further into our new culture. Those lucky few who made it through the course would be known as plain ‘royals’, or, more commonly, ‘bootnecks’ – so called for the leather neck collars worn in days of old by our forebears to prevent mutinous sailors from slitting their throats whilst on guard duty. One assumes this led to a rise in stab wounds to the chest.
As mere recruits we were nicknamed ‘nods’, perhaps due to our persistent nodding off from being awake twenty hours a day. Sailors were ‘matelots’. Army personnel were called ‘pongos’, because their questionable hygiene levels gave rise to the old military phrase, ‘where the army goes, the pong goes’. The RAF, the most civilian of the forces, were known as ‘crabfats’ due to their uniform being exactly the same colour as the lotion used by military personnel to get rid of pubic lice. It’s amazing what you could learn even before the advent of the internet.
We were under the command of ‘Pusser’, the slang word for ‘the service’. Everything would have the prefix ‘Pusser’, so a service-issue suitcase would become a ‘Pusser’s grip’. Anyone who was 100 per cent service through and through would be known as ‘Pusser’s’.
I never did find out who Harry was, but he was talked about often. Any adjective could have the prefix ‘Harry’ added to it, and be suffixed with ‘-ers’, ‘-bats’, or ‘-pigs’. For example: to expand on the word ‘wazz’ being slang for ‘good’, we could say ‘Harry Wazzbats’. To be cold: ‘Harry Icepigs’. Without money: ‘Harry Skinters’. Ronnie was Harry’s brother, so if Harry was being overworked we could use him instead, e.g. hot: ‘Ronnie Redpigs’.
The toilets were now ‘heads’, and steak and kidney puddings ‘babies’ heads’. Conversely, our actual heads became ‘grids’, ‘nappers’ or ‘fat ones’.
Jackspeak convention decrees that anyone with the surname ‘Smith’ will be rechristened ‘Smudge’, a ‘Brown’ will become ‘Buster’, a ‘Bell’ will be ‘Dinger’. Anyone who shared a famous surname would have their real first name destroyed forever and replaced with their famous counterpart’s. Dave Forsyth, for instance, would be known forevermore as ‘Bruce’. There are men who I was extremely close to, yet I never knew their real first names. Some surnames, such as ‘Driver’, could have a myriad of new first names attached such as ‘Screwy’, or even, ‘This par-four is short enough for me to use a two-iron rather than my’, although, in truth, I rarely heard the last one.
We also learnt how to talk in abbreviations and acronyms:
SLR – Self-Loading Rifle.
GPMG – General Purpose Machine Gun.
CEMO – Combat Equipment Marching Order.
LCU – Landing Craft Utility.
MUPPET – Most Useless Person Pusser Ever Trained.
So, despite not even being in a dogwatch, within two shakes of a donkey’s flip-flop we gobbed off in new tongues trying not to grip the shit of the pit monsters attempting to get their nappers down and bash out the zeds while we glopped goffers or NATO standard wets and scranning nutty while spinning hoofing dits about mega essence or rats’ gronks and pashes we had trapped while Harry Mingbats as strawberry mivvies - gen.
Every waking minute was taken up with the militaristic ethos and incessant subliminal messages to condition us. It was like a religious experience, and we were rapidly being converted. Our DL was the military equivalent of the Rev Jim Jones. While I don’t think he wanted to give us poisoned Kool-Aid, the Pusser’s orange cordial came close.
I actually looked forward to our PT lessons, even though pre-workout nerves always forced me to evacuate my bowels first. On the PRC, we’d been put through the USMC physical test to gauge our fitness, and now we attempted as many press-ups and sit-ups we could muster in two minutes, and how many pull-ups we could max out on. Having the body weight
As mere recruits we were nicknamed ‘nods’, perhaps due to our persistent nodding off from being awake twenty hours a day. Sailors were ‘matelots’. Army personnel were called ‘pongos’, because their questionable hygiene levels gave rise to the old military phrase, ‘where the army goes, the pong goes’. The RAF, the most civilian of the forces, were known as ‘crabfats’ due to their uniform being exactly the same colour as the lotion used by military personnel to get rid of pubic lice. It’s amazing what you could learn even before the advent of the internet.
We were under the command of ‘Pusser’, the slang word for ‘the service’. Everything would have the prefix ‘Pusser’, so a service-issue suitcase would become a ‘Pusser’s grip’. Anyone who was 100 per cent service through and through would be known as ‘Pusser’s’.
I never did find out who Harry was, but he was talked about often. Any adjective could have the prefix ‘Harry’ added to it, and be suffixed with ‘-ers’, ‘-bats’, or ‘-pigs’. For example: to expand on the word ‘wazz’ being slang for ‘good’, we could say ‘Harry Wazzbats’. To be cold: ‘Harry Icepigs’. Without money: ‘Harry Skinters’. Ronnie was Harry’s brother, so if Harry was being overworked we could use him instead, e.g. hot: ‘Ronnie Redpigs’.
The toilets were now ‘heads’, and steak and kidney puddings ‘babies’ heads’. Conversely, our actual heads became ‘grids’, ‘nappers’ or ‘fat ones’.
Jackspeak convention decrees that anyone with the surname ‘Smith’ will be rechristened ‘Smudge’, a ‘Brown’ will become ‘Buster’, a ‘Bell’ will be ‘Dinger’. Anyone who shared a famous surname would have their real first name destroyed forever and replaced with their famous counterpart’s. Dave Forsyth, for instance, would be known forevermore as ‘Bruce’. There are men who I was extremely close to, yet I never knew their real first names. Some surnames, such as ‘Driver’, could have a myriad of new first names attached such as ‘Screwy’, or even, ‘This par-four is short enough for me to use a two-iron rather than my’, although, in truth, I rarely heard the last one.
We also learnt how to talk in abbreviations and acronyms:
SLR – Self-Loading Rifle.
GPMG – General Purpose Machine Gun.
CEMO – Combat Equipment Marching Order.
LCU – Landing Craft Utility.
MUPPET – Most Useless Person Pusser Ever Trained.
So, despite not even being in a dogwatch, within two shakes of a donkey’s flip-flop we gobbed off in new tongues trying not to grip the shit of the pit monsters attempting to get their nappers down and bash out the zeds while we glopped goffers or NATO standard wets and scranning nutty while spinning hoofing dits about mega essence or rats’ gronks and pashes we had trapped while Harry Mingbats as strawberry mivvies - gen.
Every waking minute was taken up with the militaristic ethos and incessant subliminal messages to condition us. It was like a religious experience, and we were rapidly being converted. Our DL was the military equivalent of the Rev Jim Jones. While I don’t think he wanted to give us poisoned Kool-Aid, the Pusser’s orange cordial came close.
I actually looked forward to our PT lessons, even though pre-workout nerves always forced me to evacuate my bowels first. On the PRC, we’d been put through the USMC physical test to gauge our fitness, and now we attempted as many press-ups and sit-ups we could muster in two minutes, and how many pull-ups we could max out on. Having the body weight
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