gaz
04-01-2004, 09:39 AM
(Filed: 04/03/2004)
If you can soldier here, you can soldier anywhere - especially if you have the right kit. Sam Leith joins the Royal Marines for Arctic training in Norway
The sun is a bright smudge, low in the sky underneath a pair of bruise-coloured purple clouds. You can see snow whipping off the far peaks as spindrift. On the far shore of the frozen lake, and in every other direction, all you can see is snow, and the tops of birch trees poking through. When the engine of the Ski-doo is turned off, the only thing you can hear is the wind, as it peels heat from your face. It's dry cold, like standing in front of a fridge. Step off, go through the crust of the snow, and you're in up to your waist.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2004/03/04/bmnor1.jpg
Sam Leith in Norway: when the temperature drops, your nostril hairs freeze
There's no wildlife in evidence. Occasionally, you meet the tracks of Arctic fox, hare or reindeer. "The only living things we've seen are crows, and you only ever see them going about in pairs - if one dies, the other can eat it," says Major Justin Cunningham of the Royal Marines' 42 Commando. "That tells you all you need to know about the environment out here."
With his hat on, Maj Cunningham looks a shade like Sean Bean. When he takes it off, to reveal his vertically inclined grey hair, he takes on the surprised look of Fido Dido. Somewhere ahead of us, his Colour Sergeant -"Bert" Lane - named for his resemblance to the Sesame Street character, is recceing the river for crossing points. Bert - like 42's commanding officer, Col Buster Howes - is a Mountain Leader (an elite Arctic commando qualification). This is the first time for a few years that the Royal Marines - or, as they call themselves with pride, "bootnecks" - have been Arctic training en masse, and Bert is loving it.
Somewhere across the river, two troops in K Company, under Maj Cunningham's command, are conducting a competitive exercise. Both have secretly encamped and are sending patrols to try to find the other's "harbour" position and radio its grid reference back to the command post. For most of the men - deployed in barracks and hotels around the area, and ranging into the field for a week at a time - this is their first visit to Norway. Many have never even skied before. But by the end of the three-month deployment, they should be able not only to survive in such conditions - including the notorious "icebreaking", practising to haul yourself and your pack to safety if you fall through the ice - but also to fight. If you can soldier here, they say, you can soldier anywhere.
When the mercury sinks, nostril hair will freeze. Getting down towards -30C (when even the Marines retreat to tents to wait it out) ice crystals can start to gum your eyelashes together. You can as easily break your teeth "yeti-ing" on skis to an uncontrolled face-first halt with a weapon slung round your neck, as crack them trying to bite into the frozen chocolate bar in your rations. Vigilant personal administration - where are your mitts? Are you letting your kit get wet? Are your pockets correctly packed? - is the key to surviving.
I had my doubts. On the morning I left for Norway, there were reports of dozens of Marines being repatriated with cold-weather injuries (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$IA2FTTXJOXG5JQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2004/02/23/nfrost23.xml) (blamed, at the time, on inadequate sleeping bags; a canard, those on the ground say - it's getting out of your sleeping bag that gives you frostbite, not getting into it). Rations were also reported to have been inadequate. The repatriations were mostly ascribed, in my hearing, to tighter health-and-safety rules, to misuse of equipment (letting your hand freeze in the wrong gloves, say), and to skiing injuries. "Bootnecks are never happy but when they're dripping [complaining]," was the shrug. The kit, most said, was not up to civilian standards - but used properly, would answer the purpose.
The four-man tent is olive-brown, and the size of a civilian two-man. You sleep toe-to-tail, sleeping bags sheathed in waterproof bivvy bags, drawstrings done so tight only enough of a hole remains to breathe through. You bring your boots and mitts into your sleeping bag with you so you don't wake to find them frozen. Snow, for powdered tea or for dehydrated rations, is melted inside the tent on a naptha stove. "That's basically a bomb we're cooking on," says Maj Cunningham. "You have to keep a knife to hand to cut your way out of the tent if it goes up."
But when you are shivering cold at the end of a long yomp on telemark skis; when you are waiting for your iceblock feet ("Are your feet numb?" I was asked at one point. "I don't know. I can't feel them," I remember thinking) to warm up; when you have burnt 5,500 calories in a day operating here, a sludgy, powdered approximation of chicken balti pouring steam from its foil bag into the cold air like a Harry Potter potion starts to taste ambrosial.
Bootnecks speak in a mixture of military abbreviations, three-letter acronyms and slang. A good piece of kit is "gucci"; something good is "hoofing"; something difficult is "beasting"; something rubbish is "chad" - an allusion to the non-gucci toy manufacturer Chad Valley. Understatement is characteristic. When something "kicks off", it means there's been some killing. When it gets "gritty", there has been a lot of killing.
The Regimental Sergeant Major, Mr Botham (he kept secret for 24 years the fact that his first name is Grenville, and would bash me if I mentioned it, so I won't), is a beefy Yorkshireman with scars under his chin and on the left side of his face. He was once blown up by an IRA bomb in Crossmaglen, and five years ago nearly died when he caught his head in a boat propellor during a night crossing in South America in the course of saving a young Marine's life. It earned him the MBE and a changed outlook. "I go to church now," he says. "I didn't used to."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2004/03/04/bmnor2.jpg
Frozen wasteland: a command point in Norway
Lightly is, perhaps, the only way to wear this - what can be called the "unlimited liability clause" in a military contract. These are men who spend time around death. Men of 42 Commando were on the helicopter that crashed in the opening moments of the Iraq assault. The attack was put back six hours, and then went ahead again, landing men by helicopter in unsecured drop-zones. "Operation Certain Death," one says. One gunner killed 25 Iraqi soldiers in 15 minutes during a 36-hour firefight. Another Marine tells of digging into a position only to find themselves atop a mass grave from the Iran-Iraq war. To return to civilian life after war-fighting occasions the difficult job of what Col Howes calls "recalibrating your concerns" to more trivial highs and lows; and dealing with "gormless, repetitive questions at dinner parties - what does it feel like to kill someone?"
Buster Howes - a tall, hawkish-looking man - pretends to be a landscape gardener.
The foil to the intense seriousness of what these men do professionally is their humour, their clannishness, and a boyish relish for the tools of the trade. "Someone gets a new gun, every bootneck's got to touch it." Every Milan missile you fire costs £16,000; so if you're firing and miss, you have to buy a slab of beer. A sniper in Iraq captured a bright red motorcycle and roared about the Al-Faw peninsula on it. One lad was spotted on the range recording the heavy machine gun as the ring-tone on his mobile phone. His incoming calls will clear buses back in Plymouth.
The joke has it that "Marine" is an acronym: "Muscle a requirement, intelligence not essential." Half of that is true. Vehicles are finally unreliable: the essential piece of kit for the Marine is his legs, and they must be able to yomp, ski or snowshoe for hours on end, carrying Bergans (backpacks), often weighing well over 100lb. (When I tried to lift a loaded Bergan, I could get it just clear of the ground, but not on to my back. They laughed.)
But to be self-contained, to be manoeuvrable, to "adapt and overcome" also requires the use of initiative. I asked Matt Palmer, a US marine on an exchange programme, if there was a difference in style. "We don't have a style," he said. "We do what we're told. You guys use your brains way too ****ing' much." You tell the bootneck what you want done, not how to do it, and he - in a phrase uttered with such frequency it could be a motto - "cracks on".
The 28-year-old signaller with whom I shared a tent had a degree in international relations. Col Howes cites the likes of Clausewitz and Rebecca West with such fluency that, when he gives presentations, his subordinates run spread-bets on the numbers of quotations. "A marine is an educated thug," is how one troop sergeant put it; adding in honour of the semi-friendly rivalry between green beret and red, "...whereas a para is your basic shaved ape thug."
It is seven o'clock the following morning when the winning troop of "educated thugs" poles into camp. They are jubilant, and seem to be looking forward to the further eight-hour ski ahead. It is the other troop who are the more telling study. An hour and a half late; pitifully demoralised, and sleepless after the night-time counter attack on the enemy camp ordered by Maj Cunningham as a "reward" for losing the game. One is weighed sideways by his broken Bergan.
"Look at you!" chirps CSgt Lane, as he supervises their arrival. "My little warriors! You're all Arctic foxes! Streaks of white in your eyebrows!"
"Arctic fook," a dispirited gunner mutters. "You can tell he's had plenty of sleep. I joined the Marines to fire heavy weapons. Not for this."
"This is dog tofu," agrees another.
Someone donates a cigarette - a poor thing, bent and stained in yellow patches by its own tobacco. It's his first in days. He tucks it behind his ear and shuffles back and forth on his telemark skis. Eight hours ahead.
Poles down. Right. Crack on.
Story here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/03/04/ftnorw04.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=98526)
If you can soldier here, you can soldier anywhere - especially if you have the right kit. Sam Leith joins the Royal Marines for Arctic training in Norway
The sun is a bright smudge, low in the sky underneath a pair of bruise-coloured purple clouds. You can see snow whipping off the far peaks as spindrift. On the far shore of the frozen lake, and in every other direction, all you can see is snow, and the tops of birch trees poking through. When the engine of the Ski-doo is turned off, the only thing you can hear is the wind, as it peels heat from your face. It's dry cold, like standing in front of a fridge. Step off, go through the crust of the snow, and you're in up to your waist.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2004/03/04/bmnor1.jpg
Sam Leith in Norway: when the temperature drops, your nostril hairs freeze
There's no wildlife in evidence. Occasionally, you meet the tracks of Arctic fox, hare or reindeer. "The only living things we've seen are crows, and you only ever see them going about in pairs - if one dies, the other can eat it," says Major Justin Cunningham of the Royal Marines' 42 Commando. "That tells you all you need to know about the environment out here."
With his hat on, Maj Cunningham looks a shade like Sean Bean. When he takes it off, to reveal his vertically inclined grey hair, he takes on the surprised look of Fido Dido. Somewhere ahead of us, his Colour Sergeant -"Bert" Lane - named for his resemblance to the Sesame Street character, is recceing the river for crossing points. Bert - like 42's commanding officer, Col Buster Howes - is a Mountain Leader (an elite Arctic commando qualification). This is the first time for a few years that the Royal Marines - or, as they call themselves with pride, "bootnecks" - have been Arctic training en masse, and Bert is loving it.
Somewhere across the river, two troops in K Company, under Maj Cunningham's command, are conducting a competitive exercise. Both have secretly encamped and are sending patrols to try to find the other's "harbour" position and radio its grid reference back to the command post. For most of the men - deployed in barracks and hotels around the area, and ranging into the field for a week at a time - this is their first visit to Norway. Many have never even skied before. But by the end of the three-month deployment, they should be able not only to survive in such conditions - including the notorious "icebreaking", practising to haul yourself and your pack to safety if you fall through the ice - but also to fight. If you can soldier here, they say, you can soldier anywhere.
When the mercury sinks, nostril hair will freeze. Getting down towards -30C (when even the Marines retreat to tents to wait it out) ice crystals can start to gum your eyelashes together. You can as easily break your teeth "yeti-ing" on skis to an uncontrolled face-first halt with a weapon slung round your neck, as crack them trying to bite into the frozen chocolate bar in your rations. Vigilant personal administration - where are your mitts? Are you letting your kit get wet? Are your pockets correctly packed? - is the key to surviving.
I had my doubts. On the morning I left for Norway, there were reports of dozens of Marines being repatriated with cold-weather injuries (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$IA2FTTXJOXG5JQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2004/02/23/nfrost23.xml) (blamed, at the time, on inadequate sleeping bags; a canard, those on the ground say - it's getting out of your sleeping bag that gives you frostbite, not getting into it). Rations were also reported to have been inadequate. The repatriations were mostly ascribed, in my hearing, to tighter health-and-safety rules, to misuse of equipment (letting your hand freeze in the wrong gloves, say), and to skiing injuries. "Bootnecks are never happy but when they're dripping [complaining]," was the shrug. The kit, most said, was not up to civilian standards - but used properly, would answer the purpose.
The four-man tent is olive-brown, and the size of a civilian two-man. You sleep toe-to-tail, sleeping bags sheathed in waterproof bivvy bags, drawstrings done so tight only enough of a hole remains to breathe through. You bring your boots and mitts into your sleeping bag with you so you don't wake to find them frozen. Snow, for powdered tea or for dehydrated rations, is melted inside the tent on a naptha stove. "That's basically a bomb we're cooking on," says Maj Cunningham. "You have to keep a knife to hand to cut your way out of the tent if it goes up."
But when you are shivering cold at the end of a long yomp on telemark skis; when you are waiting for your iceblock feet ("Are your feet numb?" I was asked at one point. "I don't know. I can't feel them," I remember thinking) to warm up; when you have burnt 5,500 calories in a day operating here, a sludgy, powdered approximation of chicken balti pouring steam from its foil bag into the cold air like a Harry Potter potion starts to taste ambrosial.
Bootnecks speak in a mixture of military abbreviations, three-letter acronyms and slang. A good piece of kit is "gucci"; something good is "hoofing"; something difficult is "beasting"; something rubbish is "chad" - an allusion to the non-gucci toy manufacturer Chad Valley. Understatement is characteristic. When something "kicks off", it means there's been some killing. When it gets "gritty", there has been a lot of killing.
The Regimental Sergeant Major, Mr Botham (he kept secret for 24 years the fact that his first name is Grenville, and would bash me if I mentioned it, so I won't), is a beefy Yorkshireman with scars under his chin and on the left side of his face. He was once blown up by an IRA bomb in Crossmaglen, and five years ago nearly died when he caught his head in a boat propellor during a night crossing in South America in the course of saving a young Marine's life. It earned him the MBE and a changed outlook. "I go to church now," he says. "I didn't used to."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2004/03/04/bmnor2.jpg
Frozen wasteland: a command point in Norway
Lightly is, perhaps, the only way to wear this - what can be called the "unlimited liability clause" in a military contract. These are men who spend time around death. Men of 42 Commando were on the helicopter that crashed in the opening moments of the Iraq assault. The attack was put back six hours, and then went ahead again, landing men by helicopter in unsecured drop-zones. "Operation Certain Death," one says. One gunner killed 25 Iraqi soldiers in 15 minutes during a 36-hour firefight. Another Marine tells of digging into a position only to find themselves atop a mass grave from the Iran-Iraq war. To return to civilian life after war-fighting occasions the difficult job of what Col Howes calls "recalibrating your concerns" to more trivial highs and lows; and dealing with "gormless, repetitive questions at dinner parties - what does it feel like to kill someone?"
Buster Howes - a tall, hawkish-looking man - pretends to be a landscape gardener.
The foil to the intense seriousness of what these men do professionally is their humour, their clannishness, and a boyish relish for the tools of the trade. "Someone gets a new gun, every bootneck's got to touch it." Every Milan missile you fire costs £16,000; so if you're firing and miss, you have to buy a slab of beer. A sniper in Iraq captured a bright red motorcycle and roared about the Al-Faw peninsula on it. One lad was spotted on the range recording the heavy machine gun as the ring-tone on his mobile phone. His incoming calls will clear buses back in Plymouth.
The joke has it that "Marine" is an acronym: "Muscle a requirement, intelligence not essential." Half of that is true. Vehicles are finally unreliable: the essential piece of kit for the Marine is his legs, and they must be able to yomp, ski or snowshoe for hours on end, carrying Bergans (backpacks), often weighing well over 100lb. (When I tried to lift a loaded Bergan, I could get it just clear of the ground, but not on to my back. They laughed.)
But to be self-contained, to be manoeuvrable, to "adapt and overcome" also requires the use of initiative. I asked Matt Palmer, a US marine on an exchange programme, if there was a difference in style. "We don't have a style," he said. "We do what we're told. You guys use your brains way too ****ing' much." You tell the bootneck what you want done, not how to do it, and he - in a phrase uttered with such frequency it could be a motto - "cracks on".
The 28-year-old signaller with whom I shared a tent had a degree in international relations. Col Howes cites the likes of Clausewitz and Rebecca West with such fluency that, when he gives presentations, his subordinates run spread-bets on the numbers of quotations. "A marine is an educated thug," is how one troop sergeant put it; adding in honour of the semi-friendly rivalry between green beret and red, "...whereas a para is your basic shaved ape thug."
It is seven o'clock the following morning when the winning troop of "educated thugs" poles into camp. They are jubilant, and seem to be looking forward to the further eight-hour ski ahead. It is the other troop who are the more telling study. An hour and a half late; pitifully demoralised, and sleepless after the night-time counter attack on the enemy camp ordered by Maj Cunningham as a "reward" for losing the game. One is weighed sideways by his broken Bergan.
"Look at you!" chirps CSgt Lane, as he supervises their arrival. "My little warriors! You're all Arctic foxes! Streaks of white in your eyebrows!"
"Arctic fook," a dispirited gunner mutters. "You can tell he's had plenty of sleep. I joined the Marines to fire heavy weapons. Not for this."
"This is dog tofu," agrees another.
Someone donates a cigarette - a poor thing, bent and stained in yellow patches by its own tobacco. It's his first in days. He tucks it behind his ear and shuffles back and forth on his telemark skis. Eight hours ahead.
Poles down. Right. Crack on.
Story here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/03/04/ftnorw04.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=98526)