As the lessons progressed Corporal D varied the degree of difficulty of our assignments, adding such things as nuclear, biological and chemical warfare suits and gas masks.
The thick, confining and restrictive suits are very hot to wear and while they did not make the actual weapons training much more difficult, they made the beasting’s almost unbearable.
This was our first taste of nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) warfare equipment.
Corporal D, being a specialist in this field, was obsessively keen to have us excel in his area of expertise.
The NBC training was just horrific, completely horrendous.
We had already heard the stories from other more senior recruits about the NBC Training Gas Chamber and therefore felt some foreboding about what we were about to endure.
The day came where we were marched, carrying NBC suits and gas masks under our arms, to the infamously foreboding Gas Chamber, a brick and concrete flat roofed bunker. A safety fence and surrounding gates emphasized that this was not a safe place to enter without supervision.
The Gas Chamber was located near both the playground and the gymnasium but could hardly have been more different in character.
At the time gas training was made pertinent by fears dictators such as the then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would use mustard gas during conflicts as he had already done to the Kurds.
On our first day at the Chamber we were taken inside in groups of ten.
It was dimly lit inside with no windows.
The steel door was locked and sealed behind us.
In the dim light we were then taught to put on our gas masks and how to check the seals to ensure there were no leaks.
Then the CS gas, otherwise known as tear gas, was emitted.
At this point Corporal D stated: “If you cannot breathe normally and can feel the gas, put your hand up.”
Two recruits did.
Corporal D replied: “Fucking liars” and proceeded to rip their masks off.
The shocked recruits began to choke, unable to breathe.
Tear gas has been used as an effective riot control agent by police forces for many years. It makes your eyes burn and water profusely and most people try to escape its effects as quickly as possible.
The two recruits were in a total state of panic as they tried to get out the door.
After a minute or so Corporal D finally opened it and let them out, locked the door again and told us that the recruits would be joining us again shortly so we could start the whole procedure over again.
Then he ordered us to take our masks off to experience the gas.
Deep joy!
Anyone who panicked and tried to get out the door was pushed back into the room.
When Corporal D could see we were suffering the maximum affects of CS, only then did he let us out.
That was our first experience of the Gas Chamber.
Once outside the training team took on the unusual role of caring, using water to wash our eyes out, monitoring our breathing and state of health, making sure that within five minutes or so we returned back to something resembling normality.
This was a very brutal but realistic lesson on what it is like to be gassed.
These lessons intensified over the following weeks as we learned how to remove the gas masks, eat food, drink water, replace the masks, and blow out the gas which remained inside the masks - all within a gassed environment.
This process was repeated until we learnt how to eat a complete meal.
If you failed to ingest enough food and water within the ten second window you were given with your mask off while at the same time retaining enough oxygen in your lungs to expel the gas now inside the mask the result was you were gassed.
Shortly thereafter you were crawling around the floor of the Gas Chamber in agony.
Unable to complete the meal and therefore having failed the task, recruits in this situation were thrown out of the gas chamber while everyone else attempted to pass the test.
To eat one meal required taking the mask off up to 30 times.
You can only imagine the state of panic some people got themselves into; the food being blown into the glass windows of the masks, making some of them look as if they were filling up with vomit.
The more the recruits panicked the more they gassed themselves and the more failure became a certainty.
Failure meant the entire procedure had to be redone again.
You had to pass. There was no choice. Once again failure was not an option on offer.
CHAPTER FIVE
HOMECOMING
After five months of intensive commando training we were granted one week’s leave.
I would have to say the single greatest pleasure of
that week was the opportunity it provided to thump the guts out of my former tormentor Blondie.
As short as I was, I now walked tall. I was afraid of nobody.
After five months of coping with the “training team”, more accurately known as “the bastards”, nothing fazed me.
When I was younger, I often
ducked along the back lanes to avoid the bigger boys and the bullies
who infested not just the England of my youth but so often
succeed in today’s corporate world.
One of the strangest things about life is that bad behavior is often rewarded.
The first day of my return to Leighton Bromswold was taken up by first
seeing mom, who was just as hard a case ever and shed not a tear of
joyful welcome.
Within the hour I was out on the town, pub crawling
around the picturesque local villages which are interspersed between the rolling green hills and the farming country of Cambridgeshire. Many of these atmospheric villages with their classic English pubs have changed little in centuries.
Day Two was a day of triumph.
Having gained 14 kilograms in pure muscle in five months of rigorous training with the marines this was the day I made sure there was one less bully in the world.
With a couple of friends we walked into Leighton Bromswold’s social hub , The Green Man, a centuries old coach house and classic English pub.
It was one of the few pubs with a pool table and hence a
draw card for the area’s teenagers, who used to gather there in an almost ritualistic way.
Each evening during my break I became part of the ritual gathering.
As the inevitable pub crawl progressed our numbers increased; until by midnight four or five car
loads of drunken, hormone ridden lads headed off to the nightclubs of
Peterborough or Cambridge, during those glorious days before random breath testing and drink
driving became akin to unconscionable sin.
During my absence I had also, unexpectedly, acquired a sense of humor - because of the black humor of
the “training team”.
At first I had not realized that a sense of humor would be an
important part not just of surviving the rigors of training, but of dealing with the horrors that all marines face on active duty.
To be able to laugh at the adverse things which happen to
you and your comrades during battle is an essential part of
psychological survival, of overcoming fears.
If your friend is lying in a field with his leg blown off and blood streaming everywhere; you need to be able to focus, not just to be able to help your comrade, or “oppo” as we called them, survive a shock which would kill any normal civilian. You also have to be able to focus on the job
in hand, getting your friend out of danger and into hospital as quickly as
possible.
My first attempt at humor in front of my civilian
friends was during that first week’s leave with a very pretty girl I
propositioned in a Peterborough one night. She told me she was out of
action on her monthly cycle.
“No worries,” I replied, “I’ll follow you
home on my bike.”
There wasn’t a happy ending that night, but I got her
number and of course, if a girl gives you her phone number one thing usually leads to another and she was a part of what made that week of leave so glorious.
But what really made it was something else entirely.
I might not have inherited my mother’s stern personality, but I did inherit her capacity to hold a grudge forever.
To this day, anybody crosses me and there’s going to be payback.
It was this personal attribute which contributed to making that second day of leave so truly, utterly splendid.
Being England it was wet, windy and cold, but at 17 nothing could dampen my spirits.
The sweetest of all possible moments came when I walked into The Green Man’s poolroom with a group of friends.
There was Blondie, my chief tormentor and bully for so many years. He was still tall, handsome and surrounded by the gang of loyal followers who had looked up to him as their leader since childhood.
He didn’t look so handsome the next day.
I walked straight up to Blondie, tapped him on the shoulder and said: “Remember me? The pipe cleaner.”
That was how he had denigrated me, repeatedly making me the butt of jokes in front of his hee-hawing mates, laughing at the very idea a little runt like me could possibly make it in the military.
I was so short all I would be good at was cleaning the exhaust pipes of army tanks.
But I was no longer an
awkward, short, skinny lad, intensely uncomfortable in the Huntingdon Comprehensive’s obligatory uniform of white shirt,
tie and green blazer.
Back then the school playground had been the arena of my greatest fears and humiliations, as I was pummeled, beaten and bullied time and time again by the regions housing estate thugs.
In those days I had been easily
targeted by bullies. Now I was a ball of muscle.
Much to my pride, symbolizing as it did my shift from child to man,
I was wearing a tight fitting green shirt which bore the famous Globe and Laurel emblem of the Royal Marines.
I hit Blondie twice in the face and he hit the floor.
I’d never felt happier in my life - to humiliate
someone whose tactic had always been humiliation felt more than
fantastic.
I knew from my training that hitting someone in the chin is
the perfect spot because it gives leverage, making the head move faster than the brain and causing disorientation or an instant
knockout.
I turned to walk away, then turned and said to his friends:
“You want some?”
They didn’t say a word.
Nor did Blondie; lying stunned in disbelief on the beer stained floor of that, at least to me, most memorable and beautiful of English pubs, The Green Man.
Even my mates were quiet.
Nobody in the village and its surrounds had ever taken on Blondie and
they could not believe what had just happened. The teenagers of the
area were, in the seconds it took for a double punch, scared of me for
life.
I am not a bully; I am just someone you don’t mess with.
A double punch and Blondie was out of my life and out of my head for good.
If there is one thing I would like readers to take away from my personal story, it is that you too do not have to put up with being bullied and harassed. Fight back. Stand up.
Although the world is full of them, don’t let the bastards beat you. If you can’t fight back the way you are, learn how to fight. And stand up for what’s important in life. Independence, the welfare of those you care about. But most of all your own personal integrity. Don’t let anyone ever treat you like dirt. You’re better than that or you wouldn’t have bothered to read this far.
Enjoyed the story so far?
Part Two of Confessions of a Royal Marine Commando:
A Young Man’s Mischievous Journey Into The UK’s Finest
will be released by
A Sense Of Place Publishing on 30 April 2012.
CONFESSIONS OF A ROYAL MARINE COMMANDO (part one) Page 5
