Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Yer In The Army Now.

The British government has finally decided to pull most of the British soldiers they have out of Northern Ireland thus putting an end to that 38 year campaign known as "The Troubles." I have lived and served there so its like a part of my personal history crumbling away as they close doon army barracks and checkpoints and say to some of the troops, "Thanks but now yer out of a job." That's getting old, so many people have passed away or moved on and places get closed doon and built over and you are left with nothing but obsolete memories. I pray for a continued peace in N.I. and this post is a kind of tribute to a way of life that has gone, lets hope for the better.

Army psychical training instructors (or PTI's) are fucking nuts, there I said it. Who in their right mind would get excited about running 5 miles at 8am when its so cold yer nipples pop out like corks and yer balls vanish into yer body for warmth? I'm not even going to mention my knob, well ok I just might. Poor wee kenny didn't get his early morning warm up stretch due to the shock of being woken up at 5am, is there therapy for willys or is that just hookers?

So yer running trying to avoid the snot getting blown out from the guys ahead and to the side of you and the PT Sergeant sees a hill, oh wouldn't it be great to run up that? oh look a stream, lets run through that. It was the 20th century for fucks sake do we not have trucks? just drive me into battle and I'll kill the enemy, no running involved, can I not sign something to that effect? ah fuck it I should have put up with the hemorrhoids and stayed in the cavalry.

PTI's aren't real soldiers, "what did you do in the war grandad?" "Well I did some jumping jacks and squat thrusts , the only guns I had were these babies.":::::kisses biceps::::::

In the gym we didn't play dodgeball, they called it "murderball" you never wanted to be the team that took off their tops "the skins" the balls were hard and the walls of the gym had a rippled texture which was sharp so if you put out yer hand to stop yerself it would take the skin off, I bet they did that on purpose.

Boxing or rather Milling as it was called was a part of our activities, we were given boxing gloves and told to have at it in the ring for a one minute of pure aggression against the other fella, no technique just as many head punches and as much damage as you could do, it was called milling probably due to the windmill like punches being delivered. When the British army decided to go soft they stopped milling, or rather they just renamed it "Sparring" to keep people happy.

Being a soldier you aren't required to think, you just do what yer told . Can you imagine Old Knudsen without a thought in his head? At a training camp in the North of England we were told by the PT NCOs (non commissioned officers like sergeants and corporals) to strip off to our gunties. Its not like in the American films were you all have olive coloured boxer shorts, the British doesn't or rather didn't issue underwear so you'd have 40 young men in their leather thongs and brightly coloured banana hammocks that their mummy bought for them at Christmas from Primark standing shivering in the ranks outside of the barrack rooms, no one at that time wore boxer shorts in the UK it was all tight and colourful.

The reason we were told to do this was 1) the PT instructors were cunts and owned our tight little arses and 2) there was 2 feet of snow on the ground and the PT instructors were cunts.

We were to practice our wrestling and throws and um make snow angels as ordered, then we had to swim in the nearby river.
The reasoning behind all this was that they liked to watch and to have us experience the cold, for fucks sake I lived in Scotland I know what cold is.

Eventually I developed an attitude, I got sick of being at the bottom of the sadistic pecking order known as the military, I even told an NCO to fuck off when I had decided I no longer wanted to run, instead of kicking the crap out of me he sheepishly ran on ignoring me his bluff had been called.

I was doing sentry duty one night at the gates of the camp, we were on high alert as the Iranians were being funny cunts at the time, there was nothing I would have liked more than to tackle a smouldering raghead . We had to wear full combat gear all the time because of those cunts even for PT.

The PT sarge came zooming up to the barrier on his Topgun like motorcycle and stopped. I knew who he was even with his helmet on but still asked to see his ID, he looked disgusted and shook his head and said, "fuck its you Knudsen we're all safe tonight " I smiled at the power I held at that moment and asked for him to take his head gear off, he looked real pissed off but did so and I held up his ID card and compared it to him to it. I did extra pushups all that week but it was worth it.
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Happy Lughnasadh or Lammas you dirty Heathens.
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