The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [42]
One chap boasted that he had been a member of Portuguese Special Forces, another the Foreign Legion. The experienced guys were the least interested in the rest of the ‘gangfuck’, as one recruit called Bernie referred to our collective. Bernie had dark hair, legs like tree trunks and a boring day job judging by the way he tore off his suit before every training night.
The shared frustrations, fatigue and pain of PT made it an aggressive form of group therapy. It instilled a selfish kind of camaraderie. This phase was primarily about survival. As much as you coaxed your comrades along, you could only help those that helped themselves or you risked sharing their fate.
As the run wore on, sweat poured down my face and back. My shirt bunched beneath my bergen and rubbed the skin off my spine. The blisters forming on the heel of my right foot were a welcome distraction.
The formation broke ranks as we darted up a dirt track leading on to a range. The DS rounded on us and screamed, ‘Sprint up that fuckin’ hill, every one of you.’
We scrambled across deep gullies where heavy rainfall had washed away the soil. Many fell back and some closed to the front. I opted for the latter, falling over, pumping burning thighs until the lead in them prevented any more bravado.
We endured another forty minutes of hacking, grunting and moaning. We’d been running for nearly one and a half hours with no sign of looping back to where we had started. The DS turned us on to another tarmac road. A line of green trucks appeared to hover in the distance.
A few guys pulled out their water bottles as we reached the edge of the parking area. But the DS didn’t stop. He went straight up another hill. It was a sickener, a test of character to see who would quit and who would keep running on empty.
The bulk of the group carried on going before finally being ordered to stop and jog back to the transports. The ones that stopped short were never seen again.
One of the support staff bobbed up to me. ‘Collins, you need to see the OC next week about your medical. Looks like you failed your hearing test yesterday.’
That was bad news. I would have to come up with a plan. In the meantime, we all had jobs to get back to. We loaded our gear on to the wagons and braced ourselves, our battered knees bent at 90 degrees, for the five-hour journey back to London.
After a successful raid on Burger King we started looking forward to the week ahead. Flashman, one of the few officer recruits, was planning a speed-dating extravaganza with forty ‘hand-picked honeys’ in a Soho nightclub. His chiselled jaw, naturally manicured eyebrows, brown hair and blue eyes made him quite the Army pin-up.
I declined Flash’s opportunity of a lifetime because I already had plans, starting with a date with Georgie that night. I spruced up for the occasion, farmed the harvest of crud out of my ears and then we hit the town. Naturally I took the lucky lady out for dinner, went back to hers and – so she claims – kept her up all night.
Apparently I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow, snored like a congested rhino and played out every step of a recurring nightmare that my legs would seize up on the hills. Casanova, eat your heart out.
Chapter 12
Tortoise or the Hare
My next assignment with Top Gear involved turning my back on Le Mans in favour of what was probably the slowest motor race in the world – the Citroën 2CV 24-hour race at Snetterton.
Thirty horsepower gently encouraged the vehicle to a whopping top speed of 65mph, at which I drove for the entire lap. If you wanted to stop you posted a letter to the brakes and asked, politely, if they didn’t mind slowing the car down. I only lifted off the accelerator once, briefly, for the tight chicane on to