Month: August 2017

Top 10 Dumbest Terror Plots

On August 20, 2017

After yet another terrorist atrocity, it’s quite easy to start thinking that these morons are getting the upper hand. I think it’s worth remembering that they are not the masterminds that they would have us believe and that luck, good and bad, plays a large part in the success or failure of their attacks. To lend a bit of perspective, I’ve put together a small list of some of the dumbest terror plots we’ve seen in recent years.

1. THE KANGAROO BOMB PLOT – Sevdet Ramadan Besim was an Islamic fundamentalist struggling for inspiration for an attack on his home soil of Australia. Besim was determined to kill Police officers and came up with an array of different methods with which he discussed carrying out his attacks. While looking at co-opting some locals into his plot, Besim discussed the use of kangaroos as delivery vehicles for his bombs. Besim planned to catch a roo, paint it with the Islamic State flag and stuff its pouch with C4 explosives then set it loose among Police officers. Admittedly there were some small flaws with this plan however hats off to Besim and his gang for taking terrorism to a whole new level; the radicalisation of native animals!

2. THE WANTED MAN WHO WANTED HIS REWARD – One of my favourites as I was in the region at the time and this was the talk of the FOBs for many weeks. In 2012 a man approached a military checkpoint in Afghanistan clutching a piece of paper in his hand. The Afghan security forces stopped the man and spoke to him, asking him what his business was. The man brandished the paper and began explaining his demand. The Afghans were confused and asked him to explain himself once again. The request still made no sense so he was asked again. And gave the same answer. The Afghan commander approached his American counterpart and explained the situation:

Afghan Commander (AC): Erm…this guy has arrived with one of the ‘wanted’ posters for a local Taliban IED maker.

US Commander (USC): Cool. He’s got information he wants to offer up for the reward?

AC: …not exactly. He is the IED maker.

USC: Wait; he’s the IED maker? So he’s surrendering?

AC: No. He wants the $100 reward that’s promised on the poster.

USC: Let me get this straight; he’s the IED maker on the poster and he’s turned up here demanding the $100 bounty that’s on his head?

AC: Yes. We’ve asked him many times and he is here to collect the $100 that it says we give for information leading to his capture.

USC: Yeah…but…it’s him? He wants the reward for his own capture?

AC: Apparently so.

USC: (scratches his head in puzzlement) I shouldn’t be surprised by anything in this country by now but what the actual f***?

Mohammad Ashan was duly arrested and his biometrics taken and matched to those found on IEDs used against American and Afghan forces. He was processed into American custody but even as he was made comfortable in his new quarters he was still pleading for the money owed to him for capturing himself.

3. DUMB AND DUMBERER… – Meet David Robert McMenemy, anti-abortionist and all-round eejit. McMenemy felt so strongly about abortion he decided that he was going to attack an abortion clinic, blow it up, and die as a martyr in the process. Not really knowing any abortion clinics, he drove around his local area for a month trying to identify targets. Eventually he settled on the Edgerton Women’s Health Centre in Davenport. He would teach those pesky abortionists a lesson that they’d never forget.

Only problem was the Women’s Centre he’d chosen didn’t actually carry out abortions. Blissfully unaware of this and taking his training from Wily Coyote cartoons, McMenemy drove his car as fast as he could into the building and waited for the inevitable explosion. All he got was an airbag in the face and a serious case of whiplash. Undeterred, the valiant martyr got out of his vehicle and poured petrol over it to get the party started. Unfortunately, the building’s very efficient sprinkler system kicked in and doused all the flames. When McMenemy was arrested he’d only managed to inflict some structural damage to the reception area and a slightly scorched suburban car. Goes to show the the Islamists don’t hold the monopoly on morons…

4. CHUBBS AND CO – A cunning plan that Baldrick would be proud of: Buy up hundreds of packs of sports ice-packs, extract the ammonium nitrate from them and use the substance to construct a devastating explosive device. Led by the 322 lb master-terrorist named ‘Chubbs’, the gang set about their plan. Needing money to buy the packs they set up charity collections and kept the funds for their nefarious intents.

When the charity money wasn’t enough, Chubbs came up with another cunning plan with which to increase their finances; online gambling. Unfortunately for him, his subordinates were no Vegas bank-breakers. Rashid Ahmed lost £3k when he left a bet running as he made a pot of tea and another member lost £6k on a bad day on the net.

Oh, and as angry as Chubbs might have been with their financial disasters, it probably paled into insignificance when he learned of one important flaw in their dastardly plan; sports ice packs had not contained ammonium nitrate in them for the past ten years. MENSA have stated that they will not be sending application forms out to the three this year…

5. IF IT WASN’T FOR THEM PESKY SWEATY-FEET… – No list could be complete without the addition of the legend-in-his-own-lunchtime, failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Reid is one of the main reasons that we suffer the indignity of removing our footwear at airport security, exposing odd socks and naked toes protruding from well-worn holes.

Prior to boarding a flight from Paris to Miami, Reid stuffed his shoes with explosives, intent on achieving martyrdom a few thousand feet above Fort Lauderdale. Alas, Reid was so nervous that he was sweating heavier than a sumo wrestler in a sauna and his socks became soaked. Which in turn dampened his improvised detonator rendering it absolutely useless. A small puff of smoke emitted from his shoes and he was soon subdued by passengers and crew, missing martyrdom through personal hygiene issues.

6. MUST PAY MORE ATTENTION IN SCIENCE CLASS… – Salman Al-Taezi and his good chum Walid Ashibi were not the sort to let a shortage of munitions halt their killing of people in Yemen. The pair decided to build an improvised missile and deploy it later that day. They sourced the components and had a chat about where to put their weapon together. The decision was made to build it in Salman’s house as it was comfortable with a particularly lovely deep-pile shag carpet.

The men assembled their missile quickly, having done this many times before. Very pleased with their progress they studied the fruits of their labour with the pride of new parents. Walid then began fetching the ignition components from another room, wearing his plastic sandals as he trotted to and fro. Unfortunately for Walid however, his journeys across the sumptuous carpet had built up a major charge of static electricity which leapt from his body and connected with the missile, detonating the weapon and pretty much vaporising the Laurel and Hardy of IED makers.

7. GO COMPARE… – When they heard of an English Defence League (EDL) rally in their local area, 6 Islamic extremists decided that no bunch of crazy extremists was going to get away with such a brazen display of crazy extremism. Not on their watch. The 6 men schemed, plotted, sourced and planned an attack on the rally involving guns and explosives. Weapons bought, bombs constructed and every eventuality planned for, the men jumped in their van, pumped up some Justin Bieber and drove to the rally where they arrived…3 hours too late.

They had cocked up the time completely and were at a loss with what to do next. As no one was hungry, they decided against a KFC and opted to drive home and carry out another attack at a different date. On the way up the M1 motorway, a traffic policeman thought their van looked a bit shady so pulled it over. On checking, he found that the vehicle had no insurance and so the van was eventually impounded. It was 2 days later that staff at the impound lot discovered the lethal contents of the van and an operation was mounted and the men arrested. All because of skimping on their insurance. Should have gone to Go Compare…

8. YOU’VE BEEN FRAMED… – A group of budding jihadists decided that the US military base of Fort Dix provided a perfect target for their attempt at martyrdom. Taking their lead from online forums, the men started with training and rehearsals for their imminent operation. A video camera was bought from the local Best Buy outlet and their sessions filmed for feedback and posterity. Not being particularly technically proficient however, the group could not transfer their footage from the camera to DVD.

Annoyed by this setback to their training routine, one of the group took the camera to another electrical retail outlet and outlined their problem to the retail assistant. The retail assistant assured our jihadi in-waiting that conversion to DVD was very basic and, in fact, if he was willing to wait, the assistant would do it then and there in the store. Yep, you know what’s coming. Our retail assistant obviously saw something unusual in men of middle-eastern appearance carrying out reconnaissance of Fort Dix while discussing what type of bomb would be most effective. Jeremy Beadle would have loved it…

9. TO OPT OUT OF ANY FURTHER MESSAGES… – Moscow, New Year’s Eve 2010/11. Crowds pack the area despite the freezing temperature. Thousands of litres of vodka being passed between well-wishers, red-cheeked in the frigid air.

In a small apartment nearby, a woman slips on a suicide vest rammed with explosives and a mixture of nails, nuts and bolts. Her two accomplices help make the vest comfortable, there being nothing worse than a poorly-fitting vest chafing at your boobs as you approach your moment of glory. The mobile-phone was connected to the device and the Black Widow nodded at her colleagues. She was ready to start the small meander across to Red Square where she would detonate the device in the midst of the crowds.

Just as she said her goodbyes, in giant, anonymous tech-suites across the world, mobile phone providers pushed the ‘send’ button on the traditional New Year spam message to all their customers. Which included our Black Widow. Her device detonated, killing her instantly and severely injuring her companions who were soon arrested limping and staggering from the burning apartment. Spam; no wonder everybody hates it!

10. MATE, YOU ARE JUST PANTS… – Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab or UFA to his mates. In the usual tradition of jihadists trying to outdo each other in explosive delivery methods, UFA stepped up to the plate. He boarded a plane for Detroit with his underpants stuffed with explosives…which he had apparently been wearing for almost three weeks! I mean, wear any pair of pants for three weeks and there’s all kinds of hygiene issues apparent but a plastic-explosive nappy? What the hell…

Anyway, as the plane descended for landing, Johnny Fartpants detonated the device…and was in immediate agony as the device only partly detonated, setting his entire nether regions on fire. Easily subdued by passengers and crew he was arrested on arrival and interrogated by the authorities.

In one of the interviews he admitted trying to join Al Qaeda but had been turned down. Like any aspiring job hunter, UFA requested feedback on his rejection and was told unequivocally that it was due to the fact that he was obviously…a moron. Pretty sad state of affairs when the world’s number one employer of suicide bombers doesn’t even want you!

So there you have it: Proof if any was needed that martyrdom isn’t for morons!!

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No country for old (or young) women?

By James

On August 12, 2017

In Topical

Like many a soldier and then later in my career, an advisor, I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan. Years in fact. I count myself fortunate to have seen a lot of the country and not just the usual circuits of Kandahar and Helmand Provinces where the majority of UK Armed Forces conduct their operational tours. Logar, Herat, Nangarhar, Balkh, Paktia, Paktika, Kunar, Wardak, Parwan, Kabul were some of the regions I travelled and worked among others.

But there was one thing that I couldn’t help but observe on my travels: This was one harsh country. In every way; geographical, political, economical. A feudal landscape still dominated and ruled through tribal fiefdoms and powerful warlords. Travel an hour in any direction away from the capital of Kabul and the impact of Government was absolutely minimal if at all. A patriarchal patchwork of tribal allegiances and ethnic divides where the rule of law was determined at the local level by elders and men of influence. Patriarchal and male. Country-wide, this is how Afghanistan is really controlled.

Which leaves women with a very shitty deal really. On our first operational tours, even us older, worldly-wise individuals could be surprised at the level of the mistreatment of women in Afghanistan. Coming from a society where gender equality is a given and any mistreatment of a woman regarded as a particularly vile crime, some of the things we witnessed were particularly hard to take.

Again, far from the ivory towers of the Kabul government and their proud, vocal assertions that the foreign money and investment was improving the lot of Afghan women, the ground truth was very different. The medics on our patrols would regularly encounter village women hideously disfigured with scar tissue. Due to the patriarchal protocols our male medics were not allowed to treat these women but could only ask about the nature of the injuries in general and leave some medication with them. These injuries were a result of self-immolation; setting oneself on fire. I was to learn later that in a lot of these isolated villages, with very little else at their disposal, dousing themselves in the kerosene used for cooking and heating was a common way for a woman to attempt to kill herself.

The very nature of that type of suicide attempt pretty much underlines what a miserable existence someone must be experiencing to even consider such an act. On one occasion we learned that the woman we were trying to help had been bought and wed to a much older man, and I’m talking decades older here. She had suffered beatings from his other, older wives, given all the chores to carry out, and was being blamed for the chronic illness he was suffering. She had tried to escape back to her family but had been caught and again, brutally beaten for her transgression. Isolated, abused and unsupported she set herself on fire but did not die and was left in horrific agony with no medical treatment or medication to help.

These incidents were always reported back and initiatives and projects were developed to attempt to improve the situation. The setting up of Female Engagement Teams or FETs as they were called, was one such initiative. Female soldiers, translators, medics and civilian specialist advisors would deploy into the regions to engage directly with the local female populace. It was felt that this would be a good work-around the patriarchal limitations that our predominately male-composed patrols had been facing.

The good news stories soon began filtering back, initially in the formal reports and then onto the pages of each country’s military publications and websites. Smiling FETs with arms around village women, photos of a midwifery presentation being delivered in a crumbling concrete shed, footage of gender empowerment talks given to local women. The FETs were a solid program with great aims and focussed individuals motivated by the best of reasons. But they were fighting an uphill battle.

Although I have many examples, I think the one provided to me by a Dutch colleague gives a good general snapshot of how the program was received by the men in these regions. Anna was the lead on a coalition Female Engagement program that was reaching out to women in the isolated mountain villages and hamlets with a view to identifying their needs and addressing these requirements. Anna travelled everywhere with a complement of Dutch Marines for the protection of her team and allow them to carry out their meetings and work without the additional responsibility of looking after their own security. Anna and her team were usually accepted on a sliding scale of grudgingly to indifferent by the village elders. As for the women, it would take a little time for Anna and her team to convince them that they were there solely with the women’s interest at heart.

Anna loved her job, you can still tell that today by the enthusiasm and passion evident in her voice when she speaks about it. For her, to see and hear first hand how these women suffered fuelled her motivation to provide some improvement, no matter how small, to help them. Medical help, encouragement in self-assertion, offers to provide transport to allow them to attend clinics in nearby areas, provision of hygiene products; just some of the small but important initiatives Anna and her team provided to the women living among these remote, bleak mountain ridges.

To this day Anna is still unsure how the villagers managed to isolate her from her Marine security force. What she does remember is turning towards the door of the small room where she and her interpreter had been delivering a class in how to access further treatment. The door was wide open and the men from the village were pouring inside. The women around her began screaming and rushed past her, colliding with the men as they stumbled out of the doorway. The men ignored their wives and daughters, their sole focus on Anna and her interpreter. The first rock hit Anna on her upper shoulder and she barely had time to cover her head with her arms as the barrage of boulders were hurled at her from a distance where the men couldn’t possibly miss. She was knocked down and tried to call on her radio but her lowered arm exposed her head and she took a rock to the forehead that split the skin and made her reel backwards, blood pouring into her eyes. She curled into a ball, covering her head as best she could as rocks continued pounding her body and bouncing off the wall behind her. She was screaming for her team at the top of her lungs as the men of the village grabbed her and tried to prise her arms away from her head to give them a clearer target where they could use their rocks as hammers to crush her skull. Two loud gunshots sounded and Anna screamed with fear, believing that the villagers were now shooting at her. The grabs and the rock throwing ceased and she could hear the confident commands and the new sound of the village men yelping in pain. The security force had arrived.

Anna knows she was lucky. Bar the split forehead and a ton of impressive bruises, she survived. She is under no illusions that if the assault had continued much longer she would have died and her killers disappear into the mountain passes they knew far better than the foreign soldiers. There was of course an inquiry into the incident, how it happened, whose fault was it, but for Anna, more importantly; Why? She was at a loss to identify the motivation for the attack when all she was doing was providing low-level assistance to these men’s wives and daughters.

Turned out that the men of the villages were getting more and more irate at this foreign woman who was trying to make their women as brazen and shameless as she was. Local elders attended a shura, or meeting with Anna’s superiors to explain the incident and made no bones about the fact that they felt that the men who had stoned Anna and her interpreter had been absolutely justified in doing so and they considered the whole program a direct insult to their culture and religion. And would defend both in exactly the same way again if the foreign soldiers continued with their efforts. They didn’t. Anna’s program in the region was dropped in common with anything that was deemed culturally or otherwise incompatible with local sensitivities.

Anna is not bitter about her experience; she spent another few months in Afghanistan after her incident where she experienced some small successes but invariably ran into the same brick wall of patriarchal dominance and utter control over the lives and existence of the women in their towns and villages. An intelligent woman, she sums up her experience as something along the lines of taking 21st century values and equality ethos to a 14th century feudal society incapable of change. We both agree, based upon our experiences that real change for women, and not just the occasional good news story from Kabul trumpeted to the world’s media for its rarity, will only come with generational change. And quite a few generations.

I know some people will read this post and form the opinion that I maybe misrepresent the misogynistic treatment as being systemic, but I don’t. I think the case that highlights just how deep-rooted the problem continues to be is the barbaric murder of Farkhunda Malikzada back in 2015. This was a well-educated woman studying Islam who had the audacity to challenge the custodian of a shrine who was preying on the women who visited it by coercing them to purchase superstitious amulets. Farkhunda shamed the custodian with her knowledge of Islam and she snatched his paper amulets up, threw them in a rubbish bin and burnt them. The custodian retrieved the burnt ashes, placed them in an old copy of the Quran and went into the street holding it aloft in indignation and claiming that Farkhunda had burnt the holy book.

It was 4pm, prayer time, and Kabul was very busy. The reaction was immediate. Men in the street turned on Farkhunda and within seconds she was being beaten and accused of being an American spy. The police initially tried to help her but the mob had now reached the hundreds and had fuelled themselves into a body of rage. So the police stood back and let the animals have their way.

This whole incident was captured on film so I’m not going to go into it in painful detail as a quick type of Farkhunda’s name into a search engine will bring up the recordings. It is still one of the most vile killings I have seen and serves as a reminder how quickly hatred manifests itself as physical violence.

Farkhunda was stamped upon, beaten with planks and poles, punched then run over by a car that dragged her for 300 metres. Still not enough for the crowd, they threw her body onto the dry river bed and tried to set her on fire. She had been injured so badly however that her burqa was soaked in blood and wouldn’t take light. The mob actually used their own scarves as fuel around her body to ensure it ignited. When the police eventually arrived at this horrific cremation they advised the crowd to step back and be careful that they didn’t get burned.

So; all captured on mobile phones and the footage studied with 49 perpetrators identified, 19 of them police officers. In the end 3 men were handed sentences of 20 years and 1 man given 10 years despite the fact that the death penalty is the standard for such a heinous crime. The policemen were punished with…a travel ban. Yep, not allowed to travel outside their regions for a year. And the men who received the actual sentences? Doubtful any of them will serve anything remotely close to what they got if indeed, they even remain in jail today. And the custodian who started all of this? A proper investigation identified that he had been selling condoms, viagra, and acting as a pimp for women he prostituted from the area near the shrine. But he wasn’t beaten and set alight to by a mob of baying, rabid animals. He had nothing even close to the treatment of his victim despite his proven crimes.

All because Farkhunda was a woman. Her death was not even deemed that important until the pressure from the international community forced the Kabul government to actually deal with the crime. A telling portion of the whole sorry tale was when Farkhunda’s parents arrived at the police station on hearing that their daughter was in trouble. The Chief of Police turned to them and informed them that their daughter had burnt the Quran, that it was a proven fact beyond dispute and there was nothing more to be said about the matter. Case closed.

The title of one of my favourite books of all time is ‘No country for old men’ by Cormac McCarthy and it’s a phrase that always springs to mind whenever I think about the woman of Afghanistan where it remains No country for old, or young, women.

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Beastings and Character Building

By James

On August 5, 2017

In Military Matters

The picture above is of me as a happy Royal Marine Commando recruit or, as we were referred to for the 32 weeks of basic training, a ‘Nod’; so called because we were always nodding off to sleep as soon as we stopped moving. The happy chappy in this photo is on one of the very first exercises, a learning evolution in how to administer one’s self in the field. He is blissfully unaware that from this point on in his training all exercises will consist of physical pain, sleep deprivation, being soaked to the skin and being ‘Beasted’ for real or imagined infractions.

Beasting, or being Beasted, (and yes, I believe that it fully deserves to be capitalised for the impact and relevance that it has on all Royal Marines), is an integral part of Commando training despite the fact that you will never see it on any training program or schedule. It takes many forms, limited only by the imagination and sadistic tendencies of the Training Team member delivering the Beasting. The one underlying principle of a good Beasting is pain; real physical pain.

The first Beasting that I recall with any clarity took place on one of my first field exercises on a gorse-riddled, scrubby tract of land with the deceptively quaint moniker of Woodbury Common. Woodbury Common had been used to test the effectiveness of weaponised gases for the second world war. The legacy of this is still evident today in the Nods’ post-training routine of plucking infected gorse spikes from the various parts of their anatomy to avoid the local ailment of ‘Woodbury Rash’.

It was during this early training Ex that my troop was introduced to ‘Beastie Knoll’; a small lump of a hill in the centre of our exercise area. The fact that this feature had actually been named for its purpose should have warned us that it held a special significance but it completely passed us by. Until we were told to fall in and ‘mark time’ facing the knoll. Marking time is an odd, jogging on-the-spot activity, designed to keep the muscles warm while remaining static and listening to the verbal diatribe that precedes the physical Beasting. It ensures that while you are stumbling up a loose gravel track with your partner on your back, or powering through gorse and bracken doing wheelbarrow races on bleeding hands, at least you won’t pull a muscle.

I still don’t remember what we were actually being punished for that day, though to be honest, that’s usually pretty irrelevant anyway. A Beasting is not always dished out as a punishment, but more on that later. What I do remember is after the tenth or twelfth time of sprinting up and down this horrible landmark, laden with a partner on my back for most of them, was that I began to see double. My breathing was also not right, the deep gulps I was taking still not enough to replenish the oxygen my lactic-heavy system was screaming for. People were dropping from pure exhaustion; full-on falls and face plants into gravel and gorse. While to us nods this seemed like a good time to maybe call a halt to the proceedings, our Training Team let us know that they were singularly unimpressed with our ‘theatrical dramatics’. Just when I thought I was going to pass out it stopped. Well, sort of. We were given a minute to square ourselves away, pick up our kit and fall back in. For the five-mile run back to camp.

I’m sure when people envisage a troop of Commandos making their way down the leafy lanes of the Devon countryside they envisage a disciplined body of men, in step, steely-eyed determination as their boots strike the ground with perfect, unified precision. Well, that wasn’t us. Already exhausted and half-dead from our introduction to Beastie Knoll we looked more like the rear-guard stragglers of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Helmets askew, everybody falling out of step, stumbling into the man in front, our rifles and large packs conspiring to ensure additional discomfort was utilised. The training team ran with us, snarling and pushing us back into formation, green-beret clad collies shepherding a flock of errant Nods back to their fold.

And slowly but surely we came together as one body, rising above the pain and the self-pity to work as a group, a unit. We matched step, obeyed the cadence, regulated our breathing, lifted our heads from our chests and looked ahead with steely-eyed determination. Well, nearly…

We were soon to learn that no Training Team worth their salt would ever bring their Nods back to Lympstone in anything other than a disciplined formation, regardless of how exhausted and injured they were. And once we’d learned this it became muscle memory, a reflex that kicked in as soon as your head dropped and you began giving in to the pain. It then became a point of pride; we wanted to be seen on these suffocating country lanes as the disciplined Commandos we imagined ourselves to be one day.

From that pride another ethos was born; teamwork. I’ve lost count of the Beastings and runs I have been on where, when I’ve started to flag or slow, my oppo to the right or left of me would take a grip of my shoulder and give a couple of words of encouragement or a witty one-liner to take my mind off the exhaustion. And I would return the favour when the situation required it. It is the beauty of the Royal Marines’ training ethos that this camaraderie and teamwork is achieved almost by osmosis; the Nods learning it by guided discovery to the point where it becomes second nature. And it all starts with the Beastings.

Beastings were probably one of the most talked about subjects in the Commando Traing Centre, or CTC at Lympstone, Devon. In fact, when a Nod transitions to the second phase of Commando training he is given a ‘Beasting Jacket’ that he will wear to all future PT sessions. Even the location of CTC on the banks of the River Exe seemed to have been chosen with the criteria of having a good Beasting ground on site: The River Exe itself at low tide. These stinking, primeval mud flats, instantly accessible from the back gate of the camp, were the king of Beasting locations. Being Beasted on these mud flats was referred to as a ‘mud run’ and was reserved for special occasions due to the severity of its physical demands.

Knee deep mud sapped the strength of even the strongest Nods as they ran, crawled, burpee’d, star-jumped, leap-frogged and performed hundreds of press-ups and sit-ups in the thick, dank ooze. On special occasions they would be granted the gift of a telegraph pole with which to try new combinations of physical torture, ensuring they did not become bored or disappointed with the training team’s lack of imagination.

Initially a mud run was the boogeyman of Beastings, a sword of Damocles always present in the background and held as a threat for severe infractions. We would sometimes see a Nod troop coming back in off the mud, black creatures dripping the stinking ooze in a trail to the camp ablutions block. But here’s the perverse thing: The longer that time went by without us being given a mud run, the more we wanted it. We knew how awful it would be in comparison to some of the intense Beastings we’d had. We knew it would nearly kill us. We knew it was the worst Beasting the Team could dish out. But we wanted it. Badly.

Troops who had been Beasted in the mud carried the experience as an accolade, a badge of honour, walking with just a little more swagger to the galley or Dutchy’s burger wagon. They had experienced the worst Beasting at Lympstone and, agony and exhaustion aside, had come through it.

When we eventually received our first mud run it was as bad as we had expected. It was also quite surreal at times. For example, our Physical Training Instructor, or PTI, took us for our low-tide acquaintance with the mud. Immaculate as always in his gleaming white vest and the standard olive-coloured Denim trousers, he marched us into the slime without a change of expression or tone. He could just as well have been taking us on to the Parade Square, such was his lack of acknowledgement that this was anything out of the ordinary. Concerned that we would be getting cold, he started us off with a routine of strength-sapping leg exercises that utilised the resistant qualities of the thick mud to enhance the session. Burpees, star jumps, bastards, squat thrusts, mountain climbs, and of course marking time between them as a ‘rest’. Then to alleviate the possibility that we might be getting bored with the same exercises, we were directed to work on the upper body a little; press ups, sit-ups, leopard crawls, crunches, tricep press, flutter kicks.

I don’t know how long our mud run lasted. As a Nod you are not allowed to wear a watch for any physical activity in the event that you only apply as much effort to endure the session rather than giving it your all. But it felt like an eternity. The consummate professional that he was, our mud-spattered PTI warmed us down, stretched us off and asked for the injured to identify themselves so that he could check them over. We were then marched back off the mud and on to the bottom field of CTC where the Assault Course sits in close proximity to the main railway line. Our PTI directed us to jump in the large static tank that sits under the regain rope in order to wash the bulk of the mud away.

We marched as a soaked, dripping body back to our accommodation block, not bowed or miserable as I had expected but with heads held high and a spring in our step. We’d had our mud run and, like those before us, wore the experience with pride. We’d endured the worst Beasting that the Team could give us and, bar the aches and pains and gritty eyes and mouth, we’d come through it. We revelled in the gapes of astonishment from the newer Nod troops who had witnessed our muddy baptism from the windows of their accommodation. Stripping off our soaked and filthy uniform outside our block, we laughed and joked loudly, testosterone fuelled japery the manifestation of the experience of having come through something awful together.

And this is what Beastings achieve. The experience of physical suffering bonds and unites men quicker than almost anything else. Rising above your own pain and self-pity to remain a functional and essential member of the team takes your priorities from that of an individual to that of a unit, thinking and working for the good of the team. Throughout my entire career in the military, and indeed, even after, I still remember and value the lessons first imbued upon me as a skinny Nod stumbling up the loose gravel of Beastie knoll or wading through the mud of the River Exe.

As I said earlier, you won’t see the word Beasting appearing anywhere on any Royal Marines’ documentation or correspondence. Yet it is probably one of the key learning and development tools that I experienced in my time as a fledgling Commando. To the lay observer, a Beasting probably appears to be nothing more than a sadistic exercise in inflicting pain on an already exhausted, hungry and demoralised body of men but nothing could be further from the truth. When a Beasting is dished out as a punishment, it is rarely given to the individual responsible, usually the whole troop or section will be included. Very quickly, this demonstrates to the individual that he is accountable for his actions, that there is an impact on the whole group for the errors and mistakes he makes. Again, as the Nods progress through CTC and on to their Commando Units, this accountability becomes ingrained in the individual as common practice, needing no thought or deliberation. It is no coincidence that one of the worst insults a Marine can level at another is to call him ‘Jack’: not the affectionate Naval term but as in someone who is selfish and only does things for themselves.

The Beastings that a Nod endures teaches the importance of being accountable and thinking of the group rather than the individual, an ethos that serves them well in their later careers and in life in general. On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, the lessons learned from the training camp on a Devon estuary many years before were as relevant and necessary as weapons’ training. The ability of the individual to rise above the pain and effort of operating in hot, hostile environments, laden with body armour and ammunition, and to focus on his unit is testament to the effectiveness of the only lesson never listed on a training program: The Beasting.

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