Free Sniper Elite by Rob Maylor Page A

both ends to help pull yourself through, but now we were wet and we had a hard slog ahead. All the time there was a DS running beside us, mostly encouraging us, but from time to time they slipped in a ‘Hurry up you fuckin’ dickhead, you’re letting the team down’, or a very angry ‘Get that weapon out of the dirt, you knob!’ ‘You better make sure you clean that properly before you fire it!’ The DS would always make sure we pulled the barrel through before we fired our rifles at the end of the endurance course.
    A short run from the water tunnels brought us to the sheep dip. ‘Great–more water!’ Then up a muddy embankment where your boots sank into the sticky mud. Now we started to trip over ourselves because in that very short time our energy levels had been sapped by the physical exertion and the undulating muddy trail.
    We then hit the smarty tube, a small but long tunnel that was angled uphill, which snagged your belt kit, slowing your progress. Generally this tube was half full of water, making crawling very difficult, because with every forward motion we made a small wave thick with mud that slapped our faces and got in our mouths and eyes.
    There was one tunnel left after the smarty tubes, and on completion of that we had to cock the working parts of our weapon to the rear and the DS would inspect it. If the working parts or barrel were fouled in any way by mud, gravel or a small twig, we would have to go through that tunnel again.
    Having completed all the obstacles there was now the individual 4-mile (6.4-kilometre) run back to camp and onto the range. After an initial short uphill run the road back to camp was mainly downhill from there so we could make up a lot of time until we hit ‘Heatbreak Lane’, and passed the sign on the right: ‘It’s only pain, 500 m to go’. It was hard going on the knees but well worth the effort. All that was left was the range shoot. We quickly checked over our rifles and pulled the barrel through with some cloth threaded through a lanyard to remove any small foreign objects that would interfere with the 5.56 mm projectile. Almost immediately we were given the instructions: ‘Load, action, instant.’ 1 It was then up to the individual to take control of his breathing and apply all the marksmanship principles to put all 10 rounds into the target (or not). As soon as we applied ‘safe’ on our rifles the time stopped. My time was 67 minutes, and I knew I could cut it down after a couple more run-throughs. Once our rifles had been inspected and cleared from the range by the DS, we had to strip the weapons down and thoroughly clean them before handing them back to the armoury. Cleaning included removing all carbon residue from the ignited propellant, scrubbing the bore with a bronze brush to remove carbon and copper fouling from the projectile, and a detailed wipe-down to remove any dirt. Once done the rifle was oiled and returned.
    We also had the bottom field or the ‘battle fitness’ test, to contend with. This included climbing ropes, the assault course and a fireman’s carry for 200 metres that had to be completed in less than 90 seconds, all with kit and rifle. Then our focus shifted to the final exercise that was rapidly approaching. We were both excited and apprehensive about it–excited because it was the last big hurdle we had to get over, and apprehensive as we knew it was going to hurt. This final exercise tested us in everything we had learnt throughout our time in training. It started with a huge yomp into the Dartmoor training area in appalling weather, which remained with us for the entire exercise. To make things worse I badly hurt my foot on the walk in, but continued on as I didn’t want to get back-trooped at such a late stage. We lived in the field for the 10 days and were always on the move. We conducted troop attack after troop attack until it became second