by Mark Time
* * *
Day by day, I felt as though I was getting to grips with the tasks and challenges set before me. I now even looked forward to more weapon training. I threw my first live grenade with gusto. I wanted to shout, ‘Achtung pigdogs!’ like in the war comics, but followed protocol and boringly shouted, ‘Grenade!’. I learned about mortars, rocket launchers and machineguns, all pieces of equipment designed to inflict all manner of death. We learnt advanced patrolling tactics, feeling like a real soldier pretending to hunt down or ambush the enemy, so as to further inflict all manner of death. In fact, my portfolio of ways to inflict all manner of death was increasing by the day, and at seventeen it was frustrating that I wouldn’t be able to legally inflict all manner of death until I was at least a year older.
Moral questions of killing had never arisen during training. Killing was in our job description and the various methodologies were didactically written in my innocent-looking red plastic ring binder, known as an affairs folder, just as an apprentice mechanic would describe the diagnostics check on a 1986 Mini Metro.
By now, those recruits who harboured any moral dilemma would have taken a one-way train trip from CTC. I never questioned whether these lessons were ethically right or wrong. The morality of killing was never broached formally and personally it was never an issue, due to my immaturity.
I had, though, progressed past the phase of joining up for ‘Queen and country’. I was now doing this to protect my mates, a camouflaged, portable human shield with only the welfare of my colleagues at heart. How I would handle killing another human, only time would tell.
Week nineteen was Exercise Silent Night, topically leading us into the final week prior to Christmas leave. While shepherds watched their flocks (for fear of them being butchered by Royal Marines recruits) and snow lay on the ground all around, it was no Christmas carol. If I were to be eloquent, I could suggest that my joyful soul was numbed by the mournful cold. Or I could just say it was fucking freezing all bastard week.
Fatter people are often said to withstand the cold better, but before I nipped off to eat a bakery’s allocation of pies, the bigger guys looked as cold as I did. None seemed overly comfortable in the conditions.
The training team had advised us that the conditions were to be ‘wintry’, and suggested that when in town we should invest in some long johns or, even better, tights. I bought both just to be on the safe side. (I would have liked to say it was my first time of wearing women’s clothing, but I would wear my mum’s knickers if I had no clean pants left. Thank God I was never run over.)
I never ended up wearing my long johns. The sheer feel of the light tan material sheathing my legs in a swaddling of 40 Denier ecstasy was enough to make me forget about baggy undergarments. But it was a pity I didn’t venture into some lingerie shop to buy a full body stocking, as my top half was permanently frozen.
If feeling like a German sat on the outskirts of Stalingrad wasn’t enough, on yet another crash move I walked into a tree. On a funny video show it may have looked hilarious. However, this tree, like many in the training area, had branches cut off to assist in the application of bivvy ropes and bungees, leaving sharp, peg-like stubs sticking from the trunk. When pitch black it would be feasible, if not unlucky, to walk into one of these, yet luck was not on my side. A stub poked me directly in the eye, knocking me to the ground in writhing agony.
‘Who the fuck’s that?’ screamed the troop sergeant.
‘Me, Sergeant!’
‘Who the fuck is me?’
‘Time, Sergeant.’
‘Keep the fucking noise down, Time.’
‘I’ve nearly poked my eye out, Sergeant.’
‘Well, try harder next time and do it fucking quietly.’
It was quite alright for the training team to throw thunder-flashes and shout all manner of aggressiveness at us to expedite our crash move, but woe betide me for screaming when my eyeball was skewered onto a tree.
A magic eye pad was applied for the next couple of days. I say ‘magic’ because I was mystified as to how it worked. Still in agony, I walked around looking like I’d returned from the Somme, intermittently treated by a visiting medic who squeezed some liquid into my eyeball in a successful attempt to make it even more painful.
My weapon had become my new best friend, especially on exercise, and was never too far from me. In fact, the designated acceptable distance anyone could be apart from their weapon was a ‘hop, skip and a jump’ away. Willie Banks was the triple jump record holder of the day with 17.97m. While I wasn’t a 1.9 m tall Afro American athlete, I thought I could at least stand around 5 metres away. As per usual I was totally wrong. According to the training team, a hop, skip, and a jump constituted a distance of about 2ms - the world record for guinea pig triple jumpers, I would wager. I was punished not long after for offending against this rule, despite being virtually next to my weapon as I dug a shell scrape. Although with an eye patch I had lost a degree of depth perception, I was pretty sure I was within the prescribed distance. The troop sergeant was a sniper so he could accurately judge distance over hundreds of metres, but it was obvious his short-range measuring was in slight need of recalibration. Once again, non-tactical burpees overrode any inclination to argue my point.
When on exercise, one of the most reassuring thoughts was that upon return to camp we would have a nice, warm shower and a bed to curl up into. So, on the Thursday evening as we yomped back into CTC, our thoughts turned to scrubbing off the week’s travails and getting a good night’s kip before going home for Christmas.
The bastard training team had different ideas.
I assume they were environmental trailblazers and that turning off the accommodation’s heating system was saving a panda somewhere. But given the choice between a hot shower after a week freezing my tits off or saving an endangered animal, I would happily piss on the frigid fat furry fucker’s over-sized coffin if it meant getting the radiators turned on.
With no respite after exiting the shower, I wore my unused long johns to bed. For the first time since I’d been at CTC I covered my bed with a blanket, falling into an uncomfortable, shivering sleep. I was better off in the field.
We awoke early. It was Charlie who found a build-up of ice on the windowsill, where rivulets of condensation had frozen. He had been up most of the night, a shivering, gibbering wreck despite wearing all his layers, forsaking sleep to avoid dying of hypothermia.
Nods are now given duvets, which if anything makes recruit training harder. There is nothing worse than getting up from a comfortable bed when your breath is visible. As we only lay on board-hard mattresses covered in the most uncomfortable of sheets, getting out of bed was a welcome relief for us. Although getting picked up for having ice on the windows at our morning inspection was a little bizarre.
But we cared not a jot. They could give us as many press-ups as they wanted and call us any name they saw fit. By midday we would be going home for Christmas leave.
TEN
‘Do you know what “nemesis” means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an ’orrible cunt… Me.’
BRICK TOP, SNATCH
AS A POST-CHRISTMAS present, prior to weeks twenty-one and twenty-two and our live field firing exercises on Dartmoor, a new corporal joined us.
He addressed us in a thick Liverpudlian accent. ‘I am Corporal Hagar, like in Hagar the Horrible.’
I thought, He’s a Scouser; he must be up for a laugh.
‘Hagar spelt B.A.S.T.A.R.D.’
Maybe not then.
A nervous laugh rippled through the troop.
‘You won’t be laughing tomorrow.’
As it turned out, he certainly wasn’t a lying bastard.
His standards were of the highest order; so too were his punishments that were meted out for even the slightest misdemeanour.
He couldn’t have joined at a worse time. January on Dartmoor was as cold as usual, v
ery cold in fact. Snow had fallen more than in previous years and temperatures regularly fell below freezing.
On our first week of field firing, temperatures recorded were the lowest for the Southwest region in the whole of the twentieth century. Wrapping up warm would have been nice, but our wet combats didn’t really do the trick. Running, diving, crawling through the sleet and snow of Dartmoor during section attacks entailed wet clothing from the first few minutes.
On day one, we practised our first dry attack – ‘dry’ as in no rounds fired; it was exceedingly wet underfoot and the permanent sleet made the conditions ideal for whimpering. Committed to the cause, I dived enthusiastically every time the order was given, ignoring the jolt my body suffered in hitting the frozen ground. After we finished what I thought was a textbook attack, the troop sergeant held aloft a magazine.
‘Right, one of you has lost this. Check your pouches now.’
We all checked. My heart sank. Fuck.
‘It’s mine, Sergeant,’ I shouted meekly, my raised hand now a beacon of ineptitude.
He threw the magazine to Corporal Hagar, who would decide my fate.
Along the side of the range was a stream. In the summer it would be a nice accompaniment to gambolling lambs happily prancing along its bank. In January, it acted like an angry Scotsman (coincidentally like my troop sergeant).
It belted along, seething and swirling, swollen with rage. At the point where we stood stones had been moved, either by design or by nature, and had formed a small reservoir diverting from the main stream. Corporal Hagar imaginatively named this ‘the jacuzzi’.
‘Time, this magazine is dirty and I don’t mean like Razzle. I reckon the best way of cleaning it,’ he added, looking over to the jacuzzi, ‘is a good wash.’
With those kind words of advice, he threw it in. ‘How many magazines have you got?’ he asked, his scouse accent as sharp as the surrounding ice.
‘Three, Corporal.’
‘How many should you have?’
‘Four, Corporal.’
‘Where’s your other one?’
‘In there, Corporal,’ I said, pointing to the jacuzzi.
‘Well, you better go and get it then.’
Off I ran, fully clothed complete with webbing, into the jacuzzi. I have to say it wasn’t quite like the jacuzzis I’d heard about. Weren’t they were used by nubile Scandinavian girls and wife-swapping Americans?
Only the fast-running stream stopped the water from icing over, yet the grass alongside, spray-painted with white frost, indicated to me that if it was cold getting in, I was going to be extremely cold getting out. I told the corporal in between gasps of lung-imploding coldness that I couldn’t find my magazine.
‘That’s ’cos you’re being weak. How are you going to find it like that? You’ve not even dunked your head under the water.’
Keen not to be labelled weak again I put my head under, my snotty face numbed even more. Even with my amazing sub-aqua skills, the magazine couldn’t be located.
Out I got and for the next hour I seriously thought I was going to die. I’m sure the training team was checking me from afar for signs of hypothermia, even if Corporal Hagar was too busy throwing thunder-flashes at everyone in the hope it would warm them up, or set them on fire. That familiar feeling where the torment of cold is replaced by the contentment of warmth, as the first hot flow of coffee percolates through the body, ensured I survived the rest of the day.
After such a traumatically cold and exhausting day, it would have been nice to return to a hot bath and a warm bed, but no. Our accommodation was Standon Farm, a derelict farmhouse taken over by the MOD. It had previously gained infamy as it was purportedly where, in the 1960s, Secretary of State for War John Profumo took Christine Keeler for a bit of how’s your father. Now the place looked like somewhere you would only take your mistress to murder her.
The farmhouse was pretty simple, but we weren’t worthy of sleeping there. We were in the barn where animals had taken industrial action when asked to accept the conditions. We washed and shaved in the stream outside in the mornings and jumped into the stream after a day on the ranges.
Having nowhere to wash and dry our wet clothes, we would, on our return from the ranges, hang them in the drying room, though in January it was more of a damping room. After a stream (not steam) bath, I would towel dry quickly, rubbing over goose bumps the size of pimples. My hands tingled with cold as if dipped in battery acid and I wondered whether my lips were as blue as everyone else’s. I would then change hurriedly into my one set of dry clothes. The warmth of wearing dry clothing was like being wrapped in an electric blanket. It was the highlight of the day. Even the hated haybox meals were greeted more warmly than the food itself.
As I’d been thrown voluntarily into the jacuzzi, my clothes from the previous day were still wet when I put them on for the next day of range work. Putting on cold, wet clothes after a warm night in a sleeping bag would now be deemed a human rights abuse in a European court. But that’s what I willingly did, and so before the working day had even started I was piss-wet through and teeth-chatteringly cold.
As per usual, at the end of the range day we had to declare that we had no live or blank rounds in our possession, holding out our magazines for proof.
‘Hmm, Time?’ Corporal Hagar would ask.
‘Yes, Corporal?’
‘How many magazines do you have?’ There was an obvious answer, staring right at him.
‘Three, Corporal.’
And so again the theatre was repeated. Into the jacuzzi I’d jump with the same luckless result, reappearing from the cold froth without said magazine. This game lasted the whole of the first week. It didn’t seem to get any less funny for the training team. Corporal Hagar had become Corporal Schadenfreude, the main architect of my misfortune, which filled him with unbridled glee.
It certainly didn’t get any funnier for me. To take some heat off me – not that there was much heat in such conditions – another recruit lost his magazine. But as it was on the Friday he only had to leap into the jacuzzi once, and without calling the lad a wimp, he made a bit of a meal of it. I was honour bound to retake my role as the jacuzzi king and leapt with gay abandon back in, but still could not find my magazine. Although I did find his.
The troop sergeant commended my actions as ‘strong’ and so, while I was shivering to the bone, I’d at least proven myself to be game for anything. In recognition the troop sergeant gave me a spare magazine. It would have been nicer if he’d given me it on the Monday, but from thereon I never lost a magazine throughout my time in the Corps.
* * *
The problem with range work on Dartmoor in January was that the inclement weather often reduced visibility to a degree where the range became dangerous and was deemed ‘fouled’. All shooting stopped and the training team became bored, so after recounting our fuck-ups even beastings were repetitive and boring.
With a troop of thirty-odd recruits to play with, they had to find ingenious and comical ways of passing the day. Fred won the ‘best wanking face’ competition before the more skilful ‘Special Olympics’ were called, where the sports of bog hopping, range crawling and trench jumping were invented. Scotsman’s piss-up was hilarious, where a nod ran in a shuttle sprint to one end and was spun round numerous times until deliriously dizzy, then sent back to run in whatever direction his disorientation took him, sometimes into the nearby stream.
Elsen sprints were a less popular sport for nods; we would be timed over a set distance carrying the portable toilet full of shit, piss and dangerous chemicals, hoping we didn’t trip over the uneven, slippery surface. The Scotsman’s piss-up was eventually combined with elsen sprints but ended abruptly when the first nod emptied the full elsen all over himself and the gravel road leading to the farm. It’s extremely funny when it happens to someone else, believe me.
The haybox meals, usually consisting of stewed meat of dubious origin, would be accompanied by unlimited loaves of bread an
d far too many blocks of margarine. It was law that everything had to be eaten. Even the most ravenous could only willingly eat so much bread and margarine, but as the troop sergeant explained, ‘You don’t know when your next meal will be.’
In reality, it was highly likely to be around 18.00 that evening.
Nonetheless, all bread had to be consumed and impromptu dry-bread eating contests were called until all that was left was the margarine. If the galley staff had been in a benevolent mood we’d only have possibly half a block left, but if the chef had a hangover, or was a bastard, we’d have more blocks than necessary to spread on the bread. Raw marge does not appear on restaurant menus for a good reason. According to one of our corporals, the aim of forcing us to eat margarine was to create internal waterproofing to ensure none of us drowned. What a pile of shite…
What actually was a pile of shite was the mountain we made from sheep droppings. Corporal Hagar decided that, as the range was fouled again, we should create the original ‘dirty bomb’. Diligently collecting droppings in our helmets, we dumped them into one huge pile that eventually grew to knee height. As we stood in a circle around the pile of shite like Pacific sailors watching a nuclear explosion, Corporal Hagar lit the Mk8 thunder-flash and pushed it deep within the mound.
‘Don’t any of you move a fucking inch,’ he said as he hypocritically retreated away from the lit fuse.
The thunder-flash exploded. The dirty bomb was more Bobby Sands than Bikini Atoll, peppering us all in smouldering shit to the hilarity of the training team. We were already covered in plenty from crawling and diving along the moor, so a bit more shit, albeit in the facial region, wasn’t going to harm us.
While the operating of an observation post (OP) was not necessarily in the curriculum, with time on our hands the training team decided extra military instruction would be more useful than making us run around doing elsen sprints. While we didn’t have to lie for hours logging the movement of a dodgy-looking farmland animal or try to keep awake through the night, we did get taught the insertion, construction, administration and extraction of the OP. Bearing in mind we may have been stuck in one for days, if not weeks, the administration was important to ensure optimal efficiency. The training team enlightened us by demonstrating the various actions required to ensure an OP ran smoothly.
