CHAPTER 3

Becoming a Viking

On arriving at Elizabeth Barracks in Pirbright, Surrey, I recognised the roads from my previous time there. It is a large camp and although I still felt comfortable and at ease, the two suicides at the nearby Deepcut Barracks, which were much in the news at the time and still being investigated, came to mind. I did not really know what to expect of life in the battalion, having heard rumours and people telling me that the first six months is totally bad until you earn your right to be there. There were tales of the training we had just completed being an utter doddle and that in the battalion you would be literally punched in the face if you make a mistake – that is the real Army, so be prepared. I did not dwell on this too much and decided to approach things with an open mind. I have to admit that I was unable to quell my anxiety completely but such feelings are normal in any walk of life, on the first day in school or starting a new job.

As I approached the front gate, what I did not realise at the time was that the guys on duty were actually from my platoon in C Company. I appeared laden with four huge kit bags, containing literally everything, including all of my clothing, boots and helmet, and looking like some military answer to Steptoe and Son. I had decided not to use the internal army postal system, which was notorious for its inconsistency.

On arriving I arrived in front of my new comrades, and being used to the drill at Catterick, I stamped to a halt as if I were on a parade square, shouting my army number and announcing that Private Cartwright was, ‘Reporting for duty, Sir.’ The reaction from the lance corporal and his soldiers was rapturous applause and cheering to which I responded by also laughing. At that moment I thought, ‘Yes, I will be right at home here.’ It is that kind of squaddy mentality that I loved and still do. Inwardly I was calling myself an idiot, but I guess I just didn’t know what to expect and could only put it down to experience.

A guy called Freddy showed me up to meet the Company Sergeant Major and others, and eventually I was introduced to a very short and skinny lance corporal named Simon Pimm who came across saying, ‘Oh, you’re the new bloke then.’ He offered to take me up to the barracks, to which I replied, ‘Yes Corporal’, as this was exactly how we had been taught at Catterick to behave, showing proper respect.

This somewhat stinted conversation continued as we made our way towards the barracks, with me replying, ‘Yes Corporal’ to everything he said. Finally he stopped, turned to me and said quietly, ‘Listen mate, if you call me Corporal one more time, I’m going to punch you in the face.’ I replied, ‘Oh sorry,’ before he simply told me to call him Bog Rat like everyone else did.

I still laugh about my first moments there. It was quite a shock because throughout all my brief Army career up to that point, it had been drilled into me that I must call everyone this and that and ensure that I stood to attention. Everyone had to be called by their rank, unless it was an officer or warrant officer, in which case it would be, ‘Sir.’ Anyway, Bog Rat told me about the people I would be with, who had recently returned from a tour of Northern Ireland and were really quite cliquey, warning me not to expect to fit in and make friends too quickly which, to be honest, filled me with dread. I had visions of them being war hardened and having had a really rough time; in truth, they had actually had quite an easy time with nothing having occurred at all.

There was one guy, Ben Emmett, whom I had known during training who was put into my room. That made things a little easier, but by and large the guys from 9 Platoon were all pretty cool. I soon made friends with a number of them and was given as a mentor, someone with the nickname, ‘Billy Whiz.’ He was a really good lad and was also friendly with another guy called, ‘Webby’ who was the platoon clown, having a reputation as someone who would always be on the piss and a really good laugh. It was decided that Billy Whiz would be my, ‘in barracks’ mentor while Webby would be my, ‘on the piss’ mentor.

As my second mentor, Webby came into his own after a few weeks when a company party was organised and I became so mortally drunk it was almost the talk of the barracks. A load of Skol lager, had been brought by some of the lads which hardly anyone wanted to drink, but Webby of course encouraged me to do so. I think everyone had taken a few cans but, apart from the fact that the lager was largely ignored, not being the company’s desired booze of choice. Annoyed by the lack of people drinking their generous contribution, the lads announced that the bar would not be opening until every last can of Skol had been downed. Needless to say, I being the new guy had been passed literally everyone else’s cans. Nowadays, a large quantity of Skol would not be on my Christmas list but at the time this seemed like a particularly cheap night. I didn’t care that it was Skol, merely that it was free and alcoholic. There were around fifteen or twenty cans left and I put almost all of them away. This made me blind drunk, and I mean properly drunk, to the point that Billy Whiz literally had to hold me up as he took me back to my room at around 1.00 or 2.00 am in the morning, before presenting me with a sick bucket and disappearing.

Before long us new arrivals in the battalion were taken off to the ranges to zero our rifles. There were four of us: Ben Emmett, Ike Smith, Nicky Waite and me. During our training at Catterick we had used the SA80 A1 rifle but were now given the new SA80 A2, which was a very much better weapon. I can still remember receiving mine still covered in the grease in which it had left the factory. There was not one scratch on it and it was literally out of the wrapper and brand spanking new. I was the first person ever to fire this weapon and I appreciated it. I remember thinking how beautiful it was to shoot, being so accurate. I felt guilty even making it slightly dirty.

It didn’t take long before I managed to demonstrate my shooting ability against individuals who had been in the battalion for three or four years and even some of the NCOs. I managed to beat their scores by simply producing better grouping. I think at that point I was achieving a group of approximately 30mm. A bullet from an SA80 is 5.56mm in diameter and so to achieve that kind of score I needed to put five rounds into a 3.0cm group from a range of 100 metres, which took some achievement.

At the end of the day on the range I was walking back to the transport and Sergeant Neil shouted across, ‘Come on then, Cartwright. Get into that truck over there on the left.’ I walked across to the vehicle whose large canvas canopy flap at the rear was down. I lifted this to one side, to be confronted by soldiers all staring down at me with cigarette smoke billowing out around them. At that point one of them shouted out, ‘Ere, does your mum know you’re here?’ Of course everyone fell about laughing as I was a new guy with the particularly baby face I possessed at that time. Everyone was laughing as I jumped aboard muttering, ‘Ha ha, very funny,’ with a big grin on my face. The thought that I had got lost on the way to the chip shop, having been sent by my mother and wandered into the Recruitment Office, induced a grudging, ‘Nice one, guys’ from me as they all fell about laughing.

Despite the relative success of my first shooting experience, it took time to be noticed and it was some seven or eight months before I made my first attempt to be selected for the Sniper Platoon.

The first proper exercise in which I took part was on Salisbury Plain during the first two weeks of December 2003, when the weather was absolutely freezing. I really cannot describe how cold that was. We lived in Copehill Down, which was the FIBUA (Fighting In Built-Up Areas) village and we always referred to it as the FISH Village, which stood for, ‘Fighting In Someone’s House.’ It was where we practised storming houses, jumping through windows, throwing grenades through doorways and generally learning the skills of FIBUA. We lived in this village, which sadly had no glass in the windows and no heating and was utterly freezing.

For the initial period we were out for a day and then for two days as a run-up to the full exercise. My section commander at the time was a guy called Corporal Gary Stewart who was actually quite a decent bloke and a horse of a man. His second-in-command was Lance Corporal Kev Langston who really was a good laugh and could do a thing called the wind surfer which was the ability to transform his nut sack (testicle bag) by almost impossible means, into the shape of a wind surfer which became the stuff of legend. I think there maybe a photo of this somewhere, alongside other miracles like an invention called, ‘the cheeseburger’ which really does amazingly resemble a cheeseburger and strangely uses all of his genitalia. I know it sounds totally juvenile but, when you are within this environment, this really was the kind of silly thing that was really funny and made Army life fun.

I remember the last phase of the final and main exercise was an attack on the village of Imber. The Commanding Officer had got himself into a bit of a flap and we were marched at really high pace into the valley, despite carrying heavy packs and full kit, and consequently arrived around two hours early at 1.00 am, pouring with sweat, but the attack was not scheduled to being until 3.00 am. We lay up in a valley, watching the minutes going by. My combat jacket and t-shirt were literally drenched with sweat and before long the icy wind and freezing temperature, heralded by a mist that rolled into the valley and formed a heavy frost, began to take effect. Having lost so much fluid through sweat, I was gulping water from my water bottle. Eventually we received the order to prepare to move. While readying myself and organising my kit properly, I checked my pockets and the various zip fasteners on my clothing. As I did so, I discovered that, while drinking, I had dribbled on to a couple of zips which had literally frozen solid with ice. You can imagine how we felt, lying there motionless and freezing.

After about an hour to an hour and a half, we were ordered to our feet and marched out and then back into the valley. This was done in an attempt to warm us up because by then three or four of our number had been taken away suffering from hypothermia and the early warning signs of frostbite.

As we marched back in again, we commenced the attack. My section’s role was to provide flanking support for another section as it entered one of the main buildings. However we were subjected to a major counter-attack that resulted in everyone in my section being killed apart from me, due to my being positioned on the other side of a large shrub. This was more to do with my becoming separated from my group in the darkness and confusion; to be honest, I probably was not concentrating as much as I should have been because of the freezing conditions. Each of us was equipped with the Personal Role Radio (PRR) and I made contact with the second-in-command of the section, Kev, and asked what was happening. His response was to order me to sneak along the main track towards the main body of the enemy in the area; I should initially throw a grenade and then open fire with my rifle. Preparing a grenade and switching my SA80 to automatic fire mode, I sneaked along the track until I heard voices, thereafter creeping forward and adopting the best possible position. Readying myself, I threw the grenade and, as soon as it exploded, charged out with rifle blazing.

Unfortunately, and I still laugh about it now, I tripped over a root and fell hard and ungracefully on my face. Everyone, of course, fell about with laughter while mocking taunts of, ‘Nice one Rambo, you only killed three people,’ rang in my ears. I did of course protest, saying that, despite my tripping up, I had fired a number of rounds and thrown a grenade that had exploded in the middle of the main group. Despite my embarrassment, I maintained I had killed more than three of them.

Filling the air with banter, we all extracted our cookers from our packs and organised a fire to huddle around in an effort to keep warm. Eventually dawn arrived, bringing with it the sun. Endex (end of exercise) was called and with great relief we headed for our Saxon armoured personnel carriers for the return journey to Westdown Camp.

Each Saxon was equipped with fire extinguishers. Normally, they were activated by pulling a safety pin and then pressing a button. This particular type could be set off by banging the top of it which resulted in a non-stop massive flow of frothy foam. On this occasion, one of B Company’s Saxons had driven in and hit a massive pothole, the impact setting off an extinguisher inside the vehicle. The result was hilarious; when the door opened, a number of snowmen staggered out covered in foam from top to toe. We all just split our sides laughing! It was perfect timing for this to happen when everyone was so relieved to be going home after such a long and cold exercise. B Company covered in white foam – priceless! I don’t think I will ever forget that moment. Learning a lot, making lifelong friends and forming lifelong memories, that one so funny, were some of the best aspects of my early days in the battalion.

9 Platoon, although we were always proud of it, was always undermanned and this discriminated against us during competitions because we tended to lose, sometimes by quite some margin. There were only sixteen of us, whereas a full-strength platoon numbered thirty-two men in three sections of eight men and a platoon headquarters, so we were at half-strength while the other two platoons in our company, 10 and 11 Platoons, were well up to strength.

Meanwhile, I remained very keen to join the Sniper Platoon. I had discovered from a guy who had previously completed the sniper course that you had to have served for at least six months before you could even be selected or put forward for the course. Eventually, due to the time I had served and possessing a certain degree of aptitude, I was allowed to attempt selection for the snipers. The platoon had only two vacancies for which there were twelve candidates. This was soon whittled down to seven and eventually, following a few injuries, there were only five of us left. One of these was a guy called Alex Hawkins who passed on this attempt. This was the first time I had met him and we got on really well. I would come into contact with him again in due course, but for now our paths parted as I unfortunately failed on this attempt to join the platoon. However this was the summer of 2004 and the beginning of an exciting period in my army career, beginning with a move to the Brigade Surveillance Company for a forthcoming tour of operations tour in Iraq.