It had all been going so well.
PRC runs Tuesday to Friday. The Monday night before I was due to go down to Lympstone I cycled down to Dorking station to buy my ticket and double-check the departure times. I was leaving nothing to chance. Or so I thought.
Then on the way back I got knocked off my bike.
I was taken to East Surrey Hospital and diagnosed with a damaged shoulder and mild concussion. The medical advice was not to do anything strenuous for a week or two. They even gave me a letter excusing me from strenuous work on health grounds. I nodded as I left the ward, already certain not to heed a word of it.
The trip from Dorking was okay. I sat reading one of my military books surrounded by dozens of commuters off to work. When we changed trains at Exeter I noticed the commuters had more or less dried up. In their place were a lot of nervous young men in suits probably belonging to their fathers.
At least I know I’m on the right train.
But any air of wonder was extinguished the second we stepped onto the platform at Lympstone Commando station and this gorilla of a man in uniform just started shouting. He basically got us together and marching up to the training centre in silence.
What the hell was I doing thinking that I could hide my injury? We hadn’t even arrived and I was already sure I’d cocked up big time. I plucked up the courage and when the gorilla stopped bossing us for a moment I handed over my doctor’s note. He read it and sent me off with the others to do the first test.
Sixty minutes later I was summoned to the sick bay. They did a couple of tests and took my blood pressure, then a medic said, ‘I’m sorry, you’re not fit enough to continue.’
I was crushed. I really thought that was the end. But the main doc said he expected my body to heal so they’d have no problem letting me try again later.
This was spring 1996. It was ten dreary weeks later when I finally made that journey west again. I was annoyed at how long it had taken to reschedule but the moment I got on the train I realised I was in a better position than everyone else. This time I knew exactly where I was going, exactly who I was going to be met by. I could picture the centre. That so-called wasted journey I’d had three months earlier was basically just a reconnaissance mission. I was arriving better prepared than anybody.
There were forty or so lads on the first Tuesday. Each night that went by, though, there’d be one or two new empty beds. I felt for them but of course I’d had two ‘gos’. I saw no reason why they couldn’t come back stronger – or at least better at running.
Seeing the numbers dwindle, however, was a chilling reminder that any of us were only a bike accident or a twisted ankle away from being evicted. It was only going to get worse. If we managed to pass this test and get on to the Commando Course then that was nine months to get through without injury or mishap.
On the final day, the Friday, we had our last interviews. Then we were all sent outside while the adjudicators made their choices. When I was called back in I was awarded a ‘superior pass’, informed that I had come top of the thirty lads remaining – and I’d be hearing from them very, very soon about starting proper training.
It’s not the done thing in the military to jump for joy – I worked that out on day 1 – but I felt like doing a cartwheel. As I made my way back down to the station I looked at the sign. Suddenly the word ‘Commando’ didn’t look quite so out of reach.
Little did I know.
* * *
The Royal Marines are the light infantry brigade of the Royal Navy. They’re the rapid-response unit, able to be dropped into any hotspot in the world in the knowledge that there are none better trained. The majority of personnel come under the umbrella of 3 Commando (Cdo) Brigade.
While the roles and locations are varied, these days just about every one of the 8,000-plus regular and reserve marines has to complete the Commando Course. They all have to become Green Berets. It’s as elite as you get.
That’s the target for everyone, but, as summer 1996 dragged on I couldn’t work out why I wasn’t getting the chance. They’d said I’d hear ‘very, very’ soon – not just ‘soon’. By the turn of the year I was going absolutely crazy. Obviously I rang the CTC to chase my application, just to check there wasn’t a problem. At first they just told me to wait. When I called back a couple of months later, still with no news, they were more upfront. My predecessors may have lost the ‘O’ from our surname but we were definitely Irish. And that, coming off the back of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, was not something the military took lightly, it seems.
I had a great girlfriend – a nurse – at the time, a well-paid job and some good mates, but the not knowing was overshadowing everything. I was working out and running every day, my fitness was going up, but not having a goal just made it all feel pointless. Whatever I put myself through would be nothing compared with the physical drills I could expect at Lympstone. As a result, although I’d never been fitter I actually felt fat.
And then I got the letter. Late 1997 the note came through the door. It said, very simply, that I was to become part of 738 Troop and my start date was February 1998.
Everyone on the Lympstone train, I realised when we arrived, was a freshman like myself. We, sixty-two of us, hovered on the platform until we were rounded up by a corporal – Taff, I’ll call him – who led us to the centre and to an enormous dormitory: one bed, one locker and one chair each; down one end there was a shower block, toilets and an area full of ironing boards, buckets and the like. Obviously, the cleaners needed to store their gear somewhere.
First we, all sixty-two of us, were sent to stores, where we were issued with all the clothing and footwear we’d need, and to the barber. I asked for a little trim. ‘Right you are, sir,’ he said, and shaved the whole lot off.
As Taff left us that evening, it was with a promise: ‘Those of you who think you’re here for thirty-two weeks, think again. If you don’t perform every day, you will be out. If you don’t perform every minute of every day, you will be out. You might last two weeks, twenty weeks, or thirty-one weeks. I don’t care. It’s all the same to me. There’s no room for part-timers here.’
We were all up and ready by six the following morning, speculating about our first task.
‘We’re not going to like it,’ one lad said.
‘Definitely. They like to throw you in at the deep end.’
Taff led us down to the end of the dormitory, dragged out an ironing board and took a shirt from one of the lockers. ‘This morning’s lesson: ironing,’ he announced.
No one dared speak. We watched him – ironing, folding, ironing … Mum made it look easy, but he made it look like some kind of origami. ‘There’s the marine way of doing things,’ he said, ‘and there’s the wrong way.’ He looked us up and down, ‘This is the marine way.’
Then it was the boots – yes, they were ironed, too, just a little – and how to shave properly (the marine way).
There was barely five minutes for lunch before Taff put us through our paces in the gym. Any dissent was rewarded with an extra fifty or one hundred press-ups or squats or whatever else came to mind. Everything was hard; every muscle in our bodies hurt.
Induction training lasted a fortnight; every day there was drill practice, two-hour slots of strength and fitness … there was ironing, polishing and tidying, shaving and freezing nights spent outdoors. Sadly, not all the recruits lasted, but it was a time when we all made good mates – Paul A., Andy Probert, Luke Harmsworth, and later Paul Moynan were among my new friends. Another plus was being issued with weapons – although we were taught only how to strip and polish them; how to use them would come later.
The following weeks we had new, more specialised trainers: in physical training, radio work, surveillance, survival, mortars, heavy weapons, orienteering … and they were all hard on us, and they were brilliant. But as our sergeant kept reminding us: ‘The Marines is for the elite. If you’re not up to it, you know where the door is.’
And some did walk out through that door. I could not see how, after all that effort, anyone could do that.
Then it was the Easter holidays. Back to all the comforts and freedoms of home and family, and to my girlfriend. It was hard to ignore the contrasts with the training camp. Paul A. lived near by and we started to meet up in the pub. We talked about the hardships of training, and two days before we were due to return we agreed that we did not want to go on with it. So, on our arrival back at Lympstone we went together to the sergeant and handed in our resignation letters. He just said, ‘I’m going to sit on these letters until Friday. If you still feel the same then, then we will begin the process of getting you out of here.’
On Friday we went to him and asked him to forget the letters, and he tore them up. We continued training, which was not without its ups and downs, mostly downs, for any of us. By week 25, there were only sixteen of us left, and we were to dwindle to eleven. We were moved to Sennybridge in Wales for the next steps in commando training. For two weeks we were drilled and drilled and drilled in live firing with no limitations by marines who were nothing if not tough. Things have since changed, but in those days the watchwords were extreme violence, speed and aggression. Everything centred on locating the enemy and destroying them at no matter what cost. The bursts of gunfire and explosions going off around us to simulate the terror and confusion of actual conflict were real. They trained us for everything they could imagine might happen. It was hard work and stressful, but totally exhilarating. This was the marine way.
The final test I knew would be evil. It followed ten days crossing Dartmoor, practising all we’d learned, which was fun but ensured we were totally knackered for the ordeal that was to come, the Commando Test. To make this test a bit more challenging, the tasks were against the clock, and if one failed a task, all failed.
The first task was a 9-mile speed march carrying full battle order (about 21 pounds/9.5 kilos) to be completed in 90 minutes.
Followed by a 6-mile endurance course.
Then came the advanced weapons trials.
Then the killer assault course.
The last was a 30-mile hike carrying about 40 pounds (18 kilos) of kit to be completed in under eight hours.
We made it, and in good time, even though Paul A. did the last fifteen miles on painkillers so powerful he meandered about like one of the Living Dead and the rest of us had to herd him as if he was a wayward sheep.
Considering how much pomp and circumstance there is in the military, what happened next was fairly low key, but that suited all of us. We gathered in a square and a succession of high-ranking officers came out to meet us. Then the brigadier from the CTC arrived and personally shook our hands as he handed over to each of us our very own Green Beret.
The following week was the passing-out ceremony. Everyone had a good presentation but, as well as the standard pass, I was awarded prizes for marksmanship and coming top in other tasks, as well as a ‘Diamond’ award in recognition of being a section commander throughout my time there. As I walked away with Mum and Dad and the others I could see the look on their faces – you can’t buy happiness like that. I was sad though, sad because I didn’t want to leave Lympstone, this complex that had given me more pain and trouble than anything in my life.
I was soon back at Lympstone, but just for a nineteen-week signals course, after which I joined 45 Commando in Arbroath, Scotland, where we trained and waited. It was cold. We went to Norway, where we trained. It was even colder. But then we went to Belize for jungle training – and I hoped I would be sent somewhere cold. That is not quite what happened.
* * *
Just because you don’t see action doesn’t mean you don’t prepare for it. At any given moment in the UK there will be a battalion or a commando unit – usually between 16 Air Assault Paras or 3 Commando Brigade – that is code ‘R1’, which means they are the reaction force. Should anything happen to British interests anywhere in the world, their equipment is packed, they are ready to go instantly. When I joined 45 Commando, we were R1. I read enough news to realise that things in the Balkans might require our involvement.
In 1999 we started to get whispers that the situation in Kosovo was going bad. It was only a matter of time before the UK got involved.
‘You know what that means? We’re R1. We’ll be going.’
There was no official word but the buzz around the base was deafening. When the call came to deploy we’d be ready. We already were.
This is it, boys. We’re finally going to be marines …
All we were waiting for was the government to give the go-ahead for strike force action. Then, in May, it did.
But we weren’t the strike force.
With no explanation – at least to us – the top brass selected 1 Para (1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment) instead of 45 Commando to move into Kosovo. The mood around the camp sank into gloom. You’ve never seen so many long faces. That was the trigger that sent so many of the older lads heading for the exit door. Imagine being a footballer and spending your whole career on the bench. The decision definitely cost us a lot of good men.
I followed the news as closely as I could. When the Paras moved up from Macedonia, from where they’d launched their operations, they were met with Serbian resistance. From the reports we got it was pretty obvious the Paras were getting a substantial number of rounds down which only made our mood back home worse.
It stopped almost as quickly as it started, though. I don’t think there were any British casualties in the advance from Macedonia up to Pristina. When they arrived in Pristina it was a case of switching from combat operations into peacekeeping support. And that’s when the call came to Arbroath.
A full year after the Paras had gone in we were told to ready ourselves for deployment. The news provoked mixed emotions. On the plus side, I’d finally be going over to be a marine in a live situation. On the downside, the Paras had already scooped the best gig. Another downside was knowing how all those lads who’d left the Marines in the last twelve months, largely because of the lack of action, would be kicking themselves. Finally, there was the voice of reason back home. Mum was convinced I would be walking to my death. It didn’t help that I’d recently met a new girlfriend in Kent over Christmas. She too was convinced I shouldn’t go.
I loved them both, but was I going to listen? This may not have been the Guns N’ Roses warfare I’d been hoping for but it could get tasty, we kept being told that. The fact we were being deployed at all was recognition of how dangerous the region was.
But there was another drawback and it was a big one – for me personally.
Most of the 45 Commando lads would be going over as militarised policemen. They’d be out and about in Pristina, identifying threats and dealing with them. I was part of Z Company – a signaller. The only threats I’d be identifying would be interference on the radio signal while listening to my mates do the fun stuff.
From May 2000 until we were actually scheduled to leave in the autumn I began trying to get myself transferred to a more hands-on role. When I’d taken signals as my specialisation the sergeant assured me I could change after eighteen months. I was just about to reach that point, so I put in for a switch to go on general duty. In other words, become a basic foot soldier.
And was rejected.
That was the first lie I was told in the Marines: that I could move around the divisions. It was all personnel-dependent, I was told. If they had the manpower to cover me, they would. They didn’t, so they couldn’t. Or wouldn’t – it’s all the same.
Net result: I was gutted. I couldn’t believe 45 Commando was going to a war zone and I’d be taking messages.
And then suddenly my luck changed.
‘Marine Driscoll, we need you to work security for the advance party. Get ready to leave for Greece.’
‘Security’, ‘advance party’, ‘Greece’? Whatever it meant, I was up for it.