Going Commando (8 page)

It certainly didn’t pay to be a loser. The slower lads would run more than ten times the distance of the faster lads, and despite what the corporals said, it didn’t make them any faster. It was pretty obvious who the fastest lads were, and it would have been easy not to put in 100 per cent effort for the first few races as we knew it’d be a waste of energy trying to keep up with Hopkins and the like. However, the training team was
wise to the trickery of those who ‘loafed’, and happily dished out press-ups or star-jumps as an alternative. This slowed down the recipients even further.

Up to now, we had only worn badly-shaped blue berets and field caps. Now we were running around with helmets that seemed to be designed by that benevolent old soul Torquemada. Imagine a WWI German helmet with the point sticking out from the top: our helmets had the point protruding downwards inside the helmet. This sharp point was the male fixing for securing to the female fixing of the inner cap that looked like a Tour de France cyclist’s helmet. Should the inner cap and the spike not fit properly then the spike would bounce into your skull as you ran, the stabbing pain magnified by the bounce of the elastic chinstrap. Too scared to disclose that my male and female fixings didn’t fit, I winced every time I went over broken ground or had to run, which was pretty much all the time. The problem was finally noticed as we did some practice attacks, when the troop sergeant saw the blood dripping down my grid.

‘Time!’ he yelled. ‘Get over here. You’ve got red sweat rolling down your face.’

He took off my helmet, checked the inside and shook his head wearily at me. ‘Put some masking tape over the spike, you wanker,’ he said rather unsympathetically. ‘On your way.’

So off I went, being the wanker I was, continuing to bleed heavily from the incessant spearing of my helmet until late afternoon, when I could actually get hold of some mythical Harry Black Maskers which, as anyone who has ever served in the Corps will tell you, is as rare as hen’s teeth.

Slowly, we were turning from a collection of selfish individuals into a team. It had been hammered into us from day one, and ‘I’ was finally becoming ‘we’. The buddy system became second nature: if I had to check that my buddy was properly dressed or feeling okay, he’d check on me too – as long as I wasn’t paired with Jackie. In modern street language, we ‘had each other’s backs’, and in the Royal Marines the bond did indeed become gang-like.

With this new-found bond, we inspected each other like chimps checking for fleas, and even when we were woken up by explosions simulating an attack and were forced to evacuate with our kit to another position, we managed to think for each other, ensuring our mates had collected their kit and were all following in the same direction.

These ‘crash moves’ were intended to simulate the emergency evacuation of a position. I was under the impression that, as trainee commandos, we were on the way to omnipotence and this constant crash moving was an irksome folly. Surely we’d just stand and fight, no matter how many Chinese were pouring over the hill? We only had seven hours of night routine: in crash moving three or four times a night, I dreaded the sort of conflict we could be engaged in where this would actually happen. It kept us in a constant state somewhere between somnolence and death during the heat of the day.

The lessons we were receiving, whether in the syllabus or otherwise, were harsh ones. If we didn’t learn from those lessons we knew the consequences would be painful, or
tiresome. But they were valuable. We learnt quickly and we learnt well – though not well enough, according to the training team.

Being dehydrated wasn’t something we needed much tutelage in. If I’d been sitting in a stripy deckchair in my vest and pants, wearing a knotted hankie on my head, I’d have required at least four litres of water. We had one warm 1.5 litre-bottle a day, of which we could actually drink very little. Fully clothed, constantly running, carrying 30kg of equipment, stressed and tired, undertaking all manner of physical activity designed to test our endurance, we were all suffering. But in week four, no-one would dare question the training team’s methods.

On the final morning, all that was left to do was de-rig and pack up the training team’s area. They had the privilege of using a field kitchen. Nightly, it would waft out the aroma of bacon and eggs, while we hungry recruits lived on ration packs a stone’s throw away. The field kitchen’s pots and pans required a serious clean before returning to the stores back at Lympstone. I was one of five detailed to the washing up. With no hot water, the washing-up liquid was used with gay abandon, but did the trick sufficiently. With only hydration on my mind, I blew the excess bubbles from the top of the large bowl and drank a ladle full of greasy, fetid water, to the hilarity of the other four.

‘What’s it taste like?’ asked Brum Davies, still nursing a lump the size of a crème caramel on his head.

‘It’s quite nice,’ I replied.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, it’s a bit meaty, like Bovril.’

‘Give us a go then,’ Davies took a large swig and spurted it out all over himself. ‘It tastes like shit.’

‘Uh, yes,’ I replied, and realised it had taken me until the last day of week four to take the piss out of someone. My confidence had grown.

Although ghastly, it quenched my parched throat, so I took another ladle full. Noting my ability not to throw up, the others followed suit, even Davies reluctantly drank more with his nose pinched. It was a great opportunity to rehydrate, until one of the corporals noted our high-spirited drinking party. He ended proceedings by kicking me in the kidneys for being a stupid prick and poisoning myself. But by this time we’d all drank our fair share of greasy, dirty sullage.

Packing finished, we sat expectantly, under the shade of one of Woodbury Common’s many copses, for the four-tonne truck to bus us back to CTC.

‘Right fellas, listen in.’ said the Unsmiling Assassin. ‘The transport was due to be here by now, but one of the things you may not know about the road between CTC and Woodbury Common is that it is like the Bermuda Triangle. Looks like your truck has been swallowed up. What a bastard eh? So what alternatives do we have to get back then?’

We all knew, but really didn’t want to say.

‘Wait for another one?’ asked Jackie hopefully. It was going to be his last day so idiotic questions weren’t really an issue for him.

‘Unfortunately, we can’t afford to lose any more four-tonners. Only one way to go, and that’s by Shanks’s pony. We do know what that is, don’t we?’

With the other corporals lined up with all their kit on their backs, we had a good idea.

‘Right, three ranks in front of me, go!’

From the serenity of basking in the shade of summer trees we were catapulted into a maelstrom of activity and within a minute we were ready, fully kitted in three ranks, already sweating like huskies in a sauna.

‘One of the commando tests is a nine-mile speed march, guys,’ added Corporal Stevens from the flank. ‘This is a piece of piss. It’s only eight.’

We were already exhausted from a week of sleep deprivation. Speed marching for the first time with the 30kg of kit on our backs, in the middle of a hot summer’s day, elicited auditory signals of struggle.

‘Shitten it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ Corporal Stevens answered one particular grunt of anguished exhaustion.

By halfway, the troop had split in two. Near the end, the divisions had become greater, as too had the shouting of the training team running alongside.

‘Pain is just weakness leaving the body, fellas,’ shouted one corporal.

‘It doesn’t hurt when the pain has gone,’ screamed another, continuing the theme.

By the time we reached CTCRM, only around fifteen of us had finished as a lead group. It was noted that all five of us on washing-up detail had finished. It was also the first time I had been told, ‘Well done.’

Three weeks of summer leave followed. Everywhere I went, I wore my Royal Marines sweatshirt with pride amongst my old schoolmates who were either on Youth Training Schemes or, God forbid, still at school. They needed to get out into the real world. I had been a Royal Marines recruit for four weeks and done things they would never dream of (like boot-polishing a floor with a toothbrush).

They questioned me relentlessly about the mystical world into which I’d disappeared, and I was only too happy to fuel their imagination with awe-inspiring tales of heroism, despite experiencing very little of it. I sat in a café with an old schoolmate drinking coffee, and managed to catch a fly that had been annoying me.

‘Did you learn that in the Marines?’ he said, eyes popping at my killing skills.

I could have blown his mind by replying, ‘Yes, week three in training was devoted to catching flying insects.’ But instead I just smiled and said, ‘My reflexes have sharpened up a bit.’

And maybe they had. Despite being a Royal Marine recruit for only four weeks, a few days of rest had left me feeling sharper, stronger and fitter than I’d ever been. But my feet were a real problem. Permanently blistered, my heels were raw; an area of skin the size of a fifty-pence piece had worn away, leaving me in total agony when walking in anything other than a pair of slippers, which unfortunately were not a military-issue item. At least on leave I could go back to wearing nice, soft trainers to ease the pain and hopefully allow them to heal.

Noting my pain, and horrified at the state of my feet, my
mam suggested pissing on them. This surprised me. I’d found pornography hidden in my stepdad’s wardrobe but I didn’t think they’d gone that far. But apparently it was an old miner’s trick to harden the hands and prevent blistering.

With only two short planks of common sense between my ears, I thought I’d give it a go. Pissing on my heels was easy enough, but trying to get the outsides of my ankles was decidedly more difficult. Whichever way I contorted my body, legs and rather inadequate penis, it was impossible.

Please have a go sometime, or, by way of a comparison, try this: next time you go to a garden fete, visit the Scouts’ stall. They will undoubtedly have that piss-poor game where you trail a metal hoop along a twisting length of electrified wire, trying not to make the spotty little twat in charge laugh at you when the wire buzzes as the hoop touches and you lose your 10p. When you’ve finished punching his specky face, nick the game and take it home, where you can begin the following experiment:

Erect a stepladder in the doorway adjoining the dining room and the kitchen.

Saw an inch from one leg on the dining-room side and cover it in creosote, balancing the ladder so it doesn’t touch the new wholemeal carpet in your dining room.

Place the opposite legs on the kitchen linoleum, on upturned margarine wrappers.

The fourth and untouched leg can be left alone. (The more advanced can place it on an upturned treacle can.)

Place a comedy mirror in your kitchen, preferably one that makes your head look the size of an old 7” single.

Strap the wire game to the top of your head using black masking tape.

Climb to the top rung of the stepladder (the one the instructions tell you not to stand on).

Now look into the comedy mirror and try to drag the hoop successfully around the wire without leaving a creosote stain on your carpet from unbalancing the ladder.

That takes
half
the skill needed to urinate on the outsides of your ankles.

I tried it in the bath without a flat surface. It wasn’t at all surprising when, with one foot planted on the opposite thigh, I slipped. Thrusting out my arms, I grabbed the shower curtain and wrenched the pole from its fixing, crashing to the floor in a snotty heap. My mother heard the racket, and rushed in to see what on earth I’d done. There I lay, my meat and two veg flaccidly parading, semi-wrapped in a floral shower curtain with a pole across my head.

‘I was trying to piss on my blisters,’ I said, ‘but I couldn’t reach the sides of my ankles. I slipped.’

‘Why didn’t you just pee on your hand and rub it in?’ she said.

IQ 150, common sense zero.

This may have been why my ankle blisters didn’t heal very well. Mind you, neither did the ones on my heels. They looked just as bad, but smelled a lot pissier.

So eager was I to get back to training that I returned two days early – a ridiculous idea, as CTCRM only had a skeleton staff and most of the camp was closed. I spent forty-eight hours stuck in my room, scared shitless as the accommodation block took on a spooky aura when empty.

The first week back at CTC took off as it had finished: lots of shouting, weapons training, physical exercise, and cleaning. Jackie and five others had dropped out. They returned all the way to camp to immediately put in their notice to opt out, and within the next day or two they were never to be seen again. Within five weeks we had lost nearly thirty per cent of the troop.

Being sixteen and therefore still classed as a child – although not treated like one, unless you count the Victorian workhouses – I was issued a third of a pint of milk daily that would be sent to the training team’s office. The office sat in the corner of the accommodation block’s landing and should have had a yellow and black cordon tape reading, ‘CAUTION: BASTARDS AT WORK.’

Going to the training team’s office was as nerve-wracking as meeting the Queen –though the Queen would probably not call me a ‘scrote’.

The story goes – and I can totally believe it – that a nervous recruit, already in the shit for some hideous misdemeanour, such as having a difficult-to-pronounce surname, knocked on the training team’s door. Despite him knowing for certain they were inside, there was no answer. He knocked again, and waited like a forlorn puppy for attention. When he had been standing there for two minutes, a corporal opened the
door. Inside sat the whole team, with the troop sergeant busy making a noose to scare the nods.

‘What do you want, scrote? It had better be important. I’m busy,’ says the troop sergeant.

‘Yes, it is, Sar…’

The corporal at the door interjects, ‘Is that how you report to the troop sergeant, fuckdust? Get out and report properly.’