Ex-squaddy speaks out against how soldiers today have it easy! A Teesside man is claiming today's army is a haven for weeds and wimps who wouldn't have lasted five minutes when he was in the armed forces. Mr Alan Scrote, 34 told us he is disgusted by milksop new recruits moaning about bullying. "In my day we had to bully ourselves. I once shoved my own head down the toilet and hid my own uniform from myself. It's par for the course when you're a squaddie. Get over it."

Mr Scrote - army dreamer - yesterday

He admits training can be gruelling but it's supposed to make a man of you, like it did with him. "We had to eat chemical weapons for breakfast everyday to build up our immune system and became impervious to them." He also claimed he was trained to sleep wide awake as there were several Japanese snipers hidden in the barracks ready to pick off anyone who nodded off. "I slept wide awake for ten long years. Still do," he laughed. "You weren't considered a full solider unless you could disassemble a tank and reassemble it in less than a day - stark naked - with the Sgt Major constantly menacing you with a stick that'd been dipped in dog dirt. And quite often we'd be sent on manoeuvres to the moon - with only the air in our jumpers to breathe."

HEAD BITTEN OFF
He went on to say that square bashing, or marching practice, was made all the more difficult because they had to do it in bare feet, on broken glass, with live pumas on strings being swung across the square at them. "Boy those cats can bite. A mate of mine got his head bitten clean off.

He just picked it up and, in a Tweety Pie voice, said I tawt I saw a puttycat. He then put his head under his arm and carried on marching. I was bad laughing, me." Mr Scrote said the Army top brass were very keen for recruits to bond as a regiment and hi-jinks was always important for morale. "Some of the games we got up to would have modern squaddies wetting their boots. Every Saturday night we'd play Machine Gun My Legs where we would literally machine gun each others legs.
We played quieter games too. Like Ker-Plunk. Obviously we used a bomb instead of a ball."
We checked Mr Scrote's credentials and could find no record of him ever serving in Her Majesty's Armed Forces. He said, "Of course you won't it's classified innit. If any foreign enemy found out where I lived my life could be in perilous mortal clear and present danger." We'd like to thank Mr Scrote of 6 The Garstang, Coulby Newham for this interview.