Free Sniper Elite by Rob Maylor Page B

nature and everyone was completely exhausted. The exercise finished with a deliberate attack on Scraesden Fort near Plymouth. The fort was built in the mid-1800s. It was heavily overgrown, making it relatively easy to conduct our reconnaissance to plan the attack.
    On completion of final exercise we were all inspected by a couple of medics. Some lads had large, bright red sores on their lower backs and shoulders where the skin had been worn off by the constant rubbing of the issue personal load carrying equipment (PLCE) bergens, and nearly all of us had painful chafing between the thighs. A few lads had huge blisters to contend with and some had worn all the skin off the soles of their feet.
    Back at Lympstone the training team sent me to the sick bay to get my foot looked at, and an X-ray revealed that I had a cracked metatarsal. I was absolutely gutted, as this could mean months of rehab and the end of a long journey with 637 Troop. The training team advised that rehab was the best thing to do, but I was adamant that I was going to march out of training with the rest of 637 the following month.
    To get me over the line I had to strap my foot heavily and live on painkillers when we started the commando tests that haven’t changed since the original commandos of World War II. They are run over four consecutive days and are all completed with a minimum of 30 pounds (nearly 14 kilos) of webbing (when dry!) and a weapon. They began with a 9-mile speed march on roads and tracks, which had to be completed as a troop in less than 90 minutes, followed by a full troop attack on Woodbury Common.
    We conducted the troop attack on football fields across the road from CTC. This emphasised the importance of speed marching as a means of delivering a body of men fit for battle when they arrived. Once we had completed the 9 miler it was traditional for every troop to march into CTC led by a ceremonial drummer from the Royal Marines Band Service.
    Then came the combined Tarzan and Assault courses. The Tarzan course is an aerial confidence test of rope and wood obstacles up to 8 metres above the ground and beginning with the ‘death slide’. Once completed this leads straight into a circuit of the bottom field assault course and finishes at the top of a 10-metre wall. All of this has to be completed in less than 13 minutes.
    Next came the endurance course pass out, which had to be completed in 72 minutes; and finally the 30-mile speed march south across Dartmoor from Oakhampton Camp to Shipley Bridge completed as a section and carrying additional emergency equipment. I finished all the tests, but ended up on crutches and couldn’t participate in the easiest activity of all: the King’s Squad Pass Out Parade. Only 14 orginals finished with the troop. The average ‘pass out’ rate is less than 50 per cent.
    I had made some good mates at Lympstone but you don’t necessarily get drafted or posted to the same unit. Three of us from training went to 40 Commando: Daz and Jacko went to Bravo Company and I went to Charlie Company. We lost touch shortly after. Most of the other lads from 637 went to 45 Commando based in Scotland.

5
And If You Thought That was Cold
    Like many a new marine, Norway was my first real exercise abroad. At 0400 hours on a cold Monday morning in early January 1993 dressed in ski march boots, denims, Norwegian army shirt, olive green ‘woolly pulley’ and green beret, we boarded the coaches that were to take us to the docks in Plymouth. It was drizzling (naturally) and you couldn’t see anything out of the windows because of the condensation on the inside. I was quite excited by the fact that I had only been out of training several weeks and was already heading overseas on a major exercise.
    As we reached Plymouth it was starting to get light and the condensation on the windows was nearly dry, which allowed us to see part of this historic city. This was the port that farewelled the