by Bear Grylls
Routinely we would be covering up to thirty miles, across the mountains, carrying up to 50 lb of weight. On top of this, we were now doing every march on our own – during the day and night.
The SAS were beginning to test our ability to work alone. Could we motivate ourselves to keep going, navigate effectively and look after ourselves, even when we were cold, wet and tired?
The strange thing was that I was thriving.
We rarely got shouted at, and, for now, we were only asked to do these three basic tasks: navigate across the mountains; carry the weight; be within the time.
The soldiering stuff would come later on, but only to those who had first proved themselves capable of working to the max; whatever the conditions.
I liked this whole ethos.
Pretty soon, the number of recruits in our squadron was down to under ten men, and we’d only just completed half of the mountain weekends. Trucker was still there, but many of the muscle-guys had long since fallen by the wayside.
What was clear was that Selection was taking its toll on us all physically.
After each weekend my feet and my bruised body would take days to recover. I would hobble about on tender feet and aching limbs.
My body still felt relatively virgin for this level of mountain endurance work. I was still only twenty, and significantly younger than any of the other soldiers on Selection. Endurance comes with age.
It was no surprise that so few young guys passed, and that the optimum age was late twenties.
It would be a long journey, and getting used to the strain took time. The key was that I had to learn to recover quickly.
This skill would end up taking me months to develop.
In the early days, my calves would be in agony after one of the long, repeated, ‘fireman’s lift’ hill sessions, and my shoulders would start to burn after just a few hours of carrying the heavy pack around the mountains – but steadily, over time, I hardened.
Another vital lesson I learnt, during this first phase of Selection, was how to listen to and prepare my body properly: the right food, the right rest, the right training.
To what level of intensity should I train at in-between the tests, and how often?
A big mistake that soldiers often made, in preparing for Selection, was to over-train and then get hurt – and with an injury, Selection becomes virtually impossible.
It is an intricate balance and requires you to listen carefully to your own body.
This skill has helped me so much in my life since.
CHAPTER 46
One thing that I have always found annoying is that when I most need sleep, I often find it hardest to achieve.
It is a horrible, pit-of-the-stomach feeling: lying wide awake in bed, scared of what is ahead, knowing that your body needs rest, yet unable to switch off.
My head is constantly racing, and the less sleep I get the more it bothers my already troubled mind.
And what was ahead was troubling me – a lot.
Our first make or break big physical test. Fail this and you were off the course.
No questions asked.
Infamous in SAS circles as a real tester of character, this mountain ‘test’ is a gruelling eighteen-mile ‘speed’ march (run) in full kit, almost three thousand feet up and then down the other side of one particular high peak, then all the way back to the start.
One minute outside of the set time and you were RTU’d – no second attempts.
At the foot of the mountain on a mild, clear-skied morning, I was more nervous, awaiting the set-off time for this, than I had been about anything so far.
Do I have enough food in me; am I going to be strong today; will I be able to maintain the pace?
Within minutes of starting up the steep track, Trucker and the front group had pulled ahead of me.
Come on, Bear, push harder – you can rest all you want at the end, but go for it now.
Weighed down under 45 lb of Bergen, belt kit, rifle, food and water, moving at that speed wasn’t easy. After an hour, all my clothes were drenched in sweat, and I was striving with all I had to push my body on, faster and faster.
At the halfway mark, I took a quick gulp of water, and then I was off again – back up the long track through the foothills, towards the distant summit.
But I was behind time, and I knew it.
I was angry with myself.
Trucker had looked so in control as he had passed me on his way back: running confidently, looking strong. In contrast, I knew that I looked as I felt: a wreck. My head was down, my eyes were down, and I was breathing wildly through spit-drenched, clenched teeth.
I had to make up time, and fast, or I would fail.
Somehow, I found my strength on the next leg, and I overtook long lines of recruits who were beginning to flag. This gave me more confidence, and I pushed on harder still.
At the summit, I set off almost at a sprint, down to the foot of the peak and the end.
I could see the DS at the gate far beneath me – tiny specks – one and a half thousand feet below, and still three miles away.
I gave it everything I had, and ran for the finish.
I made it. With only three minutes to spare.
As I sat on my pack, head hung between my legs, exhausted, the relief swept over me.
I knew that almost all those that I had overtaken would be failed.
Sure enough, thirty minutes later, when all the stragglers had crawled back in, a parade was called.
‘The following names, take your kit and put it in the back of the near truck.’
It was clinical: cold and unapologetic.
You fail yourself. Remember?
That day sixteen people were returned to their unit.
The bar was being raised ever higher, and, if truth be told, I was struggling.
CHAPTER 47
The night-march was a long one.
It started at dusk and wouldn’t finish until 3.30 a.m.
The weather had taken a turn for the worse as it had got dark, and was making the navigation especially hard.
On the way to the second to last checkpoint, amongst this high, windy, boggy terrain, I had to pass through a dense forest, on the steep side of a mountain.
On the map it looked straightforward, but in reality it was a nightmare: thick, dense pine, piles of cut timber, and endless thickets of gorse.
After a few hundred yards I realized this was going to turn into a battle.
I was exhausted already from five hours of night-march through boggy moon-grass, and this was the last thing I now needed.
I just wanted to reach the other side of the wood.
In the pitch black, navigating through this insanely dense wood required pinpoint accuracy and a total dependence on your compass bearing. But the trees were unending.
Finally, I broke through and hit the steep track on the far side of the forest, and spotted the lone DS tent, silhouetted against the skyline.
The routine when arriving at a checkpoint was rigorously enforced. You approached the checkpoint, crouched down on one knee, map folded tightly in one hand, compass in the other, and weapon cradled in your arms.
Then you announced yourself. Name. Number.
The DS would then give you your next six-figure grid reference, which you had to locate rapidly on the map, and then point out to him with the corner of the compass or a blade of grass. (If we were caught pointing at a map with a finger, instead of a blade of grass or something sharp, we had been threatened, by the unforgettable Sgt Taff, that he would ‘Rip that finger off and beat you to death with the soggy end!’ It’s a threat that I enjoy passing on to my boys when we are reading a map together nowadays.)
As soon as the grid reference was confirmed, it was time to ‘pack up and f*** off’, as we were so often told.
That was your cue to get moving.
I moved away twenty yards from the tent and crouched down in the pitch black. I pulled out my head torch, which was covered
in masking tape with just a small pinprick of light shining through, and carefully studied my laminated map.
The map was always kept folded tightly in my thigh pocket, and the compass was attached to a lanyard from my jacket chest pocket. Lose either and you failed.
I shuffled my back round against the wind, and with a long blade of grass between my fingers, I traced out what I reckoned would be the best route to take across the moorland.
Make a bad choice and it could cost you precious hours.
But errors can come so easily when you are wet through, sleep-deprived and struggling to see a map in low light and strong winds.
I turned into the wind and headed up the steep track alongside the wood, and then across the last two miles of moon-grass.
Come on. Let’s finish this one now.
It was now 2 a.m.
I was so exhausted going along this track that I actually fell asleep walking. I’d never done that before.
It was a horrible feeling, having this intense desire to lie down and sleep, yet needing to fight to suppress that and just push ever onwards.
An hour and a half later I reached this small, remote quarry, cut into the mountainside. As bleak a reward for finishing a night-march as you can imagine.
It was raining hard now, and there was no tree cover to tie a poncho to. I lay down on the marshy ground, pulled my poncho across the top of me and fell asleep.
I was soon shivering with the cold and utterly soaked through. I just longed to get this miserable test weekend over with.
After being so cold, the battle PT was a welcome relief. I felt I had gone into a different zone in my head now. I no longer cared about the cold or wet or my aching limbs. I just wanted to get it all done.
After two hours of running up and down this steep-sided quarry, as well as doing endless press-ups in the mud, those of us remaining were stood down.
Totally beat up, totally filthy, totally drenched.
Totally wired.
I collapsed in the truck. The first test was complete.
CHAPTER 48
Our next test weekend was in a particularly hellish area of the Welsh mountains – remote, godforsaken, and full of even more boggy, ankle-twisting moon-grass.
The area became known affectionately by the other recruits as simply: ‘The asshole of the world.’
The first march started badly for me.
I just couldn’t sustain the pace that I knew was required. Soon everyone was passing me.
Why did I so often feel like this at the start of a march? Was it nerves?
I was so frustrated with myself as I neared the first RV. And I knew I was slow.
To make matters worse, twice I found myself lost in this vast quagmire of boggy wetland, only to have to use up valuable time moving off course to higher ground, in order to reorient myself.
I was just having a bad day. I couldn’t understand why I was tired when I should be firing, and why I was flustered when I should be keeping my calm. I didn’t know how to stop myself from sliding like this, and I knew that each minute I was falling further behind the required time.
At the second RV I made a bad navigational decision. It cost me vital time. Time I didn’t have to spare.
The navigational error was selecting to contour round a mountain, rather than go up and over it. It was a weak decision to try and save me energy – and it proved a disaster.
If anything, choosing the longer, less steep, route only served to exhaust me further.
Tentative holds no power. Sometimes you have just got to tackle these mountains head-on.
As I arrived at the next checkpoint, the DS made me do endless press-ups in the mud, pack still on, as a punishment for approaching the last thirty yards on a track, instead of along the ditch.
He delayed me a full fifteen minutes with this impromptu beasting, and I was now pretty beat-up.
When I finally made it out of the checkpoint, the DS made me wade across a fast-flowing, waist-deep stream, instead of allowing me to use the small footbridge. It was a parting gesture from him to piss me off.
I was now soaking wet and struggling big time. I staggered on for a hundred yards to get out of the DS’s view, and then collapsed in a heap to sort myself out. I just needed to rest for a few minutes. I was beat.
The DS had been watching. He shouted and called me back.
‘Do you want to pull yourself off the course, mate?’ he asked.
He wasn’t being unpleasant; he was simply being straight. He knew, from looking at me, that I was in a mess.
‘No, Staff.’
I staggered to my feet, turned and staggered on.
‘Then go for it, and make up some time,’ he shouted after me.
A big part of me simply longed for someone else to make the decision. I half-hoped he would shout again, and just pull me off the course. But he didn’t. You fail yourself.
Yet something deep inside said: Keep going.
I knew that nothing good in life ever came from quitting; that there would be plenty of time for rest when the hard work was finished. But such thoughts are easier said than done when you are being broken.
The next climb up that moon-grassed, boggy, interminable mountainside, I will never forget. I was utterly spent. I stumbled forward a couple of paces then would collapse to my knees under the weight of the pack.
I was feeling faint, light-headed, and very, very weak – just like when you have a bad fever and try and get up from your bed to walk.
Down to my knees I went again.
At the summit, I felt a little stronger. Just a little. I tried desperately to push on and make up some time.
Finally, I could see the four-tonne trucks below me, parked in a small lay-by next to a dam at the foot of the mountains.
I raced down to the dam and clocked in.
I knew I was slow, as I could see all the other recruits huddled in the woods next to the dam’s entrance.
Wispy trails of smoke drifted up from the many little self-contained army Hexi stoves, each heating individual mugs of sweet tea. I knew the score. Each recruit quietly working in their own little world, trying to rehydrate and sort their kit out under their basha or camp, before the night-march.
The DS didn’t say anything. They simply sent me to join the others, and await the orders for the night-march.
As dusk approached, we all stood on parade.
Once more they announced: ‘OK, the following will not start the night-march. You have not passed today’s test.’
I stood and waited. Four names were read out.
Then the DS looked up at me. Cold. Unemotional.
‘… and Grylls.’
CHAPTER 49
There were several other names read out after mine, but they were a blur.
I’d been failed because I was too slow. There was no fanfare, no quiet words of comfort; just the DS coldly ushering those of us who had failed to the woods to wait for dawn.
It was the worst sinking feeling I had ever felt.
Everything I had worked for – gone. Just like that.
All that sweat and effort and pain – for nothing.
A failure. A loser. A ‘scug’.
In the twilight, I sat on my pack in the woods, with ten of the other failed recruits, and I couldn’t hold back the silent tears from rolling down my cheeks.
I didn’t care who saw me.
Never had I worked so hard for something – never had I given so much of myself, and all for nothing.
Through my tears, I could see the distant figures of Trucker and the few remaining others, silhouetted on the skyline as they climbed into the darkness at the start of their night-march.
Trux had put his arm around me earlier. He looked so sad for me. But there was nothing he could do or say.
That night, I just lay there, feeling utterly alone. I was tucked under the shelter of my bivvy, safe from the driving rain. Yet all I wanted was to be out there – out in that rain, out in the mountains,
doing what I had set out to do. Passing. Not failing.
I never knew that being dry and warm could feel so awful.
So much of my life had been privileged. I’d never really had to work that hard for anything. I had grown up with loving parents, with food on the table, warmth, and clothing in abundance.
Yet I had felt uneasy with all that, almost guilty.
I wanted to work hard. I wanted to prove myself somehow worthy of the good things I had known.
If only to know that I possessed some grit and fortitude.
All I had done was remind myself that I had neither.
And that hurt.
The next few weeks were a real struggle.
Mental turmoil was a new emotion for me, and not a fun one.
I felt I had let myself down, and that I had wasted four months of my life to hard, cold misery, and all for nothing.
I was depressed and I felt useless. And that was on a good day.
The only silver lining was that my squadron training team had invited me back to try once more – if I wanted to.
It would involve going all the way back to the start. Day one.
It was a truly horrendous concept.
But they didn’t invite people back who they didn’t feel potentially had the right attitude or abilities to pass.
That was some small glimmer of hope, at least.
At this point, my greatest enemy was myself. Self-doubt can be crushing, and sometimes it is hard to see outside the black bubble.
I tried to look at the situation objectively – I’d failed Selection only a third of the way through the course – what chance did I really have of passing if I tried again?
My family said that maybe it wasn’t meant to be, and that I had gained an invaluable experience from it. This just made me feel worse.
Yet through it all, a little part of me, deep down, believed that I could do this – that I was capable of passing. It wasn’t a big part of me, but it was an ember.
Sometimes an ember is all we need.
