Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [42]
But ‘grunt’, to me, sounded much more challenging and much more fun.
What’s more, amongst SAS troopers, Old Etonians were very thin on the ground.
CHAPTER 38
In The Brunel Hotel, Trucker and I had often discussed SAS Selection long into the night. To go for it was a decision we very much took together.
It proved one of the best decisions we ever made, and it forged in us a friendship (formed through shared hardship) that I could never have anticipated.
For the rest of our days we would be the best of friends because of what we went through together on SAS(R) Selection over the next year and beyond.
We did, though, recognize that if only a very small number of those who applied eventually went on to pass 21 SAS Selection, then the likelihood of us both passing together was very small.
It was an unspoken subject.
Also, deep down, I did worry, as Trucker was so much stronger than me. In fact, he was the most naturally fit man I’d ever met, and I so envied this. He was so effortlessly strong when we ran and trained together – so different from me – and this just fuelled my fear that he would pass Selection, and I would, in reality, never make it.
On 23 March 1994 we both arrived at the barrack gates, call-up papers in hand, tense and very nervous.
We were beginning a journey that would effectively take us from enthusiastic civilians to highly trained Special Forces operatives in just under twelve long months.
It was a daunting prospect.
To be transformed from a total amateur to a total pro, skilled in everything from demolitions to covert maritime and airborne insertions, would be a journey that would stretch us to our limits. But before we could get anywhere near anything exciting we would have to prove ourselves fit and determined, way beyond the normal.
The only way to do that was through graft, sweat and bloody hard work.
We had both been assigned to what I believe was one of the best squadrons in 21 SAS. It had a strong reputation within the SAS family as being made up of tough, no-nonsense, down to earth soldiers. They were mainly Welsh, fiercely protective of their own, and utterly professional.
But their reputation was hard earned and well guarded.
We would have to work twice as hard to earn a place there.
The first evening, along with an eclectic mix of other hopefuls, we were issued with kit, taken on a steady run up and down the nearby hills, interviewed on what our motivations were, and then briefed on what to expect.
Commitment seemed to be the watchword.
I went home relieved – just to have started this damned thing.
That is often the hard bit of any long, daunting journey.
Trucker and I then returned for one evening every week, for what was called a drill night. These evenings were designed to ‘familiarize’ us with what we could expect over the year ahead.
Selection itself would take place over many weekends over many, many months – but these two-day training tests and exercises were not to start for another few weeks.
First they wanted to sieve out those that wouldn’t stand a chance.
The weekly drill nights were spent being put through progressively harder and harder physical training.
Often these consisted of very fast, lung-bursting runs, followed by hill-sprints and fireman’s carries – up and down, up and down – until every recruit was on his knees, often covered in vomit.
One particularly nasty trick they played was to line us all up at the top of this steep two-hundred-foot hill. They would then send us to the bottom, tell us to lift up our partner on our backs, and then announce that the last two back to the top would be RTU’d, or ‘returned to unit’ – failed.
We would all stagger to the top, fighting not to be last, only then to be sent back down, minus the last two, to repeat it again – then again.
Eventually only a few of us would remain – all reduced to crawling wrecks.
Sometimes they carried out their threat and the weakest