Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [55]
The next climb up that moon-grassed, boggy, interminable mountainside, I will never forget. I was utterly spent. I stumbled forward a couple of paces then would collapse to my knees under the weight of the pack.
I was feeling faint, light-headed, and very, very weak – just like when you have a bad fever and try and get up from your bed to walk.
Down to my knees I went again.
At the summit, I felt a little stronger. Just a little. I tried desperately to push on and make up some time.
Finally, I could see the four-tonne trucks below me, parked in a small lay-by next to a dam at the foot of the mountains.
I raced down to the dam and clocked in.
I knew I was slow, as I could see all the other recruits huddled in the woods next to the dam’s entrance.
Wispy trails of smoke drifted up from the many little self-contained army Hexi stoves, each heating individual mugs of sweet tea. I knew the score. Each recruit quietly working in their own little world, trying to rehydrate and sort their kit out under their basha or camp, before the night-march.
The DS didn’t say anything. They simply sent me to join the others, and await the orders for the night-march.
As dusk approached, we all stood on parade.
Once more they announced: ‘OK, the following will not start the night-march. You have not passed today’s test.’
I stood and waited. Four names were read out.
Then the DS looked up at me. Cold. Unemotional.
‘… and Grylls.’
CHAPTER 49
There were several other names read out after mine, but they were a blur.
I’d been failed because I was too slow. There was no fanfare, no quiet words of comfort; just the DS coldly ushering those of us who had failed to the woods to wait for dawn.
It was the worst sinking feeling I had ever felt.
Everything I had worked for – gone. Just like that.
All that sweat and effort and pain – for nothing.
A failure. A loser. A ‘scug’.
In the twilight, I sat on my pack in the woods, with ten of the other failed recruits, and I couldn’t hold back the silent tears from rolling down my cheeks.
I didn’t care who saw me.
Never had I worked so hard for something – never had I given so much of myself, and all for nothing.
Through my tears, I could see the distant figures of Trucker and the few remaining others, silhouetted on the skyline as they climbed into the darkness at the start of their night-march.
Trux had put his arm around me earlier. He looked so sad for me. But there was nothing he could do or say.
That night, I just lay there, feeling utterly alone. I was tucked under the shelter of my bivvy, safe from the driving rain. Yet all I wanted was to be out there – out in that rain, out in the mountains, doing what I had set out to do. Passing. Not failing.
I never knew that being dry and warm could feel so awful.
So much of my life had been privileged. I’d never really had to work that hard for anything. I had grown up with loving parents, with food on the table, warmth, and clothing in abundance.
Yet I had felt uneasy with all that, almost guilty.
I wanted to work hard. I wanted to prove myself somehow worthy of the good things I had known.
If only to know that I possessed some grit and fortitude.
All I had done was remind myself that I had neither.
And that hurt.
The next few weeks were a real struggle.
Mental turmoil was a new emotion for me, and not a fun one.
I felt I had let myself down, and that I had wasted four months of my life to hard, cold misery, and all for nothing.
I was depressed and I felt useless. And that was on a good day.
The only silver lining was that my squadron training team had invited me back to try once more – if I wanted to.
It would involve going all the way back to the start. Day one.
It was a truly horrendous concept.
But they didn’t invite people back who they didn’t feel potentially had the right attitude or abilities to pass.
That was some small glimmer of hope, at least.
At this point, my greatest enemy was myself. Self-doubt can be crushing, and sometimes it