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anxiously waiting to shove cereal, fried eggs, beans and sausages down their throats before the long day’s workload. It was an impressive sight to see that number of soldiers, and I was just a little speck amongst them. It turned out that the queue was unusual – the duty chef had either lost the keys to the main entrance to the galley or forgotten to open the doors. Someone at the front of the queue started to baa like a sheep, and soon everyone joined in. We all baaed as loud as we could, all two thousand of us. It was strange to think that only about a third of us would survive the course to wear the coveted green beret. The NCOs and officers, chomping in their own messes, must have wondered what the hell was going on.
    When a new troop arrives at CTC to begin the commando training course it begins at the bottom of a ladder, each rung representing two weeks of the twenty-four-week course (twenty-six in total, counting Deal).
    This course is for senior recruits, those of seventeen and a half and older. Junior recruits, those who join at sixteen, do a slightly different, extended commando course because they cannot join a regular fighting unit until they are eighteen. As each troop is two weeks apart, the previous troop becomes that much more senior. Whatever the troop ahead of yours is doing that day, your troop will be doing in two weeks’ time, and the troop behind you is doing what you did two weeks ago. When the troop ahead was seen returning to camp filthy and exhausted having been away for a gruelling week somewhere you knew you had that to look forward to. On the flip-side, it was a good feeling when you came back from a week of hell and saw the faces of the troop behind yours as they watched you shuffle back to the grots.
    There were six recruits to a room in CTC and when we first moved into the accommodation block we occupied thirteen rooms. Each week the number of recruits in the troop dwindled and survivors were moved to keep the rooms up to six where possible. By the end we were down to five rooms. Recruits in commando training are called noddies because of the way they tend to whip to rigid attention when questioned by an instructor and nod or shake their heads wide-eyed while they answer.
    One of the instructors on our training team was a corporal named Jakers. Jakers wore a permanent scowl whenever he was around noddies and made it obvious at every opportunity that he considered us the lowest form of life. One day a handful of us were debating the characteristics of a particular military weapon while we hung around outside the NAAFI during a break, having a wet of tea.
    ‘Ask Jakers,’ one of my squaddies said as he pointed up the road (‘squaddy’ is a term that usually refers to regular Army soldiers, but Royal Marines also use it to describe someone who is or was in their recruit troop).
    Jakers was walking down the main drag towards us. I was nudged forward to ask the question. I had already gained a reputation for repeatedly asking questions in lectures until I understood the answer, showing a confidence I never had before. I stepped forward and politely posed the question to Jakers. He didn’t slow down as he glanced at me and his nose wrinkled as if I was a bad smell.
    ‘Fuck off and talk to me when you’re a Marine,’ he said as he passed.
    All ‘green lids’ (green berets – full Marines) communicated with noddies using similar courtesy. It was part of the process – a growing pain. Commando training was one huge serving of hardship with a good-sized helping of fun on the side, for those who were willing to make the best of it. Reality did raise its ugly head on occasion though.
    One hot, sunny day, during a twenty-mile run/walk with rifle and full equipment while in columns of three, we passed a recruit lying still by the side of the road. He belonged to another troop up ahead doing a similar run and he was still wearing full equipment. The recruit’s head was covered by a towel and