“Get up! Get up! Stop messing about and get your greens on now!” Came the voice of the room IC. I was lying in my sleeping bag half asleep, it was half five in the morning and it was freezing cold. The rooms had no heating and the weather had taken a turn for the worse. My limbs were stiff but I dragged myself off of the top bunk and landed on the floor with a thud. The lights were turned on and I closed my eyes in quick reaction, slowly opening them I adjusted to the brightness. I shuffled over to my locker which I shared with the corporal who slept below me and unlocked it to get out my greens, combat boots and face paint.
Half an hour later my boots were on, my face was painted and my clothes were in total camouflage. I spoke to my friend about the coming day, what we would do was unknown until we had had breakfast and had fallen in to our flight. “Form up!” Shouted the Warrant Officer from outside. I made for the exit and found F flight.
“Permission to fall in Sergeant?” I asked.
“Fall in.” She replied. Marching to the right hand side of the flight I fell in and stood at ease until we were bought to attention and marched to the mess hall. Flight Lt Thompson was in charge of the mess hall and he chose what flights had breakfast first. It was freezing cold outside and it was only just light enough to see vague shapes, so it was a relief when he approached us second and told us to go and get breakfast. I went in; the first gunshots could be heard outside as the officers prepared the rifles.
The warmth of breakfast inside me, along with several cups of hot chocolate, I left the hall and headed back to room 10, the biggest room on the base sleeping 40 is by far the worst. The cadets and corporals who had finished breakfast began cleaning the room ready for inspection, we had to make 4 bed packs each and put them at the end of our beds. The bed packs were big blankets folded into squares exactly the width and length of the width of the bed.
“Room , Room, Shun!” Pause, bang. The Warrant Officer had entered the room for inspection, everyone stood at attention by their beds in still silence. He started moving around the room, making general comments on how good or bad it was. Suddenly he ripped off the bed packs of one cadet and threw them to the floor, turning to the room IC he shouted, “What is that? When I say I want the bed packs perfectly folded tell me what I mean. Do I mean screw them up and pile them on the bottom of your bed? NO!” The room IC, a flight sergeant, apologised to the Warrant Officer and promised the room would be better tomorrow.
Warrant Officer Williams. A face to be feared, striving for perfection in drill and routine he was not a person to get on the wrong side of. He could also be kind to people as I was later to find out, in the words of my friend, “He's a bloody swine.” Welcome to Swynerton.
“Hey you knuckle heads. You dumb, dumb knuckle heads.” Chorused the flight as we marched along the road towards our first exercise of the day. A couple of helicopters flew overhead, a squirrel and a griffin, both painted black with a yellow top barely above the treetops. Jeeps drove past every now and then with various cadets riding in the back and often out flight commander had to salute the driver if he or she was an officer. The sky was overcast, grey and black; the smell of damp was on the air and it looked as if it was ready to rain.
The first exercise of the day was rope ex. This involved lots of long pieces of rope, the know-how in how to tie grips and a lot of teamwork. We dumped our bergens under a sheltered area made with some stilts and a canvas sheet. The bergens took up a lot of room; they had to hold everything for the whole day: waterproofs, extra camo cream, a spare pair of greens, spare boot laces, food and water but to name a few. The Pilot officer who was in charge of the exercise began by showing us how to tie a double hitch, which is easy to untie and strong when pressured. The second grip we learnt to tie was the hardest, when tied the more pressure you put on it the stronger it gets. We were told to find two trees and armed with the knowledge we had just been given, make a rope bridge between them that could support the weight of three people.
After a few attempts our bridge was secure, it was two metres from the ground and was taut when all three of us sat on it. We then had to have it inspected. “Well done boys, you've done a good job there. Cadet Robinson can you take it down please,” asked the officer. “Yes sir I replied.” I began taking it down, all I had to do was pull the rope in the right place and the whole lot just fell to the floor. We plaited the rope and gave it back to the officer.
“Ok, well done everyone you passed that section of the exercise. Now over there is a ditch full of water, you need to get a load of cargo from one side to the other, you have two pulleys and ten pieces of rope, try not to fall in the water,” the pilot officer told us. The group set off going around the ditch to the other side where all the cargo was. We began tying the ropes to the cargo and making a bridge over the ditch. When the ropes were all attached I was elected to cross the bridge first to see if it was safe. I jumped up onto the rope and started edging across, the rope started going slack. I looked over to the bank and saw the grip wasn't tied properly; it was slipping with my weight. I shuffled over towards the bank as fast as I could when the grip broke. Plummeting towards the water I braced myself for the cold which took the air from my lungs. I was soaking wet and muddy as I clambered out of the ditch shivering. The other cadets ran over to give me a hand out; thank God I had a spare pair of greens in my Bergen.
That was only the beginning of the camp, the first exercise of many to come, lasting a whole week. Swynerton Rules.
