Immediate Action (11 page)

    He let him go for about a hundred meters, then shouted: "Oi, dickhead, come back here! For fuck's sake, where are you going? Show us your bearing."

    Trey showed him, and the DS said, "Then fucking go in that direction.

    You've already wasted three minutes."

    A lot of the time, if I was going for a high point, I could see it, and it never got any closer. My mind would start wandering off on to different things. Sometimes I'd start singing stupid songs to myself in my mind, or little advertising that I'd always hated anyway.

    I'd get to the checkpoint and lean forward, my hands on my knees to rest the shoulders.

    The DS'd say, "Show me where you are." Then: "You are going to Grid three-four-five-six-seven-eight. Show me what direction that is."

    Off I'd go.

    Sometimes I'd get to a checkpoint where they'd have a set of scales. For that day's marches, perhaps the bergen had to weigh forty pounds. They'd check the weight, and if a bloke was under, they'd put a big rock in his pack, sign it with a lumicolor, and radio on to the next couple of checkpoints that Blue 27 had a rock in his bergen because he was a snidey bastard. It meant that instead of carrying forty pounds, he would now be humping around with fifty-five pounds for the rest of the day. When measured in sweat and blisters, fifteen pounds is a lot of difference.

    The big mistake was to take forty pounds as the all-in start weight of the bergen, including the water. As soon as you'd drunk one pint, you'd be under;weight. When they said forty pounds, they meant forty pounds at the end of the day, not the beginning.

    When we came in off the hills, we'd be sorting ourselves out. The training team would come around, calling out names. These, we soon learned, were the people who were getting binned.

    If we'd had a bad day, we'd get a "gypsy's warning."

    The sergeant major would say, "The following people, come and see me."

    Those people would gather around him. He'd say, "You didn't do very well yesterday. This is a gypsy's; you'd better sort your shit out because next time you'll be gone."

    If anybody had already had a gypsy's and his name was called, he could assume the worst.

    I'd be feeling fairly confident if I was in the first wagon on the way back. Second wagon, I was unsure but not too worried. Third wagon, I would have been shirting myself. It happened to me only once.

    Most days, however, I was looking at other people, chuffed that these six-foot-four-inch blond-haired, good-looking thoroughbreds were getting the shove.

    I'd say, "That's a shame," but inside I'd be thinking, Good shit!

    Everybody was for himself; everybody wanted to pass.

    "The point is," the DS said, "if you've got to be in a position to give covering fire with your GPMG (general purpose machine gun) in six hours and forty-five minutes' time, it's no good being there in six hours, forty-five and a half minutes because you're late. You might as well be ten hours late. If you're given a timing, you must be there.

    The attack group might have to go in without fire cover because their attack might be time coordinated with another attack that's going in three or four kilometers away. You must keep your timings; lives might depend on it one day."

    The training team did the course every day as well, and they would vary the time limit according to the conditions. If there was a forty-mile-an-hour wind, they took it into consideration. It was then up to us to be as good as they were.

    The big thing was Platform 4. At Hereford railway station, Platform 4 went to London. "It's Platform four for you" was the Regiment's way of saying, "Thank you and good night."

    Of course, by the time people got back to their units, the reason they left Selection was a "back or leg injury," but they shouldn't have been embarrassed: They had more guts turning up for Selection in the first place than the people they were giving excuses to.

    The Royal Signals people definitely had the edge on tuning in and being happy with the environment. At that time, if a bloke wanted to go for the Regiment from the signals, he first had to be in 264, the signals squadron in Hereford. So these guys were in the environment to begin with, and they had the Black Mountains,forty-five minutes up the road to train on. A lot of them were going home of an evening. In the beginning I felt they had an unfair advantage. Then I came to see that when it came down to it, they didn't; they still had to get the boots on and go up the hill with everyone else.

    I was looking at the blokes who'd done Selection once already; maybe they had got up to the jungle phase of continuation training and then failed. I was hoping that they were going to pass this first stage again. If I got to the jungle as well-and I hoped with them-they would know what was going on.

    Some people had turned up looking fearsomely fit. I judged myself all the time against them. A fellow called Andy Baxter was one of the training team. We went out for a run with him one day, stopping to do press-ups and sit-ups. Andy took his shirt off and revealed that besides film-star good looks he had a superb physique.

    He should have been on the cover of Playgirl. I'd always been really fit in the battalion, but I thought, There's no way I'm going to pass this; I don't stand a chance here; how the hell am I going to be like him? Nothing fazed him at all. We'd come back off the runs gasping for breath, and he'd saunter back in, laughing and joking, and have a cup of tea. It annoyed me that compared with some of these blokes, I was a bag of shit, sweating and knackered. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't Baxter I was competing against; it was McNab.

    If passing Selection had been an obsession before I arrived at Stirling Lines, it was now a pathological fixation. The longer I was there, the more I wanted to stay.

    The atmosphere was so different from an infantry battalion, so laid back, so reliant on self-discipline. Everybody was on first-name terms.

    No one hassled us; all they would say was "Parade is twelve o'clock" and just expect us to be there. If we weren't, it must mean we didn't want to be there, so we could go. Each night I said to myself. "I really want to be here; this is the place I want to be."

    If I didn't pass Selection, I'd get out of the army.

    There was no way I could see myself fitting back in the battalion.

    I'd seen how the other half lived, and I wanted my share. All the facilities were there, everything from a library to a swimming pool.

    The medical center was open for us every night when we got back.

    I went there to get some bandages for my feet. it wasn't like going into a medical center in the battalion, where I'd have been hanging around so long my feet would have healed of their own accord.

    They treated me as a person rather than a soldier; as I limped back to my room, I said to myself again: I want to stay here!

    All of us Green jackets got up to the third week; then Bob got binned.

    His timings weren't good enough. He didn't seem too worried about it as he packed his gear to leave.

    Next day we had finished one march and were moving to a forestry block to spend the next few hours sorting ourselves out and having something to eat before a night tab. Dave was not feeling too good about it, and he had already had a gypsy's. As we sat around a hexy burner and sorted our feet out, waiting for dark, he said, "'That pisses me off is that they don't tell us if we've failed straightaway. I might be doing this sodding night march for nothing."

    He was. The next day, almost the end of the third week, he was also sent to Platform 4, timings not good enough. And Max, who was starting to look the worse for wear, got a gypsy's.

    "It was because I kept falling over," Dave said to me.

    "And the reason I keep falling over is that my feet aren't big enough to support me. I'v-e only got size sevens."

    I shook his hand and watched him go. I'd miss the silly bastard.

    A couple of days after that, in the final week, I was coming off Fan-Fawr and saw Max still on his way up, water tube waving in the wind, wearing a T-shirt with a motif on it, something to do with oranges. His big bushy moustahe was full of snot, and he was in shit state.

    He said, "I'm having a bad time here, Andy. My timings are bad."

    H was well and truly out of it-as if he was drunk, but without the happiness.

    I nodded and said, "Sorry," but obviously I still had to crack on myself.

    That night he went. Out of the original six Green jackets three were left for the last three days of Test Week.

    Key went the next day. As usual, he wasn't that fussed.

    "I tried and failed." He grinned. "At least I don't have to think of it again. Back to football and a few good nights out at Longbridge, that's me."

    I was sad to see them all go. I would miss their friendship and banter.

    Johnny Two-Combs was still there, and no way was he not going to pass. I didn't see that much of him as he was in a different block and by now, if I wasn't tabbing, I was sleeping.

    "Just got to carry on the way I'm going," I kept saying to myself.

    "Just don't get an injury."

    I got a gypsy's the next day.

    We were on a thirty-five-kilometer tab in the Elan valley, and I'd had a really bad day. I had no injuries, but I just found it hard going. It was as If my legs didn't want to play; my body was going at 100 mph but my legs were moving at 50. I used to have a dream as a child that I was running away from something and though my whole mental state was in a frenzy, my body would be in slow motion.

    Now it was happening in real life. I was on the second group of wagons, which was dodgy ground.

    The following morning we were waiting to be called on the vehicles. The chief instructor started to call out the names of people he wanted to see. I was one of them.

    "Your timings were not good enough yesterday," he said. "You will have to pull your finger out for the last two days or it's Platform four."

    It pissed me off, but there were only the Sketch Map and Endurance marches left.

    Sketch Map involved using a hand-drawn map rather than a proper one. We had to cover thirty-five kilometers over different checkpoints. No problem, I was cruising. I thought I'd cracked it. I knew the ground because I'd done all the recces, I'd been up there; I knew where I was going.

    I was coming up toward the Fan and came to a forestry block about a kilometer square that I would have to go around. It wasn't a fluffy little wood; this was a major Forestry Commission fir plantation.

    Looking down on it from the high ground, I could see that a firebreak went right through the middle. I started to push through, and made good progress for about the first two hundred meters. Then I got disoriented. I had to stop for several minutes and take a bearing.

    I was severely pissed off with myself. I had to get on my hands and knees and start pushing myself through because the trees were planted so closely together. I was shouting and hollering to myself.

    I'd gone too far in to come back out and go around; it was just a matter of cracking on.

    Deep down I knew I was going to be late. I knew I had fucked up.

    By the time I came out I had cuts on my face and hands, and I was covered in blood. But I still went on.

    There might be a chance.

    As I made my way up to the next checkpoint, which was on the top of Pen-y-Fan, my legs were aching something fierce. I was badly out of breath and drenched with sweat, blood, and mud. But the worst injury was to my pride. I knew I'd fucked up good style by being too cocky.

    The sun was out, and it was quite hot. Half of Wales seemed to be walking on the Fan with their famillessmall kids with two-liter bottles of lemonade in their hands and mothers and fathers strolling along in shorts and sandals, enjoying the view. I screamed through them, pissed off and muttering to myself, trying to make up as much time as possible.

    The DS looked at my cut face and torn trousers and said, "You all right?"

    I said, "Yeah, I've had a bad last leg."

    "Never mind, just get down to the vehicle; that's your next checkpoint."

    I had been the last man to the top of Pen-y-Fan. Now I had to go back down to the last checkpoint I ran. I ran faster than I'd ever imagined I could, but when I arrived, there was only room on the third wagon.

    That night my name was called. It was the day before Endurance, the last big test, and I was binned. It was my fault, being cocky, thinking I'd cracked it, rather than just going around the forestry block and being sure of where I was.

    Before you leave for Platform 4, you hand all your kit back to the stores. Then there is an interview with the training major. You can try only twice for Selection, unless you break a leg on your second attempt, in which case they might be lenient.

    As I waited to go into the office, I wasn't alone. Eight of us were sitting on a long wooden bench. I felt very much as I had done as a kid, waiting to see the headmistress or to go into a police station interviewing room. It was a hive of activity, people walking purposefully past, doing their own stuff. Nobody was taking any notice of us.

    I felt dejected. Everything was happening around me, but I wasn't a part of it anymore.

    The major looked up from his desk and said, "So what was the problem?

    Why were you so late on the last leg?"

    "Too cocky. I went through the forestry block, and that slowed me down severly."

    "Ah, well." He smiled. "If you come back again, you'll make sure you go around that one, won't you)"