Amongst the Marines

[harry hackedoff]

Toosh
What`s a toosh

[El Prez]

I think it's Geordie for poof. His poof is confused? Still doesnae soond reet.
Toosh, Moustache a la Geordie?
Toosh, the sound made when one has been to the dentist.

[Scottish Thistle]

Toosh to me has always been your backside.

For example: Sit on yer toosh.
What a fine toosh you have there.

[Rotary Booty]

It's 'Geordie' for 'touch' oh exalted ones.

(and that's 'Geordie' for sarcasm! )

Aye, Derek

[El Prez]

Del Boy, don't want to worry you, but have you noticed the lack of rotating bits on your airborne thingy wotsit in the new avatar? It's defying the God Of Suck. Known to mortals as Gravity.

[Rotary Booty]

The little one at the back is definitely going round, and the big one on the top looks as if it might be..... that's good enough for Booties.

Del Boy

[sneaky beaky]

Rotary Booty has just lent me THE BOOK! I certainly wasn't prepared to buy it.
I can only feel sorry for the guy. (I am on, about, page 80.)
He's already had a very disturbed childhood, with a father who beats him regularly. He also seems to have had a paper round at about the age of 9 years old? Later he goes drinking with his father, whom he hates, and has divorced his mother many years previously.
His RM career seems to be one long continuation of fights, of which he is always victorious and which he seems to escape the long arm of authority. This, all within two years in the Corps!! Anybody else would have been dishonourably discharged for all the mayhem he has caused!! Not our Steven. He is a hero and hard man!!
I do feel very sorry for him. He is to be pitied. However, I had better not give my address out, or he might come round and head but me!
Sneaky

[Archie]

Having just waded through this post one thing keeps coming back to me.

We had a punchy lad in my troop in training. He was a trouble maker and we (the troop) sorted him out.

It would seem however that this man slipped through the net and it's wholly unsurprising that a 3 badger sorted him out at 45.

[Sticky Blue]

I'm some way into the book (thanks to the Hereford Branch of the Mil Forums Library!) and to be honest all I see is a thugish liar who wore a uniform.
He may well say that the events were drink fuelled, plenty of that seemed to go on, but some of the acts he carried out/was involved in would not be done by any person with any common decency. Sticking the nut on a Nog for 'looking at me' is pathetic; his excuse being that he wanted to get it in before the other guy did... boIIocks! Utter crap.
He lied and openly admits it in the book.
I'm not going to continue as this will be seen as flaming. All I can say is that the book does resemble the Corps in that he wore the 'coverted Green Beret'.

[sneaky beaky]

Hi! Sticks,
I'm with you. What a W****r. He seems to have taken all the stories that you hear in the Corps and turned them into "an incident" that he was personally involved in.!
Like the time he was going back from a run ashore and his mate jumped into a field and "shagged a sheep!" (Without the benefit of Wellie's!!?). Plus the one about the RSM saying that, "There is a piece of shit on the end of this stick." The reply being "Not on my end, Sir".
They are all old stories, that we have all heard over the years.
I don't blame him for writing them, (I wish I'd enough nous to do it myself!).
What I blame him for, is putting the Corps in such a bad light and denigrating the real spirit that there is in the Corps! And then trying to sell it to the public as the "real life in the Marines story"!
As an interesting aside - he kept referring to "The Marine Corps". The only Marine Corps that I know is the USMC. He also referred to "45 Cdo Unit". I've only heard it called 45 Cdo. It does raise a few doubts.
Sneaky

[dannyd]

I purchased Steve Preece's book, against my better judgement, a few days ago. The main reason I bought it was that I have been following the arguments back & fore on this thread for a while & wanted to judge for myself.

Now, I am not a serving Royal Marine or a former Royal Marine. Due to this some may think that I have not really got a right to comment on his book. However, I am (hopefully) a future Royal Marine and so the topic of his book is of personal interest to me. I've also got a mate who is currently serving in 45 Cdo. Certainly the reception he received on arrival was nothing like that which Steve Preece describes.

I have tried to read critically what he has written. Below I highlight some of the things that seem wrong or struck me as odd:

p. (page) 18: on entering his room at 45 Cdo he asks "can you tell me where the toilet is mate?" I thought Marines called the toilet the head. A small point maybe.

p. 49: talking about inspections during training, "the corporals constantly pushed us around and screamed in our faces" From what I've heard of the RM approach to training this was not their way. It was more cold menace than shouting and screaming.

p. 51: talking about BFTs, says that they carried "a fighting order" I've never heard anyone call it 'a fighting order', just 'fighting order'.

p. 51: mentions a pass out parade halfway through training . I may be wrong here, but I didn't think this happened?

p. 52: "we moved on to using lighter weapons" What are 'lighter weapons'?

pp. 56 & 57: 9 mile speed march, "the country lanes acted as heat traps" yet on the next page, endurance course (next day), "most of the water obstacles were covered in ice" This seems to be slightly odd to me. How can the weather change that much?

p. 98: he is in a fight, says he "quickly picked up a metal bed frame" B****cks! Those things are heavy, you can't just quickly pick one up to throw at someone.

A few other general observations:
1. His references to weapons are always very vague. He does once mention the SLR but other than that says "lighter weapons" or "machine gun". No real clarity to what he is talking about.
2. As has already been mentioned, he gets simple terminology wrong. 45 Cdo Gp RM becomes "45 Commando Unit". Royal Marines becomes "the Marine Corps".
3. There are no photos included in the book. This is quite rare.
4. The cover photo is of Marines on Exercise Saif Sarea 2 in Oman, what has that got to do with his book?

I'm only about halfway through the book at the moment so that is all I've found so far. Apart from it being rather monotonous and boring it strikes me that it is one of 2 things:
1. Complete BS. He is just trying to make money by cashing in on defaming the Corps.
2. He has greatly embellished the truth in order to make money for himself.

Either way, it is a pretty crap way to treat the Corps that he supposedly is/was extremely proud to be a part of.

[Hyperlithe]

(Please can a moderator edit this for me,the space bar is broken and the naafi staff can't help!)
Sorted!!! - Loz

I can't believe this thread is still going...
Didn't everyone decide this book was fiction a couple of months ago?
Got to be something more interesting to read!

[FUBAR]

I bet Master Preece wishes the 3146 people who have viewed this topic had bought the book !

[james_m]

Mainstream is delighted to have acquired the rights to ALWAYS A MARINE, The Return to Civvy Street by Steven Preece for publication in October 2005. In this second memoir Steven Preece covers the difficult transition from being an aggressive serviceman to eventually mellowing into a respectable ordinary citizen. Preece spent seven years serving as an elite Royal Marine Commando. When he left in 1990, officially he was no longer a marine but mentally nothing had changed. He found that survival in the real world was as challenging as that in the armed forces and discovered he could not shed his tendency to turn to aggression and violence. As a result finding employment was difficult and he was forced to look for work abroad. In ALWAYS A MARINE he recounts his experiences in France (where he escaped a hotel fire), Germany (where he teamed up with an ex SAS trooper), Morocco (where border guards fired shots at him) and the Philippines (where he was caught up in a scam). Eventually fate led him to the world of the ninja where aggression is seen as a sign of weakness. On a cold November winter morning, thirteen and a half years after leaving the marines, Preece stood at a Remembrance parade and finally let go of the past forever. Steven Preece's first book, AMONGST THE MARINES, was published by Mainstream in 2004 and rights were sold to Random House Australia and to Oldag in the Czech Republic. Mainstream control world rights for both books, for further information contact.....

He's doing another one!

[Mike]

Wow.... This thread was started by your truely on Aug 20th last year....

Almost as long as Artist's Piles thread... . Keep it going Lads and I might be in for the Booby prize.
Aye
Mike