April 2013 - The Boys' Brigade

“LOOK @ LIFE”
Between Monday 19th and Friday 23rd November 2012, a team of BB Seniors and young leaders from Scotland took on one
of the toughest assignments – a fi ve day course at the Royal Marine Command Training Centre in Devon. In addition to the
demanding physical activities, the BB Team also endured the incredibly wet conditions the region was suffering at that time.
FIVE DAYS WITH THE ROYA
Some of the group members used the experience as part of their DofE Gold residential, whilst others were keen to for a new and tough
challenge. Ryan Taylor (1st Strichen) kept a blog on his incredible, but tough, experience.
Monday 19th
The bus arrived at the Royal Marines
training barracks in Lympstone at around
3pm. It had been raining on and off all the
way down, but fortunately it had settled by
the time we arrived.
After being allocated rooms, we were
directed to get back outside in three ranks
to collect our uniforms. We were led to
the other side of the barracks to some
containers where we collected our gear,
including camoufl age trousers, jacket
and a pair of boots. We were told to meet
outside the accommodation at 5pm in our
T-shirts to go for ‘scran’ (the Marines word
for food!). Their mess hall was huge and
58 The Boys’ Brigade Gazette Apr 2013
so were the portions of food! Afterwards,
in a lecture we were shown videos
about the Royal Marines and were
told what we were going to be doing.
Everybody seemed excited and ready
to go... But how long would that last?
Tuesday 20th
Everybody was up and outside by 7am
for scran. Again, we were in our T-shirts
even though it was raining! We had been
told that we couldn’t wear anything under
or on top of our T-shirts or wear hats or
hoodies so we felt cold ALL THE TIME!
Our fi rst look at Marines training was the
Endurance Course. To say it was hard
would be an understatement. We put
our camo jackets
and trousers on and
were sent out in mini
buses to a random
area of boggy ground
and heather. Our fi rst
challenge was running
towards the fl ow of
water in a river that
was up to our knees.
It put a lot of strain on
your leg muscles, but
with encouragement from each other, we
all made it through.
Now that we were soaking wet, we got to
leopard crawl (lie on your stomach and
drag your elbows and legs as close to the
ground to move forward) through some
‘fake tan’ (coloured dirt that stuck to our
clothes and skin!). There wasn’t much
dirt, but there were plenty of sharp stones
and sticks so we got nice bruised knees
afterwards! We were then challenged to
get all 30 people up onto the ledge at the
side of the dirt, feet fi rst in 1:30 minutes.
Immediately, there were six people who
started throwing others onto the ledge
and those who were up had to grab
others and pull them up. The last person
had to do a hand stand in the dirt and we
all dragged him up by the feet. We did
it in 2:40 minutes so we jumped in and
tried again. Amazingly, second time, we
managed to get all 30 up in 1:20 minutes!
We set off running again through some
more rivers that were at our thigh height.
By now, our legs were feeling the pain.
Luckily, they got a little rest while we
leopard crawled through two tunnels; they
were half fi lled with water because they
were below ground level and it had been
raining heavily.