Sickener 1
I heard another noise. Oh Christ, I thought, don't tell me Geordie's going for another shot. I turned over and half-opened one eye. In the first glimmer of dawn I saw that most of the men in the spider were already awake, either standing up and pulling on their OGs or sitting on their beds lacing up their boots. I sat up instantly. My heart pounded for a few seconds, priming my body to the same level of alertness as my mind. Years of training and discipline came to my rescue. I sprang out of bed, switched my mind on and put my body into automatic pilot. I glanced at my watch: 4.30am. I didn't even dare contemplate how much sleep I'd finally managed to get, or whether it would be enough to see me through the day.
Within minutes everyone was outside, piling into the six Bedford four-tonners lined up ready to take us to our torture. We set off westwards, then turned north up the A470, following the River Wye towards the Elan Valley, deep in the Cambrian Mountains of midWales. The Elan Valley – that was the first con. It sounded like some mythical green and pleasant land. Well, it might have been green but it certainly wasn't pleasant, as we were very quickly to discover.
I looked around the twenty bodies being shaken about in the Bedford. There in the corner, hunched over a cigarette, was Geordie. I motioned to the man next to him to change places with me and, with one hand on the side of the swaying truck to keep my balance, made my way up to the front to sit next to him. One or two of the men looked up at me, vaguely puzzled by what was happening, then dropped back down to stare at their boots, mentally steeling themselves for the ordeal ahead.
'What the hell were you up to last night?' I asked Geordie, hardly concealing my astonishment.
'Having a good fuck,' Geordie replied bluntly.
'Any chance of having twos-up when we get back?' enquired Jim, appealing to Geordie's generosity.
'You can piss off, she's mine!' replied Geordie, in a distinctly ungenerous fashion.
'Did it ever cross your mind like it did the rest of us that an early night might be useful?' I continued.
'Early night! That's about as exciting as having your sinuses syringed.'
'How did you manage it, anyway?'
'I stayed in town last night and went on the piss. It was dead easy. Women – the hero's perk! They were all swooning around me. They saw my suntan and thought I was already in the SAS. I didn't tell them that I'd just come back from exercise abroad with the LI.'
'I don't know about hero's perk, but she certainly perked you up, Geordie, more than once from the sound of it,' muttered Jim.
'No, I meant how did you manage to get her through the gates?' I went on.
'I didn't. We went in the back way, down Web Tree Avenue, across the empty plot of land and under the fence behind B Squadron basha.'
'But aren't you knackered? I reckon you must have screwed your way through the equivalent of a half-marathon last night. You know what they say about sportsmen having a leg over the night before a big match.'
'Knackered, no. It relaxes me. Best remedy for tension I've ever found.'
'It might have relaxed you, but it kept half the bloody spider awake,' mumbled Jim in a disgruntled voice.
'What's up lads, can't you get your end away? I tell you what: you can all take turns with her when I go abroad, and don't worry about contraception – she told me her old man's had a vasectomy!'
The conversation subsided and was replaced by the rattle of the Bedford as it headed north. The drone of the engine had a hypnotic effect, and I found my mind drifting back to the Blue Room in Bradbury Lines and to the pre-exercise briefing that our instructor Tim had given us. This had been my first sight of the man I would grow to respect enormously as the years went by.
Tim was a tough, craggy Northerner who hailed from Manchester. He had a six-foot frame, muscular from years of thrashing through the Malayan jungle, a ramrod-straight back and a broad chest. His sandy-coloured hair was tousled and he had bushy eyebrows. Although he was quick to show his dissatisfaction at the first sign of incompetence, he was generally very quietly spoken. His tough exterior hid a generous soul. Over the next few days he would help me on several occasions with patient extra tuition in map-reading. At first I never quite knew how to take him. He could appear to be full of encouragement one moment and cut you to shreds the next. He had at one and the same time the benign look of a kindly uncle and yet a cool remoteness in his eyes. Above all, he was sure of himself. A veteran of many campaigns, he had the Military Medal to his credit.
His words came drifting back and I stared out of the back of the Bedford. 'As you know, lads, the first three weeks are called Initial Selection. But really, "selection" is the wrong word: it should be "rejection". No matter what the pressures are to keep the numbers up, we aim to reject not select. Let me warn you right now: no one gets in the back door. If you don't match up to the standards, you're out. Believe it or not I would like you all to pass. You won't, of course. In fact very few of you will. It wasn't all that long ago that on one selection course we failed every single trainee.'
If anyone had managed to build up any confidence, by now it was rapidly draining away.
'Don't think we are putting you through these agonies for the fun of it,' Tim continued. 'SAS doesn't stand for Savage and Sadistic. No, you see, an inferior soldier means a weak link. You might get away with that in the regular Army where you can hide among the crowd. But a weak link in a four-man patrol means a weak patrol, a dangerous liability. So if you fail on a single point, it's RTU, and down to Platform 4.'
Tim glanced around the assembled trainees. 'One more thing,' he said. 'Don't even think of cheating, and I'll tell you why. In the SAS we have a very special kind of cosmetic surgery. You've heard of the nose job. Well here we've got the red-line job.' He reached into the breast pocket of his windproof and pulled out a thick felt-tipped pen. 'If you haven't got what it takes, it'll be a red line through your face on the photograph in training wing, and that's you finished.'
My thoughts of Tim's first briefing were interrupted as the wagons turned off the main road at Rhayader and headed down the B4518 towards Caban Coch Reservoir. Halfway along the reservoir, the road, now no more than a single track with passing places, took a sharp right. Shortly afterwards the Bedford jolted to a halt, giving a rude awakening to those who had temporarily escaped back into slumber. All we could see out of the back of the wagon was a vast expanse of desolate hills rolling into one another, the ridges along the tops looking like the scarred backs of a school of stranded whales.
Tim walked briskly across and pulled down the tailgate of the Bedford. He then addressed his two patrols. 'Welcome to Sickener 1. This is what we call sorting the wheat from the chaff. This is where we nail the weekend adventurers, the day releases from Broadmoor and the eternal swanners.' He glanced over his shoulder and pointed to a hill that loomed up into the mist. The slope was so severe it looked like the side of a building. Tim said simply, 'There's only one way from here lads, and that's straight up.'
I checked my kit, checked my compass and started to sweat.
The next three days were spent in a nightmare world of physical pain and mental torture, being beasted across the hills by Tim, not just getting from point to point but, as Tim explained with relish, crossgraining the bukits. This meant going straight from trig point to trig point instead of contouring around the obstacles on some of the gentler slopes. It was demoralizing going down the other side of a hard-won piece of high ground knowing that you then had to climb back up again to the trig point, when all the time you could see a straight ridge linking the two points as inviting as Blackpool Promenade. And meanwhile the menacing figure of Tim always seemed to be hovering, staring and making mental notes. Just when you least expected it he would materialize as if from nowhere, suggesting that this was perhaps too much for you and wouldn't you really be better off calling it a day and returning quietly to your own regiment. All such exhortations had to be strenuously rejected. Even the slightest sign of hesitation could mean
a red-line job.
A primal sense of self-preservation and survival of the fittest quickly began to surface in me. Seeing the misfortunes of others – seeing someone really struggling, cursing through clenched jaws, 'Shit, I feel like I've been kneecapped' – was enough in an odd sort of way to spur me on, thinking, well I may be knackered, but I'm not as done in as he is. And all the time, in rhythm with the blood pounding through my ears, the same questions beat through my brain, 'What am I doing here? Will I make it?' – and each time I got the same answer, 'I've got to. I must carry on.' It was as if my thinking process had closed down. Swept along at an ever-increasing pace by this powerful experience, my mind became clouded by the strain of constant alertness, my vision channelled to a single point. And that point was only ever the present moment. There was no spare capacity of mental energy, no space to think either side of that single point, or either forwards or back in time. Total concentration had to be in the present. Failure lurked at every second. It was as if I was wading across a fast-flowing river, seeking with each step a firm rock base to put my weight on, fearing at every moment that my foot might slip and I would be swept away by the torrent.
Towards the end of the first afternoon, a heavy squall hit us. It was vicious in its suddenness and its intensity. We were caught without our windproofs, our shirts unbuttoned to the waist. Within seconds my hair was matted against my forehead and rivulets of water ran down my neck and over my chest. I was quickly soaked through, my OGs clinging clammily to my skin. All I could do was to put my head down and keep on going up to the top of the hill. To my horror, as I stumbled wearily over the last rise I saw that the ground fell away again to be met by a near-vertical rock-strewn slope leading up to the real summit, which was already swathed in racing storm-clouds. Conditions were deteriorating. 'What do I do now?' I thought. As I hesitated, turning my back to the wind and catching my breath, two other volunteers came alongside. Their shoulders sagged visibly when they saw the size of the task ahead of them. They looked at each other and both recognized the same thought in the other.
'Sod this for a game of soldiers,' one of them muttered.
They hadn't seen Tim coming up behind them. Tim said in his gruff northern accent, 'Right, you lads, get back down to that road and wait for the transport.'
As I watched them dejectedly trudge away, I said to myself, 'I'm fucked if I'm going to jack now!' I readjusted my bergen which was getting heavier by the minute as it soaked in the rain, took a firmer grip on my .303 and headed off into the gloom, with Tim hovering menacingly in the background waiting for the slightest hint of weakness to pounce again.
The route up to the top of the hill narrowed into a ridge which became more and more exposed to the driving storm the higher I got. The rain was hitting me horizontally, stinging my face until my cheekbones went numb. The wind howled into my ears until they ached. Quite suddenly, halfway up, I became aware that far from feeling even worse I somehow felt lighter. There was a new spring in my step. My breathing was deep and rhythmical. It was as if my breath was energizing and waking up my whole body. My senses now became more acute. I relished the velvet tingle of the rain as it fell down my face. The sweet saltiness of sweat prickled the corners of my mouth, the ground smelled warm, earthy and close.
Near the summit, I covered the last few yards on all fours; the wind's ferocity had increased tenfold; and it was completely impossible to stand upright. I had never before experienced anything so powerful. I could not believe that moving air could make you feel as if you were being hit by waves of water. When the others reached the top we huddled together, shouting to make ourselves heard above the roar of the wind. One trainee, moving into the middle of the group to get some shelter, tried to steady his compass on the wildly flapping map to get a bearing for the final RV of the day. Tim loomed up, his face a mask of grim determination. 'Come on lads, on your feet and over the top before you all die of exposure.' Trying not to show our reluctance, we set off down again.
Base camp that night was set up in the lee of some woods. The storm had died away almost as quickly as it started. Already, what was left of the wind had dried most of the heavy rain from the ground. As we unsaddled our bergens, Tim greeted us with 'Well done lads, that's the easy bit over with. You can get some hot food inside of you now. You're probably ready for it. I'm sure you've been looking forward all day to tonight's feast.' Tim had every right to joke about it. It would certainly be hot – our hexamine stoves would see to that – but whether the twenty-four-hour rations would qualify as a feast was doubtful. The food was in stark contrast to what we had been used to back at the cookhouse, but still I scarcely felt it was a hardship. In my mind, I'd already written off the whole three days as a 'head down, arse up and keep going till you're told to stop' exercise.
I had some difficulty getting my boots off. The rain had swollen the para-cord and tightened the knots. After picking away at them, and breaking a fingernail in the process, I finally managed to ease off the sodden leather. My feet seemed to sigh with relief as the boots came off and I immediately felt a different person. I tugged off my wet gear and slipped into the dry kit I'd kept in a plastic bag in my bergen. I filled my one-pint mess tin with water and put it to boil on the stove, then found a packet of beef stew from my ration-pack, ripped it open and sprinkled the unappetizing contents into the simmering water. I crumbled some tack biscuits and threw them into the stew to thicken it up a bit. Then the masterstroke: in with the garlic and chilli sauce I had bought in town. A fearsome relish, my all-time favourite! It would knock a crap-hat down at fifty paces. The racing spoon moved at double-quick pace between mess tin and mouth.
After making a mug of tea from my brew kit – with the help of the real powdered milk I'd brought along instead of the poor-quality Armyissue powder which always floated to the top and looked like dandruff on the surface – I cupped my hands around my mug for warmth and glanced at the other lads. I was unsure whether or not to strike up a conversation in case it was an RTU offence. The problem was that nobody told you the rules. It was a form of psychological warfare. So I took the safest way out, stared into my tea and kept my mouth shut.
It suddenly grew darker as a large black cloud glided in from the right and obscured the setting sun, splitting its watery evening light into broad beams that fanned out over the hills in a breathtaking display.
I got up and walked away from the rest of the lads, looking for a level piece of ground to sleep on. In view of my tiredness and the failing light it was rather a quick scan of the terrain but I managed to find a reasonable spot. I brushed away the broken branches, pulled out any stones that protruded from the earth so that they wouldn't dig into my back, and laid out my sleeping bag. I then rigged up my waterproof poncho to cover my sleeping area. The secret was to keep it as tight as possible so the rain would run off. I checked the OG para-cord at each corner, ensuring that it was as taut as I could make it without tearing the material. I crawled into my sleeping bag and, utterly exhausted, stretched out my aching body. A shower of rain crackled on the canvas as the large cloud I'd seen passed directly overhead. The sound of the steady rain was strangely peaceful and soothing. I curled up, luxuriating in the soft dry touch of the Royal Engineers boiler suit I'd changed into. It had been washed a thousand times and felt like silk against my skin. As I drifted off to sleep I decided I was going to wear it for the rest of selection. Its softness would be a good defence against bergen blister.
We spent most of the second day wearily cross-graining bukits again. But worse was to come. Tim had saved up the most challenging ordeal for the end. He lined us up and introduced us to the horrors of the entrail trench: a ditch beside a hawthorn hedge, two feet deep, four feet across, filled with stagnant water and rotting sheep's innards. A real cesspit! 'It's time to go back to Mother's womb, lads, afterbirth and all!' began Tim. 'Now let us imagine we're dug into a trench in Korea under heavy fire. Up front we've got no man's land littered with blown-up bodies. It's dusk and you have
to do a night patrol to gather intelligence on the enemy's position. The only way to do it is over the top with the leopard crawl, right through the bodies, the bits of brain splattered on the rocks, the guts and gore strewn over the ground. Right, who's first?'
Geordie visibly blanched. Jim swallowed hard. Tommo's sneer became even more pronounced.
'Oh, I see. Perhaps it's because you don't know what the leopard crawl is that no one's moving,' said Tim. 'You don't want to be embarrassed by your ignorance. I can't see any other reason for your reluctance. Right, who knows how to do the leopard crawl?'
A few blank faces stared back at Tim. I took the bull by the horns. 'I do.'
'Good. Then perhaps you would be so kind as to demonstrate it for the benefit of your mates here along this stretch of ground in front of us all.'
'Right, Tim.' I got down flat on my stomach and, using only knees and elbows, proceeded to crawl along while holding my rifle horizontal to the ground, pressed against my forehead. The idea was to keep the lowest possible profile to avoid being seen by the enemy.
Soldier I Page 3