Читать книгу The Man Who Lives with Wolves - Shaun Ellis - Страница 11

Looking back, it seems that everything about my early life was preparing me for my future with wolves, though at the time there didn’t seem to be the slightest connection. Not long afterward, I was in King’s Lynn with three mates. One of them needed some money in a hurry, so we were in a backstreet stealing car radios—not something I am hugely proud of—when someone spotted a couple of policemen heading our way. We ran off into the High Street with two policemen in pursuit, desperately looking for a busy shop to disappear into. It must have been an early closing day because nothing was open except for the army recruitment office, which had a welcoming light inside. We dived in breathless and panting, and announced that we had come to sign up. I don’t imagine they had seen so many people all week; they welcomed us with open arms and ushered us swiftly into a back room to see a video about life in the army. Perfect.

We were all impressed by what we saw, and it became my life for the next seven years. We signed up that afternoon, but I was the only one who went the whole way. I had never considered joining the army and, had I not been dodging the police, probably never would have done so, but the more I learned about it, the more it seemed the perfect career for me.

My relationship with Sue was at an end. I was too wild, too angry, too disconnected. I was twenty-two and I wanted to get away from Norfolk; I didn’t feel there was anything left for me there. I liked the outdoor life, I enjoyed physical exertion, I had been used to discipline from an early age, and I was good at taking orders without question. These were all qualities I had learned from my grandfather and all were essential components of a successful soldier. In one of the interviews, I was asked why I wanted to join the army and I told them about the car radios. I think they probably thought I was joking.

I was sent for about eight weeks of basic training at the Woolwich Arsenal, where two of the three trainers were from the 29 Commando Regiment of the Royal Artillery. The one in charge was a man named John Morgan, who had been through the Special Forces selection but had been injured in the last lap. He was a strong man, fair and balanced, never ruffled, able to deal with whatever life threw at him, but he was someone you didn’t mess with. If I had to name the role models in my life, and the men I’ve looked up to—heroes in the mold of my grandfather—he would be one of them.

His colleagues were Lugsy Williams, so called because of his big ears, and a very short man named Corbet, known as Ronnie, after the comedian. Corbet was a human dynamo. The man never stopped—I’m sure he did cartwheels and push-ups in his sleep. They used to take turns taking us out on what we called Bergen runs of four, five, or six miles, wearing boots and all the gear, carrying anything up to sixty pounds in a backpack. These were in addition to the normal training and were designed to get our fitness up. It was crippling and I used to pray for John Morgan’s turn because he was slow and steady, as I was. The others ran us all into the ground.

I did sufficiently well in my written tests to be given a choice of which service I wanted to join. Having seen photographs of people rappelling out of helicopters and walking through snow and skiing, and having spoken to John Morgan and Lugsy Williams, I opted for the 29 Commando Regiment of the Royal Artillery. It was based at that time at HMS Drake, naval barracks on the south coast about three miles south of Plymouth. The regiment’s usual home was in the Royal Citadel, a beautiful seventeenth-century building in the center of Plymouth, with seventy-foot walls designed to fend off the Dutch in the wars of that century. It had provided England’s most important defense for the following hundred years, but when I arrived in 1986 the building was being renovated and all 29 personnel had moved to the modern facility (built in the 1880s) down the road.

The 29 Commando was a close support artillery regiment, part of the heavy-weapons division that supported the 3 Commando Brigade of the Royal Marines. In laymen’s terms, when the marines took the beaches, we were there to draw fire; but it felt as though we lived in no-man’s-land, between two worlds. We weren’t quite the navy and we weren’t quite army and neither seemed particularly fond of us. We went anywhere and everywhere the marines went, and since 3 Commando specialized in operating in extreme temperatures and conditions—in frozen wastes, jungles, and deserts—those were the places and conditions in which we trained.

The initial training took place at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines near Lympstone in Devon. It was the toughest thing I had experienced—this from someone who had spent years as a roofer, running up and down ladders carrying stacks of tiles. We didn’t stop; we were running or doing push-ups, sit-ups, or pull-ups—strength and stamina training—all day. It made runs with Lugsy and Ronnie feel like child’s play.

It was relentless; day after day after day our bodies were pushed to the limit. We had tests sometimes as often as three times a day. We were worn down, exhausted, beyond exhaustion physically and mentally. I would get into a bath at night and feel as though I’d never be able to walk again—tomorrow couldn’t come slowly enough. But it was all done with a purpose. As commandos, we needed not only the physical fitness to get through hostile terrain, we also had to have the mental stamina to be able to fight and defend ourselves once we got there. If we weren’t up to it, we were no use to the unit.

And when we weren’t pushing our bodies to the limit, we were map reading, doing survival training in extreme weather conditions, taking military tactical awareness courses, learning to look after our kit, taking bearings, and preparing to be dropped into an enemy zone at night “by sea, by air and by land”—the force’s motto.

During the training we were known as hats, which was short for crap hats because we wore undistinguished black berets. The final test to win the coveted green beret was a thirty-mile trek across Dartmoor that had to be completed in eight hours. It was a combination of running and walking in full gear. The dropout rate at this stage was between 40 and 45 percent. It was as tough as anything we had done, but our team came in on time. There was no heroes’ fanfare, no ceremony. The instructors were at the finishing point waiting for us, and as we limped in on the verge of collapse, they flung our green berets at us. I can still remember the feel of the material, the excitement of holding it tightly in my hands as we returned to base in the back of an open truck, tired and freezing cold—and the feeling of incredible pride. It was a sense of achievement unlike any I had ever had.

There was no resting on our laurels. That was just the beginning. We were away from base for eight and a half to nine months a year, and the training we were given in that time and the places we went to were phenomenal. I had thought I knew about outdoor living, but being out in the wild in Norfolk was a far cry from the frozen wastes of Norway in midwinter, when it can be minus twenty degrees centigrade. That place will kill you if you don’t know how to take care of yourself. I learned all about survival. I learned how to keep myself warm, how to be healthy by eating the sort of food that the body could use rather than food that simply satisfied hunger or was comforting. I learned how and where to cross frozen lakes, and how to use the environment to my advantage. In those conditions it’s possible to go from subzero temperatures to plus two degrees by something as simple as digging a hole in the snow for shelter. I learned where and how to make those holes in the quickest time and using a minimum amount of energy.

If we were traveling long distances on foot in those temperatures and that terrain, the leading person would never break trail for very long. He would lead for about five hundred meters, then taper off and go to the back and the next person in line would lead for another five hundred meters and so it would go on. The logic was that forging a path through deep snow is more tiring than following in someone else’s footprints, and on the presumption we would have to fight once we had arrived at our destination, every soldier needed to be as fit as the next.

I always used to wonder how people discovered this, but it wasn’t until I was out on the mountains with wild wolves in central Idaho years later that I noticed they used exactly the same technique in snow. After a while the leader would break off and join the back of the line, ensuring that when they came to make the kill, every animal had conserved enough energy to be effective. My guess is that the Inuit, the indigenous people of North America and Greenland, learned from the wolves, and passed on their techniques to our specialized troops when they arrived to train in those areas.

There was nothing I learned during my time in the army that wasn’t invaluable in my work with wolves, and many of the survival techniques the wolves also used. In combat I was taught to go for the element of surprise, to fight the enemy in a known environment, where the odds for keeping control are in my favor. One person alone against twelve on enemy turf doesn’t stand a chance, but by taking on those twelve in a familiar environment, the chances of survival go up considerably.

Wolves, I discovered, do exactly that. They will always make sure they change the environment to bring the odds into their favor before taking on an opponent. I’ve seen three wolves successfully take on a seven-hundred- to eight-hundred-pound bear and remain in control throughout just by waiting until it was pitch dark for the final assault. Being nocturnal animals, the wolves could still see clearly, but the bear, which is fundamentally a daytime creature, was at a disadvantage.

My unit didn’t go to Afghanistan or Iraq; the only active duty we did was in Northern Ireland, but we did a number of “hearts and minds” tours with the United Nations. I remember in particular being in Cyprus, where the UN was maintaining a buffer zone between the Greek and Turkish parts of the island. I went to the Turkish side one day to deliver food. I was the driver and I had a mate with me, but once we arrived, we were redundant. Local henchmen stepped in and started handing out the food—and violence if there was any trouble. I felt cynical about the whole exercise; it seemed to me that all we were doing was helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

As I was standing around waiting, I noticed an old lady struggling to wheel a wooden cart down a cobbled alleyway toward the lorry. She had a lined and weathered face and was dressed in black, as so many of the women were. The henchmen didn’t seem to be paying her any attention, so I quietly loaded her cart with food and while she followed, muttering, I pushed it back up the hill to her cottage, which must have been six or seven hundred meters away. I didn’t speak a word of Turkish and she didn’t speak a word of English, but when we reached her door, she thanked me by holding my hand in hers. Then she did the most incredible thing: She reached into the cart and took out a precious apple, which she insisted I take. I tried to explain that I didn’t need it, that I had plenty of food, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I was so moved; this old woman had nothing and I had three square meals a day. Her generosity of spirit was humbling. Her culture and upbringing made it impossible for her not to repay an act of kindness, and much as I admire the billionaires who give millions to charity, there’s nothing quite like the gesture of someone giving away a piece of fruit that could mean the difference between life and death to her.

There were many reasons why I loved the Forces, and moments like that were certainly among them. Having been a solitary child, I also enjoyed the sense of camaraderie. I loved the outdoor Action Man lifestyle and I believed in everything the military stood for. It suited me down to the ground. I felt secure in the routine and discipline. I felt a sense of family among my colleagues in the ranks. I imagined I would be there for a very long stint. I even tried to get into the notoriously difficult Special Air Service (SAS) and the Special Boat Service (SBS).

Normally you could only apply for the SAS if you were in the army, and the SBS if you were in the navy, but the government had begun a trial to allow crossover. I volunteered to take part in the trial. The SBS training was tough but then I went up to Wales for the SAS training and that was carnage. I got through the first stage, but I didn’t get to Hereford, where the unit is based. It was disappointing, but I was comforted to have made it past the first day. Out of 150 people who started, 40 had fallen by the wayside before nightfall. Their exhausted bodies were lying over the Brecon Beacons like sheep dung.

I obviously wasn’t destined to join the Special Forces but it turned out that I was not destined to make a long-term career of the army either. Instead, it proved to be a valuable apprenticeship for the real job I was going to do in life.