Going Commando

by Mark Time

  I’d rubbed the brass cannons so hard I was surprised a genie hadn’t appeared. But to me, the before and after shots were the same.

  To the corporal, who had super commando eyesight, the cannons appeared to be shit. ‘Have you been sat on your arse out here doing fuck all?’

  I had been sat on my arse, that was true, but doing fuck all could hardly be confused with furious polishing.

  ‘You’ve got another fifteen minutes before you can stand down. These cannons better be a far sight better or you can stay another hour.’ With that warning he returned to watch the second half of Blockbusters, or whatever else was on.

  I recommenced my polishing with the same gusto as a masturbating convict. After the additional fifteen minutes I stood back to admire my work. The extra polishing still left them identical to when I started, the only difference being the mirrored reflection of a setting sun. My work seemed futile.

  Blockbusters had obviously finished. ‘Right, let’s have another look,’ said the guard commander, tensing his biceps as if he’d just risen from his bed. ‘That’s better, see what happens when you put the effort in?’

  Now that he had determined the cannons were glistening acceptably, I returned to my grot knowing that at 22.00 I would be doing it all again, just in the dark.

  Despite all this bullshit, these lessons were important ones. Before I could become a commando I had to become a good soldier. Before I could become a good soldier I had to get the basics right, and keeping my weapon clean was part of the ABC of soldiering.

  * * *

  Post-exercise admin was always a day of drudgery, and after Hunter’s Moon we had to work extra hard to ensure every single item of kit was emptied, scrubbed inside and out, washed, dried and then, if necessary, ironed. The metal ablutions sinks was busy with the sounds of webbing clanging against metal, boots sprayed with hot water and nailbrushes scrubbing anything with even a suggestion of mud.

  With my scrubbed boots in the drying room I went to check how they were doing, like a chef assessing his rising Yorkshire puddings. The drying room was a small, dark, dank-smelling place where heated radiators made it warmer than most, and an ideal hiding spot for recruits on night duty during the winter. On entering, I found Hopkins sat cross-legged with his boots in front of him. He was crying. I had never seen a fully grown man cry before. I was clueless as to what to do, so I just stood pathetically with a mouth that wanted to say something but a head that held back.

  ‘You okay?’ It was the best I could do.

  He splayed his hands in front of him. ‘Someone has nicked the paper out of my boots,’ he cried.

  I thought he was joking. Crying over the theft of newspaper we put in our boots to quicken the drying process?

  ‘Why would someone do that?’

  I had no idea, so I offered him the paper from mine.

  ‘It’s no use, they’re ruined now.’

  I was becoming even more confused. Over the last couple of weeks Hopkins had become ever more withdrawn. Since leave I could count on one hand how many times he had actually laughed, despite my ‘What’s blue and white and lives in a tree?’ joke. (It’s a fridge in a denim jacket, by the way).

  I sat down and faced him, also cross-legged. If disturbed now, we might have been mistaken for two lovers missing the tranquillity of solitude. It was clear he had suffered enough. He had mentioned to his father while on leave that his heart wasn’t in the military, but his father insisted that most found the first few weeks of military training the most difficult and in four weeks he can’t have decided whether or not it was right for him. Pressurised to return, he was another four weeks further on and still knew it wasn’t for him.

  I had to bow down in admiration of him. We had been thrashed night and day and he was still there, unlike the many that had decided it was all a bit too much and left. Yet Hopkins was only a sideshow in his own mini-tragedy. His competency, fitness and character were never in question, but he had suffered for his selfless obligation to family tradition without the will to find his own path. Without willpower, no matter how switched on a recruit may be, completing Royal Marines training is a near-impossible task and Hopkins was evidently past his breaking point.

  He then confided that he had bought four packs of paracetamol the previous weekend from numerous chemists to avoid suspicion. He had swallowed thirty before he puked them all back up, his body rejecting the chemical that was included for that very purpose.

  I listened intently. It was a cry for help. Here was I, the only emotional response given in my life so far was to pretend to cry holding a comatose Snow White in a school play (I was typecast as a dwarf) and now I was listening to someone who had tried to take his own life.

  We talked for an age until we decided that he should see the Padre, the military conduit to God. I wasn’t a religious man but I knew he’d have the empathy that was missing from the training team, something someone of Hopkins’ disposition really needed.

  It was a Friday afternoon. On Monday morning, Hopkins was on a one-way train back home, to the surprise of everyone including the training team.

  SEVEN

  ‘We’re something, aren’t we? The only animals that shove things up their ass for survival.’

  PAPILLON BY HENRI CHARRIÈRE

  THE INTENSITY OF military training didn’t let up. Indeed, it became harder as week nine turned to week ten. Days were long and nights were short. A typical day would commence at 05.30:

  The alarm wakes me instantly. As usual I wake in the same position that I had fallen asleep, my Walkman headphones still covering my ears. It is as if within my deep sleep subliminal messages have been constantly transmitting, ‘Do not crease sheets, do not crease sheets.’ My aching body seems to weigh more, increasing the difficulty of rising from the mattress that, while cheap and nasty, always fulfils its purpose. A shit, shower and shave is the morning ritual, a precursor to the scientific rebuild of my bedding, prior to drawing our weapons from the armoury. It hardly caters to its clients; it is only open between 06.30 and 07.30, forcing us to stand in a long, but swift moving, queue.

  Weapons secured in lockers, we run to the galley to get breakfast along with the other thousand or so recruits – cue more queuing. Shuffling forward in the never-ending scran queue is often the only time we don’t get hassle so it’s an opportune time to look over the balcony to observe the other nods. I recognise who is ahead of us in training. Which week exactly, I don’t know, but I know they are nearer the end and wonder how they managed to survive through the weeks we have yet to face. It is easy, amidst the smell of grease and disinfectant, the rattle of crockery and hubbub of amalgamated chatter, to see the sea of nods below as clones. We have the same crew-cut haircuts and wear the same, possibly differently coloured, Royal Marines sweatshirts or T-shirts. Variations of this are tops reading, ‘God Is A Para’ and adorned on the back, ‘He Failed The Commando Course.’ Other pacifist slogans such as ‘Peace Through Superior Firepower’ and ‘UZI Does It’ are also popular.

  After wolfing down a full-fat English breakfast with added grease, we return to the accommodation to start the accommodation chores. Emptying bins, sweeping, waxing and polishing the floors with an uncontrollably demonic buffing machine that dents every metal surface it careers into, leaving a mirror-like finish, so too the boot-polished ablution floor that is squeakily dry after scrubbing the toilets and showers. Even if we don’t have enough time – and we rarely do – weapons are given a quick once over, the barrel pulled through and the working parts quickly and lightly oiled for any snap inspection that the training team invariably give whether we use the weapons or not. At around 07.45, the training team members are heard in their office, laughing and joking, and drinking my milk, then, like attendees at a schizophrenics’ conference, turn into shouting, screaming banshees.

  ‘Stand by your beds!’ shouts one of the team.

  The command echoes through the halls so we speedily return to our personal bed space and stand like
guardsmen on parade, hearts pumping in nervous anticipation to await inspection. Depending on what mood the team is in, the inspection could be a cursory glance (which, although quick, is annoying – we feel we have done all this preparation for nothing), or a full-blown white glove inspection where any micro-particle of dust found is greeted with evil glee. With a dusty finger the corporal will look up triumphantly and ask, ‘What’s this?’

  Many times I have wanted to say, ‘It’s your finger.’ But obviously I don’t want to be thrown from the second-floor window like many of the clothes that are hurled when the team decides to go nuclear.

  As usual, our inspection hasn’t gone well. We are ordered out onto the landing where we are told in no uncertain terms, the error of our ways. Yet again, we are told to ‘stand by to stand by’.

  We undertake all this before the day’s work has even started. First up for the day is a map-reading lecture where we go over lessons learnt previously. The instructor no longer shouts, but acts more as a schoolteacher, just with more obscene tattoos and an endearing humour that makes even the most mundane lectures enjoyable. Map reading over, we dash over to the other side of ‘Puzzle Palace’, the aptly-named large instruction block that has its lecture rooms numbered in an order that no one has yet figured out. The ten minutes between lectures are taken up by trying to find the correct room. We then take another hour to understand the troop tactics lesson given by one of the other section corporals, who absorbs the class in fantastic tales of his experiences in the Falklands conflict, strongly reinforcing the aims of his lecture.

  Lesson over, we dream of having a ‘stand easy’; the fifteen-minute break that is programmed into the daily schedule. However, a ‘stand easy’ is a mythical time where no one has ever been; perhaps C.S. Lewis should have named his book The Lion, the Witch and the Stand Easy. The fifteen minutes has been taken up by getting quickly changed into our IMF gym kit, quickly inspecting each other for specks of fluff, or twisted laces. We then run as a troop over to the gym, where again we get inspected, then put through our paces by PTIs intent on inflicting enough pain to ensure we’re ‘working hard enough’. Reddened and sweating like a monk in a brothel, we return to the accommodation block, quickly shower and change into the same clothes we had earlier been in to undertake another lecture, this time on first aid. The hour lunch break, as per usual, is only half that; preparation for the next period takes a good while, especially if weapons are involved, as we know an inspection awaits.

  Often the afternoon will be spent outdoors. This is always better than being sat in a stuffy classroom where post-lunch stupor could be the death knell for us all. Permanently tired, we look like narcoleptics, nodding away while trying to take notes that start well then deteriorate to a doctor’s prescription. This perpetual nodding of heads is probably the reason Royal Marine recruits are known as ‘nods’ and we certainly live up to the reputation. In these stuffy lecture rooms we learn a new skill: sleeping while standing up. I have seen this skill demonstrated a few times. Nods falling asleep during lessons are summarily told to stand up when caught out by the person conducting the lecture. This does not stop them from sleeping, however, and watching a man so tired his eyes cannot not stay open, no matter what position he happens to be in or what punishment may await, is morbidly enthralling. He could sway, wake, sway, wake, and then be overwhelmed by the urge to keel over and fall towards his desk. This is all immensely funny to watch, until it happens to me.

  Weapons spotless, we parade at the 25m range for a double period of zeroing where our weapons are personalised to our own dynamic. Despite my early struggles with weapon drills, I have now found those days chasing rabbits like a lunatic back home had been worthwhile and my accuracy is pretty good.

  Once our weapons are sufficiently zeroed, we run back to the accommodation block, stow and secure them in our lockers before parading at the other end of camp to get into the lorries that take us up to Woodbury Common for some practical map reading, a confirmatory lesson from the morning’s instruction. Lesson finished, we look forward to a trip back in the truck but as always, the transport mysteriously vanishes in between CTC and Woodbury Common. As always, Shanks’s pony is our only means to make the four miles back to camp. As always, we arrive back at camp hot, sweaty, tired and behind schedule; more quick showers prepare us for weapon cleaning that has to be rushed as they have to be returned by 17.30. Dinner is always another exercise in queuing and wolfing down food as quickly as our hungry bodies allow – indigestion is always confirmation that we are sufficiently nourished – before returning to the accommodation to wash, dry and iron uniform; gloss, polish and buff parade clothes; then write up the day’s notes in our folders.

  As sometimes happens after 21.00hrs, time allows me to walk to the famous Dutchy’s fast-food caravan where I religiously order the ‘Captain Kirk’ – a hotchpotch mixture of beans, fried egg, deep-fried sausage, and deep-fried black pudding. It is a high-cholesterol nightcap that varies in price depending on how busy Dutchy the cook is. Eating Dutchy’s is an important part of training and his caravan has helped more nods through training than any corporal. Having a Dutchy’s is sometimes the difference between completing the next morning’s PT and cramping up, unable to carry on.

  If lucky, I go to bed by 22.30, crashing out exhausted. I am always adamant that I will listen to my Walkman. This is my time, the difference between work and play. But play never lasts past the first song. I have cassettes I have listened to a hundred times yet I don’t know what tunes are on after the initial track.

  I am awoken again this time by the door being kicked open. Rudely addressed as ‘You fuckers,’ we are told to get into gash PT rig and parade on the bottom field in five minutes. Sleep deprived and eyes stinging we run, hearts pumping hard, to the assault-course area where the section corporal stands. We are left in no doubt that we are the worst troop he has ever come across and the morning’s inspection just proves how useless we are as a team. So now it is time to encourage us to elevate ourselves to the required standard. More crawling, rolling, sprinting and press-ups follow; all instructional techniques to improve our cleaning capabilities. Of course, we have done this many times before and the outcome is always the same. We have realised by now that when he instructs future recruits, he will use the same old line and punish them equally as hard; and the troop at the other end of the bottom field are probably getting told the same thing, but at 03.30 we never really think about the psychology of the training team, we just feel exasperated pain.

  We are taken to the monkey bars of the assault course and hang from them over the iced water below. We hang there for as long as our grip can last, while we again get told the error of our ways. I look to the stars in an attempt to take my mind off the burning of my forearms as I try to hold on. The first splash signifies someone losing his will to grip any longer. As soon as the first one goes more and more fall into the water. I am still hanging on – the advantage of weighing so little – until, of course, I succumb to the watery sound of failure.

  Slobbering back to the accommodation, we look like faecally incontinent pensioners, our tracksuit-bottom gussets hanging damply around our knees. We strip naked outside so as not to wet the accommodation block floor that would mean only even more cleaning after the alarm that will go off in an hour and a half; the starting pistol for us do it all over again, and again, and again.

  * * *

  While it was easier to get through one day at a time, we had the forthcoming month’s schedule promulgated in the accommodation blocks. We would keenly read what torment lay ahead, but we also had sporting fixtures to look forward to, light relief from the pressures of military training.

  Keen to prove my worth, I volunteered for the boxing competition. I’d been more than disappointed that, during one physical training session, I wasn’t allowed to join in the milling – three minutes of unskilled, arm-flailing, punching-the-fuck-out-of-each-other boxing – as I was the only junior and wasn’t allowed to fig
ht ‘adults’. I wanted to fight the twat who accused me of stealing, but settled for the pleasure of seeing his face get pummelled into a ragout of blood and snot when he got a good hiding.

  The annual Commando Training Centre Boxing Championship was something different. I was eligible as each of the twenty troops currently in training would enter fighters in a knockout competition, culminating in a finals night.

  Probably the biggest night of the recruits’ sporting calendar, the CTC finals night saw a packed gymnasium awash with recruits all baying for blood. Bloodlust was even more tangible should one of their troop brethren make it to the final.

  I was one of those who made it to finals night. Not because I was a good boxer, but because there was only one other junior marine in my weight category, meaning a walkthrough to a straight final. My boxing training up to then had been ten minutes jabbing and crossing on the pads with the troop PTI, who said I was a natural. Maybe he was saying that to boost my ego, but as I prepared myself on the evening of the fight I needed all the confidence I could get.

  Butterflies churned my stomach into cheese; my appetite waned so much that it was pointless worrying about the weigh-in. Through the graduated programme of Royal Marines training I’d bulked up to a massive 61kg, well below the necessary 63.5kg for the light welterweight category.

  I was untrained and certainly couldn’t consider myself a boxer. Boxers spar, do bag work and shadow box for months before they are allowed into the ring for a fight. Here I was, about to have my first encounter and I couldn’t even skip. I knew the difference between a jab and a hook, and my childhood interest in televised boxing meant I’d seen how bobbing and weaving would be helpful in preventing a good snotting.

  At least I knew I could take a punch, my stepfather saw to that. Head guards weren’t even used in those good old days and the old-fashioned gloves filled with horsehair could make a mess of even the toughest face, so I was doubly nervous about my dashing, youthful good looks being altered. I needn’t have worried.