A voice from the rear shouted, 'Be at the Quartermaster's stores in fifteen minutes!'
Outside, the sun was just clearing the top of the wooden plinth on which the four-sided clock was set. Around its base, gleaming in the sunshine, were three large bronze panels inscribed with the names of the soldiers who had died – the ones who, in Regimental parlance, had not beaten the clock. A smaller panel with a quotation worked on it was fixed to the front. I could just make out the words 'barr'd with snow' and 'that glimmering sea' on the plaque. As I looked up, a ragged crow flapped lazily along behind the clock and over the perimeter fence towards the neat rows of houses that formed the Redhill suburbs of Hereford. I thought of the people there who were going about their ordinary day-to-day routines, and then I thought of the drama in which
135 nervous recruits were about to play a leading role.
When I reached the stores, I was astonished at the sight that greeted me. It was like a Saturday-afternoon jumble sale at a church bazaar. I was amazed at the apparent disorder and lack of discipline. But the conversation was subdued. No one wanted to get earmarked as a possible troublemaker. I edged forward and found myself at the front of the queue. The corporal behind the counter glanced at me and then disappeared between long rows of large wooden pigeonholes. He reappeared with a bergen rucksack filled with all I would need for the selection phase. I took one look at the bergen and realized immediately that in bad weather the untreated canvas would just soak up rain like a sponge and get heavier and heavier. The metal fittings cracked on the counter-top as the corporal threw the bergen unceremoniously down. I checked the contents: sleeping bag, 57-pattern webbing belt, poncho for wet-weather protection, two 1½-pint water bottles with carriers, standard Army prismatic compass, heavy and cumbersome, Ordnance Survey maps of the Brecon Beacons and Elan Valley, brew kit and three twenty-four-hour ration-packs for the first major hurdle looming up: the three-day trial at the weekend, otherwise known as Sickener 1.
Then it was on to the armoury round the corner from the QM's department. There we were given the old-fashioned Lee Enfield .303 rifles. The issuing officer explained that the modern weapons were kept strictly for operational duties, and added ominously, 'They'll be in real shit order, the Lee Enfields, with what they'll have to go through in the next three weeks, no matter how much you strip and clean them.'
I made tracks from the armoury out into the sunshine again and, with a grumbling stomach, headed for the cookhouse. As I pushed through the grey swinging doors I was hit by a barrage of noise: crashing plates, hissing steam, clinking mugs, metal chair-legs rattling as they were scraped across the dull-red tiled floor, the steady roar of over 200 voices in animated conversation. The L-shaped room was filled with the warm, appetizing aroma of freshly cooked food. Through another door, in the far corner, a group of men I had not seen before were making an entrance, joking and laughing loudly. To judge from their air of confidence and deliberate step they were obviously Sabre Squadron. Two shining aluminium-and-glass serveries ran the length of each leg of the room. Behind them, men decked out in regulation kitchen whites were gliding swiftly backwards and forwards among the steaming vats and clanking ovens, going about their business in apparent chaos but no doubt following some well-rehearsed routine.
I got to the head of the queue and started to move along by the hotplate. I was in for a surprise. It looked like a tribal feast day in the jungle. There was food, mountains of food. I had never seen the likes of it in all my years of service in the Army. I picked up a tray with anticipation and pushed it along the front of the hotplate. Next to a tureen of steaming hot soup, a large wicker basket overflowed with chunks of bread. A mound of rich yellow butter, which looked as if it had been tipped straight out of the farmyard urn, had several knives carelessly protruding from it. In the middle section there was a choice: a help-yourself tray full of lamb chops, swimming in savoury juices, and a mammoth joint of beef impaled on a spiked turntable. A large cook was poised over the beef with a gleaming carving knife and a long, two-pronged fork. He looked as if he would be equally at ease wielding a machete in the jungle. I motioned towards the joint.
'How many slices?' the cook asked.
I couldn't believe my ears. I'd been so used to the routine of the regular Army cookhouse. There, some jumped-up pimply-faced cook, with a deathly pallor from never seeing daylight, feeling cocky knowing he was out of reach behind the counter, would hit you with a ladle and squeak, 'One egg, laddie,' if you so much as looked at a second. 'Two please, mate,' I ventured, still not sure quite what was happening.
The cook stabbed the fork into the joint and deftly swung it round on the turntable to get the right angle for carving. The meat compressed as the gleaming knife bit into it, and rich juices oozed from the pink centre. 'Crackling?'
'Too true!' And a huge chunk of ribbed crackling was deposited over the two thick slices of meat. I rearranged the dishes on my tray and just about found space for the sponge pudding with custard that rounded off the meal.
I looked up and spotted the other three members of the patrol I'd been assigned to, hunched over the end of a table. I crossed the room and sat down with them.
'Jesus Christ, somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming.'
'I'd heard a rumour that airborne forces get double meat rations, but this is ridiculous.'
'There's got to be a catch. It'll be tea and wads the rest of the week.'
'No, there's no catch. Don't get paranoid already. An old mate of mine gave me the whisper. It's like this every day, plenty of protein to build up the stamina. You need it here.'
'I hope you're right. I've got to have my four square meals a day. I get dizzy if I miss breakfast. I don't go for this mean and hungry look. I reckon you've got to have plenty of meat on you to stay healthy.'
There was a lull in the conversation as our attention was focused on the more serious business of eating. I looked around the other three members of my patrol. Jim, from the Black Watch, Royal Highland Regiment, and proud of it. Small, stocky with shining eyes set in a round, friendly face. Neatly parted short brown hair. A barrel-shaped body, obviously tough. Then Andy, the company joker, known to all as Geordie. He was in the Light Infantry, but whenever asked, would reply with a stiff salute, 'Sixth Queen Elizabeth's Own Gurkha Rifles!' He had a tough bony head topped by already-thinning black hair. What he lacked in the way of hair on his scalp, however, he more than made up for with a hirsute growth on his thick dangling arms and prominent chest. His most noticeable feature was an over-large mouth. It was as big as the North-West Passage, and gaped obscenely whenever he spoke, revealing his teeth and gums so that he looked like an ape challenging an intruder.
And finally, Tommo the Scouse, Royal Fusiliers. Tall, muscular in a compact sort of way, with tufts of blond hair as stiff as a yard-brush sticking straight up. Snub nose, and ears bent over slightly at the top. He looked like an overgrown leprechaun – and a malevolent one at that. The nearest he ever came to a smile was a cross between a leer and a snarl, which would slowly appear as attempts to engage him in conversation were met with a sullen 'yeah,' 'that's right,' 'dunno.' I never could guess what was going on in his mind, and for that reason never felt comfortable when he was around. In fact, I didn't trust him as far as I could throw a fully laden bergen.
After the first rush of food had hit our stomachs, I said to Jim, 'There's a lot of you lads down here. Talk of the Charge of the Jock Brigade!'
'Yeah, it is a bit like that. But when it really hits you what it's like up there – the perpetual rain, the decrepit tenement blocks stinking of urine, the empty rusting yards of Clydeside, the brawls on Buchanan Street on a Saturday night – you know you either take to the bottle or you take to the road. Me, I was down the mines for six years before I joined the Army. I looked around me one day and couldn't see a future. So I said to myself, "Jimmy, if you join the Army what would you be leaving behind?" And you know the answer that came? A living hell, a long, slow, coal-dust-coughing hell.
I decided to take me chances in the Army, I knew it couldn't be any worse. If I could survive six years down the pits, I figured I could survive anything.'
'Even the SAS selection course?'
'Believe me, pal, it'll be a piece of piss in comparison. Have you ever been down a pit?'
'No.'
'I thought not.'
'But why the SAS?'
'Oh you know, the adventure, the excitement, a chance to be more involved. A chance to do the special jobs.'
'What about you, Geordie?'
'This is why I applied, the food.'
We all looked at him, slightly puzzled.
He went on, 'I wouldn't say we're poor back home, but when it comes to tea-time, the wife nails a kipper to the back of the kitchen door, and me and the kids, we all line up with a slice of bread in our hand and wipe it on the kipper as we file past.'
The eternal joker. It was a tendency no doubt triggered by the nerves of the moment. Geordie used his humour like a shield, to ward off people or situations he felt uncomfortable with. In spite of this, I was rather warming to him; I felt I could detect a real thinker beneath the surface.
We looked at Tommo, waiting for his story. He pushed his chair back suddenly and stood up. 'Anyone for a brew?' he asked in an agitated voice. He slouched across the room to two large aluminium tea-urns next to the hotplates. One of the urns was dripping tea onto the floor from the black plastic tap. No one seemed to bother. Tommo returned with three huge mugs of tea in one hand and one in the other. He was totally unconcerned that two of the three mugs were tilting and splashing scalding tea over his hand.
'Tommo, what's your story? Why did you volunteer?' I asked as he put the mugs on the table and sat down again.
'Dunno. A change of scene I suppose.'
We waited patiently for a few moments but nothing more came.
'It was the boredom of garrison duties that got to me. Standing on guard in some obscure camp in the middle of nowhere in Germany, where you knew there was no threat. I ask you, were the Russians going to march hundreds of miles through hostile territory just to take out our insignificant little camp? Two hours on, four hours off, two hours on, four hours off. So it went on and on and on. Tedious in the extreme. I'll tell you something. Did you see the grass inside the camp gates when you arrived here? A foot high if it was an inch! Hell, I thought, I've got the wrong place here! Can you believe it – an Army camp with grass a foot high! That's why I joined, to escape the bullshit. They've obviously got a sense of priorities here. They don't do things for the sake of it, I like that. Beat the boredom, beat the bullshit, beat the clock, that'll do me.'
Even as I spoke, I felt slightly uncomfortable with what I'd said. It was true as far as it went, but somehow I felt it didn't go far enough. I sensed that something deeper was driving me, something that as yet still eluded me. I decided there were too many new things happening right now; my brain was having the luxury of sorting through the debris of the old.
'I reckon selection's a real cartilage-cracker,' pronounced Geordie with the hint of a frown.
Tommo looked at him but said nothing.
'Piece of piss,' reiterated Jim, confidently waving a teaspoon in the air to emphasize his lack of concern.
'Well, I for one will be glad when it's all over and we can get stuck into the real business we're supposed to be here for,' I said firmly.
'Whatever that might be,' added Tommo out of the blue. The three of us looked at him quizzically as we drained the last of the tea from our mugs.
That afternoon was spent doing preliminary weapons training and then a four-mile run. We had a training run every day around the leafy lanes of the Herefordshire countryside bordering the camp on the opposite side to the town. The gently rolling hills in the immediate vicinity were deceptive. They often concealed small but steep-sided valleys. There also seemed to be at least two of these valleys near the end of the run, where the incline would tear viciously at already tired leg muscles. If anyone was going to fail at the weekend, it wouldn't be through lack of basic fitness.
The rest of the first week passed swiftly, each day following a similar rhythm and merging into the next. I got to know my patrol better as the week wore on, but we didn't bond together as mates. We were all still wrapped up in our own personal battles to prove ourselves. And anyway, I thought most of these men will fail the course and you don't want to get friendly with failures. As the weekend loomed ahead, I could sense all around that the nervous bravado of the first day was gradually giving way to deepening apprehension. Indeed, as more detailed rumours began to circulate about Sickener 1, the very thought of it was enough to break some men. 'Crap-hats,' we called them. They'd collected their rail warrants and were on Hereford station, Platform 4 homeward bound, before selection had even begun in earnest.
We were given the Friday evening off and advised to get an early night. The afternoon's training run had finished around five o'clock. I had just enough time to shower, change and head into town before the shops closed. If I failed selection it couldn't be through lack of preparation. From the previous candidates who'd failed the course and from the information I'd gleaned during the week, I'd worked out what I would need: two dozen Mars bars, a bottle of olive oil, a Silvas compass, squares of foam padding, two sheets of clear Fablon, curry powder, Tabasco sauce, powdered milk and waterproof walking gear.
I stepped onto the bridge crossing the River Wye and leaned over the parapet. 'Welcome to Hereford, Historic Capital of the Wye Valley,' the sign on the bridge said. The water flowed lazily by beneath me. I gazed at a much older and smaller stone bridge, which crossed the river about a hundred yards downstream from the modern road bridge where I stood. A neatly manicured lawn behind a church manse fell steeply down to the water's edge just beyond the stone bridge. Newly leafing trees clung precariously to the riverbanks and dangled long thin branches into the water. A young couple were locked in an embrace under the trees by the putting green, luxuriating in the warm evening sunshine. Very nice too, I thought, feeling slightly envious.
I quickly located the shops and bought the necessary items, loaded up and headed back for camp.
Later that evening, the atmosphere in the spider was exceptionally subdued – and sober. The thought of what was to come the following morning was enough to convert even the hardest drinkers to temporary abstinence. By 9.30pm a good number of the beds were already resonating with snoring heads. I decided it was time to join them. I threw off my shirt and slacks and hit the pillow.
It seemed as if I'd only just begun to drift down into a deep, welcome sleep when something suddenly reversed the direction of my consciousness. In a flash, I was brutally awake and confused. I strained to make sense of what was happening. Some time must have passed since I'd gone to bed. It was dark and very quiet. I lay on my back, completely motionless, my eyes wide up, staring up towards the ceiling. A moment later I heard a groan, followed by the rustle of sheets and a stifled sigh. What the hell's going on, I thought. As the vague realization began to dawn, I wondered if I was having some weird, tension-induced dream. More sounds, coarse, high-pitched nasal sounds. Then a grunt, an mistakably female grunt; panting, pained almost, gradually rising in pitch, volume and frequency until it peaked in a sharp, drawn-out squeal followed by a sigh of relief.
A wave of sexual excitement rippled up and down my spine. I tilted my head in the direction of the sounds and caught a whiff of cheap perfume. The sweet smell was unmistakable in the heavy male air of the spider. A permed blonde head and glinting earring emerged momentarily from among the tumbling sheets of the next bed. This can't be happening, I thought, Geordie in bed with a woman. I felt almost dizzy, as if I'd got up too quickly from a prone position. I turned away and onto my back again and spent a few moments deliberately composing myself, reminding myself where I was and what I was doing there.
The groans and sighs began again, more frantic and physical than before. Geordie was like a stag in a rut. I glanced at my watch. It w
as one o'clock in the morning, my sleep had been broken and in a few hours I had to face Sickener 1, a severe test of physical endurance lasting three days for which I would need every ounce of energy I possessed. Another groan. I turned towards Geordie, anger welling up inside me, and opened my mouth to speak. Nothing. Not a word came out. A feeling of admiration at his sheer nerve combined with a vague acknowledgement that it wasn't right to interrupt a man's sexual performance somehow dammed up the wave of anger. The torrents of abuse simply swirled and foamed around inside me.
I put my head beneath the sheets to try to shut out the disturbance, but I knew it was no good. The more I chased sleep, the more it eluded me. I kept telling myself I would drift off at any moment. I began to perspire with the frustration of not being able to sleep. I twisted my body into every position imaginable, trying to relax. I explored every corner of the bed seeking a cool patch in the sheets. Who dares wins, I thought, as Geordie finally fire-crackered into an Olympian climax.
Soldier I Page 2