Mud, Sweat and Tears Read online

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Bear Grylls is a man who has always sought the ultimate in adventure.

  Growing up on the Isle of Wight, he was taught by his father to sail and climb at an early age. Inevitably, it wasn’t long before Bear was leading out-of-bounds night-climbing missions at school.

  As a teenager, he found identity and purpose through both mountaineering and martial arts, which led the young adventurer to the foothills of the mighty Himalaya and a grandmaster’s karate training camp in Japan.

  On returning home, he embarked upon the notoriously gruelling selection course for the British Special Forces to join 21 SAS – a journey that was to push him to the very limits of physical and mental endurance.

  Then, in a horrific free-fall parachuting accident in Africa, Bear broke his back in three places. It was touch and go whether he would ever walk again. However, only eighteen months later and defying doctors’ expectations, Bear became one of the youngest ever climbers to scale Everest, aged only twenty-three.

  But this was just the beginning of his many extraordinary adventures …

  Known and admired by millions – whether from his global adventure TV series, as a bestselling author, or as Chief Scout to the Scouting Association – Bear Grylls has survived where few would dare to go.

  Now, for the first time, Bear tells the story of his action-packed life. Gripping, moving and wildly exhilarating, Mud, Sweat and Tears is a must-read for adrenalin junkies and armchair adventurers alike.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part 2

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Part 3

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Part 4

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Part 5

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Epilogue

  Picture Section

  Index

  About the Author

  Also by Bear Grylls

  Copyright

  MUD, SWEAT

  AND TEARS

  Bear Grylls

  To my mother. Thank you.

  PROLOGUE

  The air temperature is minus twenty degrees. I wiggle my fingers but they’re still freezing cold. Old frostnip injuries never let you forget. I blame Everest for that.

  ‘You set, buddy?’ cameraman Simon asks me, smiling. His rig is all prepped and ready.

  I smile back. I am unusually nervous.

  Something doesn’t quite feel right.

  But I don’t listen to the inner voice.

  It is time to go to work.

  The crew tell me that the crisp northern Canadian Rockies look spectacular this morning. I don’t really notice.

  It is time to get into my secret space. A rare part of me that is focused, clear, brave, precise. It is the part of me I know the best, but visit the least.

  I only like to use it sparingly. Like now.

  Beneath me is three hundred feet of steep snow and ice. Steep but manageable.

  I have done this sort of fast descent many, many times. Never be complacent, the voice says. The voice is always right.

  A last deep breath. A look to Simon. A silent acknowledgement back.

  Yet we have cut a vital corner. I know it. But I do nothing.

  I leap.

  I am instantly taken by the speed. Normally I love it. This time I am worried.

  I never feel worried in the moment.

  I know something is wrong.

  I am soon travelling at over 40 m.p.h. Feet first down the mountain. The ice races past only inches from my head. This is my world.

  I gain even more speed. The edge of the peak gets closer. Time to arrest the fall.

  I flip nimbly on to my front and drive the ice axe into the snow. A cloud of white spray and ice soars into the air. I can feel the rapid deceleration as I grind the axe deep into the mountain with all my power.

  It works like it always does. Like clockwork. Total confidence. One of those rare moments of lucidity.

  It is fleeting. Then it is gone.

  I am now static.

  The world hangs still. Then – bang.

  Simon, his heavy wooden sledge, plus solid metal camera housing, piles straight into my left thigh. He is doing in excess of 45 m.p.h. There is an instant explosion of pain and noise and white.

  It is like a freight train. And I am thrown down the mountain like a doll.

  Life stands still. I feel and see it all in slow motion.

  Yet in that split second I have only one realization: a one-degree different course and the sledge’s impact would have been with my head. Without doubt, it would have been my last living thought.

  Instead, I am in agony, writhing.

  I am crying. They are tears of relief.

  I am injured, but I am alive.

  I see a helicopter but hear no s
ound. Then the hospital. I have been in a few since Man vs. Wild/Born Survivor: Bear Grylls began. I hate them.

  I can see them all through closed eyes.

  The dirty, bloodstained emergency room in Vietnam, after I severed half my finger off in the jungle. No bedside graces there.

  Then the rockfall in the Yukon. Not to mention the way worse boulder-fall in Costa Rica. The mineshaft collapse in Montana or that saltwater croc in Oz. Or the sixteen-foot tiger that I landed on in the Pacific versus the snake-bite in Borneo.

  Countless close shaves.

  They all blur. All bad.

  Yet all good. I am alive.

  There are too many to hold grudges. Life is all about the living.

  I am smiling.

  The next day, I forget the crash. To me, it is past. Accidents happen, it was no one’s fault.

  Lessons learnt.

  Listen to the voice.

  I move on.

  ‘Hey, Si, I’m cool. Just buy me a pina colada when we get out of here. Oh, and I’ll be sending you the evac, doc and physio bills.’

  He reaches for my hand. I love this man.

  We’ve lived some life out there.

  I look down to the floor: at my ripped mountain salopettes, bloodstained jacket, smashed mini-cam and broken goggles.

  I quietly wonder: when did all this craziness become my world?

  PART 1

  ‘The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible – and achieve it, generation after generation.’

  Pearl S. Buck

  CHAPTER 1

  Walter Smiles, my great-grandfather, had a very clear dream for his life. As he breathed in the fresh salty air of the northern Irish coast that he loved so dearly, he gazed out over the remote Copeland Islands of County Down. He vowed to himself that it would be here, at Portavo Point, on this wild, windswept cove, that one day he would return to live.

  He dreamt of making his fortune, marrying his true love and building a house for his bride here, on this small cove overlooking this dramatic Irish coastline. It was a dream that would shape, and ultimately end, his life.

  Walter came from a strong line of self-motivated, determined folk: not grand, not high society, but no-nonsense, family minded, go-getters. His grandfather had been Samuel Smiles who, in 1859, authored the original ‘motivational’ book titled Self-Help. It was a landmark work, and an instant best-seller, even outselling Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species when it was first launched.

  Samuel’s book Self-Help also made plain the mantra that hard work and perseverance were the keys to personal progress. At a time in Victorian society where, as an Englishman, the world was your oyster if you had the get up and go to make things happen, his book Self-Help struck a chord. It became the ultimate Victorian ‘how to’ guide, empowering the everyday person to reach for the sky. And at its heart it said that nobility is not a birthright, but is defined by our actions. It laid bare the simple but unspoken secrets for living a meaningful, fulfilling life, and it defined a gentleman in terms of character not blood type.

  Riches and rank have no necessary connection with genuine gentlemanly qualities.

  The poor man with a rich spirit is in all ways superior to the rich man with a poor spirit.

  To borrow St Paul’s words, the former is as ‘having nothing, yet possessing all things’, while the other, though possessing all things, has nothing.

  Only the poor in spirit are really poor. He who has lost all, but retains his courage, cheerfulness, hope, virtue and self-respect, is still rich.

  These were revolutionary words to Victorian, aristocratic, class-ridden England. To drive the point home (and no doubt prick a few hereditary aristocratic egos along the way), Samuel made the point again, that being a gentleman is something that has to be earned: ‘There is no free pass to greatness.’

  Samuel Smiles ends his book with the following moving story of the ‘gentleman’ general:

  The gentleman is characterised by his sacrifice of self, and preference of others, in the little daily occurrences of life … we may cite the anecdote of the gallant Sir Ralph Abercromby, of whom it is related, that, when mortally wounded in the battle of Aboukir, and, to ease his pain, a soldier’s blanket was placed under his head, from which he experienced considerable relief.

  He asked what it was.

  ‘It’s only a soldier’s blanket,’ was the reply.

  ‘Whose blanket is it?’ said he, half lifting himself up.

  ‘Only one of the men’s.’

  ‘I wish to know the name of the man whose blanket this is.’

  ‘It is Duncan Roy’s, of the 42nd, Sir Ralph.’

  ‘Then see that Duncan Roy gets his blanket this very night.’

  Even to ease his dying agony the general would not deprive the private soldier of his blanket for one night.

  As Samuel wrote: ‘True courage and gentleness go hand in hand.’

  It was in this family, belief system and heritage that Walter, my great-grandfather, grew up and dared to dream.

  CHAPTER 2

  During the First World War, Great-grandpa Walter sought action wherever and whenever he could. He was noted as one of those ‘rare officers who found complete release in action’.

  He obtained a pilot’s certificate but, realizing that action in the air was unlikely due to the lack of aircraft, he transferred as a sub-lieutenant to the Royal Naval Armoured Car Division, an early Special Forces organization formed by Winston Churchill.

  Unlike the British officers on the Western Front, who were imprisoned in their trenches for months on end, he moved around many of the main theatres of war – and he was in his element. Even Walter’s CO noted in an official report: ‘The cheerful acceptance of danger and hardship by Lieutenant Smiles is very noteworthy.’

  He was then seconded to the Czar’s Russian Imperial Army, to fight the Turks on the Caucasian front. And it was here that Walter was promoted swiftly: lieutenant in 1915, lieutenant commander in 1917 and commander in 1918. He was highly decorated during this time, receiving a DSO (1916) and Bar (1917), a ‘Mention in Despatches’ (1919), along with Russian and Romanian decorations.

  The citation for his first DSO stated: ‘He was wounded on the 28th November, 1916, in Dobrudja. On coming out of hospital he volunteered to lead a flying squadron for special duty round Braila, and his gallantry on this occasion was the chief factor of success.’

  On one occasion, when in action with a light armoured car, he got out twice to start it up under heavy fire. Being struck by a bullet he rolled into a ditch and fought on all day under attack. Despite the fact that Walter was wounded, within twenty-four hours he was back with his unit, chomping at the bit. As soon as he was on his feet, he was leading his vehicles into action again. Walter was proving himself both recklessly committed, and irrepressibly bold.

  An extract from the Russian Journal in 1917 stated that Walter was ‘an immensely courageous officer and a splendid fellow’. And the Russian Army commander wrote to Walter’s commanding officer, saying: ‘The outstanding bravery and unqualified gallantry of Lieutenant Commander Smiles have written a fine page in British military annals, and give me the opportunity of requesting for him the decoration of the highest order, namely the St George of the 4th class.’ At the time this was the highest gallantry award given by the Russians to any officer.

  To be honest, I grew up imagining that my great-grandfather, with a name like Walter, might have been a bit stuffy or serious. Then I discover, after a bit of digging, that in fact he was wild, charismatic and brave beyond the natural. I also love the fact that in the family portraits I have seen of Walter, he looks exactly like Jesse, my eldest son. That always makes me smile. Walter was a great man to be like. His medals are on our wall at home still today, and I never quite understood how brave a man my great-grandfather had been.

  After the war, Walter returned to India, where he had been working previously. He was remembered as an employer w
ho ‘mixed freely with the natives employed on his tea plantations, showing a strong concern with the struggles of the “lower” castes’. In 1930, he was knighted, Sir Walter Smiles.

  It was on a ship sailing from India back to England that Walter met his wife-to-be, Margaret. Margaret was a very independent, middle-aged woman: heavily into playing bridge and polo, beautiful, feisty and intolerant of fools. The last thing she expected as she settled into her gin and tonic and a game of cards on the deck of the transport ship was to fall in love. But that was how she met Walter, and that’s how love often is. It comes unexpectedly and it can change your life.

  Walter married Margaret soon after returning, and despite her ‘advancing’ years, she soon fell pregnant – to her absolute horror. It just wasn’t ‘right’ for a lady in her forties to give birth, or so she thought, and she went about doing everything she possibly could to make the pregnancy fail.

  My grandmother, Patsie (who at this stage was the unborn child Margaret was carrying), recounts how her mother had: ‘promptly gone out and done the three worst things if you were pregnant. She went for a very aggressive ride on her horse, drank half a bottle of gin and then soaked for hours in a very hot bath.’

  The plan failed (thank God), and in April 1921, Walter and Margaret’s only child, Patricia (or Patsie), my grandmother, was born.

  On returning to Northern Ireland from India, Walter finally fulfilled his dream. He built Margaret a house on that very same point in County Down that he had stood so many years earlier.

  With a diplomat’s mind and a sharp intellect, he then entered the world of politics, finally winning the Northern Irish seat of North Down in Ulster, where he served loyally.

  But on Saturday, 30 January 1953, all that was about to change. Walter was hoping to fly back home from Parliament in London, to Ulster. But that night a storm was brewing, bringing with it some of the worst weather the UK had experienced for over a decade. His flight was duly cancelled, and instead he booked a seat on the night train to Stranraer.