Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [61]
Blistered backs and feet being agonizingly stripped and redressed with zinc tape. Soldiers silently going about their business.
In fact much of our time in the evenings was spent re-dressing and re-taping the inevitable blisters that every recruit had to endure.
That morning, I was sick again whilst we stood around waiting. I hated the waiting. Being sick was pure nerves.
I looked at my day’s source of energy on the ground at my feet. Bad start.
On setting off, the snow started to fall thickly, and on top of the first summit I found that my energy was starting to wane fast. Again. My body was simply getting drained of its reserves, day after day.
And it was impossible to replenish those reserves in only a snatched few hours’ sleep each night.
I hated this faint, dizzy feeling I was getting.
Why am I getting this now? I need energy.
But the vomiting, lack of sleep, and hour after hour of hard route marches through mountainous bogs, day after day, was systematically taking its clear toll on me.
By halfway I was behind time, and I knew that I needed to up the gear, regardless of how I was feeling. I knuckled down, pushed harder, and sure enough I found that the harder I pushed myself, the more my strength returned.
Finally, I completed the day within the time. I was fired up and still running on adrenalin as I threw my kit in the back of the wagon.
Good job, Bear.
What I didn’t realize was that the price of digging so deep, day after day, was that my reserves and endurance levels were getting weaker and weaker.
And you can’t run on empty for ever.
CHAPTER 55
The next day was a much shorter distance, but the weight was increased again – significantly.
Short and sharp, I thought. Work hard, Bear, once more.
The driving, horizontal rain made navigation really hard. And, within minutes of starting out, all my kit was drenched through. I looked like I had just done a deep river crossing.
Despite being soaked through, I wasn’t cold. I was working hard for that.
I pulled the hood of my jacket down lower over my head, and pushed on into the wind.
Six hours later, I saw the end trucks ahead. I heaved the huge pack on to the back, and changed into dry kit for the slow, rumbling journey back to camp. Then it was back into the long, laborious process of cleaning my kit, re-patching my feet, and prepping for the next day.
Those of us that remained knew all too well what the final twenty-four hours held in store for us.
One march, one last push. But it was a monster.
Endurance is the route march that has made the Selection famous – it is also a march on which a soldier had died some years earlier from fatigue. It is a true leveller – and unifier to all who pass.
The march would take us across the whole Brecon Beacons mountain range … and then back again. To drive the magnitude of the task home to us, we realized that we would need two 1:50,000 map sheets just to cover the route.
Symbolically, it was also the last test of the mountain-phase of Selection.
Pass this in under twenty-four hours and you were through to the continuation-phase of SAS(R) Selection.
At 2 a.m. I woke to the sound of my alarm clock. I hated that noise.
Slowly I sat up.
The lights were already on, and everyone was busy taping up their feet or covering the blisters on their backs. The guy next to me looked pale and haggard as he silently taped his toes, like a boxer carefully wrapping his hands before a fight.
I had somehow avoided ever using too much blister-tape. I had persevered in the early days to get my back and feet accustomed to the weight, and looking at the backs and ankles around me strapped and taped up tight, I was grateful for that, at least.
I had survived thus far with only a few annoying blisters, and that can make a critical difference.
My body, though, felt utterly exhausted, and my ankles and feet were both badly swollen.
The best I could do was literally to hobble slowly the hundred yards to the cookhouse.
Halfway