If you want it bad enough, you’ll pass. - Bear Grylls

In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm.
My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect.
Somehow I had to get on that chopper with him.
I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross onto my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting.
One chance.
What the heck.
Neil shook his head at me, smiling.
“God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors.
“You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,” I replied, with a smile. “And I’m your man.” (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy — and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.)
The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy.
“I have to accompany him at all times,” I shouted back over the engine noise. “His feet might fall off at any moment,” I added quietly.
The pilot looked back at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve.
He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me.
“Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.” I shook his hand firmly.
Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself.
And with that the pilot took off and disappeared from view.
Mick and Henry were laughing.
“If you pull this one off, Bear, I will eat my socks. You just love to push it, don’t you?” Mick said, smiling.
“Yep, good try, but you aren’t going to see him again, I guarantee you,” Henry added.
Thanks to the pilot’s big balls, he was wrong.
The heli returned empty, I leapt aboard, and with the rotors whirring at full power to get some grip in the thin air, the bird slowly lifted into the air.
The stall warning light kept buzzing away as we fought against gravity, but then the nose dipped and soon we were skimming over the rocks, away from base camp and down the glacier.
I was out of there — and Mick was busy takin

Through all these times and formative young years, Lara, my sister, was a rock to me. My mother had suffered three miscarriages after having Lara, and eight years on she was convinced that she wasn’t going to be able to have more children. But Mum got pregnant, and she tells me she spent nine months in bed to make sure she didn’t miscarry.
It worked. Mum saved me.
The end result, though, was that she was probably pleased to get me out, and that Lara finally got herself a precious baby brother; or in effect, her own baby. So Lara ended up doing everything for me, and I adored her for it.
While Mum was a busy working mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate — from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed and to brush my teeth.
In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes.
I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of.

Samuel Smiles ends his book with the following moving story of the “gentleman” general:

The gentleman is characterized 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.