Right this is a mental story to tell and could have gone a lot worse and I’ll tell you now this may be a TL;DR.
This goes back a loooooooooooooooooong time ago and happened when I was in the TA (yes, supposedly I helped defend the country on weekends) and we had to do at least 2 weeks annual camp every year. I only joined a month or so before that years camp so I was thrown straight in at the deep end. I knew drugs weren’t allowed cos if I didn’t have a conviction for drug possession I’d have been midway through getting kicked out of the navy, but I bought 15 pills the night before thinking I’d have 2/3 then and the rest if I had chance in sunny Scotland.
Anywhoooo, 13 pills and about 20 hours later I was dressed head to foot in combat gear carrying full kit with a comedown from satan himself and just so I felt even worse I couldn’t stop thinking I had only 2 pills and maybe 4g hash to last me 2 weeks of misery. On top of that I hadn’t shaved which seems to piss the army off worse than American bomber aircraft so they gave me a bic razor to remove it which removed about 3 pints of bloody but barely any hair.
That day wasn’t too bad cos most of it was on a bus going to the black watch barracks (almost necked the other pills but managed to refrain) but from getting off the bus to getting back on to go home was shite. I was one of quite a few new recunts so we had a whole squadron of inexperienced soldies but unlike me they seemed to want to be there and on the last day we were supposed to have a “fun” day doing a march and shoot. This was a 20 mile TAB in full gear, including 1500m run wearing respirator.
! thing I should mention is that every night we were there 3 random people were selected to spend the night in the guard house (AWAKE MOSTLY) so they kindly puy me and the 2 others under 19 on guard the night before the march but the same night out “passing out disco” was on. Didn’t mind missing that shit but I was taking them pills no matter what, if we got attacked I could’ve probably flattered the enemy into surrender so I got fucking zero sleep that night.
Next day on the march we had 8 stops, each stop had a different task that had to be completed before you could move off (some team stuff, some individual) but after about the 3rd checkpoint I kept falling asleep when I sat down which also meant I was screamed at by an sergeant unless the major noticed. I hadn’t been selected to do any of the tasks on the march, I got chosen to do the shoot when we got back to barracks.
Soon as we got back I asked if I could go for a smoke, ran to my weed, skinned up the fattest joint the skinz would allow and caned the fucker. Jst as I was nearly finished I started hearing “private Laidlaw” resonating through the air so I went to see what was up. It turned out it was time to shoot stuff. They gave me 2 empty magazines and 60 live rounds. Managed to load the magazines fine and even load the magazine into the weapon but I always managed to hurt my finger when cocking the weapon to chamber a round. so I now had a loaded firewarm, 60 live round, a sore finger, a comedown and a head full of hash so as you can imagine, conditions were perfect, the enemy couldn’t have been safer.
There were 4 parts to this task, each involved 15 shots at a small target 75m away (I think, don’t remember). The only differences were the firing position. 15 rounds stood up, 15 shots down on 1 knee then change magazine then continue and this is where it went wrong. The other 2 positions were prone (laid on stomach) and shooting from in a 4/5ft deep ditch.
The 2nd 15 rounds we fired stood in front of the ditch and left the magazine empty but believe me, the things scare me loaded or not so when we were told to dress back (army bollocks for go backwards) I was so busy trying not to point my rifle anywhere but forward I fell straight in the fucking wood surrounded pit, really hurt my back and nearly broke a leg. And I was relieved at that. I was so fucking grateful that magazine was empty and we weren’t told to reload before the cunts made me fall in a hole, probably on purpose.
Thinking about it it’s probably the joint and any residual niceness remaining from the pill that stopped the other 30 rounds I had being put to their intended use.
