by Bear Grylls
Together, we signed up for the university OTC (Officer Training Corps), which was a marginally more professional outfit than the Army Cadets. It was, though, full of overly serious military-minded students, hoping to join the real army after university.
To our great amusement, these students invariably over-acted the military card, whereas we had just joined for a bit of fun and to meet foxy GI Janes. It was total pleasure pulling the well-pressed legs of all these military stiffs, by intentionally wearing our berets like chef’s hats and turning up late and in pink socks.
In turn, they looked down their raised noses at us, as two incompetent jokers, wasters and buffoons. Neither of us minded at all. It was all way too much fun!
It was something about guys of our age pretending to be something that they weren’t, that made playing the fool so totally irresistible. I suspect that my dad would have behaved the same. (Taking yourself too seriously, in whatever field, was always dangerous around him.)
During that OTC year, though, we did develop a marked respect for one of the genuine soldiers, a senior officer we had met who had been in the SAS in his younger years. He walked with a quiet confidence, he laughed a lot, and never took himself too seriously.
Correspondingly, we never felt the urge to mess around when he was there. Instead, he inspired us to be more like him: to have done something difficult, real and lasting. That is ultimately what good leadership does. It inspires us to reach higher.
So was quietly born in both Trucker and myself a quickening of the heart that said: I wonder if one day we might ever attempt Selection for the SAS?
And that was the second life-altering thing that happened – and it started off a ride that was to take me to the very edge.
Literally.
CHAPTER 35
Two things motivated me to join the SAS Reserves.
One was the determination to achieve something special and lasting in my life. To find that pride that lasts a lifetime; to have endured, to have been tested – and to have prevailed.
It is a hard feeling to explain, but it was very real inside me.
The other motivator was less worthy.
It was to outclass all those OTC military-stiffs who had so looked down their noses at me. A totally flawed reason, I know! But I wanted to show them what I was actually capable of. To show them that real soldiering was about graft, graft and graft – not smart, smart and smart.
Both these motivations may sound a bit warped, but if I’m honest they are probably accurate reasons why I initially wanted to attempt SAS(R) Selection.
Above all, it was about wanting to achieve something special, that so few people pull off.
The flip side was that the task did feel like an almost insurmountable challenge for me.
I knew that out of the many already toughened soldiers that applied each year for 21 SAS Selection, only a tiny handful regularly passed. It is a brutal attrition rate to embark on, especially when you feel very ‘average’ physically. But big challenges inspire me. I think we are all made a little like that.
I also believe strongly in the powerful words: ‘I took the road less travelled, and that has made all the difference.’ They are good ones to live by.
The big, final motivator was that I really wasn’t enjoying my university studies.
I loved The Brunel and our small group of buddies there, but the actual university experience was killing me. (Not the workload, I hasten to add, which was pleasantly chilled, but rather the whole deal of feeling like just another student.)
Sure, I liked the chilled lifestyle (like the daily swim I took naked in the ornamental lake in the car park), but it was more than that. I just didn’t like being so unmotivated.
It didn’t feel good for the soul.
This wasn’t what I had hoped for in my life.
I felt impatient to get on and do something.
(Oh, and I was learning to dislike the German language, in a way that was definitely not healthy.)
So, I decided it was time to make a decision.
Via the OTC, Trucker and I quietly went to see the ex-SAS officer to get his advice on our Special Forces Selection aspirations.
I was nervous telling him.
He knew we were troublemakers, and that we had never taken any of the OTC military ‘routine’ at all seriously. But to my amazement he wasn’t the least bit surprised at what we told him.
He just smiled, almost knowingly, and told us we would probably fit in well – that was if we passed. He said the SAS attracted misfits and characters – but only those who could first prove themselves worthy.
He then told us something great, that I have always remembered.
‘Everyone who attempts Selection has the basic mark-one body: two arms, two legs, one head and one pumping set of lungs. What makes the difference between those that make it and those that don’t, is what goes on in here,’ he said, touching his chest. ‘Heart is what makes the big difference. Only you know if you have got what it takes. Good luck … oh, and if you pass I will treat you both to lunch, on me.’
That was quite a promise from an officer – to part with money.
So that was that.
Trucker and I wrote to 21 SAS HQ, nervously requesting to be put forward for Selection. They would do their initial security clearances on us both, and then would hopefully write, offering us (or not) a place on pre-Selection – including dates, times, and joining instructions.
All we could do was wait, start training hard, and pray.
I tossed all my German study manuals unceremoniously into the bin, and felt a million times better. And deep down I had the feeling that I might just be embarking on the adventure of a lifetime.
On top of that, there was no Deborah Maldives saying I needed a degree to join the SAS. The only qualification I needed was inside that beating chest of mine.
I would like to preface this chapter with the following note.
As a former Special Forces soldier, I signed the Official Secrets Act, which rightly restricts me from revealing details, places, names and operational procedures of the Special Air Service.
The following account has been modified to ensure that I comply with this, and it remains important for me personally to honour that brotherhood.
The aim of the next part of the book is to give you a taste of what I went through to have earned the right to be part of the family, that is, the SAS.
PART 2
‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’
CHAPTER 36
This is how the BBC summed up the SAS in one of their broadcasts:
The reputation of the SAS stretches worldwide. It has a reputation for ruthless efficiency and military professionalism. Other Special Forces units model themselves on the SAS, whose selection procedures are arduous and protracted. Around nine in every ten hopefuls fail …
Like so many boys growing up, I had always heard about the famed Special Air Service or SAS. The shadowy figures that formed what is widely acknowledged as the toughest, most elite Special Forces fighting unit on earth.
In quiet moments, I had always wondered what it would be like to try their selection course to join.
Would I be one of those who had the ‘right stuff’, or, more likely, would I be among the majority who attempt it … and fail?
I wondered what it would really take to be one of those few that had earned the right to wear that famous sand-coloured beret, with its winged dagger.
What toll would it exert to be part of this SF (Special Forces) Unit, and would I have what it required to join the elite, the best?
Aged barely sixteen, I had passed my Potential Officers Course to join the Royal Marines Commandos as a young officer after school; I was all set to join up – just like Dad had done.
But part of me just wondered, should I not at least try Selection for the SAS Reserves, before committing to the marines?
Just to see.
The rational answer that came back to me was that
I should be honest with myself. I was fit and strong and determined, but I wasn’t a totally natural athlete – I had always had to work at it, and hard.
I had many friends who were naturally much stronger and fitter than me (and they didn’t even have to train at all), and deep down, that made me doubt myself. Yet somehow, because I wasn’t ‘naturally’ gifted athletically, I had developed this ability to fight, and to push myself hard, physically and mentally.
It was this ‘fight’ and determination that would become the key ingredient to attempting Selection – much more than any natural ability.
If SAS Selection does one thing, it ensures that everyone, over the many months, reaches that stage where they are physically ‘dead on their feet’. Utterly spent.
However fit you are.
What the SAS is looking for is spirit and fight: those soldiers who, when every bone in their body is screaming for rest, will dig deep, and start moving, again and again and again. That isn’t natural fitness, it is heart, and it is this that Selection demands of all that attempt it.
At this stage, though, I maybe didn’t have the confidence in myself to understand that we all have that spirit in us.
I felt a little more comfortable with the marines. I had experienced a small taste of what would be asked of me as a potential Royal Marines officer.
I knew it would be tough, but I felt I could do it.
I was good at press-ups and pull-ups and ‘yomping’ with a backpack (a staple of life in the marines); could I manage the ultra-long marches over the high mountains, carrying seriously huge weights on your back, which is such a core part of SAS Selection?
That somehow felt beyond what I believed I could do.
Yet still the voice niggled.
In the end I concluded that nothing ventured, nothing gained. (A vital ethos to follow if life is to have flavour, I have since learnt.)
I knew I should at least attempt Selection.
If I failed, well at least I would fail whilst trying. Face down in the dirt. Knowing that I had given it my all. (Oh, and what’s more, I knew that the SAS required secrecy from anyone attempting Selection, which was perfect. If I failed, I concluded, at least no one would know!)
So that was the plan; but in truth, if I could have had any idea of the pain and battering that my body would go through on Selection, I would have realized it was insane to continue with this mad dream.
But luckily, we never really know what the future holds.
CHAPTER 37
Normally, for a soldier to attempt SAS Selection, it first requires several years of service in the regular army. But the SAS is comprised of three regiments, with 21 and 23 being reserve regiments to 22 SAS.
Both 21 and 23 SAS tend to be made up of former paratroopers or commandos who have left the regular army, but still want a challenge and an outlet for their hard-earned skills.
The SAS then take these ex-soldiers, and put them through a rigorous selection course, designed to separate the best. Then they take those few and train them up in all the skills of a covert, combat operative.
But 21 and 23 SAS are also open to any civilians who can prove themselves capable of the exacting high standards demanded by the SAS. The route in is longer and more spread out, but it is a potential route in, all the same.
What I liked about the SAS (R)(Reserve) was that it gave you a degree of flexibility in how you lived your life.
You weren’t a full-time soldier, yet many of the SAS Reserve soldiers did it as their main job. They could be deployed anywhere in the world at little notice, were highly trained and specialized, yet they could pick and choose how much time they dedicated to the regiment.
I loved the idea of that.
Joining straight in from being a civilian meant a very steep learning curve, but if you were successful you could join the SAS(R) without all the tedious process of having to learn conventional, boot-cleaning soldiering first.
And I never had any ambitions to be a conventional anything.
Quite a few of my friends had set out after school to join a regular tank or infantry regiment, as officers. It would invariably involve a lot of ceremonial duties and high living in London. But despite the fun that they would surely have, I found the thought of that lifestyle, at barely twenty years old, totally unappealing.
I wanted adventure, and I was looking for the less trodden path.
If I was to join 21 SAS, I could only do it as a trooper, in other words at the lowest military rank available. I wouldn’t be an officer like my public-school friends, but would be joining at the very bottom of the pile, as a ‘grunt’ (as troopers or private soldiers were often derogatively called).
But ‘grunt’, to me, sounded much more challenging and much more fun.
What’s more, amongst SAS troopers, Old Etonians were very thin on the ground.
CHAPTER 38
In The Brunel Hotel, Trucker and I had often discussed SAS Selection long into the night. To go for it was a decision we very much took together.
It proved one of the best decisions we ever made, and it forged in us a friendship (formed through shared hardship) that I could never have anticipated.
For the rest of our days we would be the best of friends because of what we went through together on SAS(R) Selection over the next year and beyond.
We did, though, recognize that if only a very small number of those who applied eventually went on to pass 21 SAS Selection, then the likelihood of us both passing together was very small.
It was an unspoken subject.
Also, deep down, I did worry, as Trucker was so much stronger than me. In fact, he was the most naturally fit man I’d ever met, and I so envied this. He was so effortlessly strong when we ran and trained together – so different from me – and this just fuelled my fear that he would pass Selection, and I would, in reality, never make it.
On 23 March 1994 we both arrived at the barrack gates, call-up papers in hand, tense and very nervous.
We were beginning a journey that would effectively take us from enthusiastic civilians to highly trained Special Forces operatives in just under twelve long months.
It was a daunting prospect.
To be transformed from a total amateur to a total pro, skilled in everything from demolitions to covert maritime and airborne insertions, would be a journey that would stretch us to our limits. But before we could get anywhere near anything exciting we would have to prove ourselves fit and determined, way beyond the normal.
The only way to do that was through graft, sweat and bloody hard work.
We had both been assigned to what I believe was one of the best squadrons in 21 SAS. It had a strong reputation within the SAS family as being made up of tough, no-nonsense, down to earth soldiers. They were mainly Welsh, fiercely protective of their own, and utterly professional.
But their reputation was hard earned and well guarded.
We would have to work twice as hard to earn a place there.
The first evening, along with an eclectic mix of other hopefuls, we were issued with kit, taken on a steady run up and down the nearby hills, interviewed on what our motivations were, and then briefed on what to expect.
Commitment seemed to be the watchword.
I went home relieved – just to have started this damned thing.
That is often the hard bit of any long, daunting journey.
Trucker and I then returned for one evening every week, for what was called a drill night. These evenings were designed to ‘familiarize’ us with what we could expect over the year ahead.
Selection itself would take place over many weekends over many, many months – but these two-day training tests and exercises were not to start for another few weeks.
First they wanted to sieve out those that wouldn’t stand a chance.
The weekly drill nights were spent being put through progressively harder and harder physical training.
Often these consisted of very fast, lung-bursting runs, followed by
hill-sprints and fireman’s carries – up and down, up and down – until every recruit was on his knees, often covered in vomit.
One particularly nasty trick they played was to line us all up at the top of this steep two-hundred-foot hill. They would then send us to the bottom, tell us to lift up our partner on our backs, and then announce that the last two back to the top would be RTU’d, or ‘returned to unit’ – failed.
We would all stagger to the top, fighting not to be last, only then to be sent back down, minus the last two, to repeat it again – then again.
Eventually only a few of us would remain – all reduced to crawling wrecks.
Sometimes they carried out their threat and the weakest would be RTU’d, sometimes they then just ran all of us back to camp and no further action was taken. But you never knew.
That was how they played it.
You were only ever safe if you gave 150 per cent, stayed near the front, and never gave up.
It was becoming apparent that this was the hallmark needed to still be there the next week.
Or they might get us to do some ‘milling’. Two-minute bouts, in full gloves, where the aim was to punch your opponent with everything you could throw at him. No technique, just blood and guts.
I always got paired with the six-foot-four bruiser. And came off worse.
Then more press-ups. And lifts. Until we could no longer stand.
At this stage it wasn’t about even passing Selection – it was about just not getting thrown off the course – today.
Yet after each ‘beasting’ session the exhilaration always surpassed the doubt, and I was slowly learning to get used to the pain.
That seemed to be the key to survival here.
