Sniper Elite (3 page)

We caught a taxi into the main part of the town to get something to eat, but ended up in a bar having a liquid lunch. When it was time to leave we were well away. I bought a carton of San Miguel for the trip to Grenada and the world was looking pretty good. Trouble is, when we arrived at the hostel to get our luggage the woman had locked it all up and gone home.

We could see our packs through the glass of the front doors and we were running out of time to get to the station to catch our ride, so Willie climbed up on the roof and broke in through a flimsy door. After jogging down the stairs he opened the front door and let us in. Then it was flat out to the station before someone saw us.

Safely on the train we cracked a relaxing San Miguel and looked around for the sleeping space. They told us when we bought the Eurail tickets that everything was included, even sleeper cabins, but apparently not in Spain! I decided to have a few more beers with John before I got my head down, but a few became most of the carton. So when I did decide to get some sleep the only room available was on the parcel shelf above the seats. Somehow I managed to get up there all right, but it wasn't long before the rocking motion made me feel sick. I had to get out of that cabin quick, but missed my footing getting down and ended up in heap on the cabin floor. I did manage to get to the toilet in time, but had to stick my head out of a window to suck in some fresh air.

Grenada was truly a magnificent place. It is at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains and I wish we had spent more time there. The Aussie boys went their separate ways in Grenada, but Anna the Swedish girl was heading to Morocco too and decided to travel with us.

When we arrived in Algeciras early in the afternoon it was too late for the ferry across to Tangier, Morocco, so we ended up staying the night. This gave us time to look around and conduct a recce on where we were to get the ferry in the morning. It wasn't long before we attracted a few drug peddlers trying to sell their goods–hash, cocaine and marijuana–once again dramatically dropping their prices every time we knocked them back. I know these blokes were trying to make a living, but their persistence quickly became a pain in the arse.

The ferry crossing took a few hours and all went quite smoothly until we reached Tangier customs at the other end. Finally through the organised chaos, we discovered that our rail passes were no good in Africa so we had to get around by bus. So early the following morning we headed for Marrakesh, past the Atlas Mountains and through some very steep and nerve-racking terrain. The bus looked and felt like it was built about 70 years ago using the cheapest materials available. It was painted dark red with a thick yellow racing stripe along the side. I reckoned it had probably never had a roadworthy inspection in its hard life, and as a mechanic this did worry me slightly. It was an accident waiting to happen.

The seats were wood covered with red vinyl on a steel frame and seemed to have been built for pygmies. We were packed in like sardines but the locals must have been used to it; all we heard from them was a frustrated tut and a sigh. On the roof were hessian coal sacks full of chickens. There were also push bikes, and even 100 cc motorbikes tied down with an assortment of twine and rope. This was going to be a long and painful trip.

We did stop a couple of times on the way, mostly so the driver could get out to a have a piss and a smoke, and we all took advantage of that. There were no public toilets, so a private space along a wall or several metres away from the bus was good enough, females included! I was shattered by the time we arrived in Marrakesh, mostly mentally knackered as I had subconsciously driven the whole route for the driver hoping we would get there in one piece.

It was just before dusk, which meant the food stalls were starting to fire up for the evening's activities. We accepted the fact that we would probably come down with some gastro complaint, but I was starving. I went for the barbecued chicken and cous cous, probably not a wise choice in meat but it was cooked over a flame and cooked well, so I took the challenge. I did end up with the shits–we all did–but it could've been anything: in those conditions an unwashed glass would've done the job.

The souks, or markets, were absolutely amazing–probably unchanged for hundreds of years. It did get a little frustrating at times with nearly all the stallholders trying to get us into their shop to part with our money, especially since we didn't have any. But if you could push past all the hassle, it was a great experience.

We left three days later for a coastal city called Agadir, and another lengthy and arse-numbing bus ride. Agadir looked like it relied on tourism, as there were plenty of huge hotel complexes, most of which had bars and nightclubs built into them and nearly all were whitewashed. We did gain entry into a couple of the hotel clubs, but though the music was loud they were nearly all empty. The alcohol was too expensive for us so we opted for a smaller local bar.

The following day we decided to head up the coast to Anchor Point, a favourite spot for surfers. Once there we quickly made friends with other backpackers and some of the surfers and we were invited to a house that some of them were renting. They had cooked up a huge feed in the tagine using a large freshly caught tuna.

We hooked in. If it hadn't been rude we would've licked the tagine bowls clean we were so hungry. Then they passed around the hash. They handed the joint to me first and I thought it would've been very unfriendly of me to decline the offer, so I pinched the joint between my forefinger and thumb and took a couple of good tokes. We left our newfound friends' house a little worse for wear that evening and I reckon I had the best night's sleep of the whole trip.

By this stage Anna was starting to look pretty good, and when she went topless with us on the beach one afternoon Willie decided to put the hard word on her. He put in some very hard yards that night and left her room very frustrated and disappointed. She even told him to tell John and me that we weren't getting anything either, which kind of pissed on our fire somewhat.

It was a bit of a shame to leave that small fishing village to start the tedious journey back to England and Banbury. The journey was almost identical to our trip south; we did a few more overnight train stops in slightly different towns. A Canadian bloke who was travelling by himself joined us in Tangier and stayed with us until we got to Madrid.

We were sitting in a square in the middle of the city and he produced a block of Moroccan hash the size of a tobacco tin from his backpack. I couldn't believe he got it through customs in Spain as I had my bags pretty thoroughly searched. ‘Better make sure I haven't been ripped off,' he said as he prepped a small block for his cigarette. He put it to his lips and sparked it up, after a big drag he passed it around and we all spent the rest of the afternoon in a state of splendid relaxation.

We stopped off in Paris for a couple of nights and I remembered a book I'd read a few years previously about an Englishman who joined the French Foreign Legion in the 50s. Even though this bloke had a bit of a rough time, it intrigued me. I began to talk to John about it and finally said to him, ‘Let's not go back to England; let's join the legion.' Boy, am I glad now he told me to pull my head in. If he had said yes I'd definitely have gone through with it.

When we reached Calais we caught the hovercraft across the Channel to Dover, taking 45 minutes instead of the usual two hours. By this stage we had run out of cash; we couldn't even afford the duty-free alcohol. That's what you call ‘broke' in any language.

Once back in old Blighty we needed to find work so we called into a temp agency, which turned out to be owned by a Kiwi woman. She organised an interview for John and me at a chocolate factory and we got the job there and then. It entailed packing endless bars of chocolate into cardboard boxes–mind numbing stuff, 12 hours of 24 golden foil-wrapped bars per box. We took the money at the end of the shift and never went back. I did slip a bar into my pocket at the end of the day just to see what this choccy I'd been packing tasted like. It was bloody disgusting! It must have been some cheap and nasty cooking chocolate but we were so hungry on the walk home, we both held our breath and ate half each.

As we still needed some sort of cash flow John and I joined the other two lads on a nearby American Air Force base. This place resembled a small city. I'd never seen anything like it. I met the supervisor, who quickly directed us to the kitchens. ‘Great,' I thought, ‘there'll be bugger all to do as I'm on the night shift.' How wrong I was. Not only was this place huge, it was alive 24/7. Servicemen and women seemed to come and go at the dining hall all night.

Some of the major timings were the midnight feed and the 5 a.m. chow down. I whisked 2,000 eggs for the morning meal, two eggs per bowl, 1,000 serves of bloody scrambled eggs, which vanished within minutes of the dining hall opening its doors.

We didn't return to that job either, but we needed decent full-time work, something interesting and enjoyable. Two days later John and I borrowed a friend's car and made a rather desperate and uninvited trip to Silverstone raceway, a famous race track where there were permanent workshops owned by former race car drivers and enthusiasts who built, repaired and designed race cars.

After several knock-backs we got lucky and both secured mechanical jobs in a small but very professional workshop. John was put to work to rebuild a V6 Ford Sierra engine previously owned by a famous Swedish rally driver, and I began to help one of the other mechanics repair the front suspension of a Ford Escort rally car, which I was more than comfortable with as I'd had a lot of experience on them as an apprentice.

It wasn't long before I became bored with this and decided to make my way north back to Cheshire. There was also an ulterior motive behind my decision. I had met a girl–Carla–just before Christmas and wanted to see her again. She was working behind the bar at the Coach and Horses in a little place called Neston. During the day she was a hairdresser and she used to do some dancing in clubs as well. A romance blossomed. She was a good sort, very fiery, like her mother.

We became very close over the next few months and I found a job at a mechanical workshop. But I soon realised being a mechanic didn't really suit me and I lost interest in it quite quickly. In a way I was marking time–I really wanted to join the forces but timing was always against me and I kept getting sidetracked.

I'd had enough of the UK and Carla was more than happy when I asked her to move to New Zealand with me. That was a mistake. Once back in New Zealand things really didn't go according to plan. We found out Carla was pregnant and so decided to get married, which I thought was the right thing to do. Our son Lee was born in Middlemore Hospital, South Auckland and I was at the birth.

Carla became very homesick during that time and four months after Lee was born we made the long return journey back to England. Back in the small Cheshire village we lived with her mother and her sister in a council house. Not much fun there. We started to fight and argue and things just got worse and worse, even when we moved into our own rented council house.

I was working with my uncle fitting double-glazed windows, doors and conservatories, which wasn't what I was put on this planet to do either. It was okay in the summer but once the winter came it was more like a punishment than a job. More often than not my hands were numb with cold and difficult to use–not good when you're working with glass. It wasn't long before I sliced through the end of one of my fingers and had to have it stitched back into place. The company we were working for did a lot of telemarketing and posting of leaflets to drum up business. So it had its peaks and troughs–sometimes there would be just a couple of days work a week and then my uncle would do the odd job on the side. That was where we fell out. One of his relatives wanted the windows replaced in his house and my uncle said, ‘Come and do it with me and we'll share the profits.' I had an idea of what he stood to make on the job and said, ‘Oh yeah, no worries, sounds good.' So I did a full day's work for him and at the end of the day he only gave me 20 quid, I wasn't happy! At first I thought he was joking around. I took the money expecting him to call me back and tell me he was only messing around, but his van slowly disappeared down the road. That was it for me, everything went downhill from there.

My marriage was going from bad to worse; we began to fight a lot and were slowly drifting apart. Finally I thought, ‘I'm getting out of here.' I caught the bus to Liverpool where I walked into the army, navy and air force recruiting office and straight up to the army desk. The staff sergeant asked if I needed any help. A few unrelated thoughts did cross my mind when he said that, but I came back with, ‘I want to join the Parachute Regiment.'

I chose the Parachute Regiment based totally on a documentary I'd seen in New Zealand in the early 80s that followed a platoon through their recruit training. I'd loved it. But in Liverpool the overweight, lazy-looking staff sergeant was from the King's Own Regiment–a local regiment from Manchester and Liverpool–and not quite what I'd imagined a soldier to look like. He gave me a few brochures then booked me in for testing.

I was still living with Carla, even though it was a very rocky time. She came to the recruiting office with me to get a family perspective of military life as we thought getting out of Neston might help our relationship. Neston is such a small place where everyone knows your business–it's rumoursville–and certain elements take great pleasure in talking about people and then throwing in their own twisted fantasies, so by the time a rumour gets back to you it's 10 times worse. This can really test a weak relationship.

A couple of weeks later I returned to the recruiting office and was shown to a classroom with some other candidates. We were given a pencil, an eraser and finally the entrance test. Once completed you had to undergo an interview to decide what corps or trade you were considered suitable for. Because I didn't have any school qualifications at all it was quite a nerve-racking time for me. My feelings soon turned from apprehension to relief as I was told I was eligible for the Parachute Regiment. There were a number of other units and regiments included in that list, the Royal Marines among them.

As I sat in the cold corridor waiting for another interview, a Navy chief petty officer who was working from the recruiting office started to chat to me. He asked me what I was looking at joining and then proceeded to poach me to join the Royal Marines. He showed me into a room and played a video of the marines that went for about 20 minutes. It started by saying the Royal Marines were the navy's amphibious infantry, which sort of put me off as it wasn't the navy I wanted to join. But by the end of the recruiting video I had eyes the size of dinner plates. I had never seen anything like it before.

I quickly realised that while the marines were part of the navy, they were a separate entity within that organisation. The video showed marines fast roping from helicopters, patrolling in the Falklands and Northern Ireland, in the jungle and skiing on exercise in Norway. They were riding on rigid raiders, which are small, fast-moving watercraft with a flat hull, to tactically insert marines onto a beach or a rocky coastline. Then it showed the marines conducting sniper training and parachuting. These were also my first real images of sniping. In that instant I pushed the idea of joining the paras aside. It was exactly what I saw myself doing. I was totally sold on becoming a Royal Marines commando.

The chief petty officer then saw the army sergeant who was processing me and told him I'd changed my mind. The tubby sergeant wasn't too happy. ‘What are you doing?' he said. ‘I'm joining the marines,' I replied rather proudly. He asked me why and I told him there was more opportunity in the marines. The real difference is that the Royal Marines are a corps that is self-contained. Whether you're a clerk, a driver or a landing craft operator you all go through the same course. But right then I didn't realise just how tough that commando course would be. I walked out with a train ticket for 4 March 1992 to attend a three-day potential recruits course (PRC) at Lympstone, the Commando Training Centre (CTC) in Devon.

Lympstone had three training wings covering recruit training, officer training and infantry support training, plus command courses for noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and other specialist courses. The potential recruits course (PRC) was a series of mental and physical tests followed by several interviews from various staff. I had been keeping myself fit but when I was given the date to start the PRC I increased the intensity of my training and also followed a fitness guide from the recruiting office.

At CTC the testing phase started in the gym at 0600 hours. It was a huge complex that housed a large pool, squash courts, weights and cardio gym, and a large wooden-floored open area approximately 45 metres long and 20 metres wide. It was a place I came to fear over the following months.

The experience was quite a shock to the system, the physical training instructors (PTIs) were very overbearing and oozing with confidence, which made us all very nervous. The first test was the US Marine Corps (USMC) test that consisted of 60 press-ups in 2 minutes, 100 sit-ups in 2 minutes, 18 pull-ups and 40 burpees (full body exercises). A few of the lads had to vacate the gym to vomit after the burpees.

At the end of each of these tests we stood to attention and when our names were called we had to shout out our score. ‘Maylor!', ‘Seventy, staff!' I shouted. ‘Fuckin' listen in Lofty, you were told to do 60!' I was proud of my 70, but I had finished my press-ups well before the 2 minutes was up and kept going.

Almost immediately after the USMC, and still breathing hard, we were lined up outside the gym with a physical training instructor (PTI) barking instructions in his well-practised and high-pitched PTI voice for a timed run. Three miles (4.8 kilometres) in total, we ran the first half as a squad, then the second half as a timed individual best effort around the ring road of the camp.

After getting cleaned up we proceeded to a classroom where we were given a maths and English test. This worried me more than the physical side. The rest of the day consisted of interviews with staff from various branches, such as the medical staff from the sick bay and career advisers. That evening we familiarised ourselves with the rest of the potential recruits, asking questions about backgrounds and family.

Suddenly I was awoken by a strange buzzing noise, then
plink, plink, plink
the fluorescent bulbs in our room began to warm up. I still hate that sound today. It took me a second or two to realise what was going on as I peeked through my barely open eyes. ‘Get up you lot, you've got a big day today, and it starts by cleaning the heads!' the duty directing staff (DS) asserted. I peered at my watch. ‘Fuckin' hell! It's only 5.30 a.m.,' I whispered. At first I thought my watch was wrong, but then I heard other moans and groans that suggested otherwise. As I got into the combat trousers and jacket that were issued to me the day before I could hear the squeak of footsteps from combat boots as the DS made his way back down the tiled corridor ‘Hurry up, get moving!' he shouted. ‘Best you start moving your fingers, Lofty, if you want to get to the galley for scran [marine slang for food]! You lads can't afford to fuck around if you want to join the corps!' Other motivational one-liners and naval terminology echoed through the concrete building.

At the rush we gathered cleaning stores and began washing down the urinals, toilets and floors of the hoods (ablutions). Once that was complete there were mirrors to clean and copper pipes and taps to polish. This was all inspected by the DS when we were finished. We did this every day we were in barracks.

We all knew how much energy we expended the previous day so we tucked into the scran that was on offer in the galley. Not a good idea! Soon after we had eaten we were herded into the back of a Bedford 4-tonne truck that was bitterly cold and driven up to Woodbury Common where we were met by the PTIs. They took us through a few warm-ups which resembled a physical training (PT) session in itself, and then ran us around the endurance course through bogs, tunnels and streams. It wasn't long before I passed several lads who were bent over on an uphill stage staring at their breakfasts for the second time. The physical challenges continued throughout the day and the following morning, but by this stage some of the lads were starting to doubt their performance and were looking quite weary.

The PRC was hard going but I was quietly confident that I had performed well. And when the news came, some lads weren't so lucky, they were either told to improve in certain areas and to retry in three to six months, or were just bluntly told they were unsuitable. I was rewarded with a date to start training at the end of that month along with a handful of others from the same PRC. We couldn't stop talking about what we were going to do once in the marines and what commando unit we wanted to go to.

It seemed an age before 30 March came around, but nervously I met some of the other lads once again at Liverpool Lime Street station. Once on the train heading south reality hit home and we all began to feel very apprehensive about what was to come. Of course no-one would let on, but the tone of the conversation and the way we were all fidgeting made it very noticeable.

The Royal Marines' basic training is the longest of any NATO combat troops–30 weeks–so we had a right to be nervous. In fact, some say it's the toughest in the world. It now takes 32 weeks to become a Royal Marine commando as they include Viking armoured vehicle training in preparation for operations in Afghanistan.

We were met at Lympstone station by one of the induction corporals in uniform, who instantly got stuck into us about being ‘civvy twats' and to hurry up and get into ‘fuckin' single file'. ‘What the hell is single file?' I thought, then some more of the switched on ‘civvy twats' started to form a line. I followed suit feeling rather disorientated and wondering what I had got myself into.

We were marched up the hill past the bottom field where the 30-foot (9-metre) rope tower, regain ropes and assault course were situated. It made me feel sick in the gut as it had pain written all over it; we'd already had a taste during the PRC. Then up the gentle slope of the main street of the camp were accommodation blocks, or ‘grots', as they were called, offices, shops and the induction training wing, our home for the next two weeks.

First impression of the camp was of a low-security prison. It was surrounded by a tall wire fence curved at the top away from the camp with three to four strands of barbed wire running horizontally along the top of it. I wasn't sure at that stage whether it was to keep us in or unwanted guests out.

The camp was orientated east–west and the railway line ran north–south at the back of the camp. On the opposite side of the track was an estuary that was tidal from the English Channel and also fed from the River Exe to the north. We became very familiar with the thick, deep sludge they called mud in the coming months.

During the following couple of days they assembled us into our training troop, which was designated 637 Troop. We were 28 strong. However, over the course of the next seven months the troop numbers changed significantly, mostly due to injuries. During the first few days we were issued uniforms and field equipment and given lessons on how to prepare and care for this kit. Some very late nights ensued–cleaning gear, washing clothes by hand and then ironing them to a very high standard. The creases on your trousers, shirts and PT shorts had to be razor sharp. This at first seemed impossible to achieve, as I had never touched an iron in my life before. But there and then the standard was set; if your kit wasn't up to scratch then you could stand by for an absolute physical beasting–an extra physical training activity used as punishment to instil discipline and team building. So I struggled with the iron for ages, only to produce ‘tramlines' instead of the single crease. But after a while I mastered it. Working together and helping each other out was very high on the marine's ethical list; failure to do so resulted in another beasting for the whole troop. Emphasis was also placed on personal hygiene to avoid passing on sickness, to keep fit and healthy in the field and removing some of the nasty smells a body can develop after physical exercise or living in the field.

We wore bright orange tabs on our epaulettes to indicate to the Lympstone staff what stage we were at in training. This was something of a lifeline against military discipline, since it was accepted that recruits in those early stages would make small mistakes. For example: forgetting to march around the area, leaving your beret in your pocket after leaving a building, and of course the most common offence of all, forgetting to salute an officer. We were called ‘lumi nods': ‘lumi' due to the orange tabs and ‘nods' because recruits nodded off to sleep during lessons, particularly after lunch, due to the long hours and strenuous physical activities. The learning curve was steep and friendships were forged.

At the end of the two weeks our fitness training was in full swing: we had started with basic circuit training in the open gym concentrating on cardio and coordination. We were becoming more familiar with the corps and its history and discipline, how to launder our uniforms correctly to that all-important standard, how to march, and most importantly, who and how to salute. Not saluting an officer resulted in a horrific ‘face ripping', which is a total invasion of one's facial space by the offended officer who ‘inadvertently' spat all over you amid his outpouring of verbal abuse. He would then report you to your training staff, who also spat all over you during their verbal barrage.

I have never been keen on soldiers saluting officers. I think many of them use it as a tool to fuel egos and to make them feel superior to the rest of the human race. I definitely think there is a time and a place for it but it shouldn't be abused. Traditionally, to salute an officer was to show that the soldier was not carrying a weapon, it was also an acknowledgement of the commission they carry from their respective commanders-in-chief, not the officer themselves; in practice, I always felt it was respect for the individual, and that respect had to be earned.

After the two-week induction phase we moved into our new troop accommodation where we were to spend the next 28 weeks. We met our new troop DS or staff as they were called. Some were Falklands War vets and more recently had seen active service in the first Gulf War. All had completed tours of Northern Ireland, some more than others. I had great respect for these guys.

We all felt as proud as punch when they told us to take those ridiculous lumi tabs off and start acting like soldiers. We were now just called ‘nods' and now the hard work really began.