A teenage Royal Marine recruit who killed himself on a railway line after claiming he was being bullied by instructors, should have received better help from medics after self-harming, a coroner has found.
Connor Clark, 18, said he was told he was “useless”, a “failure” and the “worst recruit” by the training team at the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone, Devon.
A coroner said that Clark self harmed by cutting himself because he was “tired and vulnerable’” and wanted to remove himself from the training environment.
Philip Spinney, the senior Devon coroner, said that Clark was “not singled out and not treated any differently than any other recruit” but should have been referred by medics for an urgent case conference with the chain of command and this failure “more than minimally contributed to his death”.
He said that when Clark mislaid a £40 blank firing attachment for his weapon, this was “a significant factor” and “weighed heavy on him and overwhelmed” him to the point he tragically ended his life. Spinney said that this also more than minimally contributed to his death.
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Able Seaman Chris Lee, who was friends with Clark, said that he seemed “stressed and worried” about losing the attachment, which would have been noticed at a locker inspection on the morning he vanished.
The inquest heard that Clark may have been worried that shore leave for the troop may have been cancelled because he had lost the firing attachment.
Clark, who was from Norwich but was born in New Zealand, was just three weeks into a Recruit Orientation Phase when he escaped over the wire perimeter fence and lay down on the railway track in June 2021.
Other recruits woke to find a makeshift noose and bayonet outside their dorm — and a suicide note was found two hours after the alarm was raised.
Referring to the alleged bullying comments, Clark had said that Captain Mark Thrift and a corporal made the remarks to him “implicitly and explicitly” during the brief time he was at the base.
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Thrift, now a Major, denied making the comments to Clark but admitted: “I did tell him he was failing.”
During a week-long inquest, the coroner heard claims that there was a “hostile environment” and that instructors swore and shouted at the recruits.
However, Thrift said if there had been any bullying it would have been brought to his attention as the recruits have to complete the month-long ROP phase — the transition from civilian to military life — before starting the mainstream training course.
Thrift, who was later a member of the bearer party at the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral, said that “inexperienced but passionate instructors” could take foul language and negative comments too far.
Sergeant Clinton Williams, then a Corporal, agreed that recruits were sworn and shouted at but said: “It is a harsh, aggressive environment but, in my opinion, proportionate.”
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He denied telling Clark that he was a “failure” and said that he was unaware that the teenager was singled out for punishment.
Other recruits gave contradictory evidence, with some telling the coroner that Clark was not bullied by instructors, while others said that he was “certainly targeted by the trainers”.
The inquest at Exeter coroner’s court heard that Clark struggled with his personal administration and self-harmed with a knife, causing an injury to his forearm because he was “missing out on sleep and downtime”.
He admitted to a medic that he had self-harmed because he had been “making lots of mistakes” and was “always at the back of the class” and the worst recruit.
On the night before Clark disappeared, the troop had been given a punishment and at some point Clark threw a duvet over the perimeter fence, crawled beneath the razor wire and waited for the first train at 7am to come along the line.
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Clark’s mother Tracy raised concerns about how he was treated by the training staff.
She said that her rugby-playing son wanted to be a marine when he was 12 years old and was “kind, generous, selfless and thoughtful”.
The coroner said that the “inadequate response” by the chain of command to Clark going missing did not materially contribute to his death.
He also said that the actions of his fellow recruits did not contribute to his death, nor did the conduct of the training team and said that he was “not singled out and not treated any differently than any other recruit”, even though he made more mistakes than others and was punished more.
He said that Clark was highly critical of his own abilities and referred to himself as the “worst recruit”.
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Spinney said that Clark was under “enormous pressure and that became intolerable for him when he was exhausted with poor and limited sleep”.
He recorded a conclusion of suicide.
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