The Easy Day Was Yesterday (12 page)

The CO left and we began navigation theory lessons. The DS started from lesson one and went through every navigation lesson. Morning tea was served and again the amount and quality of the food was unbelievable. At this time people were starting to get sore from the PT that morning. I found this amazing; it was only the first session and we had another one planned for the afternoon. These blokes had sore muscles and couldn’t lift their arms above their shoulders. Obviously they had not put in the hours of training. One poor prick was given 50 push-ups, but he couldn’t swing his arms when marching so the 50 push-ups promised some entertainment.

Week one went by with PT twice a day. The only day we didn’t do PT again in the afternoon was the day we did the 20 kilometre forced march. This entailed carrying a pack weighing 20 kilograms, our webbing weighing 10 kilograms and our weapons, and we had three hours and 15 minutes to complete the distance. We were despatched by patrols at five-minute intervals; my patrol was the fourth patrol to leave. It was still dark when we left and we were told that water would be positioned every five kilometres. I calculated that, if I could complete each five-kilometre distance in less than 45 minutes, I’d be on target with time to spare. Initially, most of the blokes decided to make up the weight of their packs with water and then drink it on the way, which would lighten the load. But this idea was quickly squashed. The DS said that our pack had to weigh 20 kilograms when we started and when we finished. So, in went the sandbag of dirt to make up the shortfall. We also carried a 77 set radio with us at all times, so with that and the water, I didn’t have to add a great deal of dirt.

Off I went, and was feeling pretty good. I quickly got into a run-walk cycle and reached my first five kilometre mark in 40 minutes. I didn’t stop for water, but continued on. I had six water bottles on me and drank every time I walked, whether I was thirsty or not. A few kilometres later, the sun came up and it started to get hot. My back started to ache in the lumbar region and on my shoulders as the pack bounced up and down, so I had to hoist the pack off my shoulders, bend over as much as I could, and continue running. Some blokes passed me, but generally I passed more. At the 15 kilometre mark I was 15 minutes up, so decided to have a quick water break and fill my bottles to ensure I had the right weight at the finish. I had no idea what was going to happen after this was over, so I thought it was good to be ready. I set off from the 15 kilometre mark with one hour and 15 minutes to complete the last five kilometres. My pace didn’t slow and I ran-walked the remaining distance. However, 45 minutes later, I was still running and could not see the finish line. One hour after making the water break I was still running and still couldn’t see the finish. By now I was starting to panic. I hadn’t walked for the last 25 minutes and certainly wasn’t about to walk now. As I rounded a sweeping corner a DS appeared and yelled, ‘What group are you with?’ ‘The fourth,’ I managed to force back.

‘Well, you’d better pull your fucking finger out then, hadn’t you?’

Then I saw the finish line and, as I passed, the time-keeper yelled ‘three hours and 25 minutes’. Fuck it, I was gutted. I’d failed. How could this be?

‘No,’ I said, ‘that can’t be right.’ I couldn’t believe that I was talking to the DS like that, but I was sure I’d passed. The DS looked at me with a bored face and replied tiredly, ‘What group are you with, Ranger?’

‘The fourth group.’

‘Well then, stupid, you have to take 20 minutes off that time, don’t you?’ Oh yeah, that’s right. I walked off and gave my time to the timekeeper while bracing myself to get my arse handed to me for talking to a DS in such a way. But nothing happened and, after a few minutes, I was happy to lift my head again and stand up straight.

Once again the cooks had outdone themselves. There was a buffet of cakes and snack foods that we were encouraged to eat. So I dumped my pack and webbing and, with my rifle in hand, I pigged out. John and Col had beaten me over the line and were already hooking into the food. John had some cramps in his back so the dopey medic told John to take off his shirt and he began to rub in the Deep Heat. As soon as the Deep Heat hit his back, John started to swear and curse, because the pores of his skin were open and the Deep Heat got right into his skin and began to burn his back. The medic ran water over his back and we used his shirt to wipe the Deep Heat off. John was still in some pain, but it wasn’t as bad, so Col and I hung some shit on him for good measure, just for being a sook.

At the four-hour mark, blokes were still coming over the line. This was unbelievable. Sure it was hard, damn hard, but certainly attainable with the training hours put in. The DS were disgusted with the general performance and told us that this time, as a group, we were going to do it again, and do it right. So, with packs and webbing back on, we formed up on the road. John put his shirt on (the shirt that I’d used to rub off the Deep Heat) and again got burnt, but he didn’t want to complain at this stage. The DS set a blistering pace and I had to run to keep up. I couldn’t believe that we were going back. I looked around and everyone looked as depressed as I did. But I just thought, bugger it, I might as well just suffer through it. We had done about five kilometres when we rounded a corner and saw the trucks. You beauty, I thought, as did everyone else, and the pace picked up marginally. But we got to the trucks and kept going past them and the pace backed off again. A couple of hundred metres later, we stopped and the DS told us to get on the trucks.

The 20 kilometre march was just one of the tests we had to pass during the first week. We also had to do the 3.2 kilometre run. Now the difference between the one we had to do on the selection course and the pre-selection run was that, on the selection course, we did the run on day four and were pretty run down by then. We were suffering from lack of sleep and the effects of doing two gut-wrenching PT sessions every day. To make matters worse, the first 200 metres of the run was uphill, so it was bloody hard to pass. I made it by 15 seconds and I was well and truly shattered when I had finished. That run is the hardest of all runs in the army.

Another run we did was known as the airfield run. In patrols, we marched up to the airfield dressed in PT gear (shorts, T-shirt and runners). As patrols, and in single file, we approached the airfield and, to my alarm, I noticed that there were tents set up on the side of the airstrip. In those tents the medics had set up intravenous drips on stands next to a stretcher — there were five of these set up. This is going to hurt, I thought. The patrol of 10 started to run around the airstrip with the last man continually sprinting to the front. We just kept going and going, and it was bloody hot. After about half an hour of this, the stretchers were full and some blokes were on the ground getting filled up. My patrol started to get smaller and smaller until there was only Col, John, one other and me. Then a DS decided to join us and we picked up the pace. Another two laps later and, having run for an hour, we stopped. Thank Christ, I thought, I didn’t have much left in me. Again, I was well and truly rooted.

Day five of the course presented an unbelievable sight. I hadn’t given any thought to pulling the pin and I assumed everyone else was the same; but on day five there was a mass exodus — half the course withdrew. Call me selfish or whatever you like, but I drew an enormous amount of strength from their failures. One of the original blokes from 4 Platoon also withdrew on that day. From this day, we were continually asked, ‘Who wants to pull the pin? Pull the pin now, and tonight you’ll be having a few beers down in Fremantle.’ Sounded nice, but no way. I’d come to realise the SAS was indeed special. You couldn’t get into the SAS because you were rich and could buy your way in. You couldn’t get into the SAS because you came from a privileged family and went to the right schools. The SAS was available to anyone in the Defence Force and the selection course treated everyone as equals. If you wanted it badly enough and were willing to go beyond anywhere you’d been previously, then maybe you’d get through. But pulling the pin wasn’t happening.

Most nights we were finished by about 10.00 pm unless we were in the field. But, instead of getting a good night’s sleep, a DS would calmly enter the hut at around midnight, turn on the lights, and tell us to be standing outside the classroom in 10 minutes dressed in greens and runners with a notebook and pen. Then we’d be given a maths exam, or English exam, or we’d watch a video and have to answer questions like what was the written on the number plate of the jeep in the first scene, or what rank was the officer giving the brief? The movies usually went for about an hour; foolishly, some of the blokes would get some sleep then obviously fail the exam. Quite often a few of the students would arrive incorrectly attired. The DS would say, ‘There will be times when you have had little sleep, and you will be given a set of quick orders. You must listen to these orders and absorb everything that is said, because the orders will not be repeated. Perhaps we need to wake everyone up a little, so that they will hear what is being said in future.’ With that, we would set off on a five kilometre run at 1.00 in the morning. By the time we were back in our beds we were so pumped it was hard to get to sleep, and then we were up again at 5.00 am to the sound of gunshots for a gut-wrenching PT session.

Every day more and more people left the course and others were withdrawn for their own safety. We went out on several navigational exercises known as Pacer 1 and 2. These were only short in duration, but all built up to the Stirling Ranges week. We boarded a bus and drove south for eight hours which was a great opportunity to sleep. When we were about 50 kilometres from the Stirlings, I could see the peaks that I would have to scale over the coming week. The idea behind the Stirlings was for the students to complete a navigational exercise by themselves over a five-day period. The aim was to see which students could motivate themselves and complete the task. Some soldiers needed others to push them along, and the selection course was no exception; but, in the Stirlings, we were all on our own and had to complete the task under our own steam. I was relieved to finally get to the Stirlings. It was the first time I had been alone in 14 days; there’d be no DS abusing me and I would get to sleep through the night. The task was to navigate to five different peaks over the five days. The rules were simple: no walking on the roads or tracks unless walking up the side of the feature; no walking after dark when climbing a feature; and all walking to stop at 10.00 pm. Navigation was reasonably easy because, when I arrived at each peak, I was told my next peak and, most of the time, I could see it from where I was. My daily routine never really changed; I’d get up and get ready before first light; as soon as I could see where I was going, I’d start walking and eat on the move. About half an hour before last light I’d stop and eat a decent meal. The only down side to the Stirlings was that it’s a national park and therefore no fires were allowed, so a hot brew was out of the question.

When I completed my fifth peak, the DS told me to make my way back to the base camp. It took me about two hours to get back and I arrived at 9.00 am on the last morning. There was already a group of blokes there and others continued to pour in. It was then that I learnt that the other bloke from 4 Platoon had pulled the pin, as had plenty of others. Bloody hell, I then remembered that originally I’d only decided to come to the course because two blokes in the platoon wanted to do the course and were getting time off to train and that had sounded good to me. Now they were gone and I was still here. But my initial intentions had now changed. I still didn’t think the SAS would accept me, but I was determined to go back to the battalion having completed the course — I wasn’t going back a failure. However, the reality is that you either get in or you don’t and, if you don’t get something you’ve been fighting for, then you’ve failed. It’s no consolation to say, ‘well at least you finished, mate’, because you still end up at the same place as those who pulled the pin.

We ate some fresh food then boarded the bus for the trip back to Northam. The next phase was called the ‘low intensity’ phase. I liked the sound of that because, even though I got to sleep every night in the Stirlings, the hard walking during the day, and the preceding 14 days, were taking their toll on my body. I felt absolutely rooted; I was tired, my body ached from carrying my pack; my hands were scratched to the shithouse from fighting my way through the dense scrub in the Stirlings, but I was pleased that, at this point in time, I had passed everything.

The low intensity phase was a four-day period that included gaining a qualification in airborne rappelling. Now I must confess that I have a fear of heights and I was not looking forward to that activity. We boarded some trucks and went to some huge grain silos at a railway yard not far from Northam. I couldn’t believe the size of these things and wasn’t at all keen to jump off them. We were shown how to fit the harnesses and then we all lined up on the ladders ascending the bin. This part of the training had nothing to do with the airborne rappelling qualification; it was merely to see who had the balls to go over the edge head first. I certainly questioned the size of my balls and lined up last. Then it was my turn. I’d been listening intently to what the others had been told and had a fair idea of what the DS wanted to see. The DS handled the activity really well and talked me over without any dramas. In fact I even enjoyed myself once I was over edge. It gave me a lot of confidence for the next day when we were to jump from a Huey (Bell 212 helicopter). Again though, there were some blokes who said ‘fuck that’, and pins were popping all over the place.

Rappelling from the Huey was great, and I managed to get through the day reasonably unscathed. At lunchtime that day, a few blokes were talking and the subject of the parachute course came up. Yeah fuck that, I thought, but it didn’t bother me because I was only concerned with completing this course. I was having trouble understanding why this was called the low intensity phase, because that afternoon we did one of the hardest PT sessions of the course. As patrols, we wrapped our SLR slings around a giant log and raced each other up and down this damned hill. We ran down and back once and were all pretty rooted, but then we did it again. On the last day of the phase we went for a run in PT gear. We basically just followed the Senior Instructor (SI) of the course. Now, at the start of the course, I was always finishing with the top 40 or 50 blokes, but now there were only 40 or 50 blokes left and I was down the back dragging my sorry arse, and John wasn’t far away from me either. When we finished, the SI approached John and I and said, ‘Don’t worry, Rangers Ellery and Jordan, when we get you into the Regiment, we’ll have you running five kilometres in 18 minutes.’ Bloody hell, this was the first sign that I’d been given that I might actually pull this off. Immediately I started to feel pretty good about myself, but that was quickly squashed with Exercise Lucky Dip — the final phase.