21/23 sas
- Thread starter jloveday
- Start date
All wrong.
My mate Billy drinks in a pub near Hereford and he knows a bloke that's a cousin of the Landlord. Anyway, the Landlord is a quiet chap and doesn't speak a lot but one day he had a few beers and told his cousin, (Billys mate) that he went out with a girl a few years ago who's next door neighbour bought a dog from a bloke in a pub and he was ex 21, 23 AND 22. Think his name was Nigel.
Started as a painter and decorater at 21 HQ and got on quite well with the CO after he'd helped him choose a colour scheme for the Sergeants Mess. I think they finally decided on Eggshell white or something like that.
So, the CO thinks he's a wonderfull chap and asks him would he be interested in joining. Nigel says he would but wouldn't he need some mil exp first?
"Nonsense" replies the CO, "I'm the gaffer round here and I decide who gets in and I'll decide what quals are required on an idividual basis"
Nigel, quite pleased at this says "Feck it, sign me up" so Nigel joins up and goes on to have a stellar carreer with UKSF.
Gospel truth, I swear, my mate Billy wouldn't lie about something like that.
Heno
My mate Billy drinks in a pub near Hereford and he knows a bloke that's a cousin of the Landlord. Anyway, the Landlord is a quiet chap and doesn't speak a lot but one day he had a few beers and told his cousin, (Billys mate) that he went out with a girl a few years ago who's next door neighbour bought a dog from a bloke in a pub and he was ex 21, 23 AND 22. Think his name was Nigel.
Started as a painter and decorater at 21 HQ and got on quite well with the CO after he'd helped him choose a colour scheme for the Sergeants Mess. I think they finally decided on Eggshell white or something like that.
So, the CO thinks he's a wonderfull chap and asks him would he be interested in joining. Nigel says he would but wouldn't he need some mil exp first?
"Nonsense" replies the CO, "I'm the gaffer round here and I decide who gets in and I'll decide what quals are required on an idividual basis"
Nigel, quite pleased at this says "Feck it, sign me up" so Nigel joins up and goes on to have a stellar carreer with UKSF.
Gospel truth, I swear, my mate Billy wouldn't lie about something like that.
Heno
D
Deleted member 33
Guest
Well, tell Billy he is a lying duck and lamp him one for being a prize Dick.
(wasn't an Irish joke was it)
Rich H
(wasn't an Irish joke was it)
Rich H
D
Deleted member 33
Guest
No mate, Billy's English and in the RMP
Heno
No! I meant you saying the Irish joke.
Rich H
D
Deleted member 33
Guest
No surprises there then! You've got an Irish flag mate so add 2 + 2
Rich H
Rich H
D
Deleted member 33
Guest
The thing is - you're off to bad start straight away being Irish.
The jokes on you Frank.
Rich H
The jokes on you Frank.
Rich H
upsidedownhead
Longterm Registered User
Zinc oxide is awesome. After my 30 miler I still had it on my feet 4 weeks later-couldnt get it off.
Vaseline is good for the Endurance course on the inner thighs and a few other places ;-) oi oi
Thought you may like a read of this to pass the time. Its not me honest! and it's a bit dated...
"I had friends who had passed the TA course so I tried it. I got as fit as I had ever been, 5% bodyfat, ripped, 10 miles in well under an hour. Before they even issued us with kit or did a medical we did an eight miler around the park, Bye bye quite a few.
The first weekend was a bimble until Sunday morning. Then, 35lbs, boots, the ex 9 squadron staff set the pace for a battle march which I later worked out as being almost exactly seven miles. We plunged down a hill to a reservoir (North Yorkshire, I'll leave it at that in case they still use it), speedmarched up the other side, and then ran the rest. I have never been so desperate in my whole life. Basically (given the slower start) it was 7mph for 53 mins with an old GS bergan nipping the fat above your kidneys between the frame and the belt. It was all I could do to keep my hands off the bergan of the bloke in front, who was a fell runner (10 miles in 50 minutes on the road). I was utterly and completely gibbering the whole way, but me and two others held on. That weekend was without doubt by far and away the easiest of them all.
Weekend two was a version of the fan dance, 21k with the loony 9 squadron git settting the pace, but this time with well over 50lb (they jumped on the scales - we later found out that 39lbs on our scales was 54 on the centralised scales, so we were probably carrrying nearly sixty. I was a hillwalker and I knew it was about 60). It was a pretty warm morning, the pace was screamingly fast speedmarching with tabs thrown in, we went up the hill, ran down the other side, turned around and went back up it and then back to the start. I was the only person to hold on to the top on the way out and I just held on back up the hill before it all went pear shaped. One minute I was on the top of the hill, the next the horizon went sideways and I was on the deck with ripped lightweights and cut knees and hands, swearing. 9 squad smiled. He tabbed off and I struggled behind. Got back to the village having done 21k and 900m of ascent and descent in the heat with 60lb and one bottle of water in about 3 and a half hours. They then sent me up another hill. As I staggered up the hill in amongst the tourists I remember thinking, "I will not jack, but I now know why people do". At the end of this I had a massive blister on the sole of my foot at the heel, down to the full thickness of the pad. It had ripped across the front and peeled back, leaving a red meaty bit. Even the staff were impressed!. They were going to let me off the Sunday short tab (again over the 450m hill) but I instinctively knew there were brownie points for hacking it. Downhill at pace with a heel like that stung a bit. I had to go to hospital and get a plastic granular burns dressing on my foot and for months the sole was just a weird smooth shiny thing.
At the end of that weekend we went from a bit over twenty to 6. The next weekends were long marches in pairs or small groups, always up and down hills with no chance to make decent time. 3kph was a myth. Sometimes the walks would go on for 16 hours or more, which in summer in the Dales is dehydration city. Typically you would be totally knackered after 4-5 hours, no matter how fit you were, and you would then spend 10 hours plunging through layers of hell. No matter how bad you felt, it was always possible to feel much worse. Getting up hills after 14 hours involves counting steps - "if I can do five steps, I can do 10. That's ten, I can do another ten....."
Unf*****g believable. I would never have believed that it was possible to suffer like that. Certainly at the start of the course it could take 10-11 days before my legs felt reasonably ok - real trouble coming down stairs for a week.
I finished a summer walk so badly dehydrated (having staggered around for twenty hours, with a lot of it on exposed peat hags on the moors) I could see that the staff were genuinely concerned.
On one epic weekend we started on our own at 11 o'clock on the Friday. One of the blokes (good guy, ex TA para, passed) had started work in his warehouse at 7 am, started the walk at 11pm, in January with snow, wind, rain. Walk ten yards off the road in the dark and go straight into a bog. Charge about the frozen hills on your own in the dark, falling over and climbing dry stone walls, it gets light at 8, by which time you are f****d and well down on time. Tab all day in the freezing rain. They allowed us a few hours rest at 7-8pm, but the TA para said that if he lay down he would never get up, so he did the Sunday walk overnight and finished the weekend at 7 am on the Sunday morning. He said that he couldn't stop crying he was so tired. That same weekend has left me with a slightly numb ring finger on my left hand, where I was holding the compass. One little bloke arrived at the last Saturday RV and literally couldn't speak. This was weekend five.
Both the courses I did it was only me and one other that completed endurance (and I got binned on the infanrty course for "thinking this is a democracy"!)
The centralised walks were much easier than the squadron stuff. To be honest the staff in the squadron seem to think that imposing incredibly high standards on the recruits somehow excuses the fact that a lot of them have let their fitness (to put it mildly) to slide.
Things have probably changed quite a lot. They are desperate to get people through. When I did Long Drag the first time it was nearly all hills, first home did it in 13 hours, I kept up with him for 30k, blew up, and finsihed in 14:30 (second). There were people being allowed to pass in well over 20 hours - it would be wrong to identify who they were, but some of them looked "Artistic". It was an open secret that some staff were determined that their squadrons were not going to be amalgamated, and that meant that people were going to pass. Leeds, Newcastle and Port Glagow/Hamilton didn't give a s*** about that, and at the time were prepared to fail everybody, although I bet they've stopped that now. They just couldn't keep doing that.
My feeling was that a lot of the staff hadn't thought very carefully about what they were trying to achieve, but it was a long time ago, so I'm over it.
I would say you need mega endurance in your legs. Your legs can take ten times what you think they can, but you have to learn to accept the pain. You also have to have decent navigation. Most importantly, you need to accept that no matter how fit you are you are probably going to be in bits most of the time."
Good luck mate
Selous
"I had friends who had passed the TA course so I tried it. I got as fit as I had ever been, 5% bodyfat, ripped, 10 miles in well under an hour. Before they even issued us with kit or did a medical we did an eight miler around the park, Bye bye quite a few.
The first weekend was a bimble until Sunday morning. Then, 35lbs, boots, the ex 9 squadron staff set the pace for a battle march which I later worked out as being almost exactly seven miles. We plunged down a hill to a reservoir (North Yorkshire, I'll leave it at that in case they still use it), speedmarched up the other side, and then ran the rest. I have never been so desperate in my whole life. Basically (given the slower start) it was 7mph for 53 mins with an old GS bergan nipping the fat above your kidneys between the frame and the belt. It was all I could do to keep my hands off the bergan of the bloke in front, who was a fell runner (10 miles in 50 minutes on the road). I was utterly and completely gibbering the whole way, but me and two others held on. That weekend was without doubt by far and away the easiest of them all.
Weekend two was a version of the fan dance, 21k with the loony 9 squadron git settting the pace, but this time with well over 50lb (they jumped on the scales - we later found out that 39lbs on our scales was 54 on the centralised scales, so we were probably carrrying nearly sixty. I was a hillwalker and I knew it was about 60). It was a pretty warm morning, the pace was screamingly fast speedmarching with tabs thrown in, we went up the hill, ran down the other side, turned around and went back up it and then back to the start. I was the only person to hold on to the top on the way out and I just held on back up the hill before it all went pear shaped. One minute I was on the top of the hill, the next the horizon went sideways and I was on the deck with ripped lightweights and cut knees and hands, swearing. 9 squad smiled. He tabbed off and I struggled behind. Got back to the village having done 21k and 900m of ascent and descent in the heat with 60lb and one bottle of water in about 3 and a half hours. They then sent me up another hill. As I staggered up the hill in amongst the tourists I remember thinking, "I will not jack, but I now know why people do". At the end of this I had a massive blister on the sole of my foot at the heel, down to the full thickness of the pad. It had ripped across the front and peeled back, leaving a red meaty bit. Even the staff were impressed!. They were going to let me off the Sunday short tab (again over the 450m hill) but I instinctively knew there were brownie points for hacking it. Downhill at pace with a heel like that stung a bit. I had to go to hospital and get a plastic granular burns dressing on my foot and for months the sole was just a weird smooth shiny thing.
At the end of that weekend we went from a bit over twenty to 6. The next weekends were long marches in pairs or small groups, always up and down hills with no chance to make decent time. 3kph was a myth. Sometimes the walks would go on for 16 hours or more, which in summer in the Dales is dehydration city. Typically you would be totally knackered after 4-5 hours, no matter how fit you were, and you would then spend 10 hours plunging through layers of hell. No matter how bad you felt, it was always possible to feel much worse. Getting up hills after 14 hours involves counting steps - "if I can do five steps, I can do 10. That's ten, I can do another ten....."
Unf*****g believable. I would never have believed that it was possible to suffer like that. Certainly at the start of the course it could take 10-11 days before my legs felt reasonably ok - real trouble coming down stairs for a week.
I finished a summer walk so badly dehydrated (having staggered around for twenty hours, with a lot of it on exposed peat hags on the moors) I could see that the staff were genuinely concerned.
On one epic weekend we started on our own at 11 o'clock on the Friday. One of the blokes (good guy, ex TA para, passed) had started work in his warehouse at 7 am, started the walk at 11pm, in January with snow, wind, rain. Walk ten yards off the road in the dark and go straight into a bog. Charge about the frozen hills on your own in the dark, falling over and climbing dry stone walls, it gets light at 8, by which time you are f****d and well down on time. Tab all day in the freezing rain. They allowed us a few hours rest at 7-8pm, but the TA para said that if he lay down he would never get up, so he did the Sunday walk overnight and finished the weekend at 7 am on the Sunday morning. He said that he couldn't stop crying he was so tired. That same weekend has left me with a slightly numb ring finger on my left hand, where I was holding the compass. One little bloke arrived at the last Saturday RV and literally couldn't speak. This was weekend five.
Both the courses I did it was only me and one other that completed endurance (and I got binned on the infanrty course for "thinking this is a democracy"!)
The centralised walks were much easier than the squadron stuff. To be honest the staff in the squadron seem to think that imposing incredibly high standards on the recruits somehow excuses the fact that a lot of them have let their fitness (to put it mildly) to slide.
Things have probably changed quite a lot. They are desperate to get people through. When I did Long Drag the first time it was nearly all hills, first home did it in 13 hours, I kept up with him for 30k, blew up, and finsihed in 14:30 (second). There were people being allowed to pass in well over 20 hours - it would be wrong to identify who they were, but some of them looked "Artistic". It was an open secret that some staff were determined that their squadrons were not going to be amalgamated, and that meant that people were going to pass. Leeds, Newcastle and Port Glagow/Hamilton didn't give a s*** about that, and at the time were prepared to fail everybody, although I bet they've stopped that now. They just couldn't keep doing that.
My feeling was that a lot of the staff hadn't thought very carefully about what they were trying to achieve, but it was a long time ago, so I'm over it.
I would say you need mega endurance in your legs. Your legs can take ten times what you think they can, but you have to learn to accept the pain. You also have to have decent navigation. Most importantly, you need to accept that no matter how fit you are you are probably going to be in bits most of the time."
Good luck mate
Selous
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Ah the old have a dig at being Irish. You comic genius you. Been reading Bernard Mannings "Diplomacy in the modern age" have we?
Bad drills having to resort to comments based on nationality there Rich, bad drills indeed.
Heno
D
Deleted member 33
Guest
Selous, an excellent read. You didn't write 'The Quiet Soldier' did you?!
Cheers,
Rich H
Cheers,
Rich H
Carl Dowd
Longterm Registered User
Sorry guys just waiting for Top Gear to start so trawling... and your mate Loveday... how did he get on..? CD