Free Going Commando by Mark Time Page A

you only wearing one puttee?’
    Marine: ‘I could only find one, sir.’
    Inspecting officer: ‘Well, don’t you think it would look better with no puttees?’
    Marine: ‘Yes sir, I do.’
    Inspecting officer: ‘Well, sort it out, then.’
    The marine bends down to untie his puttee, unwrapping the yards of cloth. As the last of the puttee comes away he finds his other one underneath wrapped around the same ankle…
    As a sixteen-year-old I was chuffed when I got picked up on a drill inspection for not shaving correctly. However, pride in my newfound manliness was slightly dampened when I had to run back to the accommodation to fetch shaving kit and a mess tin full of cold water to re-shave at the side of the drill square, while fellow recruits ran around the square for misdemeanours such as dull boots, dirty brasses or having uneven ears.
    Still to this day I wonder at the relevance of those many hours on the drill square. Sure, we needed to know how to march and salute. Discipline, order and team building were integral, but the military ethos and fieldwork can facilitate those mechanics. The historical importance of drill cannot be ignored, but in today’s theatre of war it pales into total insignificance. Maybe we just like to do it for traditional purposes, Pavlov’s dogs performing to the crowds at Buckingham Palace. But as a teenager in my first few weeks of training, I continued unabated in my quest to complicate something as easy as walking.
    * * *
    Our first venture out of CTC was Exercise First Step. It could hardly be regarded as a commando operation; it was more like a camping trip to instill in us the basics of building alow-lying tactical shelter known as a bivvy, and how to cook our rations.
    Again, washing was an inherent part of these field lectures – this time conducted by two corporals to whom we’d been briefly introduced when taking our oath. A bivvy poncho separated the pair. The corporal at the front had his arms hidden, replaced by the arms of the corporal behind. Watching the rear man operating blind, undressing the corporal at the front, was hilarious, especially when shaving. The shaving brush swathed foam all over the face of the first corporal, and then his nose and cheeks. It was evident that not only did the corporals have a sense of self-effacing humour, there was trust between the two – especially when the rear guy cleaned under his mate’s foreskin and removed shavings of processed cheese, which he then placed in his mouth.
    I was bivvied up with Hopkins. Our friendship blossomed after Elliott had been swallowed by his locker, and we’d built up a bit of a bond. Hopkins was the total opposite of me. He had lived in Germany, Hong Kong and Gibraltar; I’d been to Ibiza once on a package holiday. My real father was a mysterious Spaniard in the UK on a building project, who seemingly liked impregnating young waitresses but not the responsibility of sticking around. His father was a respected lieutenant colonel in the British Army, who had sent Hopkins to boarding school from the age of eight. He’d learned to look after himself from an early age and, while not academically outstanding, had passed his ‘A’ levels. He was a good-looking bastard as well, and his physical prowess was pretty impressive. He had the body of an Olympic gymnast,and already seemed to find the gym sessions slightly less arduous than most of us.
    There was one small problem. He didn’t want to be there. The youngest of four brothers, the others had all joined the army as officers and, as per family tradition, he was expected to follow suit. So he decided to join the Corps, not as an officer but as a ground-level marine, just to buck the trend. While his father was happy that he’d at least joined the military, Hopkins had only done it out of family duty. It was going to be a long thirty weeks for him.
    But he had a coolness born from having done this sort of thing for the last ten years and, as a