The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [54]
‘That was, like, thirty fucking K or something. And Jesus Christ, there was some fucking headcase on my route. I was up the side of Fan Y something or other and there’s this guy crashing through, like, a million babies’ heads and barbed wire fences below me. I was looking and thinking, mate, what the fuck are you doing?
‘He gets to the fucking river, takes off his bergen and chucks his webbing across to the other side, puts his bergen back on and, like, jumps in.’
This story was beginning to sound awfully familiar.
‘Then he disappears from sight and reappears about twenty metres down-stream. I seriously thought he was fucking dead.’
‘Me too,’ I said through the opening of my sleeping bag.
‘Collins, man, where the fuck did you come from?!’ Bernie was hanging on Cartman’s every word, his racing spoon frozen over a steaming bag of sausage and beans.
‘I knew I was in trouble when my feet didn’t touch the river bed. My bergen weighed a bloody ton after that.’
He shook his head in bemusement. ‘My job’s fucking boring; that’s why I’m doing this. But you, Collins, you’re just a complete nutter.’
Kojak toked on his cigarette. ‘I just love the Phys. It’s the best bit of the course.’ He really was mad.
The banter continued, with everyone swapping routes, mistakes, medications and personal agonies. The course was thinning down to a hard core of guys who were willing to tough it out to the end. As the marches became longer, harder and higher we dug deeper and our bodies adapted. Small courtesies like sharing rations and helping each other with admin were now common. But when it came to survival you were on your own. No one could carry you.
Our training course had been whittled down from over 100 candidates to just 23 that now faced the final hurdle. The final week consisted of seven days of hell, running the marathon of marathons.
In the evening briefing the Officer Commanding laid out the timings. He was careful to leave us in no doubt that some of us were hanging on by our fingernails.
I ate like a pig in preparation for that week, but the volume of stodge consumed at camp was on a new level, even by my standards. Speed was of the essence in order to spend more time sorting kit or sleeping, so I ate dessert whilst queuing for the main meal. Later, as we were having our bergens weighed at the starting point in Zulu Valley, we were ordered to line up and display our consumables. Scales varied, so it paid to pack heavy. If you came in underweight by so much as a biscuit, the penalty was severe.
‘Where’s your food for the day?’ asked a coarse Scottish NCO with an Alsatian at his heel.
I produced the mulched banana milkshakes I was carrying in a pair of Nalgene bottles and took the tops off.
‘Where’s your proper food for the tab?’
‘This is it, Staff. It’s crushed bananas, nuts and carbohydrates.’
‘What are you,’ he said in disbelief, ‘some sort of fucking fruitcake?’
He dispatched us one at a time into the sopping valley. The range we were running through was notably more boggy than the Black Mountains and my boot strategy stank. Lowa boots were taller than my usual Skarpas, which meant they should keep more water out. Once water got in, however, you carried the extra weight on your feet and the weight was multiplied by the leverage of your lifting legs. A wet boot also acted as a greenhouse to a blister. I doubled up with knee-high gaiters.
Within sight of the start line I managed to find a bog and slurped into it as far as my armpits. The Lowas acted like a sponge and quadrupled the weight of my feet for the rest of the tab.
Each day was as relentlessly knackering as the next. Eating, drinking, sleeping, pissing, tabbing. But as wearing as the whole process became, you had to admire the scale of the natural beauty in the National Park. We ran along the black, peat-like soil tracks through