I really do.
However, I'm a little bit worried about breaking the Official Secrets Act or something. I don't want to get myself in any trouble and so maybe writing up my experiences on a public forum like this isn't the wisest decision I'll ever make.
I've made bad decisions in the past though.
Let me start by saying that I think the 'Last Thursdayism' theory probably has some merit; that is to say, sometimes I doubt that my own memories of these events are real. I question myself often and wonder if the memories of my career are invented, put in my head by a divine being last Thursday, or Friday, or five minutes ago. Other days I wonder if I have a form of schizophrenia that means it was me who invented my own past. Some days I wonder if my memories are the result of government experiments.
I think that last theory could be the most likely, because I know that the government does experiment on people. The
British government does anyway. Possibly not as much as the US government - the Yanks have much laxer rules in terms of what they can/can't do according to their RoE and what's permissible legally - but the British government does test some bits and pieces on... people.
I'm not talking about crazy UFO technology or anything like that. Not now, anyway.
I just want to talk about some stuff that sits within the more NBC realm today.
I want to be vague though. For obvious reasons. To that end I'm going to set down a few ground rules:
- I will be vague with dates - I will say "sometime between 2004 and 2008 I did basic training" instead of in November 2006 I began basic training. And if I do say "in November 2006 I started basic training" then you can be 99% sure that I didn't start basic training in November 2006. Maybe I started in March 2004.
- I will *try* and be vague with locations when possible. Occasionally. This will be a lot harder than subtly changing dates because some of the stories are inextricably linked to the locations in which they took place. Just keep it in mind though, because I don't want to catalogue my entire career posting-by-posting on Reddit.
- Names will obviously be fake.
- I reserve the right to misname, misremember, be unsure, and contradict myself. Reserving the right to contradict myself seems like a good idea. Then if I mess up and say too much, I can back peddle without issue. Or something like that. I don't want to get charged with divulging government secrets, do I?
Also, regarding 'Rule 4' I just want to say that I have a terrible memory anyway. My sister can remember all sorts of stuff from our childhood, but I often need a prompt. I don't remember birthdays. I can't remember the names of any of my school teachers bar, maybe, at a push, five? My Form Tutor, Miss Charles; my Head of Year Mr Teeson; my Headteacher Mr Borewood; my IT teacher Mr Yarn; my Science Teacher Mrs Heart. Oh, and there have been times that I've been in a bar and seen someone that I recognised but couldn't remember how or why. On more than one occasion it's turned out that I've slept with them.
Those examples aren't linked, by the way. I didn't sleep with any teachers.
Jeez, I'm rambling. Fuck.
It's like I want to tell these stories but I'm still scared of doing so. Fuck.
So.
I started basic training in October 2006. I'm from a small town in the North of England. Working class. Normal. Well, that last one my internal monologue posed as a question. Normal? Yeah. Well maybe.
I did my selection for the Army shortly after my eighteenth birthday. You can't join British military intelligence - the Intelligence Corps - until you're 18. It's one of the cap-badges of the British Army that has an 18 and above stipulation for joining. I don't know the other cap-badges that are the same, but I expect the RMP and maybe the Medical Corps fall into that category.
Is that relevant though? I'm not sure.
My basic training was with other cap badges anyway. It was down in Winchester in the South of England and it was the first time I - and the majority of the other recruits - had spent a lot of time away from home. We were put in a Troop of (roughly) 40 recruits which was divided into 4 sections. In an (accommodation) block there were four rooms, each of which had ten beds. There were 8 recruits, including me, in my section. Two empty beds. We had a Cpl and a LSgt and a Sgt as our training staff.
I'm not sure how relevant all of this information is, but I'm just trying to give as much context as possible so that there are less questions later on. I don't want to answer questions because they'll just make me question myself and I'm 99% certain what I'm remembering really happened.
Though even thinking about writing it down, it doesn't seem real.
The meaty stuff. OK.
Maybe a month or so into basic training we started doing our NBC training. I don't know if you've any idea about what that comprises, but basically you learn how to put this ridiculous NBC suit on and get to experience the comicalness of watching your fellow recruits trying to do normal stuff in oversized rubber boots and gloves and work out how to change the canister on your respirator with your eyes closed. Stuff like that. You suit up in pairs, help each other with the gloves - they're horrendous - and then do 'sniff tests' and check each other's pupils for dilation and other signs of exposure to NBC warfare.
Wait! NBC is Nuclear, Biological, Chemical.
Sorry if you didn't already know that.
So yeah, we're doing NBC warfare training and learning how to use the suit that will 'protect' us in the case the enemy launches a nuke in our general direction. If you're interested, in case of a nuclear bomb falling in general proximity to you, then you should lay on the ground with your head pointing toward the blast and your limbs tucked beneath you. Close your eyes.
Yeah, that'll do it. Safe and sound.
The blast will just pass over your head.
I'm not here to talk to you all about nukes though. Both chemical and biological warfare can be worse than nuclear in some instances. I'm not a scientist and you'd have to read up about Porton Down to really get the down-low on what the British military can produce. I've Googled bits and pieces myself since I left the forces, just to confirm or deny things I think I heard or read when I was still serving. There are things you want to forget immediately after reading them.
I'm off on a tangent again.
Once you learn how to use the suit and all of the recruits have got the basics, it's time to test your new skills in the 'gas chamber.' It's not called a 'gas chamber' though, because that's not politically correct. It's the "respirator testing facility." 'Respirator' being the proper name for a 'gas mask.'
Basically, it goes like this; once all recruits have learnt how to properly suit up and make sure that they can dress themselves in the NBC suit properly, without leaks, and they know how to change the canister on their respirator, it's time to go into the respirator testing facility and put those skills to the test. They're supposed to use CS gas, like the stuff they use for riot control.
This might sound odd, but it's fun. Everyone is kind of psyched up and ready to see who copes with the CS gas the best. What I mean by that is that, although you're supposed to do the canister change without letting the CS gas into your mask, the instructors (Cpl J and LSgt H) were always going to make sure that you got a dose of it to see how you react. Whose eyes start pissing tears, who's dribbling like a baby with a brain injury, who begins to wretch up their stomach acid. It's fun. The less you spunk snot out of your nose onto your upper lip, the more manly you are. A great 'game' for lads aged mainly between 16 (the infantry/cavalry regiments do recruit younger than 18 and we had a few in our troop) and a source of a lot of laughs.
And that's how it went.
At least the first time.
Then for some reason, a week or two later, we got told that we had to redo some of that training. We, the recruits, weren't told the exact reason, but a rumour started circulating the accommodation block that Porton Down had got a "new type of gas" that they wanted to test. Obviously it could've been Cpl J and LSgt H messing around with us and trying to scare us. They were jokers. Nobody was worried, especially as we'd done this before and how much worse could this new gas be? The British government and the Chain of Command wouldn't do something that would harm us. That was obvious. Totally obvious to a naive 18 year old.
The second time was different though. We went through the same steps, but the gas
was different. Fuck. Like yeah, it was different. I know I just said that was the point, but it was noticeably different to us, recruits, who'd done this drill - the full drill - once before.
We go in the gas chamber, the respirator testing facility, and there are about twenty of us in the first batch. We're with LSgt H. The second batch, the other half of the troop comprising two sections, is outside with Cpl J.
We're in there and it's easy enough.
LSgt H will set the gas tablet off, we'll all remove the canister from our gas masks, pass it five times behind our backs, screw it back on, individually take our mask off when signalled by LSgt H and repeat our name, rank and number to him, then we'd put the mask back on and could leave. Same as before with the CS gas.
Yet it didn't work like that.
First of all the gas wasn't whitey-grey like CS gas. The gas was black. I don't think LSgt H knew that it was going to be so black and so thick. As soon as the gas began filling the gas chamber it was impossible to see the man next to you. It's not easy to hear people in the gas chamber either. You've got a mask on and a hood over that - all your skin has to be covered - and the person speaking also has their voice muffled by their mask. Once the room was filled with black smoke we all kind of stood and waited for the order from LSgt H to remove our canisters and pass it five times behind our backs. But we couldn't see him. We couldn't see anything.
Maybe I'm just speaking for myself now, but I just remember being in that gas chamber and not being able to hear, not being able to see, and obviously I wasn't going to act on my own volition because I was an army recruit at basic training. I just stood there in the darkness, senseless, waiting. Suddenly I felt alone, like the other ~20 people in the room had disappeared and I was waiting for... I don't know. Then, from feeling alone, I felt like there was a presence right behind me. Over me. Pressing against me. Imagine when your partner comes up behind you and gives you a hug, but instead of feeling cosy and loved and protected, you feel oppressed, like a prisoner, about to be crushed from all sides. Time seemed to distort. Then I heard my last name. "Brand!" "Brand!" "Brand, NAME, RANK AND NUMBER!" "BRAND!"
I took my mask off and immediately felt like I was falling straight down a mine shaft. Then my eyes rolled back and I felt like I was falling backwards off a cliff. Like I was falling feet over head down a mine shaft.
Then I'm outside with my eyes streaming tears and sweat rolling down my forehead, and my nose and mouth have thick globulous mucousy-saliva sticking to my lips and chin and dripping onto the grass. I pull off those stupid black rubber gloves and wipe my eyes and face and through blurry vision see everyone else is there with me. All ~20 guys that were in the chamber and the other two sections who had been waiting to go into the chamber.
All in the same state.
Once we'd all recovered, Cpl J explained that our half of the troop had been in the chamber for 15 minutes without anyone leaving. He'd watched through the little square window in the door but could only see black smoke. The first of us should've been out after maybe five minutes, but Cpl J waited thinking that maybe the timings were off because of the new gas - "I thought maybe LSgt H had read on the packaging that he had to wait longer, so I waited" - but when it got to 15 minutes he felt obliged to open the door and try get us out. However, as soon as he opened the door the gas "hissed out like steam from a kettle" and anyone within a 50 metre radius - i.e. the second half of the troop - inhaled the gas.
Everyone, about 40 of us, the entire troop, had the same experience.
We all felt like we'd fallen down a mine shaft and that's all we remembered.
Except five of us.
I say "five of us" but thankfully I wasn't one of these five. Five recruits came out of that gas chamber that day with more memories than when they went in. Five recruits came out of that gas chamber with the memory of their deaths.
I mean, they didn't exactly know that at the time. They just assumed that the experimental gas had provoked nightmares. Vivid, bloodcurdling nightmares.
In fact, that's what would make sense because one of the 'death memories' didn't conform to what we know about nature. I can't explain it though. I can't prove it. This is when I doubt my own memories.
Here's what happened next. Five of the recruits, over the next few days, began talking about their "nightmares" during the incident in the gas chamber. I'll call them One, Two, Three, Four, and Five.
One dreamt that he'd committed suicide. He'd struggled with the posting to his first unit, didn't get on with some of the other soldiers, was worried about his wife cheating in the event he was posted abroad, and so he'd drank a bit, taken some pills, and hung himself. He could describe everything from the brand of whiskey he drank, to the pills he took, to how he felt both mentally and physically as he stepped off a dining room chair.
Two dreamt that he'd died on tour. In Afghan'. His vehicle had driven over an IED and he'd been killed almost immediately. I say almost immediately because Two could describe in too much detail the injuries that he had and the sensation of trying with all his might to speak his last words, but being unable to even form the correct shapes with his lips.
Three wouldn't talk about it.
Four said that he'd died in a car accident. He said that he'd been on tour and that on his first drive home from base after returning he was eager to get back to see his brothers, parents and girlfriend. He said he hadn't checked his car over before getting in, that he remembered being tired, that he hadn't driven for four months - he had driven a few times on R&R - and that it had been raining heavily when he clipped the central reservation, bounced across two lanes of the a-road, and flipped his car into a ditch.
Five said that in the dead of night he'd climbed the perimeter fence of ATR Winchester using a towel to stop himself getting caught on the barbed wired, and that he was planning to cross the field, cut through the woods, and hitchhike home from Andover Road. He'd had enough of training, had changed his mind about wanting to be a soldier, and an incident in the canteen had been the final straw. His problem was that the deadline for pulling out of basic training had passed and he was now legally committed to serving four years, which is why he decided to do a runner 'Great Escape' style.
"How did he die though?" I hear you ask
Well this is where I - and probably a few other recruits if not all of them - started questioning our sanity.
Five said that he got over the fence without issue, crossed the field and entered the woods in order to get to Andover Road. It's only a very small woods and ATR Winchester only uses it for a few bits of field craft stuff, I don't remember exactly. But Five said that as soon as he enters that wood he begins to feel like he did in the gas chamber; likes he's falling, but this time there's no gas to stop him seeing and what he sees is these tiny little creatures. He says they looked like fairies, but "blacker" and "they give off evil." He keeps walking though, because he
can see and hear, but he feels like he's falling, like he's drunk, like he's stumbling, through these woods. Then the 'fairies' begin coming up to him, like they know he's out of it, and just teasingly at first like they're daring each other, they begin to touch him. It's "like they're playing tag with me but I can't tag them back." I remember Five saying this as clear as day. Fuck. Then he says one of them sticks its claws into me and rips off a tiny chunk of flesh. He winces and keeps trying to go forward, but now the 'fairies' are getting braver and they're all ripping tiny chunks of flesh off him. He says they begin stripping him "like when you strip wallpaper from a wall" and he says he's screaming now because there are dozens of them ripping at him and biting at him with these needle sharp claws and teeth that he hadn't noticed immediately.
Five says that he felt like he'd been rolled on not needles before he passed out and doesn't remember any more of his 'death.'
So that's what we got for maybe a week after the incident at the gas chamber; four 'ghost stories' from the guys that could remember their deaths as the side effect of the gas (and one who refused to talk about it). Yet, surely that's all they were? They had to be ghost stories because obviously Five wasn't going to die being attacked by fairies after scaling the perimeter fence.
Well.
A week later is when the deadline passes for any recruit wanting to drop out. Five doesn't drop out.
Ten days later there's an argument in the canteen. There's a comment book where recruits can express any gripes they have with the food being served. Nobody ever writes anything bad in it. Five writes that "the chicken is all bone and gristle and no meat." The head chef sees it, complains to LSgt H, and there's an 'argument' - as much as a recruit can argue back - and Five is punished with 50 press-ups. Standard. But Five had had enough.
13 days later, Five's section wakes up to find his bed empty. He's gone. Outside the window there's a towel left hanging over the fence, caught on the barbed wire.
A couple of days later LSgt H and Cpl J gather all the troop outside, explain that Five had scaled the fence, crossed the woods and flagged down a car on Andover Road. They said he'd made it all the way back to Wales! From bloody Winchester. In the middle of the night. He'd been brought back, charged with desertion or something (I might be filling in the blanks in my memory here) and that he'd either spend four years in military jail or he'd be given a chance to pass out with a later troop if he decided to give training another go.
Much more logical than evil fairies, no?
Totally believable.
We all believed it too. Maybe I still do.
Except that about 4 years later I read in the paper that a squaddie had tragically died after crashing his car not long after returning home from tour . I recognised his last name immediately. It was Four. He'd come back and the first opportunity he got he jumped in his car which had been stood for months in the barracks' car park. The police report said he lost control going over standing water far too fast on the a-road between where he was based and where his family home was. The car was found upside down in a ditch.
I suspected he'd clipped the central reservation too, although the article I read didn't mention that.
I should've put this down to coincidence to save my own sanity, but instead I Googled One and Two to see if there were reports of their deaths in the media. One had hung himself. Two had died in Afghanistan. The details matched what I remember One and Two said in the days and weeks after the gas chamber incident.
Strange how something that happened four years ago can pop up and hit you like a fucking sledge hammer.
It's like, four years ago I was happy to believe that Five had gone AWOL, but that was about as exciting as it got. He'd been 'caught' and punished by the military and was either back to being a civilian or he'd eventually completed basic training and had joined his unit somewhere. It was something I'd ever worried about because, sadly, after basic training you don't always keep in touch with the guys that go off to do Phase 2 training in other locations. You only know them by their last names too. Plus, back in 2005 or whenever I did basic training, we didn't have as much social media as we do now. Maybe it's different in 2019. We also had no reason to doubt LSgt H and Cpl J; it's possibly they'd been lied to too, I suppose.
It sounds like I'm making excuses for why I didn't contact Five or consider, during a period of four years, that the truth about what happened at basic training might've been different from what we were told by LSgt H and Cpl J.
Why would I doubt it? Jesus.
Come on.
Think about the alternative!
The army tested some weird gas on Phase One recruits (and instructors) that gave them premonitions of their own deaths and then a recruit got ripped apart and eaten by fucking fairies trying to go AWOL? Years later three of the other recruits that experienced the same side effect of the gas died as they'd predicted.
Yeah, right, sure.
You do get the implication of what I'm saying, don't you?
The two major things being that the British government is willing to test chemical weapons on its own citizens and the second is that even in relatively small woods in the United Kingdom there are horrid little creatures that will kill you. I'm not saying this to scare you, I'm saying this because - I know, I'm a dick and should've said earlier - this probably isn't the worse story I have from my time in the Intelligence Corps. There are dangerous things up and down this country that the general public should be aware of - both natural and the result of us humans fucking about - and I'm just trying to help.
I'm stoked now. I was apprehensive about writing this all down but this feels right now. I should do it.
Honestly, the alternative is the reality.
The public should know.
By the way, I worked all this out pretty sharpish, but it was just I hadn't really put the pieces of
this particular little 'mystery' together until much later. All through my career there were "what the fuck" moments, but yeah, technically this one belongs first chronologically. It just beats out Lucky the Gambian by a couple of weeks.
Anyway, I should go because it's late here. I just wanted to get this off my chest. Take it with a pinch of salt though. I do. I mean, I did inhale a lot of experimental chemical black gas back in basic training. That could've done anything to my mind. My brain might've run out of my nose and I might be dead or it could've caused me to hallucinate the last decade of my life. Although I think some of the things I've seen are too unbelievable for a simple mind like me to make up, even with the help of chemical warfare.
I don't know if I'll post again. I don't know if I'm breaking any laws. But even if I'm not, that doesn't mean there won't be people out there who have an interest in keeping me silenced.
That I know to be true.
EDIT: I decided to talk about something else...
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