Going Commando by Mark Time

Author:Mark Time [Mark Time]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784187859
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2015-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

‘My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.’

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, SIXTEENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BEFORE PROGRESSING INTO the second fifteen weeks of training, we would first have to successfully complete a number of criteria tests. Fail anything and we would be back trooped. No pressure there then…

Firstly, we completed our PT pass-out. Although my feet were in bits, running around in pusser’s pumps presented little problem and gym work was my strong point. The pass-out was a doddle, so too our Annual Personal Weapons Test (APWT) on the blunderbuss that is the now obsolete SLR and the even more archaic Sterling submachine gun (SMG), which was only useful in the hands of a Star Wars Imperial Storm Trooper – even if they did always forget to attach the magazine.

Thankfully, despite my slow start on the SLR, my shooting was actually quite good, achieving 119 out of 130 and gaining marksman status that entitled me to wear a crossed weapons badge on my dress uniform, which would be ridiculed by anyone from a commando unit. As with everyone else, my SMG test was successfully completed first time – not that I would ever get to hold one again.

Exercise Baptist Run was our last and most important test to assess our military skills thus far. I commenced the exercise with my feet in such a bad state that they felt like they’d been put through a bacon slicer.

Other than piss, the tried and tested way of preventing blisters was to use zinc oxide adhesive tape. Once blisters had formed the tape became an irrelevance, only pulling off the skin it was wrapped over. In my stupidity I’d persistently wrapped my raw feet in zinc oxide, meaning that every time I changed the tape I stripped my feet again down to the raw flesh. The balls of my feet looked like I’d stepped in boiling water and my heels should have been used on the set of a horror film.

Even setting off onto the exercise, I was in agony. The yomp up to Woodbury Common, although done many times already, was excruciatingly painful and I struggled to keep up, even at the relatively slow pace.

To assess our competency in soldiering, we would be instructed to navigate our way to a stance where a military subject would be tested. Most of the lads would rock up with that typical hangdog look of someone too tired to actually hold an expression. But not me, I impressed the training team. As I approached most of the stances they asked why I was smiling so much. But I wasn’t smiling – I was grimacing in pain from walking on the raw flesh that masqueraded as my feet. The upside was that the pain overrode any nervousness I may have had in completing the tests. Yet getting to the tests was becoming more of a problem.

Fellow recruit Vince, an older cockney who was the agony uncle for

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