When we were all loaded and ready to go we looked like a troop of two-legged tortoises.
‘Just a couple of miles,’ Mister Nasty said as we followed him up the road.
We had heard the rumours that the course was too fat for this stage of selection. The word was they wanted to cull twenty more. That’s why Mister Nasty was here.
It was not long before the straps began to cut into our shoulders. If you twisted your ankle with this load you might break it, and if your knees had not fully recovered from previous hard yomps you were in trouble – this was sure to take them to their limit.
We shuffled up the steep road like mules. It was pointless and unrealistic to expect the truck to be where Mister Nasty had said it would be.
Two miles up the road Mister Nasty stopped to check his map.
‘Seems I’ve made a mistake,’ he said. ‘The truck must be a little further on. But don’t worry. I know a shortcut.’
We bet he did.
‘Come on, then. Don’t dawdle.’
We followed him through a farmer’s gate and into the wide open countryside leaving the solid road behind. We crossed ploughed fields, pushed through thick undergrowth and along narrow, treacherous sheep tracks that were rutted and uneven. Stiles and barbed-wire fences were the most difficult, but you could also ease the pain for a moment while waiting your turn by leaning forward and supporting your hands on your knees, or even better by leaning back on the fence and letting it take the weight for those precious few moments. This had its drawbacks, though. One of the men leant back on a rock wall while he waited for the rest of us to cross a stile and the wall gave way and he fell back through it. We all had to rebuild the wall without removing our packs.
If someone stumbled and fell en route those close by had to stop and lift him back on to his feet – he could not do it alone. Those who did not complete this yomp were off the course and so teamwork was, as in everything else we did, essential. Teamwork also meant sticking together to encourage each other and give moral support.
The load cut deeper into my shoulders with every mile. The vertebrae in my neck were stinging and felt like they were separating and the muscle around them tearing. The skin at the base of my back was slowly being worn through by the pack. To counter the weight you walked leaning well forward. I spent most of the time staring at the ground or watching my feet or the heels of the person in front. Every so often I shifted the load a little to the left or right to relieve sore spots. After several hours I stopped the shifting. It was painful everywhere. The callouses on my feet, which I had developed since CTC, had softened the last few days after being wet the whole time. They rubbed off in solid chunks in the early miles to expose the tender pink tissue beneath. I could feel when they began to bleed. When the pain signals started coming in from all those parts of the body at once it was time to switch off and become an automaton.
‘You can’t crack me, I’m a rubber duck,’ was a saying the course had adopted. I heard someone chanting it softly to himself, and to encourage the others.
After ten miles, Mister Nasty led us on to another narrow country road and stopped while everyone caught up. He had lied about the truck being here too.
‘It’s another five miles,’ he said coldly. ‘Get going.’
We trudged on past him as he eyed us, one by one, looking for cracks.
The road was harder on the knees but there was less chance of tripping. More importantly you could slip into a hypnotic rhythm more easily by staring down at the uninterrupted tarmac. I tried to shut out the pain and occupy my mind with something else but it was difficult to lock on to any subject for long. I had not tied my canoe as well as I should have and it was starting to slip back a little. I was having to compensate for it by leaning forward even more. My head was getting lower to the ground. I did not want to stop and adjust it, but if it slipped down any further I would have to drop my pack and rebuild it quickly. To get it up on to my back and rejoin the group meant someone would have to stay and help me. I thought about sherpas who carried as much weight up the sides of mountains. They supported the weight by passing a line under the bottom of the load and up over their foreheads which took the weight off the shoulders and placed it on the stronger neck muscles. We could not do that because of the tactical disadvantage – we would not be able to turn our heads and look from side to side. Not that any of us cared what was going on around us at that time. This was deliberate mental destruction and not a tactical march. Dave saw I was having a problem with my slipping load and moved alongside to study my pack.
‘How’s it look?’ I asked.
‘Not good.’
He took a line that was dangling from the back of my load, a canoe bow-line, and tossed it over the top so that it dangled in front of my face.
‘Try pulling on that,’ he said.
With a bit of a shuffle while I yanked down on the line the load came up a little. I could walk more upright now, although it meant I had to apply constant tension to the rope. But overall it was easier and as long as it stayed that way I did not need to stop. I wrapped it around my hand, held it tightly to my chest and got back into rhythm.
After five more miles, Mister Nasty stopped again and waited for those in the rear to catch up. No one had wrapped yet. That did not please him. There was no truck. Anyone with any sense knew what was coming next. I kept stone-faced even after he said it.
‘Did I say five miles five miles ago? I must have meant ten.’
Some expressions turned to pain and teeth were gritted in anger. I knew what some were thinking. Comments had already been muttered on the last leg.
‘This is sadism.’
‘Are they allowed to torture us like this?’
I wondered if any recruits had died on previous courses. Perhaps the SBS had a death allowance for the selection process.
Mister Nasty ordered us to get going. A few members seemed to hesitate, but when the first few got going the others trudged on behind.
All comments of encouragement tossed between individuals earlier had by now ceased. The yomp was everyone’s personal ordeal now. We plodded on in our own worlds. Some were starting to lag further behind, but as long as they kept on going they were part of the course. The DS were looking for tenacity and willpower, not fitness. Jakers noticed some stragglers had lagged too far behind and whispered for those of us in front to slow down. The concept of team unity and looking after one’s buddy is paramount within the Royal Marines and therefore the SBS, unlike in the SAS. To leave a man behind is out of the question in the SBS. Over the many years I worked with ‘the regiment’ I grew to feel many SAS troopers experienced a cold aloofness when insinuating their calm acceptance of a fellow trooper ‘written off’ as a cost of a mission. Some talked about their oppos lost in battle in the same way macho men discuss their scars.
It was getting dark.
I was beginning to think the plan was to walk us until we literally dropped. There were some who looked close to falling apart. All they had to do was stop. That’s what was unique about this slavery and abuse. It was voluntary. We were not being ordered to do anything. All the pain and injuries were self-inflicted. No one shouted at you and told you to get going. There was no encouragement. Quite the reverse was true. The DS were always inviting individuals to wrap. And if a person quit, no one would tell him off. There would be no punishment. The reason was simple. In special forces you had to be self-motivated to the point of self-destruction, but not quite kamikaze either – the training was focused on getting operatives out after a job as much as it was getting them in to do it.
You could tell when a man was losing control of his pain. There are signs. Shortened breath and darting eyes, or eyes that blink quickly as if trying to focus. Or no reaction to anything, even when asked a question, or looking as if he would walk off a cliff if one appeared in front of him. Another was to move out of character, to suddenly become talkative but in a hyperactive way, asking how far you thought it was and how much longer it could last. An indication that the end is close is a sudden spurt of effort that cannot possibly last. The worst scene is once a man has severely cracked and wrapped, when he curls up and sobs uncontrollably, out of either guilt or self-pity, because his limit has been exposed, not only to others but to himself. Most men give in before those stages are reached. I had seen it all since I arrived in Deal, and I found it curious. Watching someone you know crack up is like watching a deformed person walking towards you. It’s uncomfortable and impolite to stare.
It was completely dark an hour later and we were heading up a steep, painful incline when the beast-master paused once again. We leant heavily on to our knees, watching him through our eyebrows, waiting while the stragglers caught up. I had stopped sweating a long time back and was thirsty. I had a water-bottle and had drunk most of its contents, but I was saving the last few mouthfuls. You always did that. If you emptied your last drops when you did not know when your next resup would be it was the beginning of the end in a way – a mental gauge to yourself. Mister Nasty shone a torch in each of our faces, searching for those signs he also knew so well.
‘There is no truck,’ he said and let the words sink in.
‘Ten miles further on is a pub. If you get there before last orders you can have a pint. If you’re not there by closing time you’re off the course.’
I was trying to calculate my time and distance. We had about three hours. Four miles an hour was normal walking pace. I could do it, in theory, if I was completely fresh. But in my present condition and with this ridiculous weight hanging off my arse I would have to say no way.
‘Those who don’t want to go on can wait here and transport will come and pick you up in the morning. You can get into your sleeping bags and keep warm. Make yourself a nice cup of tea and get your heads down.’
He made it sound like a great idea.
‘Otherwise, get going.’
I stayed bent forward for a moment, taking a few seconds more of a breather before gathering myself to push on. As I pushed my hands off my knees and pulled down on my rope to move on there was a thud behind me. Someone had let his load fall off his shoulders.
‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers,’ the Marine said as he plonked down to sit tiredly on his pack.
When someone quits, it often has a ripple effect, especially if others are close to cracking. All it needs is someone to set it off. It happened just like that. Several other packs hit the road.
‘I don’t need this crap,’ another said.
Mister Nasty had a glint in his eye and looked at the rest of us, inviting more to quit. His appetite was just getting whetted.
Another pack went down. It looked like Mister Nasty might hit the jackpot.
I think Jakers was the first to move off. The rest of us shuffled off too as another pack dropped behind me. We left six men behind with their packs at their heels, watching us walk away.
I would do the next ten fucking miles if that was what they wanted. We looked like a chain-gang the way we dragged our feet in jagged file up the road and around a steep bend. Earlier on the course during a beasting session in a muddy estuary we had passed a group of civvy hikers who stopped in horror to watch us. They were so disgusted they telephoned the camp and insisted on speaking to the commanding officer. They got the adjutant, who listened while they gave their eye-witness account, exposing how we were treated like Roman galley slaves. The adjutant assured them something would be done about it. When he hung up the phone the complaint was promptly filed in the dead registry – the wastepaper bin.
As we turned the bend in the road a hundred yards from the last stop, to our surprise there was the truck. Old Noah the driver climbed out to greet us with a flask of coffee. Noah was the oldest Marine in the corps, never interested in promotion, who had been everywhere the Marines had in the last twenty years. He had been a driver for the SBS the past few years, a job he wanted to keep till his time ran out. He always felt sorry for those on selection, as if we were prisoners and had no choice. Although it was strictly prohibited, he operated like a resistance worker against the evil DS and sneaked us a sip of hot tea and a sliver of useful information whenever he could.
‘This is it, lads,’ Noah said. ‘You’ve cracked it. I’m here to take you ’ome.’
The pub and the next ten miles was a last-minute bluff. Even Mister Nasty had his limitations. I’ll never forget the relief when I let my pack drop from my shoulders. I thought I was going to float up like a helium balloon.
‘How far did we walk, Noah?’ someone asked.
‘They were going to pick you up after fifteen, but no one had wrapped, so they kept you going. This is twenty-one miles.’
In the back of the truck, on the journey home, we all had our boots off and were tending to our feet. You did that every opportunity, cleaning and sterilising them, then applying plasters for protection and powder against foot-rot. If your feet fell apart then so did you. The DS knew our feet would be in a bad way and so they would give us a couple of days’ light PT before the pressure went back on. The men who had quit sat stone-faced in a group at the back of the truck. There was an invisible wall between us now. They never bothered with their feet. It did not matter any more. They would have all the time in the world to recover. The relief of dropping their packs minutes before the rest of us had cost them their dreams of a future in the SBS. Quitting is a hard thing to live with and a hard thing to admit to afterwards. I knew something of how they felt that moment seconds before they quit. About six weeks into the course I almost quit myself.
I don’t know what had got into me that day. I was not tired, mentally or physically. We had just got out of bed after a full night’s sleep and the course was mustering outside for the usual early-morning workout. It was icy cold and, as per normal, we were not allowed to wear any more than shorts and short-sleeved T-shirts. We were going for a run which would include frequent stops for sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups and throw-ups, and end with a swim across a frozen-over quarry lake a quarter of a mile from the camp. The ice covered its sixty yards’ width as it had every day that week. On reaching the other side it was a stiff run the last leg back to the grots past main-gate sentries who either thought we were mad or toyed with the idea of having a go themselves one day. I had done it a dozen times already. We had done far worse. Perhaps I was low on energy or had been bitten by the quitting bug that flew thick that morning. Eight had voluntarily withdrawn (VWed) that morning and had gone back to their cosy beds. The ripple effect had been at work. There were no second chances once you quit. If you were not on the road doing PT you were off the course and on your way to a commando unit soon after. I sat on a toilet listening to a couple of quitters outside justifying in soft voices why they had done so. I checked my watch. There was barely a minute to go before the others would set off on the run. If I was not with them I was with the quitters. I examined my thoughts. When I thought I was a coward I tried to solve it; in the orphanage, wondering why I felt alone in the world, I came up with a helpful philosophy; when I ran away from home at sixteen intending to board a merchant ship because I hated my home life I talked myself into staying and finishing my education. But the difference was those times I had been looking for a way to get through, to succeed. This time I was sitting there looking for a reason to fail. The seconds were ticking away. I sat stubbornly, staring at nothing. Time seemed to have been suspended.