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Adventurer
In a few short years Bear Grylls has earned himself
a reputation for being one of Britain’s most notable, and
youngest, adventurers. In 1998, at the age of 23, he became the
youngest British climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest and
return alive. He braved Arctic conditions and icebergs when he led
an expedition across the North Atlantic Ocean in a small open inflatable
boat and he led the first attempt to fly motorised parachutes
over Angel Falls in Venezuela.
What makes his achievements so remarkable is that
just a few years before climbing the world's highest mountain, he
was hospitalised with a back broken in three places. Bear had spent
three years with the SAS when a routine parachute exercise in southern
Africa went terribly wrong. His canopy ripped in two and he fell
500 metres, smashing into the desert at tremendous speed and leaving
him unable to feel his legs.
'For me it was the darkest time, I should really be
paralysed,' he says. 'But if this taught me anything it was not
to listen too hard to what doctors tell you.'
He spent the next year in rehabilitation, but it was
not until about nine months into his recovery that he found his
focus. With his military career effectively over, Bear directed
his efforts on trying to get well enough to fulfil his childhood
dream of climbing Everest. After achieving this goal, Bear didn’t
stop there and quickly totted up an outstanding list of achievements.
And he’s always thinking ahead to the next one.
Surprisingly, Bear still skydives. In fact,
over a few weeks in May and June 2005 he made more than 200 parachute
jumps as part of the training for his next feat – to enter
The Guinness Book of Records
for holding the highest formal dinner party.
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So what made Bear want to take a band of merry men
into the desert to join the Foreign Legion? Nobody really knows
much about the Legion, so Bear thought it would be an interesting
challenge to lift the lid on this mysterious outfit by showing the
training regime. And what better way to do this than by signing
up himself.
It was an extremely tough and arduous process of attrition, says
Bear. It wasn’t the physical demands that he found so hard;
he is after all extremely fit and compared to the SAS the standard
of fitness and training of the Legion was relatively low, he says.
It was, rather, the sheer brutality of the training methods and
the level of control over the legionnaires that made it so gruelling
and so much harder than the SAS. 'You get no sleep and spend your
day doing meaningless tasks, like breaking rocks in the desert,'
he says.
Despite having to be there to help encourage the other
legionnaires not to quit, Bear found himself doubting on a daily
basis whether he would be able to complete the training himself.
Being the presenter of the programme, this could have posed a problem,
especially since there was no contingency plan for him dropping
out. But at the time this was the least of his worries. 'You are
continuously shouted and screamed at, you are allowed no possessions,
not even a watch. It’s all about control,' he says. Each day
you get weaker and weaker. 'You’re whole life is ruled by
a whistle.'
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Although Bear had to endure the same training as the
other legionnaires, there was one significant difference that set
him apart – his reason for being there. 'We picked people
who had a real reason to escape, from ex-drug addicts to debt collectors,'
he says. But for him there was no escape. He went through the training
regime with a continual yearning for his regular life.
It’s possible that this, and the fact that he
is now much older than when he went through his SAS training, made
the Legion training all the more challenging for Bear. The most
difficult part was that he missed his family. 'There I was buried
up to my neck in sand in the desert and I was missing my son’s
first steps,' he says. Even so, he was one of the few that stuck
it out until the end.
It was very interesting seeing the ones that survived
and the ones that quit, but ultimately he was in the same position
as them. The only way to get through it is to follow the Legion’s
mantra 'Don’t think, just do'. It’s the only way to
overcome the doubt, he says. 'I doubted myself. I’m not superman,
I’m not that strong and I missed my family.'
But those trainee legionnaires that make it to the
end do get something in return for their endurance, says Bear. It
is a learning process. It makes them stronger; it teaches them to
know who they really are and it gives them what life so rarely offers
– a second chance. Even so, Bear doesn’t recommend it:
'No matter how hard life gets, don’t join the Foreign Legion.'
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