you myself!’ He checked himself as we all looked on. ‘Don’t tell anyone I said that,’ he added. We all shifted our gaze, straight down the range for the rest of the day. Staring down the lengths of our rifles we revised in our minds whether chickens had lips.
We were up early and late to bed. I found the fatigue manageable after the initial shock and was determined to pass through with minimal fuss. Some people left after a few weeks, citing a change of heart and I thought them foolish. I reasoned that this period did not represent the army per se; it was a rushed, half-cocked introduction. I kept my head down, blending in as much as I could; the last thing I wanted was notoriety. I was once even pulled up for my obscurity in a report. A Scots corporal – one known to lift his kilt during drill practice to expose what he termed the tartan torpedo – told me I needed to look like I was struggling more, otherwise I wasn’t trying. I told him I would struggle as much as I could. I felt at all times like a fellow traveller – other people moaned and griped and I pushed on. There was no way that this would beat me, it wasn’t even the proper army yet.
We were taken on a battlefield tour of Belgium and France. We saw graveyards of grim, dark stones for the Germans and white crosses for our lot. Here and there we stopped and looked at surviving fortifications that seemed to spring weirdly out of rolling green farmland. We visited the Menin Gate – a monolithic war memorial – where a select few were allowed to lay a wreath at the service while the rest of us looked on and tried to feel morbid. The occasion was treated very seriously and seemed to demand seriousness. Our instructors told us we should think deeply about this because some of us would die soon in the wars. I thought deeply about this and quietly dismissed the idea that it would be any of us getting killed. I do not know if any of my friends from training died, except one of our sergeants who was okay to us and stole our fags a lot. ‘If you’re smoking,’ he would say in his Sunderland accent, ‘then sergeant is smoking.’ An IED killed him in Afghanistan. He was a guardsman and only thirty years old.
After the first weeks of training and the battlefield tour we began to spend more and more time out in the training area, learning to survive the cold and lack of sleep, and doing what one of our instructors termed ‘aggressive camping’. I liked being there, even though it was uncomfortable and the exercises were very basic. It felt good. To start with we would tab out and then form a ‘harbour’ area, a circle of outwards facing pits in which we lived and pretended to die when attacked. We would then do patrols and reconnaissance, and at night we would get attacked. If we lived we would bug out (retreat) in the dark.
Our troop commander, a lieutenant from the Grenadier Guards, schooled us in what to do when attacked. He carried himself like a man whose ancestors had commanded common scum like us at Waterloo. ‘When one is ambushed in the harbour area,’ he told us, ‘one must get out of one’s scratcher (sleeping bag) and pack one’s bergen (backpack) aggressively.’ When attacked we packed our bags violently and mock-fought our way out, running into trees and each other. Afterwards the instructors would bring us back and we would look for all the things we’d left behind: sleeping bags, mess-tins, rifles, boots, other recruits and packets of sweets. A ‘beasting’ (hard exercise) followed and Willy the Whistle became our master. We’d have to crawl a muddy circuit on our bellies on one blast, run on two blasts and do press-ups in the mud on three – all with the stated aim of making our eyes bleed.
The officer took us out to learn how to do a reconnaissance patrol, a particular type of manoeuvre which we were told involved the maximum of stealth and field craft. ‘So are we going to sneak around, sir?’ I asked him. He scoffed disparagingly, ‘The British Army does not simply… sneak around.’
None of this felt particularly real. In fact it felt like we were doing most of our exercises on a rubbish tip. The landscape was strewn with empty ration packs which soldiers were meant to bury after use. Animals dug these up so all our training areas were covered in plastic and the debris of pretend warfare. Another hazard was left over from years of shovel reconnaissance, where a man, his rifle and a shovel travel out into the bushes to shit. Her Majesty’s restricted woodlands of Britain are mined with shit and plastic. This tactical activity – once known as ‘Squat, Squeeze and Cover’ – was now frowned upon and Portaloos had been scattered around the woods where soldiers would go for their tactical field shits. We were told to patrol in groups, or at least pairs, to these brightly coloured shrines in a proper soldierly fashion.
Once in situ, you peer into the woods over the sights of your weapon to protect your comrade while he squeezes inside the toilet with his webbing, rifle and helmet. You then switch. This is preparation for the war. We were told they have portable shitters in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. Portaloos, I figured, are omens of freedom and democracy in the sand and are rated among our greatest weapons in the War on Terror.
Training continued to be good fun. We were forming bonds with each other, except for a few ‘gobshites’ and ‘jack’(selfish) bastards. When our fights broke out the instructors would stop them but they were not overly concerned. After all, we were learning how to survive, fight and kill – albeit in a rudimentary way. We were only destined for the corps, not the infantry. They’re the ones who do the real killing. Rudimentary killing was our game. We would not be considered fully trained until we had been at our units for six months. But, as the instructors told us, if you kept your mouth shut, turned up on time and looked like you were struggling you would get through it.
Our lives were punctuated with ‘show parades’, a punishment for such sins as inadequate ironing. You had to give a bold, clear announcement for the inspecting officer: ‘Sir, 25193317 Recruit Glenton, Peninsular Troop, 105 Squadron RLC, week eight showing combat trousers properly ironed, sir.’ During one of these punishments the scruffiest officer I had ever seen emerged from the guardroom. He was an outrageous toff with hair down his back and a stupid accent down pat. His uniform was in what we called shit-state and a swollen black Lab wheezed at his feet. All he needed was a Barbour jacket and a shotgun. He looked us up and down paying no attention, and then orated, ‘Clearly, it’s imperative on operations around the world, in places like Irarrrk, B’zzniaar and Arfgarnistaarrn, that we need smart, well-turned out soldiers. I do not wish to see you here again.’ He swaggered off and left us wondering where we’d plug in the iron in the desert. The duty sergeant met our gazes, and shrugged. ‘What a cock,’ the sergeant said. Senior NCOs alone do not fear officers, unless they have maps in their hands and want to navigate.
Every soldier in every army has stories from training, all rooted in the same themes – screaming corporals, early mornings, and inspections with unattainable standards, bullshit and violence. It was here we were lectured in the ‘Values of the Army’ by the padre: Courage, Discipline and Respect for Others, Integrity, Loyalty and Selfless Commitment. It is strange now to have learned about ethics in the army and from a priest of all people. Apparently, this is what priests are meant to do. Having been raised beyond God’s earshot, I had no idea they were other than decorative. Iraq and Afghanistan, I would find, were conflicts that required moral vaccination.
There were also informal lessons on what we were being trained for. We endured nuclear-biological-chemical warfare lessons – during which we were CS-gassed while the instructors filmed our trailing, gas-induced snot and misery. We were also taught that when a nuclear blast wave comes it is called a positive wave. This name is deceptive – it does not mean the wave is essentially good. Because of this essential un-goodness we are to lie down. When it returns we should still be prone – this wave is called the negative wave. We lie down so that we may continue to fight after the nuclear detonation. Presumably, our fight would be with whoever else had known to lie down and over whatever is left to fight for after a nuclear blast. After this lesson we were assembled and told by an instructor that whatever our job, our goal was to ‘kill cunts’, or to get others into a position where they could ‘kill cunts’. We were all about cunt-killing.
This disparity between the padre’s line and the one we were to apply was clear. After our Values and Standards lessons, once we were marched out of the padre’s proximity,
