Authors: Mark Time
Going Commando (10 page)
As if training and stomaching a bagrat wasn’t hard enough, those recruits who didn’t come up to scratch in their personal administration were either charged or put on ‘crabby recruit routine’. To be put onto ‘crabby’ was a fate worse than death. Not only were you ordered to parade five extra times in every
uniform that you held, you were tainted as being ‘dirty’. The fact that those on ‘crabby’ were godly clean compared to civilians was irrelevant. Even being found with a stone embedded into the sole of a polished boot in a clean locker could be sufficient reason to find oneself on crabby recruit routine. By Royal Marines standards they were lepers: dirty, filthy tramps who were pariahs to the mainstream recruits. Fortunately, my administration was of sufficient standard. However, on a week-eight exercise called Hunter’s Moon I was found out.
Piss-wet through all week, the exercise was a continual trial of yomping from one harbour position to another, interspersed with practising our map-reading skills, camouflage and concealment for stalking activities, and observation stances where we would try to find a water bottle hiding in a bush or a torch sneakily tucked behind a tree. The October rain – ‘It’s not rain, it’s liquid sunshine,’ we were told – let up for around two hours on the Wednesday night, but that was irrelevant as we were being crash moved yet again, dragging all our saturated kit through the mud of Woodbury Common. On the Thursday morning, with little sleep, yet another field inspection was scheduled.
I was extra tired, truly hanging out of my hoop. That night I had been on sentry and Hopkins was my relief. As per normal, ten minutes before the end of my watch I’d scramble through the bivvies, having noted previously where he’d be. The harbour position always looked different in the wooded blackness and any of us could trip over bivvies and bits of errant kit, or just fall into holes in the ground. I eventually found him.
‘Hopkins, your turn for sentry,’ I whispered.
‘Nah mate, wrong bivvy. I woke you up.’
This was a usual ploy and one I’d tried before getting kicked for it. Some had even denied who they were, preferring instead to get a precious five more minutes sleep while the confused recruit bimbled around looking for them, then realised he’d been correct all along.
‘No, Elliott woke me up. It’s your turn.’
He jumped from his bivvy still wrapped in his sleeping bag.
‘I’m not getting up. Fuck off.’
I was taken aback, this lad was supposed to be my best mate – not that I had many others to choose from. He shrivelled back into the dampness of his bivvy. He obviously didn’t realise it was me.
‘It’s me, Timey. Mate, you okay? You can’t go back to sleep.’ It’s hard to be assertive when whispering.
‘Seriously, fuck off. Leave me alone.’
Although he wasn’t the happiest of fellows, he seemed to take to training with far more ease than someone like me. But here he was blatantly refusing to do his job. What could I do? I wouldn’t grass him up to the training team. I certainly couldn’t wake anyone else up. They were hardly going to volunteer to get up an hour early in the pouring rain to do extra sentry duty.
My only option was to return to position and do Hopkins’ sentry. That feeling of smugness when just about to go to sleep had ebbed away, and here I was again with cold rain falling down the back of my neck, trickling iced water down my spine like some Devonian water torture. Looking into the blackness
of pine forests, I could only wonder what the fuck was wrong with Hopkins.
I didn’t manage to speak to him once stand down had been called after first light. He was keeping himself to himself behind the screen of his bivvy, saying little while eating his breakfast bacon grill from the tin.
On morning inspection being called, we hurriedly clustered together in our sections, laid out all our equipment as neatly as we could on our soaking wet ponchos, and stripped down our weapons for field conditions.
As I stood at ease behind my poncho, I looked across to the other section where the Unsmiling Assassin was on his haunches inspecting the underneath of mess tins, the cleanliness of bayonets that were never used, and checking the amount of water in bottles. Anything less than full and it would be emptied, a rather strange punishment for not having a full complement of water. The guys in his section tended to be the better recruits and we put it down to them being shit-scared of their section commander.
‘Why are your boots muddy, Lofty?’ asked the Unsmiling Assassin politely, as he always did.
The recruit answered with a shivering mouth, ‘’Cos it’s… it’s… muddy, Corporal.’
Yet his logical gibbering wasn’t due to him being scared of the punishment that awaited – he was fucking frozen. Awaiting him were a number of ways to warm him up, none of which could be considered desirable.
The cold gnawed at my bones too. My stinging ears took note of the activity to my right as Corporal Stevens inspected
my fellow section members. As he approached, nervousness rose from my stomach as it always did. I would always get picked up for something and my press-ups were legendary.
Corporal Stevens came into view with a mess tin swinging from his finger. He lobbed it into the undergrowth behind and turned to Davies who he had just inspected.
‘Off you go, Davies, crawl and get it back. You can start from that puddle.’
Davies lay down next to the fetid puddle at his feet. But that was a slight understatement: it was, in fact, a large fuck-off pool of muddy water, seemingly made by the many trucks that had ploughed these soft tracks.
‘Stop!’ Corporal Stevens exclaimed. ‘The middle of the puddle is your starting point, lightweight. Get in there and then start.’
Davies slipped onto his hands and knees into the brown water that mirrored his despondency.
‘Leopard crawl, fuckwit, not monkey crawl,’ added Corporal Stevens, just to make Davies’ burden a little moister.
Corporal Stevens then benevolently turned his attention back to me. ‘Time…’
‘Good morning, Corporal.’
‘Is it a good morning, Time?’
‘Up to now, Corporal, yes.’ My eyes did not move as he bent down to pick up my weapon.
‘Hmm, well, looks like it’s going to go downhill from here, then.’
The muzzle of my SLR came into my eye line as it was thrust towards my face.
‘What’s that there?’ He motioned towards the flash eliminator, which was now an inch from my bleary eye.
I looked. Inside one of the eliminator grooves was a patch of brown.
‘Cake?’ I asked, more in hope than certitude.
I didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or punch my head in. ‘Cake? Fucking cake?’
It was a fair response. I couldn’t actually recall eating any cake during the week, let alone while cleaning my weapon. It did appear a foolhardy thing to do just in case crumbs
did
fall into the flash eliminator.
‘It’s fucking rust! Not fucking cake. Give me fifty.’
So while I was doing fifty very wet and heavy press-ups, and listening to Davies getting his lanyard stuck in the gorse he was crawling through, Corporal Stevens was recounting my story to the other members of the training team, asking them whether it was indeed ginger or Dundee cake while levelling a variety of quite offensive names at me.
‘You realise a rusty weapon is a chargeable offence, numpty bollocks?’ said Corporal Stevens after I’d finished my press ups.
I did now. On my return to camp, not only had I learnt a new phrase of abuse, but was marched into the company commander’s office to be lectured on the importance of my weapon being clean. I was to be charged £50 – a week’s wage – and seven days restricted privileges (RPs), which meant I could not go ashore at the weekend. I just hoped I’d stocked up on enough green string.
As if I wasn’t busy enough, having RPs meant I now had
to report to the guardroom at 06.00, 18.00, and 22.00 in my half-lovat uniform, to be inspected and lectured about weapons cleanliness by the bored guard commander who was probably pissed off that my presence took him away from him watching television.
‘Here you go, Lofty, just to confirm you have understood what I’ve said you can give me a confirmatory demonstration on how to clean,’ said the guard commander, throwing me some rags and a tin of Brasso. ‘For the next half an hour you can busy yourself by making those cannons glisten.’
I looked at the cannons that flanked the guardroom door. How I was to make them glisten even more I didn’t know. But I gave it a good go.
‘Right, that’s half an hour, Lofty. Let’s see how we’ve got on, shall we?’ said the guard commander, probably during the TV advert breaks.
I’d rubbed the brass cannons so hard I was surprised a genie hadn’t appeared. But to me, the before and after shots were the same.
To the corporal, who had super commando eyesight, the cannons appeared to be shit. ‘Have you been sat on your arse out here doing fuck all?’
I had been sat on my arse, that was true, but doing fuck all could hardly be confused with furious polishing.
‘You’ve got another fifteen minutes before you can stand down. These cannons better be a far sight better or you can stay another hour.’ With that warning he returned to watch the second half of
Blockbusters
, or whatever else was on.
I recommenced my polishing with the same gusto as a
masturbating convict. After the additional fifteen minutes I stood back to admire my work. The extra polishing still left them identical to when I started, the only difference being the mirrored reflection of a setting sun. My work seemed futile.
Blockbusters
had obviously finished. ‘Right, let’s have another look,’ said the guard commander, tensing his biceps as if he’d just risen from his bed. ‘That’s better, see what happens when you put the effort in?’
Now that he had determined the cannons were glistening acceptably, I returned to my grot knowing that at 22.00 I would be doing it all again, just in the dark.
Despite all this bullshit, these lessons were important ones. Before I could become a commando I had to become a good soldier. Before I could become a good soldier I had to get the basics right, and keeping my weapon clean was part of the ABC of soldiering.
* * *
Post-exercise admin was always a day of drudgery, and after Hunter’s Moon we had to work extra hard to ensure every single item of kit was emptied, scrubbed inside and out, washed, dried and then, if necessary, ironed. The metal ablutions sinks was busy with the sounds of webbing clanging against metal, boots sprayed with hot water and nailbrushes scrubbing anything with even a suggestion of mud.
With my scrubbed boots in the drying room I went to check how they were doing, like a chef assessing his rising Yorkshire puddings. The drying room was a small, dark, dank-smelling
place where heated radiators made it warmer than most, and an ideal hiding spot for recruits on night duty during the winter. On entering, I found Hopkins sat cross-legged with his boots in front of him. He was crying. I had never seen a fully grown man cry before. I was clueless as to what to do, so I just stood pathetically with a mouth that wanted to say something but a head that held back.
‘You okay?’ It was the best I could do.
He splayed his hands in front of him. ‘Someone has nicked the paper out of my boots,’ he cried.
I thought he was joking. Crying over the theft of newspaper we put in our boots to quicken the drying process?
‘Why would someone do that?’
I had no idea, so I offered him the paper from mine.
‘It’s no use, they’re ruined now.’
I was becoming even more confused. Over the last couple of weeks Hopkins had become ever more withdrawn. Since leave I could count on one hand how many times he had actually laughed, despite my ‘What’s blue and white and lives in a tree?’ joke. (It’s a fridge in a denim jacket, by the way).
I sat down and faced him, also cross-legged. If disturbed now, we might have been mistaken for two lovers missing the tranquillity of solitude. It was clear he had suffered enough. He had mentioned to his father while on leave that his heart wasn’t in the military, but his father insisted that most found the first few weeks of military training the most difficult and in four weeks he can’t have decided whether or not it was right for him. Pressurised to return, he was another four weeks further on and still knew it wasn’t for him.
I had to bow down in admiration of him. We had been thrashed night and day and he was still there, unlike the many that had decided it was all a bit too much and left. Yet Hopkins was only a sideshow in his own mini-tragedy. His competency, fitness and character were never in question, but he had suffered for his selfless obligation to family tradition without the will to find his own path. Without willpower, no matter how switched on a recruit may be, completing Royal Marines training is a near-impossible task and Hopkins was evidently past his breaking point.
He then confided that he had bought four packs of paracetamol the previous weekend from numerous chemists to avoid suspicion. He had swallowed thirty before he puked them all back up, his body rejecting the chemical that was included for that very purpose.
I listened intently. It was a cry for help. Here was I, the only emotional response given in my life so far was to pretend to cry holding a comatose Snow White in a school play (I was typecast as a dwarf) and now I was listening to someone who had tried to take his own life.
We talked for an age until we decided that he should see the Padre, the military conduit to God. I wasn’t a religious man but I knew he’d have the empathy that was missing from the training team, something someone of Hopkins’ disposition really needed.
It was a Friday afternoon. On Monday morning, Hopkins was on a one-way train back home, to the surprise of everyone including the training team.
‘We’re something, aren’t we? The only animals that shove things up their ass for survival.’
P
APILLON
BY
H
ENRI
C
HARRIÈRE
THE INTENSITY OF military training didn’t let up. Indeed, it became harder as week nine turned to week ten. Days were long and nights were short. A typical day would commence at 05.30:
The alarm wakes me instantly. As usual I wake in the same position that I had fallen asleep, my Walkman headphones still covering my ears. It is as if within my deep sleep subliminal messages have been constantly transmitting, ‘Do not crease sheets, do not crease sheets.’ My aching body seems to weigh more, increasing the
difficulty of rising from the mattress that, while cheap and nasty, always fulfils its purpose. A shit, shower and shave is the morning ritual, a precursor to the scientific rebuild of my bedding, prior to drawing our weapons from the armoury. It hardly caters to its clients; it is only open between 06.30 and 07.30, forcing us to stand in a long, but swift moving, queue.
Weapons secured in lockers, we run to the galley to get breakfast along with the other thousand or so recruits – cue more queuing. Shuffling forward in the never-ending scran queue is often the only time we don’t get hassle so it’s an opportune time to look over the balcony to observe the other nods. I recognise who is ahead of us in training. Which week exactly, I don’t know, but I know they are nearer the end and wonder how they managed to survive through the weeks we have yet to face. It is easy, amidst the smell of grease and disinfectant, the rattle of crockery and hubbub of amalgamated chatter, to see the sea of nods below as clones. We have the same crew-cut haircuts and wear the same, possibly differently coloured, Royal Marines sweatshirts or T-shirts. Variations of this are tops reading, ‘God Is A Para’ and adorned on the back, ‘He Failed The Commando Course.’ Other pacifist slogans such as ‘Peace Through Superior Firepower’ and ‘UZI Does It’ are also popular.
After wolfing down a full-fat English breakfast with added grease, we return to the accommodation to start the accommodation chores. Emptying bins, sweeping, waxing and polishing the floors with an uncontrollably
demonic buffing machine that dents every metal surface it careers into, leaving a mirror-like finish, so too the boot-polished ablution floor that is squeakily dry after scrubbing the toilets and showers. Even if we don’t have enough time – and we rarely do – weapons are given a quick once over, the barrel pulled through and the working parts quickly and lightly oiled for any snap inspection that the training team invariably give whether we use the weapons or not. At around 07.45, the training team members are heard in their office, laughing and joking, and drinking my milk, then, like attendees at a schizophrenics’ conference, turn into shouting, screaming banshees.
‘Stand by your beds!’ shouts one of the team.
The command echoes through the halls so we speedily return to our personal bed space and stand like guardsmen on parade, hearts pumping in nervous anticipation to await inspection. Depending on what mood the team is in, the inspection could be a cursory glance (which, although quick, is annoying – we feel we have done all this preparation for nothing), or a full-blown white glove inspection where any micro-particle of dust found is greeted with evil glee. With a dusty finger the corporal will look up triumphantly and ask, ‘What’s this?’
Many times I have wanted to say, ‘It’s your finger.’ But obviously I don’t want to be thrown from the second-floor window like many of the clothes that are hurled when the team decides to go nuclear.
As usual, our inspection hasn’t gone well. We are
ordered out onto the landing where we are told in no uncertain terms, the error of our ways. Yet again, we are told to ‘stand by to stand by’.
We undertake all this before the day’s work has even started. First up for the day is a map-reading lecture where we go over lessons learnt previously. The instructor no longer shouts, but acts more as a schoolteacher, just with more obscene tattoos and an endearing humour that makes even the most mundane lectures enjoyable. Map reading over, we dash over to the other side of ‘Puzzle Palace’, the aptly-named large instruction block that has its lecture rooms numbered in an order that no one has yet figured out. The ten minutes between lectures are taken up by trying to find the correct room. We then take another hour to understand the troop tactics lesson given by one of the other section corporals, who absorbs the class in fantastic tales of his experiences in the Falklands conflict, strongly reinforcing the aims of his lecture.
Lesson over, we dream of having a ‘stand easy’; the fifteen-minute break that is programmed into the daily schedule. However, a ‘stand easy’ is a mythical time where no one has ever been; perhaps C.S. Lewis should have named his book
The Lion, the Witch and the Stand Easy.
The fifteen minutes has been taken up by getting quickly changed into our IMF gym kit, quickly inspecting each other for specks of fluff, or twisted laces. We then run as a troop over to the gym, where again we get inspected, then put through our paces by PTIs intent on inflicting enough pain to ensure we’re ‘working
hard enough’. Reddened and sweating like a monk in a brothel, we return to the accommodation block, quickly shower and change into the same clothes we had earlier been in to undertake another lecture, this time on first aid. The hour lunch break, as per usual, is only half that; preparation for the next period takes a good while, especially if weapons are involved, as we know an inspection awaits.
Often the afternoon will be spent outdoors. This is always better than being sat in a stuffy classroom where post-lunch stupor could be the death knell for us all. Permanently tired, we look like narcoleptics, nodding away while trying to take notes that start well then deteriorate to a doctor’s prescription. This perpetual nodding of heads is probably the reason Royal Marine recruits are known as ‘nods’ and we certainly live up to the reputation. In these stuffy lecture rooms we learn a new skill: sleeping while standing up. I have seen this skill demonstrated a few times. Nods falling asleep during lessons are summarily told to stand up when caught out by the person conducting the lecture. This does not stop them from sleeping, however, and watching a man so tired his eyes cannot not stay open, no matter what position he happens to be in or what punishment may await, is morbidly enthralling. He could sway, wake, sway, wake, and then be overwhelmed by the urge to keel over and fall towards his desk. This is all immensely funny to watch, until it happens to me.
Weapons spotless, we parade at the 25m range for
a double period of zeroing where our weapons are personalised to our own dynamic. Despite my early struggles with weapon drills, I have now found those days chasing rabbits like a lunatic back home had been worthwhile and my accuracy is pretty good.
Once our weapons are sufficiently zeroed, we run back to the accommodation block, stow and secure them in our lockers before parading at the other end of camp to get into the lorries that take us up to Woodbury Common for some practical map reading, a confirmatory lesson from the morning’s instruction. Lesson finished, we look forward to a trip back in the truck but as always, the transport mysteriously vanishes in between CTC and Woodbury Common. As always, Shanks’s pony is our only means to make the four miles back to camp. As always, we arrive back at camp hot, sweaty, tired and behind schedule; more quick showers prepare us for weapon cleaning that has to be rushed as they have to be returned by 17.30. Dinner is always another exercise in queuing and wolfing down food as quickly as our hungry bodies allow – indigestion is always confirmation that we are sufficiently nourished – before returning to the accommodation to wash, dry and iron uniform; gloss, polish and buff parade clothes; then write up the day’s notes in our folders.
As sometimes happens after 21.00hrs, time allows me to walk to the famous Dutchy’s fast-food caravan where I religiously order the ‘Captain Kirk’ – a hotchpotch mixture of beans, fried egg, deep-fried sausage, and deep-fried
black pudding. It is a high-cholesterol nightcap that varies in price depending on how busy Dutchy the cook is. Eating Dutchy’s is an important part of training and his caravan has helped more nods through training than any corporal. Having a Dutchy’s is sometimes the difference between completing the next morning’s PT and cramping up, unable to carry on.
If lucky, I go to bed by 22.30, crashing out exhausted. I am always adamant that I will listen to my Walkman. This is my time, the difference between work and play. But play never lasts past the first song. I have cassettes I have listened to a hundred times yet I don’t know what tunes are on after the initial track.
I am awoken again this time by the door being kicked open. Rudely addressed as ‘You fuckers,’ we are told to get into gash PT rig and parade on the bottom field in five minutes. Sleep deprived and eyes stinging we run, hearts pumping hard, to the assault-course area where the section corporal stands. We are left in no doubt that we are the worst troop he has ever come across and the morning’s inspection just proves how useless we are as a team. So now it is time to encourage us to elevate ourselves to the required standard. More crawling, rolling, sprinting and press-ups follow; all instructional techniques to improve our cleaning capabilities. Of course, we have done this many times before and the outcome is always the same. We have realised by now that when he instructs future recruits, he will use the same old line and punish them equally as hard; and the troop at the other end of the
bottom field are probably getting told the same thing, but at 03.30 we never really think about the psychology of the training team, we just feel exasperated pain.
We are taken to the monkey bars of the assault course and hang from them over the iced water below. We hang there for as long as our grip can last, while we again get told the error of our ways. I look to the stars in an attempt to take my mind off the burning of my forearms as I try to hold on. The first splash signifies someone losing his will to grip any longer. As soon as the first one goes more and more fall into the water. I am still hanging on – the advantage of weighing so little – until, of course, I succumb to the watery sound of failure.
Slobbering back to the accommodation, we look like faecally incontinent pensioners, our tracksuit-bottom gussets hanging damply around our knees. We strip naked outside so as not to wet the accommodation block floor that would mean only even more cleaning after the alarm that will go off in an hour and a half; the starting pistol for us do it all over again, and again, and again.
* * *
While it was easier to get through one day at a time, we had the forthcoming month’s schedule promulgated in the accommodation blocks. We would keenly read what torment lay ahead, but we also had sporting fixtures to look forward to, light relief from the pressures of military training.
Keen to prove my worth, I volunteered for the boxing
competition. I’d been more than disappointed that, during one physical training session, I wasn’t allowed to join in the milling – three minutes of unskilled, arm-flailing, punching-the-fuck-out-of-each-other boxing – as I was the only junior and wasn’t allowed to fight ‘adults’. I wanted to fight the twat who accused me of stealing, but settled for the pleasure of seeing his face get pummelled into a ragout of blood and snot when he got a good hiding.
The annual Commando Training Centre Boxing Championship was something different. I was eligible as each of the twenty troops currently in training would enter fighters in a knockout competition, culminating in a finals night.
Probably the biggest night of the recruits’ sporting calendar, the CTC finals night saw a packed gymnasium awash with recruits all baying for blood. Bloodlust was even more tangible should one of their troop brethren make it to the final.
I was one of those who made it to finals night. Not because I was a good boxer, but because there was only one other junior marine in my weight category, meaning a walkthrough to a straight final. My boxing training up to then had been ten minutes jabbing and crossing on the pads with the troop PTI, who said I was a natural. Maybe he was saying that to boost my ego, but as I prepared myself on the evening of the fight I needed all the confidence I could get.
Butterflies churned my stomach into cheese; my appetite waned so much that it was pointless worrying about the weigh-in. Through the graduated programme of Royal Marines training I’d bulked up to a massive 61kg, well below the necessary 63.5kg for the light welterweight category.
I was untrained and certainly couldn’t consider myself a boxer. Boxers spar, do bag work and shadow box for months before they are allowed into the ring for a fight. Here I was, about to have my first encounter and I couldn’t even skip. I knew the difference between a jab and a hook, and my childhood interest in televised boxing meant I’d seen how bobbing and weaving would be helpful in preventing a good snotting.
At least I knew I could take a punch, my stepfather saw to that. Head guards weren’t even used in those good old days and the old-fashioned gloves filled with horsehair could make a mess of even the toughest face, so I was doubly nervous about my dashing, youthful good looks being altered. I needn’t have worried.
Into the pulsating maelstrom of the gymnasium, with shouts and screams all around me, I stepped through the ropes and saw my opponent. He had hair he apparently called ‘strawberry blonde’, which could only be justified should strawberries actually be the colour of ginger biscuits. Behind his anaemic face I saw a fear worse than my own. Did he volunteer for this or was he pushed? It was looking, at this moment of truth, like he’d made a terrible mistake; as if he had entered a game of Russian roulette not really knowing the rules until sat at the table. How could I lose? Cheers went up as our names were called and the troops’ numbers were chanted by opposing recruits.