My arrival date at Sandhurst was now looming large and I was still remarkably naive about the place. Unlike school and university where I had been with my parents to look prior to applying, Sandhurst continued to be a mystery. My only knowledge came from the glossy brochures I had been given and stories in the press about Princes William and Harry who were both there.
So, with a month to go before I was due to start my new life, I was invited, along with some of the other new recruits, to attend a familiarization visit to the Academy. After my brief exposure into army establishment at Westbury this presented another opportunity for me to experience army food, scratchy blankets and unnecessary shouting whilst also being sized up for the new uniform. Whilst there I was also issued with a new pair of military black leather boots to take away and wear in, so that when I came back a month later to start the commissioning course my feet would already be blistered and raw. As a girl I would never reject a new pair of shoes, but these were not the latest Christian Louboutin killer heels and I’ve never been less excited to receive new footwear. Big, heavy, clumpy, Doc Martenesque boots. No fine styling and flattering cut. No soft Italian leather. We were shown like four-year-olds how to lace them up (there is a specific technique to reduce pressure and injury) and sent home to break them in.
This Sandhurst visit also gave me my first exposure to marching. An experience that ended in naive catastrophe.
While at Sandhurst all recruits are required to march. Everywhere. At all times. Arms are to be out straight, swinging shoulder high, legs should mark a good pace, as no ambling or bumbling are permitted. Cadets are marched around the Academy in orderly rank and file as a squad with a shouty sergeant at the back barking commands.
Left, right, left, right, left, right.
Arms and legs ticking like a metronome. Heels drilling forcefully into the ground, which for me literally happened as I discovered, in a wobbly, scratchy totter, that you cannot march in high heels.
There was a lot of City girl in me that was going to need transforming into soldier.
The visit concluded with a question and answer session about what to expect at Sandhurst, including lots of helpful little tips like ‘bring lots of sports bras’ and featured my favourite question of all time: ‘Can I bring my horse?’
The answer to which was an even more surprising ‘Yes’.
Along with new boots I had also been given an extensive and detailed packing list, so as my days numbered I began to assemble the items on it, plundering supermarket aisles for cleaning products. It soon became apparent that Sandhurst was going to involve a fair amount of scrubbing and polishing. The longest section of the list came under the heading ‘Cleaning Kit’ and included an exhaustive catalogue of items: Flash, Cif, J-Cloths, Brillo pads, furniture polish, dusters, glass cleaner, Duraglit, Brasso, a Selvyt Silver cleaning cloth, brushes, cloths, black shoe polish (plain and parade gloss), brown shoe polish, tan shoe polish, an ironing board and a good quality steam iron. I began to think that employment as a cleaner at Sandhurst was probably one of the easiest jobs in Surrey, with the cadets doing all the work for you. While the hairnets, hairpins, grips, plain slides, black elastics, strong hair spray and hair wax on the specific females’ packing list didn’t fill me with joy either.
As the weeks ticked down the new military boots I had been issued remained in their box, laced according to the specific instruction. But I had to get them on and break them in, so Deborah and I packed our warm clothes, Gortex, a thermos flask and a map and headed west to the Brecon Beacons in South Wales, which, when suggested over a couple of drinks in the pub, seemed like a good idea.
Deborah and I have been good friends since university, where she was a member of the mountaineering society. Each term she used to disappear off on weekend expeditions to the Lake District or Snowdonia to get piss-wet through, sleeping in a tent, while I preferred the warmth and comforts of the university’s indoor swimming pool, my own bed, four walls and a roof over my head. But Debs loved it; she was an outdoor enthusiast and knew what she was doing when it came to mountains and harsh conditions. I didn’t. During our summer holidays she had spent weeks in the Arctic sampling ice cores and lichen, while I sought the beaches of Thailand. Deborah had trekked in the jungles of South America, the Alps and Himalayas, while I preferred to bob about in a boat instead. And she had all the gear too: down jacket, gaiters, Scarpa boots, GPS. She was the perfect companion for a boot-breaking mission to Brecon. But Brecon is a formidable part of the country whatever the season, and in late December it was particularly austere; these hills are not used as the selection ground for the Special Forces for no reason, and only a matter of contours up Pen-y-Fan it soon became apparent that the slopes of South Wales’s highest mountain were an ill-advised terrain choice for breaking in my brand-new boots. So with blisters forming, we had to retreat back to the burger van and after a bacon sandwich and a shoe change, we managed a happy day in the hills but my primary aim still remained unachieved, as the boots remained in their box in the boot of my car.
There are many theories on how best to break in new boots. The favourite and widely practised is to tape up your feet with medical tape, letting the tape take all the painful rubbing rather than tender skin; some wear two pairs of socks for the same reason, or socks over tights as one soldier once advised me, although I suspect this has more to do with the wearing of ladies’ hosiery than blister prevention. Alternatively there are those who try to soften the leather by standing in the bath or use leather conditioner, Dubbin, or urinate in them. The privileged few could ask their manservant to wear them in for them or alternatively, if the whole process is simply too painful, there is always the Navy, where they wear shoes.
As my arrival date at Sandhurst grew closer and the career switch more of a reality, the complete transformation I was embarking on became increasingly apparent. Around me I saw life choices I would no longer be able to make. Doors shut on expensive beach holidays, Alpine chalets and the dream of owning a big country pile. I would no longer be able to afford my shoe and handbag habit, as my spending would have to adjust. As I downsized my car and mortgage, I realized that money meant more than just the materialistic greed I despised in the City. It meant not being able to provide for my children as my parents had for me. No head start with a public school education.6 No far-flung family holidays. No large home. Having been in a position where I could provide all this for my progeny, was I now being selfish in giving it up? I began to recognize the enormous gravity of what I was doing and, as the importance of this sank in, I had doubts.
But if I didn’t go to Sandhurst now I knew I’d regret it for ever, so I packed up my Fulham flat and moved my worldly possessions into my parents’ attic (where far too much of it still lies), and, on the first Sunday of 2007, with boots broken in, countless cleaning products packed, City job resigned and my name removed from all social activity lists, I was as ready as I could be to drive to Sandhurst.
And what lay in store for me was beyond even the wildest of my preconceptions.
1 Mark 8:36.
2 Officer Training Corps.
3 The Army has since increased the maximum age limit for soldiers to thirty-three.
4 Defence Recruitment & Retention in the Armed Forces, a study by the National Audit Office, November 2006.
5 UK Armed Forces personnel are entitled to vote either in their hometown or the constituency in which they serve. Those deployed away on operations are encouraged to vote by post.
6 The Army do provide financial support for boarding school education as a ‘continuity of education allowance’, which ensures that the education of forces children is not disturbed when their parents are continually posted and move. However, this expensive provision is increasingly under budgetary threat.
3
THE SHOCK OF CAPTURE
I woke shortly after five o’clock on my first morning at Sandhurst instantly regretting the folly of decisions that resulted in my being there. My alarm cl
ock rang out a digitized bleep that couldn’t be ignored, so I crawled out of bed and the sheer enormity of what I’d done overwhelmed me like the January frost encrusting the parade square outside. Suddenly the prospect of ironing a work shirt, putting on a suit and enduring whatever delays the District Line had in store wasn’t so unappealing. Outside it was still pitch black and would remain so for a further three hours until the bleak winter dawn, but already lights were flickering on in windows across Old College as the Sandhurst inmates began their day. I would happily have swapped my night of fretful sleep and the twisted knot of apprehension weighing heavily in my stomach for all the stresses of my old life that Monday morning, but there was no time for me to dwell and rue, because in the echoing corridor voices could be heard shouting with urgency.
‘Get on parade!’
I shuffled around my room, putting on slippers and dressing gown, drifting bleary eyed into the stark fluorescent lighting to line up for the ‘water parade’, something that was to become ritual over the next five weeks.
I couldn’t believe I was actually here.
‘Shit.’
*
I had arrived at Sandhurst the previous afternoon in my small Volkswagen Polo. The car was crammed with belongings – ironing board, crates of cleaning products, sports equipment and things I misguidedly thought would be useful – leaving a small space on the passenger seat for Deborah who was coming along to check out the men under the guise of moral support. She successfully distracted me on our drive south with jelly babies and Girls Aloud’s Greatest Hits and, before I knew it, I had driven through Staff College Gates and taken directions to park on the parade square.
I found an empty space, pulled on the handbrake, switched off the ignition and gulped in a deep breath. Inside my chest my heart began a gut-wrenching thump as I realized my vision had become overwhelmingly obscured, for there in front of me rose the intimidating splendour of Old College. A striking piece of military architecture, its sheer scale and grandeur were truly terrifying. Magnificent tall Doric columns framed the portico of the Grand Entrance, which was keenly watched over by Mars and Minerva, the gods of war and wisdom. And on either side of the main entrance steps sat six polished brass cannons that had been captured from the French at the Battle of Waterloo. It was enormously impressive and the building’s imposition reminded me of a dictator’s palace, where indeed the corridors and rooms subsequently proved to house a number of malign despots too.
By the time I reached the main entrance my nerves had me in a full, cold sweat despite the bitter January chill. At the top of the steps stood a tall impressive man in exceedingly smart uniform, his shoes polished to mirrored perfection, brass buckle and buttons gleaming in the winter sun. He stood with proud poise, every vertebra extended to the fullest, his chest puffed out, exuding gravitas and importance. Towering over me, he swallowed my tiny palm as I shook his strong bear paw of a hand. Welcoming me to the Academy he ushered me inside. A seasoned warrior with a chest of campaign medals, this was one of the most senior soldiers in the British Army, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst sergeant major; a man to be equally respected and feared.
Once inside I joined a queue of other fresh-faced, apprehensive individuals while Deborah gathered with parents and the Academy commandant for biscuits, tea and a welcoming address, frantically waving away people who mistook her for another one of the new recruits and thought she was in the wrong place. I joined the tail end of a queue and stood silently in the corridor, waiting my turn to register, shifting my weight uncomfortably in my heels, as I felt awkwardly out of place. I listened to the only noise echoing from those high corridor walls – the icy sound of metal-tipped boots clacking on the worn stone floor as another stiffly smart uniformed man paced back and forth with slow foreboding.
Clack … Clack … Clack.
I thought about turning to flee.
Standing in the still silence of that corridor, I felt as though I was about to be thrown into the lions’ den for a conclusive mauling. This was the calm before the storm. The sergeants circled the queue, eyeing up their new prey like vultures picking off the lame. And as soon as check-in was complete, they gathered the new recruits up, and marshalled them away, herding them along the warren of corridors and staircases that led to the rear of the College.
As we stood quietly in the queue, one sergeant pointed his shiny brass-tipped pace stick at the chest of a wide-eyed suited young man, barely older than a boy. ‘Wave goodbye to Mummy and Daddy,’ he said. ‘You’re all mine now.’
Dawdling and happy to wait my turn, I eventually reached the front of the queue, which had wound its way inside a formally decorated room where a desk was positioned, behind which sat a stern-looking lady, also in uniform, hunched over sheets of paper and name badges.
‘Name?’ she snapped at me, without looking up from her pieces of paper.
‘Héloïse. Héloïse Goodley,’ I said, forgetting that the army don’t use first names.
‘Miss Goodley.’ She ran her pen down the page, hovering over the names until she found mine. ‘Imjin Company. Yellow badge.’ And with that she crossed my name from her list and the sergeant next to her handed me a yellow pin badge with the name ‘GOODLEY’ printed on it. I took it and vacantly looked around the room for where I should go to next.
‘Follow Staff Sergeant Cox,’ she chipped, with a karate-chop point of her hand, directing me towards another woman now standing by the door and dismissing me to make way for the next person in line. And with that I was swept up, chivvied through a side door and bundled back onto the parade square to get in my car and move it away from the grandeur at the front of Old College and around to the functioning business end at back. Away from the imposing columns and cannon to the rear quarters. Away from the calm and formality of the grand portico, and the polished, pressed perfection of the Academy sergeant major, to my new life. To board the Sandhurst roller-coaster. And there would be no stopping, no let up and no going back. I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye to Deborah who, having drained her china cup of tea, had to find her own way back to London, wandering through the streets of Camberley until she found the train station. She left me a lasting voicemail message of encouragement and luck on my mobile phone.
There is significance to this arrival at Sandhurst, walking up Old College steps and through the Grand Entrance, since the next time cadets do this is amidst great pomp and ceremony eleven months later when they commission from the Academy into the army as officers. Until then the doors are closed and the steps strictly out of bounds (unless maybe you’ve attended a fancy-dress party in roller skates, it’s dark and no one is looking).
Over 800 cadets a year walk up Old College steps and assemble for the commissioning course; split annually into three intakes (the mustard-keen straight-from-university crowd tend to join in September, while the sunshine intake go in January when the big field exercises fall in the summer months and the laissez-faire faction take the plunge in May having avoided the previous two). Each intake is sorted into three infantry style companies of ninety, named in memory of famous battle honours. My Commissioning Course, the first of 2007 (CC071), would be named in recognition of post-world-war encounters at Malaya, the Falklands and my own easy company, Imjin. Ahead of us were Ypres, Somme and Gaza for the bloodbaths of the First World War and Normandy, Burma and Alamein, a reminder of the ferocity of the Second World War.
For me, as I walked up those steps the umbilical cord was cut; over the next few months I was about to be delivered into the military and my midwife for the traumatic process was a female staff sergeant, the pugnacious SSgt1 Cox. On the whole, senior ranking female soldiers are a frightening breed. They joined the army in the days when women didn’t and have tenaciously fought their way to the top of their game, repeatedly fighting to prove their worth. This has hardened them, stamping out all empathy and compassion, the ideal prerequisite for effectively inducing civilian girls into the military at Sandhurst.
Those first few days at the Academy became a total blur and my memory of them is selectively imperfect. I found myself gripped by the shock of capture amidst a haze of finding my way and uncomfortably wading out of my depth as the Sandhurst machine rapidly cranked into action, dragging me disorientated with it. The conversion from civilian to soldier is a painful one and the initial five weeks are particularly hard. They are designed to mimic the basic training that thousands of young men and women recruited into the soldier ranks undergo at various training establishments around the country annually; except soldiers admirably complete a full fourteen weeks of the ceaseless hell. This initial basic training involved a strict draconian regime of continuous harassment and borstal-like practices. Discipline would be harsh and sleep at a premium, as our days were consumed by hours of toil: cleaning, ironing, scrubbing and polishing.
It was intense and deeply dispiriting.
My femininity was stripped away from me, as tailored suit was replaced with drab khaki coveralls (until my uniform would be issued), my long hair was scraped and pinned back into a face-liftingly tight bun, while jewellery, perfume and make-up were gravely forbidden, consigned to my civilian persona, which would not be seen for a while.
I was one of thirty-two girls who started Sandhurst that winter, assembled together into a platoon known as Eleven Platoon. We comprised a motley collection of predominantly university graduates, some school-leavers, ex-serving soldiers, two foreign cadets and me.
An Officer and a Gentlewoman Page 4