An Officer and a Gentlewoman

by Heloise Goodley

  One moment for brief contemplation did come at our Attestation ceremony.

  Smartly uniformed in our Sunday best, the 270 newest cadets squeezed together shoulder to shoulder in the Indian Army Memorial room to pledge allegiance to obediently serve Queen and country. Entered from the hall of the Grand Entrance, the Indian Army Memorial room is a spectacularly stately venue. With its high ceiling and coats of armour, it was here only weeks earlier the General had wooed parents with biscuits and tea. Originally the Academy chapel, the room now commemorates those who served in the British Indian Army during ninety years of Crown rule, fighting bloody and brutal British battles in Asia and northern Africa. Around the room light radiates in through brightly coloured stained-glass windows that pay tribute to muddy, bloody battles in Burma, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Waziristan and Shanghai.

  We marched in stiffly, me sandwiched between Gill and Gray again, shuffling along to take up our positions, then standing at ease while we waited for the General, our hands clasped behind our backs. As I stood patiently, in those quiet, still moments I glanced up at the window directly in front of me. It portrayed a Second World War Tommy in tin helmet, wading through jungle, while behind paratroopers fell through a flush and purple sky. At the base centre of the window was a small simple red crest, a white stripe running across its middle, and in its centre a sword with three tiny black letters ‘XIV’. The Fourteenth Army. I had seen it before, embroidered onto cloth, lying in an old drawer at my grandparents’ house in North Wales. My grandfather had fought with the Fourteenth Army in Burma alongside units from the Indian Army in what became the longest campaign of the Second World War. I thought about what joining the army had meant back then. What would have been going through the minds of officers attesting in 1939? I hadn’t joined the army thinking of the intrinsic death and sacrifice. Today’s new officer generation are too far removed from the tragedy and life loss of the World Wars to recognize the distresses of war. It may have been grossly naive but hardly anyone in that room had considered the full seriousness of what they were potentially pledging to in their new careers; the proximity to danger and death were not outwardly published during recruitment and the connection between coffins stopping traffic in Wootton Bassett and our morning room inspections was too tenuous. In Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers weren’t dying in the catastrophic numbers seen in the World Wars but paying the ultimate sacrifice is still a veritable reality, and only three years later two people attesting with me in the Indian Army Memorial room that day would have done so.

  With the trauma of weeks one to five nearly over, only one thing now remained between me and a long weekend of unrestrained freedom, one sizable hurdle, at which I stood every chance of falling – a drill exam. The exam was designed to demonstrate that we had achieved the basic level of soldiering and could march in an orderly obedient fashion. Except I still couldn’t. My two left feet and intractable legs continued to persist on the parade square, and my nerves whipped me around in a vicious circle of blundering balls-ups and agitated angst. To make matters worse an unnecessary amount of fuss was being made over the importance of ‘passing off the square’ and SSgt Cox coldly issued threats that those who failed would be staying behind for the weekend.

  ‘Passing off the square’ was also to be our first small taste of military pomp and ceremony, of marching to a brass band, smart in our Blues. In the preceding days an inordinate amount of our time was spent on practising and preening. We rehearsed by marching up and down the Academy corridors, saluting framed paintings and halting in doorways. Late into the night, we polished and shone, ironed and spruced, ready for the pre-parade College Commander’s inspection. When Friday morning arrived the platoon marched into the Indian Army Memorial room again to stand painfully to attention as he and the College Adjutant perused the ranks inspecting our efforts. Staring up at Granddad’s window thinking excitedly of the weekend ahead I felt a little light-headed in the suffocating heavy wool uniform and central heating. As moments passed people around the room started to wilt and eventually there was a gentle thump from the back rank as Allinson passed out under the bright lights and choking tightness of her shirt collar. Ruse or not it worked, the inspection phase was complete and we passed.

  Outside, the parade square was characteristically wet and uninviting. The Academy band stood huddled under the cover of the Grand Entrance, snuggled in their heavy overcoats, the brass instruments catching what little light sparkled through the grey skies. Now all that separated us from the relaxed joys of the civilian world was just a bit of left-right-left. It was tense. We formed up. Straightened our skirts, adjusted the forage caps on our heads and gave little whispered words of good luck. Then a deep bellowing drumbeat resonated across the square and SSgt Cox barked out the commands as thirty-one9 left feet shot forwards: ‘Dufft, dite, dufft, dite, dufft, dite.’

  We were off. Quick march, slow march, salutes and an about turn. Round and around the parade square, executed with deft finesse; then with one final ‘HALT’ we came to a standstill and it was all over, five weeks of unadulterated hell finishing on a drizzly parade square. Back inside Old College glasses of port were handed around as people rushed to packed bags and parked cars in a mad dash to the M3. Wriggling out of suits and into denim jeans (the Devil’s cloth) in the corner of Tesco’s car park outside the Academy gates.

  We were free at last.

  ‘It is true that liberty is precious – so precious that it must be rationed’;10 and with this maxim in mind, respites from the control and captivity of Sandhurst were rationed to small heady slices of freedom. Escape from the Academy during Juniors was confined to just three ‘leave weekends’ in a fourteen-week term, each short enough to prevent the ill discipline of ‘Civvy Street’ from undoing our Sandhurst indoctrination. Like corks popping from champagne bottles, cadets raced to bars and pubs to catch up with friends still living laid-back student lives; sprinted to join new graduates in London, adjusting to their unfathomable City wages and equally unfathomable rents; dashed home to mothers’ cooking; hurried into loved ones’ embraces; lounged on friends’ sofas catching up on mindless television; and enjoyed two deliciously long nights in a bed that didn’t have to be ironed, tucked up each night barely before the ring of last orders, weary, worn out and exhausted.

  I ate lots, slept lots, got drunk far too easily and struggled to walk along the street without being in step with the person next to me. I also found that Sandhurst had distorted my perception of public reality too. Having spent five weeks sheltered in a narrow enclave of society I realized that I hadn’t seen children, old people, any homeless or many women. I hadn’t heard a child cry, or busker play and overweight people had become an intriguing oddity after the svelte fit world of the forces in training.

  For my first weekend of freedom, I retreated to Deborah’s flat in Putney, folding out the sofa bed and uncorking a bottle of wine. At dinner, I ate my first home cooking for five weeks, savouring each mouthful of Deborah’s lasagne, while she poked around for news of how I was finding Sandhurst.

  ‘So, tell me all about it. I haven’t heard from you for weeks. I’m guessing you’ve been busy. What’s it like? Are there any nice men?’

  ‘Debs, it’s manic,’ I said between mouthfuls. ‘My feet haven’t touched the ground since I got there. I’ve been surviving on just five hours’ sleep a night and get shouted at all day long. It’s horrendous.’

  I explained the room inspections, the drill, the water parades, Sunday orienteering and the trauma of Exercise Self-Abuse. Having finished my plate of food with impolite speed, I picked up my glass of wine and curled my feet up under me on the sofa.

  ‘Oh, oh, and yes,’ I said, flapping my hand with excitement. ‘And I’ve fired a rifle. You don’t get to do that every day in London.’

  ‘Oh, wow. That’s pretty cool. So you’re a trained killer now, are you?’

  ‘Well, not quite yet, Debs.’

  ‘But are you actually enjoying it? It sounds like
it’s pretty hard work, but is it worth it?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I confessed. ‘And that’s the problem. It’s been an interesting venture, but I don’t think it’s for me long term. I’m not good at any of it for starters. If my marching and shoe shining are anything to go by, I’ll make a useless officer.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ Deborah asked, a little concerned at the prospect of my failure.

  ‘Well, drop out, I suppose. I’m free to leave at any time.’

  ‘I think you should at least stick it out a little longer. Give it a bit more of a chance to see if things might improve. When does first term end? Perhaps you can make your decision then.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can carry on for that long,’ I said. ‘There are another nine weeks until the end of Juniors.’

  ‘I think you should,’ Deborah said sagely. ‘Because if you don’t, you’ll live to regret it, and will be forever left wondering, “what if”.’

  It was easy for Deborah to say. She wasn’t stuck in the nightmare as I was, hating every single miserable minute of it. Our actions at Sandhurst felt so pointless, our priorities were distorted and I still couldn’t understand how executing a perfect drill move was going to help me out on the battlefields of Helmand or why smiling socks and hospital corners would improve my command of soldiers. Self-Abuse had nearly broken me and I was dreading the prospect of sleeping in a cold, muddy hole once again. I was hanging on by a thread, only stubbornness and self-pride keeping me going. But I knew I would snap soon. For now I was too embarrassed to admit my failure, and ashamed to put my hands up admitting I was unsuitable and it was all a little bit too hard for me. Sandhurst had brought me close to my breaking point. I couldn’t face another forced march in fighting order, but I couldn’t face returning to Underground delays and a flickering computer screen even more. I needed to find my place in the platoon and discover where I belonged. I needed a skill to bring to the party, but there wasn’t much promise of me finding it on my return. Because back at the Academy we would be boarding coaches again, and this time the obstacles set down in front of us would be far more challenging than Christopher Robin’s playground.

  1 Until 1870 officers in the cavalry and infantry obtained their commission by buying it under the Parliamentary endorsed ‘purchase system’. Hopeful candidates had to obtain the approval of their regimental colonel by presenting evidence of having had ‘the education of a gentleman’ and produce a substantial sum of money, approx £25,000 in today’s money, as proof of their standing in society and as a bond for good behaviour. Subsequent promotion all the way to colonel was by purchase.

  2 Fabloning is an army obsession. It involves sticking Blue Peter-style, clear sticky-back plastic over maps and any other paperwork or card to keep them waterproofed. Fablon comes in large rolls and there is a fine art to peeling it off and sticking it down without trapping bubbles and ripples of air over all the important grid references.

  3 A spoon-fork, essentially a spoon with small fork prongs at the end (camping shops think of everything).

  4 Conversely, until the eighties, French ration packs contained cigarettes and with each meal in the field red wine was served among the troops.

  5 Webbing is the name for the army assault vest, in which a soldier carries all his essentials: ammunition, twenty-four hours’ worth of rations, water, maps etc.

  6 Basha comes from the Malay word for shelter and entered the military lexicon in the fifties during the Malaya Campaign.

  7 STAG – Soldier Trained Armed Guard, a military sentry.

  8 Non-commissioned officer. Includes all soldiers above the lowest rank of private who are not officers and who consequently don’t hold the Queen’s commission.

  9 After five weeks we had already lost one member of the platoon. The girl who had dropped the iron on her foot whilst ironing her bed was out with the burns injury.

  10 Vladimir Lenin.

  5

  AIN’T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH

  Snuggled into a cosy cleft at the base of the Black Mountains, outside the coverage of 3G and DAB, beyond the reaches of high-speed internet and high-speed trains and over thirty miles from the nearest Starbucks lies the quiet Welsh market town of Crickhowell, a sleepy farmersville. Here, dour grey stone buildings with purple slate roofs house doilied tearooms, family butchers’ and shops selling love spoons and bara brith. In Crickhowell, allotments and home-run chickens are not a suburban trend for the new yuppie generation, but a countryside practicality. Range Rovers speeding along the country lanes here actually have muddy wheels and Presbyterian ways reign strong.

  I was standing in a small car park behind the village post office, beyond Crickhowell Castle, where a coach from Sandhurst had just deposited me, along with my team of six others. We were sitting on our bergens in the empty parking bays, dipping processed white bread into paper bowls of steaming stew, filling up on our last hot fresh meal. It was nearly 6 p.m. and I had dozed well on the three-hour journey along the M4, stocking up on crucial sleep. Above, day had just become night as the sky turned black and the orange-neon street lights flickered on, illuminating the paper and glass recycling banks in the car park’s far corner. This was our starting point. Around the edges of the Black Mountains in four further car parks at village schools, pubs and community centres more cadets were also tucking into their last hot dinner because at six o’clock precisely the first teams would be setting off.

  We were gathered in the Black Mountains for Exercise Long Reach; one of the toughest endurance tests in the army. A real test of men and the stuff of Sandhurst legend, every officer in the British Army can recall for you the tale of their Long Reach experience. The exercise covers seventy kilometres over tightly packed contours taking in five summits and over 3,000 metres of climb and descent with bergens on and the clock ticking. In the preceding days we had pored over maps, planning our route, plotting on checkpoints, making complex speed-distance-time calculations, and trying to remember what Naismith’s Rule was all about.

  At 18.30 it was our turn to start.

  Merv, Rhodes, Thomas, Khadka, Evans, the Platoon Donkey (who was as inept as me, but without the excuse of never having done any of it before) and myself.

  We helped each other hoist the bergens onto our backs, checked the straps were sitting comfortably and that we weren’t wearing too many layers (as soon as we started walking we’d get hot). Map cases dangled around our necks and at the front I set my compass as we exited the car park. We turned left up the hill and passed the church (place of worship with spire, minaret or dome) where the gentle soothing sounds of a male voice choir drifted hymns from the warm light inside. Then right at the crossroads towards Llanbedr. We followed the road as it wound steeply north, past a phone box, ‘PH’ and farm on the right, out of the village, leaving the relative security of houses and civilization behind us.

  After about an hour we arrived at our first checkpoint, where Captain Trunchbull and SSgt Cox were waiting for us on the opposite bank of a swollen river, grinning with anticipation. On the muddy near bank lay an assortment of empty oil drums, ropes and wooden planks; it was unfortunately obvious that we were going to be required to undertake some sort of Krypton Factor-style river crossing. Looking at the broiling river waters circling in high flood, none of us were much enthused to join the other bank, falling into the freezing waters at the beginning of our seventy-kilometre ordeal was definitely not a good idea.

  Merv and Rhodes quickly took charge, lifting planks of wood onto the barrels and delegating me to do something with the rope. Khadka was a ninja at rope climbing and I tied a knot ready for her to scale a tree and walk the tightrope. We worked busily together as a team moving the barrels and planks of wood, but despite all our feigned concerted efforts none of us actually wanted to risk the freezing waters and attempt the river crossing, happy instead to let the clock timeout and forgo the Brucey Bonus. Because after five weeks in the Sandhurst machine we’d now learned how to play the game and
here we played a strategic fail.

  So with boots still dry and morale intact, we moved on up the valley to our next checkpoint three hours’ trekking away and more ridiculous blindfolded-rope-tying-plank-balancing-bridge-building nonsense. Nine of the fourteen checkpoints dotted around the Black Mountains had these absurd tasks awaiting us, and early on we met them with reasonable enthusiasm but after forty hours, and having watched the sun rise twice I couldn’t care less where the number nine needed to go in the giant Sudoku laid out in the field in front of me, I just wanted to stop stumbling around these unforgiving Welsh mountains and go home to bed. Because Long Reach was not just about physical endurance, it was about testing mental endurance too. It was about challenging our ability to make sensible decisions when our minds had become an exhausted mush. And as the knot in a rope failed, releasing a steel drum of ‘toxic chemicals’ bouncing 300 metres down the hillside into the woods below I realized our mushy brains could make little sense of decisions.

  Worse than the checkpoints with these Krypton Factor challenges were the ones without. Each was pitched at the absolute summit of a towering mountain top which we had to scale our way up, creeping along ridge paths as gale-force winds tried to knock us off our feet. At the top, snow nestled in sheltered hollows, reminding us that it was still winter and we shouldn’t be there. We trudged along tracks, gloves on and hoods lowered, through muddy quagmires, our heels stinging from hours of rubbing in sweaty leather boots.