wn onto us.
     They got outside Keady and went to a house that was run by an ex-prison
officer. They tried to  hijack his car, but he came out  with  a shotgun and
gave them the  good  news, so they then moved off again in  the cattle truck
and got to Monaghan to drop off the boys who were dead and injured.
     It  was the first  time I'd ever killed somebody. I  was nineteen years
old, and I couldn't have cared less. They were firing at me, and I was doing
my job by firing back.
     I  did what  I  was  taught.  No  matter  what  a  person  does  in the
infantry-he can be a signaler, driver,  whateverwhat he's basically doing is
getting himself or someone else into a position where he can put the butt of
a weapon into the shoulder, aim, and kill somebody.
     I'd spent months and months training for this sort of situation.
     I'd learned the  drills;  I was  proficient. But when the shit  hit the
fan, all I could think about was that the other character was trying to kill
me. I just knew there were a lot of  people firing,  and I knew I had to get
fire back, and that was about it. I considered myself very fortunate to have
survived. It wasn't  skill that had got  me through; it  was loads of rounds
down the range and loads of luck.
     We came back  to the UK, and I went  away on a  course called  an NCO's
Cadre.  I  got an A  and  was  promoted the same day, making me the youngest
corporal in the infantry at that time.
     Next  came Junior Brecon,  an eight-week section commander's course  at
Sennybridge training area. There was no bullshit about  it, just tactics and
training,  training and more training. It  was a really intense two  months,
lots of physical stuff,  running around with a helmet and bayonet on all the
time, giving orders. I found it really hard, but I got a distinction.
     By now I was  totally army barmy and was letting my married life come a
very poor second. I was immature, and I was a dickhead. I came back from the
course on a Saturday morning, said hello, and went out for a run.
     Then I got up early on Sunday morning  and went for another run, trying
to keep fit for whatever course I was going to go on next-and  I was putting
my name down for every course that would have me.
     For young wives in  a garrison town like  Tidworth, life could be  very
boring. It was difficult to get decent work because employers knew they were
not  there for long, and that made it almost impossible for married women to
have a career. The battalions liked to promote a  ramily atmosphere, but for
the wives it  didn't really work  out like that.  There was a hierarchy, and
there were more wives who wore their rank than blokes: "I'm Georgina  Smith,
wife of Sergeant Smith."
     The marriage started going to ratshit in about 1980.
     Christine was in Tidworth, in quarters, ready to go to Germany, sitting
there and thinking: Sod this. The ultimatum was delivered one morning during
the cornflakes. "Are you going to come back with me or are you going to stay
here in Tidworth in the army?"
     No contest.
     "I'm staying here," I said. "Away you go."
     That was it. Over  and done with, sorted out over bits of paper,  and I
didn't give a damn. I threw myself into all the bone bravado: I was out with
my mates now; I was going to stay in the army forever; I didn't need a wife.
There were many like me; I was not the only one.
     There  was a NAAFI disco every Tuesday  night  at  R.A.F Wroughton near
Swindon. It  was a  great event,  but then, so  was anything that took place
outside Tidworth.
     Six or seven of us in freshly pressed kit would pile into the chocolate
and cream Capri, everybody stinking of a different aftershave.
     One Tuesday  night I met a telephonist called Debbie  and forgot all my
resolutions about not needing women anymore.
     A posting came up as a  training corporal at  Winchester, and I grabbed
it. Germany could wait. Careerwise the job was  known as an E posting-a good
one to get.
     By the time I came back I'd be a sergeant.
     My  platoon  commander  was a lieutenant; under him he had the  platoon
sergeant and three training corporals.
     Each'of  us  full screws (corporals) was responsible for between twelve
and fifteen recruits.
     One or  two of the lads were fairly switched  on with  life and  really
wanted to join the infantry for what it offered. Most of them, however, were
there  because they wanted to be in the army but lacked the  intelligence to
be anything but riflemen-a bit like me, really.
     A  lot of them hadn't got  a clue what they were doing when they turned
up. They'd been looking at the adverts of squaddies skiing and  lying on the
beach  surrounded by a crowd of admiring women. They had the impression that
they  were in  for three years lolling around on  a windsurfer;  then they'd
come out, and employers would be gagging to get their hands on them.
     We had to show them how to wash and shave and use a toothbrush.
     I'd get  into  the shower and say,  "Right, I'm having  a shower  now,"
taking  with me the socks that I'd been wearing that day. I'd put them on my
hands and use them like flannels, so I was washing my socks at the same time
as my body. Then I  had to show them how  to shower, making sure they pulled
their foreskin back and cleaned it and shampooed their hair.
     Every  one of them had to do  it exactly  the same-way,  cleaning their
ears,  cleaning their  teeth in  the shower at the same time,  cleaning  the
shower  out  afterward.  i,d  then  show  them  how  to cut  their  toenails
correctly. A lot of them didn't  cut them at all, and they were stinking, or
they  just got  the edge and then pulled it away so they were destroying the
cuticle. In the infantry, if  your feet are fucked, then the rest of  you is
fucked.
     A  lot of  them had never done their  own washing. We even  had to show
them how to use an iron.  But soon everybody was  all squared away, and they
knew what they were doing and, more important, why.
     The idea  of the training was to  keep them under pressure  but make it
enjoyable.  The  training  corporals had  to  do everything  that  they did,
leading  by  example.  And  all  the  time we  were  also  aiming to  create
competition, a sense of achievement for their group, building up teamwork.
     The results  of the section reflected  directly on us, so  we had  that
extra incentive to  do  the  job as best we could. But it came to the  stage
where I was so involved in it that incentives weren't necessary.
     I didn't believe in giving a boy  who was slow a  hard  time because it
wouldn't help him at all.  All it would do was  make him feel  worse;  if he
needed extra training,  we had to  give it to him.  I  would encourage other
people in that section to make sure they  gave him extra training as well. I
would tell them, "He's a part of your section; he's as much a responsibility
to you as he is to me.
     When a recruit  got to the battalion, the first thing anybody would ask
was  "Who  was  your  training screw?" If  we were  sending  tossers  to the
battalion, we'd be in for a hard time.
     The  bullying  that  was  supposed  to be  going on  in  these infantry
battalions and training establishments could  only have  been very  isolated
incidents. I certainly  never saw any of it. if you're doing your job right,
you don't need to bully, you  don't  need to push and shove, punch and kick.
What  you've  got to do is  lead by  example, show them the skills that they
need to know, make it enjoyable, give them incentives-and they'll  do it. By
the same token, the culture within the army is quite aggressive and close to
the bone. There is  a need  for  hard, physical  work  and a hard,  physical
existence. But that's not bullying. If people can't actually survive that or
adapt  to it, or simply don't have the aptitude, that's when they should go.
As the saying goes, train hard, fight easy; train easy, fight hard-and die.
     Within the battalion, if people weren't performing, they'd  get decked.
I had been filled in  a few times, and after a while I always understood the
reasons why. As for these daily scenes of regimental baths and scouring with
Vim, I  never  saw it. I never went  through  any sort of initiation and was
never  present at one.  People had better things  to do with their time than
run around playing stupid games.
     They wanted to finish work, go downtown, and get legless.
     I still enjoyed the army, but it was all the niggly bits that  I pissed
me off. I went  shopping in  the town one  dinnertime with  another  of  the
training  corporals,  a bloke  in his early  thirties, married, three  kids,
responsible. He wanted to buy  a three-piece suite. He  chose the suite  and
sat down with  the manager to do the paperwork. The manager took a check for
the deposit but then said, "I'm  sorry,  but you can't  have credit  without
your commanding officer's permission."
     "I beg your pardon?"
     "You have to get this form signed by your commanding officer."
     "You're joking?"
     "No, I'm afraid if you're military, that's it."
     So  here  was a boy  with  responsibilities, a  house, family, all  the
normal things. Yet  he couldn't get credit to  buy a three-piece suite until
somebody who was probably up to his eyeballs in debt had had a chat with him
and said,  "Well, do you think  you can afford this threepiece suite? Do you
think you're responsible enough to buy it?"
     If there was any problem with the credit, they wouldn't go to the bloke
who was getting the credit; they'd go straight to the commanding officer and
say, "This man isn't paying." He'd then go on O.C's orders, and it would get
taken out of his pay.
     I  had been overdrawn once in my life, for E2.50, when I  was nineteen.
The letter from the bank wasn't sent to me; it was sent to  the battalion. I
had to go on O.C's orders and explain why I was  e2.50 overdrawn to somebody
who probably owed the bank half his annual salary.
     I asked Debbie to move to Winchester and rent a flat with me, but I had
to get permission from the O.C for that as well.
     I pondered  a bit more about Selection and the life of a Special Forces
soldier. From the limited amount I had seen, these people in Hereford seemed
to have a much freer existence; I doubted very much that in  the Special Air
Service  a platoon commander aged  about twenty-one or twenty-two had to say
whether  a thirty-year-old  sergeant should  be  allowed  to take  a  credit
application form to his commanding officer.
     I started to do a bit of bergen work just to see and found I could move
over the ground pretty fast.
     Debbie  and I lived  together  for about  six or seven months.  I had a
great relationship  with  her and her  family. Then  came  crunch  time,  my
posting back to the battalion. She now had a problem: Was she going  to stay
in the UK or come over to Germany for three years? Exactly  the same as last
time, I  thought:  What the heck, we'll  get married-and  we did,  in August
1982. This time, being a corporal, I got a quarter straightaway.
     s soon as I got to Germany I started to dream about a return ticket.
     Now 2RGJ were a mechanized battalion, which didn't grip my shit at all.
I was supposed to be a section  commander, but I didn't even know how to get
into  an A.P.C (armored  personnel  carrier), let  alone command one. I  had
about a week to  sort myself  out, and then the battalion was off  to Canada
for  two months of battle  group training. All  the tanks and infantry  came
together to form the battle group, screaming over the vast Canadian prairies
in live-firing attacks.  It was probably good training, but I  hated bumming
around in  these turn-of-the century machines. They were falling apart; most
of the time was spent drinking tea while half the REME (Royal Electrical and
Mechanical  Engineers)  were  underneath them  with spanners.  Out  of  four
vehicles in my platoon it was a safe bet that at least one of them would not
even make it to the  start line. The crew would  spend  days on the-roadside
waiting for recovery.
     After three or four  weeks back in Germany the  quarter was ready,  and
Debbie  flew  out. Almost  immediately  we  started  having  to  do  two  or
three-week exercises.
     We'd drive to a location, dig in, stay there for a couple of days, jump
in our A.P.C again, go somewhere else, and dig in again.  It  was incredibly
boring, and as far  as I  was concerned, we weren't  really  achieving  that
much. Certainly none of us at the coal face was ever told what the  big plan
was.
     As  in  Canada,  most  of these  exercises were spent at  the  roadside
-either broken  down or grounded for two days  because the Germans  wouldn't
allow armored vehicles  to  move at  weekends.  A  fair one  if you were the
indigenous population,  I  supposed, but if you  were the squaddy parked  up
just ten kilometers from the comforts of home, it was a downright drag.
     The general level of bullshit was outrageous, and it started to wear me
down. Any  time  we  weren't trundling  around in geriatric A.P.C.S  we were
doing battalion duties. At least five  times a  month I'd be on guard.  Then
we'd  have  all  the  other regimental duties, which  were  twenty-four-hour
duties. Then we had brigade duties.
     Because it  was the  British Army on  the Rhine, we had to look good at
all times. Princess Anne was going to visit the camp one day, and there were
yellow  marks  where some boxes and bits of  wood had.been  resting  on  the
grass. The management ordered it to be painted green.
     I realized then that all the royal family must  think the  world smells
of shoe polish, floor wax, and fresh paint.
     We were practicing for  the sake  of practicing, and the  soldiers were
getting pissed off.  When we'd got the promise of  a posting to  Germany, it
sounded  very  attractive:  local  overseas allowance, tax-free car,  petrol
concessions,  all this sort  of thing. But at the end of the day the quality
of life for  a single  soldier was not that good.  We hadn't really got  the
time to go  out and explore the place. It wasn't as if we could just jump in
a car  and travel  down to the south of  Germany to go skiing for a weekend;
chances  were  we'd be on some  weird and  wonderful duty, such as being the
barrier technician on the gate.
     Life  in Germany was unpleasant  in  other ways. There  were a few rows
with the other battalions and plenty of rows with the Turks, who ran all the
sex  operations, bar, and discos.  Then  there were  all the  interbattalion
horizontal maneuvers. As  soon as a battalion  was  away over the water, all
the  singlies  were  straight  over  to check out the  wives.  Boxes of  OMO
appeared in the windows to advertise "old man out." I  didn't find it funny.
None of the married blokes did.
     The  army  seemed  to  promote smoking  and drinking because  the  only
recreational facilities available were cheap fags and drink at the NAAFI and
the  company  clubs.  If weight-training  facilities had been available, the
lads would have used them-not because they thought that upper body  strength
would make them better soldiers but because of a reason far more fundamental
to an eighteen-year-old: If you look fit, you'll pull more.
     I  felt  my morale  being  slowly  eroded. I sat down one day and asked
myself: What am I going  to do?  Am I going to stay here or fuck off?  I was
doing pretty  well,  I  was  coming  up  toward platoon sergeant, but I felt
compelled to make that decision. It was a right pain in the arse sweeping up
unwanted  puddles,  painting  grass that  had been  discolored by boxes, and
maintaining vehicles that were falling apart.
     By this time Debbie had got a job at the local military hospital.
     She enjoyed it very much, but we really didn't get much time together.
     If I had free time, I'd be training for Selection,  coming home late at
night. It just wasn't really happening between us. The social life was fine,
and we had become good friends with Key and his wife.
     He was in B Company and now  a  corporal. His  wife  worked in the same
hospital as Debbie.
     By now Dave  was back in battalion after a posting and we'd all  go out
together. Key's idea of a  good Saturday would be football and a few  pints.
He  was a fair player himself and represented the battalion in the same team
as Johnny Two-Combs.  He'd  joined the army when he was in  his mid-twenties
and had a flat, a car and a good j'oh. We thought he must have joined for  a
bet.
     I became obsessed with getting into  the Regiment.  In the long term it
would  be beltter for our relationship because the Regiment was  permanently
based in Hereford. We'd be able to buy a house and settle down.
     There would be continuity  in Debbie's life, and she could get a decent
job. That was  how  I rationalized it to her anyway.  In reality I wanted it
for me.
     I filled in  an application  form  and  started  really working  on  my
fitness but at first didn't tell anyone but Key what I was up to.
     "I was thinking about doing it myself," he said. "I'll join you.)) Then
I talked to Dave, who said, "Yeah, fuck it, let's all do it."
     We got our bergens on, did some running and circuit training.
     Then Dave introduced us to a captain, a Canadian called Max, who wanted
to throw in his lot with us as well. He'd been away to Oman for two years on
secondment to the sultan's forces; he'd met some of the Regiment and had got
a taste for it. His family owned farmland near Winnipeg, and he spoke with a
distinctive twang. He planned to do the tour with  the Regiment, go to Staff
College, and carry on his career.
     The  ultimate aim  was to go  back to the farm. He was married and very
down-to-earth, not' at all the officer type. The great thing from  our point
of view was that he'd have the authority to get us places.
     We spoke to everybody we  could think of who knew somebody who'd danced
with somebody who'd done Selection. "What's the best stuff for hardening the
feet?"
     we'd ask  when  we  tracked them  down. "Any  hints on  special food or
drink?"
     "I know somebody  in Third Battalion who passed Selection and he  swore
by neat's-foot oil," was the furthest we got.
     We tried it for two weeks, then switched back to meths.
     Once the buzz started going around the battalion that there were people
going for  Selection,  a fellow  called Bob came forward. A  bricklayer from
London,  he had joined the army late in life. He was five feet  seven inches
and strongly built; fitness seemed  to come  very naturally to  him. Nothing
fazed Bob; he laughed everything off.
     "If I don't pass, I'll get out anyway," he said. "I've had enough; I'll
go back on the sites."
     Bob had  a diary written by a fellow called  Jeff, who had just  passed
Selection and at twenty-one was one of the youngest people  ever to get into
the Regiment. It contained details  of routes used in the Brecon Beacons and
became our bible.
     The captain, having more money than we did, decided to  buy a VW camper
van so we  could  get over to the UK for training; we chipped in for petrol.
We  were  helped enormously  in  our training  program by Alex, the antitank
platoon commander, who had  been  in  the Regiment himself and  was now back
with the battalion. He organized a three-week exercise in Wales for us as an
excuse for us to get up on the hills.
     We drove through the night, caught the early-morning ferry, and reached
one of the military transit camps near Brecon by breakfast the next day.
     We met up with  Johnny Two-Combs. He'd  already  done Selection  at the
same time as Jeff and had failed.
     He'd made the  commitment to go straight back and do the next Selection
and was doing his own training. It was great; he had more information.
     "Try witch hazel on the feet," he said. "And if you get blisters,  sort
them out with iodine."
     It was  all desperation stuff,  trying to find some  magic formula that
would save our feet. Name the old wives' tale, we'd be trying it.
     Some  people, we heard, wrapped orthopedic tape  around their heels and
toes. anything was worth a try because if we started getting injuries, there
wouldn't be time for them to heal. We'd just have to carry on day after day.
     As  we learned the  hard  way, bugger all worked. All it  took  was two
pairs of socks and a decent pair of boots.
     The inner sock was thin and  the outer was a thick woolen one, and that
stopped the friction rub.
     Every  day  we were  trying  something  different  to  make the  bergen
comfortable.
     Johnny  said, "Half a roll bed put down  the back of  the bergen  works
wonders."
     I  tried it, and  it was just uncomfortable for me. I still  got bergen
sores,  and they  were  really painful. They wore me down more and more each
day. We  tried  other precautions, including bandages  strapped  around  the
chest to protect our backs. I had tried padding out the actual straps on the
bergen, but that  was  no  good; it just wore away and rode  up the  masking
tape. I experimented  with cutting up a  bit of foam roll bed, but that just
used to slip along the back of it. What I found was best was simply to leave
the thing alone. At the  end of the day what  you've got is your world stuck
on your  back, two  straps over your  shoulders,  and the thing  digging in.
You've just got to put up with it and crack on.
     Then it came to drinking water. How were w'e  going  to get water  down
our necks?  Did we  want  to  have to  stop  every five minutes and take the
bergen  off?  There  were weird and wonderful devices coming out of people's
bergens. Max was  the Mr. Gadget Man. He had  everything  dangling off  him.
He'd  worked  out that water stops robbed us of a lot of time and  turned up
one day with a large water bottle of the kind that cyclists use, with a long
tube coming out. He'd sellotaped the tube onto the straps of  his bergen, so
all he had to do was put  the tube in his mouth and suck it. I had tried all
that, and it was all a bag  of shit:  It would  go wrong;  the  piping would
break or  pull out of  the bottle. What it boiled down to was  that  you had
water on your belt  and some more in your bergen. You drank  from  your belt
kit water bottle, stopped to fill it up from the kit in your bergen, and off
you went. None of the Heath Robinson kit worked-unfortunately.
     Then there was the question, How were we going to carry our map?
     Max had a plastic orienteering map case that hung around his neck.
     I tried that and found that I  spent most of my time with it blowing in
my face or wrapped around my neck because it was so windy up there.
     What was best was to put the map in a clear plastic  bag and carry that
in the map pocket on your leg.
     We  tried  all  the energy drinks,  electrolytes  and  such  that  were
starting to  come in. People were buying Lucozade and natural body composite
drinks as  if  they were going out  of fashion,  but at the end of the day I
reckoned it didn't matter what you had, as long as you had fluids  down you.
I still drank gallons of Lucozade, however; I loved the taste.
     The only thing everyone agreed on was painkillers, and plenty of Brufen
to  stop  the swelling. I  planned to  throw them  down my  neck like  a man
possessed if  I  had to. Get  rid of the pain, get  rid of the swelling, and
carry on.
     The weather  was  a mixture of  rain, low  cloud, and  mist  and always
overcast. If the sun was out,  it was cold; if it wasn't, it was raining. We
were  tabbing  hard  anyway, so we  didn't  need much clothing on.  We  were
getting really fit and confident. I  felt I had stamina now with the bergen,
and  I  knew the ground.  When  I  looked at the map,  I  had every  feature
imprinted in my mind: where all the  little pathways were, what  I could see
from the high ground. I felt I wouldn't have to worry about the map reading.
I could just concentrate on making the distance in the time allowed.
     Time  spent  on  reconnaissance  is  seldom wasted.  We were sure  that
getting up  on the Beacons had been  a  must. It gave us the time to tune in
and know the ground, to feel more confident if  the weather  started to clag
in. Before  I  went to  Wales,  I  had  looked on  the  map at Pen-y-Fan and
Fan-Fawn  the  major  features  over the Beacons, and thought:  Hmm,  that's
pretty  steep. But until I got there and saw it for myself,  I wouldn't have
believed how vertical a hill could be.
     Being there for three weeks got us over that initial shock, and we soon
built up confidence. And despite the weather,  we had a really good laugh. I
knew the pubs in Brecon  anyway from the course that I'd done down there. We
met  people that were on the  junior and senior Brecon  courses,  and it was
wonderful to be out of the battalion. I loved it.
     Back  in  Germany,  we  spent  every  spare  minute  training.  Passing
Selection had become my complete and utter focus. I'd  go  to sleep at night
thinking about Pen-yFan and all the other places that we'd  gone to.  When I
woke up, my first thought was, What am I going to  do if I fail? The  more I
thought about my life in the battalion, the more desperate I was to escape.
     There was  a  massive  ridge  that  ran  all the  way  from  Minden  to
Osnabriick. It  was a really steep feature, and we used to get  our arses up
there nearly every day. As well as that, if another company were doing a BFT
(basic fitness test), we'd turn up and do it with them. Then we'd go circuit
training. Fitness was all; we knew that the first month of Selection was the
killer, with 80 percent of candidates gone by the end of it.
     I knew I was kidding myself when I told Debbie that  it would be better
for us in the long term  if I could get into  the Regiment. She was enjoying
the  existence  in  Germany.  She  had  a good  job,  friends, and  she  was
establishing herself. If I passed Selection, I would be away from her for at
least seven months of the year.
     And so it was that on a hot sunny day in July 1983
     the four  of us boarded the old camper  van for  what we  hoped was the
last time and set off for Hereford.
     They didn't give us directions  to Stirling Lines, for obvious reasons.
If you can't even find  your way  to the camp, it's  going  to be a waste of
time trying  to join Special Forces. We had made sure we knew  where we were
going, which was just as well. One  or  two blokes were late, having got off
the train at Hereford station and  asked  the locals  for directions. Nobody
told them. Apparently the  town  was very security-conscious, and the police
were always alerted if anyone was seen as suspicious.
     We chugged up to the main gate on  a  Sunday. Apart  from the high wire
fence surrounding  it and the  military policemen  at  the  gates, the  camp
looked like a  deserted college campus.  I'd  expected to  find  a  hive  of
activity but instead  saw only  one  or  two characters  mooching  around in
tracksuit bottoms and T-shirts. They took no interest in us whatsoever.
     We signed in and did a pile of documentation, all the usual stuff-name,
date of birth, qualifications, rank.
     We were then  directed  down  to the stores to draw a bergen,  sleeping
bag, water bottles, twenty-four-hour rations, cookers, and a survival kit.
     "When you're up in  the  hills," the  quartermaster told us,  "all  the
weight  that's in your bergen must be weight that's usable-food, water, biwi
bag, spare clothes. The days of  carrying bricks for the sake of it are well
gone.
     "You are only allowed to wear an army-issue boot.
     The  argument is, you can wear a pair of Gucci walking  boots  now, but
what happens if you've been in the  jungle for  three months  and your boots
start  to  rot and  fall  off? When you  get a resupply parachuted  into the
jungle, they're sure as hell not going to be size eight and one-half in your
favorite 'Go-faster  Guccis."  Our names  were on  a  board in  alphabetical
order, and we were allocated to eight-man rooms.
     The Green Jackets were split up, and we wandered off with a casual "See
you later."
     Another  couple of  guys  had already arrived in my room;  we  nodded a
greeting to one another but not much more. As I unpacked the kit I'd brought
with me, I cast a quick eye over  what gear of  theirs I could see. I wasn't
the only one with boxes of electrolyte  drinks, bottles of  neat's-foot  oil
just in case, strapping for my legs, and a party pack of Brufen.
     I wandered off to find the others. Everybody was  doing his  own thing,
sorting  himself out, then perhaps,  like me, going to see a mate who was in
another room.
     There were one or two radios on.
     It seemed everybody was among strangers, from different units.
     People were saying hello but not really chatting to one another.
     There  wasn't  that  friendly room  thing that there usually  was  when
soldiers  got together  on a course. There were little mumblings going on of
"All right, mate, how you going?" but the atmosphere felt rather tense.
     Naturally it would take awhile to know each other, as in any group, but
I sensed there was  more to it than that. The slightly furtive unpacking and
guarded  responses reminded  me of boxers in a shared changing room before a
bout.  Polite but wary.  I  thought  it  was  rather odd.  As far  as I  was
concerned, the only person I was competing against was myself.
     First thing Monday morning, all 180 of us assembled in the gym.
     Before the  course  even  started,  we  had to  do  the  army's BFT,  a
three-mile run in boots and clothing.
     "You've  got fifteen  minutes  to do the first mile and a half," the DS
(directing staff) said. "The rest is up to you. Don't be last man home."
     We set  off at  a fastish pace. However, without kit it was a  piece of
cake. A  reasonable jogger wouldn't  have broken out in  a sweat. I couldn't
believe it when I saw people falling by the wayside, holding their sides and
fighting for breath. I'd seen old ladies who were fitter.
     Yet the basic fitness test was a basic requirement throughout the army;
in theory, even the plumpest pastry cook should have passed. As the cripples
limped in, the DS took their names and told them to go and get changed. They
had been  binned on the  spot, even  before the start  of Selection  proper.
They'd  obviously been reading  too many James Bond books:  by the  looks on
their faces the three miles had come as quite a shock to them.
     For the next couple of days we did basic map-reading revision.
     "If  you  can't read a map  and you're  stuck on top  of the  hill, the
weather comes down and it's freezing, you're going to die," the DS said. "We
don't want you dying: number one because of the expense of putting people on
Selection,  and number two, we don't want the inconvenience of having to ask
the  standby  squadron to get their arses up  trying to look for  bodies-and
three, it isn't good for you as you'll have failed Selection."
     Unbelievably,  some  people  had  turned  up  just  about  knowing  the
difference between  north  and south. Part of this map-reading refresher was
orienteering with  the bergens ' on, which was  prepping us  for the time in
the mountains. I was amazed at how many people were  starting to  get fed up
with it already. Whatever their idea of what Selection was, it wasn't this.
     I  didn't  see  much of Key  and  the others,  except  in  passing. The
occasional  quick chat at  mealtimes, however,  revealed  that everybody was
doing fine.
     We did quite a lot of running, five-milers mostly, in groups  of twenty
to thirty.  We'd do a  map-reading class, then be  sent off for  a run;  the
people who had just come in off a run, leaking (sweating) and panting, would
then  do map reading. There were still people binning it and  getting binned
after these runs.
     They  got progressively  more arduous:  five or seven  miles  in boots,
followed  by sit-ups  and press-ups,  then hundred meter piggyback races and
fireman's  carries  up  hills.  More  people  jacked. I reckoned the DS were
weeding out the people  who wouldn't be capable of doing the first real test
at the end of the week, the Fan Dance.
     Another  of the  regular  runs was  an eight-miler  in  boots  in hilly
country, to be  done in under an hour. I reasoned that  as long as I  stayed
tucked in  behind  the DS, I'd  be fine,  but for reasons best known to  him
everybody else seemed to want  to  be up the  front. I  couldn't see that it
mattered.
     We did more orienteering, this time carrying bergens.
     I got to one  checkpoint and sat by the wagons, having a brew.  One  of
the DS was sitting nearby, watching the rest of the gang stagger in.
     One of them, a tall, smartlooking bloke I knew to be a cavalry officer,
was  wearing sweatbands on his wrists, a bandanna  around his  head, and, to
top it all, a cravat. He looked as if he was going off for a game of squash.
The DS got up  and went  and talked to  other  members of the training wing.
They were all having a  look at  this boy and  obviously discussing him. The
thought  struck  me  then  that  this was about  being a gray  man;  getting
noticed, I guessed, was probably only a few steps away from getting binned.
     The Fan Dance is a twenty-four-kilometer run with bergens, done with DS
in groups of about thirty, with no map-reading requirement. It starts at the
bottom of Peny-Fan,  goes up  onto the hill, and right  to the top, which is
the highest point in that part of the country.  Then it's back  down, around
another mountain  called the  Crib, and  along  the Roman road, a rubbly old
track, then  down to a checkpoint at a  place called Torpanto. Then it's the
whole lot again, in reverse.
     One group started at Torpanto, mine at the Storey Arms mountain  rescue
center at the base of the Fan, and in theory we crossed over at the top.
     The bergen weighed thirty-five pounds. We didn't  know the cutoff time,
but the DS did."The  only  advice we  were given was "If  you keep with  us,
you're all right.
     If you don't you're fucking late."
     The DS went; he really motored. Within five  minutes the tightly packed
group was strung out along the track.
     I noticed several very fit-looking  faces that I hadn't seen before and
that  were overtaking me.  It was  the first  time I'd seen  people from the
squadrons;  apparently there  was an open invite for anybody who happened to
be  in camp to go and  do  the Fan Dance.  All these characters turned up in
Range  Rovers,  with flasks of tea.  They got the bergens on, and  off  they
went. I was feeling really  fit and confident,  but  these  blokes were just
steaming past,  especially on the uphill sections.  It really pissed me off;
they'd jog up  alongside  the DS, have a bit of a chat, then accelerate over
the horizon.
     My chest heaved up  and  down until I got  my second  wind,  and then I
started to  sweat. It started to get in my eyes and  sting  the sores on  my
back.  Within  twenty  minutes I was  soaking  wet,  but  my  breathing  was
regulated, and I was feeling good.  I knew where I  was going, and though it
was wet underfoot, the weather was fine.
     I arrived at Torpanto in good shape, huffing and puffing but confident.
It wasn't too hot a day, and I wasn't having to stop  too often for a drink.
I  gave  my  name  to  the  DS, turned around, then did  the  whole route in
reverse. I sang  the same song to myself in my head, over and over. It was a
rap song; the music was just coming to the UK, and I hated it. I still  sang
it, though.
     It was a matter of running downhill and on flat ground and of tabbin as
hard as we could uphill. That  was all there was to it,  arms swinging, legs
pumping.  I  passed  Max on the way. He was going well, with the water  pipe
flailing behind him in his slipstream.
     Out of the 180 who  had started the week, 100  of us had  got as far as
the Fan Dance. By the end of the day, another 30 had been binned.
     The Fan,  we were  told, was a  benchmark. If  we  couldn't do the Fan,
there was no way we had the stamina or physical aptitude to carry on.
     That night Peter, the chief instructor, walked around the room.
     He  was  about five  feet five inches tall and  looked like everybody's
favorite uncle. He inspected all  the weird and  wonderful drinks that  were
lying on the lockers and said, in a  very slow Birmingham accent  that never
got above 2,000 revs, "All this shit, you can take it if you like-it's up to
you. But the best thing is, two pints  of Guinness and a bag of chips at the
end of each day."
     Dutifully we went down to the town  and sank two pints of  Guinness and
bought a bag of chips each at the chippie.
     Everybody was sorting  out  his  feet  with whatever magic  potion  and
strapping his toes up. I put orthopedic  felt on my heels and  sorted out my
blisters. The army was full of recipes for how to get rid of the things, but
I had always found that the best thing was to pierce them at the edge with a
needle sterilized in  a  flame, squeeze all  the  muck  out, and just  throw
plaster over. There wasn't a lot more that could be done.
     The  second  week started. I  reached the  wagon after  a  particularly
grueling run and took stock. My feet and legs ached; my thigh  muscles  were
killing me. My  shoulders were badly  sore and felt almost dislocated, as if
they had dropped.  I  had a pain in the small of my back;  as I  carried the
bergen uphill, I leaned forward to push against the weight. When  I finished
and  dropped my  bergen, it felt as if  I was floating on air.  I  pulled my
tracksuit on and got  all nice and warm  drinking my flask of tea as we were
driving back.
     As we relaxed on the wagons, our muscles seized up.
     Getting off  again, we looked like a load of geriatrics as we  stumbled
off the  tailgate and hobbled back to  our rooms, dragging our sleeping bags
along the ground. I looked in  the mirror. I looked just how I felt. My hair
was  sticking up where  I had been  sweating, and  it was covered in mud and
twigs.
     We  kept  our bergens by our beds. There was a drying room  for all the
wet clothing, but it  was pointless washing  it;  it  was only going  to get
soaking  wet and filthy again, so we  put it in the drying room for a while,
then rested it on our bergens for the next day.
     After a while we did  start talking to one  another, but the only topic
was Selection. Every  time I came back  off a day's tabbing I wanted to find
out  how many  people  had been binned. The more  people  the better.  I was
chuffed that thirty people failed the Fan Dance.
     Great, I thought, it made me feel as if I was doing well.
     The daily tabs now ranged from  fifteen  to  sixty-four kilometers, and
night  marches were introduced. Day after day it was the  same routine. We'd
get the timings to go on the wagons in the morning, go to where  the tab was
going to start, do it, and get back at night.
     Then the Darby and Joan Club would go shuffling back to the rooms, dump
their kit, put their stuff in the drying room, have a bath or a shower, have
something to eat, and get  their heads down. The days of  Guinness and chips
were over.
     Nobody  told us the timings  for the day, so we didn't know  how far we
were  going, where  we were going, what route we were taking, or how long we
had; we had no option but to go as fast  as we could, and that was where the
map-reading skills came in. If I  came  to a reentrant (valley), I didn't go
down  and then up; I'd see if it might be worth contouring around the longer
distance.
     Discipline was uncalled for. All they'd say  was "Be in  the quadrangle
for six o'clock." We'd turn up;  they'd call  out our names and tell us what
trucks to get on. The majority of people were getting in their sleeping bags
or putting their bobble hats on, resting and drinking flasks  of  tea. Then,
all too  soon, we'd get to the checkpoint, clamber  out, and they'd  call us
forward one by one and send us on our way.
     The  training team told us nothing. We  were the ones who  wanted to be
there; they weren't soliciting for our custom. Their  attitude seemed to be:
The course is here if you want to do it.
     "Red fifteen?"
     I went over to the DS.
     "Name?"
     "McNab."
     "Where are you?"
     I  had to show him on the map where I was.  If you put your finger on a
map, you're covering an area  of  five  hundred or six hundred meters-unless
you've got big stubby fingers, in which case it might be a kilometer.
     You've  got to point  exactly where you are with  a blade of grass or a
twig.
     "You are going to Grid four-four-one-three-five-three.
     Show me where that is."
     I showed him.
     "Show me what direction you are going in."
     I took my bearing and showed him.
     He said, "Well you'd better get started because the clock's running."
     There, was one bloke in my group, Trey, who was so hyper  and revved up
that he ended up doing everything the wrong way around.
     Instead of going north, he would go south. He got off the wagon one day
and got called over by the DS.
     He said, "Where are you?"
     He showed him on the map.
     "Which way are you going?"
     He  pointed the way he was going,  which was correct, then  went off in
totally the wrong direction.
     The DS turned around to us and said, "Where the hell's he going?"
     He let him go for about a hundred meters, then shouted:  "Oi, dickhead,
come back here! For fuck's sake, where are you going? Show us your bearing."
     Trey  showed him,  and the DS said, "Then fucking go in that direction.
You've already wasted three minutes."
     A lot of the time, if I was going for a high point, I could see it, and
it never got  any closer. My mind would start  wandering off on to different
things. Sometimes I'd start  singing stupid  songs to myself in  my mind, or
little advertising that I'd always hated anyway.
     I'd  get to  the checkpoint  and lean forward, my hands on  my knees to
rest the shoulders.
     The DS'd say,  "Show me where you  are." Then:  "You are  going to Grid
three-four-five-six-seven-eight. Show me what direction that is."
     Off I'd go.
     Sometimes I'd get to a checkpoint where they'd  have  a  set of scales.
For that day's marches, perhaps the bergen had to weigh forty pounds. They'd
check the weight,  and if a bloke was under,  they'd  put a big rock  in his
pack,  sign  it  with  a  lumicolor,  and  radio  on to  the  next couple of
checkpoints that Blue 27 had a rock  in his bergen  because  he was a snidey
bastard. It  meant that instead  of carrying forty pounds, he  would  now be
humping around with fifty-five pounds for the rest of the day. When measured
in sweat and blisters, fifteen pounds is a lot of difference.
     The  big mistake was to take forty pounds as the all-in start weight of
the bergen, including  the water. As  soon as you'd drunk one pint, you'd be
under;weight. When they said  forty pounds, they meant  forty  pounds at the
end of the day, not the beginning.
     When we came in off  the hills,  we'd  be  sorting  ourselves out.  The
training team would come around, calling  out names. These, we soon learned,
were the people who were getting binned.
     If we'd had a bad day, we'd get a "gypsy's warning."
     The sergeant  major would say, "The following people, come and see me."
Those people  would gather around him.  He'd say,  "You didn't  do very well
yesterday. This  is a gypsy's; you'd better sort your shit out because  next
time you'll be gone."
     If anybody had already had a gypsy's and his  name was called, he could
assume the worst.
     I'd be feeling  fairly confident if I was in the first wagon on the way
back.  Second wagon, I was unsure but  not too worried. Third wagon, I would
have been shirting myself. It happened to me only once.
     Most days,  however,  I was looking at other people, chuffed that these
six-foot-four-inch blond-haired, good-looking thoroughbreds were getting the
shove.
     I'd say, "That's a shame," but inside I'd be thinking, Good shit!
     Everybody was for himself; everybody wanted to pass.
     "The point is," the DS said, "if you've got to be in a position to give
covering fire with your GPMG (general purpose machine gun) in six  hours and
forty-five minutes' time, it's no good  being there in six hours, forty-five
and a half minutes because you're late. You might as well be ten hours late.
If you're given a timing, you must be there.
     The attack group might have to go in without fire cover  because  their
attack might  be time coordinated with another attack that's going  in three
or four kilometers away.  You must  keep your timings; lives might depend on
it one day."
     The training team did the course every day as well, and they would vary
the   time   limit   according   to   the   conditions.   If   there  was  a
forty-mile-an-hour wind, they  took it into consideration. It was then up to
us to be as good as they were.
     The  big thing  was Platform 4. At Hereford railway station, Platform 4
went to London.  "It's Platform four  for you"  was  the  Regiment's  way of
saying, "Thank you and good night."
     Of course, by the time people got back to  their units, the reason they
left Selection  was a "back or leg injury," but  they  shouldn't  have  been
embarrassed: They had  more guts turning up for Selection in the first place
than the people they were giving excuses to.
     The Royal Signals people definitely had the edge on tuning in and being
happy with the environment.  At that  time, if a bloke  wanted to go for the
Regiment from  the signals, he first had to be in 264,  the signals squadron
in Hereford. So these guys were  in the environment to begin with, and  they
had the Black Mountains,forty-five minutes up the road to train on. A lot of
them were going home  of  an evening. In the  beginning  I  felt they had an
unfair advantage. Then I came to see that  when it  came  down to  it,  they
didn't; they still had to  get the boots on and go up the hill with everyone
else.
     I  was looking at the blokes who'd done Selection  once already;  maybe
they  had got up  to the  jungle  phase  of continuation training  and  then
failed. I was hoping that they were going to pass this first stage again. If
I got to the jungle as well-and I hoped with them-they would  know  what was
going on.
     Some people  had turned up  looking fearsomely fit. I judged myself all
the time against them. A  fellow called Andy Baxter  was one of the training
team. We went out for a run  with him one day, stopping to do press-ups  and
sit-ups. Andy took  his shirt  off and  revealed that besides film-star good
looks he had a superb physique.
     He  should have been on the  cover of Playgirl. I'd  always been really
fit in the battalion, but I thought, There's  no way I'm going to pass this;
I don't stand a chance here; how the hell am I going to be like him? Nothing
fazed him at all.  We'd  come back off the runs gasping for breath, and he'd
saunter back in,  laughing and joking, and have a cup of tea. It  annoyed me
that  compared with some of these blokes, I was  a bag of shit, sweating and
knackered. I  had  to keep reminding  myself  that it  wasn't Baxter  I  was
competing against; it was McNab.
     If passing Selection had been an obsession before I arrived at Stirling
Lines, it was now a pathological fixation. The longer I was  there, the more
I wanted to stay.
     The atmosphere  was  so different from an infantry  battalion, so  laid
back, so  reliant on  self-discipline. Everybody was on first-name terms. No
one hassled us;  all they would say was "Parade is twelve o'clock"  and just
expect us to  be there. If  we weren't,  it must mean  we didn't want to  be
there,  so  we could go.  Each night I said to myself.  "I really want to be
here; this is the place I want to be."
     If I didn't pass Selection, I'd get out of the army.
     There was no way I could see myself fitting back in the battalion.
     I'd seen how  the  other  half lived,  and I wanted my  share.  All the
facilities were there, everything from a library to a swimming pool.
     The medical center was open for us every night when we got back.
     I went  there to get  some bandages for my feet. it wasn't  like  going
into a medical  center in the  battalion, where I'd have been hanging around
so long my feet would have healed of their own accord.
     They treated me as a person rather than a soldier; as I limped back  to
my room, I said to myself again: I want to stay here!
     All of us Green jackets got up to the third  week; then Bob got binned.
His timings  weren't good enough. He didn't  seem too worried about it as he
packed his gear to leave.
     Next day  we had finished one march and were moving to a forestry block
to spend the next few  hours  sorting ourselves out and  having something to
eat before a night  tab. Dave  was not feeling too good about it, and he had
already had a  gypsy's. As we sat  around  a hexy burner and sorted our feet
out, waiting for dark, he said, "'That pisses me off is that they don't tell
us if  we've failed straightaway. I might be doing  this sodding night march
for nothing."
     He  was. The next day, almost  the end of  the third week, he  was also
sent  to Platform 4, timings not good enough. And  Max,  who was starting to
look the worse for wear, got a gypsy's.
     "It was because I kept falling over," Dave said to me.
     "And the reason I keep  falling over is  that my feet aren't big enough
to support me. I'v-e only got size sevens."
     I shook his hand and watched him go. I'd miss the silly bastard.
     A  couple of days  after  that, in  the final week,  I  was  coming off
Fan-Fawr  and  saw Max still on his  way up, water tube waving in the  wind,
wearing a T-shirt with a motif on it,  something to do with oranges. His big
bushy moustahe was full of snot, and he was in shit state.
     He said, "I'm having a bad time here, Andy. My timings are bad."
     H was well  and truly out of  it-as if he  was drunk, but  without  the
happiness.
     I  nodded and  said,  "Sorry," but obviously  I  still  had to crack on
myself.
     That  night he  went. Out of the original  six Green jackets three were
left for the last three days of Test Week.
     Key went the next day. As usual, he wasn't that fussed.
     "I tried and failed." He grinned. "At least I don't have to think of it
again. Back to football and a few good nights out at Longbridge, that's me."
     I was sad to see them all go. I would miss their friendship and banter.
     Johnny Two-Combs was still  there, and no way was he not going to pass.
I didn't see that much of  him as he was in a different block and by now, if
I wasn't tabbing, I was sleeping.
     "Just got to carry on the way I'm going," I kept saying to myself.
     "Just don't get an injury."
     I got a gypsy's the next day.
     We were on  a thirty-five-kilometer tab in the Elan valley, and I'd had
a really bad day.  I had no injuries, but I just found it hard going. It was
as If my legs didn't want to play; my body was  going at 100 mph but my legs
were moving at 50. I used to have a dream as a child that I was running away
from something and though  my whole mental state was  in a frenzy,  my  body
would be in slow motion.
     Now it was happening in real life. I was on the second group of wagons,
which was dodgy ground.
     The following morning we were waiting to be called on the vehicles. The
chief instructor started to call out the names of people he wanted to see. I
was one of them.
     "Your timings were not good enough yesterday," he said. "You will  have
to pull your finger out for the last two days or it's Platform four."
     It pissed me  off, but  there were only  the Sketch  Map  and Endurance
marches left.
     Sketch Map involved using a hand-drawn map rather than a proper one. We
had to cover thirty-five kilometers over different  checkpoints. No problem,
I was cruising. I thought I'd cracked it. I knew the ground because I'd done
all the recces, I'd been up there; I knew where I was going.
     I  was  coming up toward the Fan and came to a  forestry block  about a
kilometer square that I would  have to go around. It wasn't  a fluffy little
wood; this was a major Forestry Commission fir plantation.
     Looking down on it from the high ground, I could see that  a  firebreak
went  right through  the middle.  I started to push through, and  made  good
progress for about the  first two hundred meters. Then  I got disoriented. I
had to stop for several minutes and take a bearing.
     I was  severely pissed  off with myself.  I  had to get on my hands and
knees and start pushing myself through  because  the trees  were planted  so
closely together. I was shouting and hollering to myself.
     I'd gone too far  in to  come  back out and  go around; it was  just  a
matter of cracking on.
     Deep down I knew I was going to be late. I knew I had fucked up.
     By  the  time I came  out I had  cuts on  my  face and hands, and I was
covered in blood. But I still went on.
     There might be a chance.
     As I made my way  up  to the next checkpoint,  which was on  the top of
Pen-y-Fan, my legs were aching something fierce. I was badly out  of  breath
and drenched  with sweat,  blood,  and  mud. But the worst  injury was to my
pride. I knew I'd fucked up good style by being too cocky.
     The sun  was  out,  and  it was quite  hot. Half of  Wales seemed to be
walking  on the Fan with their famillessmall kids with two-liter bottles  of
lemonade in  their hands  and mothers  and fathers strolling along in shorts
and  sandals, enjoying  the view. I  screamed through them, pissed  off  and
muttering to myself, trying to make up as much time as possible.
     The  DS looked  at my cut  face  and torn  trousers and said, "You  all
right?"
     I said, "Yeah, I've had a bad last leg."
     "Never   mind,  just  get  down  to   the  vehicle;  that's  your  next
checkpoint."
     I had been the last man to the  top of Pen-y-Fan.  Now I had to go back
down  to the  last checkpoint I ran. I ran  faster than I'd  ever imagined I
could, but when I arrived, there was only room on the third wagon.
     That night my name  was called. It was  the  day before  Endurance, the
last big test, and I was binned. It was my fault, being cocky,  thinking I'd
cracked it, rather than just going  around the forestry block and being sure
of where I was.
     Before  you  leave for Platform 4,  you  hand all your kit back to  the
stores. Then there is an interview with the training major. You can try only
twice for Selection, unless you break a leg on your second attempt, in which
case they might be lenient.
     As  I waited to  go into the office, I wasn't alone. Eight of  us  were
sitting on a long  wooden bench. I felt very much as I  had  done as  a kid,
waiting  to see the headmistress or to go into a police station interviewing
room. It was  a hive of  activity,  people walking purposefully  past, doing
their own stuff. Nobody was taking any notice of us.
     I  felt dejected.  Everything was  happening  around me, but I wasn't a
part of it anymore.
     The major looked  up from his desk and  said, "So what was the problem?
Why were you so late on the last leg?"
     "Too cocky. I  went through the forestry block, and that slowed me down
severly."
     "Ah, well." He smiled. "If you come back again, you'll make sure you go
around that one, won't you)"
     "Yeah."
     "Fine, maybe we'll see you again'n."
     "I hope so."
     An hour later I was standing on Platform 4.
     We  boarded the train to Paddington. When we got to London, I would  go
to Brize Norton, and from there I'd get an R.A.F flight back to Minden.
     As I  lifted  my  holdall  into the luggage rack and sat down,  I found
myself looking  straight at the  word "Hereford" on the station sign. It hit
me that I hadn't felt so devastated-and so determined-for a long, long time.
     ailing Selection was a bit like falling off  a  horse,  only  it hurt a
hell of a lot  more. I somehow knew that if I didn't get straight  back  on,
I'd never try again, because I was so pissed off.
     Debbie was  less than thrilled when  I applied again, but the battalion
were  really  good about it. They didn't  give me any time  off for training
this time, however, because there were  too  many commitments-i.e  more bone
exercises. % I made up my mind that if I failed Selection a second time, I'd
get out of  the  army. I was writing away, in my naivete, to  companies that
had a lot of Middle East  contracts: "Dear Sirs, I can work a mortar." As an
infantry-' man I thought I was God's gift to industry because I could fire a
mortar, and couldn't understand it when the  polite letters came back: "Dear
Sir, Fuck off!"
     Alex, the captain who'd done so much to help us get some training, took
me aside one day and said, "Every morning when I was shaving, I got the soap
and wrote on the mirror: Battalion No, Regiment Yes."
     It had obviously worked for him. I was encouraged.
     I did all the training I could in the, free time I had. it was much the
same  as before-lots of bergen work, circuit training,  and running-building
up the endurance of my heart, lungs, legs, and mind.
     The only free time I had  to get some more work in over the Beacons was
during  the Christmas  leave  period,  which  obviously  pissed  Debbie  off
severely. We started to have rows about it. Our marriage was in name only.
     She came home one evening, and we had a massive setto.
     "We're hardly ever  together," she said.  "And when we are, all  you're
interested in is Selection."
     "I'm pissed off with myself for failing," I said.
     "Then that makes two of us."
     I started to say that  she had no idea about what was happening  to me,
that my whole world had fallen in, and  if I didn't get  in  next  time, our
future was  uncertain, because I  would leave the army and have to  look for
work.
     It was a big  allnighter, with enough shouting and slamming of doors to
wake up  half the block.  I was  just  feeling sorry for myself and couldn't
handle being rejected by the Regiment.  My only vent was Debbie, and  she, I
thought, didn't  understand.  The  Regiment was what I  wanted,  and if  she
wasn't with me, then  as far as I was concerned, she was against me.  I told
her  she was overreacting, that  if  I got in, everything would be all right
again and we would get back to where we were before. But Debbie was a bright
girl, and she must have seen the writing on the wall.
     What  had started  as  an obsession and  become  a  fixation was now  a
passion.  I was no longer concerned about anything that  happened within the
battalion,  unless  it was physical. Then I'd  throw myself  into it, purely
because it was more training.
     My  mind was  focused  completely on the  first  month of  Selection. I
wasn't  worried  about the continuation training at all;  once I'd got  over
that  first month, everything else was  the unknown,  so I  couldn't prepare
myself for it. But I could prepare myself for the first month.
     I knew I could pass it. I knew.
     During Christmas leave  Debbie stayed  with her  family  and I went  to
Crickhowell, the training depot for the Prince of Wales Division.
     Early  each  morning  I  put the bergen  in  the back  of the motor and
screamed up to the Black Mountains.
     I had a rusty old black Renault 5. One of the wings was falling off and
had to be  kept on with a rubber bungee. Some mornings it lacked  the  power
even to get up the hill to my start  point. When the roads were icy, I ended
up more than once in a hedge.
     I'd  train  hard  all day  up on the  hills,  then drive  back  down to
Crickhowell, have -my two pints of Guiness  and  a bag of  chips, drink huge
amounts of electrolytes, and strap myself up for the next day.
     On Christmas Day  I treated myself to a few hours off,  staying where I
was and watching all the old number ones on Top of the Pops. I had Christmas
dinner at one of the pubs and gave Debbie a call. There was no reply.
     Next day I  did the Fan Dance. As I tabbed hard.up Pen-y-Fan with  this
big house on my back, sweating away, four or five blokes came sprinting past
with track suits and day sacks  on. As they  went  piling  past  the bag  of
shit-me-they said, "Trying for January, are you?
     Good luck."
     I was expecting the  winter Selection to be more severe than the summer
one.  Cold  can be so debilitating; it would be tougher to wade through snow
than  move over the ground, and poor visibility would make  the navigation a
lot harder. People died on winter Selection.
     Even senior officers in the Regiment had perished on the hills.
     I'd heard that a major set off once with a bergen full of bricks rather
than warm clothing. The weather came down, and he failed to return.
     The standby squadron got up onto the hill and found the body, but  they
couldn't get down themselves because the weather was so bad. They had to get
the biwi bags out, and  they used the frozen rupert as a windbreak. When the
weather cleared, they laid  him on his back, piled their bergens on top, and
sledged him down the hill.
     I arrived back at Stirling Lines in  mid-January.  I sensed that people
were more apprehensive than the summer intake had been. I knew I was.
     As it turned out,  the weather  was  a great leveler. In thick  mist or
driving snow,  everybody had to rely on his  navigation. The elements slowed
us  all  down equally;  it  was  just  a question  of cracking  on with  the
bearings, having confidence in the map and compass. Every day I felt better,
and my confidence grew.
     Snow fell heavily for much of the second and third weeks. We were given
a six-figure grid that was  accurate to within a hundred meters, which  is a
big area when all you're looking for is a biwi bag in a snowdrift.
     Visibility was  down to twenty meters one day. I got to the vicinity of
my next checkpoint and  was running  around  for valuable  minutes trying to
find a hint of green Gore-Tex. Eventually I found it, tapped on the bag, and
the zip came down.  I was  a sweaty, dirty mess, starting to shiver  because
I'd  stopped moving. Even  in the  very cold weather  I wore just a pair  of
trousers, boots, and a T-shirt with a waterproof over the top.
     I was hit by the waft of coffee fumes and a cloud of steam from the boy
in his sleeping  bag. He  was  probably blowing the vents because he  was so
hot.
     I  wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible, number one because
of the timings and number two because I was starting to freeze.
     I was dripping all over him.
     He looked up, took a sip of coffee, and said, "Stop fucking sweating on
me."
     As he gave me my  next grid reference, he said, "See  you,"  and did up
the zip.
     I turned to face into the blizzard again and trudged on.
     I arrived at  one  checkpoint at  the  same  time as two ruperts  who'd
tabbed in together from a different direction.
     "This checkpoint is not where  it should  be," one of them said to  the
DS.
     The  biwi bag was  in a snowdrift on a piece  of  ground  called a spot
height. The DS, who happened to be Peter, the chief instructor, said, "Well,
where do you think it should be then?"
     The rupert pointed on the  map; then the two officers started to  argue
between  themselves. There  was  only a difference  of one  or  two  hundred
meters; it wasn't as if we were in. different valleys.
     The DS said to me, "Where are we?"
     I  pointed  to the spot height  on  the map  and  he said, "Correct." I
wasn't going to argue.
     Then he  turned  to the two ruperts  and  said, "Wherever you think you
are, here is your next grid.
     Off they went, and as he  gave me my grid, he shook  his head and said,
"I  can't  understand what's  the  matter  with these guys. They're here  to
become  part of something that  I'm  already  a  member of.  I'm  the  chief
instructor, and they're arguing with me. Even if I'm wrong, what's the point
in arguing with me?"
     I didn't see them  again. Next time, if there was a next time for them,
perhaps they wouldn't approach Selection with their ruperts head on. At that
stage  the DS  couldn't  even  be arsed  to know  our names unless,we'd done
something wrong. All they were trying to confirm was that we  had endurance,
stamina, and  determination. They couldn't give a monkey's about  our skills
and aptitudes.
     A character called jock was in the next bed to me.
     Every night, when we got back  from another shattering day on the hill,
he'd say,  "Och, I think I'll just nip down the town and have a drink." He'd
get all  dressed up and go down to one of the discos,  rolling back at three
o'clock  in the  morning, stinking. He'd  fall into bed,  curl UP, and  fall
asleep.
     Next morning I'd give him a nudge and say, "Jock, it's scoff."
     "Och, aye."
     He'd get up, right as rain,  put  his kit back on, make loads of toast,
and carry it to the wagon in his hands.
     The  most I  could manage, and it  certainly wasn't  every night, was a
trip to the local chip shop and a couple of pints of Guinness on the way.
     At the end  of  the first  two weeks the really serious stuff  started,
revisiting the Elan valley. I used to like the drive up there because we had
to  start really  early in the  morning.  I  could get my head  down  in  my
sleeping  bag  and  drink  loads of tea. All  good  things  come  to an end,
however, and the truck  would eventually  stop, the engine would be switched
off, and there would be silence.
     Time to ' get out.
     The cold  air always attacked my ears first; then my feet started to go
numb. I'd be torn between wanting to get moving to get warm and knowing that
it was going to entail a fearsome tab of eight or ten hours.
     The Elan valley was as I remembered  it, a godforsaken, daunting place,
full  of reservoirs  and big stumps of elephant grass, ranging from  knee to
chest height.
     The area was very  boggy, and because  of the reservoirs, we could move
only  on the top  half of the hills. We did  a lot of night marches there as
well, and I spent a lot of time falling over. I hated the Elan valley.
     By now we  were carrying a rifle as well as a bergen, and it always had
to be in our hands. They were only drill  SLRs (self-loading rifles), but it
was a bit of extra weight I could have done without.
     The carrying handles had been removed; there was no putting it over the
shoulder or strapping it  into the  bergen. I  found the SLR made life  much
more difficult because I couldn't swing my arms to pump uphill.
     We  had  to,cross a  lot  of  fences, and if you were  seen resting the
weapon on the  other side  before you  clambered  over  you got  a  fine-and
mentally they'd got you.
     Some of the tabs went on  and on.  Sometimes I could see the checkpoint
about ten kilometers away; I'd come off the high  ground on that bearing, so
I knew it was at the end of that delta, but  then I'd just  seem to be going
on  and on-and on.  The Elan valley took  a hell of a lot of people out.  It
wore them down. And because it was farther away, it meant we got back later,
and we had to start earlier.
     As the week went on, jock carried on pissing  it up. He explained to me
that he'd just  got over a bad dose of penile warts.  For eighteen months he
had  been  "off games," and  he wasn't  going  to  let a  little thing  like
Selection  get in the way of his rehabilitation. He opened his flies one day
and showed me the damage. The end of his cock looked like the moon.
     Day after day we'd be  humping over hills. The  weather was horrendous.
On  one of the  tabs the  snow came up to my  waist.  It  was  quite a  long
one-thirty-five  kilometers-and  it  was  scary  stuff.  The  mist  was  in,
visibility  was down  to about ten  meters,  and  we all failed  to  find  a
checkpoint. Eventually about six of us all bumped into one another, flapping
about our  timings. At long last one of the blokes found the DS's biwi  bag,
and we were  all busy making our excuses about  the weather. No need. They'd
already  accounted for all this. They made the decision that we'd carry  on,
but in a group until we got to the next checkpoint.
     Timings-wise I was in the  middle of the order  of  march. I was  on my
chinstrap after wading through  the snow for so  many kilometers, but I  got
lucky. There was a Canadian jock  who  wanted  to lead from the front, and I
tucked  in  behind him.  He  was  forging-through  the  snowdrifts  like  an
icebreaker and we were tabbing in his wake, grinning our faces off.
     The Endurance  phase  culminated  with  Test  Week. The  routes were  a
selection  of  everywhere we'd  been  and ranged  from twenty  to sixty-four
kilometers. This was where all the lnj'uries began to play on people.
     There were only about forty of us left, which I thought was great; less
of a wait for food. Each  day now I was feeling stronger  because I knew the
ground and what to expect.
     I hadn't  had a gypsy's, so I  reckoned I could even screw up on one of
them and I'd be  all right.  Best of  all,  I had  no blisters, which I  was
really impressed with,  but I was  still strapping up my  feet  because  the
ankles were taking a fearsome pummeling.
     By now  I was always  landing up in the same wagon  as  another fellow,
George. I discovered that we'd both been in Crossmaglen at the same time. He
was  in  an  engineer  unit  that  was  building  the  submarines;  he  then
transferred, and was now  in 59  Engineers, the Royal Engineers  attached to
the Commando Brigade. He was into mountain climbing and had  all the kit. He
really annoyed me because every time I'd get there, he would  already be in,
lying in his sleeping bag, eating oranges.
     We'd  sit  together in companionable silence and wait for the  wagon to
fill  up.  George was tall and  lean, with varicose veins behind  one of his
legs. It looked like a relief map of the Pyrenees.
     The day came when it was time for Sketch Map.
     There was no way I was going to cock up this time, and I didn't.
     We got back to camp at about 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon after a 4:00
A.M.  start. At  10:00  o'clock  that same  night we'd be  setting  out  for
Endurance, so it was straight in, sort the kit out, and have a bath.
     I'd always been a shower man, until I'd seen all the boys going in with
boxes of Radox,and I thought, Right, I'll have some of  that for  Endurance.
But I put far too much in. It was  like  floating  in the Dead Sea. I didn't
know if it did me any physical good, but in my mind I felt that it did.
     We drove to Talybont, one of the reservoirs. When  I got off  the wagon
and  put the  bergen on, I  started getting  pins  and needles in  my  hands
because the weight on my shoulders was restricting the  flow of blood. I had
that initial pain of getting  it on,  then even more pain as welts broke out
where it was rubbing.  And then after  about  ten minutes, as soon  as I got
moving, my skin started to tingle because  I was starting to leak. I got the
wetness around my  neck, and  it started to get at the base of my hair. That
was always quite  an  uncomfortable  time, that  very first ten  minutes  or
quarter of an hour, because my legs were really stiff. Then I started to get
my second breath and everything started to loosen up.
     After  about twenty minutes I was into the swing  of it again. My  mind
was switched off; I was  listening to jingles in  my head.  It was  bitterly
cold, and the wind was  getting in  all the little gaps. Until I got a  good
sweat  on,  it was a  horrible  feeling, especially after getting out of the
cozy sleeping bag I'd been lying in for the hour-and-a-half drive.
     Most of Endurance was in darkness, and because it was wintertime, there
was even less  daylight. Everybody  looked quite excited but apprehensive. I
was feeling confident and fit. I had no bad injuries, just bergen sores.
     They called out the names, and off we went. The bergen was the heaviest
it had ever  been, about fifty-five to sixty  pounds,  because of the  extra
food and water. I always took water from  the camp because I knew  it wasn't
contaminated.  I  didn't  fancy  drinking  water from  a  stream,  even with
sterilizing tablets,  only  to see a stinking  dead sheep upstream;  if  you
start getting gut aches, it's going to slow you down.
     The extra weight was worth it.
     We were not  allowed on roads. If the checkpoint was on one,  we had to
hit at an angle, not aim off and then move along it. We  couldn't use tracks
or  pathways either;  everything had  to be cross-country.  We'd get  to the
checkpoint,  where  sometimes they had  water.  If  there were other  people
coming in,  they might hold us for  five  minutes, and  that was the time to
fill up from the jerry cans if there were any. If they weren't going to hold
us, I wouldn't waste time filling up.
     If I met other people on  the route, there  was never time  to say more
than "All right?" before shooting off again.
     All I wanted to hear them  say was that they were late,  and I'd think,
That's  good. If it  was  so bad  that  they  said, "Fuck!" I was even  more
pleased. It didn't make me go faster, but it made me feel better.
     I  was just bumping along,  my head full of jingles, thinking about the
route ahead,  trying to remember  what was  on the map so  I didn't have  to
stop.  "If you stop every five  minutes for thirty seconds," Max  had  said,
"that's minutes taken up every hour." I did my map checks on the move.
     I had an extra  pouch on my belt  that  was full of aniseed  twists and
Yorkie bars, which I had stocked up on just for Endurance. I didn't use them
on other tabs, but for some reason  I just went downtown and bought them for
this one. Now I was digging in and  eating and  wondering why I'd never done
it before.
     I  tabbed through the second night. On the last five or six  kilometers
the batteries went in my torch. I knew because of the lie of the ground that
I had  to go downhill, hit  the reservoir, chuck a right, and then head  for
the bridge, which was the final checkpoint.
     Unable to use my map, I was cursing the gods at the top of my voice. On
the  side  of  the  reservoir was a  big  forestry block.  I  searched for a
firebreak  to get through, honking  to  myself  and remembering why I failed
last time.
     I found a firebreak, a good wide  one. No problem. I  was moving along,
but then I hit, fallen trees. Extra sweat, extra cuts.  Every few meters I'd
have to get the bergen off, throw  it over a horizontal trunk, roll  over it
myself,  find  the bergen  in the pitch-blackness, put  it  back  on. I  was
flapping; I couldn't believe my future was in danger through making the same
mistake twice.
     I.was relieved to see the first rays of moonlight and  made my way down
to the bottom  of the reservoir. I  knew I  had  to  turn  right, and off  I
trogged, dragging along.
     I  reached the  last checkpoint  after  a  tab of twenty-one and a half
hours. I was pretty chuffed with myself, but George had got in before me. So
what was new?
     I noticed a  distinct change  in the attitude of the  DS. It  was as if
we'd turned  a  corner,  as if a phase  was over and done with. There was no
praise or anything,  but they said, "All right, are  you?  Right, dump. your
kit down, and there's some brew by the wagons."
     The  medic was there for any problems, but everybody  was too elated to
notice if he had any.
     The QMS on training wing turned up  with big slabs of bread pudding and
tea, which  he laced with rum.  I  discovered there was a big tradition with
the  Regiment that when  on arduous  duties they  got  this G10  rum, called
gunfire. They saved up  the rum ration and served it up on big  occasions. I
hated  rum, but this  didn't seem the  time to say so.  I  didn't like bread
pudding either, but I threw a lot of that down my neck as well.
     One  of  the ruperts came up to me  and  said, "Bloody hell,  were  you
having some problems down by the reservoir?"
     I explained  what was going  on and he said,  "I  could hear you. All I
could hear was this 'Fucking fuck, fuck ya!"
     " He had been caught up in another firebreak, having the same problem.
     We  climbed into the wagons for the  last time. Everybody was happy but
subdued. Nobody was sleeping; we were all too deep in thought.
     I had the big Radox bath and tried to  get all  the  strapping  off  my
legs. It  was two-inch tape which like a dickhead, I'd put on the sticky way
around. All I'd needed  it for was support,  so it could have been the other
way around. I was in the bath, talking to George, and erring and blinding as
I  ripped the tape off. By the time I had finished, half of my leg hairs had
disappeared.
     One of the DS came around and said, "Everybody  be in the training wing
lecture room for eight o'clock in the morning."
     I was feeling confident. There were some who were on a dodgy wicket who
weren't too sure, but they were soon going to be finding out.
     As  soon as the DS  said, "The following people go and see the training
major,"  I knew that  they were binned. If they didn't call my name out, I'd
know that I'd passed.
     He called out ten names. No McNab.
     "The rest  of  you, are  there any injuries? The medical  center's open
now; go and get them sorted out."
     There was  one little job  I had to do first. One of the blokes who had
failed needed driving to the  station, and I  had offered. There had been an
unfortunate incident on the hill-at least according to his version of it. He
was  doing  well and had got  to  a checkpoint  at night where he  was  held
because a  rupert  had arrived in shit state and binned it. He was told, "Go
with this officer, make sure he's all right." He got  the man safely down to
the next checkpoint but by now was very late.
     "I was told to wait," he told the DS.
     The DS just said, "Tough shit."
     He was held because of the rupert, and quite rightly so; his job was to
make sure the rupert got down to  the next checkpoint that had a vehicle; he
would then carry on. But he was late because of it, and  they didn't seem to
take it  into account. Maybe there was  a  cock-up  in  the  administration.
Whatever,  this boy  was stuffed.  As  I drove  him to the  station,  he was
crying.  This  had  been  his second  attempt; for  him there  were  no more
tomorrows. I could imagine how he felt.
     We had the weekend off, and it was very much needed. My feet swelled up
as if I had elephantiasis and I couldn't put my shoes on. I had to cut holes
in my trainers with a pair of scissors.
     I wanted to tell  everyone that I'd passed Selection, that I was  a big
boy now. But it meant jack shit to the blokes in the camp.
     Apparently a lot of them did Endurance once or twice a year anyway.  It
was  good for them to  get up  on the hill; it showed example and also meant
there were more people in the area for safety reasons.
     Some people slipped through the safety  net. Two  weeks later  a fellow
from R Squadron was missing after a tab, and the standby squadron was called
out to  search for him.  They  found  him in his sleeping bag, half in, half
out, with biscuits in one  hand and a hexy burner in the other. He must have
died in that position.
     We had passed Selection, the only phase that we had a certain amount of
control over. Now, as we entered the lecture room on Monday morning, we were
going into the unknown.
     The  training sergeant  major stood  up  and  said,  "You  are starting
continuation training now. There's going to be a lot of work involved.
     Just switch on,  and listen to what's being  said. Remember,  you might
have passed the Selection phase, but you're not in yet."
     From the original intake of 180, we were now down to just 24.
     Sitting around me were people from  many different organizations-blokes
from the signals and Royal Engineers, infantry, artillery, and a marine.  It
was  accepted that  everybody would have different  levels  of expertise and
different  levels  of experience. In terms of  training, it  was back to the
drawing board.
     The  first step  was to train  us in the use of the Regiment's weapons.
"If you  finally  do  get to  the  squadrons," the DS said, "you might  find
yourself arriving, and going straight on jobs. They won't have time to train
you; you've got to go there with a working knowledge of all the weapons."
     The standard expected of us would depend on our  previous experience. I
was a sergeant in the  infantry; weapons were my business. But the last time
a lance  corporal in the Catering Corps had touched a weapon might have been
a year ago,  and even then  it would probably just have  been a rifle;  he'd
know nothing about the GPMG, sustained fire, or any of the technical stuff.
     He'd find it more difficult than I  would but  wouldn't  necessarily be
doing any  worse. The DS said that to their way  of thinking,  if one person
hadn't got the  same experience as another but was learning, and was getting
to a good standard compared with the more experienced bloke, then in essence
he was learning more.
     It was very  much like  a  Bible story I remembered,  when the rich man
turned up at the church and dumped off  six bags of gold  and everybody  was
thinking how wonderful he was. Then  an old  woman  came in and she  had two
coins, her  whole wealth, and  she gave one  of them to the church. The fact
was, this  woman gave  more to the church  than the rich man did because the
six bags of gold was jack shit to him. The instructors were looking at us in
the same light. They were looking at what we were, and what they expected us
to become. It was during  this stage  that we lost the marine corporal, who,
as far as they were concerned, had a standard of weapon handling that wasn't
as good as it should have been for a corporal in the Royal Marines.
     I suspected that our personalities were also under the microscope.
     From  the way the DS looked at us I could almost hear the cogs turning:
Is  the  experienced  soldier  helping the less  experienced corporal in the
Catering  Corps to get on,  or is he just saying,  "Well, hey'  I'm  looking
good"? Was a bloke maybe such a dickhead that he  spent his time joking away
with  the DS? They'd joke back  with him, but  at the end  of the day they'd
probably  think, What a big-timer. It was their job to make sure that people
who were going to the squadrons were the best that they could provide.  They
had to go back to the squadrons themselves; they might be in command of us.
     They took the responsibility very seriously.
     We  trained  with  the  personal  weapons that were  available  to  the
squadrons.  First  were the 5.56 M16  and  the  203,  the grenade  launching
attachment that most  people  went for, apparently, because of its increased
firepower. Some people, however, still liked carrying the SLR, which fired a
7.62 round. They-were in a minority  because it meant that the patrol had to
carry two types of small-arms ammunition.
     Another weapon at patrol level was the Minimiagain, firing 5.56
     rounds.  The  Regiment also  still used the  GPMG,  the  standard  army
section  machine gun. I knew it to be  an excellent weapon at section level,
and we were told that a lot of people preferred it to the Minimi. There were
quite a few jobs where people would insist on taking a GPMG: it was reliable
and very powerful.
     We worked  with  Browning pistols, Colt 45s, and a  number of different
semiautomatic weapons.  For  some jobs people might prefer a certain type of
pistol, but the majority would go for the Browning.
     Then there were shotguns-the Federal  riot  gun, a pump-action  shotgun
that had a  folding stock and was an excellent weapon. Each squadron had its
own assortment  of mortars-81 MM, 60 MM, and  40 MM-and  the  Milan antitank
weapons. There was also the LAW 90, a 84
     MM rocket,  the standard rifle company antitank missile. Then there was
Stinger, an American-made antiaircraft fire-and-forget missile.
     "Stingers turned up in the Falklands, and nobody really knew how to use
them  or what to do with them," the DS said.  "It was just a case of,  'Here
they are, get to grips with them." So  the boys were sitting  around on  the
grass  one  day, reading the instructions  and having a  brew, when over the
horizon came a flight of Puccaras.
     A D Squadron member stood up and put the Stinger on his shoulder.
     It was like the kid in the old Fisher Price ad: 'How's this work then?
     What does this do?" The bloke was  pressing all the  buttons to make it
fire, and it did. It took down a Puccara. So the first time  the Stinger was
used in anger was by a Brit firing at an Argentinian aircraft."
     The  story  didn't  end there.  About  two  years later  apparently,  D
Squadron  went  over to Germany to  the  Stinger training  center run by the
Americans.  The  training  was  in  simulators  because the  weapon  was  so
expensive.  The  American instructors  got to  fire  only one a year and had
certainly never used it in war.
     "We've got this wonderful weapon," said one of the instructors.
     "Any of you guys seen it before?"
     The  bloke  put  his  hand  up,  and  the  instructor  smirked.  "In  a
simulator?"
     "No, I shot down a jet with it."
     Besides the British and American hardware, we were trained with all the
Eastern  bloc weapons:  AK47s-the Russian, Czech,  and Chinese ones-all  the
mortars, their medium  antitank weapons, and  masses  of different  pistols,
such  as  the  Austrian Steyr. We were  told that a lot  of times we'd be on
tasks  where we wouldn't  be using our  own weapons;  we'd have  to  go to a
country and use what we could find.
     The AK family were  excellent weapons.  The'  fired y 7.62 short, which
meant you could carry more 7.62
     than  our  7.62 for the  same weight. It  was  a good  reliable  weapon
because it was  so  simple.  The  only  drawback  was the big,  thirty-round
magazines; when  you lay down, you  couldn't  actually get the weapon in the
shoulder  to fire  because the magazine hit the  floor. A lot of the Eastern
bloc policy on attack showed in the AK.
     With  the  safety catch,  the first click down was automatic;  then the
second  click down was single  shot, so the mentality  was clearly:  Give it
loads. On Western  weapons it was the  other way around: single  shot first,
then onto automatic.
     We did live firing down at Sennybridge, practicing live attacks.
     Sometimes they'd tell us things on the  range, such as how to hold  our
weapon, that were contrary to what some of us had been taught. We were doing
standing  targets at  a hundred meters; the way I fired was to put  the butt
into my shoulder and-have my hand underneath the magazine, resting  my elbow
on the magazine pouch. It seemed to work for me. One of the DS came over and
said, "What are you doing?  Put your  hand on the stock,  lean  forward, and
fire it  properly." There was no  way I was going to say, "Actually, I shoot
better like this, and this is the way I've been doing it  for years." I just
nodded and agreed, put my hand on the stock, and carried on firing.
     Some of the blokes would actually say, "No, that's wrong," but what was
the point of arguing? We wanted to be with them, not the other way around.
     People  had weird and wonderful  qualifications that they thought  were
going to be an asset,  but the DS soon put them straight.  "If the squadrons
need specific skills, they'll send their own people  off  for  training. The
most important thing is that we send them somebody with the aptitude to do a
certain type  of work  and  the personality to get on  with other  people in
closed and stressful environments. Then they  have the  baseline. Then  they
can send you out to become the mortar fire controller or whatever."
     I heard a story  about a fellow  from a Scottish regiment on a previous
Selection.  When they started training  on the weapons, he sat  muttering in
the  class,  "I don't want to be doing this  shit. This is what  I do in the
battalion. I want to get on to the Heckler and  Koch and all the black kit."
The instructors heard  it, didn't say anything; they just  got  on  with the
lesson.  But they'd pinged  him as a  big-time  Walter Mitty; they took  him
quietly to one side afterward and gave him directions to Platform 4.
     I was  phoning up Debbie once a  week, and occasionally I'd write her a
letter, but she was second in  my list of priorities; I wanted to  crack  on
and get into the jungle. As  far as I was concerned,  she  was fine. She was
still working; she was having a good time with her friends.
     The telephone conversations were tense and stilted.
     I'd say, "Is everything all right?"
     "Yeah, fine," she'd say, offhand. "What changes here?
     Still going to work, still bored, still nothing to do."
     Never mind, I thought, at the end  of the day everything will be sorted
out. We'd get the quarter; the problems would disappear.
     We started to learn the techniques we'd be using in the jungle, and why
they were used-the way to  L.U.P (lyingup point),  the  daily routine,  hard
routine,  how to ambush, how  to cross  rivers. We'd go down to the training
area  and walk around in  plain fields and forestry blocks as if we were  in
the jungle. Anybody looking  at us would  have  thought  we were a  bunch of
dickheads, prowling around right up close to the trees.
     "When  you get  into your  tactical L.U.P,"  the DS said, "you put up a
hammock-as low  as possible, so your arse is just a couple of inches off the
ground-and fix up  a poncho above  you. If you've got to sleep on the floor,
you've got to  sleep on  the floor, but why do that if you've got  the means
not to? When  you do  get  up in the morning, you're  more effective if  you
haven't been bitten to bits during the night and you've had a good chance to
get  some sleep. You're  more refreshed and better  able  to  go and do  the
task."
     Some people took biwi bags with them, he said. As well as keep the rain
off,  it kept the dry clothing dry; the wet clothing would just stay outside
and get soaking  wet anyway, that was no problem. If we could keep ourselves
well maintained and free of  embuggerances,  the better  tactically we would
be. There was nothing 'soft  about it. We were told it was far more sensible
than  playing the he-man and ending up  being effective  for about two and a
half minutes.
     "People live  in  the  jungle for months at  a time like this,  with no
adverse  effects  at  all. In fact  it's  a wonderful  environment; it's far
better than any  other environment  you've got to operate  in because you've
got everything there.
     You've got  food  if you  need  it,  you've got continuous  supplies of
water, you've got cover, the  weather's good, you don't have  to worry about
the elements-everything you need is there. So why go against it?
     Just switch on, and keep -as comfortable as you can when you can."
     We got all our injections done and filled in more documentation.
     I was  delighted;  I  felt it  somehow  meant we  were starting  to get
further into the system.
     The atmosphere was changing slightly, becoming  slowly more sociable. I
was careful  it  didn't  give  me a false sense of security, however. it was
easy  to forget that I could still be binned, that they were still seeing if
they wanted me in their gang or not. There were months and months to go, and
trying to make  an impression on a  DS over a cup of tea wasn't going to get
anyone anywhere.
     All the drills we  were learning, we  were told, were  based  on actual
experience, things that had gone right, things that had gone wrong.
     We practiced contact drills. The task of the Regiment in the jungle was
not  to  go  out  and  start  shooting  people;  it  was  to  go  out to get
information,  come back, then go back  again with  other people or  a bigger
force.
     "During the  Malayan days," said one of the  DS, a veteran  himself, "a
lot of  the  four-man patrols got through enemy ambushes without the  ambush
being  initiated  simply  because  the people manning  the  ambush  thought,
There's the recce group; let's wait for the main group to come through."
     There was still lots of physical training. They'd beast us about in the
gym, but I found it enjoyable because there was no discipline.
     There  didn't need to  be:  If we  didn't want to  be there, we were at
liberty to  walk. Nobody hassled  us about the rooms, but we kept them clean
anyway,  because that was  what was  expected  of us. I loved  it; it was  a
really wonderful atmosphere.
     At this stage the only  areas we were  allowed  into were  the training
section  and  training  wing  accommodation, but  I  still felt  part of the
organization.  We were  no longer segregated from  the other  blokes  in the
cookhouse now, and I bumped into one or two people I'd met in the  battalion
or on courses They were happy to chat over a cup of tea. One day I saw Jeff,
who was now on the counterterrorist team. He still looked younger than Donny
Osmond.
     "Still here then?" He grinned. "When do you go to the jungle?"
     "In about two or three weeks."
     "Know who your DS is yet?"
     "No idea. They're going to start putting us.in patrols very soon."
     The next morning we were given batteries of tests.
     First was language aptitude. I looked around the training wing theater,
trying to work out who would be  the most intelligent at this sort of stuff.
jake,  the American, was a main  man. I knew  that he spoke Farsi  and could
write the script, so I thought, There's the  brainy fucker, I'd better start
edging  my way next to him.  I went  for a piss with the  idea of sitting as
near to him  as  I  could when  I came  back. I found  that twenty-two other
blokes  had  had exactly  the same idea. Like a lot of  other people in  the
vicinity, I cheated, copying off jake.
     Next was  the pilots'  quick-reaction  test. We were  handed a list  of
calculations  and given a  minute  and a half  to do  each one in. They were
weird and wonderful things like mean averages and square roots, concepts way
beyond  the basic math I'd taught myself with the Janet  and John book  from
Peckham library. Then there were lots of items like the Mensa tests they had
in newspapers. I doubt my results would have got me into the Noddy Club, let
alone Mensa.
     I kept thinking, If we fail  these, are we binned, or what? Have we got
to be brain surgeons or are we going to be soldiers? It went on all morning,
and it became a bit of farce, with everybody cheating off everybody else.
     The DS must have known what was going on.
     One thing they had  been  teaching  us  from  the very  first  day  was
decision making. In the training wing corridor there was a big picture of  a
load  of sheep  in  a  pen, and underneath  was  the message:  "Either lead,
follow, or get out of the way."
     It was a big thing: Don't dillydally; make a decision.
     If it was wrong, it was wrong; if it was right, it was right. One of my
new  decision processes  was to think: What's  done  is done; if I've failed
I've failed.
     When we went into the cookhouse at lunchtime, we were like kids walking
out of an exam room.
     "What did you reckon to number sixteen?"
     "I made the answer two hundred and fifty."
     "Oh, fuck."
     Whatever the results were, we were issued with our jungle kit  the next
day:  jungle fatigues, mosquito nets, bergens, different types of ponchos. I
was like a pig in sugar.
     The same afternoon we were going to be told what patrols we were in and
who our DS was going to be.
     Everybody  wanted to  get  together  with  the people who'd been in the
jungle  before because in theory they were going to have an edge and be able
to help.
     I was made a patrol commander because I was an infantry sergeant.
     In  the patrol we had a bloke, Raymond, a Falklands veteran, who'd done
a  six-month tour in Belize as  a lance  corporal with 2 Para.  He was  very
thick-set with  jet black hair;  if  he had a shave at six o'clock, by eight
o'clock he'd need another  one.  Raymond knew  all about pole  beds and  the
routine of living in the jungle; the closest  I'd been was a school  trip to
Kew Gardens  when I was seven years old,  and my only memory  of that was of
the other kids having ice creams afterward and me not having enough money to
buy one.
     Another  member of the patrol was  Mala corporal in the Royal Anglians.
He came  from  London and  was  about the same size and height as I was, but
with the world's biggest teeth. A couple of them were missing, and he always
had a smile on his face and a fag in his mouth.
     He reminded me of the Tommy Atkins character from the First World War.
     He didn't seem to give a stuff about anything but was very confident in
what he did. If he hadn't  been in the army, he  would  have  been  a market
trader down  Portobello Road. He was the scruffiest  prson I'd ever seen. He
looked as if he'd been dipped in glue  and  thrown through the  window of an
Oxfam shop. He was a good soldier, without a doubt,  but he was so laid back
he was almost lying down. Because he found things very easy, it looked as if
he had no commitment.
     Tom  was a corporal  from  29  Commando, part  of  the  Royal Artillery
attached to  the Royal Marines, and he was completely the opposite, hyped up
about everything. He was the funniest bloke I'd met since Dave left.
     He  had a sag eye: If he was looking at his shoelaces, one eye would be
looking at the moon. He was also  the tallest  of us, just on  six feet, and
athletically  built.  He was very loud; I  suspected he  was  deaf  after  a
lifetime of artillery pieces banging off in his ear.
     I was still phoning up Debbie, writing her letters and  telling her how
exciting it was. When she wrote  or  spoke, I didn't listen or  read between
the lines. It  didn't occur to me that she might be bored shitless. I was in
the ,UK doing something I wanted to do, and she was in Germany just plodding
on, not really doing that much. I couldn't have cared less; me, I was off to
Brunei.
     n March we flew to Hong Kong, en route to Brunei.
     We came  into  Kaitak Airport at night, and I  couldn't  believe what I
saw.  The aircraft did  a  steep  turn, then flew in really low. I could see
people walking in the street and pottering around in their apartments.
     We  stayed at a camp near the airport.  It was the first experience I'd
had of somebody in authority in the army giving me money, a ration allowance
because they wouldn't be feeding us. It was supposed to  be  money for food,
but of course it paid for a night on the town, with just enough left over to
buy a bag of chips on the way home.  I thought, Hell, yes, I need to keep in
here, they give you money!
     Hong Kong was  one  of the places  I'd  always  heard about  but  never
thought  I'd see.  Now I just wanted to take as much of it in as I could  in
case I never came back. The city was packed and never seemed to stop. it was
full of neon, food shops open everywhere, dense traffic, and this was at ten
o'clock  at  night. We could sleep on  the plane  to Brunei in the  morning;
tonight was ours to enjoy.
     Raymond had been to Hong Kong before when he did an emergency tour with
the Parachute Regiment  in the New Territories. "No problems,"  he declared,
"I know broke into a horrendous sweat and found it hard to get my breath.
     We  had to cross  a river. Logs had been  positioned over it  to make a
small bridge, and  as we started to cross,  I  caught my  first glimpse of a
palm-leaf shelter  and,  nearby,  a group  of  tribesmen. The  Regiment  had
enjoyed  a  long  association with  the  Ilbans, dating  back  to the Borneo
conflict.
     "They're  good  blokes," the DS said. "We employ some of  them  to help
build all the atap [foliage-covered] huts for the admin area, including what
is  going to be your schoolhouse. They also help with a  lot of the survival
training."
     As  we went past these boys, squatting on  their haunches  and  smoking
away, it hit me that we really  had come into a totally different culture in
a totally different part of the world. We were going to be self-contained in
our own little  world,  miles and miles from  civilization,  for at  least a
month-whether we liked it or not.
     This was exciting stuff.
     Looking  at  the  rain  forest  around and  above me,  I couldn't  help
wondering  how   people  survived   in   the   claustrophobic   green-tinged
semidarkness.  The  tall  trees  of  the  primary jungle, profusely  leaved,
blocked out the sun. Humidity must have been running at close to 90 percent.
I  was hot; I was  short of breath; I was sweating; I was  getting bitten to
bits.  It seemed every animal there  wanted to  have a munch  out  of me.  I
looked at the Ilbans,  relaxing against  the  shelters  with just a  pair of
shorts on, as happy as sandboys.
     We got  into  the  "schoolhouse,"  which was in fact little more than a
roof over two rows of  log benches. We put down our bergens, and the'DS came
around for a brew and a chat.
     Each patrol's DS would stay with it all the time, we were  told, though
he  lived in the admin area rather than  with the patrol. Every time we were
out on the ground, he'd be there as well.
     They s