Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [77]
It can also make them fun to be around.
I was soon discharged from the rehab centre and sent back to the SAS. But the doctor’s professional opinion was that I shouldn’t military parachute again. It was too risky. One dodgy landing, at night, in full kit, and my patched-up spine could crumple.
He didn’t even mention the long route marches carrying huge weights on our backs.
Every SF soldier knows that a weak back is not a good opener for life in an SAS squadron.
It is also a cliché just how many SAS soldiers’ backs and knees are plated and pinned together, after years of marches and jumps. Deep down I knew the odds weren’t looking great for me in the squadron, and that was a very hard pill to swallow.
But it was a decision that, sooner or later, I would have to face up to. The doctors could give me their strong recommendations, but ultimately I had to make the call.
A familiar story. Life is all about our decisions. And big decisions can often be hard to make.
So I thought I would buy myself some time before I made it.
In the meantime, at the squadron, I took on the role of teaching survival to other units. I also helped the intelligence guys whilst my old team were out on the ground training.
But it was agony for me. Not physically, but mentally: watching the guys go out, fired up, tight, together, doing the job and getting back excited and exhausted. That was what I should have been doing.
I hated sitting in an ops room making tea for intelligence officers.
I tried to embrace it, but deep down I knew this was not what I had signed up for.
I had spent an amazing few years with the SAS, I had trained with the best, and been trained in the best, but if I couldn’t do the job fully, I didn’t want to do it at all.
The regiment is like that. To keep its edge, it has to keep focused on where it is strongest. Unable to parachute and carry the huge weights for long distances, I was dead weight. That hurt.
That is not how I had vowed to live my life, after my accident. I had vowed to be bold and follow my dreams, wherever that road should lead.
So I went to see the colonel of the regiment and told him my decision. He understood, and true to his word, he assured me that the SAS family would always be there when I needed it.
My squadron gave me a great piss-up, and a little bronze statue of service. (It sits on my mantelpiece, and my boys play soldiers with it nowadays.) And I packed my kit and left 21 SAS for ever.
I fully admit to getting very drunk that night.
CHAPTER 71
Whatever doesn’t kill you, only serves to make you stronger. And in the grand scheme of life, I had survived and grown stronger, at least mentally, if not physically.
I had come within an inch of losing all my movement and, by the grace of God, still lived to tell the tale. I had learnt so much, but above all, I had gained an understanding of the cards I had been playing with.
The problem now was that I had no job and no income.
Earning a living and following your heart can so often pull you in different directions, and I knew I wasn’t the first person to feel that strain.
My decision to climb Everest was a bit of a ‘do or die’ mission.
If I climbed it, and became one of the youngest climbers ever to have reached the summit, then I had at least a sporting chance of getting some sort of job in the expedition world afterwards – either doing talks or leading treks.
I would be able to use it as a springboard to raise sponsorship to do some other expeditions.
But on the other hand, if I failed, I would either be dead on the mountain or back home and broke – with no job and no qualifications.
The reality was that it wasn’t a hard decision for me to make. Deep down in my bones, I just knew it was the right thing to do: to go for it.
Plus I have never been one to be too scared of that old impostor: failure.
I had never climbed for people’s admiration; I had always climbed