Camaraderie

Alex was cold, wet, miserable and on the very edge of exhaustion; exactly as he had been for the last 13 days, 14 hours and 23 minutes. His shoulders had been holding up his Bergen for god knew how long and he felt like he would have permanent indentations for the rest of his life. He had somehow continued to trudge along behind his new troop, not having stopped once as they yomped onward. He couldn’t quite fathom the bloke at the front, Stiles, who still appeared to have a spring in his step, despite the constant rain and bellowed orders that came from the Sergeants and Corporals who were in charge of their training.

Even when they’d been sleeping back at camp, the rooms were so large and so poorly heated that he couldn’t help but freeze, using up the little energy he had to keep warm. Now that they were out in the field, it had become impossibly worse by also being wet. He’d never been so cold in his entire life and he couldn’t help wondering if perhaps it wasn’t really worth it.

He ducked further into his hood, the dull drum of the rain beating against the material sounding far louder inside his hood than he knew it really was. He could only be thankful for the fact that the rain wasn’t driving horizontally into his hood anymore, not that his jacket was of any help, it has long ago become soaked through and hadn’t been thoroughly dry since day two.

Alex swore as he tripped over a root he hadn’t seen in the darkness of the still early morning, he guessed it was around 01:30hrs and knew he’d be up for some time to come. The safety wagon trundled along bedside them, keeping warm flasks of tea ready for the staff, he’d come close to committing murder for one of those flasks in recent days.

Sudden movement up ahead had him gripping his rifle a little tighter, they were after all on exercise and liable to be attacked at any second. He relaxed as he saw Stiles regaining his feet after a fall and getting back into line. Despair crept up on him, had he really signed up for this for the next twelve years? Was this his life until he could quit his contract, never warm, never fully fed, never having enough time to sleep?

He’d thought about giving up many a time on the journey so far and only stubbornness and pride has kept him from ringing the bell and walking away from it all. But now, in the dark, cold wet of Woodbury Common, he thought about it once more.

Did he really want to be a marine? He wasn’t ideological, it wasn’t for queen and country that he’d joined, he’d wanted adventure. Surely that was something you could get outside of a life full of weapons and miserable hikes that left you sore and bedraggled? He hadn’t joined for the brotherhood either, none of these blokes had made it in past the walls he’d built in his life, so he saw the others as competition, as people to work with, not to befriend.

He’d joined because he’d thought he was capable of being the best. Thought he has the state of mind required to succeed. Pride, he thought ruefully, is good at getting you started, but it won’t see you all the way. He thought about how far he’d come, and how far he had yet to go before he earned that coveted green beret. He tried to picture being handed that small piece of fabric and understanding what it meant, yet each time all his worn out brain could conjure was a feeling of dread.

Again, he stumbled under the weight of his Bergen, quickly he thrust an arm out to grab hold of the fence to his left to keep himself upright. His hand went straight through and before he could even register his confusion, he caught a face-full of mud. He took a second to compose himself, thinking of the Herculean effort required to get back on his feet. He wasn’t sure if he could bear it.

‘Get up.’ One of the sergeants commanded. ‘Don’t just lay there, move.’

He braced himself to push upwards but didn’t move.

Squelching footsteps through the mud brought him back to reality.

‘What did I say Hutchins. Move it, don’t just lay there, do something, anything.’ The sergeant sounded much closer than Alex would have liked. Pulling every last inch of resolve together, he managed to stagger to his feet, in time for the sergeant to reach him.

‘Next time, pick those lazy feet up and get going. A man gives up in he field, the rest of his team suffers’ he gestured to the rest of the troop before yelling ‘50 press-ups! I want to see faces in the mud!’

Alex knelt back down to the ground, his limbs shaking from the exertion of the previous days, his lower lip wobbling as he pinched his facial muscles together to keep from breaking in front of them all. He barely held on and silently started counting out his set of 50.

A couple of hours later he reached his breaking point. The point at which he knew that was it for him. This training, he hardest thing he’d done in his life, was too much for him. He wanted to sink to the ground, to give up and give in. To take the safety wagon back to camp and be done with it all, he was, after all, still in his cooling off period and he could still leave his contract. Alex nodded, decided. The second they got back to camp, that was it for him. He was done.

It was at that moment that the sun began to break through the darkness and the rain began to clear. The first rays of the sunrise hit an old ramshackle barn, nestled in a dip, it wasn’t much of a barn anymore, having been stripped off anything useful when the sheep farm that had been here 50 years ago had sold up. But it was shelter and Alex longed to be able to stop there.

He thought he was hallucinating again when he heard the sergeant shout; ‘and that it, boys, end-ex. Make it to that barn, grab yourselves a wet and settle in for the wagon.’

Alex almost passed out in relief and with a new found modicum of energy put one foot in front of the other until he made it to the barn doors. Once inside the ramshackle, burnt out, wonderful shelter, he dropped his Bergen to the floor and searched through for his gas burner, he was planning on getting his ration hot chocolate warmed as quickly as possible.

In his haste he dropped the open pouch and the powder scattered across the floor. He looked down at the powder already mixing on the wet concrete floor and crumbled inside. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, then opened them and found the sergeant.

‘Ah, mate, that’s there is a ball-ache, these bloody pouches are shite.’ Caught unawares by the speaker, Alex turned his head and found that Stiles and another few blokes had sat near him as he prepared his hot chocolate. ‘Here,’ Stiles continued as he dug around in his day sack, ‘I’m not so keen on the chocolates as I am the coffees, you can have this one - swap you a coffee if you’ve got it?’

Alex nodded mutely, searching in his own pack for the swap item. He took the hot chocolate and carefully made it up in his flask. Heaven couldn’t be so good as the second he took that first sip. He revelled in the feeling for a few seconds longer, before his curiosity got the best of him.

‘Why the sudden urge to swap?’ He asked.

Stiles chuckled. ‘Mate, remember when Sarge was shoving all our ugly mugs in the mud? We’ve all been there, all been the reason we got fucked over by the staff and, mate, the staff have been pushing you extra hard the last couple of days. Dave and I honestly thought you wouldn’t make it to end-ex.’ He and Dave Guildman shared a rueful smile. ‘But, honestly, it’s just made you human, you were a bit of a perfect prat before. You’re one of us now, mate, welcome to the club.’

And with that, Stiles tapped Alex’s mug and laughed. Alex laughed too, not feeling quite so alone, and thinking maybe, just maybe, the blokes around him would be the reason he stayed.