Obstacles for a Tiger

After the nightmare run that morning we were then finally allowed to eat. But it was only after doing about a hundred press-ups each first. I swore I would never be late again even if I had to dress Bat myself. It was only Polar Bear who didn't seem fussed with the strenuous exercise. I was looking forward after all that work to a full English breakfast. But no such luck. Instead we got some sort of slush that could only be classed as muck. Gruel that was right. Couldn't they have got any nicer meals for us?

'Do they expect us to eat this much?' demanded Bat.

'It's high in protein,' growled Polar Bear glowering at the communications expert.

'High in protein my a-'began Bat.

Just then the sergeant entered, 'do you want to finish that sentence?' asked the sergeant.

Bat paled suddenly, 'no sir.'

'And the rest of you?' demanded the sergeant with a growl.

'No sir,' they all responded.

I thought we sounded much like school kids rather than army officers. But I didn't really want to piss off the sergeant so I quickly shut up. After that there was silence until the sergeant left again. Polar Bear remained silent throughout breakfast whilst Dog, Bat and I spoke quietly. I found out that Dog had decided to go into the army after his wife and unborn child had been killed in a terrorist attack. Dog had decided that he wanted to save others from the pain he had gone through. Bat was different who had joined the army to get away from his controlling family more than anything.

I suspected from his accent which was more upper class than mine that he was from a rich family. I didn't know his deal with his family. He didn't say and I didn't feel that I knew him enough to ask. I suspected that Dog felt the same way. We fell into an awkward silence after that unsure what to say. Polar Bear didn't say anything about himself. I could see he was an able leader and knew the how things ran around here. But it was obvious he didn't trust us. Or at least he didn't feel like confiding in us.

I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to make him act like this. I had feeling that something awful to do with those battle scars had happened. Or maybe he had been like this beforehand. I didn't know and he scared me too much to ask. But I chewed on what his deal was. Mum had always said that I'd inherited my dad's inability to leave any mystery alone. But as far as I was aware dad wasn't one who went looking for mysteries. But mum had always said odd things like that which still didn't make any sense.

And now I was old enough to wonder about it she was dead so I couldn't ask her. Dad didn't mind us talking about mum or asking about her. But we tried not to. He always got such a sad, pain filled look on his face whenever mum was brought up. I guessed it was because dad had never stopped loving her. He had certainly never dated after mum's death despite Uncle Tom and Uncle Ben saying that it would be good for him to move on. I privately thought that for dad nobody would ever be able to take mum's place.

After breakfast we headed to the obstacle course like no other obstacle course. By the time we had finished I was flushed, sweating and filthy. I had read about it of course. But no preparation could prepare me for the monster which was the course. We had to complete it in our units this time. It had begun with climbing over a monstrous wooden construction looking very much like a ladder. Luckily we were all pretty tall so we could pull ourselves up using the ledges as support. Unfortunately they were too thin to be able to stay on for any length of time.

My unit all managed it in decent timing. However, F unit's bald member and member with long, raven hair had managed to trip each other up somehow and were still in a heap on the floor. The sergeant was yelling at them for their incompetency threatening to bin them whilst my team were over the other side. This filled me with confidence. I unit's leader seemed to be close to falling as well but managed to just make it to the other side. M unit's leader was the first one down with his unfair height advantage.

Well at least I thought it was unfair. But he had to wait a short time for his youngest, blonde unit mate. When we were down just after M unit putting our unit in second position we were onto the next obstacle. This time we had to clamber up another ladder which was about twelve feet off the ground. Then we had to use the monkey bars to manoeuvre our way across. I'd liked the monkey bars as a child on the playground. But these were a nightmare. The only consolation was if we did fall down then at least it would be a soft landing; in a nice puddle of mud, maybe not so nice then.

Well it was SAS training not Boy Scout camp like the sergeant had told us several times. You'd have thought once was enough? But no every time someone mucked up he told us. And people mucked up all over the place here thanks to their sweaty hands. Our unit seemed to be one of the only units that all managed to make it across to the other side. Not one of us fell. In A unit both the tall raven haired man and older torture victim fell into the muck much to their leader's frustration. The leader only stopped yelling at them when the Sergeant turned around and joined in with the yelling.

C unit then caught up with us over the course of the so called monkey bars. And they were certainly making monkeys of enough of us soldiers. None of C unit fell into the mud. In D unit it was only the brunette who was not the leader much to his leader's hilarity. I could see D unit's leader was trying his best not to laugh. That caused D unit to fall behind quite a bit. Again for F unit the bald man and the long haired man fell in. I didn't think those two from F unit would last very long given what had happened for the first two obstacles.

Not leading is team spectacularly and being threatened with having his leadership revoke Bear of I unit fell in three quarters of the way through. So it was the non leaders of I unit that improved their time. M unit was the third team to all complete the monkey bars without getting covered in muck meaning that they were still ahead of us. Then N unit came the next completing the bars successfully just behind us causing us to have to speed up. R unit fell slightly behind when the curly man fell sloshing his pale face with mud.

Still in second place behind M unit we went onto clambering over a too tall fence which meant we had to rely on team work. It turned out that Bat was actually a good instructor and we managed it without too much problem as did A and D unit. However, C and F unit just didn't seem to want to cooperate with their team members. I, M, N and R units did fairly well and got over okay after an initial reluctance to work with one another. By the end of the team work task M had fallen behind us so we were now in the lead. A fact that I was very proud of but unable to dwell on that as the next task was coming. This time we had to manoeuvre ourselves across wire about six foot in the air where there were more left behind.

Not us we still managed not to fall over. I thought I had managed to be put with a good unit. Unfortunately so did C who were hot on our heals. We were still leading the way at the end of the latest obstacle. Then we had to crawl under the nets with our machine guns in hand. I was a lot quicker than my team mates. Polar Bear was actually quite slow whilst Bat and Dog were around average completing it at the same time. Due to C unit's quick pace through the nets they ended up beating us.

I was disappointed being competitive as I was and knowing I would have beaten them had I not been waiting for the rest of my team. So we were once again in second position. By the end of this we were rather muddy we then had err "fun" crawling through lots of welsh mud. How this helped our training I could not say. We then slid along a rope over a river (1). I got horrible rope burn as we went. And we were pushed into third position much to my dislike when it seemed that Bat got stuck half way across.

Next there was a rope bridge that had to be carefully judged if we weren't to make it fall over. C unit fell in and had to swim out and start all over again. The sergeant was not impressed with them at all. N unit had to pull up the bridge so that they could go across. We planned it out carefully so that we could move across glad that we were back into second place. Maybe next time we would move back up to first. They then clambered across the wooden climbing frame for giants. And they were back in front just ahead of N unit.

We then ran through about twenty rows of tires as quick as we could. I prided myself on being pretty quick but unfortunately had to wait for the others at the end. But luckily we just scraped first. I thought it was my imagination but I thought I saw the sergeant smile at me. But it was replaced by its familiar scowl when the other three joined us. We didn't have long to wait for the next team. N Unit followed. Then there was M who despite having lead the way at the start had only came third. Then I followed them. Then D and then F who had done far better than I had expected as they had done so poorly at the beginning. Then R, then A and finally C who had been doing so well until the rope bridge incident. We were then dismissed for lunch.

More slush, yummy!

I don't know how I did the obstacle course. Hope it was real enough for SAS. Please review and tell me what I think.

One of the few things I liked about the pathetic movie of brilliant books.

Does anyone want to beta this?