Unlike the first two weeks, when we were part of a team, the third week – test week – we were strictly on our own. We were now being subjected to a finely tuned trial of motivation and navigation, and individual effort against the clock. Distances and bergen weights increased daily. To add to the pressure, we had to undergo deliberate disorientation techniques – last-minute changes of plans, sudden extra distances, later nights and earlier mornings than had been announced – all designed to break down our natural defences, to take us to the edge of exhaustion and rebellion, to the point where our true characters would come through. No acts of bravado, no fake façades could survive this scrutiny. Deep-lying personality flaws that would normally have taken years to reveal themselves stood out in stark relief. The instructors were like scientists employing accelerated-ageing techniques. All mental and physical stress fractures had to be identified and rejected before they grew large enough to cause a disaster.
Day Three of Week Three, and we were heading for the ordeal of point-to-point three times over the highest bukit in the Brecon Beacons. Compared to Pen-y-fan, the Skirrid looked like a pimple on a pig’s arse! The strain was now beginning to tell. Our numbers had already been depleted by well over half since Day One of Week One; the red felttipped pen had been really busy.
Platform 4 was getting busier by the day. There had been a steady stream of dejected egos heading for the station over the last two weeks. Selection had brought back down to earth those who had thought it would be easy, the jokers and shirkers who’d just fancied a few weeks away from the normal routine, a chance to impress their mates and girlfriends, and all but destroyed the self-esteem of the serious candidates. They were easy to spot. They sat on the ancient-looking ‘GWR’-inscribed wooden benches on Platform 4, hunched over, not saying a word, drawing deeply on their cigarettes, brooding on their failure. Excellent soldiers to a man – but not excellent enough. The train rattles in, the doors swing open, they step on board and they’ve already left Hereford, a town they’ll probably never see again. A few seconds later, the train pulls out – and the dream has ended.
The Bedfords coughed into life at 4.00am. I eased my shattered frame – blisters, bergen rash, aching muscles and all – into the most comfortable position I could find, and we rumbled out of the camp gates. As we picked up the A438 and passed the sign for RAF Credenhill on our right, I carefully surveyed my preparations. I checked that the strips of foam were still taped in place around the frame of my bergen. This padding gave some relief from the constant thudding and the sweat-induced friction rash that resulted. After starting the week at 35lb, today my bergen had tipped the scales at 40lb as it swung on the spring balance in the early-morning mist shrouding the camp. Even though I was a young and impressionable soldier, I knew there was no sense in having the weight made up to the required level by the addition of bricks, which was the usual practice. I would rather carry 40lb of Mars bars! I checked that my socks had been thoroughly soaked in oil. I’d heard from an old sweat that olive oil reduced the friction between skin and wool. Its efficiency would certainly be put to the test today.
As the Bedford laboured up the increasingly steep inclines, temporarily held up behind an even slower tractor pulling a rusty cylinder full of evil-smelling manure, we got our first view of the Black Mountains, rising just to the east of the Brecon Beacons, as we crossed the border into Wales. All I could see were slate-grey outlines of the ridges and peaks. They were too high for any detailed features to be discernible. A few miles further on, just after joining the A470, which winds its way southwards through the town of Brecon and on to Merthyr Tydfil, we got our first sight of Pen-y-fan – all 2,906 gruelling feet of it. ‘There she is, lads, there’s the monster,’ said Geordie cheerfully. ‘Pen-y-fan! Sounds like a cheap prize from a fairground stall, doesn’t it? Well, we’re certainly going on a merry-go-round, but we won’t be riding and it won’t be fuckin’ fun!’
We were passing signs to Brecon more frequently now: ten miles, eight miles, six, five, a countdown to torture. As the Welsh place-names became increasingly unpronounceable, the small towns we passed through became more and more dreary. Rows of terraced houses with stained pebbledash and faded paint stared coldly at us as we went by. We finally pulled up in a rough stone car park just beyond the Storey Arms, a small, white-walled building nestling close to a copse of newly planted conifers. In its time it had been a pub, then a café, and was now a YMCA hostel. It was 6.00am.
It was like a Le Mans start. Fifty bergens, having been weighed again to ensure no one had jettisoned any of the ballast, were lined up in a row across the road. We were assembled 100 yards back from the rucksacks and waved off by Dave, the SSM. When the arm came down, I sprinted to my bergen, hoisted it onto my back as quickly as the weight would allow, crossed the car park to a gap in the trees and pushed through the gate. I splashed through the stream that tumbled down from behind the saddle of Pen-y-fan and across the bottom of the path leading up to the summit. It was into this stream that the next two times around I would throw myself face down, seeking momentary relief in the cool water. Then it was up the pink-tinged sandstone path peppered with glistening sheep droppings that ribboned its way up to the top of Pen-y-fan. Once at the top, we had to drop down the other side beyond a long gentle ridge, sweep around the foot of the ridge, cross the plain, then continue over the road we’d travelled up, right around, behind and over the imposing peak which faced the Storey Arms, down the slope and back to the car park to begin all over again – and then again. I reckoned it would be not far short of thirty miles in all.
Many hours later, as I hovered briefly on the summit of Pen-y-fan for the last time, soaked in sweat and on the verge of exhaustion, bracing myself against the wind as it tugged furiously at my equipment and contoured the material of my boiler suit tightly around my limbs, an instructor materialized as if from nowhere and advanced on me menacingly. Then he hit me with the question, ‘What’s 240 multiplied by 250, divided by 12?’ Oh God, I couldn’t believe it, mental gymnastics in my state, when it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. I composed myself and worked through the question methodically, then put my brain into fast forward and gasped out an answer: ‘Five thousand.’ The instructor’s face was expressionless as he gave me a qualifying nod. Relief swept through me and I headed for the final descent. My pace quickened when I saw the three Bedfords parked on the road far below me in the distance, shimmering through the heat haze – the final RV. I went for it.
One more day to go, but the last day was the worst. Day Five, Week Three, the endurance march. Otherwise known as Sickener 2, this was the climax to initial selection, the ultimate challenge of strength, stamina, motivation and good old-fashioned guts. Forty-six miles crossgraining the Beacons, complete with rifle, four 1½-pint water bottles slung from my belt and a 55lb bergen crucifying my back, and twenty hours to do it all in. I’d worked it out: one Mars bar per bukit. I would need the two-dozen box. When I saddled up I could hardly move. The thirty-seven of us who were left set off at first light from the disused railway station at Talybont, which lay eight miles almost due east from the Storey Arms across the mass of Pen-y-fan and the surrounding hills. By the end of that long day it would need only one Bedford to cart the weary survivors back to camp, and even then there would be some empty places in the twenty-seater.
I pushed across jagged stones, squelched through peat bogs, crushed through lime-green beds of young fern shoots and picked my way across stagnant pools of water by jumping from one clump of reeds to another. The olive oil on my socks didn’t help this time; the friction in my boots felt like someone pushing a hot, razor-sharp file across the skin of my ankles. Backwards and forwards relentlessly with each step, sapping my willpower and determination, until it felt as if the file was sawing against raw bone. I kept repeating out loud over and over again as the sun rose higher and hotter, ‘I’ve got this far, I’m fucked if I’m going to jack now!’ I was overwhelmed by feelings of isolation and loneliness. I felt as though I was the only person for miles around. I must keep going. I must keep going. The sun was getting fiercely hot. It was one of those rare spring days that was a match for the best that summer could offer.