Royal Navy

[racingsnake]

Anyone out there been in the RN.
Want to know what the eight weeks at raleigh is really like ??

 

[Peter Burgess]

I hate to think what's coming......   

 

[racingsnake]

Good Point Peter, but I am serious my son is joining soon and I would like to ask for serious replies only

Thanks

 

[Peter Burgess]

Oh, it sounded like you knew something you wanted to share with us, rather than asking a sensible question. I'll go and stand in the corner and be quiet.

 

[Dep]

I was in the RN, I entered as an artificer in 1981 and was based at HMS Fiscard on the other side of the road to HMS Raleigh, not the most successful career choice, I soon discovered that I didn't like being told what to do - I took on the Navy and they won! I left in 1983.

Fiscard has now closed (derelict ten years ago when I last saw it, and probably a housing estate by now) and all new entrant training for all branches is now at Raleigh.

A few years ago I bumped into someone who had also joined as an artificer but more recently - things have changed a little as modern attitudes have now reached even the armed forces.

We did a lot of our R&IT (resource and initiative training) on Bodmin Moor at a place called Cardinham, an old china clay mine. Aparrently they don't use it any more as it was deemed 'too hard'?

In my day the idea was to give new entrants as much shit as possible to weed out those who could not take it - there is no use for shrinking violets in the forces.

Accommodation at Raleigh was fairly modern then, but unless there has been extensive rebuilding I suspect it might be a bit old-fashioned.
Raleigh is a large base and fairly self contained with plenty to do.

The key emphasis then and now is on personal fitness - I STRONGLY advise your son to start running a few miles each day, he will be doing lots of this and if he is not 100% aerobically fit he will suffer.
I cannot emphasise that enough - GET FIT - very fit!

He needs to know when to speak and when not to, and have the basic ability to get on with people.

Living in close confinement with 20-30 other people means that if you do anything wrong or make yourself unpopular it will not be forgotten - after lights out there is ample time to settle scores.
In my day bullying was a major problem, I think that this has reduced but even so the idea of the armed forces is to create fighters so a certain amount of bullying is not only tolerated but actively encouraged.

Make sure he knows how to launder his clothes, sew and use an iron, he will be doing a lot of that during his new entry period.

Torpoint, and Plymouth over the Tamar is a rough place but at the same time nice enough when you get to know it.
Initailly he won't get any shore-leave during new entry but afer he has 'passed out' he will be allowed to go into town.

If he gets to go to Scraesdon fort up at Antony village which the RN use for training then tell him to have a good poke about in the tunnels underneath!

Not sure that I would advise a career in the armed forces for my kids, but if that is what he wants to do then fair-play to him, and I wish him the very best.

 

[Cave Monkey]

I have a friend who works down there as a civilian, he says it does not seem to have changed much in the last 10 years since we used to frequent the place as cadets.

As Dep has pointed out, They want physically fit, healthy, tough, obedient young ‘people’ at the end of basic training. If that means they have to break you and rebuild you, they will find a way to do it.

As long as your son is well mannered, polite, mentally strong, capable of lifting his own body weight and can run round the block he should be ok.

Two of the best things I have ever done in my life were the fire fighting and damage control courses at Raleigh, it made all the repetitive and mundane stuff worth while.


On a side note..

Dep, did you ever do the gun or log run ?

 

[Dep]

I have a friend who works down there as a civilian, he says it does not seem to have changed much in the last 10 years since we used to frequent the place as cadets.
As Dep has pointed out, They want physically fit, healthy, tough, obedient young ‘people’ at the end of basic training. If that means they have to break you and rebuild you, they will find a way to do it.
As long as your son is well mannered, polite, mentally strong, capable of lifting his own body weight and can run round the block he should be ok.
Two of the best things I have ever done in my life were the fire fighting and damage control courses at Raleigh, it made all the repetitive and mundane stuff worth while.
On a side note..
Dep, did you ever do the gun or log run ?

A small world - I didn't know you'd been there.

I remember the fire training school there - that was pretty cool.
Along the west side of the site there is a stream and an assault course that crosses and recrosses it - did that more times than I can remember - slowest team usually gets to go round again - and that will either kill you or make you fit.

We used to run from Fiscard main gate (opposite to Raleigh's) out towards Antony, round the back and along the road back to Torpoint and then back to Fiscard - four miles in all.
My one regret is not maintaining my level of fitness from then, back then I could do that and still have the capability to do it a second time - as we had to on occasions when we weren't fast enough.

On one exercise at Cardinham on the assault course there our team of four contained me and three people I really did not get on with at all (hence my previous comment about learning to get on with people - this is a lesson I learnt the hard way in the Navy hence my warning - smart-arses aren't liked - especially not gobby ones - like I was)
Anyway, as the smallest my job was to get to obstacle like walls first and stand there cupping my hands so that others could climb up me, and then reach down and pull me up.
One particular guy with whom I really did not get along with used to take the opportunity to gouge my face with his boots as he climbed up me - until one day as he did this I waited until he was standing on my shoulders before grabbing his ankles and tipping him over backwards onto the rocks below. I wasn't sorry then, and don't feel sorry now, he deserved it; but it is a huge contrast to the way we go caving as a proper team based on mutual trust and respect rather than a militarily enforced pecking order.

We did have a few field-gun teams and I had a go at running pulling the limber but it wasn't really my thing.
The log run wasn't really training as much as a punishment. A long length of telegraph pole with rope handles, after you and your group have run round the playing fields a few times with it you make damn sure that whatever it was you did wrong you damn well don't do it again!

I was in the navy during the Falklands war, we were used as general dogsbodies for loading and unloading the ships as they came and went - I was also in the band and played a few ships away when the task-force sailed, and whne they came back. The Argentine surrender was my 17th birthday, I remember it well as I spent much of the day hiding as I didn't want to get thrown in the static tanks (a birthday treat for all - big tanks of emergency water for firefighting - full of slime and algae)

Looking back on it I think I was too young, I was 16 in June'81 and in the Navy by that September. With the benefit of hindsight most of my problems were due to immaturity and not having a good enough understanding of the adult world, I had opinions and not enough sense to keep them to myself. I got into more fights in those 18 months than in the rest of my life put together including my school years.

I just manged to get out before my 18th birthday** at which point I would have signed on and committed myself to 22 years service with an optional 10 afterwards. I would have retired by now, probably as a Chief Petty Officer, artificers usually end up as PO or CPOs in charge of a technical section, in my case I was an air-electronics artificer and would likely have served my time on carriers.
My original plan as a kid was to go to university and enter as an officer, had I stuck to that I might have had a more successful carreer, but issues at home meant that I wanted to leave ASAP, and so as soon as I was 16 off I went.

**The armed forces will not let you sign on as a 'minor', I got out by deliberately failing key exams - AKA "working one's ticket". Made damn sure I passed the exams for my engineering diploma though.

If I had my life over again I probably wouldn't do that again, but all in all I gained from the experience, I learnt a great deal about myself, but far more about other people - ie that most of the people you will meet in life are arseholes - the real life skill is in seeking out that small percentage of people who aren't. Interestingly I also learnt that my greatest weakness in the Navy was my independance of thought - which paradoxically turned out to be my greatest strength in civilian life.

Interestingly I immediately tried to enlist in the RAF after I left the Navy, but when they found out why I left the Navy, thank god they told me to go away!

 

[racingsnake]

Cheers boys
Thanks for the info. Its kinda what I thought it may be like. In answer he is a fit lad and polite,but it will have to be a big hard ba*tard who tries to bully him so I don't have any worried on that score . Thanks for  the good wishes

D

 

[Slug]

Interestingly I immediately tried to enlist in the RAF after I left the Navy, but when they found out why I left the Navy, thank god they told me to go away!
[/quote]

Saw the light then ?.........Should have joined the RAF first........6 weeks of (not very strenuous) running around and shooting guns.........after that,,,,20 rounds once a year to re-qualify, running around... totally voluntary, and no digging holes either.........We had our own regiment to do that for us 




Little chance of drowning too

 

[Dep]

Yes, with the benefit of hindsight you may be right.
I joined the Sea Cadets at the tender age of 11, and I was pretty much single-mindedly set on that career path from then on to the total exclusion of all else.

Ironically I have always been fascinated by aircraft and had selected a trade that would have had me in the fleet air arm, main reason that I really did not want to serve on submarines, too claustrophobic (?!) and zero chance of survival when things go pear-shaped.

 

[Peter Burgess]

Yes, with the benefit of hindsight you may be right.
I joined the Sea Cadets at the tender age of 11, and I was pretty much single-mindedly set on that career path from then on to the total exclusion of all else.

Ironically I have always been fascinated by aircraft and had selected a trade that would have had me in the fleet air arm, main reason that I really did not want to serve on submarines, too claustrophobic (?!) and zero chance of survival when things go pear-shaped.

I thought submarines were more like cucumbers than pears.

 

[Dep]

Yes, the problem arises when the submarine suddenly ceases to be cucumber shaped!