An Officer and a Gentlewoman (13 page)

Snuggled into a cosy cleft at the base of the Black Mountains, outside the coverage of 3G and DAB, beyond the reaches of high-speed internet and high-speed trains and over thirty miles from the nearest Starbucks lies the quiet Welsh market town of Crickhowell, a sleepy farmersville. Here, dour grey stone buildings with purple slate roofs house doilied tearooms, family butchers' and shops selling love spoons and bara brith. In Crickhowell, allotments and home-run chickens are not a suburban trend for the new yuppie generation, but a countryside practicality. Range Rovers speeding along the country lanes here actually have muddy wheels and Presbyterian ways reign strong.

I was standing in a small car park behind the village post office, beyond Crickhowell Castle, where a coach from Sandhurst had just deposited me, along with my team of six others. We were sitting on our bergens in the empty parking bays, dipping processed white bread into paper bowls of steaming stew, filling up on our last hot fresh meal. It was nearly 6 p.m. and I had dozed well on the
three-hour
journey along the M4, stocking up on crucial sleep. Above, day had just become night as the sky turned black and the
orange-neon
street lights flickered on, illuminating the paper and glass recycling banks in the car park's far corner. This was our starting point. Around the edges of the Black Mountains in four further car parks at village schools, pubs and community centres more cadets
were also tucking into their last hot dinner because at six o'clock precisely the first teams would be setting off.

We were gathered in the Black Mountains for Exercise Long Reach; one of the toughest endurance tests in the army. A real test of men and the stuff of Sandhurst legend, every officer in the British Army can recall for you the tale of their Long Reach experience. The exercise covers seventy kilometres over tightly packed contours taking in five summits and over 3,000 metres of climb and descent with bergens on and the clock ticking. In the preceding days we had pored over maps, planning our route, plotting on checkpoints, making complex speed-distance-time calculations, and trying to remember what Naismith's Rule was all about.

At 18.30 it was our turn to start.

Merv, Rhodes, Thomas, Khadka, Evans, the Platoon Donkey (who was as inept as me, but without the excuse of never having done any of it before) and myself.

We helped each other hoist the bergens onto our backs, checked the straps were sitting comfortably and that we weren't wearing too many layers (as soon as we started walking we'd get hot). Map cases dangled around our necks and at the front I set my compass as we exited the car park. We turned left up the hill and passed the church (place of worship with spire, minaret or dome) where the gentle soothing sounds of a male voice choir drifted hymns from the warm light inside. Then right at the crossroads towards Llanbedr. We followed the road as it wound steeply north, past a phone box, ‘PH' and farm on the right, out of the village, leaving the relative security of houses and civilization behind us.

After about an hour we arrived at our first checkpoint, where Captain Trunchbull and SSgt Cox were waiting for us on the opposite bank of a swollen river, grinning with anticipation. On the muddy near bank lay an assortment of empty oil drums, ropes and wooden planks; it was unfortunately obvious that we were going to be required to undertake some sort of
Krypton Factor
-style
river crossing. Looking at the broiling river waters circling in high flood, none of us were much enthused to join the other bank, falling into the freezing waters at the beginning of our
seventy-kilometre
ordeal was definitely not a good idea.

Merv and Rhodes quickly took charge, lifting planks of wood onto the barrels and delegating me to do something with the rope. Khadka was a ninja at rope climbing and I tied a knot ready for her to scale a tree and walk the tightrope. We worked busily together as a team moving the barrels and planks of wood, but despite all our feigned concerted efforts none of us actually wanted to risk the freezing waters and attempt the river crossing, happy instead to let the clock timeout and forgo the Brucey Bonus. Because after five weeks in the Sandhurst machine we'd now learned how to play the game and here we played a strategic fail.

So with boots still dry and morale intact, we moved on up the valley to our next checkpoint three hours' trekking away and more ridiculous blindfolded-rope-tying-plank-balancing-bridge-building nonsense. Nine of the fourteen checkpoints dotted around the Black Mountains had these absurd tasks awaiting us, and early on we met them with reasonable enthusiasm but after
forty
hours, and having watched the sun rise twice I couldn't care less where the number nine needed to go in the giant Sudoku laid out in the field in front of me, I just wanted to stop stumbling around these unforgiving Welsh mountains and go home to bed. Because Long Reach was not just about physical endurance, it was about testing mental endurance too. It was about challenging our ability to make sensible decisions when our minds had become an exhausted mush. And as the knot in a rope failed, releasing a steel drum of ‘toxic chemicals' bouncing 300 metres down the hillside into the woods below I realized our mushy brains could make little sense of decisions.

Worse than the checkpoints with these
Krypton Factor
challenges were the ones without. Each was pitched at the absolute summit of a towering mountain top which we had to scale our way up,
creeping along ridge paths as gale-force winds tried to knock us off our feet. At the top, snow nestled in sheltered hollows, reminding us that it was still winter and we shouldn't be there. We trudged along tracks, gloves on and hoods lowered, through muddy quagmires, our heels stinging from hours of rubbing in sweaty leather boots.

And then there was Checkpoint X-ray, lofting high up in the clouds, 500 metres vertically above us.

To get to the summit we zigzagged our way along a steep, precipice dirt track, tripping over stones, our legs now clumsy with exhaustion as the bergens on our backs dragged us down. This was Wales at its most unforgiving and the climb to the top took over an hour. We bowed our heads into the driving rain and shuffled our feet slowly to the peak in silence, too tired to even speak. Peering out from my shrouding hood, I watched the neon glow of Crickhowell village as it disappeared into the grey mist below and I felt surprisingly content. Here we were in the middle of one of the most arduous challenges we'd do at Sandhurst, if not our entire military careers, but as I trudged to the summit in search of Checkpoint X-ray, I could see my circumstance broaden into perspective. I wasn't crawling. I wasn't digging. I wasn't ironing or marching. I wasn't being shouted at and I wasn't polishing my shoes. I was walking in the hills with friends, albeit in the freezing darkness of midwinter, but this was tangibly normal and it put a small smile on my face.

As dawn approached on the first morning we descended west from the summit of Checkpoint X-ray into the tiny hamlet of Cwmdu. Climbing down I could see a tiny speck of light shining from the village pub below drawing us in, radiating the rich malty warmth of real ales and farming men with their dogs. We prayed that through the darkness next to the pub there stood a village church (place of worship with tower), not so as to hear our prayers but because if the church wasn't there then this wasn't Cwmdu but Pengenffordd and we were too far north. A church
alone however wasn't confirmation enough; if a church was present but without a tower (place of worship without such additions) then this was Tretower and we had stumbled too far south and had more unwelcome walking ahead. Every cluster of houses here seemed to have a church. We checked our compasses, hoped and prayed.

As we neared the village, stepping down onto the gentle flattening river plain, we joined a meandering footpath with tall thick bramble hedges on either side. We were all tired now and walked in silence, the grumble of our tummies the only sound, as we had agreed to stop for breakfast after our next checkpoint. On the track ahead of us, I could vividly see a lady approaching. She was dressed beautifully in old Victorian fashions, her bustle and flouncing petticoat trailing in the mud. An open parasol rested on her shoulder and there was a genteel frilly bonnet on her head. I stared at her for quite some time as we moved closer. She looked completely out of place on a boggy wet path in a National Park. I wondered if the others had noticed her, but I was too tired to speak out, and glad that I hadn't because of course she was out of place. As we got nearer she disappeared, replaced by a signpost and overhanging tree. I had begun hallucinating. In the early morning half-light, tiredness was winning and playing havoc with my brain. Later, as we walked up a steep slope on our way to another towering summit Merv swore she saw a drove of pigs, rosy pink and incongruous on the Welsh mountainside; she was adamant that they were there, but the rest of us saw nothing. Then at dusk my eyes deceived me once more as a looming farm building morphed into a singing ice cream van.

The tiredness frayed tempers too.

As the hours clocked by there were tantrums and tears as the Platoon Donkey stubbornly refused to continue. Sitting down on a slippery wet rock in a tight river gully, she refused to take another step. Not a budge. The agony and exhaustion had pushed her past her breaking point.

‘I can't do this any more,' she blubbered between gasps of tears. ‘This is fucking killing me, I can't go on.'

‘Come on, don't cry. Look, you can do this,' Rhodes soothed. ‘Just think, it'll all be over soon and you can rest. It's nearly the weekend, and you'll be back at home with your boyfriend in no time,' Rhodes reasoned. ‘So let's keep going, shall we?'

‘No, no. I can't,' she wailed as she put her head in her hands and started to sob loudly. ‘Honestly, this is the end for me. I can't go any further.' She was broken. Mentally, she had given up, as the Long Reach challenge had taken its first victim.

I looked over at her. Crying here was going to achieve nothing. We were nowhere near a road or access track and Mountain Rescue would hardly scramble to save an able-bodied adult having a petulant strop. There was only one way off the mountain and that was to continue walking. But what exactly were we supposed to do with her?

‘Here, have one of these,' Evans said, walking over to her and offering an open packet of Haribo sweets. ‘A couple of these and you'll get your energy back. You just need a little boost, that's all.'

The Platoon Donkey looked up, her eyes wet and puffy, a little bulb of snot at her nose. ‘Thanks,' she said quietly, taking one with a sniff and popping it in her mouth. She chewed on it as we all held our breath, waiting for her to snap out of this malaise and get back on track. But she just sat there, staring into space and feeling sorry for herself. Now I just wanted to walk over and throttle her. This was so selfish. No matter what, we still had to get to the next checkpoint and all she was doing was slowing us all down. But I bit my tongue and kept quiet. This was not the time for a temper tantrum.

‘Do you think you're ready to try and carry on?' Rhodes tentatively quizzed. ‘We can take it slowly if you like.'

Slowly! Slowly was not going to get us there by our six o'clock deadline, but I knew Rhodes was right, the Platoon Donkey was being stubborn and needed gentle coaxing. I looked down at the
map and moved slowly to lead the way. I knew it was going to take us at least two hours to reach the next checkpoint, even more if she continued to be precious about it.

‘We don't have much further to go,' I said, pointing at the map and trying to encourage her to her feet. ‘It's no more than an hour to the next checkpoint.' It was a lie. My grandfather used to use this trick on me for years before I realized what he was doing. As my brother and I would sit in the back of his blue Ford Fiesta on long car journeys he'd always promise us that we were nearly there. When we pressed him for a specific time, he'd always half it, turning forty minutes into twenty, twenty into ten, psychologically making it seem more bearable.

‘Here, do you want to take some of the load from your bergen and put it in mine,' Merv offered. ‘It'll make things easier.'

And at that she saw her window of opportunity. ‘Oh, if you don't mind. That would help,' she said, lifting her head to look at us.

And so as the tears dried on her cheeks, Merv squeezed the Platoon Donkey's sleeping bag and half of the contents from her bergen into her own. I was grateful that we would finally be moving again but incensed that she had given up so readily. It felt wrong. Alone she would have failed, but for us to pass as a team, some of us would have to work harder than others. However, in the army that is just the way it is sometimes.

By six o'clock on the second evening we had been walking for twenty-four hours without rest. We were shattered with exhaustion and ravenously hungry. Ahead lay one more checkpoint challenge before an enforced four-hour rest. As we staggered along a stretch of quiet country road separating checkpoints seven and eight CSgt Gleeson suddenly jumped out of a field beside us. CSgt Gleeson was a bit of an unknown to Eleven Platoon. He was a Physical Training Instructor (PTI) in the Academy gym and we saw him occasionally strutting around Sandhurst in his tight red and white PTI vest tucked neatly into a pair of navy bottom-skimming shorts
that perfectly framed his toned backside. He was body-beautiful and knew it. As he leaped from the bushes that evening in Wales he was freshly shaven and undoubtedly freshly fed, and looked far perkier than our lack of sleep would allow. Behind him a mud-splattered green Land Rover chugged noisily, the engine ticking away keeping the heating on and inside enviably warm.

‘Ladies,' he grinned as he eagerly greeted us. ‘How are you all this fine evening?'

‘Fine thank you, colour sergeant,' Thomas piped up chirpily (never let them know you're broken).