Chapter 11

Five disciplines, five chances for failure. It didn’t bode well. Failure was a relative term though. If I finished and did well, then perhaps I wouldn’t be disgracing fellow nashos and those who weren’t to be deployed out in the field. I’m glad Major Carslake had faith in me. Out of the two of us, that meant there was at least one.

The assault course was akin to the one that all soldiers did and shouldn’t be too much of an issue. My lithe figure was a bonus on comparison to at least one of my two competitors. What I hadn’t factored in was the likelihood of them working as a team and some pretty underhanded ploys. I am not talking about tying my boot laces together but the occasional, trip, bump and shepherd that allowed them to force me to the rear. In the end however that gave me a better picture of what they were up to and I could predict what they would do and plan some strategies to overcome them.

When it came to the traverse ropes I had to be in front as there were only two rope lines and I could be sufficiently delayed by the person ahead. Luckily, I managed a sprint to them and made it safely up for the hand over hand underslung traverse. I hit the cargo net hard only to find that one of my competitors was shaking it mightily underneath in order to hold my ascent or flip me off completely. That gained them some ground. At the concrete wall, they worked as a team. The shorter one used his hands as a stirrup to get the heavier one up to the top. That person then reached down and hailed the other over. I was left with a run and leap which I managed on the second attempt but that put me last. I gained ground under the low ropes and tunnels. Unders and overs saw me in the lead as I seemed to tumble more agilely and smoother. Unfortunately, I missed my footing at the final A frame and came a close second. The cheers were universally directed away from my direction.

The hike that followed was in full kit and I set off at a long loping pace that I knew I could keep up the whole way. Soon I was in the rear as the other two shot ahead. A chorus of derisive comments followed me from various vantage points along the way. However, as I predicted the gap between myself and the two ahead narrowed very quickly in the latter half of the hike. Perhaps I had become a bit soft but the pack was starting to chafe on my shoulders as we breasted the top of the last rise before we finished. At my pace I would easily pass them in the last two hundred metres. The larger of the two was sweating and swearing as he gasped for every breath. He had pushed himself too hard and was starting to weave as he ran. He had led most of the way. Suddenly he fell and collapsed on the ground. His compatriot took the lead and suddenly I was in second place just behind him but he was struggling constantly glancing over his shoulder. I glanced over mine and saw the third hiker sitting holding his ankle and grimacing in pain. I stopped, torn between a comfortable win and turning back. In the end conscience, and I guess the knowledge of what George would have done, took over and I went back to the stricken soldier. Took his pack off and slung it over my shoulder and then hoisted him to his feet. He leant on me and we hobbled to the finish line where the winner was waving his arms in the air in triumph. I managed to push the soldier I was carrying over the line and went back for his pack which had fallen off my shoulder some ten yards from the finish. I carried it over the line and finished third. There was a subdued silence at the end of the second part of the competition. No cheers for the winner and no chiacking this time.

After a brief examination of the fallen soldier’s ankle he was deemed unfit for the rest of the competition. He may have been able to box and perhaps shoot but the speed trials would have been beyond him and they were up next. I felt sorry for him. He seemed disappointed that he was ruled out. I went over to shake his hand which he took willingly and whispered a quiet thanks for what I had done. The time trials involved a series of sprints on the track and we went and got changed. A fifty-yard dash, followed by a hundred-yard slalom around cones, a two-hundred-yard run and finally a special twenty yards sprint forwards and backwards until exhaustion set in or you didn’t do it in the prescribed time. The latter one was exceptionally hard. Twenty yards isn’t far but at the end you have to turn around and continue back the way you came. All the while the clock is ticking. After the assault course and the hike, I knew I would be struggling but then so would my companion.

After the first two events I was dead level. I was easily beaten in the fifty-yard dash but won the slalom. My opponent skipped one of the cones to just nudge me out as we crossed the line but ended up disqualified. The two-hundred-yard run was more my event and though I was huffing and puffing at the end I won by just under five yards. We were both pretty knackered when it came to the exhaustion trial. It was only our determination and desire not to be seen as weak that saw us push each other to the limit. In the end we drew and lay flat on our backs sucking in oxygen as fast as we could. It was then I began to wonder what we were trying to prove. Three events down and ostensibly I had a first, a second and a third. My opponent had the same. What were we actually doing? Was this just entertainment for the rest of the group? Was it a chance for the JIO to show that they were not just the shiny pants brigade? Was it a bet between the senior officers who decided that this would be more fun than horse-racing? What was actually on the line here?

There was some respite before the boxing luckily and when the two of us got changed at the gym, there was some unsaid grudging respect shown. We kitted up with taped hands, gloves, groin protector and headgear. Three rounds of madness lay ahead. I had initially wondered how three people in the competition would end up organised to fight. One of us would have to fight twice. Knowing my luck, I would have been drawn to fight both in two separate fights. I sized my remaining opponent up. He was shorter stockier and as such his main strategy would be to get in close and fight in clinches, inflicting as much damage as he could to my body to force me to drop my arms. I stepped into the ring which is oddly named as it is a square and it felt like I was trapped. As with the rugby pitch, it was an enclosed space where the purpose was to maim and injure. We were both pretty stuffed by the time the bell sounded. A lot of energy had been spent already. My soft jabs scored points and kept him at bay but when he slipped inside there was a flurry of punches that knocked the stuffing out of me. He wanted to win probably more than I. I merely wanted to survive and so I kept moving and staying out of his reach all the while putting a fist in his face much to the contempt of the crowd gathered around.

After two rounds I had no idea who was in front and I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to get caught again. The bruising my abdomen had been getting was having an effect and I was unable to move away as freely in the final round. At times I just covered up on the rope as he let fly. I don’t think he scored much as I took most of his shots on my arms but geez my arms hurt. Almost trancelike with my mind outside of my body I watched his combinations and realised that he was very consistent when he got in tight and close. It was always two or three quick lefts, followed by a right left combination and then an uppercut if I left an opening. With less than a minute to go it dawned on me that if I got it right then I could use his predictable punching routine. If I blocked his right left combination, as he shaped for the uppercut his right jaw lay exposed for a fraction of a second.

He hit the canvas two seconds before the bell sounded, but he was out like a light. He won on points but the ref couldn’t raise his hand. Smelling salts and close examination by the doctor in the change room saw the competition set to continue. There would be a delay however before the final round of the competition so that he could recover. The shooting would take place late in the afternoon.

Canberra is a place of extremes, not just in a political extent. Mornings can be quite bitter and snow falls regularly in winter. Today had been unseasonably hot and as the day wore on humidity increased dramatically. As we hit the rifle range, the heavens opened up and a deluge began. Noah in his era would have started closing up the doors to the ark, finally believing that God meant what he said. The drops of rain were huge and turned the dust to mud in a very short time. Just what we both needed: targets shrouded in an opaque waterfall, us lying prone in mud, drips of rain streaming off the front of our jungle hats and bubbles of water trickling down to where our fingers were on our triggers. Both of us had high quality scopes but the dangers of those were the condensation and fogging up that could occur. This was the shooting match from hell. We had lost our crowd though and so that outside distraction was gone.

This part of the competition was not about beating the opponent but beating yourself and the conditions. I could not worry about how well my opponent was shooting. That was completely out of my control. I just had to focus on my breathing, my aim and all the things my father had taught me over the years. There was a wind shear factor to take into account as the rain was being driven across the range at forty-five degrees. I had never fired much in the rain. Up in Croydon, rain was a blessing and not to be wasted by spending time shooting. Up there it was when the rain stopped and the dry desert like paddocks came to life, that the rabbits, dingoes and feral dogs came out and shooting was conducted. In the end both of us fired five shots at targets we could barely see from a range of distances. Neither of us knew how accurate we were. Finally, after the last shots were fired and we stood up, the gods paid homage to the stupidity of the whole competition. Bolts of lightning flashed across the sky from the direction of Black Mountain and it was followed by the deafening rumble of thunder. We just made it to the shelter of a nearby hut as hail fell about the size of ping pong balls. We looked across at each other, our faces splattered in mud, our clothes soaked through and we smiled. The senior officers had been out watching us to the side through binoculars. Their nearest point of shelter was a long way further than ours.

I had outshot my opponent and the result was declared a draw when the troops were informed at the next parade. My two opponents however disputed the decision, much to the annoyance of the company commander. They believed that by going back and helping one of them, I had cost myself a chance of overall victory. Nevertheless, the company commander said that the results stood. He received a couple of boos from some men who quickly hid behind others so as not to be singled out. Major Carslake winked in my direction. He had used me to achieve his aims. Something I found out later he did to anyone he could. At that parade he looked pretty chuffed. I just thought he was a bit more of a bastard than I had originally thought.