by Nigel Benn
Several members of our gang made me cry. They were hard men who could take a lot of punishment as well as giving lots out. I’d go with them to martial arts films late on a Friday night. Afterwards, we’d practise some of the moves. My brother was very fond of the ‘claw’. This was used countless times on my head and I’m surprised my hair is intact after the brutal way he scraped my scalp. We’d also jab each other in the solar plexus, the temple and any other vulnerable spot on the body, using the snake, the mantis or the crane. We regarded these movies as classics: Warriors 2, Iron Monkey and Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow.
At the same time, I was being taught martial arts, first by Master Kam at the Wu Shu Kwan and then at the Lau-Gar with Neville Ray. But I could still be beaten by other lads. I had a punch-up with David Terriot who was a bit older and bigger than me. He was a hard nut and really hurt me with a blow to my face. I fled home crying. That was nothing, however, compared to what Sledge did to my head with his fist. And one of the Ramsey brothers, huge guys, let me have it whenever I gave them too much lip. It would often be in the form of a hot bag of rice in my face at first, then a hard slap. They all used to beat me up, but by the time I’d reached 15 I said to myself, ‘You ain’t crying no more.’ I’d never run from a one-to-one fight unless the opponent could kill me, but I would leg it from a street situation that looked bad.
Crying over women or relationships is quite different to crying over physical pain. I don’t think I’ll ever stop tears over personal relationships, particularly when the people involved are very close to me. In terms of physical punishment, however, I have always been able to put up with a lot. Like the time Colin Chambers pulled me up over a wall so that we could sneak into a cinema. He lost his grip and, as his hand slipped past my face, his ring caught my front tooth, twisting it 90 degrees from its original position. Gingerly, he tried pushing it back, but two years later I had to have it removed. Curiously, I felt no great pain.
Perhaps I had been well schooled by my older mates. Bully also seemed impervious to pain. On one occasion he was at a fair with his girlfriend, Linda Rogers, and his money fell under a ride. He knelt down to pick it up and was attacked by a hammer-wielding attendant. The guy was calling him ‘black’ this, and ‘black’ that and whacked him with the hammer. Bully took it from him, broke the hammer against an iron railing and then let him have it with his bare fists. He beat the crap out of him. He is one of the most powerful men I know. He’d eat you up and spit you out.
He was extraordinary to watch. He once had a shouting match with Linda at the Mocca Bar and the police were called. They came in a team and Bully sent every one of them flying through the air like rag dolls. It was an amazing sight watching him pick them up, one by one, and tossing them about like an angry child discarding its toys.
When the going got tough in gang fights, I usually stayed away. For some reason, other gangs were always out to get me. Monday nights used to be our club night and we would go down to Ilford Town Hall where I’d won a dance competition. Can you imagine that? I could have been a dancer. I was a right little bopper. Down at Ilford there were a lot of racist whites and we used to fight the skinheads and mods. This particular Monday there was going to be another battle, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
About 200 mods had gathered to fight us. I was sitting in McDonald’s waiting for the action when some blokes walked in. I couldn’t believe that they were involved. We were mostly young teenagers but these people were in their mid-20s. One sat next to me and said, ‘It’s a bit fuckin’ dark in here.’
He was huge and I thought, Yeah, it sure is. There was no way I wanted to roll around the floor with this grizzly bear. All his mates were coming out of the woodwork. We were surrounded and these guys were not playing around. They’d come tooled up for the occasion. Some had irons and sawn-off shotguns. It could have been very nasty.
Fortunately, I was able to push one of them over and then legged it in the confusion that followed. I think they were after us because, a week earlier, one of our group had smashed a furniture shop window and about ten guys had fallen into a double bed and hammered the life out of another gang member. That time I had stayed around and we had had to fight hordes of people. As we marched down the street like a marauding army, people kept joining our ranks from bus queues and post offices, like volunteers in a wartime emergency.
After one of these sorties, a bottle had been thrown at police who’d chased our gang. We were ordered to stop but as I was the only one who obeyed, they tossed me in the police van and charged me with the offence. I told them I hadn’t done anything and on that occasion Dad rightly believed me. He knew I would usually put up my hands if caught.
When I was 15 I was convicted of GBH and threatening behaviour against an Indian guy almost twice my age. I usually went to the Hope Revive pub in Ilford Lane to be with the big boys, although I didn’t drink any alcohol. On this particular evening, I was sitting on the pool table and was asked to get off by the man I assaulted. I told him I would if he asked me nicely but he said something derogatory. He must have thought I was a weakling because he was much bigger than me. While verbally abusing me, he also started walking towards me. My brother Dermot was there but didn’t have time to intervene.
As the guy approached, I whacked him in the face and it was all over. He was bloodied and beaten and seriously hurt. Bill the barman had, seconds earlier, feared for my safety and armed himself with a monkey wrench to stop the fight, but it was over too soon.
A day later, I was walking down Ilford High Street and about six policemen jumped on me. I thought they were going to do me for nicking but, as I hadn’t done anything, I protested, ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I ain’t nicked nothing yet.’ That’s when they told me they were holding me for assault. I then saw the Indian guy identifying me and thought, ‘What a grass!’ Again, my initial fear was that I would be in big trouble with Dad and I begged the police not to call him, but he was already at the police station by the time I arrived.
This time, he supported me. ‘Did you win, son?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, Dad. I knocked him down.’
Dad was pleased. He told the police after they had explained what had happened, ‘So he should have done. I would have bashed him up as well. I always told my sons if anyone wants to bash you up, don’t let them put you in hospital. But if you steal, then I’ll bust you up.’ Mum had to pay £30 to the court and I was given 60 hours’ community service which took six months to do.
My life wasn’t all fighting, though. There was a lot of fun in between and a continual flow of women. Because of my youth, I would like to excuse my behaviour with girls. I would treat them quite badly from time to time because of the influence of the big boys around me. Some of them had been just as tough and cruel to their girlfriends as they were to me. It was part of their macho image. They treated them mean and I followed suit. Women whom you did not love were simply used. We’d never fight over them. We’d just use them and like having them around to do our bidding. Happily, that attitude has long since changed.
I remember going to the Notting Hill Carnival with my friends Colin and Mark Jemott. We got separated and I had no money, although I had arranged with one of my girlfriends to meet her at her house later that night. Her parents were going to be away and I wanted to sleep with her. I didn’t want to be embarrassed by boarding a bus without money and getting kicked off, so I walked all the way home. It was a horrendous 15-mile trip. When I finally arrived at her house, it was nearly 4.00am and there was my good friend Mark curled up in bed with her! I was gutted.
I very much regret the way I treated one of my girlfriends. I was inexcusably mean. I used to make her meet me at 1.00am and bring me Kentucky Fried Chicken or fish and chips. She was like a slave to me. I used and abused her and slapped her around. That is not a period I am proud of but I have grown up considerably since then.
Mostly, the girls I went out with were lots of fun. We’d get up to high jinks on the top deck of th
e number 25 bus and do just about everything except make love. There was one girl I was quite keen on for a few months. I made love to her on Wanstead flats late one night but it turned out to be a horrible experience. We were in the heat of passion when I pushed against the ground with both hands for extra leverage. Instead of feeling terra firma, my hand squelched and slid along the grass. I had plonked it smack bang in the middle of a huge mound of dog mess.
Another girlfriend and I were travelling home on the number 25 when the urge to make love overtook me. I couldn’t wait to get home so we got off the bus, raced into a derelict house and made passionate love against the crumbling wall. I was exhausted by the end of it because this girl was hefty. She was bigger and heavier than me and the strain really showed. My legs were like jelly. After that I vowed I would do daily leg exercises to build up my muscles.
I left school at 16 not knowing quite what I wanted to do. I went on the dole and continued seeing the boys and having a lot of fun. But I was very hurt at the ending of my close friendship with Colin. When I make friends, I’m very serious about the relationship. Colin had some very fine clothes and gold coins and ducats. They were worth a lot of money and were stolen by one of our circle of friends who then pointed the finger at me. The devastating thing was that Colin believed him.
In the meantime, Mum was becoming increasingly anxious about my friends and the direction, or lack of direction, I was taking in my life. My brother John was already serving in the regular army, serving with the First Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in Minden, West Germany. She begged him to persuade me to join. Thank God I did. The decision to do so was a major turning point in my life.
4
FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY
Platoon Sergeant Weaver was a bastard and a gentleman. He thought he was God. We believed he was and he certainly behaved like a deity. He ruled by fear and scared the living daylights out of me and all the other raw recruits who joined Tobruk Platoon for their initial 18 weeks’ training at Bassingbourn Barracks in Royston, Hertfordshire.
Sergeant Weaver was a one-off but I respect him for what he put me through. My first impression was that he was a racist bastard. I was wrong about the ‘racist’. He treated everybody the same and put us through the toughest regime I have ever experienced. You would get a pasting just because you were in his platoon. He’d go up to a guy and say, ‘Look at those nostrils!’ and pull out the man’s lip.
To see how tough we were, he’d order us to get down on our knees and stick out our chins. Then he’d walk by and crack jaws with his NCO’s baton. It was done to find out if you were a man. There was no racial abuse involved. If you could take it, you were tough and passed the test. In one of our survival practice sessions, I was made to swim under a boat in freezing cold water. Sergeant Weaver watched approvingly as my fellow soldiers then threw me naked into a bed of nettles. While hating him at times, I admired the way Weaver conducted himself. His grooming was immaculate. I had never seen anybody as well turned out as he was.
His approach would pay dividends for us later in our training. When we were sent to Scotland for our final assessment, we were grateful he’d hardened our resolve. That’s where they really sorted out the men from the boys. Anyone who put a foot wrong would receive one of several punishments, each more barbaric than the last.
If you were given ‘Corporal Rock’ as punishment, you were unlucky. It was one of the hardest to endure. You had to carry a big rock on your back for the whole day. It was about five stone in weight and, for brief spells, you were made to run with it until you had reached the point of exhaustion. But I would have preferred Corporal Rock to ‘Corporal Entrails’, which meant wearing a disgusting necklace of raw animal guts and offal for a 24-hour period, even during mealtimes.
While on manoeuvres in Scotland, I escaped the more horrendous punishments but still had to endure an ordeal. I was blindfolded, locked in a corrugated tin shed and then, to brighten the proceedings, a thunder flash used in skirmish attacks was thrown into my ‘cell’, causing a deafening explosion.
Many of us were given nicknames. At first, I was useless at map reading and my inability to find tracks earned me the nickname ‘Pathfinder’.
I went into the Army a boy and came out a man. I was 16 when I enquired at the Forest Gate recruitment centre about becoming a soldier. The wartime slogan ‘Your Country Needs You’ did not apply to me. I needed the Army. I missed being with John, and as he was the one who had always pleased my parents, I thought it would be nice to follow in his footsteps, besides which there had been some subtle hints from Mum. I had also seen my brother box in the army finals at Aldershot and thought I’d like some of the action.
Shortly before I approached the recruitment office, John had rung home from Germany to find Mum in tears. She begged him to do her a favour. ‘Please, John, for my sake and his, get Nigel to join up, because the way he is going he’s heading for prison.’ John and Dad worked on me and convinced me to enlist, advising me that it was the best thing I could do.
There was nothing else that interested me at the time so I applied and sailed through the army selection tests before I was 17. Not that they were very hard. You just had to prove you were not too thick by ticking lots of boxes.
Then you were sent away for a couple of days to see how fit you were. After that, there was a delay of several months until I had reached seventeen. I started my training on 11 May 1981. Private Nigel Gregory Benn, Army Service Number 24604617 — a number I will never forget — would soon make his mark. One of the good things about the Army was that you were immediately made to feel part of a new family which had a long history. It gave you a sense of belonging and a provenance which you might not otherwise have had. On top of that, it instilled a sense of direction, comradeship and the guts to carry on when the going got tough. I owe the Army a great deal.
The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers had a proud and distinguished past. Formed in 1968, it was an amalgamation of the Northumberland, Lancashire, Warwickshire and London fusiliers dating back to the seventeenth century. King James II asked Lord Dartmouth to raise a Regiment of Fusiliers at the Tower of London in 1685. They were armed with the snap-hance musket which was the same as the French fusil. The king described his soldiers as ‘My Royal Regiment of Fusiliers’ and they became the ‘Seventh of Foot’.
Their headquarters is still at the Tower, together with regimental memorabilia and silver. Among the documents is a list of my army fights. The records will say I was undefeated.
In 1881, the City of London, in recognition of the regiment and the old trained bands who helped make up its numbers, granted it the treasured privilege of marching through the city with ‘… drums beating, bands playing, colours flying and bayonets fixed’. I wish I had been there to see the regiment when it took advantage of this privilege on 29 April 1994. That march was held to commemorate the twenty-fifth year of the regiment’s formation, but at the time I was away in Barbados.
Immediately prior to joining the Army, I felt I had quietened down a bit. Mum and Dad no longer had problems with school but they were still worried about some of my friends. One or two of the older ones had a bad reputation and had been in trouble with the law. On the odd occasion, I was still a dab hand at shoplifting and had had a run-in with the authorities after stealing from Woolworth’s. Apart from that, I was having a high old time, although there was no real direction in my life. While Debbie Hogan was my regular girlfriend, I was still very much into going out with my mates and seeing my older buddies.
My music tastes had also started to change since leaving school. I was into soul music now which meant going to different clubs. Soul clubs were much quieter and more trouble-free than the reggae venues. We went to places like Lacey Ladies in Seven Kings, the 100 Club in Oxford Street, Oscar’s and Global Village. Stratford Town Hall and Ilford Town Hall also had good club nights and entry was relatively inexpensive. Our circle of friends included some great dancers with names to match: Shakin’ S
tevens, Oily, Mutley and Bassey. We were one big happy family going from club to club.
Debbie and I were far too young for a serious commitment and I was still attracted to other girls, particularly to one with whom I became absolutely besotted. She was the most beautiful black woman I had ever seen. Vanya was a goddess. She had a huge Afro hairstyle, which she sometimes plaited and which seemed to have a life of its own.
We dated but didn’t sleep together. Not that I didn’t want to. She was gorgeous. I took her back to my mate Paul’s one night while his parents were away and sat talking with her for 20 hours. However, by the close of this marathon I was back to where I started. She was far too shy to do anything physical with me at that time.
Later, when we took up again while I was on leave from the Army, our physical relationship flourished. She was as beautiful as ever but less introverted. I don’t know why I won her over then, possibly because I was fairly boisterous. She was still a little reticent but a very decent girl. I was proud to be with her.
Bassingbourn Barracks might as well have been in a different country. It seemed a million miles from home. My first night away from Mum was murder. I cried like a baby. For the first time, I realised how vulnerable I still was at 17. What a change from my confident old self. When surrounded by stable and loving parents and family, I had felt tough, invincible and grown up beyond my years. Here at camp I even had a picture of Debbie which I slipped under my pillow and clutched tearfully before going to sleep. Not one of my friends in east London thought I would make it beyond two weeks. They were convinced I would fail to knuckle down to army discipline.
The experience was new to me and it took some time to adapt to the strict regime. It began the moment they woke you. They threw you out of the bed and then turned the bed upside down. But it was not all bad. We had a good bunch of lads and I made friends quickly. Joe Reeves became my best mate in those first six weeks and the other lads in my circle were Ducksy who had been a gardener, Jimmy Henderson, whom we called Jap because of his oriental appearance, Stretch Armstrong who had no teeth, and another Joe who was a massive black guy and a right hard-case.