Mud, Sweat and Tears

by Bear Grylls

  I reassessed the map and my timing. I had to come up with a plan to get myself out of this mess, and fast.

  I turned 90 degrees and started to climb back up on to the high ground that I had just come off. This was way off-route, I should be heading down, but I just knew that the high ground would be better than fighting a losing battle in the bog. I had done that before – and lost.

  The wind was blowing hard now, down from the plateau, as if trying to deter me. I put my head down, ignored the shoulder straps that pulled and heaved against my lower neck muscles, and went for it. I had to take control.

  I was refusing to fail Selection again in this godforsaken armpit of a place.

  Once on the ridge, I started to run. And running anywhere in that moon-grass, with the weight of a small person on your back, was a task. But I was on fire. I kept running. And I kept clawing back the time and miles.

  I ran all the way into the last checkpoint and then collapsed. The DS looked at me strangely and chuckled to himself.

  ‘Good effort,’ he commented, having watched me cover the last mile or so of rough ground. I had made it within time.

  Demons dead. Adrenalin firing.

  There were only three more marches to complete on Test Week. But they were monster ones.

  The first march was back in the Brecon Beacons. It was some twenty miles long, between the three highest summits – but with three RVs cruelly placed all the way back down at the floor of each valley.

  The weight of our packs had also been increased substantially. I had had to take a second look at the noticeboard the night before just to confirm it.

  Each morning, as we waited in line to start the march, it was a struggle just to heave the weight of the pack on to my back. Often the easiest way was to squat on the ground, slip your arms into the shoulder straps and then get a buddy to haul you up to your feet.

  Once up, you had to stay up.

  The weight of the pack was always worse at the start and end of each march, and the first couple of hours invariably felt the most painful.

  Any blisters on your shoulder blades would weep painfully, as the weight of the pack went back on. Then somehow your mind would shut out the pain, for a while. Until, by the end of the march, your shoulders would start to wilt and cramp up as if they were on fire.

  The bloodied, taped-up, and blistered lower backs and shoulders of so many of the recruits told that story best, and the shower block always looked like a field hospital.

  Blistered backs and feet being agonizingly stripped and redressed with zinc tape. Soldiers silently going about their business.

  In fact much of our time in the evenings was spent re-dressing and re-taping the inevitable blisters that every recruit had to endure.

  That morning, I was sick again whilst we stood around waiting. I hated the waiting. Being sick was pure nerves.

  I looked at my day’s source of energy on the ground at my feet. Bad start.

  On setting off, the snow started to fall thickly, and on top of the first summit I found that my energy was starting to wane fast. Again. My body was simply getting drained of its reserves, day after day.

  And it was impossible to replenish those reserves in only a snatched few hours’ sleep each night.

  I hated this faint, dizzy feeling I was getting.

  Why am I getting this now? I need energy.

  But the vomiting, lack of sleep, and hour after hour of hard route marches through mountainous bogs, day after day, was systematically taking its clear toll on me.

  By halfway I was behind time, and I knew that I needed to up the gear, regardless of how I was feeling. I knuckled down, pushed harder, and sure enough I found that the harder I pushed myself, the more my strength returned.

  Finally, I completed the day within the time. I was fired up and still running on adrenalin as I threw my kit in the back of the wagon.

  Good job, Bear.

  What I didn’t realize was that the price of digging so deep, day after day, was that my reserves and endurance levels were getting weaker and weaker.

  And you can’t run on empty for ever.

  CHAPTER 55

  The next day was a much shorter distance, but the weight was increased again – significantly.

  Short and sharp, I thought. Work hard, Bear, once more.

  The driving, horizontal rain made navigation really hard. And, within minutes of starting out, all my kit was drenched through. I looked like I had just done a deep river crossing.

  Despite being soaked through, I wasn’t cold. I was working hard for that.

  I pulled the hood of my jacket down lower over my head, and pushed on into the wind.

  Six hours later, I saw the end trucks ahead. I heaved the huge pack on to the back, and changed into dry kit for the slow, rumbling journey back to camp. Then it was back into the long, laborious process of cleaning my kit, re-patching my feet, and prepping for the next day.

  Those of us that remained knew all too well what the final twenty-four hours held in store for us.

  One march, one last push. But it was a monster.

  Endurance is the route march that has made the Selection famous – it is also a march on which a soldier had died some years earlier from fatigue. It is a true leveller – and unifier to all who pass.

  The march would take us across the whole Brecon Beacons mountain range … and then back again. To drive the magnitude of the task home to us, we realized that we would need two 1:50,000 map sheets just to cover the route.

  Symbolically, it was also the last test of the mountain-phase of Selection.

  Pass this in under twenty-four hours and you were through to the continuation-phase of SAS(R) Selection.

  At 2 a.m. I woke to the sound of my alarm clock. I hated that noise.

  Slowly I sat up.

  The lights were already on, and everyone was busy taping up their feet or covering the blisters on their backs. The guy next to me looked pale and haggard as he silently taped his toes, like a boxer carefully wrapping his hands before a fight.

  I had somehow avoided ever using too much blister-tape. I had persevered in the early days to get my back and feet accustomed to the weight, and looking at the backs and ankles around me strapped and taped up tight, I was grateful for that, at least.

  I had survived thus far with only a few annoying blisters, and that can make a critical difference.

  My body, though, felt utterly exhausted, and my ankles and feet were both badly swollen.

  The best I could do was literally to hobble slowly the hundred yards to the cookhouse.

  Halfway I stopped to rest – and think.

  Look at yourself, Bear, I thought. Today is Endurance. Yet you can hardly walk to the cookhouse.

  I tried to put the thought aside.

  The parade that night in the dark was deathly quiet. No one spoke. We were now but a tiny fraction of those who had started out only a week ago. Trucker was still there. He had been stubbornly, quietly, doing the distances, making the time. No fuss. Good lad.

  ‘We can do this, buddy,’ I muttered to him as we stood waiting. ‘Just one more march and we can nail this, Trux.’

  He smiled wearily back.

  He looked like the walking wounded. We all did. Strong men, shuffling on hurting feet.

  Just let me get moving, I thought, and the pumping blood will shake the stiffness and pain from my back and feet.

  No one talked on that last truck journey out to the mountains. We all sat huddled, heads covered by hats or hands, in our own worlds.

  It was freezing cold in the middle of that February night.

  The hiss of brakes and the jolt of the dying engine shook us into life. I looked outside.

  It was dark, and the snow was thick on the ground. Time to dismount.

  Our packs now weighed 55 lb plus belt kit, water, food, and weapon. Too bloody heavy.

  They weighed our packs on the old meat-hook scales slung roughly off the back of one of the trucks.

>   The scale read that Trucker’s pack was underweight by a pound.

  The DS tossed a ten-pound rock at him to add to his pack. Endurance was Endurance. None of us could expect any favours here.

  Trux and I helped each other saddle up and heave the packs on to our backs, then, one by one we lined up, waiting to be set off at the customary two-minute intervals.

  It was bitingly cold, and the wind was quite strong even down here at the foot of the mountains. We all turned our backs to the wind as we waited in line.

  Finally – my name.

  ‘Grylls. The clock’s ticking. Go.’

  CHAPTER 56

  I headed off across the track into the darkness.

  I set my bearing to the first trig point on the summit ridge, put my head down and started to move as fast as my feet would carry me.

  The first checkpoint was some two thousand feet above, and I reckoned I could cut the corner off by heading up the bowl of the valley instead of following the ridgeline.

  I knew early on that this was a mistake.

  I had grossly underestimated how deep the snow pack would be, but by then I was committed to this route and couldn’t afford to go back.

  The snow pile in the bowl was this horrible waist-deep drift snow. I was reduced to a snail’s pace.

  I could see this trail of figures above me, silhouetted against the full moon skyline. It was all the other recruits moving steadily up.

  Meanwhile I was floundering in this hellhole of deep snow, going nowhere.

  I had hardly even started Endurance.

  I cursed myself.

  What a crap decision, Bear.

  I was pouring with sweat already.

  It took me over an hour to clear the ridgeline, and by then there was no sign of any other recruits. I was on my own and behind.

  The wind was horrendous as I crested the ridge, and it was truly a case of moving two paces forward, then stumbling back one.

  I worked my way cautiously along the ridge’s narrow sheep track, with a sheer drop of some eight hundred feet just yards to my right.

  Suddenly a small icy pool under me cracked, and I dropped up to my thighs in freezing cold, black, oozing mud.

  I was now wet, and covered in this heavy, black clay that clung like glue to my legs.

  Cracking start.

  I just put my head down and carried on.

  As the first flicker of dawn began to rise, I ascended, for one last symbolic time, the east ridge of that one high peak we had got to know so well.

  I had been strong on this mountain so many times, but this time, I was reduced to a slow plod up its steep face – head bowed, legs straining under the weight, breathing hard.

  It felt like a final submission to the mountain’s enduring ability to make mere humans buckle.

  As we descended, and then started to climb up into the next valley, I found myself ascending towards a spectacular winter sunrise, peeping over the distant skyline.

  We would walk all through this day, and wouldn’t finish until after midnight the next day – that was if we completed Endurance at all.

  I just kept plodding and plodding, and then plodded some more.

  Keep the pace; control your breathing; keep pushing.

  The hours blurred into themselves. It was a war of attrition with my mind and body – all the time trying to ignore the growing swelling of bruised feet inside wet, cracked boots.

  I descended yet another steep, snow-covered mountain down towards a reservoir: our halfway mark. Exhausted, I dropped my pack down and rummaged for some food. I needed energy.

  The other recruits I could see were all eating madly as they shuffled out of the RV. Dark, wet, hunched figures, moving fast across the moorland leading back up into the mountains, chewing on oatmeal ration biscuits or army chocolate bars.

  I had been stationary for over five minutes now at the checkpoint, waiting in turn. I knew I had to start moving soon or my legs would start to seize up. Stops any longer than a few minutes were always more painful to get going from again.

  I saddled up and started back up the same face I had just descended. I was soon slowed by more of the incessant moon-grass and marshy bog. I tried to push through it as fast my body would take me.

  Ten miles later, I caught up with Trucker and we moved on together – two lone figures trying to keep the pace, fighting this creeping exhaustion.

  At the next checkpoint, I took my boots off, which were filled to the brim with mud and water from the marshy terrain. I put fresh socks on and drained my boots. In wet boots, fresh socks didn’t really make much difference, but they did mentally. We now only had eighteen miles to go – and I had new socks.

  Psychologically, it was a fresh start.

  Get on, Bear, get up, and get moving. Finish this.

  CHAPTER 57

  VW Valley is one of the final mountains one climbs on Selection – but it’s among the worst.

  VW stands for Voluntary Withdrawal, and when you see the mountain you can understand why people have often quitted here.

  Steep, windswept, and boggy – and at mile thirty it is the point where many recruits quit and remove themselves from the course – broken by the sheer distance, weight and speed.

  But not me. Not now.

  On my backside, I slid down the first steep re-entrant leading into the bowl of the valley. I was using the butt of my weapon to steer me as I glissaded down the snow, and I finally slowed at the bottom, near an iced-over stream.

  I crossed it and started straight up the face with Trucker behind me.

  On and on and on – until finally at the crest I collapsed and waited for him.

  Trux’s feet were both badly swollen. Later on, he discovered that he’d broken both of his big toes somewhere around this point. It was purely from the incessant pounding his feet were taking. He was in agony.

  I heard him muttering under his breath. He was mumbling Bible verses to himself.

  We had often both quietly prayed together before the big marches. Now we needed that help more than ever.

  ‘I am holding you by your right hand … Do not be afraid. I am here to help you.’ Isaiah, 41:13.

  If ever I needed to hear such words it was now.

  It is easy to be cynical, and to think you do not need help when all is going your way; but if Selection taught me anything it is that we all have our limits. To push beyond those limits sometimes requires something beyond just ourselves.

  That is what my faith has given me – a secret strength and help when I have needed it most.

  I needed it now.

  As we cleared the summit, the mist descended and darkness began to fall again. We soon began to get very cold. We were exhausted, staggering through this boggy plateau in the failing light, and gradually we realized we had become disoriented – out of sheer fatigue.

  We were descending slowly when we should have been still on the plateau.

  ‘Where the hell are we?’ I mumbled to myself, shivering, as I restudied the map.

  We both searched in circles for the small cliff-edge path that would take us down to our next checkpoint.

  It was soon pitch black and the mist was thick on the mountaintops, reducing visibility to almost zero.

  I was in front when suddenly I slipped and started to slide fast down this muddy, icy gulley. Trucker was right behind me, falling, too.

  As we slowed in the snowy, gravel slush, I turned to climb back up where we had fallen, when suddenly we saw a light just below us.

  I realized that this was the checkpoint we had been looking for in vain. What an answer to our desperate, quiet prayers!

  We checked in and headed out for the last RV.

  Suddenly the going got almost impossible. I went up to my waist in bog three times. The terrain was also littered with endless cut tree trunks, half-submerged in the peaty ground.

  I was freezing cold and badly dehydrated now. This march was beginning to beat me.

  I had nothing more
to give. Slowly but surely, from sheer exhaustion, I was beginning to shut down.

  Matt, one of the other recruits from our squadron, was with us now as well. He could see I was at my limit. He pulled me aside, and made me put on an extra layer of clothing. He shared his water bottle with me and helped me stand.

  He did more for me in that hour than I can ever thank him for. Then, together, the three of us pressed on.

  Soon, we spotted a dirt track down below us. It was a way out from these cursed tree stumps. We knew the consequences of being caught using a track. RTU’d at once.

  But we were getting nowhere in this godforsaken terrain, and we needed to make up time if we were to pass this final march.

  It was do or die.

  We picked our way through the maze of dense tree stumps, and stumbled out on to the track.

  Cautiously, we began to follow it.

  Suddenly we saw headlights ahead, and we dived over a barbed-wire fence. We had nowhere to hide – so just hit the dirt. We lay there, faces pressed into the mud, and didn’t move.

  I prayed that the headlight beam wouldn’t pick us out.

  The Land Rover, with the DS inside, rumbled slowly past without stopping. They hadn’t spotted us.

  We risked the track for another thirty minutes, then cut east back into the woods and then on to open moorland again.

  The end was now only eight miles away.

  But the end just never seemed to come. We were like the walking dead.

  Matt, Trucker and I had to stop and sit down every five hundred metres for a rest, but then we’d fall into a daze in a matter of seconds as the weight came off our shoulders and legs.

  Two minutes sitting, slumped in the snow and mud, then I’d have to kick Matt and get him moving again. It was my turn to help him.

  ‘Get up, Matt, we’ve got to finish this.’

  Eventually, across the reservoir, we spotted what we’d been looking for.

  Headlights glistening on the water.

  They were coming from the four-tonne trucks that stood waiting for us at the end. We could hear the distant low rumble of their diesel engines turned on to fire the heaters inside the cabs.