MRF Shadow Troop

by Simon Cursey

  With it being late at night, wet, and almost deserted on the roads, I had no choice but to walk and run the entire way to my parents’ home. Sometimes I’d take refuge, huddling in the corner of a bus shelter to warm up and eating a bar of chocolate, before moving on again. It was still dark and miserable when I arrived at approximately 04:00 hrs and everywhere was completely, ringingly silent in a way you just do not hear any longer. I didn’t want to wake my parents that early, so I forced my way through one of the windows in our caravan, which was parked down the side of the house. Inside I found a couple of blankets, so I pulled off my boots and curled up to try and get a little sleep before first light broke. By 08:30 hrs, to everyone’s amazement and surprise, I clambered out of the caravan window and walked in the front door to enjoy a nice hot bath, while mum made me a wonderful sausage, egg and bacon breakfast. They really couldn’t understand how I had managed to walk and run such a distance through the weather in the middle of the night, and me still only 15 years old. It was the Army, Mum – but I began to realise it was also what I was becoming. I had developed the ability, and the competence, to do what I decided on.

  ‘It was only 20-odd miles, and a good bit of exercise,’ I said with a grin as I got stuck into breakfast. ‘Just doing what I’ve been doing for the last six months.’

  Back at camp time seemed to fly by. Before we knew it we’d done over a year, and the passage of time in the outside world seemed to be marked, at least in my memory, by news of deaths. In April 1968 Jim Clark – who had won the Formula One World Championship for the second time not long before I’d joined up – was killed during a Formula 2 race at the Hockenheim track in Germany, just 32 years old. He hit a tree and broke his neck, and I recall it so well because, as I said, I was crazy about motor racing. Graham Hill, his surviving team-mate at Lotus, won the F1 title that season.

  Over the last 12 to 18 months we were at the camp, my fitness level just moved higher and higher. It was amazing, although being young I almost took it for granted. During this period of our intense training programme we went on expeditions in the wilds of Scotland and Wales, in both winter and summer. We trekked around the mountains and bivouacked in improvised camps in all kinds of weather conditions, which I thought was interesting and all good fun. But it was no holiday, and while we lived in the hills and forests we had to operate in a military way, with guard duties, night patrols and field training every day.

  During my junior service I managed somehow to get myself selected for the company swimming and boxing teams. Our swimming team had to be at the pool for an hour’s training every morning at 06.00 hrs, eat breakfast at 07.00, then be ready for normal training with the other lads by 08.00 hrs. That was all right. On the other hand, I really don’t know how I managed to get into the boxing team – I must have just been lucky in my earlier bouts. I wasn’t very big or exceptionally strong at that age, but if you happen to keep winning the fights you’re given, the Army attitude is that you keep going until someone bigger and stronger beats the hell out of you. I was OK at boxing but I didn’t think I was good enough to be in the team and I didn’t really like the few beatings I had to endure for the benefit and enjoyment of the training staff. Truth be told, I much preferred to watch it on TV. Fighters with names like Ali, Frazier and Foreman were all big names in the late 1960s – a golden age of boxing as far as I’m concerned – and we all used to pile into the TV room when they were fighting, stocked up with cans of Coke and bags of crisps.

  Earlier that year, in January of 1968, I took part in an Outward Bound mountain school in the North Yorkshire Dales for five weeks. They were civilian courses but the Army, usually Junior Leaders Units, had places available for boys to take part. But to my great surprise, upon our arrival we were told that the whole course was being immediately relocated to Luxembourg. This was due to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease we had going around the country at the time. It was detected in October 1967 and wasn’t brought under control until June the next year after the destruction of 400,000 animals. Bad for the cows, but exciting for us: I had never been abroad. I recall that before we departed for our four weeks in Europe we had to have our shoes and boots thoroughly dipped in disinfectant at the airport.

  I had a great time there even though it was bitterly cold, with two feet of snow lying on the ground. The place was just like a picture postcard, with a kind of landscape I had never seen before. Most days we were out and about navigating and trekking around the snowy hills, building camp fires and crossing rivers. One interesting wrinkle I learned is that when out in the hills and forests of Luxembourg, you should head uphill to find an inhabited area, whereas normally in mountains and jungles, the idea is to head downhill, following streams and rivers to reach civilisation. In Luxembourg, just about all towns and villages are located on plateaus on top of the hills. I don’t know if that’s a defensive decision on the part of its past rulers, but it is a fact that the principality has managed to retain its independence from the surrounding nation states, which have spent the past good few centuries fighting each other almost non-stop, and bulldozing everything in their way.

  While out of our base on expeditions, we had to wash and bathe each morning in the freezing rivers after breaking away all the ice. I made some very good friends there and achieved top merits for the skills I learned. I also received an excellent final report, which on return to my unit produced my first promotion – to Junior Lance Corporal.

  By July 1968 I had completed my junior service, and now that we were pretty well qualified in all things military, my platoon got itself ready to move. After the passing-out parade on a wonderfully sunny weekend, with my parents and brother looking on, I was ‘badged’ to my chosen Regular Army unit as a junior corporal, which I lost before moving forward into ‘Man Service’, as they call it.

  The parade was quite interesting. Our platoon had developed a ‘silent drill’ sequence for the passing out while the other platoons gave assault-course and weapon-handling demos. All 30 of us in our platoon were lined up in three ranks, in the middle of the square, and our sergeant just gave out one initial order of command to start us off. We then went through a 15-minute sequence of numerous drill movements, with intervals of only three seconds, without another word. All this included marching away in various directions for 20 or so paces, turning around, marching back, halting, saluting, doing another about-turn and marching off in review order. It was all rather complicated but turned out well and my parents seemed impressed.

  There was a buffet party afterwards and then the well-deserved prospect of a whole four weeks of ‘leave’, which in prospect seemed like a lifetime of holiday after the years we had spent in the camp. After that we were to join our regular units, wherever they were. The list was exotic and exciting, with destinations such as Hong Kong, Cyprus, Germany as well as the UK. As it happened, my unit was based in UK at that time, the short straw, but I wasn’t too disappointed. I was just happy to be moving on to pastures new. I had made some really good friends during my time as a junior soldier and it was a little sad to be saying goodbye to most of them, before we set off on our month-long furlough

  My first posting as a ‘man soldier’, in August 1968, was to Colchester in Essex, attached to an Infantry battalion based there, across the road from the infamous MCTC – the Military Corrective Training Centre. It was and probably still is known as the hardest prison in Britain (military or civilian) and I heard many horrendous stories from some of its survivors. The first thing they did to you when you arrived there was to shave your head, and you had to always run not walk when moving throughout the centre. The soldiers (in some cases ex-soldiers) I saw come out of there were as thin as a broom handle and fit as a butcher’s dog. Still, rather them than me.

  On my arrival at the barracks in Colchester I was put into a section called ‘new intake’, just brushing up on military skills with some other new recruits, while we waited to be placed in a department. After my introductory interview a couple of
weeks later, to my great surprise and delight, I was offered a place in Support Company in the support weapons section of the battalion.

  Ex-junior soldiers were not very popular in the battalions in those days and we were commonly known as ‘junior brats’, sort of the teacher’s pets of the service, as we’d started so early – we were seen as altogether a bit too keen. Luckily for me, the officer at my interview was someone I knew, a captain from my junior days. He remembered me because I had volunteered to take part in a couple of expeditions in Scotland that he had organised a year or so earlier. He had always given me a good report from the expeditions and I think he saw me as a reliable, determined type. So he did me a big favour and assigned me to Support Company. In those days, Support Company, Signals platoon and the Reconnaissance section of the infantry battalions were normally where the best and most talented soldiers were sent. I felt privileged to be offered the opportunity of a place there, especially as I was to be one of the youngest of its members at the time.

  During that autumn and winter of 1968, the battalion members were gradually arriving back from a six- month active tour of duty in Aden, which then (as now – it’s a seaport in Yemen) was a trouble spot in southern Arabia. By then I was busy training with and getting used to the heavy weapons, vehicles and characters in Support Company. Being only 17 years old I was unfortunately much too young to join them out there in Aden. I didn’t realise that there had been lots of trouble and I found out later that some of our guys over there had been injured and killed. All I thought, as I waited for the main body of the battalion to return, was that it sounded like a nice sunny place with perhaps some long sandy beaches.

  One friend told me, many months later after he wearied of me pestering him for information about the scar on his knee, that when he was in Aden he was doing a driving job for some officer and that his own personal weapon at the time was a Browning 9mm pistol. One evening while sat on his bed cleaning it and watching TV, the gun accidentally discharged and he shot himself right through the knee. Luckily the bullet passed through the flesh, only skimming his knee cap (which I can testify is still unbelievably painful) and embedded itself in the floor. He was later ‘charged’ for the ‘offence’ and was awarded a £200 fine to go with his few weeks in hospital. He showed me the scar it left, which was quite long and jagged, running down about nine inches along the inside of his right knee. He never used to talk about it much because I’m sure he was very embarrassed about shooting himself, but these things do occasionally happen around weapons, no matter how well-trained and knowledgeable you are.

  Some of the older guys I met in the Battalion were ex-National Service men who had stayed on after compulsory time had ended. Most of them were OK and quite helpful and friendly, but we did have some strange characters.

  One chap I got to know in another section was a desperate alcoholic, I was told later, and was almost always well-oiled, day and night. When he had no money, he used to sip Brasso metal polish on a regular basis to get his fix. I often saw him making sandwiches, melting and spreading boot polish on the bread, then eating it. At the time I was baffled. Then, one evening, he caught me by surprise.

  He walked into our section-room, where I was busy ironing my uniform by the window, and came over to me. ‘Do you have any aftershave young’un?’ he asked out of the side of his mouth. I thought he must have got a date for the evening in town.

  ‘Yes, no problem Reggie, it’s in my locker over there, take what you need.’ It was always good tactics in those days to stay on the good side of the older soldiers. Reggie crossed the room, leaned into my locker and took out the full bottle of Blue Stratos aftershave my mum had given me for Christmas, even though I didn’t really shave that much. Then, I’ll never forget, he unscrewed the cap and lifted the bottle to his lips. He drank the lot, said ‘Thanks young’un, see ya,’ and walked out again. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen.

  ‘It’s normal with Reggie,’ one of the other lads in the room told me. ‘He’s OK, but you should always keep your aftershave out of sight when he’s around.’ All I can think was that back then they can’t have been using ethanol in scents like they do now, or Reggie would have been RIP.

  Another couple of strange characters from one of the rifle companies down the road came up with a crazy plan to get themselves discharged out of the Army. They decided to cut off each other’s trigger fingers with a bayonet. But the plan went for a ‘ball of chalk’ after one of them laid the blade across his friend’s finger and hit it smartly with a floor bumper, chopping the digit clean off, according to plan.

  However, on seeing what he had done and the mess it made, he quickly changed his mind about his own finger and ran off, screaming, with his fingerless friend chasing after him around the parade square, waving the bayonet and shouting, ‘It’s your turn now, pal!’

  They were quickly caught and thrown into prison by the local MPs. Later, after the Court Martial, they ended up in MCTC for an extended visit. I never did see them again, so I suppose they eventually got the discharge they were hoping for.

  On weekends, some of the lads from my section usually arranged to go out on the town on pub crawls which lasted two full days. Weekends were actually boring and there wasn’t much to do except to get dressed up and go out on the town, or perhaps hitch-hike home to Yorkshire for a couple of days, travelling back on the Sunday overnight train via London. It was funny, every Monday morning at about 04:30 hrs you could see gangs of troops in civvies, dashing around Liverpool Street station for their connections to get them back to camp before 08:30.

  However, there were one or two worthwhile pubs we often used around Colchester. One of which was ‘The Grapes’, over the back of the ranges and just a short walk from camp. Another, ‘The Fountain’, was further down the road, more towards the town centre. We often spent our free time in these places, drinking ourselves stupid. I wasn’t used to alcohol like the others, and after about two pints of the local brew I was finished. Some of the guys would amuse themselves by getting me drunk and then telling the barman I was under age. The barman would throw me out and I’d have to sit on the car park wall waiting for them all to emerge after closing time. I soon got fed up with this form of entertainment and made my feelings very clear indeed to those involved, which seemed to elevate my status within the section.

  One evening there seemed to be a little trouble fermenting in ‘The Grapes’ between a few of our guys and some squaddies from another regiment. One of my older pals, seeing this, quickly sent me off to get a load of fish and chips, mainly to get me out of the way till the trouble was sorted out. It was very thoughtful of them, because I was by far the youngest and least experienced in ultra-violent brawling. By the time I got back, everything had settled down after a couple of skirmishes in the car park, and we all got stuck into the food, laughing and joking as we strolled back to camp.

  On another evening I was in ‘The Grapes’ with a few of my friends when we noticed Reggie clinging onto the bar at the far end of the room. A couple of my pals went over to ask him if he was all right because as usual he’d had plenty to drink (although he must have smelled fabulous). ‘I’m going back to camp soon,’ Reggie spluttered. ‘Can some of you lads see me back OK?’

  A few minutes later, we all started making our way home, singing merrily and holding Reggie up between us. Over the back fence to our camp there were a few 30 metre firing ranges with a footpath weaving between them to our building. Reggie couldn’t seem to manage the winding path very well and decided to walk, or stumble, directly across the ranges, wading through the muddy ponds in the centre of each one. We occasionally hallooed to him in the darkness to check that he was OK, but by the time he arrived at the far end where we were waiting he was a terrible mess. He emerged from the swampy gloom, climbing up the banking on hands and knees, covered from head to foot in mud. All we could do was curl up laughing while we helped him to his feet and walked him over to his building and into the shower fully clothed, wh
ere of course we left him. The next morning, Reggie couldn’t remember a thing about the night before. This was all normal.

  Some training days we gathered the section Land Rovers together, six or eight of them outside our barrack block. We spent an hour or so fiddling around and fitting C42 radios from the stores in the back of them, before setting off out of camp in different directions. The idea was to spend the day out of camp and out of sight on a radio communications exercise of our own. They were great days out, spending an hour directing each other to different map reference locations. Then eventually we would meet up and all bunk off to some roadside café, miles away, for a relaxing lunch break, some of us filling our faces with sausage and bacon ‘banjos’ (sandwiches), while others just lazed about or slept in the back of the vehicles. This sojourn would last two or three hours, while we periodically did radio checks with our old mobile A41 radios, pretending to send our colleagues to various fictitious locations, because we knew that people back at camp will be listening into us on the radio net. Eventually, we arrived back at camp at around 16:30 hrs explaining to our superiors that we had had a busy day dashing around the countryside.

  I was sitting on my bed reading a book one Saturday afternoon when a sergeant from the Combat Engineers section downstairs came up. He looked around for a moment and on seeing me asked if I was free the next day, as he needed a little help with something he was involved in. I told him I was around and at a loose end. ‘It’s a little demolition work, for a film crew making a film,’ he informed me. ‘It’s about two hours’ drive away but we’ll be back by about 18.00 hrs.’

  A nice Sunday drive, the glamour of the movie industry: it sounded great to me. ‘What time do you want me ready?’ I asked him

  ‘By about 07.00 hrs outside will be fine, just put on your combat suit and beret. I’ll arrange food for the day, before we go.’

  Early the next day, while all the other lads were still drunk and snoring in bed, I was outside waiting as a Land Rover pulled up with the sergeant at the wheel. ‘Get in,’ he said. ‘I’ve got everything we need. By the way, can you drive?