Mud, Sweat and Tears

by Bear Grylls

  It was only half a mile as the crow flies across the reservoir, but probably three miles to march all the way around.

  Renewed energy soared to my muscles. I picked up the pace and started to march as fast as I could. It was pure adrenalin, driving me to finish this hell.

  Finally, after twenty-one hours, Matt, Trucker and myself were the first of the twenty-one SAS recruits to finish Endurance.

  I had never felt so exhausted, relieved, proud and broken in all my life.

  But all I cared about was that I was through the mountain-phase of SAS Selection.

  Continuation training, though, would prove to be a very different and much tougher beast altogether.

  CHAPTER 58

  At the end of the ‘hill’ phase, only a handful of recruits from our squadron remained.

  It took me nearly six days to get any real feeling back into my swollen feet and blistered back, but I had proven myself fit and resilient in the mountains.

  Now would come the time to be trained.

  First we had to learn what they called ‘green army’ skills (which are the regular, basic soldiering skills), and then, when these were mastered, we would move on to learn the SF skills.

  It would be on these specialist skills that the bulk of our time would be spent. After all, it was now time for the DS to take the raw materials and shape us into the highly trained, resourceful, specialist soldiers that the SAS are famed for.

  This process would teach us to carry out intricate skills accurately, swiftly and, most importantly, intuitively. The learning curve to reach this standard would be intense. We were told that any mistakes or slip-ups would be excused once only. After that you had to get the drills right, every time – if you didn’t you were out.

  More than anything, I wanted to be capable of the standard the SAS required, to make the grade and learn the skills. I was determined not to mess up this opportunity that I had worked so hard to get.

  We had ahead of us many long weekends to learn these specialist skills. Then would come a long, intensive battle camp lasting several weeks, where our skills and character would be put to the test under exhausting and pressured conditions to see if ultimately we were up to becoming SAS soldiers.

  At the end of this would come the most gruelling of phases, designed to ‘initiate’ combat troops to be prepared for capture. If we successfully came through that (and we were told that this phase always claimed a few scalps), then, and only then, would the ‘Who Dares Wins’ cap-badge and SAS beret be earned.

  On our first weekend training at SAS HQ, the pace started hard. But now it wasn’t all about the physical. This was about learning the skills – and then combining those skills with the physical strength we had developed.

  We were summoned before dawn into an underground bunker. This was where all the ‘lectures’ and information would now be thrown at us – thick and fast.

  ‘Explanation. Demonstration. Imitation.’ That was the mantra. We would have a drill explained to us, be shown it, then be expected to perform it. Again and again until we got it perfect.

  We would cover a huge amount of ground in these days, getting familiar with any of the SOPs (standard operating procedures) that UK Special Forces use.

  What I noticed, though, was that the atmosphere now was very different – we were no longer treated as recruits, as numbers – but were treated more like potential SAS soldiers – soldiers the DS might well have to fight alongside in the near future.

  So those DS now had a vested interest in making sure we learnt the drills properly and that any weak links amongst us were weeded out.

  In many ways this next phase was less forgiving than the mountains. If that was possible. It was more subjective – if the DS didn’t think you were up to the job, or you weren’t picking things up fast enough – or if they simply reckoned your face didn’t quite fit, then you were gone. No questions asked.

  What the DS cared about now was this: are you quick to learn? Can you react, adapt and improvise? Can you remain calm under pressure? Can you work well in a small team, as well as alone? Are you self-disciplined, organized, yet able to show controlled aggression when needed?

  I could also now understand why the physical levels demanded had been so high. That fitness was now being put into practice – it had a purpose.

  ‘You have a heli extraction due in five hours – the location is fifteen miles away. You also have one casualty and an enemy force on your tail. If the mission is to be successful you have to make that heli RV – so get moving.’

  And I was loving it.

  CHAPTER 59

  There was no doubting we now felt more part of the SAS fold, and it felt good.

  As we rehearsed the enemy contact drills over and over again, the adrenalin flowed non-stop. We were either fighting our way out of snap-ambushes, lugging ammunition and radios up mountains, or preparing for dawn raids on disused farm buildings.

  In-between it all we would still be doing endless runs and PT sessions, and of course the inevitable battle PT and pack run.

  Just when we were getting the hang of one set of drills, they would throw a whole load more at us. It was a relentless pace, mentally, to keep up with, and it is why the SAS are considered to be the ultimate ‘thinking-man’s’ soldier.

  That ability to think clearly and act decisively when all about you is chaos. Oh, and to learn ultra-fast.

  Camouflage, tracking, cacheing, or CTRs (close target recces). Weapon drills: in the mud, underwater, in the dark. Training on all the many different foreign weapons; learning how to assemble and fire them quickly and accurately. Live-firing during four-man contact drills, whilst ducking and weaving up ‘jungle’ target lanes, expending hundreds and hundreds of rounds.

  And through it all, we were learning how to work as the ultimate team: to know instinctively how each of us reacted under pressure, and where our individual strengths lay.

  The idea was that when we needed him, we would just know our wingman would be there.

  Tension was always high, as the consequences of mistakes began to get more serious. We were in this together, and errors would cost us collectively. At best, it might be a night of press-ups, and at worst one of our lives. (Real bullets, being fired at targets in the dark, whilst diving and scraping through ditches, are always unforgiving in such close proximity to one another.)

  Our final battle camp was fast approaching, and the DS’s ‘discussions’ over our individual suitability for SAS service were becoming more frequent now.

  They also continued to increase the physical pressure, as time and time again the DS would have us running up and down mountainsides with heavy machine guns and boxes of ammunition.

  ‘Good – now do it all again – but this time strip and reassemble a rifle as you climb.’

  And through it all, we knew that, by the end, not all of us would pass.

  The journey up to battle camp started badly.

  ‘If you can’t even load a bloody truck with all your kit properly, then you’ve got no bloody chance of passing what’s ahead of you, I can assure you of that,’ Taff, our squadron DS, barked at us in the barracks before leaving.

  I, for one, was more on edge than I had ever felt so far on Selection.

  I was car sick on the journey north, and I hadn’t felt that since I’d been a kid heading back to school. It was nerves.

  We also quizzed Taff for advice on what to expect and how to survive the ‘capture-initiation’ phase.

  His advice to Trucker and me was simple: ‘You two toffs just keep your mouths shut – 23 DS tend to hate recruits who’ve been to private school.’

  23 SAS were running the battle camp (it generally alternated between 21 and 23 SAS), and 23 were always regarded as tough, straight-talking, hard-drinking, fit as hell soldiers. We had last been with them at Test Week all those months earlier, and rumour was that ‘The 23 DS are going to make sure that any 21 recruits get it the worst.’

  Trucker and I hoped sim
ply to try and stay ‘grey men’ and not be noticed. To put our heads down, and get on and quietly do the work.

  This didn’t exactly go according to plan.

  ‘Where are the lads who speak like Prince Charles?’ The 23 DS shouted on the first parade when we arrived.

  ‘Would you both like newspapers with your morning tea, gents?’ the DS sarcastically enquired.

  Part of me was tempted to answer how nice that would be, but I resisted.

  The DS continued: ‘I’ve got my eye on you two. Do I want to have to put my life one day in your posh, soft hands? Like fuck I do. If you are going to pass this course you are going to have to earn it and prove yourself the hard way. You both better be damned good.’

  Oh, great, I thought.

  I could tell the next fortnight was going to be a ball-buster.

  CHAPTER 60

  The first five days were a blur of limited sleep, endless tests, and more PT than we had ever done before.

  Each morning began with one of these hour-long, killer PT sessions, held at 0500, before the day’s programme had even begun.

  Meals were often eaten standing up, and I wasn’t quite sure why they had bothered to issue us with a bed, we got to see it so little.

  We’d go from stripping foreign weapons blindfolded, and against the clock, to a ballistics lecture; then into a practical signalling exercise; then from a lake crossing into another pack run; followed by live contact drills, helicopter rehearsals, a field medics’ lecture and a practical assessment.

  The pace was intense, and the DS wanted to test our individual mental and physical abilities to stay alert and switched on and working well as a team, even when our heads were bursting with new information and we were physically shattered.

  We were up each night till 3 or 4 a.m., often doing mock ambushes and live attacks.

  The hardest times were when we were just lying there in some ditch in the pouring rain, so tired that it was near impossible not to nod off for a few seconds. Cold, hungry and drained of adrenalin – waiting for the DS to pass through our ‘ambush’ site, high up on the boggy Yorkshire moorland that surrounded the barracks.

  Often they never showed, and we would finally haul ourselves, and all our kit and weaponry, back to camp in the early hours, where we’d have to clean everything like new.

  Only then could we collapse into our billets for a precious couple of hours’ sleep.

  I learnt to dread the alarm that roused us each morning for PT, after only having had such a small amount of sleep.

  My body felt like the walking dead – tired, bruised, stiff. Yet the skill level we were required to operate at increased every day.

  That was the real test of this phase: can you maintain the skills when you are beat?

  I remember one early morning PT session in particular. We were doing our usual series of long shuttle sprints and fireman’s lifts, which had us all on the point of vomiting. Just when I thought I could run no longer with the weight on my shoulders, there was a loud thud and cry of pain from behind me.

  I glanced behind me to see a recruit lying sprawled out on the concrete, oozing blood.

  Apparently, the guy carrying this poor recruit on his shoulders had sprinted too close to a lamp post on the road and, as he passed it, he had thwacked the guy’s head so hard he had been knocked clean out.

  The silver lining was that the medics moved in and we were all dismissed half an hour early. Perfect. But this didn’t happen that often. In fact, that was about the only tiny let-up we got for two weeks.

  This general lack of sleep really got to me. And little can prepare people for how they will react when deprived of it – over multiple days. Everything suffers: concentration, motivation, and performance. All key elements for what we were doing. But it is designed that way. Break you down and find out what you are really made of. Underneath the fluff.

  I remember during one particular lecture (on the excruciatingly boring topic of the different penetration abilities of different bullets or rounds), looking over to my left and noticing Trucker jabbing his arm with a safety pin every few minutes, in an attempt to keep himself awake.

  The sight cheered me up no end.

  What became so draining was that nothing that any of us did went unnoticed. Again, it was carefully planned that way: they wanted to see us work under the maximum amount of fatigue and pressure.

  Soon I was just longing for the final four-day exercise, where at least we could get out on the ground, in our patrols, away from this intense scrutiny and hell.

  The day of the final exercise started in the cold pre-dawn (as usual), but with no PT (unusual), and we were moved into our small four-man patrols.

  We could no longer have any interaction with anyone outside of our own small team or cell. (This is a standard operational security measure to ensure that if you are captured then you have no knowledge of any other patrol’s particular mission.) It effectively acts to keep you 100 per cent mission-focused.

  Orders were issued and individual patrols briefed on their mission-specific details.

  The day was then a flurry of mission preparations: stripping down our individual kit to the bare minimum so we could carry enough ammunition between us. Filling magazines with rounds and tracer rounds, cleaning weapons, studying maps, rehearsing drills, memorizing emergency heli RVs, going over E & E (escape and evasion) procedures, and testing radio comms.

  I was fired up, and chomping to get going.

  The four of us then ate, went over the mission once more, and then re-checked our kit once again.

  The helicopter was due at dusk.

  CHAPTER 61

  It was a bright night as we watched the chopper swoop in low over the camp, silhouetted against the moon. We threw our packs on board and climbed inside.

  It was my first time in a military helicopter flying at low level through the mountains to a remote LZ (landing zone) at night. As part of the team, as fit and as trained as I could have ever hoped to be, I felt invincible.

  The chopper soon came to a hover, barely five feet off the ground on the top of a bleak mountain. We silently piled off and took up our all-round-defence positions as the heli disappeared down off the peak, into the night sky.

  Soon it was all silent, save for the noise of the wind steadily blowing across the back of our packs as we lay quietly and waited. We needed to tune our senses in before we started to move.

  We then patrolled off. Our first contact was seven miles away.

  We were to be met by a nondescript person in a nondescript vehicle, who would relocate us closer to our target and provide updated intelligence on our mission.

  We arrived, took up split positions, waited and listened.

  Slowly, though, the tiredness of the night began to creep in, as the adrenalin of the previous hours began to wear off.

  Stay awake. Come on, Bear. Get a grip.

  Those hours waiting, immobile, cold and stiff, were a fight to stay awake through.

  Every few minutes I’d nod off and then wake with a start, trying to shake the fatigue from my head. I even tried resting my chin on my rifle’s foresight, which was sharp and pointed, in an attempt to keep myself awake.

  Finally, the agent pulled up in the clearing.

  Quickly and silently, we piled into the back of his transit van. For half an hour the agent drove us through narrow lanes, as we pored over the sketch map we had just been given in the back. The red light of our torches flickered crazily.

  Soon we were dropped off in a lay-by, on a small deserted road, and the vehicle disappeared into the night.

  We set off cross-country and patrolled to our prearranged OP (operating procedure) point, where we would set eyes on our primary target for the first time.

  The scenario for the exercise was simple.

  Our target was the suspected hideout of a kidnap-hostage sting. On confirmation of this intel, we would have twenty-four hours to regroup with two further patrols, brief them, form a plan to r
escue the hostage, and then execute the mission. We would then have to extract ourselves to our final RV.

  From here, all patrols, plus the hostage, would be extracted.

  At the end of all of this, we would be ‘compromised’. We would be intentionally caught and would then begin the final phase of ‘capture-initiation’.

  Through everything that would happen during this final test, we of course would know it was all simulation. Yet we had learnt over the months of continuation training to treat everything we did as real.

  That was the key to preparing troops for combat: train hard, fight easy. Make the training as real as possible and when it then happens for real, there are fewer surprises.

  And one thing the SAS have become very good at over the years is making that training simulation feel utterly real.

  Trust me.

  CHAPTER 62

  We located a good OP position overlooking a deserted house – which was our target. We camouflaged ourselves and set about our OP rota. This would consist of working in pairs on two-hour shifts, observing the target and taking notes on any enemy movements, and eating and resting.

  It was a welcome relief finally to be able to close my eyes, even if only briefly.

  It was summer, and the sun shone all day on our well-hidden camouflaged position, which made a change from the incessant summer showers we had endured for the previous ten days. And quietly, undetected, we lived and watched, only three hundred yards from the target location.

  Our tasking the next night was to guide two further patrols into our location from a few miles out. Matt and I were to meet and bring the other patrols in, whilst the other two in our patrol maintained the OP rota.

  The meeting was set for between 0300 and 0500 hours.

  Matt and I reached the RV early and sat and waited.