Immediate Action (10 page)

    We were then directed down to the stores to draw a bergen, sleeping bag, water bottles, twenty-four-hour rations, cookers, and a survival kit.

    "When you're up in the hills," the quartermaster told us, "all the weight that's in your bergen must be weight that's usable-food, water, biwi bag, spare clothes. The days of carrying bricks for the sake of it are well gone.

    "You are only allowed to wear an army-issue boot.

    The argument is, you can wear a pair of Gucci walking boots now, but what happens if you've been in the jungle for three months and your boots start to rot and fall off? When you get a resupply parachuted into the jungle, they're sure as hell not going to be size eight and one-half in your favorite 'Go-faster Guccis." Our names were on a board in alphabetical order, and we were allocated to eight-man rooms.

    The Green Jackets were split up, and we wandered off with a casual "See you later."

    Another couple of guys had already arrived in my room; we nodded a greeting to one another but not much more. As I unpacked the kit I'd brought with me, I cast a quick eye over what gear of theirs I could see. I wasn't the only one with boxes of electrolyte drinks, bottles of neat's-foot oil just in case, strapping for my legs, and a party pack of Brufen.

    I wandered off to find the others. Everybody was doing his own thing, sorting himself out, then perhaps, like me, going to see a mate who was in another room.

    There were one or two radios on.

    It seemed everybody was among strangers, from different units.

    People were saying hello but not really chatting to one another.

    There wasn't that friendly room thing that there usually was when soldiers got together on a course. There were little mumblings going on of "All right, mate, how you going?" but the atmosphere felt rather tense.

    Naturally it would take awhile to know each other, as in any group, but I sensed there was more to it than that. The slightly furtive unpacking and guarded responses reminded me of boxers in a shared changing room before a bout. Polite but wary. I thought it was rather odd. As far as I was concerned, the only person I was competing against was myself.

    First thing Monday morning, all 180 of us assembled in the gym.

    Before the course even started, we had to do the army's BFT, a three-mile run in boots and clothing.

    "You've got fifteen minutes to do the first mile and a half," the DS (directing staff) said. "The rest is up to you. Don't be last man home."

    We set off at a fastish pace. However, without kit it was a piece of cake. A reasonable jogger wouldn't have broken out in a sweat. I couldn't believe it when I saw people falling by the wayside, holding their sides and fighting for breath. I'd seen old ladies who were fitter.

    Yet the basic fitness test was a basic requirement throughout the army; in theory, even the plumpest pastry cook should have passed. As the cripples limped in, the DS took their names and told them to go and get changed. They had been binned on the spot, even before the start of Selection proper. They'd obviously been reading too many James Bond books: by the looks on their faces the three miles had come as quite a shock to them.

    For the next couple of days we did basic map-reading revision.

    "If you can't read a map and you're stuck on top of the hill, the weather comes down and it's freezing, you're going to die," the DS said.

    "We don't want you dying: number one because of the expense of putting people on Selection, and number two, we don't want the inconvenience of having to ask the standby squadron to get their arses up trying to look for bodies-and three, it isn't good for you as you'll have failed Selection."

    Unbelievably, some people had turned up just about knowing the difference between north and south. Part of this map-reading refresher was orienteering with the bergens ' on, which was prepping us for the time in the mountains. I was amazed at how many people were starting to get fed up with it already. Whatever their idea of what Selection was, it wasn't this.

    I didn't see much of Key and the others, except in passing. The occasional quick chat at mealtimes, however, revealed that everybody was doing fine.

    We did quite a lot of running, five-milers mostly, in groups of twenty to thirty. We'd do a map-reading class, then be sent off for a run; the people who had just come in off a run, leaking (sweating) and panting, would then do map reading. There were still people binning it and getting binned after these runs.

    They got progressively more arduous: five or seven miles in boots, followed by sit-ups and press-ups, then hundred meter piggyback races and fireman's carries up hills. More people jacked. I reckoned the DS were weeding out the people who wouldn't be capable of doing the first real test at the end of the week, the Fan Dance.

    Another of the regular runs was an eight-miler in boots in hilly country, to be done in under an hour. I reasoned that as long as I stayed tucked in behind the DS, I'd be fine, but for reasons best known to him everybody else seemed to want to be up the front. I couldn't see that it mattered.

    We did more orienteering, this time carrying bergens.

    I got to one checkpoint and sat by the wagons, having a brew. One of the DS was sitting nearby, watching the rest of the gang stagger in.

    One of them, a tall, smartlooking bloke I knew to be a cavalry officer, was wearing sweatbands on his wrists, a bandanna around his head, and, to top it all, a cravat. He looked as if he was going off for a game of squash. The DS got up and went and talked to other members of the training wing. They were all having a look at this boy and obviously discussing him. The thought struck me then that this was about being a gray man; getting noticed, I guessed, was probably only a few steps away from getting binned.

    The Fan Dance is a twenty-four-kilometer run with bergens, done with DS in groups of about thirty, with no map-reading requirement. It starts at the bottom of Peny-Fan, goes up onto the hill, and right to the top, which is the highest point in that part of the country. Then it's back down, around another mountain called the Crib, and along the Roman road, a rubbly old track, then down to a checkpoint at a place called Torpanto. Then it's the whole lot again, in reverse.

    One group started at Torpanto, mine at the Storey Arms mountain rescue center at the base of the Fan, and in theory we crossed over at the top.

    The bergen weighed thirty-five pounds. We didn't know the cutoff time, but the DS did."The only advice we were given was "If you keep with us, you're all right.

    If you don't you're fucking late."

    The DS went; he really motored. Within five minutes the tightly packed group was strung out along the track.

    I noticed several very fit-looking faces that I hadn't seen before and that were overtaking me. It was the first time I'd seen people from the squadrons; apparently there was an open invite for anybody who happened to be in camp to go and do the Fan Dance. All these characters turned up in Range Rovers, with flasks of tea. They got the bergens on, and off they went. I was feeling really fit and confident, but these blokes were just steaming past, especially on the uphill sections. It really pissed me off; they'd jog up alongside the DS, have a bit of a chat, then accelerate over the horizon.

    My chest heaved up and down until I got my second wind, and then I started to sweat. It started to get in my eyes and sting the sores on my back. Within twenty minutes I was soaking wet, but my breathing was regulated, and I was feeling good. I knew where I was going, and though it was wet underfoot, the weather was fine.

    I arrived at Torpanto in good shape, huffing and puffing but confident.

    It wasn't too hot a day, and I wasn't having to stop too often for a drink. I gave my name to the DS, turned around, then did the whole route in reverse. I sang the same song to myself in my head, over and over. It was a rap song; the music was just coming to the UK, and I hated it. I still sang it, though.

    It was a matter of running downhill and on flat ground and of tabbin as hard as we could uphill. That was all there was to it, arms swinging, legs pumping. I passed Max on the way. He was going well, with the water pipe flailing behind him in his slipstream.

    Out of the 180 who had started the week, 100 of us had got as far as the Fan Dance. By the end of the day, another 30 had been binned.

    The Fan, we were told, was a benchmark. If we couldn't do the Fan, there was no way we had the stamina or physical aptitude to carry on.

    That night Peter, the chief instructor, walked around the room.

    He was about five feet five inches tall and looked like everybody's favorite uncle. He inspected all the weird and wonderful drinks that were lying on the lockers and said, in a very slow Birmingham accent that never got above 2,000 revs, "All this shit, you can take it if you like-it's up to you. But the best thing is, two pints of Guinness and a bag of chips at the end of each day."

    Dutifully we went down to the town and sank two pints of Guinness and bought a bag of chips each at the chippie.

    Everybody was sorting out his feet with whatever magic potion and strapping his toes up. I put orthopedic felt on my heels and sorted out my blisters. The army was full of recipes for how to get rid of the things, but I had always found that the best thing was to pierce them at the edge with a needle sterilized in a flame, squeeze all the muck out, and just throw plaster over. There wasn't a lot more that could be done.

    The second week started. I reached the wagon after a particularly grueling run and took stock. My feet and legs ached; my thigh muscles were killing me. My shoulders were badly sore and felt almost dislocated, as if they had dropped. I had a pain in the small of my back; as I carried the bergen uphill, I leaned forward to push against the weight. When I finished and dropped my bergen, it felt as if I was floating on air. I pulled my tracksuit on and got all nice and warm drinking my flask of tea as we were driving back.

    As we relaxed on the wagons, our muscles seized up.

    Getting off again, we looked like a load of geriatrics as we stumbled off the tailgate and hobbled back to our rooms, dragging our sleeping bags along the ground. I looked in the mirror. I looked just how I felt. My hair was sticking up where I had been sweating, and it was covered in mud and twigs.

    We kept our bergens by our beds. There was a drying room for all the wet clothing, but it was pointless washing it; it was only going to get soaking wet and filthy again, so we put it in the drying room for a while, then rested it on our bergens for the next day.

    After a while we did start talking to one another, but the only topic was Selection. Every time I came back off a day's tabbing I wanted to find out how many people had been binned. The more people the better. I was chuffed that thirty people failed the Fan Dance.

    Great, I thought, it made me feel as if I was doing well.

    The daily tabs now ranged from fifteen to sixty-four kilometers, and night marches were introduced. Day after day it was the same routine.

    We'd get the timings to go on the wagons in the morning, go to where the tab was going to start, do it, and get back at night.

    Then the Darby and Joan Club would go shuffling back to the rooms, dump their kit, put their stuff in the drying room, have a bath or a shower, have something to eat, and get their heads down. The days of Guinness and chips were over.

    Nobody told us the timings for the day, so we didn't know how far we were going, where we were going, what route we were taking, or how long we had; we had no option but to go as fast as we could, and that was where the map-reading skills came in. If I came to a reentrant (valley), I didn't go down and then up; I'd see if it might be worth contouring around the longer distance.

    Discipline was uncalled for. All they'd say was "Be in the quadrangle for six o'clock." We'd turn up; they'd call out our names and tell us what trucks to get on. The majority of people were getting in their sleeping bags or putting their bobble hats on, resting and drinking flasks of tea. Then, all too soon, we'd get to the checkpoint, clamber out, and they'd call us forward one by one and send us on our way.

    The training team told us nothing. We were the ones who wanted to be there; they weren't soliciting for our custom. Their attitude seemed to be: The course is here if you want to do it.

    "Red fifteen?"

    I went over to the DS.

    "Name?"

    "McNab."

    "Where are you?"

    I had to show him on the map where I was. If you put your finger on a map, you're covering an area of five hundred or six hundred meters-unless you've got big stubby fingers, in which case it might be a kilometer.

    You've got to point exactly where you are with a blade of grass or a twig.

    "You are going to Grid four-four-one-three-five-three.

    Show me where that is."

    I showed him.

    "Show me what direction you are going in."

    I took my bearing and showed him.

    He said, "Well you'd better get started because the clock's running."

    There, was one bloke in my group, Trey, who was so hyper and revved up that he ended up doing everything the wrong way around.

    Instead of going north, he would go south. He got off the wagon one day and got called over by the DS.

    He said, "Where are you?"

    He showed him on the map.

    "Which way are you going?"

    He pointed the way he was going, which was correct, then went off in totally the wrong direction.

    The DS turned around to us and said, "Where the hell's he going?"