Nijmegen Four-Day March, 1984

Last week, I found some Kodak disc negatives in an old box that I had forgotten about long ago.  I knew they were from the '80s but had no idea what type of pictures might be on them.  The first challenge was finding a photo shop that could scan them since this type of film went out of style in the late '80's.  Fortunately, I did find a shop but they warned me that doing this would be a bit expensive with no guarantee of the pictures' quality or even if they'd come out at all.  Well, I picked them up yesterday and the quality was relatively good.  The subject was also a pleasant surprise as these pictures were taken in 1984 in Nijmegen, Holland during the annual four-day march.  This event occurs in July of every year and both civilians and military teams participate.  As a matter of fact, my army team was chosen after six months of intensive training and being culled from an original group of about 150 to only 12 participants.  I never thought of myself as being in great physical shape but that wasn't what was needed for this event.  One only required mental endurance to finish the long marches in combat boots and uniform. 

This picture was taken as we were loading our gear onto vehicles that would transport it to our base camp where we would start every day's march.  More coming tomorrow!