First Man In

by Ant Middleton

  Finally, I glimpsed what looked like the brow of a hill. I ran to the top to get a look around and saw, about fifty metres away, a little stream. ‘Yes!’ I thought. I opened the map again so I could try and zone in on my whereabouts using the stream as a landmark. My heart sinking, I realised there were waterways like this everywhere – dozens of them. The blue streams on the map looked like veins on a tea-lady’s leg. I ran down to the river and followed it. After about fifteen minutes I found a Y junction. ‘Yes!’ I shouted, practically falling to my knees with gratitude. This was a feature I’d be able to place on the map. I found it, took a bearing from it and was back on my way. But I wasn’t out of trouble yet. I was at least half an hour late. And if I didn’t finish on time, I’d be failed.

  By the last leg of the march I was absolutely hanging out, my muscles were trying to go into spasm, my will was almost empty and my feet were mangled, puffed and bloody, feeling for all the world like lumps of gnawed meat hanging off the end of my legs. I was also panicking. We were forbidden from wearing watches, so I had no idea how late I was running. At the top of a hill I saw the checkpoint and the DS there. I squinted down. Yes! He was still checking men through. I was still in time, just about, but I knew the DS could stop and pack in at any second. Overwhelmed, I put my weapon against the fence post, leapt over and charged down the hill.

  I’d made it. But then, just as I thought I was through, the DS stopped me. And he didn’t look happy.

  ‘Middleton,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, staff?’

  ‘Why did you take both hands off your weapon at the top of the hill? You’re meant to have two hands on your weapon at all times.’

  I couldn’t believe he’d seen me up there. It was like he had some sort of sixth sense. How the fuck? But there was no way I could give him any bullshit.

  ‘I’ve got no excuse, staff,’ I said.

  He opened his flip pad that had a little rain jacket on it and made a note.

  ‘Take your bergen off,’ he said.

  I did as he asked. He pulled the scales towards him and lifted my pack onto it. There was a silence.

  ‘What’s wrong with your bergen, Middleton?’ he asked.

  I looked at the scales. I couldn’t believe it. There was no way. It was impossible. My bergen was two pounds light.

  ‘It’s underweight, staff.’

  ‘Correct,’ he said. ‘Get in the wagon.’

  I pulled myself up to find Darren sitting in there on the bench, a stew of sweat and dirt ground into his face. I didn’t have to say a word. He could see that I was crushed.

  ‘What’s wrong, lad?’ he said.

  ‘DS saw me take my hands off my weapon,’ I said, ‘and my fucking bergen’s under.’

  ‘It’s under?’

  The sheer shock on his face was a reminder I didn’t need about how serious this was.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said, thinly. ‘Try not to bother yourself with it.’

  But I wasn’t listening. I had my head between my knees, just drowning out the sound.

  ‘They’re going to think I’m a cheat,’ I said. ‘How the fuck has this happened?’

  Then it clicked. Of course! I’d forgotten to take my protein shake out of my bag before I’d weighed it that morning. Then, during the march, I’d drunk the shake and that two pounds was the difference. Not that there was any point explaining this to the directing staff. Excuses were worthless here. I just had to suck it up and accept that I was about to be failed.

  That night, I nervously approached the noticeboard in the galley that listed the men who’d passed and their times. I ran my finger down the sheet of paper, my heart thumping in my chest. There I was … and there was a red card next to my name. But I felt as much fury as I did relief. I’d let myself down, that day. One more error and it was all over.

  The final test of the Hills is known as the ‘Long Drag’. It’s a weighted run over the Brecon Beacons that we were required to navigate ourselves, using a compass and map to get to various checkpoints in allotted times. We had to cover forty miles with seventy pounds on our backs, carrying our weapon, and we had to do it in twenty hours. Most people either went on the top of the hill or took the route that lay down in the valley. I decided to contour it, pacing one foot in front of the other along the ridge lines of a steep hill for miles. It put huge pressure on my ankles, tracking for miles on the edge of a goat track, constantly on the slope, never stopping for more than five minutes because I didn’t want to get demoralised in the freezing mud and needle-sharp rain. My right ankle took the brunt and became so sore I kind of went out the other side of it, and was only aware of a very distant burst of pain, like a star exploding in a far-off galaxy. Knowing that I’d highlighted myself so badly, I’d become possessed by a kind of angry desperation. I found myself in a trance state. I was just going and going, almost trying to punish myself for my error.

  When I was, I guessed, about two hours away from the finish I saw a checkpoint at the bottom of a hill. I pressed on towards it, girding myself for the agonising final push beyond it. But when I got there, the DS stopped me again.

  ‘Right, Middleton,’ he said. ‘You’re all done.’

  ‘I’m done? I don’t understand, staff.’

  ‘Take your bergen off and get in the wagon.’

  ‘In the wagon, staff?’ I said.

  I didn’t know what was happening. I had maybe three miles to go before I finished, so what the fuck had I done wrong? ‘Is this a game?’ I thought. ‘Are they trying to fuck me over?’ I cautiously did as I was asked and pulled myself up into the four-tonner. A couple of the lads were already in the back. They looked surprised to see me.

  ‘Ant, I thought I left you near the back?’ said one.

  ‘I went a different way,’ I said. ‘I contoured it.’

  ‘Fuckin’ nice one.’

  ‘Mate, is this for real?’ I said. ‘This is the end? They’re not playing with us?’

  ‘Ant,’ he laughed. ‘What you going on about? You fucking smashed it.’

  LEADERSHIP LESSONS

  Never allow the mistake to win. We all make them. It’s allowing that mistake to take you over that’s the real problem. When you make a mistake you should accept that it’s happened, push all the self-recriminations aside and calmly make a new plan.

  Don’t be intimidated by all the people you have to beat to get to the top. It was a dizzying moment for me, in Sennybridge, when I saw the amount of bodies in that room, knowing that only a handful would pass. The numbers are irrelevant. The only thing that counts is you.

  Don’t listen to the know-it-alls. You’ll always encounter people who are utterly convinced they know everything there is to know about the task ahead and want the world to know about it too. These are exactly the people you should be cautious of. The smart people in the room aren’t the ones giving it out – they’re the ones taking it all in.

  LESSON 7

  THE WAR IS ALWAYS IN YOUR HEAD

  ‘What’s happened to my bed?’ I thought. ‘Why’s it so uncomfortable tonight?’

  I stirred, trying for what seemed like the thousandth time to get comfortable. Unable to do so, I opened my eyes a crack. All the lights were on. That was weird. Where was Emilie? Why was I wearing these nasty thin tracksuit bottoms? I opened my eyes fully and propped myself up on an elbow. And then it all came back to me in a terrible flood. I was in a cell somewhere in the bowels of Chelmsford Police Station. And ‘bowels’ was right – for I was deep in the shit.

  Soon I heard the door rattling and clanking before finally whining open. A middle-aged police officer with a bald head appeared on the other side of it.

  ‘How are you this morning, Mr Middleton?’

  ‘Could murder a cup of tea.’

  ‘Any injuries?’

  ‘Well, my head’s fucking pounding.’

  ‘Need to see a doctor?’

  ‘No, mate, I’m fine.’

  ‘Well, your solicitor’s here.’


  ‘Solicitor?’ I said. ‘I haven’t called any solicitor.’

  ‘Well, someone’s called him in,’ he said. ‘You got any mates know you’re here? Anyway, come on. Up and ’ave it. He’s waiting for you.’

  I rubbed my eyes and stood.

  I’d been out of the military for six months, having completed two successful tours of Afghanistan with the SBS. Going straight into responsible daily life as a husband, provider and father on civvy street had not been easy. As tough as military life can be, what it gives you is a structure and a routine. It’s like having a drill sergeant constantly living with you, telling you where you need to be, what you need to do and when to go to bed. When that suddenly vanishes, after you’ve spent most of your adult life relying on it, it’s not unusual for ex-servicemen to feel disorientated. Some get depressed. Some turn to drink. Some lash out in violence. Some end up homeless or even in prison. I’d managed to find some work, here and there, on the security circuit, but nothing permanent. For the first time in years I had no goal to set my sights on, no Everest to climb. I didn’t think it was affecting me too badly. Turns out I was wrong.

  The police officer led me down an echoing corridor to a small interview room. Sitting waiting for me were two other officers and my solicitor, who was someone I knew from Chelmsford. On the table was a small portable TV monitor. After some not-very-pleasantries, one of the police officers switched on the screen and pressed play on the recorder. It was the CCTV footage from the previous night.

  I’d been reconnecting with some of my old mates. Ten of us had met in Chelmsford town centre at 6 o’clock on a Sunday evening and we’d bounced from The Toad to Edwards to Lloyds to the Yates’s, ending up at Chicago’s nightclub. We’d blagged a large table in the corner to settle into, ordering bottles of vodka and Jack Daniel’s with jugs of Coca-Cola and cranberry juice to be delivered to our table. We’d probably drunk our way through about £600 already.

  At just after 1 a.m. some of my pals went out for a smoke. I was pouring myself a fresh vodka and watching the dancefloor going up to ‘I’ve got the Power’ by Snap when I became aware of someone running towards me.

  ‘Ant,’ he said. ‘Mate. It’s all kicking off outside.’

  We pushed our way through the sticky, leery bodies and out into the cold street. I didn’t know what situation I was about to meet exactly, but I wasn’t worried. After surviving suicide bombers and AK-47-wielding Taliban thugs in the darkest hellpits of Afghanistan, I thought I could handle a few wallies outside an Essex nightclub.

  Out on the pavement I discovered that three women had started an argument with one of my friends. They were jabbing fingers at him, telling him to go fuck himself. He, of course, was returning this in kind. I pushed my way in between them.

  ‘Oi! Oi! Oi!’ I said. ‘Take it down a notch. Calm it down. Come on.’

  I put my arm around the pal who was at the centre of the row and began walking him in the direction of the taxi rank. As I was manoeuvring him away from the scene, I turned to the women. ‘And you lot, fuck off,’ I said.

  I came back to find that the three women had not fucked off. Instead, they’d been joined by their male friends. The rest of my pals had now piled in properly, and the shouting had taken on a new and dangerous intensity. This, I realised, was seconds away from turning into a full-on street brawl. I started grabbing my friends, one by one, and putting them into taxis, all under a hail of abuse from the idiots. They were about half gone when two police officers arrived. ‘Thank God,’ I thought. ‘Back-up. At last.’

  I knew from my training with the Met at Hendon that the first move law enforcement are supposed to make in a situation like this is to separate the fighting parties. If they’re no longer able to make contact with each other, the abuse stops and the trouble rapidly de-escalates. Nine times out of ten it’s the magic bullet that kills the aggression.

  I carried on clearing my pals into cabs as the officers approached the women. I was expecting them to move them on, but for some reason they didn’t. They just stood there with them, allowing them to continue hurling abuse. I tried to ignore it, and had just put the last man in a cab, when the woman at the front, who’d kicked it all off, started insulting me.

  ‘You silly fucking cunt,’ she said. ‘What are you? A babysitter? Do you change their fucking nappies an’ all? Fucking prick.’

  Now I was getting angry. I turned to the male officer, who was just standing there, his hands in his pockets, with a silly, nervous grin on his face.

  ‘Why don’t you take them round the corner rather than leaving them here, gobbing off?’

  ‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t get all attitude with me.’ I walked towards him. ‘I’m the one that’s defused the situation.’

  Suddenly, he was up in my face.

  ‘You need to go home now,’ he said.

  ‘Just answer me one question,’ I said. ‘Why are they still here? I’m doing your job for you and you’re stood there with them doing nothing. Move them five metres down the road and they’ve got no one to abuse.’

  He stretched his finger out and poked me in the middle of the chest. I can’t remember what he was saying, because by now everything was darkening and narrowing and stretching out. I looked down at what he was doing.

  ‘You want to watch what you’re doing with that finger,’ I said. It happened in slow motion. He jabbed me again, this time hard between the ribs. Its force pushed me back slightly. Before my body had had the chance to right itself, my fist had made impact with his jaw.

  He was on the pavement. Flat. Sprawled. Silent. To my left, I saw the female officer reach for her CS gas. She blasted me with it. I turned and blocked the spray with one arm. As I was doing so, the officer beneath me roused and tried to stagger to his feet, while grabbing for his cosh. In his semi-conscious daze he tumbled back into a shop window. As he flailed about, trying to regain his balance, I took a step towards him, grabbed fistfuls of his uniform with both hands, lifted him off the ground, raised him up and slammed him back down. He landed on the pavement with a thud. He didn’t move. I pulled the cosh from his hand. For just a second I had the strange sensation of stepping out of my body and looking down at the scene: there was me, crouched over an unconscious police officer. And there, in my hand, was a cosh. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘does not look good.’

  I ran.

  My footsteps echoed along a narrow, empty street. Within seconds it sounded as if the whole of Chelmsford had gone up with the cat’s-cry of sirens. The police must have been watching it all on CCTV, and by now they’d had enough time to leap into their cars and vans and flood the town centre. I took a left and a right, making the most of my knowledge of the back lanes, stopping briefly beside a drain, down which I posted the cosh. The sirens seemed to be getting louder. The walls of the buildings around me flashed blue. I took off, only for the slap-slap-slap of my trainers hitting the ground to be joined by the thud of boots. I was being chased. I nipped down an alleyway and turned a corner, hoisted myself over an eight-foot wall and landed into a crouch. I waited, in total silence, not even letting the sound of my breathing betray my position. They passed by.

  The sirens were so loud they’d become deafening, like something out of the Blitz. I crept forwards, cat-like, peering up, trying to see where the CCTV cameras were. As far as I could tell there were none back here. But I had a problem. In front of me there was only one way I could go: the River Can. I moved towards it, keeping low in the shadows. The water was black and deep, and an icy, metallic breeze whipped off it. The far shore was a good twenty feet away. I’d have to swim it. I bent down and dipped my fingers under the choppy surface. It was freezing. I had no choice.

  I put one foot in and then the other. The river filled my trainers. Lowering myself down, I felt the level of the water’s surface rise up my body in a line of crackling, numbing pain. When I was up to my shoulders I pushed myself into the middle of the
river, my toes quickly losing touch with the river bed. I told myself to be careful – the River Can was no doubt littered with several decade’s worth of shopping trolleys and other hazards. There was a chance I could get tangled up and stuck.

  In the streets above me sirens blared and vehicles tore about. It felt oddly quiet and separate down here in the water, as if all the commotion were happening in a faraway place that wasn’t quite real. To my right I saw an arched footbridge and, underneath that, clinging to the bank, a large, dark bush. It gave me an idea. Rather than swim across to the other bank, and most likely directly into the arms of a waiting officer, I’d glide over there and just wait it out. As I made a silent breaststroke down the river, the freezing water lapped against my chin. My fingers were turning numb and my feet were being dragged down by the weight of my socks and shoes, but before long I was there.

  I don’t know how long I waited underneath that bush, gripping on to the chains above that lined the pathway, with only my head above water. The ruckus above me echoed noisily as the numbing spread and my body became heavier and heavier. They seemed to be zeroing in on my location, somehow. Somewhere in the upper world I heard a voice.

  ‘Where the hell is he?’

  ‘He can’t have gone far.’

  ‘You’d hope. Who knows?’

  ‘The dogs would find him. Are they on the way?’

  ‘Not sure.’ There was a silence. ‘Should we call them in?’

  ‘Yeah, reckon. Get hold of Mike, would you?’

  ‘OK, Sarge.’

  Less than five minutes later I heard the slamming of van doors and the animals above my head, barking, sniffing, claws clattering on the ground. I lowered my head into the river as far as it would go, leaving only the tip of my nose, my eyes and forehead above the surface. They didn’t seem to be having much joy up there. Despite my discomfort, my spirits rose. I knew that being down here in the water was ideal for avoiding having them pick up my scent.