Going Commando (12 page)

For many recruits this was the first time they would kill an animal. I was ‘lucky’; I killed my first rabbit when I was around seven years old. My grandad was a poacher, and our kitchen would be forever filled with skinned rabbits hung on a washing line, emanating that deeply appetising aroma of blood. After his poaching days were over, my grandad built a pen and filled it with rabbits. I would treat them all as pets and gladly feed them until they were as fat as Grandad liked. I don’t know whether there was a hole in the pen but every so often one would ‘escape’, coincidentally on the day that we had ‘boiled beef’ pie for tea.

While harsh on the rabbits, the skills learnt were invaluable and had to take priority over any juvenile love of animals. My oppo for this exercise, Stevie, had never killed before, so he was keen to do the deed and I was only too happy for him to chalk up the first rabbit silhouette on his headboard. Nervously, Stevie held Gordon as instructed and chopped down hard on the back of his neck; the dull thud and whelp was echoed all around, as the mass chopping of bunny necks was sickeningly orchestrated like the soundtrack to an 18-rated version of
Watership Down
.

Gordon lay limp, but blood did not run from his nose. I was not convinced that Gordon was done for. Indeed, when Stevie walked away with Gordon draped over his shoulder the rabbit winked at me, just the one eye as if to say, ‘Alright mate?’ Was he trying to haunt me?

‘Stevie, that rabbit’s still alive,’ I said.

‘Nah mate, it’s dead as a dead thing.’

‘Well if it is, then it’s the star of
Poltergeist IV: Rabbit’s Revenge
.’

‘Nah, it’s the nerves still working.’

‘I’d be fucking nervous if I was alive and draped over your shoulder. I’m telling you it’s alive!’

As if to prove my point, Gordon started to thrash around violently. I don’t care how many nerves it has, a dead animal cannot attempt to scramble over the shoulder of its attempted killer. I had to give credit to Gordon, he was a fighter, but my admiration for him was short lived. I snapped his neck with, it has to be said, a respectful remorse. Remorse over, Gordon tasted wonderful and his pelt made a smashing hat.

BEFORE PROGRESSING INTO the second fifteen weeks of training, we would first have to successfully complete a number of criteria tests. Fail anything and we would be back trooped. No pressure there then…

Firstly, we completed our PT pass-out. Although my feet were in bits, running around in pusser’s pumps presented little problem and gym work was my strong point. The pass-out was a doddle, so too our Annual Personal Weapons Test (APWT) on the blunderbuss that is the now obsolete SLR and the even more archaic Sterling submachine gun (SMG), which was only useful in the hands of a
Star Wars
Imperial Storm Trooper – even if they did always forget to attach the magazine.

Thankfully, despite my slow start on the SLR, my shooting was actually quite good, achieving 119 out of 130 and gaining marksman status that entitled me to wear a crossed weapons badge on my dress uniform, which would be ridiculed by anyone from a commando unit. As with everyone else, my SMG test was successfully completed first time – not that I would ever get to hold one again.

Exercise Baptist Run was our last and most important test to assess our military skills thus far. I commenced the exercise with my feet in such a bad state that they felt like they’d been put through a bacon slicer.

Other than piss, the tried and tested way of preventing blisters was to use zinc oxide adhesive tape. Once blisters had formed the tape became an irrelevance, only pulling off the skin it was wrapped over. In my stupidity I’d persistently wrapped my raw feet in zinc oxide, meaning that every time I changed the tape I stripped my feet again down to the raw flesh. The balls of my feet looked like I’d stepped in boiling water and my heels should have been used on the set of a horror film.

Even setting off onto the exercise, I was in agony. The yomp up to Woodbury Common, although done many times already, was excruciatingly painful and I struggled to keep up, even at the relatively slow pace.

To assess our competency in soldiering, we would be instructed to navigate our way to a stance where a military subject would be tested. Most of the lads would rock up with that typical hangdog look of someone too tired to actually hold an expression. But not me, I impressed the training team. As I approached most of the stances they asked why I was
smiling so much. But I wasn’t smiling – I was grimacing in pain from walking on the raw flesh that masqueraded as my feet. The upside was that the pain overrode any nervousness I may have had in completing the tests. Yet getting to the tests was becoming more of a problem.

Fellow recruit Vince, an older cockney who was the agony uncle for us young lads, suggested I ask the training team if I could forsake walking between areas and get a lift. A well-meaning suggestion met a violent outburst of anger from the troop sergeant when I asked if this was possible. It was fair enough; the movement between each test was part of the test itself, although I thought him calling me a ‘spineless piece of shit’ a little unnecessary.

In retrospect, my childlike naivety can’t have endeared me to the training team. But I was sixteen and stupid. As the exercise went on, so my confidence slumped with my shoulders as I struggled from one test to another, often late. When it came to the speed march back to CTC, I fell back within the first half-mile. I wasn’t exhausted; I just gave up. I had, in Royal Marine speak, ‘wrapped my tits in’. The pain was just too much to tolerate.

Even when we want something so badly, the pain doesn’t subside. Our bodies still ache and our legs still don’t work in the way we wish they would. I couldn’t run another metre, despite having a green beret waved in front of my eyes and such encouraging words from the training team as:

‘If you drop back any more, you lazy fucker, you’ve failed.’

‘You’re a waste of space, Time.’

And the classic ‘Say goodbye to the troop, you spastic.’

On my return to CTC, arriving way after the rest of the troop, Exercise Baptist Run was finished. So too was I.

I showered quickly and immediately reported sick to get my feet sorted. In the sickbay examination room, the medics tore off the zinc oxide tape with unnecessary zeal and laughed at what they described as the worst pair of feet they’d seen in ages. The only applicable treatment now was to be covered in the dreaded iodine spray that would sterilise and protect them. Having knitting needles gouge out my eyes would have been preferable to the spray that disseminated pain so excruciating that even someone as eloquent as Stephen Fry would fail to convey the agony without adding ‘fuck my old boots that hurts.’ My inner mechanism laughed in agony, tears filled my eyes as I bit the pillow as if some sweaty man was trying to take my virginity.

‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’ said the smiling medic who had a BSc majoring in sadism and minoring in stating the bleeding obvious.

I limped pathetically back to the accommodation in my flip-flops, dog-eared and downhearted. Corporal Stevens passed me with his normal sprightly gait; he looked like he’d just walked from a successful job interview, not from a week in the field.

‘Time, you scrote, where have you been?’

I showed him my bandaged feet, hoping to elicit some form of sympathy.

‘Soft cunt,’ he sniggered, before walking off with the air of a man who had not a care in the world.

That afternoon we paraded to be told of the results of the exercise. The troop officer stood in front of us all, lined up in three perfect ranks. It wasn’t often we saw him so his address was obviously important.

‘There are some of you today who have not made the required standard we expect of you at this stage of training. It is not the end for you guys, but it is the end for you in this troop. It is up to you now to go away and learn again. Think of it not as failure, but as a deferment. It is up to you now to dig deep and go forward. However, if you don’t think you are able to meet the required standards, now is probably a good time to have a word with yourself.’ Names were called:

‘Davies.’ That was obvious, he was always in the shit.

‘Haines.’ His navigation was terrible. It was a wonder how he made it to the toilet without shitting his pants.

‘Trickett.’ Another biff, another weak link.

I hoped my name wasn’t going to be called. But as is often the case in life, hope was just a denial of reality.

‘Time.’

A part of my soul died immediately. Inwardly I knew I’d failed, but the confirmation destroyed me. Other names were called but I didn’t hear them under the heavy, shoulder-depressing weight of disappointment. The gasps of relief and muted cheers made me sick to my stomach.

‘To those of you who have passed, I pass on my congratulations. What I need you to do now is change into civvies, get your kit together and get ready for a week of adventure training in the sunshine of Cornwall,’ he said, trying to calm down the celebrants before continuing. ‘For those of you who have failed, you can clear out your lockers. You are no longer part of 299 Troop.’

That last sentence crushed me: my brotherhood since day one, my people, my troop, my mates.

The troop officer continued, ‘Report to the CSM [company sergeant major], he will tell you your futures.’

With my heart dragging across the sparkling linoleum floor, I returned to my room. Sitting down, I stared at nothing, numbed to the bone. My world had collapsed. I was no longer part of 299 Troop.

I had never failed anything in my life that I really wanted to do. Sure, I’d failed chemistry at school but that was pretty much expected as I’d skived two years of lessons, in which the clueless chemistry teacher thought I was, quote, ‘very quiet’.

But here I was, with my only goal in life to be a Royal Marines Commando and I’d fallen at the first real hurdle. How was I to continue? I was no longer an ‘original’. I was to become one of those back troopers that would be mocked and looked down upon as an oxygen thief, especially as I’d failed Baptist Run.

The lads who I’d shared a room with for the past four months were too busy to offer their condolences. They knew I was weak, so it was of no consequence to them. I wasn’t close to any of them so my anger turned to withdrawal. I packed in silence, my shaking body the only clue that I was frustrated, angry and trying not to burst into tears.

With my kit packed and my motivation thrown into the Exe estuary, I was among the eight failures the CSM brought into his office. I stood like a naughty child in front of the headmaster.

‘Men, I can see you’re all pissed off.’ His powers of observation were outstanding. ‘But your journey isn’t over. It has just had a slight, how can I put it, interruption.’

I didn’t really care what he had to say. It was alright for him, he hadn’t failed.

‘It’s time for you to regroup, and get back on the horse. You now have to prove, both to us and to yourselves, that you are capable of passing not only Baptist Run but the rest of training.’

Yeah, cheers for that. Tell me something I don’t know
.

‘I am confident you can all do that. I look forward to seeing you now putting this disappointment behind you to show everyone you are capable of becoming Royal Marines.’

As his speech became more encouraging my responsiveness waned further. The training team had always used a ‘select out’ method rather than the more modern ‘train in’ approach that the CSM was now offering. Encouraging and consoling words had, up until that point, been alien to us; words that now made the others seemingly feel slightly better about being abject failures. As for me, all I could hear was, ‘
You are no longer part of 299 Troop
.’

‘He’s right, you know, we need to get a grip and make sure we don’t fuck up again,’ said Davies, as we were dismissed to the NAAFI. ‘I’m gonna smash it next time.’

‘Yeah, me too, I reckon I only fucked up on my nav,’ said Haines, to no one’s surprise.

‘Yeah, it must be all those shit compasses they keep giving you,’ replied Davies to a ripple of laughs.

I remained quiet, distant from their renewed aspirations. I was still devastated by the first taste of failure. I rolled the CSM’s words repeatedly around my head to salvage a modicum of inspiration. Yet his positive reinforcement seemed hollow. ‘
You are no longer part of 299 Troop
.’

‘Nah, it’s all bollocks,’ I stated huffily to the group, now so positive it was a wonder they all weren’t hugging. ‘A failure is
a failure. You can tell a duck it’s a swan but at the end of the day it’s still a duck.’

The once-smiling group now stood stern and silent. ‘Quack,’ announced Davies.

My grimace probably showed I was the only one currently lacking cheerfulness in the face of adversity.

Before being placed into the troop directly behind us to retake Exercise Baptist Run, we would do some remedial military training with a trial ‘Gibraltar Troop’, specially set up for us numpties who couldn’t get it right the first time.

A group of eight marching around camp suggested a number of things to me: we were on crabby recruit routine, we were on the way to the VD clinic, or we were failures that everyone would look upon with disgust and disdain. The fact that ninety-nine per cent of those on camp didn’t know who we were, or didn’t give a flying fuck, didn’t register with me. My confidence crumbled by the day. By the time I had reached my new troop I didn’t want to be there.

On the first morning in my new room, shared with five strangers I was convinced all looked at me with utter disgust, I decided not to stand when the DL walked in, as was protocol.

He stared at me, quizzically at first. ‘Why the fuck are you not stood to attention, cunty bollocks?’

I got up lazily and stood there in a pose that very deliberately said,
Fuck off. Not interested
.

To his credit, he read it quite well. As a confirmatory
response, he stuck his pace stick so far up my nose that my nostrils were in my eye line.

‘I have known hundreds like you, surly fucking twats who think they don’t need to stand up when I walk into the room. They all ended up failures as well. Now get your fucking heels together before I take you around the back and fill you in, you cheeky little cunt.’

Appreciative of his fortune-telling abilities, I blurted out with a highly nasal twang, as his pace stick nipped my septum like a peg, ‘I don’t care, I’m opting out.’

There, I had said it. Opting out was the opportunity to leave before week twelve. I was in week thirteen but discretion was allowed for those who wanted to leave after this cut-off point. It had never occurred to me to opt out before, but here I was spitting it out to a man I’d met only ten seconds ago.

‘Good. I’m glad you’re giving up. The Corps doesn’t need wrap-hands like you. However, between now and the time you fuck off you are still mine. Now I won’t tell you again: get your fucking heels together.’

In the end, my nose situation forced my heels into surrender.

It seemed the altercation with my new DL had filtered through to my new section commander, Corporal Nash. The weapon-training stances, where I was going over the characteristics of a GPMG, became yet another hunting ground for members of the training team to test my resolve.

‘Right men, we have a back trooper. Do we like back troopers?’ It was his way of bringing his section even closer, a fortress that did not welcome outsiders even if they wore the same cap badge.

‘No, Corporal,’ returned the chorus, a little too like
American Marines for my taste. These lads I already disliked. We had not got off to the best of starts in the accommodation, with little in the way of a welcome. It was as if I tainted the bloodline of the troop.

‘Apparently he’s going to wrap his tits in today. Opt out. He can’t hack it. Shall we give him a leaving present?’

I wasn’t expecting a nice present with bows and a little message saying, ‘
Good luck, Mark ~ Love Cpl Nash and the lads xxx
’.