Caught Red Handed; British Assassins in the Horn of Africa

[Jan Klimkowski]

Former "Royal Marine Commando" Dom Mee is sufficiently well connected to have been give broadsheet newspaper space to refute claims that a video obtained by the British press portrayed, in the words of The Times: "loutish bullying, fuelled by alcohol, with a sinister homo-erotic streak running through it. The pictures were reminiscent of Abu Ghraib."

We're a band of brothers, not a gang of louts

The video of naked Marines fighting did not show a strange initiation rite. The men had already been initiated in the hell of war

Dom Mee The Observer, Sunday 4 December 2005

Naked, drunk and brawling: the video images of Royal Marines were plastered across newspapers this week under headlines that warned of brutal initiation rites and bullying.
I served 15 years with the Marines, including nine as a corporal with 40 Commando. I know about the initiation rites. It's different every time, but for the lads in that video, some of them just 18, it probably began in a C-130 Hercules heading for Iraq and the 'line of departure' - current jargon for a war zone.

The first time a Royal Marine goes into battle, that's the initiation. When the machine-guns open up and the bombardment starts, with the mortar rounds landing behind you and the aerial support raining bombs, nothing in your life has prepared you for the terror. It goes deeper than fear for your life: hell is all around and it is trying to claw its way inside.

Then the training kicks in. You do what you've learned, operating your weapon, staying alive, keeping to the rules drummed into you during the 30-week course that earned you a green beret. You fight and you kill and you see the dismembered bodies of women and children, and you are still only 18 years old. But now you have been through the initiation. You survived the test. Some of your friends won't have. You don't understand how you feel about everything you have been through, and you know you'll never be able to describe it to anyone who hasn't been there.

All the men in the video had completed a tour of duty in Iraq, despite inaccurate claims that they were raw recruits. They had been through an initiation more intense and binding than anything that can happen in any other walk of life. They've been through hellfire.

Humiliation rituals are for secret societies and gangs of petty criminals: they're make-believe. Life in the Marines is not make-believe. The footage deplored by editors shows men letting off steam, competing for a laugh. It's clear what's going on: two commando troops from the same company have challenged each other to a contest, in private, away from MoD land and out of sight of the public.

Both sides want to win. That's the way we are. We're warriors, and we're intensely competitive in everything. When we're partying, we don't play snap and drink cocoa. The challenge matches are usually football or rugby, and the emphasis is on contact sport.

There's a moment on the tape when the situation goes out of control, and a man is knocked unconscious by an NCO. That's bad, and against the whole spirit of the Marines. But what the news has not shown is what happens next, where the NCO is grabbed and restrained by two Royals. Everyone present knew the man had gone too far, and he quickly saw it, too.

Outsiders might think the men were naked to make them weak or humiliate them. In fact, nakedness makes us equals. A band of commandos have nothing to hide from each other, because nothing can be hidden: in battle the real man is laid bare. 'Naked bar' parties, where you don't get a drink if you don't strip, are the norm - you're stripping yourself of your ego and your bull. I've been stark naked with men who are closer than brothers to me, in the Arctic wastes of Norway, cold enough to freeze my balls off but also profoundly happy.

The media's over-reaction stems from ignorance. Most ex-Marines I've asked are fuming, not at the video but at comments like that in the Times: 'It looked like the worst kind of loutish bullying, fuelled by alcohol, with a sinister homo-erotic streak running through it. The pictures were reminiscent of Abu Ghraib.'

That last smear makes my blood boil. The Royal Marines have served in the worst scenarios throughout the war in Iraq, and there has not been one human rights allegation against them. They have behaved with complete humanity in an inhuman situation, maintaining perfect discipline even when securing towns that the Americans could not make safe.

Loutish bullying? It's physical banter, hard games played by tough men. Banter is constant, never-ending in the Marines: it is like therapy; how we deal with the demons we can't name. It keeps us sane. I had a mate who fought back-to-back with me in Northern Ireland, and coped, but then took a desk job, away from his band of brothers. Cut off from their banter and their mick-taking, he had a breakdown.

We send young men to war. The ones who come back are no longer young. We have to be honest enough to face that.

Dom Mee is a maritime explorer and former Royal Marines commando

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/dec/04...ry.comment