“59. Creature Comforts Are Only Temporary

It was one of the most painful lessons of my life.

It was during the first time I attempted SAS selection. I was totally lost in a vast boggy wetland, torrential rain was driving down, and I was utterly spent.

I was also way behind time, and I knew it.

When I finally made it to the penultimate checkpoint, the corporals kept me there doing endless press-ups in the wet marsh with my heavy pack still on my back. I knew this was costing me even more valuable time and energy.

I was feeling fainter and fainter; I knew things were bad.

I was soon off again, wading across a fast-flowing, waist-deep stream, before climbing up through knee-deep mud towards the next 2,000-foot (600-metre) mountain ridge-line. I just had to keep going. Ten miles. Twenty miles. ‘Nothing good comes from quitting,’ I told myself, over and over again. ‘If I keep going, I will pass.’

But I was getting more and more delirious with fatigue. I didn’t know why this was happening, and I couldn’t control it. Maybe I hadn’t eaten or drunk enough, or perhaps it was just that the months of this relentless pace were finally taking their toll and I was at my limit.

Every couple of paces, my knees would buckle. If I stumbled, I couldn’t stop myself from falling.

Eventually I saw the trucks in the distance below me, symbolizing the end point. Wisps of smoke from army Hexi stoves curled upwards from the woods. Soon I would be warm, soon I would have a cup of hot tea. It was all I wanted.

But when I reached the end checkpoint I was told I had been failed - I had been too slow. My world fell inwards. I was sent off to make camp in the woods and rest for the night. The remaining recruits would be heading out for the night march in a few hours.

The next morning I would be returned to camp with the others who hadn’t made the grade. I was totally dejected.

That night in those woods, warm and dry under my shelter, blisters attended to, dry socks on, and out of the wind and rain, I learnt an enduring lesson: warm and dry doesn’t mean fulfilled and happy.”