by Paul Bruce
It was about this time that I met Ann, the love of my young life. She was a good-looking, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl and not too tall. She had a lovely figure and looked about eighteen, three years older than her real age. I was just sixteen and smitten. We met in the cafe where my pals and I drank coffee after weight training at the youth club.
I would spend two or three hours every night just looking at her, too shy to talk, and hoping that she would speak to me. One night she did and my heart leaped.
After a month we began dating every night. This would be the real thing. I would arrive home at 6pm, filthy after a day’s hard work on the site. After a quick dinner, a bath, clean clothes and five minutes spent on my hair, I would meet her at the cafe by 7.15. If the weather was fine we would stroll over to Mayes Brook Park and find a secluded spot in a copse at the edge of the park. We couldn’t get enough of each other. We would make love until dark. She was fantastic. I was in love.
Six months later Ann became pregnant. We had been taking precautions but not all the time. My parents were livid; her parents were even angrier. At first they demanded that she should have an abortion but she refused. Instead, I was banned from her house and her parents refused to let her out after six o’clock at night, the time I arrived back from work. Neither of us was on the telephone and, as a result, we virtually never saw each other. Her parents must have known that such a strict regime would result in killing our love for each other. Finally, it did.
Then, one day, ten months after I had last seen her, we bumped into each other in the road. She had had the baby, a little boy, but her parents had persuaded her – ordered would be more accurate – to have the child adopted. She had wanted to keep him but her parents had so knocked the spirit out of her that she finally, reluctantly, agreed to give up the baby. When we met, we looked at each other but the passion we had once felt had gone. We never saw each other again and perhaps that was for the best. I felt very sad. I also felt a terrible sense of guilt.
I needed a change. I was still only sixteen but reckoned that I had been on the building site long enough. I applied to Redbridge Council for a job and ended up working in the Maintenance Department, helping to lay new drains and repair council property. I can still remember the first time I had to fill in my weekly time sheet. I worked out exactly how many hours I had done and wrote them down correctly. The chargehand came along and asked to look at my time sheet.
He looked aghast when he saw what I had written. ‘Do you want to get us all hanged?’ he protested. ‘That’s no bloody good, lad. Give me another time sheet.’ As I watched, he rewrote another time sheet with my name on the top. ‘That’s better,’ he said as he handed it over to me.
I looked at what he had written with astonishment. By his reckoning I had worked twenty hours’ overtime! In reality it had been only four. I didn’t know what to do. Then he said, ‘And don’t put in another time sheet until I’ve checked it. Do you understand?’ I just looked at him and said nothing.
Throughout the following week, I worried about what he had done; worried that I might be found out; worried that I might end up in court. Then when I received my pay packet and realised how much extra money I had made, I decided to stay quiet and keep the money. However, the chargehand still wasn’t confident that I would keep up the pretence and checked my time sheet every week.
With good money in my pocket, a good job and the thought that I had only another year to go before joining the army, I decided to enjoy myself. Every Saturday was party night at someone’s house. After a few drinks down at the local, we would descend on some poor person’s house and rock’n’roll the night away.
At one of these parties I met Jennifer, a well-built, good-looking blonde – and a true blonde – with beautiful hair and bright-blue eyes. She was only sixteen but I thought she was great and I found her very sexy.
It really was a case of love at first sight. Our eyes met as everyone danced and I walked over to her. Immediately we began talking to each other, we both realised that we were attracted. We danced and smooched and danced and smooched. Within an hour we had made our way upstairs to one of the bedrooms. We started to undress each other as we kissed. Within ten minutes we were making love. Three times that night we went upstairs to the bedroom to make love. I walked her home at three in the morning. When we were saying good night at her front door and I was about to leave, I suddenly realised that I didn’t know her name!
We dated for the next year, until after I joined the army. We had a wonderful time together, dancing, having a drink or going to parties. Whenever possible, which was virtually every time we dated, we found somewhere to make love. However, I had learned my lesson. I never went anywhere without a packet of three. The last thing I wanted to do was make another girl pregnant.
The early sixties was the time of the height of Mods and Rockers’ rivalry and Southend was one of their principal battlegrounds. Jennifer and I would often visit Southend with our friends, most of whom had motorbikes. As a result, I would sometimes find myself in the middle of a pitched battle. My main objective was to protect Jennifer and myself but, on occasions, when my mates were being beaten up, I would wade in, throwing fists and putting the boot in. I can remember ending up with the odd black eye and bruised ribs but nothing more. I was learning to look after myself.
On one occasion during a Southend battle, a Mod hit Jennifer in the face. He was wearing a knuckleduster when he smashed her in the eye. I went berserk. Jennifer had simply been standing with me watching what was going on, not interfering at all. I chased the bastard, threw him to the ground and gave him a bloody good kicking. I was livid.
We would often visit Southend in the summer months because Jennifer adored making love in the open air and we would usually find some semi-secluded place to get it together. I would also take her birdwatching. She wasn’t that interested in birds but, of course, we would always end up naked and she seemed to love that more than anything.
In my heart, however, I knew that I was just playing for time. My real life was about to begin.
CHAPTER TWO
For two full months Jennifer and my mates tried to talk me out of joining the army. Jennifer would kiss me all over my body as we lay in bed, reminding me of what I would miss if I joined up. Sometimes, as we were making love, she would even tell me that there would be no sex for me in the army. My mates just thought I was a bloody fool throwing in a good job, good pay, a great girlfriend and great parties for what – square-bashing, spit and polish and bullshit! But I would not be deterred. I would lie awake at night thinking over what I should do but I knew in my heart that my destiny lay in the army.
One morning in September 1966, aged eighteen, I took the train from Dagenham to Romford, intent on visiting the Army Recruiting Office. On the way there, however, I got cold feet. I wasn’t sure. I kept thinking of Jennifer and our relationship; I kept hearing my mates’ words in my mind, telling me how stupid it would be to throw away my life and join the army. For more than thirty minutes I walked around Romford trying to decide what to do. Then, like a flash, I knew I had to join up, forget about the past, forget the good times, the good pay and Jennifer, and find the career I had longed for all my life. I took a deep breath and pushed open the door of the recruiting office. There would be no turning back.
An army sergeant sat behind one desk, a corporal behind another. Along the walls were recruiting posters showing squaddies in exotic overseas locations. It looked more like a holiday travel bureau than an Army Recruitment Office.
‘Right, young man, what can I do you for?’ said the sergeant.
‘I want to join the Parachute Regiment,’ I replied confidently.
‘Right then, you’ve come to the right place. Come and sit down.’
We chatted for a while. His corporal made me a cup of coffee and he gave me the forms to fill in. An hour later I walked out, having abandoned the idea of joining the Paras and having agreed, for some extraordinary reason, to sign on with the
REME to train as a mechanic. As I took the train back home, I wasn’t at all sure I had done the right thing.
Two days later I returned to the recruiting office for my medical. Ninety minutes later I left the office, having been passed A1 fit and with a railway warrant to Arborfield in Berkshire. There was no going back. I was now a member of Her Majesty’s armed forces.
My mates threw a party for me on the Saturday night, determined to get me blind drunk. Jennifer had other ideas. We spent half the night drinking and dancing and the other half in bed, making love. I saw Jennifer again on the Sunday night but she could not be consoled; the tears flowed down her face as we kissed goodbye.
I had no real idea what to expect at Arborfield. As I stepped off the bus and walked along the road to the main gates, I could see squads of soldiers marching about to the accompaniment of lots of shouting and swearing and I wondered in my naivety what was going on. I would soon learn.
The next six weeks were a blur of marching, shouting, drilling, more shouting, spit and polish, cleaning and bedmaking and, of course, weapons training. I slept like a child and always seemed to be hungry. I never had time to think of Jennifer or my mates as there was so much to do and so little time in which to do it. I enjoyed the PE and the cross-country runs; I hated the drill.
My mother and elder sister Jan came to see my passing-out parade and I loved the 72-hour leave which followed, enjoying a few pints with my mates and spending as much time as possible with Jennifer. Back at camp we only had time to pack before being bussed down to Borden in Hampshire to start training as mechanics.
During the next twelve months, the army instructors taught us everything there was to know about army threetonners and the ubiquitous Land Rover. By the time I took the REME exam, I could change the clutch on a three-ton truck in forty minutes. I had not only learned everything there was to know about vehicle maintenance, but I was also now the proud possessor of an HGV licence.
I was posted to a place I had never heard of before in my life – Bielefeld, near Dortmund in north Germany. I had reservations about the place even before I arrived as the weather conspired to keep me away. The original flight from Heathrow was cancelled because of fog; other flights from other airports were also cancelled and I ended up taking a train from London to Harwich and had a dreadful Channel crossing followed by a long, weary rail journey to Bielefeld. I arrived three days late, exhausted.
I was assigned to 9 Squadron, Royal Corps of Transport, and sent to work in a small light aid detachment workshop in the camp. Most of the time I seemed to do nothing except drink tea and play darts. This wasn’t the army life I had envisaged. It was a far cry from the life I had dreamed of enjoying as I listened to my father’s desert adventures.
To make life more interesting, I persuaded the others in the workshop to keep more of the heavy work that we should have sent to the main workshop. So, for example, when a three-tonner came in for inspection and we found it needed a new engine fitted, we would carry out the work ourselves rather than sending it to the main workshop five miles away.
I still found life boring so I volunteered to join the REME recovery unit, going out in all weathers to recover broken-down vehicles within a sixty-mile radius of the camp. I finally felt as though I was earning my keep as well as leading a more interesting life. Deep down, however, I still felt frustrated.
My mind kept wandering to the life I wanted to lead, where there would be some real action. One day, these thoughts nearly cost me my life. I was daydreaming as I drove a Land Rover along a country lane, having collected some spares from the main depot. I forgot I was in Germany, where I should have been driving on the right side of the road. Suddenly, I realised that a huge truck was coming straight towards me. Inadvertently, I had drifted over to the left side of the road but it took me vital seconds to realise that I was the one in the wrong. If I had braked and come to a halt, the huge truck would have smashed into me and I would probably have been a goner. So, instead, I drove straight off the road and into the hedge at the side. The truck must have missed me by a matter of inches. As the Land Rover came to a halt, half-buried in the hedge, my heart started thumping as I realised just how close I had come to a very serious accident. ‘Stupid bastard,’ I kept mouthing to myself, about myself, as I drove back to camp.
Bielefeld did have some compensations, however. My footballing ability came in useful. After a trial I was selected to play for the squadron football team. We would play teams from around the area and those were always great days, finishing with a few beers and a singsong. There was also an army gymnasium where I was encouraged by the PT instructors to continue my weight training.
It was in that gymnasium that I met the man who would change the course of my life. One day I noticed a powerfully built, tough-looking geezer, aged about thirty, who concentrated on weights to increase his stamina. I had seen him around the camp but had no idea of his rank or his job.
When he dressed at the end of his training session, I realised he was a provo sergeant. However, sewn on the upper right arm of his shirt I noticed a navy-blue set of wings which I had never seen before. I knew the emblem did not represent the Paras because their wings are a lighter blue. The next time we met, I plucked up courage to ask him what the wings represented. ‘SAS, son,’ came the reply. I looked at him somewhat bewildered for I had never before met anyone who had been a member of the SAS. To me they had always seemed more like ghosts than real army personnel.
Occasionally our paths would cross outside the gym and the sergeant would nod or wink. I took it for granted that he wouldn’t speak to me but I was determined to find an opportunity to ask him how he came to wear SAS wings. I was fascinated and wanted to know more. One day the opportunity arose as we trained in the gym together. I summoned up the courage to ask him, ‘I suppose you must be really fit to get into the SAS?’ The question sounded a little pathetic but it was all I could think of.
My simple question began a series of conversations that we would have during the next few weeks whenever we trained together. Outside the gym we never spoke but the more we talked during training, the more he realised he had found someone who was genuinely interested in the Special Air Service.
He told me that he had served with the SAS in Aden and had seen action there. He confessed that he missed the SAS lifestyle and the mates he had made during his time with the regiment and that he desperately wanted to get back into it but he couldn’t. Since serving in Aden he had married. He now had a couple of kids and his wife was absolutely against him risking his life by rejoining the regiment. So now he was a provo sergeant back with his parent unit, the Royal Corps of Transport.
He told me of occasions in Aden when he had had to kill people in cold blood. I looked at him, not knowing whether to believe what he was saying or take it all with a pinch of salt. I couldn’t believe that a British Army sergeant would actually kill someone except in wartime. Everything I had heard about the British Army I had taken as gospel – that the Brits always fought clean, that the British Army wasn’t like other armies, that the rules of combat were never flouted. Nevertheless, everything he told me made my blood race. I was hooked.
I asked the sergeant how I could go about applying to join the SAS and he told me. He even picked up an application form for me from corps headquarters. It is, in fact, a simple, straightforward form. I only had to write my name, rank and number to apply to attend an SAS selection course. He took the signed form and sent it to Hereford, the SAS headquarters. I never heard another word.
I could not believe that the SAS had turned me down without even seeing me or giving me an interview, so I tried to forget about joining and concentrated instead on enjoying myself in Germany and keeping fit.
Only an hour’s drive from Bielefeld was the city of Dortmund, and I listened to the tales of other RCT soldiers about weekends of drinking and the sex on offer to British squaddies. About three months after arriving in Germany, four of us hired a car and went to Dortmund for t
he weekend. I was nineteen and a man of the world, or so I thought, but the sights that greeted me as we walked around the red-light district of Dortmund made me realise I hadn’t started to live. I could not believe that the Germans were so totally open about sex and prostitution – so very different to the British attitude.
The first pub we walked into, The Blue Lamp, was an eye-opener. I could hardly believe what I saw. On one wall a huge screen showed hard-core porn films. Everything that I had ever heard about went on, from group sex to bondage to sado-masochism, and every detail was filmed in close up in full colour. As I looked around the pub, I realised that some couples were openly having sex and some of the tarts were playing with blokes under the table.
I watched with my mouth open as a barmaid came over to one table and plonked down a couple of large steiners of beer while the couple sitting there carried on playing with each other. It was later that I discovered that the cost of a ‘knuckle-shuffle’ was only one steiner of beer – about two bob! When some of the squaddies realised what was on offer they literally formed a queue, waiting their turn and watching their mates having a ‘knuckle-shuffle’. After their turn, some would immediately go back to the end of the queue and enjoy another pint of beer while waiting their turn again.
We went from pub to pub, having a pint in each, until we came to the place we had been told was the greatest – the Hole in the Wall. As we walked in, some girls came up to us and asked for a beer. Some of them were tasty, really good looking. They didn’t seem like tarts at all. We sat and chatted and bought them drinks and then they asked us if we wanted to go downstairs.
With a drink in my hand, I went off arm-in-arm with my girl, a dark-haired, well-built young woman who could speak English well. She seemed about 25. I knew what was going to happen but I wasn’t prepared for the scene. Around the room were seven or eight couples, all standing against the walls, the girls in various stages of undress and the blokes enjoying knee-tremblers. I think I lasted less than thirty seconds.