Going Commando by Mark Time Read Free Book Online Page B

What am I?’ he demanded.
    ‘You’re a sergeant, Corporal!’ shouted Webb.
    We had to be issued with various pieces of bulky equipment, which were hard to carry without looking like an idiot, undergo more paper administration, pledge oaths to the Queen and ensure our joining routine card was complete. The latter was the archaic administrative task ensuring the relevant departments officially recorded our presence by way of an ink stamp, an entry into a ledger and some complaint about interrupting someone’s ‘stand easy’. It was like a cross between a bingo card and a treasure hunt indicating mysterious departments hidden around camp that we had to find, with our only clue being, ‘Get it filled in before the end of the day or you can standby.’
    In between, we were summoned to line up with everyone else outside the barber’s shop.
    ‘Would anyone like to keep their hair?’ said the DL, casually.
    One long-haired soul put up his hand. ‘Yes, I would, Corporal.’
    ‘Well, have you brought a bag?’
    We were each herded inside and given a very brutal haircut by an overly enthusiastic old barber who had clearly trained on sheep.
    Finally, we had our photographs taken in the photo booth of lies – transforming me into something from Crimewatch , rather than the scared child I actually was.
    Before there was any instruction on how to creep up behind the enemy and garrote him with cheese wire, we were ordered to the NAAFI shop to buy specific items we needed for the next couple of weeks. The Navy Army Air Force Institute is the paramilitary arm of consumerism, selling items at extortionate prices to a captive market. The NAAFI at CTC offered a wide range catering to its main demographic: from a cigarette lighter in the shape of various exotic animals, which for some reason wasn’t a big seller, to pornography, which was.
    Now high on the list of life’s necessities were items unknown to most teenage boys: washing powder (dhobi dust), Brasso, Duraglit, whitening fluid for pumps (blanco), nail-scrubbing brush, on/off boot-polish brushes, boot polish, starch and flip-flops. I took one of all of the above, and dumped everything into my newly bought plastic bucket. It left me with 45p to last the rest of the fortnight. The Ferrari could wait.
    The military-issue kit was an assortment of clothing and equipment as varied as our pick’n’mix of accents. We were shown once how to launder and look after our issued clothing. As ever, there would be no second demonstration; information had to be absorbed immediately. We wore hessian-like green shirts for normal duties, as opposed to the smooth stone shirts worn for drill. These needed to be as sharp as a pin, but would crease as soon as you looked at them. They would only iron well with the correct amount of starch. Too little starch made no difference. Too much and the subsequent stains looked like the wearer had become sexually excited. Our trousers, known as ‘denims’ but nothing like jeans, also had to be pressed to the required standard, and ‘immaculate’ was the only acceptablestandard. This required arm-jarring pressing of the legs to create creases so sharp you could shave with them.
    On our feet, depending on the activity, we would wear Royal Marine high combat boots (RMHCB), which I loved as they made me at least an inch taller. On the down side, I looked like a glam rocker and they weighed the same as me, so running became especially exhausting. Bearing in mind we ran everywhere, they hardly made me feel like Darren Coe, Seb’s faster brother. We were issued two pairs of RMHCB, no doubt so that we could suffer twice as many blisters. Inside, we would insert plastic insoles that shared their moulding with ‘ACME Cheese Grater Inc’. Burning and rubbing, rather than cushioning and comforting, seemed to be the design priorities; they were so tough they could only be cleaned by scrubbing them with something equally as abrasive - another insole. The friction