What it takes to pass the Commando Test, The Royal Marines 30-week Training Course.

Week 1, Having previously passed the three day Potential Recruits Course, you find yourself back a few months later in Lympstone, Devon.

The induction block will be your home for the next two weeks.

Eight months to go and only about 35% will make it. For the first 10 weeks gym work is concentrated on Initial Military Fitness, a form of Swedish drill, with precise, formal movements in unison.

Week one, Days six and seven, are reserved for exercise first step. Off camp for the first time. Equipped for 24 hours on Woodbury Common, before traveling the four miles back on foot. 

Week 2, Getting by physically is not enough, though it is hard enough in itself. A bone head with muscles is not the ideal marine. Winning through is a fight with your mind as well as your body.

Early in the week the troop goes through the physical tests in the US Marine Corps manual. Two minutes of Sit-ups, the Press-ups. Then 60 seconds of Burpees: stand to attention, squat, one squat thrust, back up to attention. That's One burpee. Then comes the Pull-ups. The tests finish with five continuous 60-yard sprints.

Week 3, First time on the parade ground, time to learn the basics: stand at attention at ease, easy; quick march, halt; turning left, right, and about at the halt. 

Week 4, Out to Woodbury Common for exercise twosome.  Dehydrated ration packs and only a pint of water per man per day. Water has to be conserved that pint has to replace a lot of sweat as well as  providing for washing and shaving.  

Week 5, By the end of week five your troop has had eleven swimming periods. All must pass the Battle Swimming Test by the end of the course.  Dressed in trousers and tops, with webbing pouches containing about 6Kg of weights, and with and old .303 rifle slung around their chests, the BST candidates line up to climb the steps of the diving board.  It is then simply a case of diving 3 meters down into 4 meters of water and swimming the length of the pool and back with all kit.  Pass the test, or fail the course.

Week 6, Sixteen periods of first aid are crammed into the first few weeks of the recruits course.  There'll be a written test this week, and a practical test in week Thirteen during exercise Baptist Run.  

Week Six also sees a practical introduction into the use of short range field radios.  

Week 7, On the range at Straight Point. An arm of Sandy Bay off Exmouth.  Week seven is when you really get to grips with live round firing.   

Week 8, It's time for Hunters Moon, a three night exercise away from Lympstone.  

Week 9, In the middle of the week there are two practical map reading tests held on the Common.

This week sees the first time you allowed to use the climbing wall.

Week 10, The dreaded gas chamber visit is designed to familiarize you with CS gas, the riot control gas used by the British Army. It also gives you confidence in your gas mask.  Waiting to go in.  The killer comes when the instructors make you remove your mask and say your name and address.  You cannot avoid taking a breath and inhaling inhaling the gas.

Week 11, South Dartmoor.  In week eleven you get your first taste of survival in the field.  

Instead of your usual working rig, you are wearing a basic minimum of underwear, socks, a wooly pulley, a dark blue boiler suit, boots, and a peaked foraged cap.  Your belt order webbing contains one water bottle, one mess tin, one poncho, a jack-knife, and a survival tin. 

Week 12, Introducing Jimpy. Practice starts with Stripping down the GPMG, then reassembling it - the first of many times.

Week 13, Baptist Run is a test of all the skills you have been learning in the first 12 weeks, out on Woodbury Common.

Week 14, The big drop. Abseiling at Sennen Cove sorts out the men from the boys. The trick is to descend in graceful, controlled jumps. It is all too easy to panic and pull up hard, resulting in a jerky and irregular series of drops.

Week 15, Half way. Parent's Day falls on the Thursday of week 15. This is the culmination of everything done so far: part test, part display, part ritual marking the halfway point of the course.

Week 16, Live firing. You are driven out from Okehampton for the troop's first bash at the Personal Weapon Test (PWT) on the GPMG.

Week 17, Ambush and Patrol. You're practicing the real thing: the drills and techniques you will use in combat. Most of the instructors have been in action and under hostile fire, and they will spare no effort to make sure you get it right.

Week 18, On the ropes for Battle Fitness Training. On the forbidding assault course, bodyweight control and stamina are more important than sheer strength. Anyone who has trouble taking their weight on their arms spends a lot of time in the water.

Week 19, Silent Night teaches you the skills demanded by low-intensity operations against urban terrorists.

Week 20, In this week of training, two thirds of the way through the course, you get the introduction to two formidable items of weaponry, the grenade and the 84mm anti-tank weapon.

Week 21, Set well up the side of a steep hill, Okehampton camp is a favorite base for speed marches. The troop's here for Field Firing Exercise One (FFX1), the first time you get to fire live rounds away from a laid-out range.

Week 22, Still based at Okehampton, the troop spends week 22 getting to know a small portion of Dartmoor very well indeed.

Week 23, This week you receive an intensive training course in the techniques used in a battlefield contaminated by Nuclear, Biological or Chemical weapons. The "Noddy" suit is hard to work in: you sweat unbelievably inside it, and there's nowhere for all that sweat to go. Used correctly it can enable you to survive and fight for 24 hours in a contaminated environment.

Week 24, Holdfast. After a week on camp getting writer's cramp in the lecture room and going through the tedious rituals of the NBC suit and respirator, getting out on Woodbury Common again seems like a good idea.

Week 25, The endurance course is a circular layout on a particularly wet and hilly part of Woodbury Common. The obstacle course itself is about 2.5 miles long, but has to be followed immediately by a four-mile run back to camp, where you are given a shooting test. You have 71 minutes!

Week 26, Up at the ranges at Straight Point, to watch bullet penetration demonstrations, and to learn the basics of bayonet fighting.

Week 27, On Monday of week 27 you're at RM Poole in Dorset, being introduced to the sea. The final exercise starts on Tuesday, but first you have to learn boat drills.....

Week 28, You can see the end of the exercise now. You've been on it for over a week, moving over great tracts of the West Country in pursuit of the "rebels", moving by sea, air and land. Most of all, you've moved on your own two feet.

Week 29, 13 minutes to complete the Tarzan-Assault Course pass-out. This week features the 30-mile yomp. The last obstacle between you and the green beret.

Week 30, An awful lot of drill ready for passing out.

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Last modified: August 24, 2000

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