Sniper Elite (9 page)

Chappy is quite a character and extremely confident in his soldiering ability. He is also a terrific leader. In our bar one night in Norway it was young AJ Smith's 21st birthday. As 9 Troop's senior corporal, Chappy decided to make him a ‘death wet'–a pint glass filled with an assortment of spirits. There was a little ceremony that accompanied the death wet and everyone shouting, ‘Scull, scull, scull!'

AJ knocked back the concoction in one hit and it wasn't long before he started to turn green and was handed a bucket. The death wet resurfaced along with his dinner into the blue plastic bucket. Chappy, being the tightarse he is, decided not to waste the pint of spirits they'd paid for and encouraged the 9 Troop lads to drink the contents of the bucket. In fact, Chappy went first and knocked back a decent mouthful. Some of the contents stuck to his moustache, which made him look like a kid after drinking a glass of milk. He then proceeded to lick his moustache and then chew on the piece of tomato skin that was stuck in it.

I watched from another table and physically had to stop myself from being sick. Once the bucket had gone around, Chappy had another crack at it, and then offered it to the rest of the lads in the bar. He got no takers. ‘Stick it up ya fuckin' arse, Chappy!' And ‘You're sick mate!' is all he got.

Chappy was like me. We both lived by the Royal Marines' ethos of ‘work hard, play hard'. Later in Chappy's career in the marines he became an officer.

In Norway, we had a company dining-in night–‘top table' as it was called–and the theme was ‘formal suit'. Of course we didn't have any formal clobber, as we were deployed on a three-month exercise. So the blokes decided to raid the Q store of all their large black plastic bin liners and make dinner suits from them. Some put tremendous amounts of thought into making these, and some didn't. But it didn't matter; everyone had a suit.

One of the rules for a top table is that you cannot leave the table until you either have permission from the OC, or until all the formalities are completed. So the lads stocked up on beer and got stuck into it well before the event. Within minutes of sitting down at the table a bucket was being passed around underneath it so blokes could relieve themselves. Some couldn't wait and just went where they sat. One of the blokes used an empty wine bottle that was promptly passed up to the OC. We all urged him to have a swig, which to my disbelief he did. He then spat the contents back into the bottle and gave us a look of horror and disgust while wagging his finger.

I thought, ‘You dickhead.' If someone hands you a very warm wine bottle and tries to get you to drink it, there's obviously something wrong it; all the combat indicators were present to suggest it wasn't wine, but something else. This was the same dickhead who jumped off a wharf during that trip to get out of a major field exercise–he made it look like he fell! Being wet in Norway can be extremely life threatening, so the OC was whisked away to a nearby hotel for a warm bath and change of clothes.

Another mate was Big Thomo; I can't remember his first name as it was never used but he was a hard man to handle when roused with the drink. I remember walking out of Kingstons night club near the base in Taunton, Somerset one night when we had returned from Norway, and seeing Thomo sitting on this civvy's chest pounding him in the face. The shots he was delivering were rather pathetic so we just had a giggle and carried on to Lotus Flower, a Thai takeaway.

Alcohol in Norway was ridiculously priced and being underpaid British soldiers we couldn't afford the crazy £5 a pint it used to cost. So we would buy one or two and then conduct an exercise called ‘mine sweeping'. This involved identifying a reasonably full pint that was unattended or not being closely guarded by a local Norwegian, and then swiping it for our own consumption.

One night in a bar in Bjerkvik, Big Thomo got caught. (C Company had two Thomos, so we called one Big Thomo and the other Little Thomo.) The bar erupted. I remember Thomo planting one on this bloke and then it was all in since naturally we had to support him. Next thing I felt a big bang on my face and I was dragged out of the bar and thrown into the back of a Land Rover. Thomo followed a few seconds later. There were four of us in the back of that freezing Land Rover all the way back to Ose. The vehicle commander was one of our own from another unit. He was on what the corps called ‘shore patrol' making sure we kept out of trouble. He wasn't happy with our performance but did the right thing and got us out of there as the local police had been called. I'll never forget that 30-minute drive back to Ose; the temperature was below minus 10 and all that was separating us from the elements was the canvas tarp.

Before Thomo joined the corps he used to work as an entertainer: he played the guitar and sang. One weekend during summer leave 12 of us, ‘the orphans' as we called ourselves, decided to spend some time at the Butlins holiday camp in Minehead. This was about 45 minutes drive from Taunton. We all arrived together and were actually turned away at the gate by security. However, one of the guards did the right thing and said if we were to come back in twos and threes they would give us a pass until midnight.

Once inside we had a few beers while watching a cabaret show, then Thomo decided he was going to get up on stage and do a rendition of Frank Sinatra's ‘New York, New York'. To my surprise he was very good. However, 2 a.m. came around all too quickly and we'd had a skinful. A big fight started and all 12 of us got stuck in. At one stage Big Thomo went to headbutt this bloke, but because Thomo really is quite ‘unco' he telegraphed his intentions that told this bloke what he was about to do. So the bloke moved out of the way and Thomo became unbalanced. His front foot slipped forward on the wet floor and he somehow ended up on his back. His opponent then jumped on his chest and made a pathetic attempt to strangle him. Thomo looked over at Little Thomo and me and said rather calmly, ‘Would someone get this fuckin' lemon off me?' We obliged.

The police arrived shortly after and all 12 of us made a run for it. Pete and I ran towards the beach, crossing the road and jumped off the wall and into the sand. We heard a police officer shouting behind us. Fortunately the tide was out so we were able to lie in the night shadows cast by the rocks at the low-tide mark. The police officer stood on the wall and shone his torch along the beach but soon gave up. Big Thomo lost his wallet and military ID card during the fight and sheepishly had to return the following day to retrieve it.

Friday mornings at 1100 hours we always had ‘rounds'–an inspection of the accommodation by the CSM and the OC–before we knocked off for the weekend. As rounds were being conducted we had to stand at ease by our beds in uniform until brought to attention by a senior corporal who then reported the accommodation ready to inspect. This time the CSM and OC were accompanied by the regimental sergeant major (RSM) and the commanding officer (CO) of 40 Commando, known as ‘the Moose'. Thomo always ran his own routine, and on this particular morning he got caught out. We were all standing at ease when we heard the door burst open followed by a loud ‘Oi, fat arse!' Thomo had just finished in the shower and met the inspection team head on. His only escape route was through our grots. He sprinted straight towards the fire escape at the far end of our room completely naked with towel in hand. As he ran through with the RSM hot on his heels his thongs flew off, making the RSM stumble momentarily. Thomo got through the fire escape and was gone. The RSM was wild. He turned to us furiously shaking and pointing his pace stick randomly. ‘Who was that fat cunt?' he shouted. We denied everything and struggled immensely to stop ourselves from laughing.

But while we played hard, we prided ourselves on our professionalism in the field. On the whole, the Royal Marines are good hard soldiers and cheeky bastards who were always up for a laugh. In fact, one of them, Matt Howley–or H as he is called–did me the greatest favour of my life.

I first met H when I marched in to Charlie Company at 40 Commando. I instantly liked him as he had a ‘no bullshit' attitude and was a quiet but very professional soldier. H played a lot of rugby for the marines and his local club. And, being a Kiwi, it's in my nature so I was happy to join him in the team. A few times when we were ashore (marine slang for off base), usually at Kingstons night club I had noticed his sister Georgina. By that stage I was usually blind drunk and making a fool of myself. I was really attracted to her–she was beautiful, blonde and very bright–but she must have thought I was a drunken idiot.

I returned to New Zealand in 1994 on leave and suddenly found myself in a different world. It was like getting my freedom back. I realised what a lovely place it was and for the first time in ages I didn't feel constricted. I'm not a fan of crowds or heavily populated areas. I love the open spaces and going back to New Zealand made me realise what I was missing. While there I spent most of my time hunting and fishing and got part of my life back. It was like two separate worlds. But there was one thing missing: Georgina.

Soon after I returned to England I was placed on restriction of privileges (RPs), a form of punishment given to soldiers designed to screw you around from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. on each day of your sentence. I'd received five days RPs after a drunken scuffle in the accommodation at Norton Manor and caused £150 damage to a door after kicking it open when a bloke locked it in my face.

Charlie Company was on guard duty at the time so I didn't get too much grief from the guard commanders especially when H was the guard 2IC. I was up at the guard room in full combat equipment with him and I asked if he'd fix me up a date with his sister. He said, ‘Come and play rugby on Saturday and I'll make sure she's there.' That was it. We hit it off from there.

‘George' was a nurse but her family was all military. Even her mum was in the services for a short spell–the Women's Royal Army Corps. George's brother Karl was also in the marines, and the youngest, Boris, was an officer in the Royal Corps of Signals. Her father was in the Royal Corps of Signals for 23 years and during that time was posted to Rinteln, Germany, where George was born. When I met George her father was working in Oman; he'd retired from the army but had a civilian contract over there. When he got back in late 1994 I got on really well with him. He was an old-school career soldier.

Shortly after we met, George went to Cyprus on a two-week holiday that she had organised months before. We could hardly believe how much we missed each other and from then on we were pretty much inseparable; that is, until I had to deploy on exercise to Norway again. Just before George and I got together I had passed selection for Brigade Patrol Troop (BPT)–3 Commando Brigade's reconnaissance troop. It is run by the Mountain & Arctic Warfare Cadre so naturally Norway was the perfect training ground for the troop. I had opted for BPT, as some of the lads from 40 had started to get drafted to units and jobs that they didn't want to go to. Commachio Group in Scotland guarding the submarines was where a large proportion of the lads went. I didn't want to go there. I wanted action.

Once settled into the Norway routine again we decided to head to one of the civvy ski slopes to upgrade our skills. However, we were on ‘pusser's planks', the wide-based cross-country skis that were standard marine issue. Cross-country or telemark skiing is a different style to downhill skiing–to turn you slide one leg forward of the other into what looks like an awkward, half-squat kneeling position. Your knees are crossed and leaning the way you want to go.

I was struggling to get this right and became more and more frustrated as I was creaming in all the time while others gracefully skied past me. So I decided to head down the slope as fast as I could to have a break and a coffee. A couple of the lads whipped past as soon as I started my descent, so I crouched over and tucked in my ski poles under my arms to pick up the pace. Towards the bottom of the slope I saw the lads catch some air from a bump in the snow and land safely. I thought I'd do the same as they made it look so easy, but as I got closer to the jump the light faded and a big soft shadow covered the slope making it all look smooth. I lost sight of the jump. Suddenly I hit the bloody thing totally unaware and in a split second was looking down on the town and remember seeing all the house and street lights, then
bang!
I'd hit the deck.

I landed on my right shoulder breaking and dislocating it. As I slid face first to a stop I was thinking, ‘I'm really hurt this time.' Luckily a Norwegian nurse was on hand and helped me out. I felt like a real goose as this happened about only 50 metres from the front of the cafe. Some of the boys were drinking coffee and watching me as I hit the jump. They skied over in fits of laughter. I wanted to laugh as well but the pain was too bad. They took me to a doctor's surgery where he reduced the pain with the help of some very good painkillers and muscle relaxants.

However, the doctor didn't have an X-ray machine there so I had to wait until I got back to England to have the injury examined properly. But even then they missed the break at the top of my shoulder. It wasn't until three weeks later when I saw a surgeon at the naval hospital in Plymouth that he realised something was wrong, as my range of movement wasn't what it should have been at that stage of recovery. My shoulder took a long time to get back to full strength and it was 12 months before I could do a full-arm stretched pull-up.

It didn't help my recovery either when the troop had returned from Norway and decided to do a day's parachuting on Woodbury Common. I landed very heavily on my shoulder, which made it impossible to use, I couldn't pull on the risers to deflate the canopy. This led to me being dragged 20 metres through the dry gorse bushes. I looked like a bloody hedgehog when I finally stopped.

In April that year they flew my patrol from BPT out to Brunei for a five-week, long-range reconnaissance course in jungle warfare. ‘Fozzy' was the patrol commander, a Falklands War vet and more than capable of handling the task. We flew to Hong Kong for a two-day stopover at Osborne Barracks to conduct a bit of admin and to catch a connecting flight. There was plenty of time to visit all the famous bars in the city, which we did. An American aircraft carrier was in port at the time, so there were a lot of US naval personnel in town. We joined in with their banter, took the piss and generally had a good time with them. By the time my mate ‘Pea' and I headed back to Osborne Barracks on the underground it was getting light. At the station in Kowloon outside the barracks, we saw a familiar sight: Tom McPherson, another member of our patrol, a big bloke with ginger hair. He was sprawled out over one of the benches fast asleep. When we woke him he was suffering badly from the effects of dehydration caused by alcohol and the humidity of the tropical climate. He looked terrible. Mind you, I was no pretty picture either. My eyes felt like they were full of sand and I was desperate for sleep.