CHAPTER 1

The Beginning

There was never really any doubt that I would join the Army in some form or other. My father served in the Royal Navy seeing action in the Falklands War, and my two grandfathers served in the RAF and the Royal Army Service Corps during the 1950s. When you are bought up with this kind of heritage, and hear the stories that surround these experiences, I guess it was simply in the blood. My father and maternal grandfather were both marksmen and in due course I would follow in their footsteps, achieving marksman status in all of my annual personal weapons tests and ultimately becoming second-in-command of a sniper section.

At the age of sixteen, I attempted to join the Royal Marines. In hindsight this was far too early as my body had simply not developed sufficiently to cope with the physical standards required. However, I was close and completed the assessment tests satisfactorily apart from one that required you to lift your own body weight in the form of three overhand pull-ups immediately after a gruelling non-stop session in the gymnasium. I would have been able to pass it a few years later, but at that time I could not quite manage it and thus failed.

Soon afterwards, I telephoned the Army recruitment office in Reading, where I lived with my father at the time, to book an appointment to speak with the recruiting sergeant there. As I entered his office, I felt at ease and generally comfortable in myself. The sergeant himself was tall and amusing, and was in the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment (RGBW), now amalgamated into The Rifles. I recall a song playing in the background that I really liked at the time and I still play to this day called My United States of Whatever by Liam Lynch. I also remember feeling generally relaxed and at ease while talking to the sergeant, enjoying a feeling of being at home within the military whose sense of humour is different from that in civilian life, much of it based on banter between comrades.

I had two or three meetings with the sergeant over a period of time, discussing where I would go, which part of the armed forces I would join and where I would undergo my training. There were a number of choices open to me regarding training; although approaching the age of seventeen, I would still be joining the Army as what is known as a ‘boy soldier.’ I had to choose between the standard twenty-four weeks training at the Infantry Training Centre at Catterick, in North Yorkshire, or a longer period of training at the Army Foundation College at Harrogate. Despite the fact that those who were trained at Harrogate tended to be promoted a little more rapidly, I decided that I wanted to complete my training as soon as possible and so opted for Catterick.

My first day in the British Army for training was Valentine’s Day 2003, but not exactly filled with romance! I made my way down to the Army Training Regiment at Pirbright to undergo the selection process for the Army, which lasted two days. Having previously trained hard to pass the three-day selection assessment for the Royal Marines, which I had come so very close to achieving, I experienced little difficulty with the Army tests because of my high level of physical fitness

One of these was the ‘bleep test’ where you have to run a certain distance before the bleep sounds and back again before it sounds again and so on, until too exhausted to make it before the next bleep. There was a target of fourteen bleeps set by the Royal Marines and twelve for the Army. I completed sixteen and can recall, as everyone dropped out, myself and another lad sprinting back and forwards like mad men for what seemed an eternity. We also underwent a number of command tasks. I remember one in particular where there were mats, vaulting horses and other items of gymnasium equipment neatly arranged to resemble cannons. We had to work in teams of four or five, dismantling our cannon and carrying it from one mat before reassembling it. I was placed in charge of my team and generally tried to do what I thought was correct, such as taking command, making decisions and issuing orders.

Other tests included completing a timed mile and a half run. In the Royal Marines it was three miles, so once again my previous training paid off and I completed the test without any difficulty. Those two days at Pirbright cemented my enjoyment of Army life. I had been used to living away from home, spending time with my father in Reading and my mother in Peterborough, so homesickness was not a problem for me. That, together with my high level of physical fitness, made things easier and not too daunting. I was, of course, somewhat naïve. I remember thinking that I would join the Army and be allowed to choose the job I wanted, in my case to be a member of a sniper platoon. This is most definitely not the case, because selection for the platoon is based on skills and aptitude for the role.

For the moment, anyway, I had passed the selection tests for the Army and now had to undergo training as an infantryman. If, in due course, I wanted to become a sniper I would have to win my place in platoon on merit alone.