Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [53]
I had to make up time, and fast, or I would fail.
Somehow, I found my strength on the next leg, and I overtook long lines of recruits who were beginning to flag. This gave me more confidence, and I pushed on harder still.
At the summit, I set off almost at a sprint, down to the foot of the peak and the end.
I could see the DS at the gate far beneath me – tiny specks – one and a half thousand feet below, and still three miles away.
I gave it everything I had, and ran for the finish.
I made it. With only three minutes to spare.
As I sat on my pack, head hung between my legs, exhausted, the relief swept over me.
I knew that almost all those that I had overtaken would be failed.
Sure enough, thirty minutes later, when all the stragglers had crawled back in, a parade was called.
‘The following names, take your kit and put it in the back of the near truck.’
It was clinical: cold and unapologetic.
You fail yourself. Remember?
That day sixteen people were returned to their unit.
The bar was being raised ever higher, and, if truth be told, I was struggling.
CHAPTER 47
The night-march was a long one.
It started at dusk and wouldn’t finish until 3.30 a.m.
The weather had taken a turn for the worse as it had got dark, and was making the navigation especially hard.
On the way to the second to last checkpoint, amongst this high, windy, boggy terrain, I had to pass through a dense forest, on the steep side of a mountain.
On the map it looked straightforward, but in reality it was a nightmare: thick, dense pine, piles of cut timber, and endless thickets of gorse.
After a few hundred yards I realized this was going to turn into a battle.
I was exhausted already from five hours of night-march through boggy moon-grass, and this was the last thing I now needed.
I just wanted to reach the other side of the wood.
In the pitch black, navigating through this insanely dense wood required pinpoint accuracy and a total dependence on your compass bearing. But the trees were unending.
Finally, I broke through and hit the steep track on the far side of the forest, and spotted the lone DS tent, silhouetted against the skyline.
The routine when arriving at a checkpoint was rigorously enforced. You approached the checkpoint, crouched down on one knee, map folded tightly in one hand, compass in the other, and weapon cradled in your arms.
Then you announced yourself. Name. Number.
The DS would then give you your next six-figure grid reference, which you had to locate rapidly on the map, and then point out to him with the corner of the compass or a blade of grass. (If we were caught pointing at a map with a finger, instead of a blade of grass or something sharp, we had been threatened, by the unforgettable Sgt Taff, that he would ‘Rip that finger off and beat you to death with the soggy end!’ It’s a threat that I enjoy passing on to my boys when we are reading a map together nowadays.)
As soon as the grid reference was confirmed, it was time to ‘pack up and f*** off’, as we were so often told.
That was your cue to get moving.
I moved away twenty yards from the tent and crouched down in the pitch black. I pulled out my head torch, which was covered in masking tape with just a small pinprick of light shining through, and carefully studied my laminated map.
The map was always kept folded tightly in my thigh pocket, and the compass was attached to a lanyard from my jacket chest pocket. Lose either and you failed.
I shuffled my back round against the wind, and with a long blade of grass between my fingers, I traced out what I reckoned would be the best route to take across the moorland.
Make a bad choice and it could cost you precious hours.
But errors can come so easily when you are wet through, sleep-deprived and struggling to see a map in low light and strong winds.
I turned into the wind and headed up the steep track alongside the wood, and then across the last two miles of moon-grass.
Come on. Let’s finish this one now.
It was now 2 a.m.
I was so