Sniper Elite (7 page)

You were constantly trying to keep one step ahead of the elements, but the one thing I found a real challenge was the wind chill factor. Minus 4 to minus 28 degrees Celsius was the average temperature range we experienced, and wind dramatically amplifies the effects of these freezing temperatures. Frostbite was a constant threat and we often had frost nip in the cheeks, which was recognisable by small white dots appearing on the skin–this is the tissue starting to freeze.

‘Creamed in' was slang for having an accident which had the potential for injury. Many a time I ‘creamed in' face first. We also called it a ‘Yeti' because that was what we resembled afterwards. Thankfully I avoided injury this time. If the snow is soft and deep your arms will disappear up to the armpits and your bergen will slide forward, pinning your head down and causing you to suffocate. It may take a while for your mates to get to you because generally they will have fallen over too–from laughing. But once the boys get to you it generally takes two to help you back onto your feet.

Our first company-sized activity was on a day when the weather was pretty bad. The wind was very strong and it was snowing heavily. In fact, the wind was so strong that when I stretched my arms out to the side parallel to the ground, the wind blew me up a small gradient. Admittedly we were on skis, but when travelling with it we could really get some speed up.

It was this wind that was partly responsible for ‘Mac' McDonald falling into a small ravine on our way back to the accommodation. We had decided to take a different route back to Ose, one that led us on a very tight path past a deep creek line. Mac was hit by a strong gust of wind which unbalanced him. He slipped and fell into the ravine. Two lads quickly removed their skis and climbed down to him. He had the stuffing knocked out him but was otherwise okay.

Sadly, Mac was later killed in Iraq when working as a security contractor. He was quite a comedian. Back on home turf, someone at 40 Commando organised some strippers and a comedian to do a show. After the strippers finished their first routine, the comedian took the stage and started his show; it wasn't long before he was really struggling; military personnel are the toughest audience to please. Mac, seeing this as an opportunity to demonstrate his own talent as a comedian, bounded onto the stage, snatched the microphone and pushed the comedian out of the way. The crowd roared with laughter and he was extremely funny, but even he couldn't compete with the strippers and it wasn't long before the audience told him to shut up and get the girls back on. However, in Norway his accident was a reminder to treat the environment with caution; a momentary lapse in concentration could be fatal.

Another company exercise took us towards a mountain about 3 kilometres south-east of Ose where we split up into sections. Mike, my section commander, was very experienced in Arctic warfare and an experienced civilian and military ski instructor. We were dressed in our camouflage whites, a white silk jacket and trousers that allowed the snow to slip off the surface instead of melting and soaking the fabric. Underneath we wore a windproof smock and trousers. We also wore our belt webbing, rifle and day sack, which contained a few essentials like extra warm kit, a thermos flask of hot coffee and some safety equipment.

Mike led us off into our night exercise and we entered a narrow valley. He reminded us all about the dangers and signs of avalanche, especially ‘booming'. This is the sound made by tonnes of snow collapsing onto a lower, unstable layer of crystallised snow formed very early on in the season. It's not a good sound to hear when in a steep-sided valley. And it wasn't long before we experienced the booming of snow slabs becoming very unstable. Slab avalanches are extremely dangerous, but any avalanche can be bad.

We continued to ski carefully up the valley until we got to the base of a small mountain. We had previously applied plenty of fresh wax onto the underside of our skis, which gave us the traction we needed. However, it was a hard climb to the top. Once there we cracked open the flasks of hot coffee and admired the view and the lights of Bjerkvik. Suddenly the cloud cover came in and the wind picked up. We quickly put our flasks away and moved to the leeward side of a huge rock. The snow began to fall and became heavier by the minute. Mike made a decision to get off the mountain before we were forced to stay there overnight, but by this stage we were minutes from getting caught in a whiteout.

Just before we set off Mike issued a few instructions about staying together and avoiding injury. As we slowly and carefully skied down the side of the mountain the snow got heavier and the wind picked up even more. Because the majority of our eight-man section was relatively inexperienced in Norway, we struggled to keep visual on the person in front; and it was damn near impossible if you creamed in. But even (or especially) in times of trouble we still managed to have a laugh at each other–the more spectacular the crash the funnier we found it.

It soon reached the point where I didn't have a clue where we were going. I was heading downhill, which was good enough for me. Hopefully there were no obstacles in the way. All of a sudden I heard a worried call: ‘Aarrgh, Rob, Rob, wait, wait!' It was Simmo who was about 6 ft 5 in (196 cm) and not too good on skis. He was sliding on his back and floundering around like a flipped-over turtle. This image I found extremely funny, even when he knocked me off my feet. Still in hysterics, we picked ourselves up and tried to catch up with the others by following their fading tracks. When we reached the base of the mountain we all crashed into each other because one of the lads in front had fallen over.

The weather was still poor, so Mike continued to navigate using his map and compass and led us back to the company location. ‘Thank fuck for that,' I said as I loosened the bindings on my skis and stepped out of them. Navigation is difficult in snow-covered regions because when the landscape is covered by a white blanket it looks completely different to what is shown on the map.

We had earlier erected a 10-man tent for our section, so as Mike went to check in with the boss, we all got inside and got the wets (naval term for any kind of drink) on. To pitch a tent, you first had to dig down into the snow deep enough to provide shelter from high wind and to also give cover from enemy fire and view. To aid in concealment we generally arranged a white net over the green tent. A few feet down, the snow had been compressed and become quite hard so it could be dug out in large blocks. We used this to build the side walls. Once they were up we shovelled the loose snow back on to take away the unnatural shapes of the man-made block wall.

Sometimes we would also dig a trench system that connected all the tents and sentry positions, particularly if we were going to be in the location for more than 12 hours. Weapons and skis were kept outside–the skis wouldn't fit in the tent and it would be a nightmare getting out in a hurry with them. We always left our weapons outside so they wouldn't be subjected to condensation; if that occurred the rifles would freeze and be inoperable.

In the snow pit we also designated a pisser, usually marked with a stick and surrounded by orange or yellow urine-stained snow–orange because the work routine in Norway was quite fierce and dehydration was a common problem. It took a few wets to get the body back to a reasonable state of hydration. To make a wet in the field we had to melt snow in a pot over the peak burner (fuel cooker), but keep an eye out for yellow/orange snow, definitely a trap for young players.

I made that mistake once. Several days into an exercise and after a long cross-country ski journey we stopped for the night. By dark all the tents were in and admin finished. I was absolutely knackered by this stage but it was my turn to collect the snow for cooking. We started our night routine and got stuck into cooking up some hot scran. Mine barely touched the sides. I needed more warm water to wash out my mess tin, so before long I was digging back into the bag of snow I had collected. ‘Aarh, for fuck's sake'–it was mostly yellow.

It turned out that while digging in the tent, one of the blokes took a swamp (piss) right where I had collected my snow. Bugger all I could do about it now. I just made sure next time I had a better search of the ground before thinking of my stomach. Funny thing was, I'd cooked for two as usual and shared the scran and wets. I can't exactly remember who my ‘oppo' was that night, but I do remember he reckoned it was top scran. I said nothing.

The peak cookers worked from pressure-fed fuel, usually naphtha, which burnt extremely hot and clean. The standard operating procedure (SOP) to start your cooker was to release the pressure, pump it six to eight times, open the valve and attempt to ignite the gas. If you followed that procedure, more often than not you would be successful. But sometimes problems did arise like the jet becoming blocked, which caused blokes to gorilla fist it and force more pressure into the canister than usual. All this did was leak highly flammable fuel everywhere, but because the fuel was so light and thin you didn't realise it had leaked. On one particular night when I was moving between tents, I heard this muffled thump and an excited commotion coming from a tent. As I turned I saw an orange glow from inside Yorkie's tent, all of a sudden the flap was thrown open and a huge fireball shot out. The cooker landed with a ‘thump' about 2 metres from the door of the tent and momentarily turned into a small cloud of fire. The commotion and swearing continued so I rushed over to see what was going on and just caught the tail end of Yorkie rolling around in panic and a couple blokes trying to lie on top of him to extinguish the flames.

When he emerged from under the human sandbags, I couldn't help but crack up with laughter. He'd singed both eyebrows, fringe and moustache. But because he had jet-black hair the singed parts were a light tan colour: he looked like he'd just stepped out of the hairdresser's with highlights done to his face. A bloke shouldn't laugh, I know. The poor bugger was probably in pain but the snow soon cooled him off and he was pretty bloody ugly to start with anyway.

Between exercises we conducted several range shoots and this is where I first experienced the radical effects on ballistics of extremely cold weather. The cold didn't allow the propellant of a round to burn completely or as rapidly as it should, so the correct muzzle velocity was never achieved. This meant the effective range was shortened, as the projectile was travelling slower. To compensate for this we had to aim slightly higher than normal. I also encountered other problems such as fitting a gloved finger into the small SA80 trigger guard. One of the lads thought he'd trial his SA80 on an exercise with the trigger guard removed, which worked well until he creamed in and had a negligent discharge (ND). Lucky for him we were using blanks. We also had to become familiar with alternative firing positions, such as crossing your ski poles at the handles to use them as a makeshift bipod. The lads who carried the light support weapons (LSW) fixed spare circular ski pole ‘baskets' to the bottom of the bipods to stop them from sinking into the snow.

Back at Ose the wild nights in the bar resumed. We organised several ‘silly rig' nights–fancy dress, usually with an outlandish theme–that generally got out of hand. The barmen came from volunteers within the company and generally didn't get too much hassle from the blokes, until Billy the ‘pongo' (marine slang for army personnel) was the barman. Billy was a champion of a bloke despite his parent unit; he had passed the Royal Marines' all-arms commando course and was seconded to us for a couple of years, but this night he called last orders at the bar way too early. He was instantly verbally abused and this was followed by a volley of bottles.

The boys thought this was a great laugh and a good way to clear the tables of empty bottles, so poor old Billy had to duck and dive out of the way of wave after wave of these tumbling projectiles. One did actually catch him on an elbow, which cut it quite deeply. ‘You fuckin' dickheads!' Billy shouted, and returned fire. Now I was ducking for cover. The fire fight died a natural death, probably because all the ammo was broken, and a couple of lads made sure Billy was okay. We then continued to act like animals–after all it was a Viking run! Nevertheless, we always managed to clean the place up pretty well after a good night–maybe we were just removing the evidence.

The weather in northern Norway is very unpredictable–conditions can be perfect one minute, deadly the next. We got caught in a whiteout towards the end of a two-day company exercise; fortunately we had some very experienced MLs amongst us and were only about 8 kilometres from Ose when the weather closed in. I thought we were just going to harbour up and see the blizzard out, but Al, one of the MLs, decided to lead the company back to Ose. I have no idea how he did it as I couldn't see 20 metres in front of me.

After that little experience a 20-kilometre cross-country ski and navigation exercise (navex) was organised. We went clean skin but still carried our safety stores. By ‘clean skin' I mean we were still in windproofs with cam (camouflage) whites over the top, but didn't carry any webbing or a rifle. They broke us up into sections and we set off at different timings, each member navigating and leading the section through a nominated leg.

The wind had been quite strong over the previous week and we were in the middle of a cold snap, which meant most of the snow had turned to sharp ice, making it very difficult to ski on. At the end of the navex, we all met up at the top of a freshly graded forestry track. This was just too good a track to ski down sensibly. I don't know who started it, but in an instant we were off racing each other down this winding track. It was wide enough for a large truck; on the right was the high ground and to the left was a reasonably steep gradient where some of the lads ended up after creaming in then finding themselves in amongst the birch trees. Christ knows how no-one wiped themselves out.

I was racing with a couple of lads who were just as keen as me to get to the bottom of the track as fast as they could. One lad took a tumble and disappeared from view, and it wasn't long before I did the same. One of my skis caught an edge on the hard packed snow and the skis crossed over each other. I hit face down and winded myself. As I slid to a halt one of the lads stopped to make sure I was okay. I dusted myself down and refitted the ski that had come off, then continued the race.