The picture above is of me as a happy Royal Marine Commando recruit or, as we were referred to for the 32 weeks of basic training, a ‘Nod’; so called because we were always nodding off to sleep as soon as we stopped moving. The happy chappy in this photo is on one of the very first exercises, a learning evolution in how to administer one’s self in the field. He is blissfully unaware that from this point on in his training all exercises will consist of physical pain, sleep deprivation, being soaked to the skin and being ‘Beasted’ for real or imagined infractions.
Beasting, or being Beasted, (and yes, I believe that it fully deserves to be capitalised for the impact and relevance that it has on all Royal Marines), is an integral part of Commando training despite the fact that you will never see it on any training program or schedule. It takes many forms, limited only by the imagination and sadistic tendencies of the Training Team member delivering the Beasting. The one underlying principle of a good Beasting is pain; real physical pain.
The first Beasting that I recall with any clarity took place on one of my first field exercises on a gorse-riddled, scrubby tract of land with the deceptively quaint moniker of Woodbury Common. Woodbury Common had been used to test the effectiveness of weaponised gases for the second world war. The legacy of this is still evident today in the Nods’ post-training routine of plucking infected gorse spikes from the various parts of their anatomy to avoid the local ailment of ‘Woodbury Rash’.
It was during this early training Ex that my troop was introduced to ‘Beastie Knoll’; a small lump of a hill in the centre of our exercise area. The fact that this feature had actually been named for its purpose should have warned us that it held a special significance but it completely passed us by. Until we were told to fall in and ‘mark time’ facing the knoll. Marking time is an odd, jogging on-the-spot activity, designed to keep the muscles warm while remaining static and listening to the verbal diatribe that precedes the physical Beasting. It ensures that while you are stumbling up a loose gravel track with your partner on your back, or powering through gorse and bracken doing wheelbarrow races on bleeding hands, at least you won’t pull a muscle.
I still don’t remember what we were actually being punished for that day, though to be honest, that’s usually pretty irrelevant anyway. A Beasting is not always dished out as a punishment, but more on that later. What I do remember is after the tenth or twelfth time of sprinting up and down this horrible landmark, laden with a partner on my back for most of them, was that I began to see double. My breathing was also not right, the deep gulps I was taking still not enough to replenish the oxygen my lactic-heavy system was screaming for. People were dropping from pure exhaustion; full-on falls and face plants into gravel and gorse. While to us nods this seemed like a good time to maybe call a halt to the proceedings, our Training Team let us know that they were singularly unimpressed with our ‘theatrical dramatics’. Just when I thought I was going to pass out it stopped. Well, sort of. We were given a minute to square ourselves away, pick up our kit and fall back in. For the five-mile run back to camp.
I’m sure when people envisage a troop of Commandos making their way down the leafy lanes of the Devon countryside they envisage a disciplined body of men, in step, steely-eyed determination as their boots strike the ground with perfect, unified precision. Well, that wasn’t us. Already exhausted and half-dead from our introduction to Beastie Knoll we looked more like the rear-guard stragglers of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Helmets askew, everybody falling out of step, stumbling into the man in front, our rifles and large packs conspiring to ensure additional discomfort was utilised. The training team ran with us, snarling and pushing us back into formation, green-beret clad collies shepherding a flock of errant Nods back to their fold.
And slowly but surely we came together as one body, rising above the pain and the self-pity to work as a group, a unit. We matched step, obeyed the cadence, regulated our breathing, lifted our heads from our chests and looked ahead with steely-eyed determination. Well, nearly…
We were soon to learn that no Training Team worth their salt would ever bring their Nods back to Lympstone in anything other than a disciplined formation, regardless of how exhausted and injured they were. And once we’d learned this it became muscle memory, a reflex that kicked in as soon as your head dropped and you began giving in to the pain. It then became a point of pride; we wanted to be seen on these suffocating country lanes as the disciplined Commandos we imagined ourselves to be one day.
From that pride another ethos was born; teamwork. I’ve lost count of the Beastings and runs I have been on where, when I’ve started to flag or slow, my oppo to the right or left of me would take a grip of my shoulder and give a couple of words of encouragement or a witty one-liner to take my mind off the exhaustion. And I would return the favour when the situation required it. It is the beauty of the Royal Marines’ training ethos that this camaraderie and teamwork is achieved almost by osmosis; the Nods learning it by guided discovery to the point where it becomes second nature. And it all starts with the Beastings.
Beastings were probably one of the most talked about subjects in the Commando Traing Centre, or CTC at Lympstone, Devon. In fact, when a Nod transitions to the second phase of Commando training he is given a ‘Beasting Jacket’ that he will wear to all future PT sessions. Even the location of CTC on the banks of the River Exe seemed to have been chosen with the criteria of having a good Beasting ground on site: The River Exe itself at low tide. These stinking, primeval mud flats, instantly accessible from the back gate of the camp, were the king of Beasting locations. Being Beasted on these mud flats was referred to as a ‘mud run’ and was reserved for special occasions due to the severity of its physical demands.
Knee deep mud sapped the strength of even the strongest Nods as they ran, crawled, burpee’d, star-jumped, leap-frogged and performed hundreds of press-ups and sit-ups in the thick, dank ooze. On special occasions they would be granted the gift of a telegraph pole with which to try new combinations of physical torture, ensuring they did not become bored or disappointed with the training team’s lack of imagination.
Initially a mud run was the boogeyman of Beastings, a sword of Damocles always present in the background and held as a threat for severe infractions. We would sometimes see a Nod troop coming back in off the mud, black creatures dripping the stinking ooze in a trail to the camp ablutions block. But here’s the perverse thing: The longer that time went by without us being given a mud run, the more we wanted it. We knew how awful it would be in comparison to some of the intense Beastings we’d had. We knew it would nearly kill us. We knew it was the worst Beasting the Team could dish out. But we wanted it. Badly.
Troops who had been Beasted in the mud carried the experience as an accolade, a badge of honour, walking with just a little more swagger to the galley or Dutchy’s burger wagon. They had experienced the worst Beasting at Lympstone and, agony and exhaustion aside, had come through it.
When we eventually received our first mud run it was as bad as we had expected. It was also quite surreal at times. For example, our Physical Training Instructor, or PTI, took us for our low-tide acquaintance with the mud. Immaculate as always in his gleaming white vest and the standard olive-coloured Denim trousers, he marched us into the slime without a change of expression or tone. He could just as well have been taking us on to the Parade Square, such was his lack of acknowledgement that this was anything out of the ordinary. Concerned that we would be getting cold, he started us off with a routine of strength-sapping leg exercises that utilised the resistant qualities of the thick mud to enhance the session. Burpees, star jumps, bastards, squat thrusts, mountain climbs, and of course marking time between them as a ‘rest’. Then to alleviate the possibility that we might be getting bored with the same exercises, we were directed to work on the upper body a little; press ups, sit-ups, leopard crawls, crunches, tricep press, flutter kicks.
I don’t know how long our mud run lasted. As a Nod you are not allowed to wear a watch for any physical activity in the event that you only apply as much effort to endure the session rather than giving it your all. But it felt like an eternity. The consummate professional that he was, our mud-spattered PTI warmed us down, stretched us off and asked for the injured to identify themselves so that he could check them over. We were then marched back off the mud and on to the bottom field of CTC where the Assault Course sits in close proximity to the main railway line. Our PTI directed us to jump in the large static tank that sits under the regain rope in order to wash the bulk of the mud away.
We marched as a soaked, dripping body back to our accommodation block, not bowed or miserable as I had expected but with heads held high and a spring in our step. We’d had our mud run and, like those before us, wore the experience with pride. We’d endured the worst Beasting that the Team could give us and, bar the aches and pains and gritty eyes and mouth, we’d come through it. We revelled in the gapes of astonishment from the newer Nod troops who had witnessed our muddy baptism from the windows of their accommodation. Stripping off our soaked and filthy uniform outside our block, we laughed and joked loudly, testosterone fuelled japery the manifestation of the experience of having come through something awful together.
And this is what Beastings achieve. The experience of physical suffering bonds and unites men quicker than almost anything else. Rising above your own pain and self-pity to remain a functional and essential member of the team takes your priorities from that of an individual to that of a unit, thinking and working for the good of the team. Throughout my entire career in the military, and indeed, even after, I still remember and value the lessons first imbued upon me as a skinny Nod stumbling up the loose gravel of Beastie knoll or wading through the mud of the River Exe.
As I said earlier, you won’t see the word Beasting appearing anywhere on any Royal Marines’ documentation or correspondence. Yet it is probably one of the key learning and development tools that I experienced in my time as a fledgling Commando. To the lay observer, a Beasting probably appears to be nothing more than a sadistic exercise in inflicting pain on an already exhausted, hungry and demoralised body of men but nothing could be further from the truth. When a Beasting is dished out as a punishment, it is rarely given to the individual responsible, usually the whole troop or section will be included. Very quickly, this demonstrates to the individual that he is accountable for his actions, that there is an impact on the whole group for the errors and mistakes he makes. Again, as the Nods progress through CTC and on to their Commando Units, this accountability becomes ingrained in the individual as common practice, needing no thought or deliberation. It is no coincidence that one of the worst insults a Marine can level at another is to call him ‘Jack’: not the affectionate Naval term but as in someone who is selfish and only does things for themselves.
The Beastings that a Nod endures teaches the importance of being accountable and thinking of the group rather than the individual, an ethos that serves them well in their later careers and in life in general. On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, the lessons learned from the training camp on a Devon estuary many years before were as relevant and necessary as weapons’ training. The ability of the individual to rise above the pain and effort of operating in hot, hostile environments, laden with body armour and ammunition, and to focus on his unit is testament to the effectiveness of the only lesson never listed on a training program: The Beasting.
