A long long time since forever, boys at boarding school were given a taste of army life with a compulsory (natch) stretch in the Combined Cadet Force. Nothing embodies the batshit insanity of boarding school life so perfectly as this experience. Don’t get me wrong, the military is great for adults who choose to do it. However….
The first thing to help us deal with the insanity was the immediate deconstruction of language. Nothing was called the same thing as it was to normal people. Guns were “rifles”, bullets were “rounds”, hats were “berets”, people were “civvies”, and 15-year-old cadets were “fucking horrible useless pieces of shit I have ever had the fucking empty experience of looked at in my whole fucking life” or something along those lines.
The afternoon began with boys at attention being shouted at with unanswerable questions followed by punitive press-ups if you couldn’t think of the non-existent answers. Example:
“Are you happy with the state of your beret?”
“Erm”
Press- ups.
Always press-ups. Not sure where the obsession with this particular exercise came from. It was never a case of “You horrible little shit- drop and give me 20 leg-raised stomach crunches and a 90 second downward dog”
Then the children would head down to the armoury to pick up their machine guns from the ex-soldier who lived in it.
Nobody saw a problem with that sentence so a hundred or so tooled up 15-year-olds headed to the woods to learn how to set up camps.
After months of shoe-shining, shouting and shooting we were informed of two key dates in the calendar. Inspection and Core-camp. The former was a tradition (like everything else) that went back hundreds of years (like everything else) was completely pointless (like everything else) and resulted in several children losing consciousness (unique in this aspect). Ex-pupil, General Bumblecrunch who probably hadn’t seen action since the Crimean War was invited to come and inspect the troops. In July. On the hottest day of the year. Our uniform consisted of a thick shirt from the 1940s made from a material more commonly used for scrubbing pans. On top of this was a heavy jacket which would be suitable for skiing. Berets, heavy trousers and shin high boots completed the ensemble. Naturally the powers that be realised that making young boys wear such heavy garb in 35 degree heat was a bit dangerous so they called the whole thing off. Just kidding. They told us to drink some water beforehand. Being 150, the General wasn’t the most nimble of chaps and so “beforehand” was hours ago.
We were called to attention and squinted through the mirage (without turning our heads of course because of press ups) to see how the General was doing. He went up and down lines of wobbling boys occasionally stopping to ask questions of those still capable of responding. He was halfway around when the first boy toppled. Being at attention we were not allowed to move to help. The powers that be didn’t care – they loved the smell of dehydration in the morning (and evidently when the sun was at its apex). By the time he’d finished his tour a couple more had gone over. He was ushered around the corpses to a small stage where someone fired a cannon (we had a cannon for cannoning purposes) which helped wake up the boys that were drifting to their happy place. After what seemed like an age he finally fucked off and we were eventually brough to ease with a squelch of foot sweat. We were dismissed, picked up our wounded and headed for shade enjoying the new levels of character we had just built.
Even better than inspection was Core-Camp. We spent a week in a barracks in Wales with the real army. They loved us because we were arrogant posh boarding school boys and they were rugged battle-hardened drill instructors from the real world. Anyone entering the week with an attitude, inflated self opinion or sense of humour had it firmly removed in the coming days.
“Because it’s your first day tomorrow we’re going to give you a little lie in – First Parade at 6am”
“You old softie” I sarcastically quipped.
Fuck me that was stupid I thought at 5am between press ups. Here is my attitude, I won’t be needing this for a bit.
At one point we were learning the amazingly practical skill of checking an enemy corpse to make sure it had not been booby-trapped. We hadn’t been taught about the metric system or that computers might be useful but if you ever need an enemy dead-body checked to make sure the sneaky fucker hasn’t died with a live grenade under them with their bodyweight depressing the lever, we’re your lads. A grizzled veteran of the Scots guards with a pronounced accent explained the procedure which involved one person throwing themselves on the corpse and rolling over with it on top of them to avoid the potential explosion while his partner checked the area under him from a safe distance.
“Uf yew seeey unyting yew shoot GRRINEEDE”
The first two boys selected to perform the manoeuvre still had their attitudes and one made the unwise decision to shout:
“OCHHH GRINNNEEDE”
We didn’t see him again.
Later in the week we were tasked with finding a camouflaged man in the woods in front of us, a task I achieved by shouting “Camouflaged Man, Come here!” with some authority and then casually gesturing at the only bush that was walking towards us. Press-ups.
One lad tried to take a large, bright red golfing umbrella on night-opps. He failed to notice that he was the only soldier with a large, bright red golfing umbrella prepping for battle or the rhetorical nature of the “What the fuck is that?” enquiry from his commanding officer and innocently suggested that it looked like it might rain later. Press-ups.
Another boy fired off thee (blank) rounds at a group of regular soldiers who were not interested in his “halt, advance one and identify” while on watch. He followed procedure to the letter but turns out the army don’t like being shot at by school children. Lots of press-ups and quite a bit of paperwork.
A combination of teenage attitude, complete incredulity that any of this was happening, finding whimsical observations impossible to leave unsaid and being absolutely shit at every army task I was given meant I was averaging several hundred press ups a day and left the camp considerably stronger than I arrived. That said I turned in my wings the second it was allowed and left military life to play old wartime songs to OAPs in local retirement homes which was the only other thing you were allowed to do on a Wednesday afternoon. Watching the old boys and girls tear up as they joined in with We’ll Meet Again I think I’d found a far better way I could contribute to the war effort.
Diaries of Boarding School 