Immediate Action by Andy McNab Page B

what direction that is."
        Off I'd go.
        Sometimes I'd get to a checkpoint where they'd have a set of scales. For that day's marches, perhaps the bergen had to weigh forty pounds. They'd check the weight, and if a bloke was under, they'd put a big rock in his pack, sign it with a lumicolor, and radio on to the next couple of checkpoints that Blue 27 had a rock in his bergen because he was a snidey bastard. It meant that instead of carrying forty pounds, he would now be humping around with fifty-five pounds for the rest of the day. When measured in sweat and blisters, fifteen pounds is a lot of difference.
        The big mistake was to take forty pounds as the all-in start weight of the bergen, including the water. As soon as you'd drunk one pint, you'd be under;weight. When they said forty pounds, they meant forty pounds at the end of the day, not the beginning.
        When we came in off the hills, we'd be sorting ourselves out. The training team would come around, calling out names. These, we soon learned, were the people who were getting binned.
        If we'd had a bad day, we'd get a "gypsy's warning."
        The sergeant major would say, "The following people, come and see me."
        Those people would gather around him. He'd say, "You didn't do very well yesterday. This is a gypsy's; you'd better sort your shit out because next time you'll be gone."
        If anybody had already had a gypsy's and his name was called, he could assume the worst.
        I'd be feeling fairly confident if I was in the first wagon on the way back. Second wagon, I was unsure but not too worried. Third wagon, I would have been shirting myself. It happened to me only once.
        Most days, however, I was looking at other people, chuffed that these six-foot-four-inch blond-haired, good-looking thoroughbreds were getting the shove.
        I'd say, "That's a shame," but inside I'd be thinking, Good shit!
        Everybody was for himself; everybody wanted to pass.
        "The point is," the DS said, "if you've got to be in a position to give covering fire with your GPMG (general purpose machine gun) in six hours and forty-five minutes' time, it's no good being there in six hours, forty-five and a half minutes because you're late. You might as well be ten hours late. If you're given a timing, you must be there.
        The attack group might have to go in without fire cover because their attack might be time coordinated with another attack that's going in three or four kilometers away. You must keep your timings; lives might depend on it one day."
        The training team did the course every day as well, and they would vary the time limit according to the conditions. If there was a forty-mile-an-hour wind, they took it into consideration. It was then up to us to be as good as they were.
        The big thing was Platform 4. At Hereford railway station, Platform 4 went to London. "It's Platform four for you" was the Regiment's way of saying, "Thank you and good night."
        Of course, by the time people got back to their units, the reason they left Selection was a "back or leg injury," but they shouldn't have been embarrassed: They had more guts turning up for Selection in the first place than the people they were giving excuses to.
        The Royal Signals people definitely had the edge on tuning in and being happy with the environment. At that time, if a bloke wanted to go for the Regiment from the signals, he first had to be in 264, the signals squadron in Hereford. So these guys were in the environment to begin with, and they had the Black Mountains,forty-five minutes up the road to train on. A lot of them were going home of an evening. In the beginning I felt they had an unfair advantage. Then I came to see that when it came down to it, they didn't; they still had to get the boots on and go up the hill with everyone else.
        I was looking at the blokes who'd done Selection once already;