First Into Action (4 page)
I was four months short of my nineteenth birthday when I stepped on to the train at Charing Cross Station carrying a small suitcase. I had said goodbye to my father at home. He gave me an awkward hug and wished me luck. I think he was about as surprised at me joining the Marines as I was. I still knew nothing about what I was getting into. I had not received any instructions other than where to report – no programme, no descriptions, no list of requirements, nothing. I had not even bothered to find out any more about the Marines. All I knew was what I saw on their posters – they wore green berets and cam-cream. I felt I was embarking on a journey to a new world and I did not have a clue what to expect.
On the train I picked up a discarded newspaper to pass the time. The first article I read was about the North Sea and the huge oil and gas fields that were opening up there. Oil company executives were worried about where they were going to find the divers they needed to work on the platforms. The North Sea offers some of the worst diving conditions in the world because of the cold and constant storms. The thought of being a deep-sea diver one day appealed to me, but I had no idea there were other implications in that article that, six months later, would change my life.
I walked through the train to see if I could spot other likely recruits. I had this idea that I was not quite big enough for the commandos even though I’d been selected to try them out. I counted half a dozen who fitted my picture of a Marine, all much bigger and harder looking than me.
When the train finally stopped at Deal, I stepped off it and headed along the platform to where a large Royal Marine corporal was barking for recruits to come forward and hand him their joining papers. I merged with the converging crowd of young men and held up mine. Those around me looked like boys too and were all shapes and sizes. I don’t think any of the men I had selected on the train were amongst them. I did not realise the corporal was reaching for my papers and that my hand was drifting away from his as I looked around. He lunged forward, snatched my papers then lowered his face inches from mine.
‘You little germ,’ he said, as bits of spittle hit my face. ‘You just went to the top of my list to straighten out – if you make it through today that is.’
He kept glaring at me as he collected the rest of the papers. I was already a marked man.
Seventy-eight of us piled into the back of several four-ton trucks outside the station and we headed for the camp. As we drove through the town I looked out the back down on to the ordinary people in the streets going about their everyday lives. I felt different from them, as if I was off to serve some kind of sentence. For all that, it did not seem as if I was in the wrong place. I didn’t want to be anyone other than myself at that moment. I found the whole experience fascinating and that fascination stayed with me throughout my career. No matter where I went or who I met, even the rich or famous with their fancy lifestyles, I knew they did not envy me, but nor did I them, not when all was totalled up. Today, when I smell diesel exhaust fumes, I often have flashes of those early days in training as a young man riding in the back of a four-tonner, and inside I smile.
When we arrived at Deal camp we piled out of the trucks and were shouted at by half-a-dozen Marine instructors to form ranks and march. This was our first attempt at anything military and of course we were useless. I was still curious about my new-found colleagues, many of whom did not look like my idea of a Royal Marine Commando. It seemed obvious to me that many would fail and I wondered what would make them quit. I never wondered that about myself. It’s not that I had made any deep pledge to myself not to quit, or that I was gung-ho and consciously determined to pass. I just never considered it, nor did I think for a second about what I would do if I failed. I felt as though I was there to observe the Marine Commando course even though I was taking part. I had always felt like I was on the periphery and looking in, and this was no different. I would be there at the end, simple as that.
The first man to quit, about two hours after we arrived, had had his hair cut and styled early that morning in an expensive London salon, presumably believing the Marines would be so impressed with his coiffure that they would bend the rules. The recruit’s hair was heavily bonded together with hairspray and I watched the camp barber as he gleefully concentrated on the job of clipping the recruit’s hair off in one solid, helmet-shaped piece. He got half of it off before it dropped to the floor and lay there like a bird’s nest. The recruit walked out of the barber’s shop and straight out of the camp. The next two quitters walked out of the main auditorium a few hours later in the middle of the camp commander’s welcome speech. He told us that one of us in the room would be likely to be killed somewhere in the world in the next three years if we passed through training. It seemed there were some recruits who knew less about the Marines than I did. I at least had accepted that, being soldiers, they did, on occasion, die.
During the first two weeks, if we were not doing educational and medical tests, we were sprinting up and down the gym, climbing ropes, or in the barracks-room (grots) learning boot and brass-buckle cleaning, and for some, basic personal hygiene. The Royal Marines were part of the Navy and Navy hygiene was of the highest order. Early morning shaves in the surf on the beach was a favourite way the instructors had to make that point, and those recruits who did not have facial hair had to practise for when they did. Locals passing by appeared to think nothing of seeing a bunch of recruits attempting to shave as the cold waves broke over their heads.
One day I was sprinting through the camp alone to join my troop after having been for a medical examination – recruits ran everywhere or stood to attention, there was no in between. Up ahead I saw a Marine walking towards me in full dress uniform. I was not sure what to do as I sped towards him. We had not been allowed to go anywhere by ourselves as yet and were marched everywhere as a squad. If we passed an officer the squad was ordered to give an ‘Eyes right!’ We had not been taught how to salute yet.
I didn’t want to make a mistake and so I rehearsed it quickly in my mind. As I closed on him I hit the brakes stopping a few feet short of him, came to attention smartly and gave him a stiff salute.
He brushed passed without returning my salute and said, ‘Don’t salute me, you wanker, I’m just a corporal. And anyway that’s how the Yanks do it.’
The purpose of the first two weeks of training was to get rid of the dead wood, and this they did. We were down to about fifty-five recruits when we climbed aboard the four-tonners to leave Deal, this time in uniform, with blue recruit berets (the green ones were presented only to those who passed selection) and heavy boots, carrying sausage-bags filled with our new military kit (we didn’t have rifles yet, we hadn’t even held one). We were bound for the main Commando Training Centre (CTC) in Lympstone, near Exmouth in Devon. Mine was one of the last troops to do their first two weeks in Deal. The next time I saw the camp at Deal was in photographs several years later, after an IRA bomb exploded there killing ten Royal Marine bandsmen.
Whereas Deal was old and steeped in Naval history, CTC was a huge, modern military complex more like a small town. My first morning there, whilst heading across the camp for breakfast, I reached the top of a wide flight of stairs and found myself at the back of a large crowd of recruits which was only part of a very long, broad queue waiting to enter the galley. There were over two thousand recruits in CTC and nearly every one of them was here in front of me anxiously waiting to shove cereal, fried eggs, beans and sausages down their throats before the long day’s workload. It was an impressive sight to see that number of soldiers, and I was just a little speck amongst them. It turned out that the queue was unusual – the duty chef had either lost the keys to the main entrance to the galley or forgotten to open the doors. Someone at the front of the queue started to
baa
like a sheep, and soon everyone joined in. We all
baaed
as loud as we could, all two thousand of us. It was strange to think that only about a third of us would survive the course to wear the coveted green beret. The NCOs and officers, chomping in their own messes, must have wondered what the hell was going on.
When a new troop arrives at CTC to begin the commando training course it begins at the bottom of a ladder, each rung representing two weeks of the twenty-four-week course (twenty-six in total, counting Deal).
This course is for senior recruits, those of seventeen and a half and older. Junior recruits, those who join at sixteen, do a slightly different, extended commando course because they cannot join a regular fighting unit until they are eighteen. As each troop is two weeks apart, the previous troop becomes that much more senior. Whatever the troop ahead of yours is doing that day, your troop will be doing in two weeks’ time, and the troop behind you is doing what you did two weeks ago. When the troop ahead was seen returning to camp filthy and exhausted having been away for a gruelling week somewhere you knew you had that to look forward to. On the flip-side, it was a good feeling when you came back from a week of hell and saw the faces of the troop behind yours as they watched you shuffle back to the grots.
There were six recruits to a room in CTC and when we first moved into the accommodation block we occupied thirteen rooms. Each week the number of recruits in the troop dwindled and survivors were moved to keep the rooms up to six where possible. By the end we were down to five rooms. Recruits in commando training are called noddies because of the way they tend to whip to rigid attention when questioned by an instructor and nod or shake their heads wide-eyed while they answer.
One of the instructors on our training team was a corporal named Jakers. Jakers wore a permanent scowl whenever he was around noddies and made it obvious at every opportunity that he considered us the lowest form of life. One day a handful of us were debating the characteristics of a particular military weapon while we hung around outside the NAAFI during a break, having a wet of tea.
‘Ask Jakers,’ one of my squaddies said as he pointed up the road (‘squaddy’ is a term that usually refers to regular Army soldiers, but Royal Marines also use it to describe someone who is or was in their recruit troop).
Jakers was walking down the main drag towards us. I was nudged forward to ask the question. I had already gained a reputation for repeatedly asking questions in lectures until I understood the answer, showing a confidence I never had before. I stepped forward and politely posed the question to Jakers. He didn’t slow down as he glanced at me and his nose wrinkled as if I was a bad smell.
‘Fuck off and talk to me when you’re a Marine,’ he said as he passed.
All ‘green lids’ (green berets – full Marines) communicated with noddies using similar courtesy. It was part of the process – a growing pain. Commando training was one huge serving of hardship with a good-sized helping of fun on the side, for those who were willing to make the best of it. Reality did raise its ugly head on occasion though.
One hot, sunny day, during a twenty-mile run/walk with rifle and full equipment while in columns of three, we passed a recruit lying still by the side of the road. He belonged to another troop up ahead doing a similar run and he was still wearing full equipment. The recruit’s head was covered by a towel and he was lying on his back part way up the grass verge with one of his legs turned out in an unnaturally relaxed manner. One of his instructors stood above him holding his rifle and watched us with a blank expression as we doubled past. We all sensed the recruit was dead. I thought of the only other dead person I had ever seen, a nun back in the orphanage. She had been our English teacher. There must have been a shortage of paper in the orphanage because we used to write mostly on the back of old Christmas cards. When you went up to her desk to ask for more paper she would hastily tear a card along its crease and draw lines in pencil across the blank part for you to write on. The lines were never straight or the same distance apart and always curved down the page to the right. One morning, instead of us all walking into the classroom at the period change, we were made to line up outside. There were about twenty of us. I was about eight. None of us knew why we were lining up. We were told to be quiet. We never disobeyed the nuns. The atmosphere was grave. When we finally filed into the small classroom we saw our English teacher lying on her back on several desks that had been moved together to support her. She was at my chest height. Her eyes were closed and her hands were crossed over her chest. After passing around her we were filed back out of the room.
The Marine recruit had died of a heart attack.
When the last week of the commando course finally arrived only twenty-five out of the original seventy-eight members of my squad remained. I stood on the huge parade ground the size of several football pitches in my white pith helmet, white gloves and navy-blue uniform and a Marine band marched and played in the background. I had reached the top rung of the ladder. We were the Kings’s Squad, the name given to the most senior troop in recruit training. The occasion was made more memorable by an event that had happened earlier that morning when we first arrived on the parade ground.
Discipline, especially when marching in a column of three ranks in full dress uniform, is iron in the Marines and it’s instant death to turn your head, even slightly, to look at something – the white pith helmet would give the movement away. When we marched on to the parade ground that morning the whole troop was straining to look out of the corner of their eyes at something unusual parked in the middle of it. We were brought to a resounding halt, but still did not dare turn to look.
The drill instructor screamed, ‘Left turn’na!’
Twenty-five men moved as one and our feet came together with a crack that could be heard across the River Exe a mile away. We had drilled throughout the six-month training course for this day, but this final week had been spent doing little else so that we would be faultless in front of Lord Louis Mountbatten, which we were. It was with some relief that we turned for we could now see what was in the centre of the parade ground.