Going Commando (19 page)

I could have cursed him, called him names that my gran would have given me a thick ear over and, under my breath, I probably did. But, trashed ankle or not, I was determined to finish. No way was I going to repeat this exercise.

With an increasingly sore ankle, I finished the exercise at Bickleigh Barracks, marching into 42 Commando’s home, watching the marines laugh at us as we walked in as proficiently as we could. The morning had started with a dawn attack on an old fort, then ended in a speed march to finish there, where tepid sausage, beans and egg had never tasted so good and the hot showers felt like ambrosia poured by the gods themselves onto our tired and grimy bodies.

Part one – to my mind, the hardest test of the commando phase – was thankfully over. Returning to CTC a conquering hero, my first port of call was to see if Charlie and Fred were okay. Unfortunately, they had already left to do the exercise all over again. I couldn’t think of a worse way to spend the next fortnight, other than to boil my head in a cauldron of piss.

As for me, even without the benefit of a medical practitioner’s qualification, I knew something was definitely not right. As I made my ravenous way from Fred and Charlie’s accommodation it became increasingly difficult to bear weight
on my foot and by the time I had reached the galley doors I was hopping, the pain unbearable. Like most, I hit my bed early, hoping I was just suffering post-exercise soreness.

The next morning I woke up and felt little pain in my ankle. But on trying to get out of bed I feared the worst. The pain became hideous when trying to bear my weight, and the ankle had swollen to the size of a black and bruised melon (a honeydew, not a watermelon – that would be an exaggeration). I showed the training team who, to be fair, suggested I report sick, leaving me safe in the knowledge I wouldn’t be doing the Tarzan assault pass-out later in the day. I had pretty much deduced that, anyway.

I limped pathetically for what seemed like miles to the sickbay and was treated by a medic, who immediately called the doc.

‘Hmmm,’ he said, tapping a pencil against his cheek.

‘
Aaagh
,’ I screamed, as he prodded my ankle.

‘Does that hurt?’ he asked stupidly.

‘Uh yes, Sir.’ Being facetious without sounding insubordinate was a riddle in terms of intonation, but I think I got away with it.

‘Hmmm,’ he annoyingly repeated, studying my half-naked body.

‘
Aaagh
,’ I screamed again as he pressed my pelvis. He didn’t ask me again if I had felt any pain.

‘Well, the good news is you haven’t broken your ankle.’

That was a relief; it would have been three months in rehabilitation, possibly shoving me into the ranks of ‘perma-nod’ – the name given to recruits spending more than a year at CTC.

‘Have you heard of Woodbury rot?’ The Doc was up to his old tricks again.

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Well, by the look of things, that’s what you’ve got.’

‘But I was on Dartmoor, Sir.’ It was my turn to take up the idiot baton.

‘It isn’t exclusive to one training area, but could have been incubated from the endurance course or somewhere else. Either way you’ve got it. See this painful lump here in your pelvis?’ He prodded it again just to ensure I hadn’t forgotten it was painful. ‘It’s a lymph gland fighting the infection. You’ve got an ankle full of poison. Lucky you haven’t succumbed to septicaemia. You can die from that.’

A double relief then – no broken ankle and I was alive. What a result – but the celebratory somersaults would have to wait. There was nothing else I could do but take copious amounts of drugs and lay in sickbay until it had subsided.

My world once again fell around me. Totally gutted at the news, I settled into life as a sick bay ranger in a bed with a telly. It should have been a cosy few days feeling permanently warm, having food brought to me – not by a Barbara Windsor
Carry On
-style nurse in a tight-fitting uniform, I might add, but by a burly male navy nurse looking more like Bernard Bresslaw. Yet all I wanted to do was get out of there and finish the commando tests so that this purgatory could finally end.

Other medics visited and did little to reduce my fears of a lengthy injury by taking photos of my ankle, which was acclaimed ‘a beauty’. I welcomed the odd visit from fellow recruits, informing me of the gossip and how the commando
tests were progressing. The compassionate training team informed me I could do my commando tests with the lads who had failed their first attempt, but would have only two attempts before getting back trooped again. Bargain.

I was discharged from sickbay on the Sunday morning of week twenty-eight. If I was to pass out with my troop I’d have to pass the commando tests prior to going on the upcoming Easter leave.

If I’d been a professional athlete there was no way I’d be even contemplating walking without the aid of crutches. Even if was a normal civilian, I’d have been given a taxi on release from hospital and told to rest for a fortnight.

Unfortunately I wasn’t. I was a Royal Marines recruit on my way to do a thirty-mile march.

THE THIRTY-MILER is the final hurdle and the test that transforms a recruit into a commando, should everything go to plan. My own plans had gone slightly awry, thanks to my immune system deciding to have a week off. So I had to attempt what is normally the final commando test first.

I staggered from my bed, like an old man with rickets, to join the troop for the route briefing for the following morning’s thirty-miler. I was popping strong antibiotic pills and painkillers, so I thought a quick phone call to Exeter
air traffic control would be in order as I’d be flying over Dartmoor.

And I virtually did. I wasn’t the only one on medication, a few lads had shin splints, another had inflamed Achilles’ tendonitis. To be honest, we were all being a bit soft – some guys had completed the thirty-miler with broken limbs.

The weather was typical Dartmoor, having five seasons in one day, including the lesser-known ‘honking’ season. Ignoring whatever weather was thrown at me, I felt good, as one does when doped up to the eyeballs, and confident we could comfortably complete within the time.

‘How’s the ankle coping, Time?’ asked the troop PTI.

‘Fine, Corporal.’

‘Any pain?’

‘Not now, Corporal. The pain from my blisters bursting has taken over.’

‘That’s the spirit. Crack on.’

Full of spirit, we conquered Ryder’s Hill and, forgetting the pain in our knees as we descended to Cross Furzes, saw the end in sight. Finishing in just over seven hours, we ran towards the small gathering that greeted us.

The final metres of the thirty-miler is always lined with green-bereted commandos applauding those finishing. It is a salute to completion of the longest infantry training in NATO, and a welcome for those who will now stand by their side – an elite band of brothers that has few peers.

Halting as if we were on the drill square, rather than completing a lengthy march over Dartmoor, we were split into two groups. I was part of the group still to pass all the
tests and so was put on the flank of shame. Green berets were handed out to those who had successfully completed the previous tests. I was genuinely happy for them, but felt wholly envious and left out as the berets were placed upon the heads of those who’d earned them. Finishing the thirty-miler should be the pinnacle of training. For me it was a hollow victory.

Returning to CTC in the back of the four-tonne truck, the mood was high. Everyone had passed the thirty-miler and, in truth, we’d all found it far easier than expected. Those who had passed all the tests were especially buoyant. They knew that, barring a cataclysmic event, in two weeks they would be passing out as Royal Marine Commandos.

In the morning we would be officially in King’s Squad, dressed permanently in drill uniform. Their final two weeks would be spent on the drill square, practising for their pass-out parade. I, however, would be getting back into my beasting jacket and taking on the Tarzan assault course with the failures from the previous week’s test.

There were only the three of us lined up at the foot of the death slide. I already knew I wouldn’t pass. My ankle had survived the thirty-miler by drugs and courage, but the rest afterwards had returned me to a pain level similar to that suffered after the final exercise.

Mental discipline, fortitude and mind over matter are easier said than done when you can hardly walk. Telling the accompanying troop officer that I wasn’t fit to do it never even crossed my mind, but as I jumped into the first net the pain was too much. I staggered along the high wires feeling nauseous, but set off towards the assault course.

‘Time, stop. You’re finished,’ the troop officer shouted from behind.

I was nowhere near finished.

‘Time,’ the shout came louder this time. ‘I said you’re finished. Stop.’

I struggled on regardless at the speed of an arthritic octogenarian. Tears welled up in my eyes, and my teeth were gritted so hard my jaw ached. The shouts got louder and angrier. I stopped. I was so close to getting that green beret I could taste it, yet all that lay on my tongue was the salt of tears. I had broken down again, physically and now mentally. I had regressed to a young boy with failure as his constant sidekick, weeping inconsolably.

‘Listen,’ ordered the troop officer with a hint of sympathy.

My head refused to draw away from the floor, the only place I could bear to look.

‘Look at me, Time.’

I raised my head. He put his arm on my shoulder.

‘Look, Time, you’re already near the time limit. There’s no way you can make it. I can’t see you carrying on and suffering like this. All you’re going to do is totally fuck yourself up. You will have to get yourself sorted and then have another crack with another troop. You’re in no fit state to pass now.’

Like an old horse, my time was up. He was sending me to the knacker’s yard. I was being back trooped – again.

My mind swirled, not accepting the day’s events. I cleared out my belongings to retreat to a spare room of my new troop, still away on Exercise Nightmare. I was back trooped with a fellow injured recruit called Lee. While it was tough on us both, having
someone else who was going through the same agony made it easier to bear. As I could see the finish line, with Easter leave approaching, I found myself trying not to be too despondent.

Joining my new colleagues of 523 Troop was a far easier experience than I’d imagined. Many were lads from the troop I had just left. They had either been back trooped earlier in training or been taken off my final exercise, so I knew many already – including Fred and Charlie.

Out of the fifty-two that had started with 523 Troop, only four originals remained. This was not only testament to these lads’ incredible durability, but the demands placed upon all those who pass through CTC. Having such small numbers remaining was not unusual. Some troops even had to be amalgamated if natural selection devastated two consecutive troops’ numbers to insufficient levels.

For the hierarchy it was, and always will be, a fine balancing act between maintaining a training regime harsh enough to separate the wheat from the chaff and the demands of the Treasury, who want value for money in their forces. Having fifty-two commence training, for only four to finish, could seem to a Saville Row suited bean counter sat comfortably at his leather trimmed desk in his plush Whitehall office a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money.

With Easter upon us, the troop I’d just left invited me to their King’s Squad piss-up – a night out where the lads could see a more humane side to the training team and we could get absolutely rat-arsed with no civvies to offer complaint.

For some odd reason, we decided to have our piss-up in Okehampton Battle Camp. The only reason I can imagine we’d do this would be to see the two women regarded as the world’s ugliest strippers. As my sexual experience up to now had been a bit rubbish, the sight of a naked, cellulite-ridden, middle-aged woman rubbing her crusty vagina near my face, wafting her scent and overused cheap perfume, was nearly enough to put me off women for life.

Returning home on leave, I was quite happy to tell friends of my injury. After all, it would only confirm how hard Royal Marines training really was. I would have liked to tell my mum something similar, but that proved problematic – I didn’t have a fucking clue where she was.

I’d taken the chartered train like all the other nods to get us ‘up the line’, alighting at Leeds Central station as per normal. My mum and stepdad’s fish and chip shop had evidently just opened. The shop-front window was filled by a queue of those who had eaten chips for lunch and now hankered after something more substantial – maybe fish and chips. Not wanting to disturb their metronomic fish-frying system, I diverted my route via the rear garden and dog shit minefield, entering through the backdoor. I immediately smelled a rat and it wasn’t the battered variety new to the menu.

All houses have a smell distinctive to the occupying family, an olfactory homing beacon of familiarity. I wasn’t responding to this one.

As a child living with my grandparents, the kitchen smell in my early years would usually be of skinned rabbits. Once my grandfather had died, it was just my gran and I living there. The kitchen was no longer a slaughterhouse for bunnies, and so became a makeshift toilet. As she got older Gran struggled to walk two flights of stairs to the loo, so she decided to pee in a bucket. This bucket also became a makeshift ashtray for the Senior Service habit that left her with a shock of yellow nicotine in her grey hair.

Having such a large urine collecting receptacle wouldn’t have been a problem - cooking and washing with a nicotine diffused piss bucket nearby was, I am sure, common in many kitchens. Probably not so many had a young lad, running around thinking he was Kevin Keegan, kicking a small football around. My skills were pretty good but on occasion, I would batter the ball and knock over the bucket. Once knocked over, a sea of brown piss and fag ends would wash all over the kitchen floor.

If it was possible to make a floor covering that was perfect for catching, and holding urine, yet virtually impossible to clean, then the beaded linoleum mat that was stuck to the floor tiles in our kitchen would be it. Often my gran would squelch along the mat, tramping soggy fag butts underfoot to feed me my usual evening meal of coffee and bourbon biscuits.

Now, when passing a tramp in a doorway my olfactory homing beacon kicks in. And people today panic about not sterilising their kitchen tops.

So here, as I stood at the backdoor of the fish and chip shop, my senses were out of synch. The odour wasn’t familiar. Even with a topping of grease, fresh cod and batter, there
was something different. The strange woman who came into the back hallway was as shocked as I. A Mexican stand-off between two puzzled strangers ensued.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked quite politely, considering the circumstances.

‘What am I doing? What are
you
doing here more like?’ I replied, not quite as politely.

Once I’d prevented her husband from attacking me with a fish-filleting knife, it transpired that my mum and stepdad had not long moved house. They had upped sticks and gone, without so much as a carrier-pigeon message to tell me.

The rather bemused couple allowed me to use their phone to ring an aunt who informed me my loving family had bought a café in Scarborough, but she didn’t know which one. It couldn’t be that hard, surely, to find a café in the largest seaside resort town in Northeast England?

It was now 6.30pm (or 18.30 as I’d now say if someone asked, ‘Time check?’). I could either get on a train to Scarborough to try to find my errant parents, or I could stay the night in Leeds. Too tight to find an overpriced hotel, I thought sleeping rough an acceptable alternative. Having just spent ten days sleeping in the frost of Dartmoor, a night on a park bench with my bergan for an oversized pillow was luxury itself.

A late spring morning in Scarborough is awash with sunburnt people promenading in silly hats, children sucking on teeth-melting confectionary for their breakfast and old people sunbathing in their cardigans talking about immigrants and the ungodly cost of a tin of beans. There is little more English than the smell of candyfloss, burgers and the North
Sea, even at 10am (or 10 hundred hours as I’d say when again asked to ‘Time check?’ I would also tell them it was about time they bought a watch.)

This seaside ambience would have been perfect if it wasn’t raining, if I didn’t have a fucked ankle and wasn’t limping around trying to find people who were apparently still legally responsible for me.

To add insult to literal injury, I was humping a full bergan on my back and, in a moment of financial madness, had bought a diving suit complete with full weight belt. I was now carrying that as well, which encouraged me to sweat just a little.

Although I’d been to Scarborough a few times I’d never previously noticed how hilly it was. Then again, I had never had to walk around with a house on my back. Looking around, it did dawn on me that with the plethora of bed and breakfast joints I really should have chosen this option over a freezing night in a drug-riddled park.

Peering into every open café, I tramped frustratedly up Castle Road, a main thoroughfare in the town. As I trudged further up the hill towards the castle, there they stood behind the counter, laughing and joking with customers obviously partial to my mum’s French fancies and my stepdad’s tales of smashing up Paris in 1975 as a Leeds United football hooligan.

Mum greeted me warmly, totally oblivious to my travails. ‘Ooh, hello love,’ she said without a care in the world, bless her.

‘So here you are. Is there any reason why you didn’t inform me you were moving?’ Under the circumstances I thought it a pretty understandable question.

‘Well, we were going to.’

‘Well you were going to… but…?’

Your pen ran out? Aliens abducted you? You suddenly had a temporary bout of myotonic dystrophy?

I should have just said, ‘You are the world’s shittest parents.’

A more pathetic excuse I couldn’t have imagined. It would have resulted in a severe beasting if they’d been nods in the Corps. Unfortunately they weren’t, so I huffily retreated to my room full of unpacked boxes on a bed that was supposedly for me, dreaming of my mother doing star jumps and my stepdad running up a hill on Dartmoor with a café chair above his head.

Despite only being there a short while, they had already built up a small band of regulars who’d come in each morning to have their arteries thickened by mum’s full English breakfast. One such customer was a guy called Kim. A rather large chap, he claimed to have been in the Paras with impressive military credentials.

Kim took me under his wing when we met. I was a young, impressionable Royal Marines recruit, so wet behind the ears I had fungus, and therefore believed everything Kim would tell me. I was his mate, he kept repeating – in hindsight a little too often.