Bad Medicine
Page 21
But what did it all amount to? If it all boiled down to one enduring life lesson, what would it be?
The value of misery.
The new wave of positive-thinking, psycho-babble bullshit that had infiltrated social consciousness, and my mind, saw me trying to live, love and laugh through a lifestyle that just wasn’t meant for me. Happiness, or the illusion that it could be attained in any meaningful quantity while living in the Real World, was a mental mediaeval torture device that chained me to my mundane prison cell.
I finally understood that perpetual unhappiness had always been my gift, not my curse. It motivated me. Boredom and misery had been the driving forces behind anything positive I’d ever done with my life. Why change a winning formula? So, instead of trying to trick my mind with positivity, I let my boredom and misery run their course. I welcomed the motivational magic.
After a few days, I felt a familiar emotion. I was utterly miserable, rolling a stage-five, head-fuck level of boredom. But best of all, I was pissed off – just pissed enough to take action, but not too unhinged to lose my shit; the perfect level of pissiness.
As I sat there at my work desk, wallowing in negativity and pessimism, a sly, mischievous grin spread across my face. I was instantly happy – optimistic even. I knew I’d just fostered the perfect conditions for more cool shit to happen.
I was ready for another adventure, or seven.
EPILOGUE
My life’s journey up until this point had been spent in folly, trying to become a grown-up – a Man. But in the Real World, being a grown-up was synonymous with being fucking boring. After a lot of soul-searching, I realised that this kind of life was utter insanity. Of all the amazing and exciting possibilities out there in the world, why the hell would anyone want to choose this lifestyle? I didn’t want to be a grown-up anymore. Fuck that noise. But somewhere along the line I’d forgotten how to use my brain, and I couldn’t seem to find an escape route. I logged in hundreds of hours in my quiet backyard ‘thinking spot’ trying to figure out how to break free.
All of a sudden, it hit me. The answer was staring me right in the face the whole time. I remembered that once upon a time, I’d known how to think properly – when anything was still possible; before my mind had been rotted with all the delusional constraints of the Real World: when I was a child! At that moment, my childish spirit took hold; the imaginary shackles released from my ankles and the illusionary prison walls came crumbling down. I was finally free!
The world outside, the real Real World, looked amazing – it was a playground, not an office cubicle.
But what is an imaginative, mischievous and adventurous Man-child to do with their new-found freedom?
Everest!
Hell, while I’m at it – why not roll all the Seven Summits!
The crisp, freezing air stung the back of my throat as my lungs slowly caught up with the oxygen deficit in my body. The 360-degree panorama around me was a stunning, rugged assortment of ice- and snow-covered peaks that looked like they’d been haphazardly slapped together by a city planner who was tripping balls on acid. I was in the middle of the Mount Cook national park, New Zealand, on a mountaineering training course in 2014. This was the first waypoint on the road to climbing Everest, and the rest of the Seven Summits. And I’d just made my first successful summit attempt; I’d conquered Rum Doodle. She wasn’t the biggest of girls, but the training group celebrated the accomplishment by taking casual photos on the summit peak – we didn’t want to look like overzealous fuckwits in the photos because Rum Doodle wasn’t exactly a mammoth mountain, in terms of altitude or difficulty.
But a big, intensifying wave of snow storms was closing in fast, so we couldn’t stay on the summit for long. It was getting very close to decision time. On the one hand, if we rocked and rolled back down the mountain in quick time, we could make it back to camp and ride the first of the nasty storms out. On the other hand, if we miscalculated, we’d have a pretty rough night bivouacking on the mountain. This is why we paid Mal, our super-experienced mountaineering instructor, the big bucks.
Mal was confident that we could make it back to camp in time. Reaching the summit was one thing, but getting back down was another matter – the afternoon sun had melted the snow into slush. Our crampon spikes screeched against the smooth rock of a nearby outcrop as we leant over and surveyed the scene below. There was a perilously steep snow slope in our path. The snow slope in itself wasn’t lethal – but there was a hundred-metre sheer cliff face at the bottom of it that spelt certain death. This was one of those sections where keeping your footing was the only chance of survival – one small fuck-up would earn you a one-way ticket to the morgue.
Mal wedged a snow stake between two rocks and attached a rope, unfurling the loose end down the slope – the safety line. I was the first cab off the rank. Mal schooled me about the ‘forward facing Sherpa rappel’. This manoeuvre was done completely unclipped. I wrapped the rope around my forearm, twice. It was all about friction and forward momentum. I needed to maintain the friction on the rope around my arm through smooth and seamless forward motion. I nervously stared down the steep snow slope, taking my first few steps. I jolted a few times before I fully committed to the rappel, but I quickly realised that momentum was my friend, so I picked up the pace.
Well, this isn’t so hard. This is fun. What was I nervous about?
I was cruising, picking up the pace as my confidence grew.
Just at that moment, my foot punched through the slushy, icy crust into a shallow crevasse. My forward momentum had been interrupted.
The rope came free from my forearm as I violently rag-dolled down the slope.
I’d just fucked up. I was already dead.
As it always does in these life-or-death situations, my perception of time dilated. Milliseconds felt like seconds, and I had a few extra panicked moments to think.
I frantically clawed and scraped at the snow to right my ungraceful tumble so I was on my guts – facing up the slope, crampons in the air, sliding backwards towards oblivion: the textbook self-arrest position. But the velocity of my slide kept accelerating.
Stop panicking. Think, motherfucker, think . . . My ice axe!
But my ice axe was tucked into the shoulder strap of my pack. No way I could reach it in time. The slide was beyond terminal velocity now.
The snow and ice whizzed past my face at light speed.
If there was any skerrick of hope before, it was certainly gone now. I accepted that this is how my story would end.
Like fuck, Tezz. Never give up.
I threw my hand out for one last, desperate Hail Mary . . .
The direction of my ferocious slide had put me just in reach of the coiled tail of the safety rope. I stretched as far as I could, just catching it with my fingertips as my hand clenched closed like a vice. My grip strength from all those years as a bachelor was paying dividends now. The slack in the rope snapped tight as it shock-loaded and took my weight. Above me, the snow stake anchor flexed and dislodged; the quick-thinking Mal slammed his crampon-clad boot down on the snow stake – a split second before it could completely dislodge and fling after me like a deadly slingshot projectile.
I used the rope to pull myself onto my knees and dug my crampons into the ice, spitting a chunk of snow from my mouth, panting like a dehydrated dog. I looked down to the edge of the sheer cliff face; it was only five metres away, or another split second of sliding, however you want to measure it.
Fuckness! Oh well, no point dwelling on it. So I just stood up, wrapped the rope around my forearm and got straight back to business.
MILITARY ABBREVIATIONS
The military loves a challenge, so it enjoys overcomplicating straightforward concepts with acronyms. For those non-military readers who are unfamiliar with the terrain, here’s a guide to help navigate the jargon in this book.
1RAR 1st Royal Australian Regiment
4RAR 4th Royal Australian Regiment
16AD 16th Air D
efence Regiment
3CSSB 3rd Combat Service Support Battalion
CASEVAC casualty evacuation
ER emergency room
FFI free from infection
FOB forward operating base
FSB forward surgical base
IED improvised explosive device
LRPV long-range patrol vehicle
LUP lay-up point
LZ landing zone
MinDef Minister of Defence
NVGs night-vision goggles
PT physical training
PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder
RAP regimental aid post
SCMA Soldier Career Management Agency
SOTG 4 Special Operations Task Group IV
SSM squadron sergeant major
terp interpreter
UM underwater medic
VVCS Vietnam Veterans’ Counselling Service
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Terry Ledgard is a former SAS medic, a mountaineer, an aspiring entrepreneur and a writer.
MICHAEL JOSEPH
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa | China
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies
whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2016
Text copyright © Terry Ledgard 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
The views of the author do not reflect those of Defence or government policy and the military response is not necessarily a true and accurate reflection of current or previous Defence procedures. The author ceased to be a Defence member several years ago and within that time the organisation has gone through a number of cultural changes.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover design by Alex Ross © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Text design by Samantha Jayaweera © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Front cover image by Australian Government Department of Defence; back cover image
and Afghanistan images in insert by Terry Ledgard © Commonwealth of Australia/Department
of Defence; all other images © Terry Ledgard
penguin.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-76014-276-6
THE BEGINNING
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