An Officer and a Gentlewoman (14 page)

‘And where are you heading to now?' he asked as he unfolded a map out in front of us on the bonnet of the Land Rover.

I peered in. Looking down at the map as I hovered my right index finger over where I thought we were, jabbing to a point on the map.

‘We're walking along this road here, colour sergeant; from checkpoint seven to eight,' I said, tracing my finger along a small yellow B road on the map. A fatigued error on my part because in the Army you never use the inaccuracy of a fat finger to point on a map.

‘Oh dear, dear, dear, Miss Goodley. What have you been told about pointing to maps with your finger?' CSgt Gleeson said, reaching behind him into the Land Rover. ‘You must always point at a map with something pointy,' he said, bringing out a fresh, warm triangular slice of pizza, oozing with oily cheese and succulent pepperoni. We couldn't believe our eyes. He used the pointy tip of the pizza slice to trace our route on the map and then took a large satisfactory bite as we stood salivating helplessly in front of him.

Exercise Long Reach was emotional. We returned to the Academy scarred, beaten, stumbling wrecks. For the next few days, cadets hobbled around like battery hens on swollen, broken legs and feet. Leg muscles were tight and unwilling, forcing people to walk slowly and deliberately with the precision of a geriatric. Raw, open blister
wounds wept and the softer soled limped weakly to the medical centre for sick notes to wear trainers instead of boots, their pain excruciating enough to suffer the mocking ridicule of the rest of us.

But with the pain of Long Reach had come my Sandhurst turning point.

Looking back I now see Long Reach through heavily rose-tinted spectacles. I know I must have hated it at the time, but now all I feel is nostalgia for the Black Mountains: their quaint National Park status, the clearly marked footpaths, enchanting Welsh cottages and Crickhowell's peculiar charm. Today I can't recollect any of the pain or blisters that I must have suffered. I don't remember struggling with my bergen for forty hours. I don't recall getting lost and I don't even think we were that cold. Hindsight is a most dangerous and deluded perspective. Our brains are cleverly wired to forget pain (otherwise women would never give birth a second time). Pain isn't lasting and blisters heal, but it's glory that is laid down in history, to be exaggerated by each generation of story-telling. What I do remember of Long Reach is the euphoria of crossing the finish line, the satisfaction of having achieved something quite special, the coming of age, passing the Sandhurst initiation test, completing a rite of passage and finally, after weeks in the wilderness, finding my talent. Because Long Reach changed my Sandhurst fortunes. For it was on Long Reach I found my place. Finally I could take part, because on Long Reach I discovered my useful skill. I could read a map.

In Australia the Pormparaaw tribe of Aboriginals don't have words for left or right; instead they use the cardinal compass points. A sixth sense means they always know their orientation, even when in an unfamiliar darkened room. I've always been fascinated by this skill and, while nowhere near this talented myself, I can competently use a compass and read a map. I was aware that I could do this before I went to Sandhurst, but I was not aware that so many others couldn't. In the army, officers have a dreadful reputation among soldiers for being incapable of
reading a map and routinely getting lost,
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and conforming to female stereotypes should have further compounded this for me, but instead in this instance two wrongs make a right. And with map in hand I finally became a useful addition to the platoon. My parade square ineptitude and inability to shine shoes became forgivable, because at last I could join the club, no longer standing in the queue outside feeling useless, racked with guilt and incompetence. I could take part. My special skill meant I could contribute after all. I could hold up my side of the bargain. While the other members of the platoon helped me shine my shoes, dig holes and disguise my two left feet on the parade square, I became indispensable with a map.

I desperately hadn't wanted to return to Sandhurst after that first long leave weekend. And as Sunday night arrived I slipped into a deeply depressive ‘Sunday blues', moping around Deborah's flat, like a child reluctant to return to school at the end of the long summer holidays. I dragged my heels to the car, wishing for any excuse to escape: lightning strike, alien abduction, natural disaster: anything to get out of going back to boot camp. My first weekend of freedom had brought a taste of the free world and I so much wanted to be part of it again, and the thought of returning to the oppressive Sandhurst regime filled me with dread. The endless cycle of cleaning, polishing, marching, meals on the run, incessant shouting and the feeling of continually being on edge, trapped under a fear of misdemeaning and recrimination, filled me with anxiety.

As I had left the Academy at lunchtime the previous Friday, screaming my way up the M3 motorway as fast as my VW Polo would carry me, Deborah's jelly babies long demolished, I made a personal promise: if things didn't improve, if I didn't improve, on 
my return I would jack it all in and return to the City to ask for my old job back,
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the itch scratched. There seemed no point in flogging the dead horse. If I was going to suffer the slashing pay cut, the demeaning indignities and back-breaking, blister-giving,
muscle-snapping
training, I should at least be competent at it, and right now I wasn't.

But that was until Long Reach.  

Long Reach changed my fortunes and, with it, it changed my Sandhurst experience. With Long Reach the course of my fate jibed around the buoy and onto the right tack, as I had my lucky break. Back at the Academy, while cadets limped around on languid limbs I had a small spring in my step, because finally I got it. I understood something. Just because I could read a map, it didn't suddenly overnight mean that I could shine shoes and march, but it did give me a tiny little break. A modicum of skill with which I could play the game, like everyone else.

Those early days of the commissioning course were all about weeding out the unsuitable. Identifying those who wouldn't last the course, whose absenting potential may have been missed by the filtering sift at Westbury. If you were struggling, as I was, you found yourself under greater staff scrutiny. The magnifying glare honed in, focusing unnecessary additional heat to the pressure cooker we were already in. The only way out of this was to excel at something. Getting top marks in a map-reading exam allowed you to bask in the glow of being top of the class for long enough to overshadow other inadequacies. Having an immaculate room bought more time to practise the slow march, the shiniest shoes provided a smoke screen under which to improve press-ups and being fast at running protected you from everything. The Sandhurst vultures circled for the weak and the lame, the ones who universally struggled, and then they hounded them.

After the rigours of the first five weeks, we returned to an ever so slightly relaxed regime at the Academy after our first leave weekend. From now on our days would begin with a generous lie-in to half past six, the national anthem dawn chorus stopped, the chocolate ban was lifted, our mobile phones were released from SSgt Cox's office, but only to be used in our rooms, and meal times were extended by a lengthy five minutes (although by now my eating habits had adapted to the breakneck pace of feeding, much to my mother's disapproval). Our rooms became our own space, as we no longer had to adhere to the prescribed layout. Kettles, photographs, personal effects and homely touches were allowed, as the farcicality of room inspections relaxed, but unfortunately didn't stop. In my room, I added a pot plant and a rug, and replaced the army-issue quilt with a brightly coloured duvet-cover set. On the bare shelves, I placed books and photographs, while at the back of my underwear drawer I squirrelled away bottles of wine to get me through the late evenings of polishing and shining. Alcohol was strictly banned in our rooms, and being caught with it would have been a serious offence, but as I was now twenty-eight years old I felt responsible enough to control my own consumption so hid it away at the back of the drawer behind my bras and pants.

So with the shock of capture over, we began to grasp the essentials and Academy life got fractionally easier. Occasionally we would get too comfortable and a healthy dose of maddening nonsense would be dealt our way: a late-night parade,
early-morning
inspection, guard duty or threat of return to ‘weeks one to five', but on the whole we settled into the routine and started to play the game, as the remainder of the Junior term subsequently passed in a forgotten blur. The cycle of drill, inspections and parades persisted, interjected occasionally with glimmers of academic lectures to awaken our brains.

In keeping with the ideals of sound Christian leadership, religious ceremony was a weekly fixture in our new world. Each Sunday during weeks one to five, we paraded in Chapel Square dressed smartly for inspection and then took our pick from the faith options on offer. There was the choice of joining either the large Anglican congregation in the Academy Chapel where the service was lengthy but provided plenty of scope to fall asleep unnoticed in prayer, or the shorter, smaller Roman Catholic ceremony where the slumber potential was much reduced. The overseas cadets were all excused to the ‘multi-faith room' where none of them ever went, instead sloping off to their rooms for an extra hour in bed. I like to think that everyone's God understood our unanimous pan-faith requirement for sleep.

And at some point I do recall my parents coming to one of the twice-termly Chapel Sundays when the whole of Sandhurst, all of the cadets and staff, marched to church to a brass band and filled every seat in the cathedral-like Chapel. On these occasions the euphony of 1,000 people belting out ‘I Vow to Thee my Country' to resounding organ pipes, made proud shoulders bristle and spines stiffen, as the music echoed around the eaves and pews.

On my parents' visit my mother fussed terribly over how tired and gaunt she thought I looked, shocked by the dark circles under my eyes and pallor of my skin. My father belted out the hymns and couldn't resist the urge to execute some Nazi-style marching, demonstrating for SSgt Cox and Company Sergeant Major Porter that my drill ineptitude was not due to personal ignorance but the fault of my unfortunate genetics.

But the Chapel was more than just a place to sleep and worship, it also bears memorial to Sandhurst officers who had died in service. Every pillar, pew, stained window and spare inch of wall is inscribed with the names of the fallen. Over 3,000 Sandhurst graduates lost their lives in the First World War alone, most painfully young and
their names and teenage years can be found carved into the marble and oak all around the chapel. At the front, before the choir stalls, a raised glass and wooden cabinet sits, inside which lies the Book of Remembrance, a thick tome listing all the names of Academy alumni who have died in active service. Each day a page is turned. And in the arch above the altar are etched the words spoken by the Chaplain in his sermon on the last Sunday of term in July 1914: ‘
Dulce et decorum
est pro patria mori
': ‘It is sweet and right to die for one's country', the ‘old lie' there for each new generation to decide.

With the thrashing of the first five weeks over, our Sandhurst world started to expand too as we broadened out into the classroom and lecture hall. We used the firing ranges and sports facilities, gymnasium, assault course and were now also permitted to venture to the NAAFI (Navy, Army, Air Force Institute). The NAAFI was a café cum local convenience shop, selling everything from Mars bars to hairnets, and provided us with rare slivers of normality on the brief occasions we sought refuge there. Like driving around in my car on Sunday evenings eating jelly babies, the NAAFI became a sanctum from which to escape the prying eyes of the Sandhurst machine. A place to hide and forget, because for now we were still largely confined to camp. Ten o'clock curfews meant that there was no scope to vanish into London to catch up with friends, and we were still too tired to do so. Occasionally there would be a trip to Camberley Tesco just outside the Academy gates to stock up on jelly babies and freezer bags, but otherwise the only feasible means of escape was to play a suitable sport.

As you might expect, sport is a big deal in the army and at Sandhurst it was compulsory. After week five, sport became a mandatory fixture every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. To select your mode of glory or escape, a university ‘Freshers' Fair' style event was held at which each cadet had to register with sporting options from an exhaustive menu. There were two philosophies of approach to this: one, to choose a sport that you loved but that might turn into a
twice-weekly additional physical thrashing and see you confined within the Academy gates; or two, choose a sport with benefits such as rowing or sailing which involved trips to one of Surrey's local lakes with a shopping stop at Sainsbury's en route. I chose to swim, which had double benefits. I could swim in the Academy pool where the far too kind-hearted retired Colonel took pity and allowed us to paddle around serenely, propped up on a float while gossiping in the shallow end and then go back early to our rooms for a siesta. Or I could travel to Aldershot to use the Olympic-sized garrison swimming pool, where, once I'd got my hair wet, I could slope off into Guildford for a few stolen moments in Caffé Nero, savouring a coffee and warm chocolate brownie while smelling of chlorine.

But where physical exertion was concerned sport was definitely the soft option because physical training, or PT as it is known, was when our bodies were truly pushed to exhaustion at Sandhurst.

Now I'm no slouch but Sandhurst PT involved serious amounts of pain because PT hurts. Each gruelling session involved parading at the gymnasium in immaculately ironed clothing ready for whatever horrendous form of physical torture the instructors had prepared for us: a boot run, circuits, loaded march, hill reps, combat drowning (army swimming) or a visit to the assault course. Then the physical training instructors (PTIs) would emerge grinning, jostling and joking with excitement at the prospect of another masochistic session. They strutted up and down in tight white vests which framed their carefully sculpted biceps, inspecting the platoon, checking bergen straps, clothing creases, shoe laces and socks for whiteness. Because even PT couldn't start without an inspection.