Tank News and Blog

The Royal Marines are renowned for having one of the toughest training regimes in the military outside of the SAS, and two Tank clients – Raz, owner of the Curry Lounge in Nottingham and Neil, managing director of Versaclimber UK – who both have strong links with the armed forces, went to experience a day of Marines training to see first hand how the recruits benefit from their input.

Now, money can’t buy social media opportunities like this (unless, of course, you use a certain aptly-named Nottingham PR agency), so we dusted off the chloroform and… persuaded… our account exec Glen to tag along. He couldn’t just stand back and tweet about it, though. It would only be genuine if he had a go himself. There was no other way.

After arriving bright and very, very early, our three Rambo extras were briefed on the 32 weeks of burning, exhausting hell it takes to train the recruits, culminating in a 30-mile run. Carrying 100lbs of body armour. And food and water. And radios. And weapons. Over moorland. It makes the 27-mile London Marathon look like a stroll in the park.

Suited up in combat gear, the trio were given a deafening demonstration in clearing a building and taught how to break in using a battering ram and the wonderfully named ‘hooligan bar’.

After being shown a line up of guns straight from the set of Star Wars, each was entrusted with an SA80 automatic rifle and live ammo, and instructed to hit a square inch of tape 40 metres away. We were worried Glen would miss the target and shoot someone over in Exmouth, but they were all unnervingly good at this. We’re a bit uncomfortable now.

Then came the perilous assault course, stretching the length of a football field – and then a bit more uphill. After being taught how to hang off a rope using only their left armpit, the boys tackled the timed course. Delights included vaulting a big water trough, a 6-foot wall, monkey bars over rancid water, various awkward things to climb over and under, muddy tunnels and more rope climbing. Then they were all chucked into the river estuary for a “run”, waist-high in rather dubious water. They were all still alive at the end, but it was touch and go for a while.

We were rather hoping that this would toughen our account exec up a bit, but it seems he’s just gone back to drinking tea and eating all our biscuits. Only now he’s trained to break into the safe and shoot us. Brilliant.