The ultimate bootcamp: Arctic warfare training with the reserve marines
|
Version 0 of 1. Andy Dyer staggers up the steps of the Ministry of Defence’s Kinlochleven training centre, his face glistening with sweat and snow. Behind him, the Mamores, one of the most dangerous mountain ranges in the Scottish Highlands, rears its jagged peaks. “I’ve been doing this for 12 years, and those are the worst conditions I have ever been in,” Dyer announces, offloading the 32kg Bergen backpack he has just carried 914m up an icy slope. Dyer removes his green beret and shakes out his short wet hair. “It was brilliant.” Dyer is 30 years old. From Monday to Friday, he works as a police officer in Newcastle. On Friday night, he hops on military transport, dusts down his uniform and becomes Captain Dyer, a Royal Marine commando reserve who spent six months of last year fighting in Afghanistan. The Royal Marines reserve is perhaps the least known corner of the British armed forces. There are fewer than 600 marine reservists spread across the UK, young men (and it is entirely men) who balance full-time civilian life with being members of a reserve military force widely acknowledged to be the toughest of the lot. Take this weekend. We are on an Arctic warfare training exercise in a remote corner of the Highlands. Not because Britain is at war with Finland, but because someone in the military needs to know how to fire a gun in sub-zero temperatures, and you never know when you might need them to. There are around 50 reservists here, ranging in age from 19 to 45. They include a mental health nurse, a postman, a water company manager, a politics student and a trainee doctor from Bath who was so scared of what his family would think, he didn’t tell his mum he’d signed up for six months. They are taught how to abseil down rocky cliff faces at high speed, launch themselves off snow banks with ice axes, build emergency snow holes and scale icy precipices while carrying 27kg of emergency ration packs, ammunition and crampons. They are treated just like the men in the regular marines – that is, with a curious mix of machismo and mollycoddling. At 7.30am, they are in the car park doing 50 burpees in full uniform because they didn’t tidy up properly after breakfast; by 12.30pm, they are climbing a kilometre-high ice ridge in a raging blizzard wearing crampons and Arctic face masks. The commitment is intense, and the dropout rate among recruits is high. They face weekly meetings, weekends away and two-week training courses. Most are gone from home and work for about two months a year. Those who make the grade must pass the notorious commando assault course, a brutal, seven-day test that includes a 48km uphill march, a “death slide” and 10km through underwater tunnels and pipes. “You’ve got to leave one life at one door and pick up the other at the next, which is a bit weird,” says Corporal Tom Davies, a softly-spoken 26-year-old engineering student from Liverpool with a shy smile. He toyed with the idea of joining the regular marines – many reservists do – but ultimately decided that marines at the weekend and lectures during the week was the best of both worlds. His mum and dad weren’t convinced. “I told them I applied to go out to Afghanistan, although I didn’t get to go in the end. My dad was OK about it, but when I told my mum, she was obviously a bit gutted. But I enjoy the lifestyle. It’s hoofing.” Marines, or bootnecks, speak their own language, one so strange as to outfox even other members of the armed forces. Something is “hoofing” if thought to be great, or “threaders” if it is awful. You don’t have a drink but a “wet”, and a wash is a “dhobi”. A disorganised parade line is the splendid “gagglefuck”. Up on the hill it is rather threaders, to this civilian anyway. The mountain is bleak and steep. Snowy pockets fall away to nothing over precarious inclines. In a close, huddled line, marines in groups of 10 go up the steep path. Once up in the white, the plan is to practise ice-axe arrests, where you use your axe to stop yourself being carried down the mountain by snow in an avalanche. Each man is issued with an official Cold Weather, Mountain & High Altitude Operations Personal Survival & Safety Guide. Advice on what to do if a fellow soldier comes down with trench foot or snow blindness is to the point: “cover both eyes, ideally keep casualty in darkness.” But safety is not something that can be taken lightly. On 13 July last year, army reservists Edward Maher, 31, Craig Roberts, 24, and James Dunsby, 31, were taking part in a gruelling SAS selection test on the Brecon Beacons when temperatures hit 30C. They were reportedly seen begging civilian hikers for water. Maher and Roberts collapsed and died at the scene; Dunsby died in hospital 17 days later. The Ministry of Defence has since been ordered to change the way the SAS selection test is run. A little higher on the mountain, as thick flakes of snow continue to fall, I’m told it’s not safe for me to go any farther. The marines disappear behind another snowy peak as I gingerly make my way down. Back at base camp, where a signaller keeps radio contact with the lads, an urgent report comes through: the marines have had to take an escape route down the mountain. Conditions are too dangerous and, unused to the kit, some were taking 25 minutes to get their crampons on. That evening there are a few sore legs and tired faces. While some talk about the financial rewards as a reason for signing up, they are not enormous: a lower-ranking marine reservist will probably bring home £2,500 a year, with an additional tax bonus of up to £1,700, depending on how long they have served. The marines hope to add an extra 200 reservists by 2018, and from this April, as part of a sweetener across all armed forces reserves, there will be a modest pension, too. The next morning, they are up with the lark, off to scale Britain’s highest mountain, and once again practise for that shadowy war in the snow. In 24 hours, they will be back at desks or hospital wards. But, for now, as they disappear into the white, they are marines – hard, bonded, hoofing. |