Eye of the Storm

by Peter Ratcliffe

  In my desperation, I simply thought I’d give the recruiting office another try, hoping they didn’t remember me – the guy whom they had got off a police charge, and who’d then more or less told them to get stuffed. Clad in the sort of reefer jacket made popular by the Beatles and a hat not unlike a Russian admiral’s, I shoved open the door. With my long hair hanging scruffily well over my collar, I must have been a recruiting sergeant’s vision of hell.

  As it happened, they didn’t remember me. So I filled in all the papers again and completed all the tests. I sat, hands in pockets, on a hard chair and heard one sergeant say to another, ‘Come and have a look at this.’ I guessed that he was talking about me, and immediately assumed that they were going to kick me out.

  But it was the test papers they were interested in. Apparently I was the only would-be recruit they had ever seen who had answered all the questions correctly. They gave me that ‘What do you want here?’ look, but were obviously keen to get me to sign on. They told me what a wonderful life it was in the army, then tried to talk me into joining one of the army’s technical corps. ‘With these results you could become a technician, maybe join the Royal Corps of Signals,’ one of them said. To me, however, it was the Parachute Regiment or nothing. So I sat there, periodically repeating, ‘No, I want to join the Paras.’

  I was aiming for the top, I knew that. But I didn’t want to waste my time in some unglamorous, technically minded, mostly non-combatant corps like the Engineers, the Signals or the REME. Eventually they gave up arguing because by then they knew that if I didn’t get a shot at the Paras, I’d walk straight out of the door. Although I had not the slightest idea what I would have done then …

  They sent me for a medical, which in due course I attended. I must have passed, for in November 1969 I received notice telling me that I was going into the army the following week. I was determined to spend Christmas with my mates, however, and therefore asked them to postpone the date I was due to join. The recruiting office agreed and I was ordered to report back there on 5 January 1970. That Monday morning I borrowed 2 shillings (10 pence) off the Labour Exchange guys I was sharing the house with and, with my kit stuffed into a supermarket plastic bag, made my way to the recruiting office. This time I’d left my Russian admiral’s outfit back at the house and was wearing a sports jacket and grey trousers, so I looked a bit more respectable, or at least conventional.

  I was taken upstairs to a room where a middle-aged officer who looked like a relic from the Second World War sat me down and lectured me about how boring it would be for me in the Paras, rushing about the place doing forward and backward rolls. As it quickly became obvious that he didn’t know what he was talking about, the conversation sort of tailed off after a bit. Eventually he stopped talking about the Paras and swore me in on the Bible. After that brief ceremony he gave me a day’s pay – about 23 shillings (£1.15), which was a fortune in those days for me to have as spending money – and an army clerk then issued me with a rail-travel warrant to Aldershot. The money even paid for breakfast in the first-class dining car on the train.

  At about four o’clock that afternoon I arrived in Aldershot, the sprawling garrison town which is the traditional home of the British Army. Outside the railway station I asked someone how to get to Browning Barracks, the Parachute Regiment’s depot, and he pointed to a double-decker bus. I climbed aboard and the bus eventually got going, only to meander all around Aldershot. There seemed to be soldiers everywhere – marching, running with packs on their backs, trotting in track suits, hanging out of the backs of canvas-topped trucks that were painted a dull olive green, drilling on barrack squares, stamping up and down on guard duty. I’d never seen so many soldiers in my life.

  But it was when I began seeing my first Paras that my heart started racing. I was getting really excited about becoming one of these guys in their red berets and parachute smocks when the bus driver shouted ‘Browning Barracks.’

  The place differed dramatically from the yellow-brick barrack blocks that the bus had passed, clusters of buildings with names like Badajos commemorating ancient victories. For a start, Browning Barracks had an old Douglas C-47 transport aircraft – the famous Dakota, which had ferried so many Paras to battle during the Second World War – parked on the lawn outside the gates. The building blocks that flanked the two large parade grounds were modern, with lots of glass, making them light and airy, and the whole barracks immediately had a good feel to it.

  Having left the bus and gone through the gates, I realized I had no idea where to report. I spotted an office and was looking for the door when a woman came to the window and asked if I was lost. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I’ve joined the army.’ I gave her my name and, after she had looked it up on a list attached to a clipboard, she told me that I was expected and asked where my kit was. Wordlessly I held up my plastic bag. She must have felt sorry for me, because she invited me in and gave me a cup of tea. Then she pointed me in the direction of another building, which she said was the Transit Block.

  By now it was about 4.45 and the last grey light of a winter’s afternoon was fading fast. I made my way over to the building and was directed to a small room where I found two other recruits, both Welsh, and both later to join the SAS. Apart from them, there were four grey-painted metal beds with steel springs and no mattresses, blankets or pillows; there was precious little other furniture either. We sat there and waited for somebody to come. But nobody did, so at about seven o’clock we set off to find something to eat, shambling around the barracks in our civvy clothes and non-military haircuts.

  We finally located the NAAFI, where we each bought a meat pie and a cup of tea. Then we made our way back to the Transit Block, resignedly concluding that we were expected to sleep that night on the bare metal springs, without mattresses or blankets. Yet, even though it was cold and uncomfortable on that metal bed, I was dog tired and went out like a light. When we woke in the morning and took off our shirts to have a wash, our backs were covered with diamond-shaped indents from the metal springs. We looked as though we’d been lashed with a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  At around nine o’clock the door opened and a soldier in uniform entered. He told us his name was Corporal Palmer and asked when we had arrived. I said, ‘About a quarter to five, sir. Last night.’

  ‘Don’t call me “sir”,’ he snapped, furious that nobody had told him that we three had been due to arrive. Then he asked where we had slept. He looked mildly incredulous when we pointed to the metal springs, remarking, ‘What, there? That’s a good start. Come with me and get the mattress and bedding you should have collected last night.’

  As it happened, we had missed the intake for the Parachute Regiment, which was held every month. More recruits began arriving that morning but, like us, were all too late. We would therefore have to wait until the following month’s intake to be formally drafted into the regiment, although we were to remain at the barracks for the time being. Having drawn bedding and a certain amount of army clothing, though not proper uniform, we were given tests and interviews and put through an assault course, before undergoing an assessment and meeting the officer who would be in charge of us, who spoke briefly about the Paras and what would be expected of us.

  One of the tests involved being taken to a trinasium, which is where the directing staff (DS) work out whether you have the confidence to make a parachute jump. The test itself required us to walk along a length of scaffolding tubing fixed about thirty feet in the air. Having shuffled along this to the middle, we had to stop, bend over and touch our toes, before making our way to the far end.

  I was terrified – literally shaking – because I can’t stand heights. Nevertheless, when my turn came I obediently climbed up and inched my way through the routine. Having succeeded once I dreaded doing the test again, but I had to. Several times. Somehow I managed not to fall off, and, either by luck or good acting, the instructors didn’t notice that I was scared to death.

  After four days of tests,
trips to the assault course and other more or less mindless activities, Friday came and with it pay parade. When I reached the head of the line I was given a paybook to sign, after which the Pay Corps corporal handed me about £29 and a few shillings. The supervising officer then said, to my considerable surprise, ‘Off you go. You’ve got three weeks’ leave.’ Bloody hell, I thought, on leave already and I’ve only just arrived. What was more, I hadn’t had so much money in my pocket since, aged fourteen, I had run that newspaper stand. We got ready to go, though first we had to hand in the gear they’d given us to wear while we were in the barracks. Suddenly we were back in civvies.

  I reported back to Browning Barracks on the first Monday in February. With my fellow recruits we were finally kitted out with uniform, boots, and all the other paraphernalia of the newly joined recruit, then put into our sections, each under a section corporal, and assigned to another four-man room in the Transit Block. I’d had my collar-length hair cut in January, but it still wasn’t short enough for the British Army. Now they gave me a haircut that left me looking like a convict just beginning his sentence.

  In a sense, that is exactly what we were doing – beginning a sentence. There must have been some one hundred and ten hopefuls on that first day, but after six weeks there was barely a handful of us left. The reason was simple – the NCOs and instructors very quickly and very ruthlessly weeded us out. One screw-up and you were out, told that there was no place for you in the Parachute Regiment, invited to try again with another unit, and sent on your way.

  In those first days we were shown how to put on our new kit and how to wind on our puttees – long khaki bandages that were wound round the legs from boot-top to knee. It didn’t take long to learn the shortcuts, however. If you were going to pass the course you had to learn fast, which was what survival in the Paras was all about. Slower-thinking recruits had no chance, and a steady drip of departures began almost from day one.

  Every day there was a barrack-room inspection. Apart from everything else – ‘everything’ meaning having all your kit immaculate and neatly squared away in the prescribed manner – this meant ‘boxing’ your bedding, creating from unruly bedclothes a pack like a square biscuit, with every edge razor sharp and perfectly aligned. The order was first a blanket, then a sheet, then another blanket and then another sheet. Then a final blanket went over everything to form an outer cover. All the edges had to be even, and you then laid this ‘biscuit’ of wool and cotton at the proper place on top of the mattress each morning. Without fail you had to strip your bed and put two pillows and two folded pillow cases next to your boxed bedgear.

  After three days, I learned the trick of laying out my biscuit of folded bedclothes for inspection and then, after the inspection, very carefully stowing it away on top of my locker. It stayed there, unused, for six months, except for the few minutes every day when it was laid out on my bed. I slept between the mattress and the mattress cover, thereby saving myself half an hour of effort in the mornings. I also had a brand-new, spotlessly clean washing and shaving kit which was never used apart from laying out for inspection – I actually used a second set which I kept well concealed. All our kit, and the room itself, had to be perfect or trouble followed, which meant, among much else, that we had to polish our boots until we could see our reflections in the toecaps, and shine the floor till it gleamed like a plate-glass window.

  Our platoon officer was Lieutenant Rupert Smith, now Lieutenant-General Sir Rupert Smith. He was a very fair man, as were his two sergeants. In this I was lucky, although I didn’t know that for some time. If I had joined a month earlier – the first date given to me by the recruiting office in Preston – life would have been hell. That intake, it turned out, had been supervised by a group of NCOs who were little short of monsters. These regularly tossed their recruits’ blankets and other gear out of the barrack-room windows, leaving the bewildered young soldiers to scramble frantically around outside, often in rain and snow, trying to gather it up and put it all back together again for yet another inspection by the bullies who had roughed up their gear in the first place.

  The truth is that there are a lot of NCOs of that type in the British Army. They are very tough on their subordinates, but crawl to everybody above them – or to anyone bigger and stronger who holds the same rank as they do. Give them some poor ignorant squaddie who can’t answer back, however, and they are in their element. I have never had time for men like that, and I was fortunate that, in Lieutenant Smith and his NCOs, I had decent superiors.

  I underwent six months’ basic training, which was mainly made up of drill, running and hard slogs on route marches. Bit by bit we turned into soldiers. When a man joins the Parachute Regiment he is issued with a series of coloured shoulder tags to mark his progression through the training course. The first badge is green (it doesn’t take a genius to work out why); then, after six weeks, you move on to wearing a blue tag. By that time, so many of your intake have been kicked out as unsuitable for the Parachute Regiment that you feel like an old hand when you see that month’s new recruits arrive.

  The NCOs never stopped reminding us that selection for the Paras was a very greasy pole. Because of the pace and the brutality of the training course, the rate of attrition is enormous, and fewer than one in five of those who start out are allowed to finish the course. Some men simply decide to quit, because they know they will never make it. The training is undoubtedly effective, however, for what comes out at the end of it puts the fear of God into other countries’ armies.

  After six weeks, although we recruits – those of us still left, that is – had got as far as the blue-patch stage, we were still a long way short of winning the right to wear that maroon beret with its chromium-plated badge of a winged parachute. There were endless drills and classes, and miles of tracks to be run and tons of logs to be carried on bleeding shoulders through mud and slime, until we felt that our arms were being pulled from their sockets, that our legs were turning to jelly, and that our hearts would burst.

  Log-running is the nearest thing the British Army has to a medieval torture rack. But it is all part of the very deliberate hardening process, like plunging white-hot steel into cold water to temper the metal – except that, instead of steel, it was muscle and willpower the DS were toughening and testing. They were constantly pushing us further than we thought we could go, until we were covering distances that only weeks earlier would have had us on our backs in the nearest emergency ward.

  The emphasis was always on aggression. So whenever we looked like slackening, we were ordered into the gymnasium for a ‘milling’ bout. Milling is peculiar to the Parachute Regiment, and consists of two men, often mates, standing toe-to-toe on a mat and beating hell out of each other. And if they don’t go at it hammer and tongs, there is always a pug-nosed physical training instructor ready to take the place of the guy getting a soft ride. The PTI will then belt the chap who had been pulling his punches, knocking him all over the place.

  Training NCOs encouraged their squads to attack other passing squaddies. They wanted to see men knock each other out of the way as they ran, disputing the other side’s right of way on the pavements beneath the horse-chestnut trees that flank Aldershot’s barrack roadways. After brief but frequently bloody skirmishes, the NCOs would call off their squads, for all the world like whippers-in at a hunt bringing their hounds back into line.

  Several times I saw training corporals grab the helmet chinstraps of fast-fading recruits and run them across the assault-course finishing line. Then, when the exhausted man collapsed in a heap, the NCO would plant a well-aimed boot up his backside. Other slowcoaches often spent their NAAFI breaks doing a hundred press-ups, while their mates slurped mugs of thick, sweet, rather gritty tea and bit into rock buns baked by cooks who would never be in any danger of being prosecuted for misrepresentation under the Trade Descriptions Act.

  So the laggards and the weak were thinned from our ranks. Dispirited and demoralized, they often simply bought th
emselves out of the army for £20 before the inevitable axe could fall. Indeed, I got myself into trouble with the brass for encouraging several of the fading recruits to buy themselves out long before they had been warned that they would not make the grade. There is little point in watching a man punish himself when you – and he – know there is going to be no reward for him at the end. It seemed ludicrous to me, even though all of us considered quitting at some time or another during those hardening months. So I tried to convince a number of our intake to leave while they were still ahead, something which the authorities soon came to hear of. As a result, one day I was summoned before an officer, who told me that I was a troublemaker and asked why I had encouraged other recruits to buy themselves out of the army but had not done so myself.

  ‘Because I never had twenty quid, sir,’ I answered, although it wasn’t the truth. I never for a moment doubted that I would not get through – not that I dared tell him that. The outcome was that he told me he was watching my performance, the clear implication being that the slightest failure or transgression would see me kicked out. It was scarcely news, however, for we were watched from dawn to dusk – and even beyond that during night exercises.

  There was another cloud on my horizon, however, for while I enjoyed my basic training in the Parachute Regiment, I dreaded the thought of actually parachuting. In fact, the closer we got to going to RAF Abingdon in Oxfordshire for jump training, the more scared I became. Nor could I understand the guys who were looking forward to it, who struck me as being quite mad.

  The Royal Air Force does not waste money sending trainee paratroopers up in an aircraft until the instructors know that the recruits can do the business. As a result, on our arrival at Abingdon, and after the usual lectures and practices and a certain amount of jump training in a vast hangar, we were first of all winched up in a cage suspended beneath a helium-filled balloon. The large silver-grey blimp is tethered by a steel cable, three-quarters of an inch thick, which winds around the drum of a large winch mounted on the back of a truck. The winch-men and their gear are protected from the vicious lash-back of a broken cable by a lattice canopy of heavy-gauge steel mesh. Trainee paratroopers stand in the cage while the balloon to which it is attached is allowed to rise on its cable to 800 feet. Then the jumping begins.