Sniper Elite (6 page)

A short run from the water tunnels brought us to the sheep dip. ‘Great–more water!' Then up a muddy embankment where your boots sank into the sticky mud. Now we started to trip over ourselves because in that very short time our energy levels had been sapped by the physical exertion and the undulating muddy trail.

We then hit the smarty tube, a small but long tunnel that was angled uphill, which snagged your belt kit, slowing your progress. Generally this tube was half full of water, making crawling very difficult, because with every forward motion we made a small wave thick with mud that slapped our faces and got in our mouths and eyes.

There was one tunnel left after the smarty tubes, and on completion of that we had to cock the working parts of our weapon to the rear and the DS would inspect it. If the working parts or barrel were fouled in any way by mud, gravel or a small twig, we would have to go through that tunnel again.

Having completed all the obstacles there was now the individual 4-mile (6.4-kilometre) run back to camp and onto the range. After an initial short uphill run the road back to camp was mainly downhill from there so we could make up a lot of time until we hit ‘Heatbreak Lane', and passed the sign on the right: ‘It's only pain, 500 m to go'. It was hard going on the knees but well worth the effort. All that was left was the range shoot. We quickly checked over our rifles and pulled the barrel through with some cloth threaded through a lanyard to remove any small foreign objects that would interfere with the 5.56 mm projectile. Almost immediately we were given the instructions: ‘Load, action, instant.'
¹
It was then up to the individual to take control of his breathing and apply all the marksmanship principles to put all 10 rounds into the target (or not). As soon as we applied ‘safe' on our rifles the time stopped. My time was 67 minutes, and I knew I could cut it down after a couple more run-throughs. Once our rifles had been inspected and cleared from the range by the DS, we had to strip the weapons down and thoroughly clean them before handing them back to the armoury. Cleaning included removing all carbon residue from the ignited propellant, scrubbing the bore with a bronze brush to remove carbon and copper fouling from the projectile, and a detailed wipe-down to remove any dirt. Once done the rifle was oiled and returned.

We also had the bottom field or the ‘battle fitness' test, to contend with. This included climbing ropes, the assault course and a fireman's carry for 200 metres that had to be completed in less than 90 seconds, all with kit and rifle. Then our focus shifted to the final exercise that was rapidly approaching. We were both excited and apprehensive about it–excited because it was the last big hurdle we had to get over, and apprehensive as we knew it was going to hurt. This final exercise tested us in everything we had learnt throughout our time in training. It started with a huge yomp into the Dartmoor training area in appalling weather, which remained with us for the entire exercise. To make things worse I badly hurt my foot on the walk in, but continued on as I didn't want to get back-trooped at such a late stage. We lived in the field for the 10 days and were always on the move. We conducted troop attack after troop attack until it became second nature and everyone was completely exhausted. The exercise finished with a deliberate attack on Scraesden Fort near Plymouth. The fort was built in the mid-1800s. It was heavily overgrown, making it relatively easy to conduct our reconnaissance to plan the attack.

On completion of final exercise we were all inspected by a couple of medics. Some lads had large, bright red sores on their lower backs and shoulders where the skin had been worn off by the constant rubbing of the issue personal load carrying equipment (PLCE) bergens, and nearly all of us had painful chafing between the thighs. A few lads had huge blisters to contend with and some had worn all the skin off the soles of their feet.

Back at Lympstone the training team sent me to the sick bay to get my foot looked at, and an X-ray revealed that I had a cracked metatarsal. I was absolutely gutted, as this could mean months of rehab and the end of a long journey with 637 Troop. The training team advised that rehab was the best thing to do, but I was adamant that I was going to march out of training with the rest of 637 the following month.

To get me over the line I had to strap my foot heavily and live on painkillers when we started the commando tests that haven't changed since the original commandos of World War II. They are run over four consecutive days and are all completed with a minimum of 30 pounds (nearly 14 kilos) of webbing (when dry!) and a weapon. They began with a 9-mile speed march on roads and tracks, which had to be completed as a troop in less than 90 minutes, followed by a full troop attack on Woodbury Common.

We conducted the troop attack on football fields across the road from CTC. This emphasised the importance of speed marching as a means of delivering a body of men fit for battle when they arrived. Once we had completed the 9 miler it was traditional for every troop to march into CTC led by a ceremonial drummer from the Royal Marines Band Service.

Then came the combined Tarzan and Assault courses. The Tarzan course is an aerial confidence test of rope and wood obstacles up to 8 metres above the ground and beginning with the ‘death slide'. Once completed this leads straight into a circuit of the bottom field assault course and finishes at the top of a 10-metre wall. All of this has to be completed in less than 13 minutes.

Next came the endurance course pass out, which had to be completed in 72 minutes; and finally the 30-mile speed march south across Dartmoor from Oakhampton Camp to Shipley Bridge completed as a section and carrying additional emergency equipment. I finished all the tests, but ended up on crutches and couldn't participate in the easiest activity of all: the King's Squad Pass Out Parade. Only 14 orginals finished with the troop. The average ‘pass out' rate is less than 50 per cent.

I had made some good mates at Lympstone but you don't necessarily get drafted or posted to the same unit. Three of us from training went to 40 Commando: Daz and Jacko went to Bravo Company and I went to Charlie Company. We lost touch shortly after. Most of the other lads from 637 went to 45 Commando based in Scotland.

Like many a new marine, Norway was my first real exercise abroad. At 0400 hours on a cold Monday morning in early January 1993 dressed in ski march boots, denims, Norwegian army shirt, olive green ‘woolly pulley' and green beret, we boarded the coaches that were to take us to the docks in Plymouth. It was drizzling (naturally) and you couldn't see anything out of the windows because of the condensation on the inside. I was quite excited by the fact that I had only been out of training several weeks and was already heading overseas on a major exercise.

As we reached Plymouth it was starting to get light and the condensation on the windows was nearly dry, which allowed us to see part of this historic city. This was the port that farewelled the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620 as they set off on the
Mayfair
to establish a colony in the New World that turned out to be America. I felt I was heading for a new world too, and it couldn't come quickly enough.

We pulled into the ferry terminal where we got a glimpse of the ship we were to travel on: Royal Fleet Auxiliary Landing Ship (RFA)
Sir Galahad
, the replacement for the vessel that was sunk in the Falklands in 1982. I was disappointed by the size of it, as I had imagined it to be a lot bigger. It was still drizzling. Suddenly the doors opened and cold air blew into the warmth of the coach. With it came the company sergeant major (CSM) who advanced past the first two rows of seats. Everything went quiet, ‘Okay lads, hopefully this will run smoovly, but remember we're dealing wiv fuckin' matelots [navy personnel] so be patient,' he said in his thick cockney accent.

He explained what was going to happen over the next few hours, and then moved to the next Charlie Company coach to brief them. The majority of 40 Commando were waiting on the dock to board. It was all laughter and piss-taking as we boarded via the back ramp and into the smell of diesel and carbon monoxide inside the tank deck. We carried on our large brown kit bags over a shoulder and dropped them into troop lots. Inside the tank deck amid the hive of activity most of our vehicles were already parked  with precision–Bedford 4-tonne trucks, Land Rovers and the Hagglund BV 206D tracked snowmobile, which looked like a box on rubber tank tracks.

There wasn't much accommodation, which meant we were all tightly packed into the ship and literally living on top of each other in bunks. I imagined this partly resembled the living conditions of marines on board ships for the last several hundred years.

After finding a bunk space it wasn't long before we set sail out of the Sound and turned left into the English Channel and a rising sea. For the first two days we were hammered by stormy weather and very rough seas. I didn't mind it too much but 90 per cent of the blokes were extremely ill during that time. Things started to settle down once we sailed into the shelter of the fjords of southern Norway. I couldn't believe the difference in conditions, and in no time at all the lads started to appear out of the woodwork to walk around the ship, get some fresh air and to do physical training on the deck.

The fjords were amazing, steep-sided hills that ran straight into the freezing deep water. I expected to see more snow on the hills but it was still drizzling, which didn't give the snow chance to settle. We began to see more snow the further north we travelled and also noticed we had more hours of darkness, until there was only one hour of light a day–or so they said; it seemed dark all the time. As we disembarked one of the lads suddenly pointed out the northern lights: a slow, swirling reflection of light. I'm unsure what causes it, but it looks very similar to an eerie thin cloud. The journey had taken four days and when we reached our company location we were split up: the ‘sproggs' (marine slang for new or young), me included, and the ‘old hands'. The old hands had been to Norway before so they stayed in location, and the novices moved to Malsevfossen, which was just north-east of Ose where we would complete the Novice Ski and Survival Course. This consisted of learning to cross-country ski with emphasis on safety and survival in the Arctic.

One of the first things we learnt was an acronym called HAVERSACKS:
H
ave a map, compass and first aid kit;
A
lways wear the correct clothes and carry spares;
V
ictuals in case of emergencies;
E
nsure you have the proper equipment;
R
emember international distress signal;
S
eek local advice;
A
lways leave a route card;
C
onserve your energy;
K
now your limitations; and
S
afety in numbers. All pretty obvious to me now, but as a young marine who hadn't done anything like that before it was very important advice, so I listened intently.

The mountain leaders (MLs) instructing on the course gave us a list of items we needed to carry in the pockets of our windproof smocks, which they regularly policed over the following two weeks by conducting spot checks. This was generally followed by a bit of PT in the snow if items were missing. Now I was confused; I thought I'd left this kind of punishment or ‘corrective training' back at Lympstone!

I enjoyed the skiing and was grateful that I'd learnt my way down the slopes of New Zealand. But cross-country skiing is difficult, and even more difficult when you are carrying weight. To lighten our person load and to take more stores into the field we used a fiberglass sled called a pull, which is pulled from the front, or is pushed from behind by inserting the steel spike of the ski pole into a bracket at the rear. This is extremely hard work and very difficult for novice skiers like us. As the ski tuition continued and the days grew longer, we learnt ways of identifying avalanche areas and techniques to give you the best possible chance of surviving one. We even conducted an ice-breaking activity: the MLs took us out onto a frozen lake and chainsawed a rectangular hole in the ice, exposing the freezing water. The ice was about 30 centimetres thick, and the hole the MLs carved was about 2 metres by 3 metres. We novices looked at each other. Surely not. Soon our worst fears were confirmed. We were going in!

Before we entered the water we had to prepare our kit by removing one arm from the shoulder strap of our packs so we could get rid of it if we were in trouble. We had to take our hands out of the straps of our ski poles and hold them in one hand, then slacken off the ski bindings from the back of our boots so we could jettison them without too much trouble. The drill was to ski into the hole and swim to the other end, then climb out of the water using the spiked ends of the ski poles to stab the ice like ice picks, hand over hand dragging your body out of the water.

When I hit the water the instant cold forced the breath out of me. They told me to keep my face out of the water so when I gasped I wouldn't take in a mouthful. The cold shock would place enough of a strain on the heart without that. In fact, we were told, the cold water would suck out the body's heat 32 times faster than cold air, our extremities would quickly become numb and the deadly effects of hypothermia begin after the loss of only a couple of degrees of body heat. So every effort should be made to exit the water as soon as possible.

No argument from me on that one. I was in and out just as quickly as humanly possible. Once out of the hole you rolled in the snow which acted like a giant sponge and sucked most of the moisture from your wet clothing. After changing into a fresh and dry set of clothing the MLs supplied a tot of navy rum. I've always begrudged having just one drink, or just one tot; to me it's more of a tease than a gesture of goodwill, but as a gesture of goodwill, I drank it.

The course culminated in a long cross-country ski and survival exercise. They split us into groups of five and showed us how to build a snow cave and soon after we had  to do it ourselves. Our cave was pretty simple; we just dug into the side of an extremely compact wall of snow. We started low, which was to be our entrance, and gradually worked our way inside the wall. Once we had a decent-sized cavity we went to work inside on the sleeping benches and ‘cold trench'.

Cold air is slightly heavier than warm and will flow to the lowest point of the cave, so the cold trench kept this air off our sleeping benches. But we also needed an escape route, so off the end of the cold trench we dug a small tunnel that led to the outside. This was just big enough to slide down face first. Once the MLs checked it out and gave us the thumbs up for safety they took most of our food and warm gear then cleared out leaving us with just the basics.

It was a very long night indeed. We had a roster up and running so we had at least one person awake all the time. The man on duty also had to keep an eye on the candle that we kept burning inside the cave because if it went out it was from a lack of oxygen, and in that case we'd have to quickly check the ventilation or get out. The ventilation was a ski pole stuck through the roof of the cave.

It was so cold that night none of us got much sleep. I watched that candle for hours. It was about 5 centimetres in diameter but because it was so cold the wax on the outside didn't melt except when the flame flickered and touched the sides causing a honeycomb effect all the way down to the base.

Exercise over, we shared our experiences with the lads from the other groups. Some stories were not so good. Some of the others had one of the three junior officers in who generally wanted to take charge of the whole situation and practise their skills of delegation. This pissed off the blokes immensely. One even argued that he should light a fire inside the snow cave to keep warm. Fortunately for me, the group I was in were all junior NCOs and below, and we worked well together.

We had an end-of-course piss-up in the township of Malselvfossen where we all had a skinful and enjoyed ourselves. A 4-tonne truck turned up to take us back to the accommodation. We were all so pissed that we didn't feel the bitter cold of the minus 15 to minus 20 degree Celsius night temperature as we sat in the back of the truck wearing only jeans and a T-shirt.

Back in Ose we met up with the other lads and settled into the company routine. Our accommodation was log cabins specifically built for the summer season, but they served our purpose. About 1 kilometre to the rear of our cabins was a civilian ski field that provided us with extremely cheap lift passes. We put them to good use on our days off.

Our work routine consisted of section drills, troop drills and then building up to a company-sized activity. We practised the fire and movement skills on skis that we had learnt on NSSC and gradually reached the point where we successfully conducted section attacks without constantly falling over. Fighting on skis is extremely hard, slow work and requires a lot of practice. If you just had to concentrate on staying upright on your skis you could master that without too much trouble. But keeping up with others, wearing equipment, using your rifle, changing magazines, etc and it all becomes quite difficult to keep your balance. Even the kneeling firing position can become a challenge. Once you have fallen over, the momentum of the attack is slowed down, and generally the bigger the stack, the longer it takes you to get sorted again, and more often than not a foot has slipped out of the bindings. It can be quite comical at times.

When on the move and leading the section, troop or company in thick snow, you had to ‘trail break', and we all took turns at this as it was quite hard work (very good for the quads and triceps), especially when there was a fresh dumping of knee-deep snow. We had to wax the base of our skis for certain snow conditions. The ski wax we used came in two categories: grip and glide. Klister was the grip wax we used for new snow and icy conditions, and Glide wax was used for normal or slightly slushy conditions. If you screw this up you'll either find it very difficult to ascend or end up with clumps of snow stuck to the base of your ski. We would carry these two waxes with us everywhere.

Some other bits of kit we used to make life a little easier in those conditions were Gore-Tex gaiters that slipped over our boots to provide a certain amount of protection from the wet snow to help keep your feet dry, absolutely essential in those conditions. Snowshoes were good for walking on soft and deep snow. However, walking in snowshoes wasn't the easiest thing to do and required plenty of practice and expended a lot of energy. We carried these everywhere as a backup for skis. Our packs were always very heavy, generally about 40 kilos, and contained warm clothing, sleeping bag and Gore-Tex bivvy bag, rations, safety equipment, snow shovel, radio equipment, as many batteries as we could pack and shared section stores. It wasn't uncommon for a pack to get up around the 60-kilo mark, especially if you were the bloke carrying the four-man tent. I was unfortunate enough to carry one of the tents for our section for the whole deployment. And because the thing was so heavy it changed your whole movement dynamics completely.

The rations were a mix of dehydrated scran and ‘boil in the bags'. The dehydes were the best as you got a more substantial meal from them; we also used to thicken them up by crushing the crackers into the mix. If our logistical chain was working properly we would sometimes get supplemented with fresh rations usually handed out by Chris, the CSM. Most blokes, me included, would take a selection of spices out into the field and add them to the ration pack meal. Curry was the favourite. Sometimes I used to take garlic or a fresh onion to add a little more tang.

Our clothes needed to be worn in layers and not too tight or blood flow could be restricted, which would invite cold-weather injuries. Wearing loose layers would trap air, increasing insulation to keep the body warm. Several layers of lightweight clothing are more effective than wearing one article of equivalent thickness; and you could always remove a layer to prevent excessive perspiration. If you sweat too much your clothes will become wet, thereby decreasing insulation, and when the sweat evaporates your body will cool. This is very noticeable when you stop and remove your day sack or pack. The sweat on your back rapidly cools down and so too does the sweat that has been transferred onto your pack. When it comes time to move and you throw your pack on, it's like strapping a block of ice to your back–not a nice feeling.