Watching the Game.

During my time at the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, we were all whisked off one evening to take part in an overnight combat exercise at Poole. They split us into two groups. One was assigned to occupy and defend a building; the other was required to attack it, capture it, and take prisoners. I was in the attacking party.

There was a lot of running about, shouting, and the banging of thunder flashes. It struck me as being all a bit pointless, since it didn’t really replicate a combat situation in which the ammunition is live and grenades do rather more damage than thunder flashes. I found myself doing what I have always been inclined to do: I stood aside and observed, rather than engage with the general mayhem. Eventually the building was taken and the ‘defenders’ captured. At that point an officer yelled at me.

‘There are two prisoners escaping,’ he screamed excitedly. ‘Get after them, for God’s sake.’

No doubt he thought I was being lazy or ineffectual in some way. He didn’t know the real reason why I was so transfixed by the scene before me. It wasn’t the noise, the mayhem, and the overbearing silliness of it all; it was the violence. The real violence. We were all cadets together. We worked, played, drank and exercised together. We were all friends together, or so I thought. Which was why I couldn’t understand the reason for the violence. The attackers were treating the captured defenders with real brutality. The punches were real, so were the kicks, and so were the blows with rifle butts.

It was the first time I’d witnessed how easily people can have the veneer of decent behaviour stripped away from them. These were highly educated, intelligent young men destined for the officer ranks, and yet they were treating their colleagues worse than punchbags. And all because of the heat of a replicated moment.

That’s why I wonder what really goes on in genuine combat situations when the stakes are higher and the heat of the moment far more intense. I never forgot it, and it wasn’t to be the only time I’d witness it.