More Combined Cadet Force
Inspired by Albert Marshmallow's tale of derring-do, I thought I'd share mine.

I went into the Army Cadets (where the real men went, according to school legend), rather than the asthmatic pigeon-toed weeds who went into the RAF cadets. Or the sons of pacifists who played triangle for the school orchestra.

The first term was pretty dull, with lots of square bashing drill, but the following spring we went to the assault course in Sennybridge and did about a half a mile of it, which was good muddy, freezing cold, wet fun. Less fun was the chain-smoking Selwyn Frogett-alike in the vest that made John McClane's look like it had been freshly laundered, who managed to give six of us amoebic dysentery. (Though the bit of the assault course that meant swimming in the dark down a stretch of river that passed through a submerged drainage tunnel, along with god knows how much rat piss and sheepshit can't have helped.)

I was the first to come down with it, vomiting through the night from my bottom bunk into a rusty bucket, a routine broken only by the half-hourly dash to the bogs to pebble dash the porcelain. This being just cadets, one of the officers (i.e. one of our school teachers) phone my parents to come and get me, and I spend most of the following morning dozing in the passenger seat of my dad's car half-listening to Dave Lee Travis's bullshit radio 1 show.

Adventurous training and leading the signals section followed later, which I'll post about if I can be arsed.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 1 Jun 2012, 15:46, Reply)