A few minutes later I attack the assault course. Buoyed up by my success I seem to find a gear I didn't know I had and I fly over the first few obstacles. As usual I struggle over the monkey bars because of the strain it puts on my shoulder but I get through them. The half regain goes well, as does the swinging bridge and the tunnel. I climb the rope up the side of the twelve-foot wall and run for the finishing line.
My lungs are on fire and I am doubled up. But what was my time? Last attempt I was forty seconds over the five minutes allowed.
'Four minutes and fifty seconds,' says Jon. 'Pass.'
'Good, Chris,' says Sean. 'That's two out of two. Get your breath back and then you go for the fireman's carry.'
A few minutes later Jon plus webbing and weapon is atop my shoulders. I line up at the white starting post and look two hundred yards down the field at the distant white finishing post. I decide to run along the top of the field as I reckon that, although it involves a slight incline, it will steer me clear of the worst of the mud in the middle.
'Stand by,' shouts Sean.
'Go for it, mate,' whispers Jon curled over my shoulders.
'Three, two, one . . . go!'
I push off hard and break into an immediate run. Fast walking is not good enough if I am to stand any chance of breaking the ninety-second barrier. The trick is to maintain the run for as long as possible before the lactic acid builds up in the legs so much that a staggering walk or a grinding stop are the only options left.
'Keep running,' says Jon.
'Do not walk,' echoes Sean.
I keep looking up to navigate myself through the mud and to keep my eye on the white post I am aiming for, but it doesn't seem to be getting nearer. Jon is getting heavier with every stride so I lower my head and concentrate on driving my legs forward as hard as I can. Not watching where I am going I immediately run right into the worst of the mud and feel my boots sticking. I look up again and suddenly the white finishing post looks bigger. It is nearer. I have made progress. Fifty yards to go. I dig deep and try to maintain forward speed.
'Go on, Chris,' shouts Jon. 'Do not walk. Keep pumping!'
Still twenty yards to go but I am hardly managing to lift my feet. I am stumbling like a drunk but I manage to keep upright. Five yards, two yards, one yard. I cross the line and Jon leaps off my back. 'Breathe deeply, Chris,' he says. 'And keep walking. Keep moving.'
I cannot describe the pain I am feeling. It is agony mixed with ecstasy. Pain blended with the euphoria released by endorphins. I feel light-headed but know I did my best. I had nothing left to give.
'Eleven seconds to spare, Chris,' says Sean. 'That's three out of four passed. One to go.'
One to go, indeed – but what a one it is. The full regain – my nemesis. The commando challenge I have always feared most and one that I have never successfully executed.
I climb the scaffolding and look along the rope swinging gently over the freezing tank that I always seem to end up falling into. I take time to gather my thoughts and steady my nerves. As I do so I make a decision. I am going to go for broke and try a different technique. It is one I heard about the other day when I bumped into McCann – a soft-spoken recruit from Northern Ireland. He had been backtrooped after failing the ropes and full regain but had eventually passed after a few weeks' remedial training in Hunter Company. I was delighted for him as he was, in all other respects, a first-rate recruit and a really nice bloke as well.
'So, what did you do differently?' I asked him.
'I didn't use the natural bounce of the rope to get my feet back on,' he told me. 'If you mistime it you just fall back and it puts extra strain on the arms. I just let my feet down from the rope in a very controlled way and then do what is effectively a pull-up bringing my head to the rope and then I curl up and hook my feet on.'
With McCann's technique in mind I crawl along the top of the rope to the halfway point. I stop, look down at the beckoning tank of water and then let myself fall beneath the rope and hang for a few seconds from my hands and feet like a sloth. Then I unhook my feet and, just as McCann told me, I gently lower myself down maintaining a strong grip with my hands. As soon as my arms are fully extended I brace them and pull myself up until my chin is in line with the rope. I then concentrate hard and, putting my head right back, I curl my body and feet upwards. I try to grab the rope with my right foot and I almost do but it slips off and I curse as I fall back to the vertical. Damn! Has my gamble failed? I don't know if I have the strength to try that again. I compose myself for one last attempt. My fingers are beginning to tingle and I know I don't have much grip left. I take a breath, brace my arms once again and pull myself up. This time, feeling myself slipping, I jerk myself backwards and kick hard for the sky. The top of my right foot hits the rope and my left foot follows. Somehow I manage to maintain my body curl against gravity and push my right heel over the top of the rope. Hooked! I then push my left heel over as well. Double-hooked! I am back to being a sloth again. Now it's a matter of pure technique, which I have done many times on the half-regain obstacle, so I mustn't panic. I force my right elbow over the rope and then roll my body back on top of the rope in a swivel movement. I am there. I pause, look straight down the rope and wait for the violent swaying to stop. As soon as it does I start to crawl to the other side of the tank. I am bursting with excitement and want to shout out but I manage to contain myself. This is new territory for me as I've never got this far before and so the last thing I want now is to lose my head – and my balance with it. That tank could still claim me.
I have virtually nothing left in my arms but I somehow manage to inch myself to the cargo netting which is my way back down to the ground. It is not until both my feet are firmly planted on the gravel that I allow myself to punch the air. I have passed the Bottom Field!
'So, why didn't you do that the first time?' smiles Jon.
'If only,' I say. 'Thank God. I really thought I wasn't going to get my feet back on that bloody rope.'
'Neither did we, mate,' says Sean. 'Good effort though. Now we have to get you onto Tarzan as soon as possible. You're not out of the woods yet, you know.'
Sean is right of course. I know the Green Beret is still a long shot but at least now I have earned the right to run the commando tests for real. I've got myself into the final, so to speak, and have not, after all, fallen in the heats.
I stride back to my block with head held high. I am filthy and sodden through – but this time I am wet with my own sweat and not from the filthy tank water. I drag my heavy legs up the stairs to the first landing and push through the heavy fire doors onto my corridor where I can see Jane standing at the other end doing some vacuuming. She turns and looks nervously towards me.
'Well?' she says.
'Get the kettle on, Jane. And break out your very best biscuits . . .'
11
Bid for the Green Beret
22 January
The most immediate consequence of cracking the Bottom Field is that I have earned the right to wear an olive-green cap comforter – since the Second World War the headwear traditionally worn by those ranks undergoing commando training.
'Well done, Chris,' says Orlando Rogers as he officially hands me my comforter in the training team office. 'You left it a bit late, mate, but you got there in the end.'
'Thanks, Orlando,' I say, shaking his hand.
'Remember, when you're wearing it you have to run everywhere,' he says. 'No walking allowed in the commando phase of training.'
'I know. It'll be a pleasure, believe me,' I reply, as I pull the woollen hat over my head.
'Now comes the big challenge, Tomcat,' says Matt Adams. 'You need to swap that for a beret – of the green variety!'
'I'll do my best, Matt,' I mutter, knowing I've got my Tarzan acquaint the day after tomorrow at the crack of dawn with Jon.
24 January
06.30
It is freezing cold – perfect conditions to pull a muscle, so we don't hang around. T
o acquaint me with the Tarzan assault course Jon walks and talks me through it once and then, as soon as the regulation ambulance is in place, he orders me to the top of the death slide.
'Stand by, Chris,' he shouts, as I reach the gantry seventy foot off the ground. I step to the edge and prepare to leap.
'Place your travelling rope over the main rope,' says another PTI who has come up with me. 'Put your hands through the loops, grip and hold on like fuck. You'll be going in ten seconds.'
I take a deep breath and look out over the aerial Tarzan assault course spread out beneath me – a mass of suspended ladders, metal rigging, swinging ropes, cargo netting, and high-wire tightropes threading through the tall, swaying trees. Having watched the lads do the course several times I am more than familiar with the obstacles and the techniques, at least in my imagination where I have run the course countless times. Any second now, though, I am going to do it for real.
'Three, two, one – go!'
I leap, curl my legs to my chest and hurtle downwards so fast that it instantly becomes clear how potentially dangerous it is at these heights and this sort of velocity. I kick out and hang on for dear life – one slip could spell disaster and horrendous injury. I am flying but it is when I start to feel my arms being pulled from their sockets that I really start to reflect on the ramifications of falling, not only to life and limb but also to the whole documentary project. If I break my neck by plummeting to the ground the whole enterprise will come screeching to a stop. This is still in the back of my mind as I leap to the ground and sprint towards the next obstacle – the high rope swing that sends me smashing into a vertical cargo net. The potential for disaster occurs to me again minutes later as I slide my feet along a swaying wire tightrope forty feet off the ground and then again as I leap across the chasm and punch my arm through the rough rope netting. Clearly, if I had any sense of responsibility I would give up this madness and concentrate my efforts on my own job . . .
Yes, if I had a sense of responsibility I might – but obviously I do not! This is fantastic. Exhilarating. Thrilling. And the death slide is to die for! I love every spine-tingling minute of it.
But – and it is a big but – my time, it turns out, was desperately slow – a minute over the five minutes allowed.
'Not bad technique, Chris,' says Jon. 'But you'll really have to speed up if you're going to beat the time limit, and remember, for the commando test itself you have to sprint straight from the Tarzan course to run the entire Bottom Field and you have to do the whole thing in less than thirteen minutes. One second over and you fail.'
Half an hour later, back in my accommodation, I slide my battered, bruised and shivering body under a steaming hot shower. Shutting my eyes and letting the warming water cascade over me for a good ten minutes, I rerun the Tarzan assault course over and over again. I want to imprint every inch of every rope and wire on my consciousness so that it becomes second nature to me. I have missed virtually all the practice sessions allocated for 924 Troop and I know I won't be able to get many more practices on my own in the time I have left. For one thing, the camp timetable won't allow it, and also, every time the Tarzan is run, even by just one person, it requires considerable resources – at least two PTIs for safety and of course an ambulance and crew.
For the next two weeks I work on my physical fitness as hard as I can. Before breakfast I run to the village of Budleigh Salterton and back – a distance of just over ten kilometres. Every lunchtime I swim between twenty and thirty lengths of the fifty-metre pool and then every evening I train for two hours in the gym – on the ropes, on the weights and on the floor mats. I am unable to practise on either the Bottom Field or the Tarzan course because every time I'm free other recruit troops are booked on to them. It's frustrating as I desperately need the opportunity to perfect my techniques and, more importantly, to build up my confidence to go faster.
Eventually, Jon tells me he has managed to get permission for me to do a run-through on the Tarzan course combined with Bottom Field on 10 February at 8 a.m. This will not be with my troop but with 923 Troop.
'You need to do this run-through,' he tells me emphatically. 'You've still not run the Tarzan and Bottom Field together and that's what you will have to do in the commando tests. The trouble is, this'll have to be your one and only practice because the commando tests proper start one week later on 17 February. It's pretty tight but there should be enough time to recover
10 February
08.00
I climb the tower to start the only complete practice I am going to have on the Tarzan obstacles combined with the Bottom Field – a course, I'm constantly reminded, that has to be finished in thirteen minutes. I've had one run-through of Tarzan and several runs of the Bottom Field but I've never done them together, so once again I find myself in uncharted territory.
'Three . . . two . . . one – go!'
I go into autopilot, leap and hurtle down the death slide. I then put my head down to jump, run, swing, balance, wobble and sway over the first few obstacles. So far so good, I think to myself. I know I'm not breaking any speed records, but as I approach the chasm leap, I'm feeling pretty confident that I'm going faster than on my last run. I hurl myself at the cargo netting, punch hard through one of the holes and then, bending my elbow, hook on with my right arm. I immediately start to climb to the top of the netting in order to pull myself over and come down the other side but something is wrong with my grip. I glance down at my right hand and notice that my ring finger is strangely crooked. It is dislocated at the first knuckle.
Fuelled by adrenalin I climb down from the netting and immediately sprint to leap for a hanging rope in order to swing over a massive log obstacle. I can hardly hold on with my right hand and clip the log so hard with my left shin that I feel the skin sheer off under my fatigues. I fall to the ground but leap up as soon as possible as I now have a 300-yard dash to the Bottom Field. As I run I grasp my injured finger with my left hand and squeeze it as hard as I can. It clicks and I look down to see that it is straight again but massively swollen and throbbing like hell.
The first obstacle to get through on the Bottom Field is, in this configuration, the sixty-foot tunnel. I crawl through as best I can but my right hand is excruciating. Next is the twelve-foot wall which I scale but I manage only a two-finger grip with my right hand which slows me down considerably. I run down to the tank trap, leap it and accelerate towards the six-foot wall. I jump and get my elbows on top but then fall back. 'Jump again!' shouts a nearby PTI. I run back a few yards and try again. This time I manage to pull myself over but it has cost me more valuable seconds. I clear the next couple of barriers and then jump up to start swinging myself over the monkey bars. This is not my favourite obstacle at the best of times but now everything that could go wrong does so. My right hand has very limited grip and I can do little more than hook on with a couple of good fingers. I try to compensate by taking more of my weight on my left side but manage no more than three bars before I fall unceremoniously into the tank. 'Get out and try again,' shouts the unsympathetic voice of a PTI. I obey. The same thing happens again except I only make two bars. 'Again! Get out of that water and go for it. Move!' screams the voice. Bedraggled, soaked and heavier because of it, I make one more half-hearted attempt but I put so much extra strain on my already injured left shoulder that I feel a searing pain shoot through it as if I have been stabbed with a hot knife. I fall for the last time. 'OK. Move on to the next one,' snaps the voice. Somehow I manage to scale the rest of the barriers and even the final obstacle – a massive thirty-foot wall that you have to haul yourself up by using a rope – but I know that I have not only failed the overall course but failed it spectacularly. I have failed it by default because I did not get across the monkey bars but also because of my dismal time. Fifteen minutes and forty-five seconds. That is nearly a massive three minutes over the time allowed to complete it.
Before today I had been so bucked and elated at having passed Bottom Field that I
felt I could smash any obstacle put in front of me, but now that familiar feeling of depression and hopelessness has returned to haunt me. It's almost as if the very obstacles I overcame a couple of weeks ago to book myself on the commando courses have plotted and schemed to exact a sweet revenge. Maybe they were so mortified that, against all the odds, I actually managed to overcome the king of all obstacles – the full regain – that they plotted my downfall together. A dark plan was hatched whereby the chasm leap would contrive to injure my hand and deprive me of my grip. The rope swing would skin my shin for good measure. The tunnel, the twelve-foot wall and the six-foot wall would then twist the knife and increase my agonies further. But it was left for the monkey bars to deliver the killer punch – the coup de grace. Well, their dastardly plan has worked. They have destroyed me and humiliated me. And they have a chance to do it all over again just one week from now.
Over the next few days I concentrate on my filming and catch up with the recruits and their own unfolding stories. James Williams, for example, is going from strength to strength, though even he is suffering from injuries to both his feet. They are impact injuries, swellings and blisters, but he's getting by, like most of us, with copious amounts of painkillers. He is as confident, determined and as pragmatic as ever and is not about to let his injuries get in the way of the commando tests and his own Green Beret.
'The thing is,' he tells me, as he polishes his boots in his grot, 'I can get through the pain by popping pills. Even if I'm doing damage I can get that sorted after the tests – as long as I've got that green lid I don't care. Mind you – I'd be well pissed off if I missed the opportunity to get out to Ghaners.'
Lee Smith, the normally cheerful Tottenham supporter from Leytonstone, is battling on but is looking completely exhausted and drained. I think he's having to draw on deep reserves of determination and guts.
Mark Blight is as strong as ever, and being a 'rejoin' who previously made it all the way through to week twenty-two has set him in good stead this time round. His weakness before was, like mine, the full regain but he's conquered that and now looks supremely confident on the high-rope obstacles.
Commando Page 24