Dont know if anyone replied to this, but could you be watching the naked rollmat fighting? That was the marines if the media is correct.phenom wrote:This post triggered a memory of something that i seen on the news a while back. I don't know which division amongst our armed forces that these guys belonged to but there was footage of men fighting completely naked in a field, with a group of men circling them jeering them on. One got KTFO pretty badly.
Does anyone know what I'm on about and can you provide more info?
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Bullying in the royal marines
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Frank S.
- Guest
Heyup Frank. Hope all's well with you and Mrs Frank. I look in now and again - mostly when I'm feeling nostalgic. It brings back a few memories for me. I chip away but it's hard for me to explain what a thrilling, uncompromising, passionate, painful, dull, compassionate, selfless, exciting.....life it is. It's like normal life but much more so. I'm sure you know what I mean mucker 
Rollmat fighting is for girls and it's disgraceful that that lad went down so easily - what are they turning out at CTC these days. The rigs were pretty gash as well
Rollmat fighting is for girls and it's disgraceful that that lad went down so easily - what are they turning out at CTC these days. The rigs were pretty gash as well
Per Flank, Per Tank
The naked roll mat incident happened at 42 CDORM, all concerned were fully booted and spurred Bootnecks. Not one was a recruit. The guy knocked out was a Cpl. The guy who knocked him out was a L/Cpl and also as it turned out was the Cpl's Oppo. Just give Royal his head and a ruck of booze and things like this happen. In my day mobile phones with videos didn't exist so much of what we did was never seen by the general public.
Me and an Oppo in the seventies both got steaming in the NAAFI one Weekend in Norge and decided to go outside and beat the crap out of each other by heaving great big lumps of frozen wood at each other. He knocked me out with a rather good shot to the head. I woke up back in the bar with my Oppo insisting that he bought the wets for the rest of the night as he'd won. At no stage was there any bad feeling between us.
Lets face it people, Bootnecks don't as a habit sit around and talk about the weather and what they plan to do with the spare room when they get back home. They are basically people trained to fight and kill anybody they are ordered to take on. You get nought for coming second so Bootnecks tend to be right in your face when they are let loose on the World.
It's what Royals done for years. Worked hard and Played hard. It may seem animalistic to the average civvy but to the average Bootneck it's the normal thing to do when let loose with rucks of booze and a need to get things off your chest. As I said before Bullying was/is a no no. Even a hint of it would and could result in the accused finding himself in deep doo doo's with all and sun dri. Ok some times a few HARDCASE'S would get a bit gobby, this normally resulted in them getting a "reminder" from their fellow Bootnecks to wind in their necks.........or else. Just the hint of what would happen if they got to big for their boots was normally enough.
When I joined my first unit there were quite a few of what were called Three Badge Marines, Marines who had done a minimum of 12 years in the Corp and could be trusted to look after the younger Marines, they were called Sea Daddies and most would take a few young lads under their wing and teach them the ways of normal Royal Marine Behaviour. These days the Three Badger is a rarity but even so there is always some older and wiser Marine or NCO who will be a calming influence on the rest of the blokes in the Section.
Sometimes two blokes would for some reason detest each other, the normal routine in my day was to put them in a boxing ring and let them beat the shite out of each other until they were both totally knackered. Most times they would make up and the reasons for the tiff would be forgotten.
Rambled on a bit but I really think this idea that bullying is rife within the Corp be squashed before the rumours and hearsay get right out of hand. The average Bootneck is a bloke who is not going to take shit from anybody regardless of their size or in some cases their rank.
I can relate to my last comment as a certain USMC Staff Sgt attached to our Corp once made the mistake of thinking that as I looked Skin & Essence (young and innocent) that I would be an easy target to pick on. I had attended a Crimbo bash dressed as a Bird and passed myself off as a Three Badge Marines Pash (girlfriend), the Yank was in his own words disgusted with me and thought I was "A Faggot!". The bloke soon found out that rank may have it privileges but it didn't give him the right to try and give me a hard time. So I beat the shit out of him in his office when no one else was about one afternoon. He was sent back to his Corp and I got away with it as no one else witnessed the incident.
Artist
Me and an Oppo in the seventies both got steaming in the NAAFI one Weekend in Norge and decided to go outside and beat the crap out of each other by heaving great big lumps of frozen wood at each other. He knocked me out with a rather good shot to the head. I woke up back in the bar with my Oppo insisting that he bought the wets for the rest of the night as he'd won. At no stage was there any bad feeling between us.
Lets face it people, Bootnecks don't as a habit sit around and talk about the weather and what they plan to do with the spare room when they get back home. They are basically people trained to fight and kill anybody they are ordered to take on. You get nought for coming second so Bootnecks tend to be right in your face when they are let loose on the World.
It's what Royals done for years. Worked hard and Played hard. It may seem animalistic to the average civvy but to the average Bootneck it's the normal thing to do when let loose with rucks of booze and a need to get things off your chest. As I said before Bullying was/is a no no. Even a hint of it would and could result in the accused finding himself in deep doo doo's with all and sun dri. Ok some times a few HARDCASE'S would get a bit gobby, this normally resulted in them getting a "reminder" from their fellow Bootnecks to wind in their necks.........or else. Just the hint of what would happen if they got to big for their boots was normally enough.
When I joined my first unit there were quite a few of what were called Three Badge Marines, Marines who had done a minimum of 12 years in the Corp and could be trusted to look after the younger Marines, they were called Sea Daddies and most would take a few young lads under their wing and teach them the ways of normal Royal Marine Behaviour. These days the Three Badger is a rarity but even so there is always some older and wiser Marine or NCO who will be a calming influence on the rest of the blokes in the Section.
Sometimes two blokes would for some reason detest each other, the normal routine in my day was to put them in a boxing ring and let them beat the shite out of each other until they were both totally knackered. Most times they would make up and the reasons for the tiff would be forgotten.
Rambled on a bit but I really think this idea that bullying is rife within the Corp be squashed before the rumours and hearsay get right out of hand. The average Bootneck is a bloke who is not going to take shit from anybody regardless of their size or in some cases their rank.
I can relate to my last comment as a certain USMC Staff Sgt attached to our Corp once made the mistake of thinking that as I looked Skin & Essence (young and innocent) that I would be an easy target to pick on. I had attended a Crimbo bash dressed as a Bird and passed myself off as a Three Badge Marines Pash (girlfriend), the Yank was in his own words disgusted with me and thought I was "A Faggot!". The bloke soon found out that rank may have it privileges but it didn't give him the right to try and give me a hard time. So I beat the shit out of him in his office when no one else was about one afternoon. He was sent back to his Corp and I got away with it as no one else witnessed the incident.
Artist
Good grief no!Macca wrote:Haha a good interesting post there Artist (as usual). Were you like that before training at all or did the fairly violent nature (wich i understand) come along after training?
I was seriously considering a career in the church prior to joining the Corp. As it happens me Pop was a PTI in the RAF and before that was briefly in the Corp but his eyesight was not up to scratch so he transferred to the Crabfats. Even so he was a member of the Malayan Scouts in the fifties, which in the end caused his death at the age of 55. Just six months after he left the RAF (He contracted Malaria whilst working in the Malayan Ulu (Jungle) and was always getting relapses which resulted in him having to have a major operation to remove one of his lungs about a year before he left the RAF, after that he was in his own words.........Bolloxed). But during my childhood he was as fit as a fiddle save for the odd attack so my childhood was interesting to say the least.
Pop would drag me up the Welsh Mountains around Llandovery in Carmarthenshire where he was born when I was no more than six or seven. Later he encouraged me to take up canoeing, abseiling, rugby union and loads of other stuff so I was kind of used to hardships few other boys of my age would tollerate. I was binned from the Wolf Cubs at the tender age of eight for wacking the Station Commanders ten year old son in the knackers because he was having a go at my mate. Later Pop sent me to a Roman Catholic Public School near Diss in Norfolk when I was 13 (used to get into trouble at my old Grammer School a fair bit).
The Head Master was a Priest whilst the teachers were all Monks (a right bunch of sadists they were an all!) But I was expelled from there at 14 because Pop gave me a book printed in the 1930's. I can't remember it's name but on the first page it had the words: "For boys who crave adventure". The book contained one chapter all about how to make gunpowder...................
I spent quite a lot of my pocket money buying the stuff I needed and also had away quite a bit of the required ingredients from the Chemistry departments Store and finally made my first bomb.I planted it in the Head Master's Vegetable Patch and lit the fuze one Sunday afternoon.................Took out his Cabbages, Carrots, Turnips the whole fecking lot!
So back home I went. Pop was less than impressed but had to grin and bear it. By this stage I'd really got the bomb making bug and once more started to accumulate the ingredients, but had to stash them away from the house as Pop was a tad worried about my facination with loud noises.This time I went for broke and got my hands on a Catering sized NAAFI coffee tin from the dustbin behind the RAF Camps NAAFI. Once it was toppers I then had to make a fuze less inclined to go FLASH! BANG! like the first one did (I was blown arse over tip by the first bomb but was uninjured) So I got a bootlace and soaked it in Saltpeter, tried it and LO! it worked. So I repeated the procedure on another bootlace.
Come one Saturday night I left me parents house telling them that I was off to the Camps Youth Club. Anyway I got to where I'd stashed the coffee tin full of my homemade gunpowder (It was behind the Gym where me Pop worked hidden amongst these bushes) in front of the Gym was the sports field with the Officers Married Quarters behind the field. Running along the entire length of the Sports Field were three Golf greens with bunkers around one of them. I decided to put the coffee tin in one of the bunkers about 40 foot from this 10 foot tall perimeter fence that ran all the way along the Officers Married Quarters.
The Tin was buried in one bunker, the fuze was lit and I legged it to this other bunker about thirty yards from the tin's resting place.........................
BANG! ........................KINNEL!! I was covered from head to foot in sand, where the tin had been was now just a girt big crater in the ground with smoke coming from it, I'd nearly gone deaf, every dog in Norfolk was barking fit to bust, the Camps alarms were going full chaff and this RAF Police Land Rover was hairing it's way towards where I lay closely followed by an Airfield Firetruck dinging its bells for all it was worth.It turned out that the Camps CO a Group Captain Herbert had had a Cocktail Party going on in his garden when my bomb went off so it was lucky that no one was hurt by the flying glass from all the windows it took out. The RAF Coppers pulled up in their Land Rover and had me in the back racing to the Guard Room as fast as the Land Rover could go. Thats when I sussed that maybe just maybe I was in the cack!
During the next few hours lots of things happened, I was dragged in front of Gp Captain Herbert because as I was a dependant of a serving member of the RAF I could be done by the RAF and even find myself in Prison. I really started to shit meself when I found that out! Herbert was as you can imagine less than happy. But I suppose that deep down he just may have seen the funny side because after about three hours I was escorted back to the Airmans Married Quarter where we Lived (number 27 AMQ, RAF West Raynham). Me mum was in tears, me younger sister was out bragging to her mates all about her loonatic brother. Of Pop there was no sign.
About four in the morning Pop returned home. Surprisingly he was in a fairly good mood. It turned out that Gp Captain Herbert had decided that Pop was getting the fastest Posting ever in RAF history! He was off to RAF Gan a small island in the middle of the Indian ocean for a year whilst Mum, me and my sister were going to be moved to this AMQ site in the middle of knowhere called Swanton Morely, about six miles from West Raynham. The place had closed down years before as an RAF camp and all that was still used by the RAF were the AMQ's. One week later we were in our new quarter whilst Pop was stuck on RAF GAN in the middle of the Indian ocean.
Years later Pop told me that he hated West Raynham with a vengenge. So he was chuffed to buggery to get his posting to GAN. Hence his good mood on the fateful night of the West Raynham Bomb Blast. As it was the RAF said the explosion was caused by a WW2 German unexploded bomb so it barely got a mention in any newspaper save for the local rag in this place called Fakenham which had it on the front page. I carried on going to School at Fakenham Grammer School and left at 16 with six O-levels and two A-Levels in Art. I was also awarded a Scholarship to the Slade College of Art in London as earlier I had come first in a national schools art competition with a painting I had done of the Harbour at Wells next to Sea on the North Norfolk Coast but alas my dear Pop said that there was no way I was going to an Art School because of all the Hippys and Drug taking that went on at them according to what he had read in the Daily Express.
Once Pop was back from GAN he was Posted to RAF Cosford and we moved to another old AMQ site just outside Bridgnorth in Shropshire which suited me Mum to a tee as she was a Cheshire lass so she was only a few miles from her parents and other relatives. I started at the College of Higher Education in Bridgnorth but soon got tired of yet more classrooms so applied to join the Royal Marines..............The rest is history and here I am fifty odd years old telling you lot the story of my bomb making period.
It would appear that I may have Hi-Jacked this thread......Sorry eagleeye. There are always other threads to start are there not gentlemen?
Artist
