From Kosovo to a blazing car in Bristol

Jonathan Thompson talks to Marines about the frustration and boredom of fire duty

"It's almost like a prison here for us," says 30-year old Nick Courtice, glancing around the condemned Territorial Army centre in Bristol.

It's 3am on Saturday morning and the Royal Marine – who in 14 years of service has seen active duty in Iraq, Congo and Sierra Leone – is sitting beside a discarded Scrabble board waiting for the red phone to ring.

Marine Courtice is one of 39 military personnel, almost entirely Marines, assigned to the Temporary Service Fire Station at the TA headquarters in Horfield – responsible for the north of the city.

Outside, two stately Green Goddesses sit in the drizzling rain, prepped and ready to go in a matter of seconds; but it has been a quiet night.

The teams, split into two watches, are working 24-hour shifts, beginning and ending at 7am each day.

As Marine Courtice speaks, other seasoned forces personnel doze or move restlessly in a large, dilapidated area bearing more resemblance to a sixth-form common room than to an army barracks.

"At the end of the day, we're doing a job," says Marine Courtice, sipping from a cup of coffee, "but often it's extremely boring – almost mind-numbing."

There are other, more pressing concerns on the Marine's mind. He has little idea when he will next be allowed home, and his wife is due to give birth to their first child any day now.

As well as this, in a strange twist of fate, Marine Courtice is due to leave the Royal Marines in February – to become a fireman.

"It's mainly for the stability the job will offer, especially with a family on the way," he explains. It is a decision he took over a year ago, long before the current strikes were planned, but he confessed to being "surprised" with the reality of life as a firefighter during his short time at Horfield.

"I thought when we started that we'd be working from the minute we came on until the minute we came off," he says. "I didn't think we'd be having five-hour breaks or longer between shouts."

Tonight has been particularly quiet. As the hours drag by, many of the Marines doze on temporary beds behind ageing theatrical curtains on the decrepit stage.

Others play cards or watch videos in the protracted periods between "shouts" – emergency calls put through to their operations room. As dawn approaches, the evening's log tells its own tale: two calls have been registered – both due to a fire alarm at the local hospital being set off by an overheated computer monitor.

Then, at 5.03am, the bell rings. Hardly believing their luck, one of the crews scrambles into a Green Goddess and is on the road, with blue lights flashing and a police escort leading the way, in under two minutes.

The emergency turns out to be a Peugeot 205 incinerating rapidly on a nearby housing estate. The crew arrives at the scene and has the blaze under control in a matter of seconds.

The temporary firefighters continue to hose the vehicle for a considerable time after the blaze is out – "just to make sure" – and seem almost disappointed to have to return to base.

There's time for one more false alarm – a man briefly threatening to jump off the roof of the local branch of Currys – before the shift is over.

As one team gratefully steps down, another wearily begins its 24 hours of duty. Many of them share the misgivings of Marine Courtice.

One of the new Green Goddess drivers is Paul Brewitt, 20, also a Marine, who jokes that the vehicles are quite possibly older than his parents.

"I used to hate getting into the Goddesses, but once you're used to them and you've got your confidence up it's all right," he said.

"Morale's not that high at the moment, with all the uncertainty and the fact that the next set of strikes could take us into Christmas Day."

Marine Philip Milner, 31, who returned in September from a three-month operation in Afghanistan, was less tactful about his frustrations.

"We've all been pulled away from our units, our families, and many of us have missed leave," he said.

"I've served in Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Afghanistan, but it's quite off the scale here.

"The hardest thing to understand is a public service that's allowed to strike.

"We've just spent months traipsing up and down mountains in Afghanistan: if we were to drop our weapons, who would carry them for us?"

Minutes later, the bell rings again, and the Royal Marines speed off to tackle another situation a world away from the mountains of Afghanistan – a road traffic accident on the M5.