Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [44]
If you couldn’t do that, then it was best that the regiment found out now, before you started out on Selection itself.
Eventually we were released from our rat holes – tired, cramped and exhausted. We were then run round the assault course again – just for good measure.
This was all about the DS having a chance to see each of our ‘default’ characters: was I a sticker, a grafter, was I calm under pressure, could I maintain my control in a crisis?
Still there was no rest.
We were then escorted off to a large, heavy steel artillery cannon that sat, sunk in the mud, in the middle of a field.
‘Well, get pulling, lads – and fast.’
We heaved at the towlines and strained to move it, and slowly the wheels started to turn.
‘We will tell you when to stop … and if you stop before, then you will be off the course …’
The DS rarely shouted, but tended quietly just to watch – they were looking for self-discipline. This was their mantra throughout: ‘You push yourselves, lads – if you are too slow, then you’ve failed yourself. Is that clear?’
It was clear – and it was hard, but I liked it.
Such self-reliance was strangely empowering.
A lot of other soldiers who I encountered on Selection found such an attitude difficult. Many recruits were used to being shouted at, endlessly driven on by their colour sergeants.
But the SAS way was different, and those who needed shouting at in order to perform would soon fall by the wayside.
You had to be able to push yourself, and be able to do it alone. And as I learnt, in the case of the SAS, it was ‘always a little further’.
Eventually, as dusk fell, utterly exhausted, we were stood down. It had been a long, hard day, and I collapsed into my sleeping bag on the hangar’s concrete floor.
It was still dark when I could hear the corporals hovering outside the hangar like quiet, prowling lions. I fumbled to get ready. At 0550 I lugged my heavy backpack on and shuffled out into the pre-dawn light. It felt even colder outside than it had in the damp, open hangar.
I was stood on parade five minutes early, ready.
We had been told very clearly that if we were told to be on parade at 6 a.m., then that really meant 5.55 a.m. A minute late and you were warned. Late again and you were off the course.
We weighed in our packs on the makeshift scales – 35 lb minimum plus webbing, weapon, water and food. It felt heavy. (Little did I know what was in store over the next year ahead, and the sort of weights I’d finally be carrying.)
We set off as a squad at a fast walk that quickly became a forced stride, and then a jog, as we followed the same track round the same hills, all over again.
The same eight miles – over four laps of the wooded hill – but this time in full kit.
‘Come on – one lap done – three more to go.’
Halfway through the second we lost several more recruits who slipped behind the group, unable to maintain the pace. If the speed was too fast and the weight too great now, then it was best they were taken off the course at this early stage – for their own sake.
By the third lap I was really struggling, gasping for more oxygen, snot smeared down my face, any humour or romance firmly gone, replaced by burning leg muscles and burning lungs.
Just fight, Bear. Come on, one more lap. Don’t waste all that hard work now.
At last the finish point, and I turned around to see a diminished group and a load of stragglers behind. The stragglers were taken aside. I never heard what was said to them, but they looked utterly dejected and spent.
They were sent to pack their bags.
Another eight had been failed, but the real fear in me was whether I could keep pushing that hard.
I mean, this was still only pre-Selection. And it was tough.
What on earth would SAS Selection itself be like?
CHAPTER 40
Before we got even close to the stage of being ‘trained’ in all the skills of a Special Forces soldier, we would have to pass the ‘hill’ phase of Selection.
This was simply the SAS’s way of whittling down the numbers from the masses to the few. It was always against