An Officer and a Gentlewoman (17 page)

And bored minds have time to think.

There had been one event that took place during our week in Brecon which bothered me, something which struck with an unwelcome jolt and forced me to ponder.

As Gill and I had made our Good Friday toilet and ice-cream stop at the motorway services, the front pages on the newspaper stand brought news of soldiers who had died the previous day in Iraq, killed as a roadside bomb exploded. While not an uncommon occurrence itself, this particular incident had greater significance for us because one of the dead was a new young officer and, of particular concern, she was female. Second-lieutenant Joanna Dyer had been an intelligence officer attached to an infantry unit patrolling in Basra. She had commissioned from Sandhurst only four months earlier along with Prince William. Just a year ago she, like me, had been digging and crawling around Brecon. Like me, she had spent the week shivering on sentry and eating corned-beef hash, hauling casualties and shooting at waving Gurkhas. She was no different from me. As a female in the army I had always felt that somehow the duty of death didn’t apply to me, that it was the preserve of the infantry units, the boys on the ground. Women are not allowed to serve on the ‘frontline’. Women are prohibited from ‘closing with and killing’ and this I thought precluded us from danger, but in Iraq there was no ‘frontline’. In Iraq there were no columns of advancing tanks or nice trenchlines in the sand marking out where the enemy were. Because in Iraq the enemy were everywhere, because Iraq was not a conventional war like the ones we were learning about. Iraq was a counter-insurgency campaign, like Northern Ireland, Malaya and Afghanistan. At Sandhurst we were still learning about convoys of communist tanks and how to defeat the Russian Shock Army (you can’t). And as I thought more about it I couldn’t help wondering why we were still working from Cold War tactics if in Iraq they were playing by different rules. And why decision-makers still insist that women don’t serve on the ‘frontline’ when there isn’t one and women are already in the line of fire.

That Saturday night as the Company got heavily inebriated in the cricket pavilion, bopping on the dance floor to disco lights and the Killers belting out the lyrics, ‘I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier’,
I noticed the 2006 Academy hockey team photograph framed on the wall by the bar, and Jo Dyer’s smiling face in the front row.

Perhaps we would be taught the relevant stuff next term. And at least for now I could march and polish shoes.

Oh, actually no. I couldn’t do that either.

I'm back in my old stomping ground. Back behind enemy lines in the City and feeling distinctly uncomfortable. Ann, Deborah and I have convened in Coq d'Argent for cocktails, gossip and panoramic views of London. The bar overlooks the Bank of England and is a mere stone's throw from my first London desk at the former offices of HSBC, light years away from my life right now. Ann is at the bar pressing herself forwards, trying to catch the barman's attention – it won't take her long – while Deborah and I are perusing the room, seated on white leather upholstered stools at a low table. It's still early, most City workers are stuck at their desks and the bar is yet to fill up.

Ann and Deborah are both smartly suited and booted, having come straight from work. I've come straight from Sandhurst and am glad to not be booted for the first time in fourteen weeks. Earlier that afternoon, back in a far corner of Tesco's car park in Camberley, I wriggled into my jeans again behind the wheel of my VW Polo, choosing not to show off my bruised legs tonight by wearing a skirt. Tucking my freedom into my back pocket and unlocking my femininity, I dusted off my make-up bag and delved in, applying a different kind of warpaint. My hair is down, blow-dried and styled, freed from its bun, hairnet and gel. Earrings dangle from my lobes and I feel like a girl again. Although I'm struggling to remember how to act. The raw chapped skin on my
hands and boyish short fingernails are the only giveaway that London's cocktail bars are no longer regular haunts.

‘You're looking great, Héloïse,' Deborah says.

‘Thanks, Debs. I feel good too,' I reply. ‘All this time we're spending outdoors running around is doing me some good. I feel so much healthier and alive now than I ever did when I lived here.'

‘That's fantastic,' she says. ‘And have you lost weight too? You're looking trim. I bet it's a good diet regime in there.'

‘No, I haven't actually. It's a completely different kind of fitness. I can't lose weight or I wouldn't be able to do it. We carry so much weight in our bergens on exercise that you need to be strong. I'm actually eating twice what I used to. It's great. Some of the girls have lost loads of weight though. One lost a stone in the first five weeks.'

‘Goodness. Can I sign up just for that? Just the five-week weight-loss plan, please.' We laugh at the thought of it. ‘So are things better at Sandhurst now then?' she asks, recalling how low I'd been when we last met.

‘Absolutely,' I say with enthusiasm. ‘I know what I'm doing now and things have relaxed. It's bearable. Don't get me wrong, it's still incredibly hard at times, but I'm enjoying the challenge now and I think I'll make it to the end.'

‘That's good to hear,' Deborah says.

Ann returns to our table clutching three extortionately overpriced mojitos and plonks them down on the glass tabletop. I take a sip and my eyes water; not just from the alcohol that springs into my bloodstream but at the heady London price tag and prospect of my round next. I'm still adjusting to my new monthly bank balance and know that tonight will probably cost me the equivalent of a week of crawling and shivering in Brecon. Ripping my knees open in a wet muddy field and sleeping in a soggy hole is in such contrast to London's flash trendy bars, with their highly paid clientele. From the open windswept Welsh hills
of Brecon to Bank Tube station, corporate head offices and bright City lights. I've gone from cold, tired and hungry to the glitzy surroundings of material gain and monetary greed: my old world. I can see now why I left it all behind. Why I had an inner urge to burst out and do something else with my days. I can see as clear as a bottle of gin that I don't belong here any more; my drive is in a different direction, my conscience doesn't fit with the City's scruples. I've made the right choice joining the army. Now beyond the bounds of the Sandhurst bubble I can see that.

I take another sip of my mojito and twizzle the straw between my fingers, chasing crushed ice and muddled mint around the glass. Ann and Deborah are discussing recent events in the City: giddy bonuses, mergers, movements and share options; I'm listening but can't keep up. I've only been out of the loop for a few months but the pace of the markets and London life have already left me behind, leaving me happily adrift in its murky wake. For now times in the City are good. Ann and Deborah are both busy and business is booming. My former colleagues have just creamed off the benefits from another round of whopping bonuses and the money markets are sound. The cracks of a global recession are yet to appear. Depositors are still merrily putting their money into Northern Rock and shopping at Woolworths (although clearly not buying enough pick 'n' mix). The braying City tossers filling the Coq d'Argent this evening certainly seem as bullish and cocksure as ever, revelling in Gordon Brown's ‘age of irresponsibility'.

Oh how the mighty can fall.

As the bar begins to swell with the arrival of more pinstriped stockbrokers and fat-tied barrow boy traders I find myself on the receiving end of some dreadful chat-up lines. Rounds of champagne cocktails arrive at our table followed by a group of Goldman Sachs boys who sidle up to us, trying inconspicuously to impress by flashing their Coutts gold cards. Without a boyfriend I find myself in the midst of an odd singles world at
Sandhurst. When it comes to men, being a girl in the army is like being thirsty at sea: men are everywhere. Good-looking, well groomed, uniformed, eligible men. Daily, I am surrounded by them. Muscular toned sculpted men who have biceps and abs as a matter of course, because of their job, not crafted through hours of vanity in the gym. Real men, who are trained hunters, gatherers and killers. Men with primordial skills that women are tuned to desire. Strong alpha male types who can survive in a real jungle not just the concrete one within the confines of the Square Mile. Men who are not motivated by pecuniary gains. Men who are simply far more attractive than these Goldman boys.

I have caught the attention of Rupert, a Savile Row-suited fund manager with a client-dinner paunch and unhealthy complexion. He is busy leaning into my ear (and peering down my top) telling me about himself, how important he is and how much money he makes. Me, me, me. I feign interest in his egotistical blitherings, thankful that the bar bill is not on my tab, cooing and swooning at appropriate junctures. As the jazz music is turned up he eventually diverts his attention from himself and asks me which bank I work for.

‘I don't work for a bank any more,' I tell him. ‘I'm in the army.'

His mouth drops to the floor and he suddenly recoils as if I've just spat in his face.

‘Really. So are you a lesbian then?' he asks, finally settling on an answer for my rebuttal of his advances.

‘No. I just decided to do something different with my life,' I tell him.

I can tell from his perplexed expression that this is most preposterous and utterly beyond his comprehension. ‘Why on earth would a pretty little girl like you want to go and do something like that?' he retorts.

One of the most soul-destroying activities of my former London life had been the painful daily commute on London Underground. Standing on a station platform each week morning, queuing four deep with waiting passengers, silent and motionless in the winter darkness, a sea of grey and black woollen coats and umbrellas, watching the rain hammer down onto the track. Praying that as the next carriage drew to a stop in front of me there would be a sliver of space that I could wedge myself into as the doors slid open. The depressing ten-mile journey from Fulham to Canary Wharf each morning and night took a whole hour, stealing two hours of my day. Two hours of being pressed like a sardine in a can. Two hours with some random hungover Australian backpacker breathing hot, heavy alcoholic fumes into my face. Two hours with a sweaty unwashed armpit hovering its damp patch over my nose. Two hours with a total stranger's crotch pressed against my upper thigh, rocking and bumping with the swaying train as it sped along the tunnels between stations. Sadly, if my boyfriend was out of town, my daily Tube journeys were the most intimate I'd find myself with someone else all week.

One particular cold morning as I travelled on my commute to Canary Wharf I was part of a very British incident.

I was on the Jubilee Line racing east, ticking off station stops: Westminster, Waterloo, Southwark, London Bridge, Bermondsey. At Bermondsey, the train doors beeped open and someone stood up and departed, leaving me with the rare pleasure of a seat. I sat down and settled in, unfolding my newspaper, and hiding behind its broadsheets, as the train sped on towards Canary Wharf. At some point, in the blackness between station stops, I sensed something down at my feet. Peering over the top of my newspaper shield, I saw there was a woman kneeling on the floor of the carriage, crouched over her rucksack praying. Wedged between mine, and the other passengers' feet, she was curled on the floor with an open copy of the Koran in her hands, reciting and muttering its verses. She was sweating in the large puffer jacket
she had on too. This was before London had experienced its own version of Al Qaeda's terrorism in the 7 July bombings, but September 11 2001 had occurred two years earlier and Londoners were all too aware of the threat to their capital. I leaned forwards and tapped her shoulder, whispering the offer of my seat, but she declined.

If she was planning to detonate a suicide vest of explosives on this Tube train, she'd chosen well: the carriage was packed with London capitalist scum. The suited City types most hated by extremists: Occidentalism, amoral, greedy, materialistic infidels.

I am quite sure that had such a scene occurred on the New York subway it would have been encountered very differently from the London experience I was part of that day. I would guess that New Yorkers would have met this infringement into their day with outspoken American hysteria, with accusing raised voices and confrontation, but certainly not the stony silence that filled that overloaded carriage somewhere deep underground east of Bermondsey. I could feel the uneasy tension filling the stale air around me as I sat with my paper lowered, waiting for events to unfold. Now everyone on the carriage was conscious of her, but no one uttered a single word. A very British stiff upper lip kept what may have been our last moments alive politely quiet. Avoiding the discomfort of a challenge or action we all ‘kept calm and carried on', dealing with our last prayers and testament personally in reflective silence.

Whatever it was we witnessed that morning, it wasn't a suicide bomber. She didn't click a trigger to martyrdom, but she did succeed in bringing fear to our morning. A terror and terrorism. She may have simply been a nervous passenger, turning to her faith, but as each one of us alighted at Canary Wharf our hearts were racing as though we'd just stared down the barrel of an Al Qaeda gun.

But the whole experience didn't cause me to have an ideological epiphany. I didn't get to my office, kicking off my high heels to
take up arms. The links that day were far too tenuous for any of us to make. The war in Afghanistan and London bombings are too disparate to be linked. But they are, at a political level. The safety of our streets (and Underground) is the reason soldiers board RAF planes bound for Kandahar, it is the reason soldiers return in coffins draped with the Union Jack flag, it is the reason they are fighting in Helmand in the first place, but it is not the reason they fight. War today is not about defending and invading territory. There isn't the obvious patriotism of protecting British soil like the Falklands or defending allied borders as in the World Wars, because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are more obtuse. It isn't the threat of Al Qaeda bombs in London that drives a soldier to arms, because today's PlayStation generation are not motivated by religious zeal or political ideals. They don't go to war so Fat Cat bankers can sit more comfortably on the Tube, and they don't patrol around the villages of Helmand Province concerned with spreading democratic values (not to say this doesn't occupy more senior commanders). They do it because of their friends, their mates and their Army family.

This is one of the incredible successes of the British Army's inherited structure, the regiments and corps that we would have to select from. It is this army family that gives soldiers their motivation in war, because in the army it is left to the politicians to decide the reasons why we go to war, as ours is ‘but to do and die'.
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It is the esprit de corps that binds army units and makes them so effective. A spirit fostered from the identity and proud traditions that a soldier lives and breathes from the moment he joins his ‘cap badge'. The pomp, the ceremony, the centuries of history, honours and battle glories, are what give soldiers and officers their sense of shared community and belonging. Regiments and corps are like tribes, with individual identities,
chiefs, ancient customs and battle cries. And it is a soldier's comrades-in-arms who matter far more than the politics that decide their battles.

And it was this camaraderie that I was lacking in my City job. This all-together, together-as-one attitude that existed in Eleven Platoon. The collegiate, the group, the greater sense of purpose. I realized that I had been seeking something more than just commuting to an office; I had a need to be part of something much more than simply being an employee on the payroll. The bonds we were forming at Sandhurst would last for ever and be far more meaningful and deep rooted than any normal working relationship, because we had been through the hard times together, staggering up hills in Brecon, digging shell-scrapes in Kent, shivering on stag; we had been through it all together, and were a closer unit because of it. The bonds that form between a soldier and his fellow comrades can be stronger than any family tie, stronger than even the relationship with his wife, because normal everyday life rarely tests you to the extremes of those demanded in the military.