Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [66]
That ability to think clearly and act decisively when all about you is chaos. Oh, and to learn ultra-fast.
Camouflage, tracking, cacheing, or CTRs (close target recces). Weapon drills: in the mud, underwater, in the dark. Training on all the many different foreign weapons; learning how to assemble and fire them quickly and accurately. Live-firing during four-man contact drills, whilst ducking and weaving up ‘jungle’ target lanes, expending hundreds and hundreds of rounds.
And through it all, we were learning how to work as the ultimate team: to know instinctively how each of us reacted under pressure, and where our individual strengths lay.
The idea was that when we needed him, we would just know our wingman would be there.
Tension was always high, as the consequences of mistakes began to get more serious. We were in this together, and errors would cost us collectively. At best, it might be a night of press-ups, and at worst one of our lives. (Real bullets, being fired at targets in the dark, whilst diving and scraping through ditches, are always unforgiving in such close proximity to one another.)
Our final battle camp was fast approaching, and the DS’s ‘discussions’ over our individual suitability for SAS service were becoming more frequent now.
They also continued to increase the physical pressure, as time and time again the DS would have us running up and down mountainsides with heavy machine guns and boxes of ammunition.
‘Good – now do it all again – but this time strip and reassemble a rifle as you climb.’
And through it all, we knew that, by the end, not all of us would pass.
The journey up to battle camp started badly.
‘If you can’t even load a bloody truck with all your kit properly, then you’ve got no bloody chance of passing what’s ahead of you, I can assure you of that,’ Taff, our squadron DS, barked at us in the barracks before leaving.
I, for one, was more on edge than I had ever felt so far on Selection.
I was car sick on the journey north, and I hadn’t felt that since I’d been a kid heading back to school. It was nerves.
We also quizzed Taff for advice on what to expect and how to survive the ‘capture-initiation’ phase.
His advice to Trucker and me was simple: ‘You two toffs just keep your mouths shut – 23 DS tend to hate recruits who’ve been to private school.’
23 SAS were running the battle camp (it generally alternated between 21 and 23 SAS), and 23 were always regarded as tough, straight-talking, hard-drinking, fit as hell soldiers. We had last been with them at Test Week all those months earlier, and rumour was that ‘The 23 DS are going to make sure that any 21 recruits get it the worst.’
Trucker and I hoped simply to try and stay ‘grey men’ and not be noticed. To put our heads down, and get on and quietly do the work.
This didn’t exactly go according to plan.
‘Where are the lads who speak like Prince Charles?’ The 23 DS shouted on the first parade when we arrived.
‘Would you both like newspapers with your morning tea, gents?’ the DS sarcastically enquired.
Part of me was tempted to answer how nice that would be, but I resisted.
The DS continued: ‘I’ve got my eye on you two. Do I want to have to put my life one day in your posh, soft hands? Like fuck I do. If you are going to pass this course you are going to have to earn it and prove yourself the hard way. You both better be damned good.’
Oh, great, I thought.
I could tell the next fortnight was going to be a ball-buster.
CHAPTER 60
The first five days were a blur of limited sleep, endless tests, and more PT than we had ever done before.
Each morning began with one of these hour-long, killer PT sessions, held at 0500, before the day’s programme had even begun.
Meals were often eaten standing up, and I wasn’t quite sure why they had bothered to issue us with a bed, we got to see it so little.
We’d go from stripping foreign weapons blindfolded, and against the clock, to a ballistics lecture; then into a practical signalling exercise; then from a lake crossing into another pack run; followed