Free Going Commando by Mark Time

the nod, bleeding from a head wound, didn’t see the funny side; probably not least because the bloodstain was going to make washing his IMF top a whole lot harder.

FOUR
    ‘When we are tired, we are attacked by those ideas we conquered long ago.’
    F RIEDRICH N IETZSCHE, PHILOSOPHER
    MUCH TO MY disappointment, we did very little of anything that resembled soldiering while in induction.
    We wouldn’t even get our hands on a weapon until week three. But in those first two weeks I learnt how to march quite smartly in pseudo-unison with fifty or so others, feeling proud that I could complete complex tasks such as putting one leg in front of the other, turning and stopping.
    On a drill square, even walking properly is difficult. Military marching is a mental balancing act of walking at a 30” pace, crashing your heels firmly into the tarmac parade ground and swinging your arms level with the shoulders, elbows locked, thumbs pressed hard on top of fists, head immobile on yourshoulders – unless we were trying out the complex new move of saluting to the left/right, all in time to the howling sarcasm of the DL. According to him, when anyone marched slightly wrongly a village was deprived of its idiot, or Joey Deacon was missing his less able brother.
    Prior to getting mobilised, the drill square was the scene of many a tense inspection. The DL would slowly make his way along the front rank. Due to my height I’d been positioned in the middle of the second rank, so I had plenty of time to gauge his mood. Even if the recruit was immaculate he would suffer.
    DL to recruit (who returns his look): ‘Do you fancy me?’
    ‘No, Corporal.’
    ‘So you think I’m ugly then?’
    ‘No, Corporal.’
    ‘So you do fancy me then. Give me fifty for being a noshbag.’
    So the previously immaculate recruit, was not only accused of lusting after the drill sergeant, but now irrevocably creased up by press-ups on the tarmac of the parade square.
    Anything even slightly less than perfect was picked up on, especially if it was fluff on our ‘wee beret’. The kind of thing a normal human could only see with the aid of an electron microscope stood out like a sore thumb to the DL.
    ‘Do you know why it’s called a wee beret, Lofty?’ the DL would ask, the blue beret swinging on his finger.
    ‘Because I have a small head, Corporal?’
    ‘ Weeeee! ’ the DL would shriek, throwing it twenty metres over the adjacent hedge.
    The guardian of the drill square was the ‘first drill’. The bastion of everything ceremonial in the Corps, he was a sternlyanhedonic warrant officer whose presence made everyone extra nervous, despite his head looking like a suet pudding. His voice had all the tenderness of an air-raid klaxon, and his beady eye was cast not only us but also the instruction of our DL. Only years later would we find out that the DL we looked up to as one step up from God wasn’t overly respected by his peers, and was actually known as the ‘last drill’.
    At the time, some bright spark at the MOD (there’s a lot of them, apparently) decided to reintroduce puttees for a trial period. Puttees are hessian wraps designed to protect the ankle as a buffer between the bottom of battle fatigues and boots. They were so old fashioned that they were introduced around the time the Dead Sea first went sick, and taken from service not long after. We wore them with our denims, but only for drill in our initiation weeks. Our DL had somehow forgotten to tell us how to put them on correctly, possibly due to not really knowing; after all, they had been discontinued way before even his time.
    I ended up just wrapping them around in an ‘I’ve broken my leg’ sort of way, gaining a B grade in first-aid bandage. It left me looking like a cross between a Japanese sniper and a 1950s golfer. Take a few steps and they would unravel, leaving me looking like the Andrex puppy.
    On parade, a marine turns up wearing only one.
    Inspecting officer: ‘Why are