‘We dived for cover – my helmet was full of porridge’: What Army recruits really get up to
Amid its recruitment crisis, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst is lowering its standards for entry requirements. For the first time, the academy will be accepting borderline candidates who didn’t originally get through the Academy’s Officer Army Selection Board, with the hopes that they will meet expectations throughout Sandhurst’s 44-week training course.
While this allows for a boost in numbers, the real test doesn’t really lie in the early stages of written exams and push ups. Once you’re in, you are tested to your limits both mentally and physically – and it’s not always part of the official training. Beyond the shiny boots, combat trousers and symmetrical parades, there is a whole system built on brotherhood, hierarchy and unusual rites of passage.
While you will courageously put your life on the line when deployed, another obstacle you are likely to face when in training is boredom, and not necessarily your own. Light-hearted pranks become the cure for a quiet day in the Officers Mess. Where the abnormal becomes normal, outrageous becomes acceptable and seemingly unsurvivable becomes unquestionable.
So, what do Armed Forces recruits really get up to? Here, a handful of ex-army officers explain where the real character building lies, and it’s not with a bleep test.
Discovering an eight-legged friend
Between 1964 and 66, aged just 23, I was on Loan Service with the Royal Brunei Malay Regiment. I was in temporary command of “B” Company. We had been the first Bruneian troops to deploy on operations during the Indonesian-Malaysian Confrontation and had “gelled” well as a unit to the extent that the soldiers felt comfortable enough to “test” me.
We had just finished a firing session on a rifle range we’d constructed in the jungle outside our barracks. While the soldiers collected all the empty brass cases, I was checking all the empty cardboard ammo boxes, before throwing them on the fire as we cleared the range. Putting my hand into the umpteenth ammo box, I felt it close on something large and furry. Looking down, to my horror I found I was clutching the largest spider I’d ever seen. Emitting an involuntary scream, I flung the spider away, as my soldiers burst out laughing.
This was the moment they had been waiting for – they must have heard that I wasn’t keen on spiders and had killed the spider and placed it in the box to see what might happen. My reaction exceeded their expectations. Then I like to think that my Sandhurst training came to the fore. Wrestling back the initiative, I said we’d take the spider back to camp and I would send it back to the Natural History Museum in London, as it looked rather exceptional. Indeed it was.
The museum wrote back saying it was a bird-eating spider and highly venomous. They felt it might be a new species of bird-eating spider, but was badly decomposed by the time it arrived in the UK. Sending me instructions on how to preserve such creatures, they asked me to send them another specimen. Thank goodness I never did come across another of those monsters.
Kidnapped by his own men
In 1988, I was based in West Germany. After a party in the Mess, we took a new Second Lieutenant on a “tour of the inner German border” – all completely fake. He was quite drunk so we drove him around the town a few times then up into some woods on the training area behind our camp where we stopped at the barrier to the live ranges.
To the Second Lieutenant it looked like the border. We got out and were met by four “East German border guards” (other officers dressed up). One of us tried to run away and was “shot” – blank ammunition of course. The “guards” then arrested us, blind folded the Second Lieutenant and drove us away in an armoured vehicle. After half an hour we were bundled out of the back and into a cellar – it was actually the cellar under the Officers Mess.
The lights were off, less a bright light shining on a chair in the middle of the room. The Second Lieutenant was brought in and interrogated while someone’s dog, a rottweiler, snarled beside him. He begged for mercy before his blindfold was removed and we turned the lights on to shout “surprise!” Poor chap had been totally taken in and was in a state of shock.
Don’t look down
We dug a field latrine in the middle of our platoon position in a wood in Wales which we all had to use. A soldier of mine went to use it in the night, as he was cleaning himself he dropped his torch and it stuck at the bottom shining straight up. It illuminated a terrible sight.
False alarm
I arrived in Northern Ireland and was told to take my helmet to dinner and leave it under the table while we ate. Halfway through dinner the mortar alarm went off, we all dived for cover under the table and put our helmets on.
Mine had been filled with porridge and the whole thing was a staged prank.
You’re a solider, not an R&B performer
We had an officer join us in London while we were doing Public Duties. He came to his first black tie dinner in the Mess wearing a frilly white shirt (officially called a “ruffle front”) when everyone else was wearing a more sedate golf-ball patterned shirt.
The senior major was incredibly pompous and declared in a loud voice: “My dear chap, if we wanted The Drifters we would have booked them.” The poor man went bright red and never lived it down.
Swordless in Hong Kong
We were on a parade in Hong Kong when someone, not sure who, took the commanding officer’s ceremonial sword out of its scabbard and replaced it with just the hilt. When he drew his sword, there was no blade.
The commanding officer was particularly disliked and everyone sniggered while he went into a rage.
Frostbite for the defeated
I spent the Millennium New Year’s Eve in a shoe factory in Bosnia. Temperature was about -10 and there was snow about a metre deep. As a New Year’s day “treat”, we had a rugby 7s tournament in the snow.
Turns out that’s quite hard work when it’s freezing. Of course, the losing team in each match had the penalty of being dragged through the deep snow by the winners.
Another slice?
I was second in command of “B” squadron when the Third Royal Tank Regiment was deployed to Sharjah in the Persian Gulf in 1969. Our task was to show a military presence in the area and in Northern Oman to “keep the peace”, while most of the Omani Forces were committed to fighting the Dhofar War.
When operating in the desert we were resupplied by the RAF. On resupply days, we would have to clear the Landing Zone (LZ) or the Drop Zone (DZ), if the resupply was by parachute. At the time I was reputed (quite unfairly, of course) to have the largest appetite in the regiment.
When operating in the desert, the routine was to rise before dawn and be ready to move by first light. We’d operate the vehicles until about 9:30am and then “make-shade” during the heat of the day. Around 3pm we’d move off again. About three weeks into one of these patrols, I was on radio watch when an RAF pilot told me that our airdrop was on the way and could we please clear the DZ. I replied that we didn’t have a resupply scheduled but was assured that we did.
I therefore had to give orders for the DZ to be cleared – quite an onerous task, especially during the heat of the day. The aircraft duly hove into view and out came a tiny parachute, delivering a single loaf of bread addressed to me. The plane then turned in a wide arc, and flying low over the squadron waggled its wings and returned to Sharjah, leaving me to face the wrath of the soldiers. I blame my squadron leader for this. And in case anyone thinks this prank was a dreadful waste of taxpayers’ money, this was a routine RAF training flight.
Were you in the Armed Forces and caught out by a big prank? Or were you prankster-in-chief? Share your stories in the comments – and keep it clean...
