2
I reached the small Surrey train station in the sunshine to find a horde of other recruits. You can spot them easily, even when you are one of them: we were all jittery, with cropped hair, and trying to butch up. We were led onto a bus and delivered through the gates of Army Training Regiment Pirbright to begin the Common Military Syllabus (Recruits). Rallied by an ancient, shouting corporal, we were marched through the camp to our accommodation. We were out of step and looked ridiculous; we knew nothing about anything here. Then we were fed and issued with a whole number of green and camouflaged items, many of which we never learnt the use for: a confusing mass of camouflage clothing, webbing, pouches, aide-mémoires, straps, respirators (gas masks), chemical warfare suits.
The base itself was spartan, industrial-smelling and every building and fixture seemed worn by either a lack of care or perhaps too much scrubbing, polishing and sweeping – it was hard to tell. Everything was ‘bullshit’ according to the other recruits, or at least the ones who spoke to us, because there was a hierarchy based on time spent here. The recruits who had been here the longest looked at us with scorn and mocked us. Even to the other recruits we were fresh, and to the instructors we were even lower than that. This camp turned normal people into soldiers bound for different parts of the army: privates for the logistics corps, troopers for Household Cavalry and gunners for the Royal Artillery. But at this stage we were all just called Recruit.
On our first night we were called to the central room of our block for the corporal’s amusement. We sat on the floor wide-eyed and nervous – forty new bonehead haircuts and standard issue tracksuits. ‘Okay, lads,’ the squat corporal told his captives, ‘if at any time while you’re here anybody tries to bum you, you should take one for the team!’ We laughed the laughter of sycophants. ‘And remember,’ he waggled a finger, ‘you’re only gay if you push back.’
From then on you had to march everywhere and call people by their ranks – even privates. This reminded us that we were only recruits. I only failed to do this once when I was peering through a window at a squad of recruits marching past the scoff-house (mess hall). Their tiny Scots corporal saw me, halted them perfectly and then ran to confront me. Staring up at me, he raised himself on tiptoes. ‘You eyeballin’ me, wee man?’ he slurred in his near-impenetrable Glaswegian. He was slight, wiry, and glowed alcoholically. ‘No, mate,’ I assured him, unsure of the penalty for having eyes. His face reddened. ‘Mate,’ he rasped. When I explained I was in Week One he let it go, satisfied he had beefed himself up to those present. He scuttled off and switched his abuse back to his own charges.
For the first few days the corporals were limited to shouting at us. The regulations said they couldn’t damage us until we had passed a medical. Once the medics had checked us over we were fucked about at all times as we stumbled through the fundamentals: boot polishing, uniform ironing and foot drill. Within days we started to bond by ransacking each others’ rooms dressed in gas masks, boots and full green, military long johns in the dark hours. We adopted soldierly habits, swearing, fighting and piss-taking, and the weakest were routinely turned upon.
The transformation had begun. But we were still only panicky recruits, our first names trimmed and replaced with numbers. I was now 25193317, Recruit Glenton. We were always alert to the shouts around us and always relieved when it was someone else being ripped into. Our lives and value were measured in weeks served. People would ask each other what week they were in, and this provided a hierarchy. The first serious test was to carry out a set of drill movements as a squad on the parade square. After this you could march yourself to eat bad food, rather the being marched by the corporals. This seemed like a privilege to us.
I was starting to love it, the marching and the shouting and the joking and the new friends. Even the language started to seep into us: fuck this, cunt that, and wanker everything and scrote-bag every fucker. On weekend leave I found this language jarred with the real world. Fuck it, I thought. Who needed the real world? I was going to be a soldier forever. I went back to training eager and feeling like I should have joined earlier and not wasted years in dead-end jobs in kitchens and factories. I was good at this stuff and it was little strain. Just turn up on time, pay the compliments, salute the posh blokes, call the corporals corporal and the sergeants sergeant, charge around the woods, iron your kit, get paid – easy life.
We had been taught to strip our rifles down for cleaning, except sights and a few other parts which were reserved for armourers. This would have been ‘illegal stripping’. On the ranges during our shooting test my rear sight had come loose and, as it slid free, I got increasingly inaccurate. We were not allowed to adjust them. I told our sergeant this and he told me I should have adjusted it. In the army, this kind of thing is called ‘being seen off’. This means being stitched up and is what happens in the Soldier Box, away from civilian eyes and universal sense. I failed the test, was sent back – ‘back-trooped’ – by a week to retake the test, and re-assigned to another troop that was a week behind us.
In this new group – Peninsular Troop – we were taught by infantrymen from the Guards and the Green Howards. The guardsmen were cracked: they told us that in the Household Division the word ‘yes’ did not exist. Instead, they just said ‘sarnt’ (meaning sergeant) as a matter of etiquette. It is the only approved affirmative in the Guards, they said. In addition, when they entered and left the parade square for drill practice they halted and saluted the concrete expanse; drill was religion to them. One of them told us that when we had our final passing out parade we should aim to be so crisp, so smart and so superb that our very posture and bearing seemed to bellow to the onlookers: ‘Look at me. I am chocolate. LICK ME.’
The Green Howard was from the north of England and hated southerners. He would single out a particularly southern-sounding soldier and repeatedly scream ‘Dawkins, you are a cunt’, into his face in his best cockney accent. He was bitter about having got all the way through SAS selection only to be rejected. His personality hadn’t squared with the Special Forces. We felt this was understandable. I later heard he was kicked out of the army, something about punching recruits.
At times we would hear our names bellowed as the NCOs summoned us for a round of abuse. We’d stop what we were doing and scuttle out of our rooms, snap to attention at the door of the central room, and rattle off our names and numbers. ‘Ah, recruit so-and-so!’ one of them would cackle, ‘come in.’ They would lounge around the edge of the room as we were interrogated about nothing in particular. ‘So, recruit so-and-so,’ one corporal would ask as others looked on, ‘tell me, have you ever tasted your own semen?’ Any laughter from the subject would be met with a demand to know what ‘the fuck’ was funny. Do you think you’re hard? Or funny? Are you a fucking joker? Are you a clown of some kind? ‘No corporal’ would be the only acceptable reply.
‘So Glenton,’ I was asked once, ‘what is THAT?’
‘Corporal?’ I asked.
An accusing finger shot up to point at a mole under my eye. ‘THAT. Is it a fucking Coco Pop?’
This was accompanied by a new round of chortles.
‘Yes, corporal, it’s a Coco Pop,’ I confirmed.
‘Well be more fucking careful at breakfast then, Recruit Glenton.’
We soon moved on to weapons training, field craft, more drill, tabbing (marching or running with a backpack) and lots of time in the gym wearing ridiculous blue short-shorts. As some kind of encouragement our corporals would egg us on: ‘You’ll fucking run when you’ve got twenty hairy-arsed Iraqis chasing you.’
The corporals were often angry – our stupidity was painful to them. One day on the firing ranges, as we lay with our elbows crunching in the damp gravel, firing rounds at the targets, one of our number managed to upset an instructor, a mouthy southern corporal. We all froze as he
