I spent a few weeks at my dads house prior to leaving to go to Bovington. This was a strange time for me, I had gotten very attached the Depot in Ballymena and the thought of starting again in a new camp was daunting. My flight was booked to fly from George Best Airport in Belfast to London Heathrow. Then we would travel down to Bovington on the south coast of England, by train. There were only 4 of us that had joined the tank regiments and I must say none of the 4 I was particularly close to. We arrived at the camp and it had none of the grandeur of the camp in Ballymena in my eyes. It was absolutely enormous, also. We were shown to our room and split up. I was put into a room with three other English lads that I didn't know. I felt uneasy from the outset.
The first day we were broken down into our Troops and the first element of training you do in Bovington is to learn to drive a car. What the instructors didn't know was at the time I was still only 16 and was too young to take this part of the course. When the instructors found out about this they informed me that I had to go to into Holding Troop until I was old enough to learn how to drive. Holding Troop is where people go that are on long term sickness, or wanting to leave, or just generally a misfit. I felt like I wasn't in any of those categories, I was fit, keen, and wanted to get through this. I was moved accommodation into where the Holding Troop recruits all stayed. This was a tough time for me, it was boring and we didn't do much.
We had to do the commanding officers PT on a Friday morning, what this entailed was a race around a course near the camp, the last 20 people in the race had to do remedial fitness on a Saturday. This race included every soldier training in Bovington. The first time I did it incredibly I came first. I remember the CO asking me my name, and when he found out I was in Holding Troop how surprised he looked. I think this was another example of me hiding behind fitness to impress people. I suppose a positive about living in Bovington was that I was only 2 train trips away from my mother in Manchester. I remember when one Friday we had our Friday inspection, which was delayed. I didn't get out of the camp until after 6pm. I had to travel to London from Bovington and missed the last train to Manchester from Euston Train Station. The security guard allowed me to sleep in Euston Station for the night. I remember feeling bad that I had been allowed to sleep in the station and there were homeless people just outside the shutters, looking in.
I continued for another number of months in Bovington and during this time my great grandmother passed away. She was in her late 90's and had been suffering badly with Alzheimer's for a number of years before her death. I flew home for her funeral and when I was due to go back to Bovington I felt a real sickness in my stomach and really didn't want to live in England again. When I got back to Bovington I applied to return back to Northern Ireland and serve in the Royal Irish Regiment Home Service. The instructors at Bovington did not take kindly to this and I was ostracised by many of them because of it. They finally accepted my application and I was allowed to return home to serve in the Royal Irish, phase 2 training for this would be back to Ballymena which I couldn't have been more excited for.
I arrived back in Ballymena and went to the guardroom. From the outset it was clear that what I had done did not go down well with the staff there. I had seemingly cast shame on them coming back like I did. I was put into a platoon with many of the people I was in phase 1 training with, which was comforting. There was one instructor in the platoon that took a particular dislike to me and no matter what I did I didn't do it right in his eyes. I look back now he was clearly bullying me. We did an exercise in a place called Magilligan in Co Antrim and were practicing fire and manoeuvre techniques. I was in the firing position on the ground and for whatever reason wasn't doing what he wanted me to do, he ran over and grabbed my helmet and pulled me up to my feet, as he did this my chin strap caught my nose and blood spilled out of it. I shouted at him "what the fuck do you think you are doing" his whole demeanour changed, a clear example of me standing up to a bully and the bully backed down. I continued on this course and my fitness continued to get better, but I was noticing my speech more and more being an issue. I hid behind it and I ended up the fittest person in the platoon, my runs and tests were all really positive.
The last camp in phase 2 was called Battle Camp, this was a 3 week event that was notorious for being tough, you got no sleep and had to tab from the camp beside Magilliagn Prison to Binevenagh Mountain and stay on the mountain for a number of days, then tab back down to finish it. I remember on the last day we had just marched down the mountain and were standing round on the side of a road. We were all told to get our packs on and that we were going to play "it pays to be a winner" this was another name for a "beasting" session. What it entailed was a 200 metre race involving the entire platoon, the first 5 back do not have to go again. This would continue until the last 5 people in the platoon. We started and I just took off, I left everyone behind and came in first. This meant of course, that I wouldn't have to go again. I didn't feel good about standing there with the other 4 people so got my kit back on and ran back down to encourage the others that were struggling with the run. I must have went up and down 4 times. When I stopped one of the instructors said "well done" to me. That was the most praise I had in the 3 months I was in that platoon. The platoon was told to fall in on the road and I was asked to march everyone back to the rooms, something that normally was asked of more popular recruits.
I felt elated, I felt I had literally made them respect me, I had put up with all their shit and in the end they realised I wasn't giving up.
My pass out parade for phase 2 was again in Ballymena and I remember it was a nice day, but nothing special in comparison to the phase 1 pass out parade.
I was informed I would be joining 9 Royal Irish in Antrim. I wasn't overly excited about this, the hardship of the training depot's I had become comfortable with, it seemed safe and I knew what I had to do and to this day I missed it. Moving to Battalion just seemed like another unknown thing to deal with.
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