Going Commando (17 page)

At the finish, a ghostly mist of sweat swirled into the cold air from our clothing as we stood to be addressed by Corporal Hagar. Out of the van came the lads who’d fallen behind, unable to keep up the pace.

‘Time,’ said Corporal Hagar, ‘join those clowns from the wrap wagon.’

I looked at him quizzically, and remained on the spot. This was probably viewed as insubordination, so I was unceremoniously dragged over to the van that followed every speed march, the truck of shame known as the wrap wagon.

‘You’re a short arse, Time. That means you were supposed to be at the front. You ended up at the back. So you’ve failed.’

No, not the ‘f’ word, not failure again. I couldn’t handle failure. My body lurched into disappointment and once more my confidence was shot. Fred and Charlie gathered around me, consoling me that the team had done it to test my willpower, just like throwing me into the jacuzzi every day.

From that moment I took a ‘fuck you’ attitude to the training team. If they wanted to play these silly games, let them. They wouldn’t break me. My motivation had changed from proving to myself that I could pass out to proving the training team wrong.

Fuck ’em
.

The next morning the failures did a rerun. If anything it was harder; maybe the training team wanted some of us to fail and so pushed up the intensity.

Fuck ’em
.

With my breath shortening and my legs pounding, I wasn’t going to let an inanimate object like a hill beat me. But it was. The hill seemed to get steeper and longer, the cold air rasping at the back of my throat as the pace gathered. My thighs screamed, lactic acid built up in my calves, my step scrambled out of time and I was warned by the troop sergeant to get back in or get in the wrap wagon.

As I thought the hill would never end, we came to its brow. I got my body sorted and found the famous second wind.

At the finish, the troop sergeant stood to our front. ‘Four miles in under thirty minutes, that’s not bad, considering the route,’ he said, the green beret on his head collecting
condensation. ‘Be aware, that’s the easiest speed march you will do from now on.’

Those words felt ominous.

Returning to CTC, struggling for confidence, the BFT pass-out was probably the tonic I needed to get ‘back on the horse’. Royal Marines Physical training is a graduated and scientific programme designed to prepare us for the rigours of war. The Institute of Naval Medicine had conducted a study that suggested the need for a particular type of athlete. Runners usually don’t have good upper-body strength and upper-body gymnasts aren’t great at running. Royal Marines training sought to create endurance-based strength athletes, all-rounders with highly capable physiques. BFT training is an ideal method of achieving these aims.

While feeling extremely knackered after every BFT session, I found the bottom field a place where I could regain credibility. The PTI found me to be one of the stronger of the troop and, as a fellow Yorkshire man, liked the effort I put in.

Someone who didn’t particularly like putting in the effort required (and as such, I’d imagine, suffered for it) was HRH Prince Edward. He decided he’d had enough, officially wrapping his well-groomed royal tits in. Not binned, or back trooped, or even convalescing through injury, he’d decided life as a wannabe commando officer was a bit too difficult.

It was brilliant. Although I’m sure the bureaucrats were disappointed that someone of such standing was leaving, and therefore no longer guarding against any future defence cuts, for us working-class buffoons, who saw the green beret as a challenge for only the deserving, his admission
that training was beyond him propelled our elitism into the stratosphere.

Soon, new t-shirts were worn around camp stating, ‘You can turn a frog into a prince but you can’t turn a prince into a Royal Marine.’ Unfortunately, they only were made in size medium and upwards.

The tabloids made a huge issue out of his resignation and press releases detailed how lonely he’d been; how he felt pressurised as a royal to do better than his peers; how he was brutalised by instructors with a loathing for academics. Of course, his C and D grades at ‘A’ levels and his lower second-class degree in history were clear signs of his superior intellect. As for feeling pressure, I think the term could be more accurately applied to those who struggle to put food in front of their children, or soldiers pinned down under enemy fire.

The next challenge, for those of us whose parents weren’t the wealthiest land owners on the planet, was to survive the defence phase, including getting gassed in our Nuclear, Biological and Chemical warfare (NBC) suits. The rubber respirators made us look like sex gimps storming the Iranian Embassy, but the gas chamber held no fear for me. I walked into the dark room with the thick fog of CS gas as my only handrail, and was instantly reminded of my childhood living room. All that was needed was a copper spittoon full of green smoker’s phlegm in the corner and it’d have brought a tear to my eye.

With our masks all fitted correctly, we had to take them off and inhale the chamber full of CS gas, which
did
bring a tear to my eye. Rioting football hooligans would probably appreciate the sting that CS gas brings. Like a swarm of bees stinging
the face, the CS infuses into every facial orifice, drawing out bodily fluids that are internal for a reason.

Running out into the fresh air in a swathe of tears, snot and spit, we coughed, spluttered and gasped before breaking out into spontaneous laughter at the sight of each other: red, sweaty heads, as if apple bobbing in a deep fat fryer, blanched in a deathly pale covering of Fuller’s Earth Powder and mucus.

Like having fibreglass rash, the gas required washing off with cool water. In contrast, sweating would cause the stinging itch to return with a swagger. We were so glad then that, after our cold showers, we had to run up to the top field to undertake assault engineering lessons on defensive tactics where we’d continue to sweat, bouncing out hundreds of metres of barbed dannert wire, then collecting it up to bounce it all out again, in the name of ‘practice’.

The confirmatory exercise for the defensive tactics learnt was called ‘Holdfast’. Yomping once more up to Woodbury Common, this time carrying a heavy weight, my shovel overhung the bottom of the poncho roll which rubbed the crease joining the top of the thigh with the bottom of my buttocks. By the time we’d covered four of the six miles, my arse had a weeping sore attaching my skin to my combats, a relationship I was rather averse to.

Navigated to a hilly area, we were positioned where trenches would have to be hand dug. Although extremely laborious and exhausting, this would present little problem if the earth were of a loam or soft-clay consistency. Typically, however, we would be defending a hill with a ratio of one part pebble to two parts rock.

Through the night we continued in pairs into the next morning, then through the afternoon. Sleep escaped us as we rushed to get the trench dug to the required standard. By the time we had covered the sleeping area and returned the topsoil, we’d been constantly digging for twenty-seven hours. If I ever had any aspirations to being an Irish navvy, then they had certainly disappeared.

My trench partner Frank was a tough-as-leather, heavily-tattooed ex-builder with biceps the size of a four-slot toaster. He was the ideal partner physically, but mentally he wasn’t as robust. As I was trying to lay out my roll mat in the rubble of the sleeping trench, I noticed his shoulders shaking and a small sniffle.

‘You okay, Frank?’ I asked, genuinely concerned. He was crying. The trauma of the exercise had beaten him.

‘Not really. It’s my birthday.’

‘Happy birthday,’ I said gleefully, with all the tact of Enoch Powell.

He glared at me rather menacingly. ‘Is it a happy birthday? I should be with my wife and kids. Not fucking here in this shithole doing this shit.’ He launched the nearby pick helve skywards.

If Great Britain needed an Olympic standard hammer thrower, they could do worse than the mess that now stood before me.

‘I fucking miss them. Desperately.’

Until now I’d never realised the sacrifices some of my compatriots were making. Unlike me, who had little to leave behind, some of these guys were voluntarily going through
this continuous hell while sacrificing the comforts of a warm double bed, loved ones to cherish, and a real home life, all for the green beret. My respect for them soared even higher.

The week was physically draining due to sleep deprivation. It’s a strange beast, bringing out odd behaviour in even the most robust of men. Charlie cackled like a witch on a night patrol for no other reason than Fred in front had a clown clinging to his back. Of course there was no clown, only webbing; but the onset of hallucinations came as a symptom of not getting any shut-eye. It was my first witnessing of hallucinatory behaviour.

Weirder still was Charlie putting out his washing in a field. There was I, settling into my sentry position as comfortably as you can on sharp rock, staring into the shallow re-entrant to my front. Even with no enemy in sight, I was particularly surprised when Charlie stood in the re-entrant with his laundry, hanging it out on a washing line.

An odd thing to do when on exercise
, I thought,
and why on earth is he in civvies?

‘Charlie!’ I called. ‘What are you doing?’ Even though only a few metres away, he clearly couldn’t hear my call. ‘Charlie!’ I repeated a little louder.

‘Frig me pink, Timey, you mad bastard, why are you calling Charlie?’

It was Fred from my rear.

‘It’s not me who’s mad, it’s Charlie, look, hanging out his
washing,’ I said, pointing to nothing but an empty re-entrant. ‘Where’s he gone? I asked, rather confused.

Fred had evidently knocked me from my psychotic world back to reality, where Charlie was in a trench digging out bits of rock with laundry probably the last thing on his mind.

Hard as it was to stay awake, if we were given the alarm ‘Gas! Gas! Gas!’ we’d have to immediately don full NBC clothing, including our respirators, as smoke slowly drifted across our positions to simulate the creeping death of toxins such as mustard gas or sarin.

Swaddled within the warmth of full PPE with an NBC hood over a respirator cocooning the face causes a certain amount of drowsiness, even without inhaling a nerve agent. In certain casinos, piped oxygen is pushed through the air conditioning system to promote alertness, lengthening a patron’s ability to spend money. Laid down on sentry, wearing a respirator on a warm spring day works in exactly the opposite way. Anyone who, after being awake for the previous twenty-seven hours, can resist succumbing to the ever-increasing weight of the head and not submit to the odd catnap is held forever in my respect.

Sticking an upright bayonet under the chin is an age-old method of preventing sleep; but if not for the fear of letting my mates down, I’d have gladly impaled my face to get a few minutes kip.

Many times we believed we were awake, stood in the trench, only to open our eyes to face a pair of boots. These would usually be attached to a member of the training team who had stood there long enough to confirm our closed eyes weren’t just a long blink. Counting up our sleep indiscretions
at the end of the exercise, the team thrashed us back to camp carrying all our kit.

‘Time!’ Corporal Hagar shouted with the expectant glee I now recognised as a precursor to pain. ‘You’ve been caught a few times. So you can have some metal fence pickets as well.’ Fence pickets were pushed down onto the top of my large pack, as he had with others caught in a state of periodic slumber. I smiled falsely so as not to advertise my despair.

‘And for being caught adrift from your weapon, you can have this as well.’ He dragged with him a roll of dannert barbed wire, which I can categorically confirm is, other than a burning tyre, the last thing you want to carry around your neck.

In this instance, however, my choice was limited. It was Fred who at least put a smile on my face. ‘You look like a bankrupt Mr T,’ he glibly noted.

With fence pickets clanking against my shoulders and barbed wire digging through the hessian sacking into my neck, the arduous yomp back was in preparation for our final period of training: the commando phase.

THE CONFIRMATION THAT our journey was nearly complete came via swapping our blue berets for cap comforters – the neck roll that formed into the soft triangle made famous by the
Commando
comics. Wearing the cap comforter separated those recruits who had progressed to the commando phase from those yet to reach this stage in the training. Instead of me, it would be the nods in the weeks behind who would now be stood peering over the galley balcony, watching in awe those cap comforters.

Just being in the commando phase gave us more confidence. We ran with enthusiasm, as wearing a cap comforter meant we
were forbidden to walk anywhere, irrespective of the strange gaits caused by the injuries prevalent throughout the troop. However, everything previously endured in training was just the key to the hurt locker we were about to step into – it was now the dawn of true pain.

Although we had boxed and done a little wrestling, we had far more fun bending, throwing and hitting each other while learning the art of unarmed combat, hand-to-hand fighting synonymous with the commandos of old. In doing so, we discovered little-known animals: the ‘wide-mouth frog’ and the ‘numb-armed bastard’, neither of which even Sir David Attenborough would have seen. These sessions gave confidence to the least aggressive recruits, so that they could handle themselves should some Spetsnaz operator attack them with a shovel, or a smart prick in a pub launch at them with a spork.

We witnessed pig corpses blown to smithereens to give us an indication of the destruction various weapons systems could inflict upon the body. We would then patch up the wounds they had suffered. While I’m sure the training team would have like to shoot some of us, the use of a few pigs satisfied their need.

We jumped from hovering helicopters and for the first time I truly felt I was doing something special. I had never even seen a helicopter prior to joining up, other than on the telly, and just to smell their fumes gave me a twitch in my starched pants.

Back on Dartmoor we practised river crossings and cliff assaults, scaling rock faces in full kit this time, though
thankfully without haemorrhoids. While very commando-like, it paled in comparison to the fun of abseiling back down. We scaled 20m up rope ladders that swung uncontrollably; while it raised the blood pressure and squeaked the sphincter, it was the most exhilaration I’d experienced since joining up.

We would ascend again in an altogether easier fashion, undertaking a roller haulage technique whereby we would be pulled vertically up the cliff by the rest of the troop at the top. It was like being at some sort of adult fairground and my face cramped with smiling so much. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was, actually being paid to learn all the specialist skills required by a commando.

While all this flying around in helicopters, disarming knife-wielding attackers, abseiling down quarry walls and inspecting porcine wounds was very exciting, at the back of our minds, niggling away like a bit of steak caught between molars, we knew we’d have to soon undertake the commando tests.

These tests are the physical criteria all Royal Marines have to successfully complete in order to gain the green beret. Throughout training we had interim physical tests – basic fitness tests, USMC gym tests, battle swimming tests, IMF pass-out, BFT pass-out, four- and six-mile speed marches; but the commando tests were all important. Fail any of these and the months of training so far undertaken would have been wasted. We would get three chances at passing. If deemed unfit to succeed we’d be given a ticket home, a failed wannabe commando with only futile excuses.

Only ever run when the weather is insufferable, the course starts on Woodbury Common at 07.45, so an early-morning four-mile speed walk is required through the fog of vapourised breath to reach the start line. Even this is an important part of the test; not only does it give us time to make sure our weapon is secured comfortably and our fighting order is snug by the application of bungee cords wrapped around our webbing to mitigate friction, but it also provides a mental battle to overcome the fear of what we know lays ahead.

The first part of the endurance course is a series of tunnels and obstacles, acts of calculated sadism. Okay, so I didn’t expect the tunnel designers to make them luxurious transit points adorned with animal skin rugs. But it would have been nice if the floors were designed as a muddy mess smooth enough to slide through. Instead, some sadist had the marvellous idea of shovelling shitloads of sharp shingle in there to destroy what is left of your knees.

‘The shingle is there to aid drainage,’ we were told by a PTI. Yet every time I went through any tunnel, I nearly drowned in the fetid, foul-smelling water. Depending on size, a recruit either manages to crawl, each movement creating painful spasms, or the bigger lads slide through like epileptic eels, webbing and weapon crashing on the tunnel’s corrugated tin sides sounding like a skeleton wanking in a dustbin.

The first obstacle is called the ‘dry tunnel’, named by someone with a vocational qualification in irony. It was
always so wet that if I looked at it for too long I feared I might develop trench eye.

Running down a dip over rough terrain causes the knees to scream before entering Peter’s pool. I never found out who Peter was, but I think he was a little careless leaving a pool there in the middle of the endurance course; it just got in the way.

Although I was never fortunate enough, like some, to have the privilege of breaking the ice on its surface, we did witness thin, frozen slivers on its edges. Entering the icy-cold water, lungs implode automatically, forcing gasps of exhaling air. Inhaling is made all the more difficult when the throat is blocked by rocketing testicles.

To those vertically challenged such as I, the pool is neck deep. Lurching along the sunken rope is easy; exiting isn’t. Bodyweight doubles from the inundating water, just the tonic running up a forty-five degree hill of shale and mud that, although short, immediately steals away any bounding energy.

Just as heavy breathing reaches a modicum of normalcy, along comes the water tunnel. It is a submerged pipe that a recruit must individually torpedo through. Here, underwater in darkness, the senses are reduced and those submerged are totally reliant on colleagues at each end of the tunnel engaged in a push me/pull me drill. The human torpedo hopes not to get jagged on some randomly placed obstruction, as the tunnel’s girth is too narrow to allow any freeing movement should they get stuck. If Peter’s pool doesn’t saturate, then the water tunnel does.

Being submerged in dirty brown water leaves not an inch of
the body dry. The squelching of wet boots sliding irregularly over slimy mud and ankle-turning rocks is the syncopated backing track to the drumbeat of drenched webbing bouncing off blistered backs; rasping breath adds the vocals.

The next area that could cause anyone to come a cropper is the sheep dip, a gully of ankle-deep water and energy-sapping deep mud, with banks that, if not approached correctly, lead to a comedy slip. Not funny if it happens to you, just more energy wasted when at an absolute premium.

Through the woods of Woodbury Common, the next obstacle is the claustrophobe’s nemesis – a 30m water pipe, known as the ‘smartie tube’. It envelops the biggest blokes, who struggle to fit their wide shoulders and kit through. In winter, when the water is high, and when we do it, it always is; (I can only imagine the training team filling it with a hose in the summer) the excess water means I literally have I had to drag myself unceremoniously through the near-darkness, scraping my nose along the roof to obtain air along with mouthfuls of mudded slurry. Fresh air is welcome upon exiting, unlike the pain from the crawling.

We carry on again; even trying to stand upright after the smartie tube is an effort, but we ignore our self-mutilation. We thankfully reach the final obstacle, the zigzag tunnel, sponsored by knee-reconstruction surgeons. While we can’t shoot through it, the zigzag tunnel is probably the least distressing obstacle.

Upon exiting, a member of the training team will check an individual’s weapon for blockages and offer some sarcastic remark, before a limp up a slow, grinding, dirt-track hill sees
knackered yet determined bodies reach the metal road where begins the four-mile run back to camp in full, wet, heavy and uncomfortable kit.

It is here, where forestry turns into farmland, that the recruits split up. Throughout the obstacle phase, teamwork is encouraged by sticking together to assist each other through the difficulties. Now it is every man for himself to attain the best time possible.

The key is to quickly develop a rhythm, to synchronise bounding legs, pumping arms and lung-filling breaths that inhale the pungent perfumery of steaming cow shit and farm slurry that attracts a haze of flying insects intent on dive bombing eyeballs or open mouths. Often my rhythm is similar to a tachycardia-suffering tortoise and even the downhill stretches caused me to dribble mud and the odd fly I’d so far consumed.

On Heartbreak Lane – a rather literal name for a road so cruel – 500m before we reach CTC a sign hangs from a tree. Painted on it is a comedy-caricature marine gasping and puffing with the immortal words, ‘It’s Only Pain.’ It is a shout of encouragement to strengthen the resolve of those who pass it. For me, it always works.

The overpass footbridge outside CTC becomes an impromptu obstacle; it has just the right amount of steps to kill any energy left in the thighs, dribble phlegm over the railings onto passing cars underneath, then to painfully jar the already destroyed knee cartilage on the downward steps.

The finish line of the endurance course is at the far end of CTC, where success is dependent on getting six out of ten
shots on target at the 25m weapon range. As the easiest part of the course, if the weapon jams due to any serious damage sustained through the rigours of the tunnels, it results in a sickening fail. All the previous suffering, all the heartache leading up to this point, would be in vain.

Pass times have changed over the decades due to changes of route, but completing the course in less than seventy-one minutes was our target.

Imagine being Spider-Man, flying high through the air, jumping sprightly to swing, balance and launch yourself from one structure to another. Now imagine doing that wearing boots better designed for diving, with a weapon continually clattering against the back of your head and 16kg of weight bouncing off your midriff. Spider-Man never did, the wanker. And he wore spandex.

The Tarzan assault is a high obstacle course of ropes, swings and nets that challenges both physical co-ordination and mental courage. Starting on the aptly-named Death Slide, recruits whizz from the 15m high tower down the manila rope, then take on the various high-wire, rope, beam and ladder disciplines interwoven between the ancient trees that make up a giant sized version of the board game ‘Mouse Trap. Falling from any discipline would not necessarily fail anyone; however, if anyone could walk away from a fall and still eat solids, he is a better man than me.

When completing the Tarzan phase, a 150m run leads to
the assault course that a recruit has run around many times before. Having the Tarzan as a warm-up tends to make the assault course a tad more difficult, but as is often the case, mental strength is the spur to continue onwards to the final obstacle – the 30ft wall that is climbed using a rope for assistance. On reaching the top, the recruit gives their name with the most triumphant shout they can muster.

One of my fellow recruit’s surnames was Thorpe. It is a verbal blur, a rather bland, soft monosyllable that is difficult to understand through a thick Welsh accent and heavy breaths.

‘Thorpe, Corporal!’ he would gasp.

‘Fox?’

‘No, Thorpe, Corporal!’

‘Fawn?’

It continued through ‘Thorn? Thought? Halt? Fawlty?’ until Thorpe realised the PTI was just taking the piss. His finish times were always thirty seconds longer than they should have been after the PTI’s verbal jousting.

Thirteen minutes of speed, strength, agility, and correctly pronouncing your surname will lead to passing the Tarzan assault course.

The least spectacular of the tests, the ‘nine-miler’ is a straight speed march over splendid hills and through wondrous dells of the Devon countryside. By now speed marching has become as natural as waking up in agony, but as a pass-out test it is done at a more breakneck speed than necessary. Ninety minutes at
a ten-minute-mile speed would see a recruit troop home, but most do it far quicker.

The nine-mile finish only becomes the start line for a long troop attack where a fictitious enemy seems to be an infinite distance away – coincidentally up a hill, never at the far end of a bowling green. Even without a false-dawn finish a recruit will continue in formation, dashing down, crawling, taking cover, observing sight, time and time again, the recruit wishing every dive will be the last. In the real world, it is pointless speed marching to an objective and being unable to carry out the necessary assault once there.

As a recruit, there is no better way to finish a Saturday morning than the ‘nine-miler.’ All there is left to complete the tests and earn the green beret is the final small task: the ‘thirty-miler’.

With an evening of route planning complete, personal administration consists of ensuring kit is well fitting, eating as much as possible and taping up the majority of bare flesh to reduce contact sores. With the variety of burns, blisters and bruises on my battered body, by the time I finished I looked more like an Egyptian mummy than a nod.

Waking in the dark, a hearty breakfast is all that is required before greeting the harsh bleakness of Dartmoor, which at first light has an unnerving tranquillity. In syndicates of eight, all assist in the navigation of the march accompanied by a corporal who, rather than giving permanent bollockings, now carries a couple of jars of encouragement.