Back at the barracks, we lads from the Airborne were making our presence felt. We quickly colonised the NAAFI bar. Anyone who wasn’t Airborne was made to feel distinctly unwelcome. We were loud, rowdy and intimidating. The shared belief was that if you weren’t a Para, you weren’t worthy to be in the bar when we were there. There were twenty or so of us who’d take up the physical space with our volume and behaviour, and if any stubborn remainers insisted on defying us and drinking in the corner, someone would front up to them: ‘Listen, fuck off, this is a fucking Airborne bar now.’
I was nineteen years old and built like a whippet. Two pints of Heineken would leave me fairly wrecked. But I had no option but to keep chugging away and try desperately to keep up with the older lads, not least the squadron’s big alpha male, who everyone called Bus, because he was built like the smelly end of a London double-decker. Bus was your typical bully. A big lad. He liked to throw his weight around, he wasn’t scared of anything and he always wanted everyone to know that he was the most Airborne of the Airborne. One night, I was four pints in and blearily watching a game of pool when I became aware of Bus talking to a group of lads over by the cigarette machine. Bus smirked and then they all smirked and, one by one, looked around at me. Something was going on.
I pretended to be completely focused on the pool game as three of them barged their way behind the bar and pulled the top tray out of a steaming glass-washer. A group of nine or ten men gathered around the dance floor, too many of them throwing hungry looks in my direction for me to feel in any way comfortable. They began hurling their beer, glasses and all, onto the wooden floor. Glass smashed everywhere and alcohol spattered up the walls. Then Bus started handing out more glasses from the wire tray. They started throwing them down too.
Bus walked up to me. ‘Initiation time, sprog,’ he leered. A low cheer arose from the group. Bus grabbed my upper arm and pulled me to the top of the dance floor, now slicked with alcohol and broken glass. Circling dots of light from the disco ball picked their way over thousands of glinting splinters and terrifying upright shards that curved into the air like great shark’s teeth.
‘Head first,’ shouted Bus. ‘Dive in, boy.’ The cheer rose louder. Bus turned to face the lads. ‘And fucking do it naked.’
‘You fucking new boy!’ someone else cried. ‘Get in there!’
I knew this was a test, and a massive part of that test was showing zero fear. I removed my trainers, socks, T-shirt and trousers. When I was down to my underpants they all started clapping in time, ‘Off! Off! Off!’ And off they came. There was nothing to do but go for it and hope I wouldn’t get one of those nasty daggers of glass slashing down my face or ripping into a major artery or, even worse, my nut sack. I didn’t think. As the chants got louder I dived.
I felt a thumping hardness on my chest as I landed, then the sound of shattering glass and the slick and slide of beer on the polished floor. The cuts were painless. At first. I was just aware of the sensation of prickling and slicing and skin opening up. As I skidded forwards in the foaming beer river, I whipped my body around quickly, trying to angle my back and arse at the floor.
As I slid to the end, the slipstream pulled bunches of glass around my body. I pushed myself to my feet as carefully as I could without betraying the fact that I gave a shit. When I was up, Bus grabbed me in a headlock and started punching the crown of my skull. ‘Welcome to the brotherhood!’ he shouted. From my position under his armpit I could see the blood pouring down the pale skin of my arm, back and arse cheek. Other members of the Airborne began volunteering, diving into the glass themselves with maniacal cackling. Behind us, pool players continued with their game, showing a complete lack of interest in what was taking place.
I spent the whole of the next week picking glass out of my arse. But at least, I told myself, I was in the gang now. My pleasure at that fact would have been greater hadn’t one of the older lads, who was probably jealous of the attention I’d been getting from Bus, reminded me as I paced back naked towards my clothes, ‘But don’t forget you’re still a fucking sprog.’
That was the depressing thing about it all. I always wanted to be the best, but there was no way of climbing up this hierarchy by excellence. You needed to be in with the right people and you needed to have been in for a long time. The only way you could really earn rapid success in 9 Para was by your level of roguery. It was bad behaviour, more than any achievement or skill or experience in the field, that made someone feel they had the right to call themselves Airborne. Aside from that, you had to stay in the middle of the pack. You couldn’t highlight yourself in front of Bus and the rest. If you did, you’d be smacked down, smartly and with prejudice.
What made it worse was that this was an era in which nothing much was going on in the world to keep the power-packs in the military occupied. Between 1998 and 2002 there were no deployments. There was no Afghanistan. There was no Iraq. The psychological machinery of the army is dedicated to the creation of a certain type of man, one who generates aggression. And that aggression needs an outlet. It needs a battlefield. It needs operations. In a war zone all that furious energy is incredibly effective. But without it, the men just turn it on each other. There’s nowhere else for it to go.
As soon as I returned to the UK I had the wings tattooed on my left arm. Back in Aldershot I found myself in a bunk near Cranston. Now that I’d passed my initiation – and had learned my place – we were getting on better with each other. Every evening we’d all go drinking in local Airborne pubs and clubs like The Peggy or Cheeks. The lads would compete with each other to see who could dream up the most shocking behaviour. Some nights they’d be drinking pints of each other’s piss. Other nights they’d be lowering their bollocks into the pockets of a pool table and having balls fired right at them, or taking their tops off and having darts throwing into their backs. ‘Airborne!’ would come the cry, as another act of debauchery went down. ‘Airborne!’ as the vomit ran. ‘Airborne!’ as the glass smashed. ‘Airborne!’ as pool ball smashed into nutsack. ‘Airborne!’ as we were chased by the military police all over town once again.
And me? I was swallowed right into it. I had to be. I wanted to be accepted. I wanted that sense of belonging. I wanted to be in that elite club. Acting like this was the only way to prove yourself and gain a little bit of status. If you didn’t, they’d quickly pick up on it and make your life hell. I’d come a long way since I’d been that polite, young grammar-school lad, fresh off the ferry from Normandy, lifting his hat to everyone who passed him on the street and bidding them a cheery good morning.
I managed to avoid the violence until one night at Cheeks. We were all sitting in our usual place, having taken over several tables, and concentrating on the serious business of getting as pissed as we could as quickly as we could, beneath the glow-in-the-dark images of singers like Michael Jackson and Madonna on the walls around us, when the biggest lump of a man any of us had ever seen walked past. He was in a muscle vest and had more gold rings on his fingers than a gypsy fortune teller.
‘Oi, Middleton,’ leered Cranston. ‘Go and hit him.’
‘Fuck off,’ I laughed.
Then Bus grinned at me from over the rim of his pint. ‘Go on, Middleton,’ he said. ‘Hit him.’
There’d be no backing out of this now. As soon as Bus had issued his kingly decree, I was swamped with excited Paras, all of them shouting ‘Airborne!’, ‘Airborne!’, Airborne!’ I staggered to my feet, trying to disguise not only how pissed I was but also how much I was shitting myself. By now the lump had found his mates, who had congregated around the jukebox.
‘Airborne!’, ‘Airborne!’, ‘Airborne!’
There was nothing else I could do – and no point in drawing it out. I strode towards him. He saw me coming. His whole group turned. I knew I’d have to do it without hesitation, and do it properly. Anything less than a clean knockout and this animal would have me resembling the contents of a butcher’s bin. I balled my fist, raised my arm and
put the force of my entire body into it, squeezing my eyes shut at the force of knuckles on his jaw. A jolt of pain shot through the bones of my hand. Jesus Christ, the lump had barely moved. He was just looking back at me, slightly confused and irritated, as if by a fly. And then, he swung back. I somehow ducked it and, luckily, the lads were ready. They pounced on the poor guy and gave him a serious shoeing while I staggered back to the bar for another round of flaming sambucas.
Hours later we were on our way home, having taken over the whole top deck of the night bus. The few civilians that were forced to share the space with us were intimidated but pretending not to be, each one staring intently out of the window as the dark streets, silhouettes of terraced housing and glowing orange street lights bumped past. We were in our usual state, shouting, swearing, laughing and generally living up to our legendary reputations. It felt almost a duty in public. People had expectations of 9 Para, and nobody wanted to let them down. I’d had a brilliant night. Despite the fact that I’d failed to fell the big fella back at The Peggy, I knew my status had gone up a notch with everyone, and I took a secret pleasure in knowing that it had all been Cranston’s idea. The last thing he would have wanted was for his suggestion to lead to Bus and the lads embracing me further into the fold, but you could just tell that that’s what had happened. I felt elated.
As the bus swung round the corner towards the barracks I decided on a little stunt, just to cement this evening as mine in the minds of the boys. I staggered out of my seat, made my way to the front of the bus and turned around, holding onto the seats either side of me in an effort to keep upright.
‘Oi, oi, oi!’ I shouted, catching Bus’s eye.
He looked back at me. ‘Middleton!’ he shouted. ‘Miiiiidddduuulllltoooooooon!!’
Everyone turned. I raised both arms triumphantly and shouted ‘Airborne!’ The cry immediately came back, ‘Airborne!’ And, as it did, I allowed my bursting bladder to release. Hot piss ran down my jeans, trickling into my socks and onto the floor of the bus, where it ran backwards in little streams. The lads erupted into cheers and laughter. Just as I was about to wobble back to my seat, I saw someone looking at me. She must have been in her fifties and I guessed, from the way she was dressed, that she was something like an office cleaner returning home from her night shift. She said, ‘I bet your mum’s proud of you.’
My next deployment was in August 2001. Operation Essential Harvest was a NATO mission in Macedonia, and the ‘essential harvest’ we had to assist in gathering was one of firearms. Macedonia was one of those troubled Balkan states that always seemed to be on the edge of some fresh conflict whose roots ran back into the distant past. We were there to collect weapons from rebel forces for destruction at a special site in Greece, thereby helping to prevent civil war. The Brits were the largest contingent there, with more than a thousand men from the Paras and the 2nd Battalion joining smaller numbers of French, Germans and Czechs. 9 Para were set up close to the mountains and we were billeted in a local hotel. Day to day, we were setting up checkpoints, making sure that communications were working and sitting behind desks in big tents, collecting weapons from fighters and logging serial numbers.
It was all pretty standard until I was selected to go and work with the French Foreign Legion. Word had got around that I spoke fluent French, and the next thing I knew I was interpreting for high-ranking officers from the Legion’s Second Foreign Parachute Regiment, or ‘Deuxième Rep’. They were an elite group that functioned a bit like the Special Forces. To say they operated in a different culture would be an understatement. These men were intelligent, as well as being trained to a level that would have left many Paras collapsed in a ditch. They behaved in a way that showed they had nothing to prove. Although Operation Essential Harvest was officially a dry tour, the Foreign Legion are actually sponsored by Kronenbourg. I was smuggling crates back to the Paras’ hotel but drinking with the French. When they got wasted they didn’t beat each other up. They sang old patriotic songs together like a bunch of merry pirates. I loved it. There were moments when I seriously considered packing it all in and joining the Legion. It was so good to be out of that violent bubble. I felt, for the first time in ages, properly accepted and respected. I was me again.
One morning I went into a hangar where the Paras used to eat and saw everyone was congregated in one corner. ‘That’s a bit weird,’ I thought. I barged my way past a few people, before finding a crate on the floor by the wall. I stepped up onto it and peered over the heads. They were all transfixed by a portable TV, a big black box with a tiny screen and an aerial sticking out the top. An aeroplane was flying into a huge tower block somewhere. ‘It’s going to fucking kick off,’ muttered someone. Nobody responded. They didn’t have to.
Spending so much time with the Deuxième Rep had a powerful effect on me. It made me question what I’d been doing and who I’d become. I began to think, ‘Is this who I am now? Is this what I’m going to have to do throughout my whole career? Is this who I aspire to be these days? Is my life’s ambition to become the next Bus?’ I’d allowed myself to become part of the crowd. I’d been sucked into it. And that’s exactly what the military wants.
There are lots of important things about being part of a group. When it’s working, it’s about not putting yourself at the forefront of your thinking. It’s about being dedicated to each other. Living and working together – and fighting and making up – turns you into a band of brothers. You might go through phases when you literally hate one another, but when the crunch comes you’re so defensive on behalf of everyone in your group that you’d do anything to protect them. Concern for your own safety disappears and your only thought is for the safety of your brothers. And that is reciprocated.
It happened to me many times in Afghanistan. One day I was out on patrol when I saw a flatbed truck with a massive gun on the back of it driving past at the end of a dusty side street. We went to ground and watched it go. Suddenly it stopped. We quickly identified it as a 120mm anti-tank/anti-aircraft weapon, a hugely valuable asset to the enemy. I turned to my officer and said, ‘Let’s not waste any time, let’s go and secure it.’ Before we knew it, we were up and sprinting towards it, zig-zagging between buildings, approaching with our weapons raised. Everyone else had been left behind.
Soon we found ourselves out in a clearing on the other side of a huge corn field. Two men in the truck saw us, leapt out of the cab and sprinted towards the field. My officer immediately launched himself after them. It would be incredibly dangerous in there, with no field of vision whatsoever and two armed Talibs on the loose in among the seven-foot corn. I thought to myself, ‘I hope he’s not going in there. He’s the boss, we need him.’ But he was. Without another thought I ran after him and shouted, ‘Stay with the gun.’ And then it was me in that corn field and him in the relative safety of the clearing. I remember thinking, ‘What the fuck am I doing in here?’ But it was an automatic reaction.
That is the power of the group at its best. But what marks a true leader out is the ability to separate yourself from those psychological forces when you need to. You can’t allow group thinking to push you around too much. When I was young there was always something pulling me away from the crowd. It wasn’t as if I was thinking, ‘I want to lead.’ It’s just, looking back, I can see that it was in me. It’s these people who can stand apart from crowds that the military seek for service in the Special Forces. They’re taken out of the green army and put together in one elite group. The result is a gang of highly competitive men – a team of individuals. It’s why they refer to them as the ‘thinking soldiers’.
As deeply as I sank into the groupthink of 9 Para, somehow that respectable young man I’d once been was never quite killed off. My assignment with the Deuxième Rep had reawakened him, reminding me who I really was. From that point on I found myself gradually separating from Bus, Cranston and the rest.
What pulled me apart further still was the fact that, back in the UK, I’d met a girl. It happ
ened when I was in Portsmouth visiting my nan. I’d gone for a drink in a club called Route 66 with a couple of old friends and was approached by a stylish woman with a blonde bob who told me her name was Hayley. Following some awkward flirting, we slept together. After that we just kind of slipped into a relationship. This didn’t go down well with the lads from 9 Para. The first clue that the flock had decided to reject me was that the banter stopped. From the outside, the banter we used to indulge in could probably seem harsh, like bullying, but it was an integral part of the 9 Para world. It was a way of saying what you really thought about someone while turning it into a joke. Banter was always more than a bit of truth, however. It was also a test of your armour. If you couldn’t take it, you’d get the shit ripped out of you.
But there was also something affectionate about it. You only shared banter with people you’d accepted as part of your group. In the Forces, it’s when the banter stops that you’re in trouble. And, with me, it stopped dead. ‘Why are you not drinking down The Peggy?’ they kept asking me. ‘What’s your fucking problem?’ I’d come back from weekends in Portsmouth with Hayley to find my room trashed – my bed upside down, CDs smashed, locker door ripped off, clothes everywhere covered in piss and shit. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to see Cranston, Bus and three or four others just standing over me, staring at me, all of them pissed.
I’d find any excuse not to hang around with them. But as much as I wanted to get away, I just wasn’t having a great deal of fun with Hayley. Despite this, I somehow found myself flying to Cancun and marrying her in a hotel, with her mum and friend watching. There was no great romantic scene, no bending down on one knee and proposing. Even as I was saying ‘I do,’ I was thinking, ‘What the fuck have I got myself into?’ A year later, with the relationship failing further, we decided that having a child might save us. The child was Oakley. He was born on 12 November 2001 in Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey. Although I love him dearly, and today we enjoy a fantastic relationship, he didn’t save us.
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