Going Commando

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T
his is a personal reflection on my early years as a Royal Marines recruit. While stories may have been slightly embellished, they are all based on fact or the verbal passing of history through ‘dits'. Names, including my own, have been changed to protect the not-so innocent. It is written through the viewpoint of a naïve young man and, while I may now have slightly matured, I thought it important to be true to my young self to illustrate the hardships one must overcome to become the person one seeks to be.

My wholehearted thanks go to the following people for their selfless assistance during the preparation of this book:

John Blake Publishing, for their patient advice and guidance through the minefield of publishing to such a literary sprog.

Andy Screen, the boss at Golden Rivet, for his creative genius in producing the book cover.

Debbie Howarth and the team at the Go Commando charity; you truly define the word ‘family'.

Finally, Jo, Connor and Finlay, whose patience, support and unconditional love I hardly deserve.

O
ften, when we thumb through the rows of military books on a retailer’s shelf or scroll through endless internet pages looking for our next e-read, we are overwhelmed by the sheer number of autobiographies of men in the thick of the action.

Some people argue that these publications become a fanfare of self-adulation, written to denigrate anyone possessing human faults apparently absent in the author. This observation, however perceived, should not deny the fact that these writers are true heroes. Those unfortunate enough to have been through the hell of war are most deserved of the respect they receive. If I had endured the same degree of danger, been involved in death-defying acts of heroism or survived the unsurvivable, what is to say I wouldn’t have written a book in the same vein?

But I didn’t. I struggled even to make tea, let alone war. That’s because when I joined the military, I was a numpty, an idiot – and a sixteen-year-old idiot at that.

To make matters far worse, I didn’t choose to join any old outfit, one where I would occasionally be able to shed my cloak of imbecility. No, my struggles to achieve competence would be tested daily, as not only was I attempting to undertake the longest infantry training in NATO, I was trying to become a Royal Marines Commando.

While many have tried, few have succeeded in gaining the Royal Marines’ coveted green beret; even fewer have attempted it when so young, short and scrawny – there is a good reason why, in modern times, the Royal Marines have introduced a minimum bodyweight of 65kg to join.

At age sixteen, many boys are discovering the joys of cheap booze, fags and incessant masturbation. Many retain their commitment to sport – be it football, rugby or mini-golf – and those who can look beyond the sticky pages of a second-hand
Penthouse
magazine may see education as their conduit into adulthood.

I didn’t do any of that. I decided to forego the luxury of sleep, comfortable clothing and being indoors during extreme weather, instead choosing a path some said I was neither physically nor mentally ready to tread. Yet as the saying goes, ‘The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.’

This is my journey as a Royal Marines recruit, undertaken as a scraggy, spotty and ludicrously naïve adolescent. It is an account more akin to
The Inbetweeners
than
Bravo Two Zero
,
as was my time in basic training. It is a story intentionally written with a stroke of self-effacement, as humility is a highly-regarded trait in the Royal Marines, despite public perception pointing towards an environment full of pouting testosterone.

Some parts of the book may shock those with no connection to the ‘Royals’. To those wise in the ways, it will hopefully spark some personal recollection of their own travails during their burgeoning years.

Moreover, while this is a military story, it is inherently a book about spirit, written about a time when life was far more fun, when people did more and offended less; about the spirit instilled in me as a child of sixteen by those green-bereted men.

Like my time in the Corps, this memoir is full of fun, exposing the calamities as well as recognising the greatness. But please – don’t expect tales of derring-do. I will leave that to the heroes.

There is little doubt that the Royal Marines are small in number but immense in stature. Formed in 1664, the Corps has developed from a band of 1,200 sea soldiers into an elite modern-day amphibious commando force that is globally revered and feared in equal measure.

There is certainly something in the drinking water at Commando Training Centre, as I have seen at first-hand how the Royal Marines continually produce some of the finest men to grace the shores of the United Kingdom. It may be trifle clichéd, but they truly put the ’Great’ into Great Britain.

My time amongst these men was the greatest that a young man could ever wish for, something I probably took for granted at the time. Yet as I ponder the inconsistencies of life
through the eyes of middle age, I can look back and glow with pride that for a short, but formative, time, I was a Royal Marine – a ‘Bootneck’ – and in a way, I still am.

‘OARMAARM.’

M
ARK
T
IME

TAKE A TRAIN journey along the Avocet line from Exeter St David’s to Exmouth in Devon, and in between stops, through the window to your right, your heart will lift at the green rolling hills that form a poetic backdrop to the shimmering Exe Estuary. Boats with witty names like
Sea U Soon
or
Sir Osis of the River
are either bobbing around their moorings when the tide is in, or stuck on the mud bank like strawberries on a cheesecake when the waters retreat.

Look to your left, and you will see the names of the quaint railway stops that flourished during an era where corseted ladies carried parasols and dapper gentlemen braved the estuary wearing hooped bathing suits: Digby and Sowton, Exton and Polsloe Bridge.

Should you wish to alight at any of these, to soak up the charm of village England, you will see thatched cottages and keen gardeners – most likely named Barbara or Charles – pruning and admiring their floral treasures like proud parents sticking down errant hairs before their child’s first day of school.

But not all of the stops on this line are as welcoming. One in particular allows only a certain few to alight. The platform sign could read ‘Hell’.

What it actually says is ‘Lympstone Commando’.

Behind the barbed wire fencing, huge white rectangular accommodation blocks apparently designed by a sadistic Stalinist architect loom menacingly over a torturous assault course. If you’re lucky, you may see green-clad men running, bent over, soaked to the skin, being shouted at quite rudely by white-vested muscle bosuns. For most, this fleeting glance is as close as they will ever get to the realities of life within such a mysterious place. It is the first view of home to those brave enough to take the tentative steps to enter Commando Training Centre Royal Marines (CTCRM), carrying only a suitcase filled with burning ambition to commence their arduous journey to become a Royal Marines Commando.

I took those first steps onto the platform when I was sixteen years and ten days old. My sixteenth birthday present from the government was a train warrant for Lympstone Commando.

The previous weeks of waiting to turn sixteen had been long ones. After passing my initial aptitude tests and interview at the Royal Navy/Royal Marines Careers Office, I completed a medical. I can’t recall much about it other than it was the
first time I ever had my balls touched. Having it done by an old man who said I had a ‘nice physique’ isn’t how I’d hoped it’d happen. Standing against the height ruler, I measured a smidgeon over the minimum height requirement of 1.64 metres, or 5’4”. Luckily, they didn’t have a minimum weight requirement in those days, as my weedy 55kg child’s body would have definitely failed.

Looking back, I think my obsession with joining up became rather unhealthy. After passing the medical, I’d become so focused on joining that I lost my grip on reality. I was foaming at the mouth to be a Royal Marine. It was like having rabies, but without death or the fear of water. I wanted to join the elite, the commandos, and my pathetic body would have to shape up if I was to succeed.

I secured a job on a not-so-local milk round to get used to waking up during the night, and ran along my route carrying near-frozen bottles of milk as makeshift weights. When I’d finished, before getting changed for school I’d do a hundred press-ups and a hundred sit-ups, then drink my free pint of milk, mixing in a raw egg just like Rocky Balboa.

I used my stepdad’s Bullworker to get massive. If it was good enough for Peter Shilton, it was good enough for me. I remember anxiously checking in the mirror to see whether my T-Rex arms had grown. They hadn’t. I blamed the Bullworker for not giving me instant results, so I started taking cod liver oil tablets. I’d seen an item on Yorkshire TV’s
Calendar
news programme about a champion bodybuilder who consumed them by the handful. But all they did was give me fishy piss to go with my eggy farts. So I started running in my stepdad’s
pit boots, carrying a 20kg weight in my school haversack – an idea so ridiculous I struggle now to imagine what I was thinking of. I rubbed my shoulders and heels raw, covering them in burns and blisters; ironically these injuries would haunt me during the year ahead.

At this juncture, I think I should add that this spectacularly ill thought-out training regime wasn’t even to begin Royal Marines training, but to prepare for the Potential Recruit’s Course (PRC).

The PRC is a three-day selection course in which aspiring commandos prove their suitability to commence the full thirty weeks Royal Marines training. Three quarters of applicants don’t even make it to the PRC, and I’d managed to be one of the other twenty-five per cent – a statistic I was quite happy to share with friends, repeatedly, until they fell asleep; something I found hard to do the night before first attending.

I’d never been so far away without adult accompaniment, and I found the independence exhilarating. I had two days off school, and watched, entranced, as the Yorkshire countryside’s spectrums of green passed by the window of an Intercity train, rather than staring out of my history class window – usually at Dawn, a hot fourth former who sat in an adjacent class. Yet as I steamed further south, the train journey slowly drew me from buoyant excitement to confidence-sinking nerves, as I began to wonder what I was getting myself into.

They say knowledge dispels fear. I’d managed to gain both through watching a video at the recruiting office, reading recruiting pamphlets and eagerly consuming reading material with titles like
Elite Forces, Modern Small Arms
and
Razzle
.
I knew the PRC was three days, as it said so on my return ticket. I guessed there would be a lot of shouting and I’d see commandos running around doing commando-like things for the first time. I certainly knew that I wanted to become one of them, or at least I had when sat at home in the comfort of a teenager’s bedroom.

Now butterflies churned my stomach, and what I’d eaten got lost in the grimy train toilet that became the therapist with whom I disclosed my tangible fear. What had started out as a
Boy’s Own
adventure was quickly turning into a battle for self-belief.

As the looming, white tower blocks of Commando Training Centre came into view, I was in two minds. Would I get off and go through with this madness or take the easy option and remain on the train, another inanimate object passing through to Exmouth? I could tell everyone back home that I missed the connection. They would be none the wiser.

This must be what it feels like to parachute from a plane
, I remember thinking.

The train stopped. The doors opened. I could hear my heartbeat pump through my chest. My knees felt weak. A few young men alighted. It was now or never.

Red on
.

I paused.

Green on
.

Then I followed.

I was surprised at the friendliness of the marine who stood guarding the back gate leading from the Lympstone Commando platform. The corporal in charge didn’t shout
as much as expected, and we were treated far better than a group of young men who, as we walked past, were running around the nearby drill square with weapons above their heads, directed loudly by an unintelligible instructor. I’d never seen weapons carried like that before, and wondered if it was a sneaky commando method.

We were led to the PRC block away from the rest of the camp. Bunk beds with grey blankets, the smells of polish and the outdoors all stimulated memories of the outward bounds centre I’d visited with my school before trekking over the Yorkshire Dales and conquering Ingleborough, one of the famous Three Peaks. Yet I had the feeling this was going to be no holiday.

I cast my nervous eye around the room and tried to weigh up where I stood in the social pecking order. It didn’t take me long to realise I was at the bottom. All the other lads seemed older than me, and they were definitely bigger. One of them even had a moustache! It was with a slight conceit that I noted one lad wore an earring, so I pushed myself one rung up the ladder. Surely people who had ear piercings would never get through? I opened the fluorescent orange PVC sports bag that had served me faithfully through my secondary school years and looked to my side where the bloke next to me, who wore a military-issue jumper, had something I recognised from the recruiting pamphlets. He noticed me looking longingly at it.

‘Alright?’

He was the first cockney I had ever met in real life, and he appeared to be far more confident than I.

‘Ayup,’ I returned, hoping I didn’t sound as meek as I felt. ‘What’s that?’

He then gave that scoffing sound which generally means ‘idiot’. ‘
Pppfff!
Don’t you know what it is?’

If I’d been more confident I’d have probably given a rather sarcastic retort, but under the circumstances I just said, ‘No.’

‘It’s webbing. 58 pattern.’

I could have said, ‘Webbing? Isn’t that on a duck’s foot?’ Or, ‘58 pattern? Isn’t that something you do with knitting?’ Knitting knowledge might have made me sound a little more self-assured. Instead, I said, ‘What’s it for?’

‘It’s for carrying all your kit in,’ said my new mate. ‘Look.’

He opened a couple of the pouches. Inside one I recognised shiny metal mess tins. From the other he unfurled a green roll that contained his toothpaste and toothbrush.

How very convenient
, I thought, and so much better than the small sandwich bag I’d brought. Storing my toothbrush next to my soap would give cleaning my teeth a rather more carbolic flavour than was ideal.

‘Why have you got that?’ I said, with honest naivety.

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ he said. ‘I’m prepared for anything. Look, I’ve even got some cord in case my shoelaces break.’

I nodded with feigned awe. Personally, I wore Velcro-strapped trainers.

‘I carry it around with me all the time,’ he said, airily. ‘I’m a sergeant in the Army Cadet Corps. Look.’ He turned to show me the three stripes on the right arm of his jumper. I was impressed. The only three stripes I’d ever owned were on my football boots. ‘I’m either joining the Royal Marines or the
Parachute Regiment. I can’t make up my mind, so I am going for both and then I’m going to pick the best.’

Wow!
He was the man. He seemed very knowledgeable about all this military malarkey, and it didn’t take me long to slip back to the bottom of the pecking order as the communal conversations about military stuff started. I had absolutely no clue about any of it; even the bloke with the earring knew more than me.

I found myself withdrawing into isolation. I didn’t want to embarrass myself even more, so I spoke only when spoken to and only about things I knew about, i.e. football and the world’s capital cities – a specialty of mine which, in truth, wasn’t much use as a conversation piece.

Dinner was a trip into the unknown. The eating hall or ‘galley’ was a cacophony of cutlery and animalistic devouring of meals, reminding me of my childhood days at Pontins Holiday camps, but with skin headed recruits rather than chain-smoking families. I approached the hotplate. It displayed exotic delights that I’d never seen before. I recognised the sliced beef slapped, limp and forlorn, onto my plate with such force that gravy splattered my one clean shirt. I scooped some oily roast potatoes onto my plate before pondering the culinary conundrum of the other vegetables.

The beef-throwing chef waved his tongs impatiently. As a commando chef he could probably use them as a deadly weapon. On this occasion he just used them as a pointing device. ‘You waiting for a bus, Lofty?’ he said as I stared into the rack of food.

‘Uh, just need some advice.’

‘Advice? Do I look like Claire fucking Rayner? Get your scran and piss off, there’s a queue behind you.’

I rushed to pick up the tongs that sat in a bunch of unidentifiable green stuff. ‘What are these tree things?’ I asked the bloke with the earring who stood behind me.

‘Tree things?’ interrupted the ear-twitching chef, laughing manically. ‘Are you from a fucking orphanage? It’s broccoli, numb nuts, full of iron and puts hairs on your chest. So I suggest you get some down your grid. It may even put a brain in your head.’

I didn’t dare ask him what the tray of small yellow cube things were.

We spent the evening trying on ill-fitting combat gear for the following day’s outdoor activities, and then squeezed into an overly-warm room where we were shown countless videos about the Royal Marines. I’d read in one of my newly-acquired books that this technique was used by the SAS to encourage unsuitable people to fall asleep; so to coin an old Yorkshire phrase, there was no way I was going to let a ferret piss in my lug. Some amateurs did submit to the warmth, and were summarily brought out of their slumber by the sharp-eyed corporal. The eye-testing evening continued as he lectured us on such things as the Royal Marines’ Victoria Cross winners and the qualities of a commando.

‘There are four qualities that distinguish a commando. Does anyone know what they are?’

A silence followed. I pondered the question. From what I had seen you certainly needed to be up for a laugh, but I didn’t have the confidence to say so.

‘Quality Street?’ said some smart Alec to a paucity of chuckles.

The corporal didn’t really see the funny side of it either. Even if the joke was shit, I wondered whether I should cross a sense of humour off my mental list.

‘Courage,’ said the corporal, thus commencing a discussion on what constituted courage – not in the way Plato’s Socrates might have but in the manner of a Royal Marines corporal.

‘Determination’ was number two. The corporal cheerfully insisted a number of us would lack the determination even to get through the next day, though he admitted he’d be happy to be proved wrong.

Surely a sense of humour would be number three?