Jay Morton - Soldier

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

FIRST EDITION

Jay Morton 2020

Cover design by Claire Ward HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photograph Matt Hardy Photography

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Jay Morton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008418151

Ebook Edition November 2020 ISBN: 9780008418175

Version: 2020-10-15

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To everyone who has influenced my life for the better and for the worse. To my family who have always been my family regardless of the shit I put them through. And to you, the reader I hope my experiences and the lessons Ive learned will inspire you to believe there is always more and there is always a way.

MOUNT EVEREST, MAY 2019

Im in trouble here.

A thin cone of light from my head torch cuts through the darkness. Its just enough for me to see the rocks and snow beneath my feet and in front of my face before the beam peters out and fades, swallowed up by the night. I can only hear three sounds: the wild howl of the wind, the clinking of my carabiners and the ragged gasping of my own breath. I dont know what time it is, other than that its the middle of the night, the witching hour at which anyone with a modicum of sense would be tucked up in a sleeping bag and tent. Its a long time since I left Camp 1 and a long time till I arrive at Camp 2.

If I ever get there, that is.

Like I said, Im in trouble. Big trouble. Real trouble. And thats not a figure of speech.

Im freezing cold, and no matter what I do I just cant get warm. My bodys struggling to generate heat, even though Im wearing all the kit I could find. Its because I havent eaten or slept enough. Im so cold Im not even shivering, and thats not good. Shivering is your bodys way of trying to warm itself up. If I could go quicker then perhaps Id get a bit warmer, but Im so tired that I need to rest after pretty much every step. Its a vicious circle. I need to move quicker to warm up, but Im too cold to do anything other than trudge. The slower I go the colder I become, and the colder I become the slower I go. Ive got no energy left, absolutely none. Even though my bodys trying to work hard its a steady climb at an altitude of more than 6,000 metres, where theres half as much oxygen as at sea level nothing hurts. I cant feel any lactic acid in my legs or muscle burn in my arms. I cant feel anything. Thats the problem. Its like someones turned the tap off or taken the plug out, and there go my last reserves of energy, dribbling away down the drain.

One step. Rest. One step. Rest. One step. Rest. And each time the gap between steps seems to grow just a little. Have to keep going. Want to stop. Want to rest up here a while and get some strength back, though how thats going to happen without warmth or food is anyones guess. Still. Just stop for a bit, eh? Summon up the old sinews for a final push.

Body shutting down. Mind shutting down.

Through the fog in my brain, I realise that Im going hypothermic.

There are three stages to hypothermia. First its mild, where the body is doing all it can to preserve heat: shivering, quick and shallow breathing, elevated pulse rate, contraction of blood vessels. Next comes moderate, where you become confused and forgetful, your speech gets slurred, your reflexes slow down and your fine motor skills start to go. Right now I reckon Im in the early part of stage two.

And I really dont want to go any further down Hypothermia Highway, because the last stage and often the terminal one is severe. Its a gradual shutdown of bodily functions, basically: your heart rate drops, your respiratory rate drops, your blood pressure drops and most of all your core temperature drops. You become so confused that you start to hallucinate, and your senses are so scrambled that quite often you start to take your clothes off because you feel too hot rather than too cold and taking your clothes off when its 20 degrees below with a savage wind chill to boot is only going to end one way. Plenty of corpses have been found partially or totally naked on the higher reaches of mountains.

Im not at that stage yet, but if I stop for too long I will be. Even though I know what might happen, Im not scared or panicky either. Im quite chilled, in fact. Thats the killer here, that its so easy to accept, so welcoming and seductive. I could sit down and never stand up. I could lie down and drift off to sleep. All very serene and painless.

A sudden vision comes into my head: all the blokes in Camp 2, just up the mountain from me but right now as remote as the moon, waking up to find that a bodys been found just short of their tents. Some poor, stupid bastard whod tried to get there but had fallen just short.

Some poor, stupid bastard called Jay Morton, in fact. This is my own death Im seeing.

I made it to Camp 2, of course, or else you wouldnt be reading this (or at least it would have taken the concept of ghostwriting to a whole new level.)

It wasnt the first time Id faced the prospect of my own death, and Im sure it wont be the last. Thats not me being all macho and full of bravado, but just matter of fact: when you voluntarily put yourself in dangerous situations you accept that sometimes youll be taken to the edge. As youll read later in the book, me being alone on Everest that night was actually the least worst option, bizarre as that may sound. I wasnt doing that climb solo and knackered because I wanted to. I was doing it because every possible alternative was more rather than less likely to kill me.

A brief bit of background. I was born in 1984 in the Lancashire city of Preston, and spent my childhood there. Some lads who went on to serve in the Special Forces have real horror stories of being brought up, proper Oliver Twist stuff or worse. Mine wasnt anything like that. It was just a pretty normal, unremarkable childhood. I was an adventurous kid who never liked being indoors, and I had a short attention span. These days Id be diagnosed with ADHD or hyperactivity, but back then I was just a low-level pain in the arse, constantly distracted and getting into trouble. I wasnt a bad kid, and I certainly wasnt a mean kid: I just didnt like school much, and the feeling was pretty mutual. The best times I had at school were on the sports pitch, where I played rugby league (and to any southerners reading who think that league isnt proper rugby, youre very welcome to come up north and say that ).