Immediate Action Page 9

  As I made my way up to the next checkpoint, which was on the top of Pen-y-Fan, my legs were aching something fierce. I was badly out of breath and drenched with sweat, blood, and mud. But the worst injury was to my pride. I knew I'd fucked up good style by being too cocky.

  The sun was out, and it was quite hot. Half of Wales seemed to be walking on the Fan with their famillessmall kids with two-liter bottles of lemonade in their hands and mothers and fathers strolling along in shorts and sandals, enjoying the view. I screamed through them, pissed off and muttering to myself, trying to make up as much time as possible.

  The DS looked at my cut face and torn trousers and said, "You all right?"

  I said, "Yeah, I've had a bad last leg."

  "Never mind, just get down to the vehicle; that's your next checkpoint."

  I had been the last man to the top of Pen-y-Fan. Now I had to go back down to the last checkpoint I ran. I ran faster than I'd ever imagined I could, but when I arrived, there was only room on the third wagon.

  That night my name was called. It was the day before Endurance, the last big test, and I was binned. It was my fault, being cocky, thinking I'd cracked it, rather than just going around the forestry block and being sure of where I was.

  Before you leave for Platform 4, you hand all your kit back to the stores. Then there is an interview with the training major. You can try only twice for Selection, unless you break a leg on your second attempt, in which case they might be lenient.

  As I waited to go into the office, I wasn't alone. Eight of us were sitting on a long wooden bench. I felt very much as I had done as a kid, waiting to see the headmistress or to go into a police station interviewing room. It was a hive of activity, people walking purposefully past, doing their own stuff. Nobody was taking any notice of us.

  I felt dejected. Everything was happening around me, but I wasn't a part of it anymore.

  The major looked up from his desk and said, "So what was the problem?

  Why were you so late on the last leg?"

  "Too cocky. I went through the forestry block, and that slowed me down severly."

  "Ah, well." He smiled. "If you come back again, you'll make sure you go around that one, won't you)"

  "Yeah."

  "Fine, maybe we'll see you again'n."

  "I hope so."

  An hour later I was standing on Platform 4.

  We boarded the train to Paddington. When we got to London, I would go to Brize Norton, and from there I'd get an R.A.F flight back to Minden.

  As I lifted my holdall into the luggage rack and sat down, I found myself looking straight at the word "Hereford" on the station sign. It hit me that I hadn't felt so devastated-and so determined-for a long, long time. ailing Selection was a bit like falling off a horse, only it hurt a hell of a lot more. I somehow knew that if I didn't get straight back on, I'd never try again, because I was so pissed off.

  Debbie was less than thrilled when I applied again, but the battalion were really good about it. They didn't give me any time off for training this time, however, because there were too many commitments-i.e more bone exercises. % I made up my mind that if I failed Selection a second time, I'd get out of the army. I was writing away, in my naivete, to companies that had a lot of Middle East contracts: "Dear Sirs, I can work a mortar." As an infantry-' man I thought I was God's gift to industry because I could fire a mortar, and couldn't understand it when the polite letters came back: "Dear Sir, Fuck off!"

  Alex, the captain who'd done so much to help us get some training, took me aside one day and said, "Every morning when I was shaving, I got the soap and wrote on the mirror: Battalion No, Regiment Yes."

  It had obviously worked for him. I was encouraged.

  I did all the training I could in the, free time I had. it was much the same as before-lots of bergen work, circuit training, and running-building up the endurance of my heart, lungs, legs, and mind.

  The only free time I had to get some more work in over the Beacons was during the Christmas leave period, which obviously pissed Debbie off severely. We started to have rows about it. Our marriage was in name only.

  She came home one evening, and we had a massive setto.

  "We're hardly ever together," she said. "And when we are, all you're interested in is Selection."

  "I'm pissed off with myself for failing," I said.

  "Then that makes two of us."

  I started to say that she had no idea about what was happening to me, that my whole world had fallen in, and if I didn't get in next time, our future was uncertain, because I would leave the army and have to look for work.

  It was a big allnighter, with enough shouting and slamming of doors to wake up half the block. I was just feeling sorry for myself and couldn't handle being rejected by the Regiment. My only vent was Debbie, and she, I thought, didn't understand. The Regiment was what I wanted, and if she wasn't with me, then as far as I was concerned, she was against me. I told her she was overreacting, that if I got in, everything would be all right again and we would get back to where we were before. But Debbie was a bright girl, and she must have seen the writing on the wall.

  What had started as an obsession and become a fixation was now a passion. I was no longer concerned about anything that happened within the battalion, unless it was physical. Then I'd throw myself into it, purely because it was more training.

  My mind was focused completely on the first month of Selection. I wasn't worried about the continuation training at all; once I'd got over that first month, everything else was the unknown, so I couldn't prepare myself for it. But I could prepare myself for the first month.

  I knew I could pass it. I knew.

  During Christmas leave Debbie stayed with her family and I went to Crickhowell, the training depot for the Prince of Wales Division.

  Early each morning I put the bergen in the back of the motor and screamed up to the Black Mountains.

  I had a rusty old black Renault 5. One of the wings was falling off and had to be kept on with a rubber bungee. Some mornings it lacked the power even to get up the hill to my start point. When the roads were icy, I ended up more than once in a hedge.

  I'd train hard all day up on the hills, then drive back down to Crickhowell, have -my two pints of Guiness and a bag of chips, drink huge amounts of electrolytes, and strap myself up for the next day.

  On Christmas Day I treated myself to a few hours off, staying where I was and watching all the old number ones on Top of the Pops. I had Christmas dinner at one of the pubs and gave Debbie a call. There was no reply.

  Next day I did the Fan Dance. As I tabbed hard.up Pen-y-Fan with this big house on my back, sweating away, four or five blokes came sprinting past with track suits and day sacks on. As they went piling past the bag of shit-me-they said, "Trying for January, are you?

  Good luck."

  I was expecting the winter Selection to be more severe than the summer one. Cold can be so debilitating; it would be tougher to wade through snow than move over the ground, and poor visibility would make the navigation a lot harder. People died on winter Selection.

  Even senior officers in the Regiment had perished on the hills.

  I'd heard that a major set off once with a bergen full of bricks rather than warm clothing. The weather came down, and he failed to return.

  The standby squadron got up onto the hill and found the body, but they couldn't get down themselves because the weather was so bad. They had to get the biwi bags out, and they used the frozen rupert as a windbreak. When the weather cleared, they laid him on his back, piled their bergens on top, and sledged him down the hill.

  I arrived back at Stirling Lines in mid-January. I sensed that people were more apprehensive than the summer intake had been. I knew I was.

  As it turned out, the weather was a great leveler. In thick mist or driving snow, everybody had to rely on his navigation. The elements slowed us all down equally; it was just a question of cracking on with the bearings, having confidence in t
he map and compass. Every day I felt better, and my confidence grew.

  Snow fell heavily for much of the second and third weeks. We were given a six-figure grid that was accurate to within a hundred meters, which is a big area when all you're looking for is a biwi bag in a snowdrift.

  Visibility was down to twenty meters one day. I got to the vicinity of my next checkpoint and was running around for valuable minutes trying to find a hint of green Gore-Tex. Eventually I found it, tapped on the bag, and the zip came down. I was a sweaty, dirty mess, starting to shiver because I'd stopped moving. Even in the very cold weather I wore just a pair of trousers, boots, and a T-shirt with a waterproof over the top.

  I was hit by the waft of coffee fumes and a cloud of steam from the boy in his sleeping bag. He was probably blowing the vents because he was so hot.

  I wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible, number one because of the timings and number two because I was starting to freeze.

  I was dripping all over him.

  He looked up, took a sip of coffee, and said, "Stop fucking sweating on me."

  As he gave me my next grid reference, he said, "See you," and did up the zip.

  I turned to face into the blizzard again and trudged on.

  I arrived at one checkpoint at the same time as two ruperts who'd tabbed in together from a different direction.

  "This checkpoint is not where it should be," one of them said to the DS.

  The biwi bag was in a snowdrift on a piece of ground called a spot height. The DS, who happened to be Peter, the chief instructor, said,

  "Well, where do you think it should be then?"

  The rupert pointed on the map; then the two officers started to argue between themselves. There was only a difference of one or two hundred meters; it wasn't as if we were in. different valleys.

  The DS said to me, "Where are we?"

  I pointed to the spot height on the map and he said, "Correct." I wasn't going to argue.

  Then he turned to the two ruperts and said, "Wherever you think you are, here is your next grid.

  Off they went, and as he gave me my grid, he shook his head and said, "I can't understand what's the matter with these guys. They're here to become part of something that I'm already a member of. I'm the chief instructor, and they're arguing with me. Even if I'm wrong, what's the point in arguing with me?"

  I didn't see them again. Next time, if there was a next time for them, perhaps they wouldn't approach Selection with their ruperts head on. At that stage the DS couldn't even be arsed to know our names unless,we'd done something wrong. All they were trying to confirm was that we had endurance, stamina, and determination. They couldn't give a monkey's about our skills and aptitudes.

  A character called jock was in the next bed to me.

  Every night, when we got back from another shattering day on the hill, he'd say, "Och, I think I'll just nip down the town and have a drink."

  He'd get all dressed up and go down to one of the discos, rolling back at three o'clock in the morning, stinking. He'd fall into bed, curl UP, and fall asleep.

  Next morning I'd give him a nudge and say, "Jock, it's scoff."

  "Och, aye."

  He'd get up, right as rain, put his kit back on, make loads of toast, and carry it to the wagon in his hands.

  The most I could manage, and it certainly wasn't every night, was a trip to the local chip shop and a couple of pints of Guinness on the way.

  At the end of the first two weeks the really serious stuff started, revisiting the Elan valley. I used to like the drive up there because we had to start really early in the morning. I could get my head down in my sleeping bag and drink loads of tea. All good things come to an end, however, and the truck would eventually stop, the engine would be switched off, and there would be silence.

  Time to ' get out.

  The cold air always attacked my ears first; then my feet started to go numb. I'd be torn between wanting to get moving to get warm and knowing that it was going to entail a fearsome tab of eight or ten hours.

  The Elan valley was as I remembered it, a godforsaken, daunting place, full of reservoirs and big stumps of elephant grass, ranging from knee to chest height.

  The area was very boggy, and because of the reservoirs, we could move only on the top half of the hills. We did a lot of night marches there as well, and I spent a lot of time falling over. I hated the Elan valley.

  By now we were carrying a rifle as well as a bergen, and it always had to be in our hands. They were only drill SLRs (self-loading rifles), but it was a bit of extra weight I could have done without.

  The carrying handles had been removed; there was no putting it over the shoulder or strapping it into the bergen. I found the SLR made life much more difficult because I couldn't swing my arms to pump uphill.

  We had to,cross a lot of fences, and if you were seen resting the weapon on the other side before you clambered over you got a fine-and mentally they'd got you.

  Some of the tabs went on and on. Sometimes I could see the checkpoint about ten kilometers away; I'd come off the high ground on that bearing, so I knew it was at the end of that delta, but then I'd just seem to be going on and on-and on. The Elan valley took a hell of a lot of people out. It wore them down. And because it was farther away, it meant we got back later, and we had to start earlier.

  As the week went on, jock carried on pissing it up. He explained to me that he'd just got over a bad dose of penile warts. For eighteen months he had been "off games," and he wasn't going to let a little thing like Selection get in the way of his rehabilitation. He opened his flies one day and showed me the damage. The end of his cock looked like the moon.

  Day after day we'd be humping over hills. The weather was horrendous.

  On one of the tabs the snow came up to my waist. It was quite a long one-thirty-five kilometers-and it was scary stuff. The mist was in, visibility was down to about ten meters, and we all failed to find a checkpoint. Eventually about six of us all bumped into one another, flapping about our timings. At long last one of the blokes found the DS's biwi bag, and we were all busy making our excuses about the weather. No need. They'd already accounted for all this. They made the decision that we'd carry on, but in a group until we got to the next checkpoint.

  Timings-wise I was in the middle of the order of march. I was on my chinstrap after wading through the snow for so many kilometers, but I got lucky. There was a Canadian jock who wanted to lead from the front, and I tucked in behind him. He was forging-through the snowdrifts like an icebreaker and we were tabbing in his wake, grinning our faces off.

  The Endurance phase culminated with Test Week. The routes were a selection of everywhere we'd been and ranged from twenty to sixty-four kilometers. This was where all the lnj'uries began to play on people.

  There were only about forty of us left, which I thought was great; less of a wait for food. Each day now I was feeling stronger because I knew the ground and what to expect.

  I hadn't had a gypsy's, so I reckoned I could even screw up on one of them and I'd be all right. Best of all, I had no blisters, which I was really impressed with, but I was still strapping up my feet because the ankles were taking a fearsome pummeling.

  By now I was always landing up in the same wagon as another fellow, George. I discovered that we'd both been in Crossmaglen at the same time. He was in an engineer unit that was building the submarines; he then transferred, and was now in 59 Engineers, the Royal Engineers attached to the Commando Brigade. He was into mountain climbing and had all the kit. He really annoyed me because every time I'd get there, he would already be in, lying in his sleeping bag, eating oranges.

  We'd sit together in companionable silence and wait for the wagon to fill up. George was tall and lean, with varicose veins behind one of his legs. It looked like a relief map of the Pyrenees.

  The day came when it was time for Sketch Map.

  There was no way I was going to cock up this time, and I didn't.

  We got
back to camp at about 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon after a 4:00 A.M. start. At 10:00 o'clock that same night we'd be setting out for Endurance, so it was straight in, sort the kit out, and have a bath.

  I'd always been a shower man, until I'd seen all the boys going in with boxes of Radox,and I thought, Right, I'll have some of that for Endurance. But I put far too much in. It was like floating in the Dead Sea. I didn't know if it did me any physical good, but in my mind I felt that it did.

  We drove to Talybont, one of the reservoirs. When I got off the wagon and put the bergen on, I started getting pins and needles in my hands because the weight on my shoulders was restricting the flow of blood. I had that initial pain of getting it on, then even more pain as welts broke out where it was rubbing. And then after about ten minutes, as soon as I got moving, my skin started to tingle because I was starting to leak. I got the wetness around my neck, and it started to get at the base of my hair. That was always quite an uncomfortable time, that very first ten minutes or quarter of an hour, because my legs were really stiff. Then I started to get my second breath and everything started to loosen up.

  After about twenty minutes I was into the swing of it again. My mind was switched off; I was listening to jingles in my head. It was bitterly cold, and the wind was getting in all the little gaps. Until I got a good sweat on, it was a horrible feeling, especially after getting out of the cozy sleeping bag I'd been lying in for the hour-and-a-half drive.

  Most of Endurance was in darkness, and because it was wintertime, there was even less daylight. Everybody looked quite excited but apprehensive. I was feeling confident and fit. I had no bad injuries, just bergen sores.

  They called out the names, and off we went. The bergen was the heaviest it had ever been, about fifty-five to sixty pounds, because of the extra food and water. I always took water from the camp because I knew it wasn't contaminated. I didn't fancy drinking water from a stream, even with sterilizing tablets, only to see a stinking dead sheep upstream; if you start getting gut aches, it's going to slow you down.

  The extra weight was worth it.