Category: Military Matters

Once were Warriors..

On September 15, 2017

United by uniform, bound by oaths of attestation, moulded by shared experiences, the military is the very definition of a tribe. A warrior tribe of men and women connected by common values and ethos. A patchwork populace of smaller groups united by the same procedures and processes that provide commonality. We call them Unit or Regimental traditions because ‘rituals’ sounds too primitive and pagan. We call them deployments because ‘rites of passage’ is more akin to young African males entering manhood, having proved their worth. We award medals to mark the warrior’s achievement because celebrating this accomplishment with scar tissue on the face would not please the RSM.

We speak our own language; largely English but littered with acronyms and slang incomprehensible to anyone outside our circle. This bonds us further, separating us from those who don’t talk our talk. And we like this, take a perverse pride in our collective identity. If you ever witness a reunion of old military colleagues it is almost instant that drinks become ‘wets’ or ‘brews’, the kitchen becomes the ‘galley’ or the ‘cookhouse’ and the rate of profanity multiplies at an eye-watering rate. They are back with their tribe, back among the only people they feel truly understand them.

This relationship is cemented completely by the bond of experiencing war. When young, and perhaps not-so young people experience and survive war, they become even closer to one another, becoming a tribe within a tribe. They relate more to each other than anyone else in the belief that only they can fully understand what they have gone through. Trying to share this with someone outside of their circle is futile and often seems to belittle the intensity of the experience.

This situation becomes worse when the conflict is an unpopular one. The well-documented situation of returning soldiers from Vietnam to the USA is a good example of this. Tours of duty over, the returning veterans were targeted by those protesting the war and the government’s foreign policy. Stunned by the staggering level of antipathy they experienced, most veterans retreated within themselves, unwilling and unable to discuss their experiences with anyone else but another vet. It took many years for the general public to differentiate between a government’s misguided foreign intervention and the poor conscripts that were sent to fight it. Hence the glut of books and movies relating to Vietnam only being released a long time after the conflict. Vietnam veterans in the USA probably retain a stronger bond with each other than most post-conflict veterans due to their poor treatment, forcing them to fall back on the bonds formed in the jungles and paddy fields of South East Asia to fill the void they found on their return.

The military, by necessity, takes individuals and moulds them into tribes, relinquishing the self and thinking only of the group. Because that is the only way you can take people to war and expect them to fight and survive. Contrary to public perception, very few soldiers would cite Queen and Country as their motivation for facing down bursts of AK 47 fire in dusty foreign compounds. They fight to protect the man or woman either side of them, to take the position without losing one of their own. In this the military is uniquely successful in its ability to achieve this mix of duty, honour, and commitment from an individual pulling in sometimes less than the minimum wage.

But what happens when service personnel leave all this behind and enter an entirely new world where there is no real chain of command? No orders, merely company directives? Where swearing in the staff room can lead to a dignity at work infringement? When their request for a coffee ‘Julie Andrews’ is met with a blank look? Some won’t experience this, assimilating almost immediately to their new circumstances. Some will adapt, in time, learning through guided discovery. Others however, can’t or won’t adapt.

I’ve lost count of the amount of ex-servicemen and women I have met who refer to their work colleagues as ‘civvies’, despite having been ‘civvies’ themselves for many years. When they discuss their jobs there is the inevitable lambasting of the evil triumvirate of Health and Safety, HR, and Political Correctness and that these institutions weaken rather than strengthen the workplace environment. Nostalgia for their time back in the mob when things seemed simpler and easier to understand is all too common. A time when an infringement was addressed immediately by a SNCO having a quiet word or a blatantly open threat of public disembowelment from the RSM. No paperwork or escalation process, no HR hand-wringing or procedural quagmires. A different time.

So why do some of us find it harder than others to integrate back into regular society after a long spell in the military? It’s simple; we have left our tribe, our brothers and sisters, a way of life alien to many but the only one many of us have known. It’s particularly hard for those who joined the Forces at the age of 16 and have literally known nothing other than the military for their entire adult life. A friend of mine is a prime example of this. He joined the Royal Marines as a ‘boy soldier’ or junior, worked hard, got promoted, became a sniper and enjoyed a good career. What was apparent to me however was that during social occasions we could only ever really talk about military subjects as he had no real experiences outside of this. When wives and girlfriends would discuss their work or relay an anecdote or two, his eyes would glaze over and he would have nothing to say until he turned the conversation back to the merits of Crusader Bergans over PLCE…

Another friend of mine summed it up with his own experience. He left the Marines after completing around 6 years of service. When he was attending job interviews he would conduct a discreet assessment of those around him and, by his own admission, sit back smugly secure in the knowledge that he was more than a cut above most of the scruffy applicants, dressed as he was in smart suit and gleaming, polished shoes. After many rejections however, it dawned on him that if he wasn’t getting these jobs then they must have been given to the scarecrows he had been so quick to deride. He told me that the penny eventually dropped that nobody really gave a shit that he’d been in the Corps for a few years or that he could iron a shirt and polish his shoes.

He was treated exactly the same as the scruffs he had looked down his nose at. And it was this aspect that confused him the most. He was accustomed, as most of us were, that when people asked you what you did and you replied ‘I’m in the Forces.’, they would proffer their respect and admiration. When he left, he anticipated this same admiration to stand him in good stead but found it cut little ice with employers looking for someone with recent experience. Dejected and alienated, he missed his tribe more than ever and became quite embittered as a result of his experiences.

Because in the private sector, there really isn’t a tribe, at least not in the way that we have become accustomed. Alpha bankers and stock traders may beat their chests and dispute this, but a collection of hyper-masculine individuals do not constitute a tribe. At most they are a subculture.

So when we walk out of the camp or barracks for the last time we are also walking away from our tribe. And when we lose our tribe we become lost, cast adrift in an entirely new world that we struggle to make sense of. At least for a while. And that time frame is different for everyone.

Company employees are not conditioned or programmed to put the group before self, do not endure physical suffering that creates bonds or recognise a sacrosanct chain of command. Because they don’t need to; they will never encounter a situation where the life of the man or woman next to them depends on their actions. They will never be asked to remain awake, hungry, thirsty, physically and mentally exhausted, for days at a time. Never have to say goodbye to their wives and children in the hope that they return alive or at least in one piece.

Because that’s what members of the Armed Forces are paid for. To fulfil these duties on behalf of the public and negate the requirement for conscription or compulsory National Service.

When former service personnel join their new job in the private sector, depending on the individual, the transition period can be quite a significant one. And the main reason for this is, for the most part, lack of commonality. The adjustment of leaving a structured tribe and moving into something altogether more amorphous.

In some cases however, the attributes and values we bring from our tribe stand us in good stead in our second careers. Again, it is not uncommon for an ex-Forces individual to shine in a job through their confidence, communication, and willingness to push themselves. One of my former colleagues found himself doing very well at his new civilian job and was gaining rapid promotion. He found that one of the things that he brought from his military background was that of keeping going until the task was complete. Many of his co-workers were happy to down tools the minute the working day was done, regardless of what stage of development the project was at. My friend reverted to old habits and worked until happy that he had completed the elements of the task to either deadlines or time-frames rather than clock-watching. This attitude was picked up by senior management who rewarded his endeavours with quick promotion and additional benefits, to the chagrin of some of his colleagues who felt their time in position should have qualified them for the promotion. As my friend stated quite succinctly, ‘Longevity of position is not a benchmark of quality.’ Quite right; anyone can spend 8 hours a day sitting in an office. It’s what you do with those 8 hours that makes the difference.

I see regular posts on various forums from former service personnel unhappy with their lives after the Forces and in particular, how they feel let down by the military after they have left. One such post I see now and again on social media says ‘I was prepared to fight for my country, I was prepared to die for my country, I was NOT prepared to be abandoned’. I was curious about this post for several reasons, the main one being that it was liked and shared by a lot of people. Now, I could understand the odd individual who has had a raw deal based upon personal circumstances, but whole groups?

So I contacted a few of these people, asked about their experiences and was quite surprised by their reasoning. Taking the few individuals with very personal circumstances out of the equation, the remainder seemed to feel that the military had failed them all in dereliction of after-care. Their military experience ranged from 2 years to 10, some had deployed, some had not, some were front-line soldiers, some were not. But all felt that their struggle to assimilate was the direct fault of the military in not preparing them for life after the mob. As some of them had left the Forces as far back as the seventies I thought it possible that perhaps the blame lay in the inadequate resettlement processes of that era. However, many of the individuals I contacted had left far more recently and had the opportunity to engage with the resettlement packages available so this couldn’t be the ‘one size fits all’ answer.

Truth is…I didn’t find an answer. I found bitterness, blame and utter belief that the military ‘should have done something’. But what? What could the military have done to assist these individuals in integrating into civilian life? As I said, I can understand this back when once your time was done you walked out the door on a rainy Friday afternoon after handing your leaving routine in and that was it. Military to Mr or Mrs at the dropping of the barrier behind you.

But regarding the individual who had only completed 2 years of service, never deployed and (I suspect from our conversations) left under a bit of a cloud; were they entitled to some long-term commitment from the Army to ensure their well-being? My feeling was that this individual couldn’t give me a definitive answer to what the Army should have done for him…realistically. His suggestions seemed to indicate that he wanted some kind of extended, formal links with his old life. He felt that the Royal British Legion, Regimental Associations etc just didn’t cut it for him. To be honest, I was at a bit of a loss with what to suggest and struggled to identify with his cause. But I believe that on leaving the Army, he’d struggled to fit in with his new circumstances despite his relatively short service period. His language remains littered with military jargon and slang, linking him back to the tribe he left many years before.

It is incredible the strength of the bonds that unite military personnel, even, as in the case of the individual above, when they have completed a relatively small amount of service. Once forged, never forgotten as the expression goes. I doubt there’s a former member of the Armed Forces, regardless of how long they have been civilians, who can’t rattle off the service number they last used decades before.

I’ve always thought that if a company or business could replicate the military’s success in gaining and retaining the loyalty and esprit de corps of its tribes, they would be sitting on a gold mine. Unfortunately, corporate culture and working compliances do not open themselves to the same practices that the military exploit to build the tribal framework. The closest I think I have witnessed was the early years of Virgin, when Richard Branson’s personality-driven work culture accrued very real loyalty from his workforce. Branson, through his well-documented focus on looking after his staff, came closest to building what I believe defines a tribe. Branson’s employees loved working for the brand, were proud to wear the Virgin uniform and represent their CEO to the general public. As I said, this was the early days and Virgin today is another multi-national, corporate giant with a typical workforce representative of such.

And I think this is because the bigger an organisation becomes, the more difficult it is to maintain the links that created the tribal culture in the first place. Yes, the military is a large organisation, but it is essentially a nation of smaller tribes bonded and linked by common purpose and sense of duty.

Our tribes define who we are and how we conduct ourselves, and the longer we remain with a tribe the stronger the bonds. The intense experiences we endure throughout our military service further cements those bonds, extending them long after the day we walk away from our tribe to face a future of assimilating into an altogether different animal. An animal that has none of the intensity of experience or common platforms from which to relate.

We once were warriors, a tribe in the truest sense of the word where, for however long we served, the self was put aside for the good of the many. A concept that became hard to find once we’d returned our ID cards and walked out of the main gate of camp to whatever fate awaited us.

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Women on the Front Line…

By James

On September 6, 2017

In Military Matters

While it never really leaves the media, there is another surge of interest currently doing the rounds regarding females joining front-line military units and engaging in combat operations alongside their male counterparts as equals. US Ranger training is the latest unit to hit the headlines across the pond while here in the UK, the RAF Regiment has announced that it is opening its ranks to accept female candidates.

Interestingly enough, the Royal Marines went through a very high profile experience some years ago when the first female soldier successfully completed the All Arms Commando Course. Now, despite media assertions to the contrary, this course was already open to both sexes but due to the arduous nature of the physical demands, had never really been inundated with female applicants.

Naturally, when it became public that several women were attempting the course, the media went into hyper-drive. The female candidates were immediately labelled as ‘G I Janes’ after the abysmal Demi Moore movie of the same name, and as much information on them dug up to bolster the tabloid stories.

Again, despite the reports that these women would be the first Marine Commandos to earn the Green Beret, this was completely untrue. The women were attempting the All Arms Commando Course, a six to eight week evolution aimed at qualifying serving personnel from the other branches of the Armed Forces with the Commando qualification, allowing them to serve in a supporting role with 3 Commando Brigade. The Royal Marines Commando Course is 32 weeks long and a completely different beast.

Most people will remember Capt Pip Tattersall as the woman who passed the Commando Course. Capt Tattersall was the first female to pass the course in 2002 and immediately became a media sensation. Her achievement was congratulated by MPs in an early day motion in the House of Commons, she was mentioned on No. 10 Downing Street’s official website and named Woman of the Year by Good Housekeeping Magazine. Very high profile but as the first female Commando, probably to be expected.

Unsurprisingly, there was a corresponding backlash from several corners regarding this. Some found it suspicious that someone who could never cross the first main obstacle of the Assault Course, the 6-foot wall, miraculously achieved it on her final attempt when onlookers were dispersed to avoid placing undue pressure upon her. Others looked upon it as the opening of the floodgates where the standards for passing the Tests would be lowered, similar to the Army Fitness Tests where women have different criteria to the men for the same tests.

Personally, I don’t know. I wasn’t there and didn’t witness Capt Tattersall’s attempts. Among myself and my peers when we heard that women were starting to attempt the All Arms’ Course, we weren’t particularly interested either way. Our prevailing opinion being that if they passed it under their own merit then it was a job well done. I don’t care who you are, the Commando Tests are tough, unchanged from the days when they were evolved to prepare soldiers to deploy on specialist warfare missions during the war. Anyone who passes them gets my respect.

And that is the key point for me and most of my contemporaries. That the standards remain unchanged. Undiluted. Valid. I remember talking to a Warrant Officer at the time who informed me that there were some very high-level discussions taking place regarding identifying alternative standards to facilitate females viewing the course as achievable. The Royal Marines of course defended the standards as a hallowed benchmark, never to be tinkered with in the pursuit of a well-intentioned social experiment.

The Royal Marines could never hope to win such an argument at MoD level. Reforms and alterations that improve and promote inclusion and equality take precedence over almost anything a Royal Marines’ General may go in to bat with.

But here’s the interesting thing; Regardless of the conflicting opinions on a woman passing the All Arms’ course, something fundamentally important came out of the situation. After Capt Tattersall, the Royal Marines would never have to adjust the Commando Tests to encourage women to attempt them. Because a woman passed the Tests under the same criteria as the men, proving that the Tests can be passed by either sex without the need for alteration. So, whether by accident or design, the Royal Marines have ensured that they will retain the one standard for some time to come.

And despite the fact most of us remember Pip Tattersall as the woman who passed the Commando Course, there has been another, although with much less fanfare. Surgeon Lt Lara Herbert RN passed the course carrying exactly the same weight and within the same timings as the men, first time around proving again, that women can pass the Tests as they currently stand.

Women in front-line combat roles is an altogether different subject and probably more hotly debated. Those for the initiative point to 21st century values and equality legislation. Those against highlight the risk to unit cohesion, additional logistical requirements and distraction through romantic trysts and liaisons. In 2016, the UK Prime Minister David Cameron lifted the ban on women serving in these units.

The Israeli Defence Force is usually held up as the example where females are integrated into combat roles and have been for some time. Again however, there are limits here. For example there are ongoing trials evaluating mixed-sex tank crews but the line has been drawn at females serving in Special Forces units. Other considerations were also recently brought to bear when a deployment of female soldiers manning checkpoints in a kinetic area attracted the wrath of Islamists who viewed the women’s presence as a direct provocation, inciting a higher level of violence and attacks. Some elements of the IDF remain unconvinced that total inclusion into ground combat roles can ever be achieved, pointing to an earlier trial where medical and psychological experts questioned the wisdom in exposing a large amount of women soldiers to excess physical and mental pain and exhaustion just to find one or two candidates who could successfully complete the training.

Another consideration that raises its head when the discussion of having women integrated into ground combat units is that of their treatment at the hands of the enemy. An example I heard at a recent discussion panel was that of the fate of the Royal Irish Regiment soldiers who were taken hostage by the West Side Boys in Sierra Leone back in August 2000. While, by and large, these soldiers endured their period of captivity and survived to be rescued in the SAS Operation Barras, the point was made that had there been female soldiers present, their treatment would undoubtedly have been vastly different to that of the men. The West Side Boys were a collection of vicious, well-armed thugs constantly out of their heads on either cocaine or marijuana and regularly used rape as an integral weapon in their campaign of terror. The point being made at this discussion was that in all likelihood, female soldiers in the same situation would be forced to endure far worse treatment and trauma than the men as a result of their gender.

The problem seems to lie with how to integrate women into ground combat units while maintaining the physical standards that ensure all soldiers deploy to conflict zones confident in the abilities of the soldier next to them. I personally witnessed a situation some years ago when I was assisting on a pre-deployment course for soldiers deploying abroad to be integrated into a front-line unit. As part of the preparatory training package there were standard criteria that the soldiers had to meet in order to be signed off as ready to deploy. These involved a balance of skill-based tests and physical tests such as medical training, weapons training and shooting and casualty evacuation procedures. It was this last subject that proved problematic for the female soldier on the course. Her shooting was okay, she was good at med, and had no problems with the variety of weapons that she had been instructed in. One of the casualty evacuation procedures used was that of the casualty drag; hauling a dead weight to simulate getting a wounded soldier out of the line of fire and into cover. We used a heavy dummy, weighted to represent that of a soldier and his body armour, rifle and equipment to test the soldiers in this. It wasn’t easy but it was an accurate representation of what it felt like to drag a wounded oppo out of a firefight and into safety. And it was, as one would expect, a criteria test; pass or fail.

The female soldier struggled badly. She never managed to haul the dummy much past the half-way mark and even at that she would collapse exhausted and unable to go any further. She was given several opportunities over a two day period to attempt the test again in the hope that she might find the strength from somewhere to pass it. But to no avail. The result was passed to the unit’s headquarters who immediately sent a Major to the training area to investigate the matter. He was apprised of the situation and watched as the female soldier completed her final attempt but again, failed to achieve it. After several calls back to the unit he approached the senior instructor and asked if he would be happy to pass the female as ready to deploy if the unit in country accepted her at risk. The senior instructor stated that if the unit was happy to take her then he would annotate her training record to show that she was being given a limited pass and highlight the reason for this.

Before the Major could call headquarters with the result, the senior instructor pointed out an important fact: While the female soldier could deploy to the unit with a limited pass, all the soldiers that she was deploying with would remember that she couldn’t pass the casualty drag. This would impact on their confidence in her once engaged on operations, where her ability to get an injured colleague out of the line of fire could not be relied upon. He also highlighted the fact that if she was deployed with a limited pass, she would only be allowed to operate within limited parameters once in theatre, not carrying out the complete role that she was being deployed to fulfil.

Long story short, the Major took responsibility for the remainder of the situation and the woman was deployed as intended. I asked the senior instructor if any men had failed the casualty drag during his tenure and he informed me that he had seen 2 individuals fail. They had been members of a support unit being deployed to augment a front-line unit and had struggled with most of the fitness but bombed on the casualty drag. They had been failed, headquarters informed and they were returned to their respective units without further discussion. No Major was sent to the training area to investigate, no request for limited passes forwarded.

I asked my colleague what his thoughts were on the disparity between the treatment of the sexes in this situation. He shrugged, said he thought it unfair but that the Army were massively overcompensating to show that women were not being discriminated against when it came to filling available roles, including serving with front-line units. The problem in his view was that it achieved exactly the opposite; male soldiers would eventually regard all females conducting the pre-deployment training as an attend course, rather than a criteria one, thereby devaluing any progress in equality.

But women have proven beyond doubt that they can not only fight alongside male counterparts in combat operations but also excel at it. Gallantry awards to women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are not unusual or the actions they are awarded for different from that of male soldiers. Female medics in particular have shown outstanding bravery on the field of battle with Kylie Watson, Sarah Bushbye and Michelle Norris among a growing group of female soldiers awarded the Military Cross for bravery and valour. Leigh Ann Hester, an American MP serving in Iraq, was awarded the Silver Star for her role in recovering from an ambush and assaulting an enemy position with hand-grenades and small arms.

So there is no argument that women cannot be as brave or as proficient as men on the field of battle. I worked with a female soldier some years ago who pulled off an astonishing recovery from a dire situation, saving her own life and eliminating the immediate threat. Operational sensitivity precludes me from going into detail but suffice to say I don’t know many people, male or female, who could have done what my colleague did and I’m still awed by her actions these many years later.

Is there an answer here? Can we seamlessly integrate women into front-line combat units? Do we want to? Is the problem one of perception rather than practicality? I don’t know. But one thing’s for sure; this is not a subject that is going to go away any time soon. To that end, real answers and solutions are going to be required. Answers and solutions that, while addressing the issue, do so without risking the lives of those men and women who will be going on the front line.

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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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Experiences….

By James

On July 8, 2017

In Military Matters

A friend of mine was reminiscing with me today and we got talking about our time in Kurdistan. We were both young Commandos back in the early 90s and we were sent straight to the mountains of this region hot on the heels of a previous deployment.

Looking back, it is clear to me that this deployment was formative in my development as a professional soldier. The physical challenges of working at altitude, the utter evil practices that the Iraqi forces carried out on the local population, and operating in such a unique environment made a big impact upon the young James E Mack. I remember sprinting off the tail ramp of a chinook helicopter with a backpack the size of a house, skis and snowshoes strapped under the top flap ready for immediate use once we hit the ground. Our Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre had been in the area for a week before, concealed in covert observation posts on the mountain sides, relaying back all pertinent information that could affect our insertion.

As I ran off the back of the chinook into blistering heat and the roasting downdraft of the rotors, I was a little surprised at the absolute dearth of snow. Once the choppers had departed and we had a moment to take in our bearings it was pretty apparent that we’d have been better served bringing sun-hats and jungle lightweight clothing. The temperature was easily 30 degrees celsius plus and I remember a surreal moment of looking at a line of sweating, red-faced Commandos carrying their Arctic deployment kit in a summer heatwave. To this day, nobody has ever really explained how the recce force managed to forget to inform the main body that it was a little cozy for skis and snowshoes…

Our main task was to patrol the mountains and link up with the Peshmerga; the resistance fighters from the mountains. These were hard men who lived and fought in a hard environment. Under Saddam Hussein’s regime the Kurds were heavily persecuted with utter prejudice. When we entered the large town of Zakho, we encountered bodies on the street that were mutilated and bore the ravages of state-sponsored torture. In the middle of the town was a barracks that housed the Iraqi Secret Police, the perpetrators of these crimes. Smug in the knowledge that a toothless UN would have no impact whatsoever upon their activities or status. Many of the locals had fled the town and taken refuge in the peaks around the city but would not come down until a safe haven could be provided. So we ‘encouraged’ the Secret Police to leave. And they did, in exactly the same way that the locals had left the city months earlier with their possessions balanced upon a mattress on their heads as they traipsed along the hot tar road out of town.

Little by little, people began to return. The Peshmerga reached out to us and we met. They were grateful for our help but needed more to guarantee the safety of their people. The Americans arrived and took over the security role in Zakho, freeing us up to return to the mountains with our new allies. It was this phase of our operation where I think my love for the people and the region really stemmed from. The mountains were stunning and wild, the odd village the only interruption to the green hillsides and mountain flanks. We’d find signs of bear, leopard, monkeys, snakes and other animals we couldn’t readily identify. We bathed and drank from mountain streams and waterfalls. Climbed ridges and escarpments, crossed decaying bridges that had existed as part of the silk route.

But it wasn’t all good. Some days we would reach a town or village and monitor it from a distance looking for signs of life. Seeing none, we would enter warily, booby traps and IEDs a given. It is hard to articulate the sensations you feel when going house to house in a decent sized town and seeing rooms that the occupants had clearly just dropped what they were doing and ran. Half-empty bowls of food, cups of chai, laundry in tubs of stagnant water. An urban Mary Celeste.

We would stay put in these locations for a day or two, usually enough time for the local Peshmerga and villagers to return. In one large village a woman returned and when asked why they had left informed us that Saddam’s men had arrived in the night and taken all the males over the age of fifteen. She put the number at somewhere between 120 – 150. We asked the obvious question; where did they take them. She gave a term that our interpreter struggled to understand but with a little more back and forth the explanation was clear: They had trucked the men out to a barren location and buried them alive. And by all accounts, this was pretty standard practice, a fact backed up by reports from other villages and towns we secured.

These people were fighters. Fighting for their lives, their land, their culture, their existence on the planet. And they started young; I have a photo of a very serious 14-year old boy who had already killed half a dozen Iraqis. It sounds barbarous to our cultured sensitivities but when the state routinely culls your male population at the age of 15, there’s very few options open to anyone looking to defend their people.

So we helped the Kurds. In any way we could. It was simple at first until politics entered the equation. Suddenly some Kurds were good and some were bad. We could help this lot but not that lot. Turkey says we cannot help these guys as they are designated as terrorists. Etc,etc,etc…And then we left. Abandoned these people that we’d encouraged to rise up against the regime, that we’d encouraged to return to their homes with the guarantee that it was now safe. The West was here to make sure everyone would be okay. But it wasn’t, because we just left them, after all their effort, to be punished for their transgressions by the full power of Saddam’s state. And if it was bad before, the gloves were truly off this time….

I have since been back to Kurdistan on several occasions and always feel a connection to the area and its people, despite how the political directives shaped our withdrawal all those years before. The Kurds have been probably the most important ally in arresting the progress of Daesh or ISIS throughout Iraq. Steadfast and unflinching in their support to the coalition effort despite their heavy losses and constant frontline exposure. And while they are doing so for their own safety and survival, they also want their semi-autonomous state to be granted recognition on the world stage. An independent Kurdistan, self-sustaining through its oil reserves and safe from the attentions of the nation states intent on seeing this aspiration fail.

The Kurds themselves have an expression that sums up their experience: ‘A Kurd’s only friend is the mountains’. Throughout their history, anyone who has ever interfered with an offer of help has always let them down. But the mountains, the Kurds’ home in both the physical and spiritual sense of the word, have always remained constant.

My operational experiences back in the 90s shaped a lot of the soldier and indeed the person I was to become. My love of mountains, my interest in foreign culture and wariness of political agendas were all formed in the wilds of Kurdistan with my Peshmerga friends and guides. My fondness for the land and its people give me the hope that they will be rewarded for their support to the west and their autonomy recognised.

My experiences however make me suspect that, when this conflict has faded from memory, once again the Kurds’ only friend will be the mountains.

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