We Were Warriors

by Johnny Mercer

  After that, we were summoned for parade and split into two platoons. When speaking about myself, I was to refer to myself as ‘Cadet Mercer’. We filed into a classroom with the smell of fart hanging heavy in the air; someone was scared already. We were introduced to the platoon commander, a lanky sort from the Parachute Regiment who seemed unable to make facial expressions.

  ‘However tough you fuckers think you are, this course will break you. It will form you as new men – ready to enter the commissioning course to become an officer in the British Army. If you get there.’

  He seemed to like the grand announcements – I think we all knew why we were there.

  I did feel like telling him that breaking me wasn’t going to take particularly long. Perhaps we could get on to the re-forming part of the course sooner? I had no idea how this process was going to work.

  A platoon sergeant got up after him. He was small – never a good start. Small people in the Army generally overcompensate. He smoked heavily, which in the following weeks would give me hope that he might suffer a heart attack during some exercise and be replaced by somebody a bit nicer.

  ‘This is the hardest fucking course outside Special Forces in the British Army,’ he politely bellowed.

  Yeah OK, I thought. Fifteen years later, I can safely say that he was absolutely right, although I would remove the Special Forces bit.

  I made friends pretty quickly. Cadet Oscar was a beast of a man, who I would come to respect above all others for his ability to keep going when others – literally all of the rest of us – could not take another step. There was Cadet Matthews also. Our friendship became so deep that I was the best man at his wedding five years later. He drove a blue, still-immaculate 1985 Ford Escort. He came from Essex and in his own words was a ‘pikey’ like me, so we got on well amongst all the university types.

  The conditions were fairly austere. We could have one radio stereo per platoon in our twenty-one man rooms, provided that the dial did not move off BBC Radio Four. We were ‘so fucking thick’ we couldn’t pass the RCB properly, and this way we might be educated. This was according to a platoon sergeant who, I think, left school for borstal at age fourteen.

  Mobile phones were handed in on day one and were banned. So was leaving the 200-metre parameter of the Rowallan Company complex. Watches were banned too, so there was no way of telling time or date. Moaning wasn’t banned.

  The physical exercise was brutal. On the first day, we were given an induction into something called the ‘pain machine’. I’m pretty sure this would have been banned had the course not been discontinued. It involved lifting tractor tyres, doing heaves (pull-ups) for five minutes and seemingly interminable crawls through all the shittiest areas of the camp. The crime that warranted this punishment always varied, and was not always understood. Often it was for a collective untidy accommodation, sometimes a ‘general malaise’ in the platoon, or some equally unaccountable reason.

  The course was brutal and much of the early days passed in a blur. The physicality of the course was something beyond what I was expecting. Strapped to a log for miles and miles; endless route marches at just a slightly quicker pace than I could cope with; ‘robustness tests’ through ice-covered lakes and survival exercises that genuinely felt like a quest for survival rather than the controlled, sanitized examples you see on television these days.

  But the strange thing was, I liked the pain; it cleared my head. It required real mental discipline to not give up and I enjoyed the challenge of never letting my mind cave in, despite my body doing so. At night-time I found that I finally slept; granted not for long, but I slept, and things began to change for me.

  The instructors had this nasty trick of waking you up at three in the morning. Bedtime wasn’t until all our tasks were done, which was usually around 1 a.m., and with reveille every day at 5 a.m., sleep was at a premium.

  Sometimes the instructors would come in screaming and take us on exercise for a week, right out of the blue. They never told you where you were going on these exercises, so you always took maps of each of the seven different training areas in the UK with you. When you arrived at a training area, you had to work out where you were using the ground in front of you.

  This sometimes followed thirteen-hour trips in the back of a Bedford truck – an open-ended lorry used to transport troops. They have a top speed of 41 mph and are rigidly sprung, so one feels every bump through the spine and has little protection from the elements. I can remember some of those journeys through the night like they were yesterday.

  People dropped off the course like flies. The intelligent ones quit. The weaker ones were trampled on, literally, while carrying logs around the training area. I didn’t really fall into either of those groups at that stage and seemed quite well-liked by the directing staff; they had probably seen my type before – strange boy from a strange home – and been overcome by sympathy. Or so I hoped.

  The first weekend’s leave came after four weeks. We were unsure of the date or the time, so it came as a surprise. The course was paraded in civilian clothes, and – mother of all privileges – we were marched to the pay office on camp and given £50 for the weekend’s leave. Fifty pounds, I jest not.

  Just before we were allowed to ‘fall-out’ for the weekend, four names were called out. Mine was one, as were Oscar and Matthews. Stood there in our civilian attire ready to go home, we were singled out in front of the course.

  ‘Ha ha! You’re not going home at all. Your equipment was not up to the standard in this morning’s inspection!’ bellowed the platoon sergeant.

  I thought it was a joke. My kit was fine.

  ‘Get your fucking denims back on and get outside the platoon commander’s office for a chat.’

  We stood in silence, stunned, before he started manically shouting again. The four of us ran upstairs.

  I snapped, as did Oscar. I went down to see the staff to put in an ‘official complaint’, whatever that was. I didn’t bother knocking, but walked in and asked what the hell was going on. Bad move. I was dragged outside for a personal training session with the company sergeant major.

  You only spoke to the company sergeant major if you were really in the shit. On this occasion, he was very much speaking to me.

  I remember only parts of the next hour and a half. I have a mental snapshot of hanging on a heave bar for an interminable amount of time, tears not far away due to the sheer pain in my arms, with the sergeant major spitting his angry words in my face:

  ‘You are pathetic; weak and pathetic. Why are you here, Mercer? Just fucking leave.’ He managed to drag this theme out for what seemed like the entire session.

  I physically collapsed at the end of it, was ordered back to my feet and collapsed again, seemingly drifting in and out of consciousness with my face stuck to the dead leaves and mud. I could just about hear the sergeant major:

  ‘You are a pathetic little fuck, Mercer. Pathetic. Be under no illusion – pull that trick again and I will take you around the other side of the block.’

  I didn’t know what this meant, but the threat of further, more concentrated violence was pretty clear.

  ‘Yes, Staff,’ I mumbled.

  He walked off, leaving me on the ground.

  That weekend was tough on the mind. The staff were clearly trying to get us to quit. The four of us were given some work to do to present to the rest of the course the following Monday, fresh from their weekend off. I led the presentation, which was on Ernest Shackleton. I casually dropped into my talk that when Shackleton joined the Navy he was given adequate leave, and that this contributed to his success.

  There was an explosion from the back of the room where all the staff were sitting. They took this as a direct jibe at them, and although it wasn’t, I could see where they were coming from. I was made to stand and watch both platoons (their numbers diminished significantly by this stage) while they were systematically destroyed on the ‘pain machine’.

  ‘Have you seen A Few Go
od Men, Mercer? Heard of ‘code red’?’ said the horrible little colour sergeant from the other platoon. He was small, too. And angry. ‘Good luck tonight!’

  ‘No, Colour Sergeant,’ I said. ‘I do not have a television at home, Staff.’

  ‘You don’t have a fucking television? What are you, some sort of monk?’

  ‘No, Colour Sergeant. My parents are religious, Staff.’

  ‘Your parents are religious? Is this a fucking joke?’

  ‘No, Colour Sergeant, it is not a joke.’

  I think this course thrashing was designed to get my mates to rally against me, but it had the opposite effect, and while afterwards I was sorry, they wouldn’t hear a bit of it.

  ‘Funniest thing I ever seen,’ said Matthews.

  ‘I actually enjoyed it,’ said Oscar.

  I wasn’t entirely sure why the staff had suddenly taken against me, or if they were simply pretending. I think I must have been quite eccentric, or really bloody annoying. Probably a bit of both.

  Later that bruising week I was summoned downstairs to the directing staff’s offices. All seven instructors were in their little hang-out room when I walked in.

  ‘Relax, Mercer, you’re just here for a cup of tea,’ one of the platoon sergeants said. This made me very nervous indeed.

  These instructors had been vile to me for six weeks now, and now they were being friendly. They didn’t even baulk when I said I’d prefer coffee. With sugar.

  ‘How’s it going?’ they asked, as one of them put a mug in my hand.

  I felt like being truthful and telling them what a group I thought they were. I tried to stop wishing I had a grenade on me that could take out the whole room.

  ‘Yeah, fine. Think the worst of it is over now, but as ever I don’t know. I don’t even know what day it is,’ I said, trying to garner some sympathy.

  This was a clever answer, making them feel good that they were fucking me up, and at the same time showing I hadn’t given in and was just hoping for the end. I was just prolonging the conversation – the coffee was rather nice.

  ‘So, Mercer, who are the troublemakers? We are getting to the point now where we need those who are unsuitable to go. Tell us who is causing the problems. What about Hillmoor?’

  There were some problem people on the course, but I only hated one of them, Cadet Hillmoor. He was lazy, posh and weak and we spent interminable hours in the evening helping him with his kit. The staff knew I didn’t like this guy. But they must also have thought I was very stupid.

  Thinking fast, I mumbled some nonsense to buy me some time and they all fake-laughed. I took a deep breath.

  ‘Unlucky, lads,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to come in here and grass anyone up I’m afraid, Staff. But thanks for the coffee.’

  I put the empty cup down and went to leave. I had a second to wonder why I’d called them ‘lads’ before the company sergeant major exploded again. It was worse this time – he was in front of his training team. Time for him to show off, I think. He destroyed me verbally – or so I assumed, he had a heavy northern accent and I only caught bits of it – but just about kept his hands off me this time. As soon as he paused to draw breath and looked like he was winding down, I beat a hasty retreat.

  One of the two platoon commanders was from 29 Commando. He followed me out.

  ‘Mercer?’ he said quietly. When I looked back he added, ‘Good for you. Go away.’

  He winked, and I knew I just had to get through the next four weeks and I would pass the course.

  The remaining weeks were as tough physically as anything I can remember, but the staff behaved completely differently to me. Smiling, taking the mick. My waterproof trousers and jacket were old and shit – doing nothing against some of the epic weather we were working through that winter. I asked for a new set and was handed a brand-new pink ensemble. I was given the option to refuse and get wet. I took the new Gore-Tex and looked ridiculous.

  The exercises were hard – they all started with rain-sodden two-day solitary marches across Dartmoor and Otterburn, carrying significant weight made heavier because it was so wet. The North Sea blows in hard and wet across Otterburn, and it had broken many souls in its time. I certainly saw my soul on those nights, and what it took to keep it going.

  Just surviving in some of these conditions was tough. Hallucinations were regular. We had wet and dry drills – keeping one set of dry clothes to wear for a couple of hours in your sleeping bag at night, and putting your wet, ice-clad clothes on again in the darkness before the dawn. These experiences ground away at us, mentally and physically. But for some reason I was resolute, and even became a source of strength for others. I would pass huddles of quitters, who had put up a tent and were waiting for the staff to come and collect them, but giving up never crossed my mind. I used to keep thinking of the ‘yardage’ I was putting between myself as a disturbed, vulnerable adolescent and who or what I was becoming on this course.

  They were teaching us independence, discipline, an unyielding attitude and the ability to simply keep going. Many dropped by the wayside. From a course of forty-two, seven of us lined up against each other in two teams to complete the final race – twenty-six miles across the entire Otterburn training area, with two 20kg ammo boxes per man. Somehow I was one of the six finishers.

  Unbeknown to us at the time, the original Rowallan Company course – on which the modern version was entirely modelled – was used to select the first commandos before they entered full commando training during the Second World War. It was the traditional ‘naughty boys’ course, but it produced brilliant results in those who stuck with it. Some older men had visited us at irregular intervals, often with the course officer, but I didn’t take much notice in my various comatose states. I found out later that these were veterans from the original course.

  At the end of the final march in Otterburn, we formed in a hollow square and were addressed by one of the veterans. His words were between us and the hills, but they have stayed with me for the rest of my life. He was from a generation that defined itself by the qualities we learnt on that course. In my wet, muddy, sweat and piss-stained clothing, I felt deeply privileged for the first time in my life.

  I experienced a strange new emotion too. I felt a deep and warm sense of security – pride even. It was the first time in twenty years I had felt that way.

  When we returned to the accommodation block at the Royal Military Academy, we were informed that we were going to close this historic course in style. The symbol of the course is the stag’s head that had hung above the office of the Commanding Officer (CO) since the very first Rowallan Company almost sixty years earlier. That deer was shot in the area around Spean Bridge – where the first commandos trained in the 1940s. We were going to turn it into a backpack and carry it, entirely on foot, from Sandhurst back to the Highlands of Scotland.

  An interesting ten days followed. Not many of us could run properly any more, but we did trot a half marathon each, every day in a relay, 24/7. My running partner was the platoon commander from 29 Commando, who became a friend of mine. Running at a pace that allowed us to talk, I learnt a lot about him and his motivations, and was even more determined to join that unit. He is an impressive guy, who has had an equally impressive career. Like the CO of the course, he is now a general, and reached that rank in a very short space of time.

  We always did the night shifts – I liked being out at night. Night-times were destroying me before the course, yet now I loved them. The staff couldn’t see you put your hands in your pockets in the freezing winter and you could wear a soft hat, provided it was gone by the first shards of dawn.

  And so, the most formative months of my life came to a close. I made friends for life and found myself brutally but firmly changed from boy to man. I had learnt hard and painful lessons that I would carry with me through the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, the jungles of Belize and Brunei, the Arctic wastes of Norway, the mountains of south Wales and into the Houses of Parlia
ment.

  All these years later, the truth is that nothing came close to Rowallan.

  The Commissioning Course at Sandhurst was a sausage machine, and a deep disappointment by comparison. I hated it. It was all uniform, marching and soft exercises – I wouldn’t put it down as more than some slightly aggressive camping. You had to ‘play the game’, and I wasn’t great at this particular game. I needed to develop a ‘career laugh’ to get on, it seemed.

  However, I did make some truly great friends, and coped with some relatively significant challenges, such as completing fitness tests while still drunk. But, all in all, I was delighted to leave and move on. I graduated in April 2003, as UK forces went over the border into Iraq for the second Gulf War.

  Tony Blair attended my passing out parade.

  ‘Yours is a noble calling,’ he told us.

  When he got to me in the line he asked me why I joined the Army. Good question.

  ‘For the boys,’ I said.

  The company started laughing. The drill instructors started getting very upset.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that, sir,’ I said.

  Blair laughed.

  In order to join my chosen unit – 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery – I had to commission into the wider Royal Artillery Regiment first, and then hope I got selected for service as a commando.

  Some of my peers were getting pulled out early to go and fill jobs that were urgently needed in the Operational Order of Battle (ORBAT) for Iraq. I wanted to go to war. My brother Stuart wrote to me at Sandhurst. He was a medical officer onboard RFA Argus, and had treated three wounded British soldiers engaged by a United States Air Force A-10 ground-attack jet. He wanted me to stay away from Iraq.