Immediate Action (3 page)

    "I suppose so."

    "Probably fancy a bit of traveling, seeing a bit of the world?"

    "That's me."

    "Well then, have you considered a career in the infantry? There's a lot more potential. The battalions move every two or three years, so you're going to different places. It's a more exciting life for a young man.

    We have vacancies in the Royal Green jackets."

    "Right, I'll have some of that."

    I was quite proud of myself. I thought I'd cracked it. I was a man; I was in the army now. I couldn't wait to get home and tell my parents the news.

    "What did you land up in then?" the old man asked, looking up from his paper.

    "The Royal Green Jackets."

    "What's that?"

    "Part of the Light Division." I beamed. "You knowlight infantry."

    "You wanker!" he exploded, hurling his newspaper to the floor.

    "You're not going to learn anything. All you're going to do is run around humping a big pack on your back."

    But I was not going to be deterred. A couple of days later, when it was clear that my mind was made up, my mum handed me an envelope and said,

    "I think you need to know all about this."

    I opened the envelope and pulled out my adoption certificate. It wasn't a shock. I knew my brother was adopted, and I'd always just taken it for granted that I was, too. I wasn't really fussed about it.

    "I met your natural mother when you were about a year old," my mum said.

    "She told me that she worked for a Greek immigrant who'd come over to England in the fifties and was running a nightclub in the West End.

    She sold the cigarettes in the club and was seventeen when she fell pregnant by him. She told me neither of them wanted a baby so she left you on the hospital steps in a carrier bag."

    My mum and dad had fostered me more or less straightaway and eventually adopted me.

    "She wasn't really concerned about you, Andy," my mum said. "She said to me, 'I can always have other kids." In September 1976 I had what I thought was the world's most fearsome haircut and boarded the train to Folkestone West. Double-decker buses were waiting to take everybody to the Junior Leaders' Battalion camp at Shorncliffe. As soon as we got there all eleven hundred of us were given another haircut. A really outrageous bone haircut-all off, with just a little mound on the top like a circle of turf. I knew straightaway I was going to hate this place.

    The first few days were a blur of bullshit, kit issue, and more bullshit. We couldn't wear jeans; they were ungentlemanly.

    We had to stand to attention if even a private came into the room.

    I thought I was hard, but there were people here who made me look like the Milky Bar Kid. They had homemade tattoos up their arms and smoked roll-ups. If they couldn't find somebody to pick a fight with, they'd just scrap among themselves. Shit, I thought, what's it going to be like when I get to the battalion? I wanted out.

    It was a very physical existence. If we weren't marching, we'd be doubling. We were in the gym every day, running and jumping. I actually got to like it. I found out I was quite good at running and started to get more and more into sport.

    As a young soldier, milling was part of any selection or basic training at the time. They'd put four benches I together to make a square and say, "Right, you and you, in you go," and in we'd go and try to punch hell out of each other. Most blokes just got in there and swung their arms like idiots. The hard nuts from Glasgow and Sheffield were a bit more polished, but I was amazed to find that one of the best punchers of all came from Peckham. Before I knew it, I was on the company boxing team.

    One good thing about getting into any sports team in the army is that you're excused from all the other training. Another is that you get to walk around in a maroon tracksuit all day, looking and feeling a bit special.

    I won my two bouts at welterweight, and my company won the battalion championships. We got to the army finals, and I won the welterweight title. As far as I was concerned, my future was sealed: I'd go to 1RGJ, the boxing battalion, be a boxer for three years, then get out. What was even better, 1RGJ were off to Hong Kong.

    A lot of the other blokes resented us sports people.

    Maybe it was the color of the tracksuit, or maybe it was because we were allowed straight to the front of the dinner queue as a privilege.

    The boxing team swaggered in one lunchtime, went to the head of the queue, and started slagging off the other blokes.

    "You think you're fucking it, don't you?" said one of the Glasgow boys.

    I answered with a smirk and walked on to the front and waited for the doors to be opened.

    A Glaswegian mouth came very close to my ear and said, "What's the difference between your leg and maroon tracksuits?"

    Ishrugged.

    "None," he said, "they're both full of pricks," and with a massive grunt he rammed his fork straight into my thigh.

    I staggered back a pace and looked down. The fork was embedded in my leg right up t'o the ends of the prongs. I grabbed hold of it and pulled gently, but my leg muscle had gone into rigid spasm, and I couldn't get the thing out. I wrenched as hard as I could and pulled it free. The prongs were red with blood as I did an aboutturn an. d marched from the canteen. There was no way I was going to say anything.

    It wasn't until I got around the corner that I covered my mouth with my hand and screamed.

    Boxing finished. I went back to the platoon, still with at least six months to do with the same intake. I was way behind. I'd done the weapon training, but I hadn't had time to consolidate it. I was really brought down-to-earth; they knew a lot more than I did. But I worked hard at it and even got a promotion. For the last three months we were given ranks, from junior lance corporal to junior RSM. It meant jack shit really.

    On Friday mornings we had the colonel's cross-country over a six-mile course in and around the camp. The whole battalion had to race. If you came behind the colonel, you had to do it again on Sunday, whether you were staff or a junior soldier After that, we'd go to a training area to practice being wet, cold, and hungry. I enjoyed it; at least we were away from the camp. I got better and better at it, and it made me feel good.

    There was a ritual. The provo sergeant would come out of the guardroom and greet everyone back. It was the first time we had been given any respect. We would be staggering back as a platoon, with our silly tin hats on, kit hanging off us, stinking, our faces covered in cam cream, and he would come out and give praise.

    "Well done! Keep it going!" he'd boom.

    It gave me a sense of pride that I'd never felt before, especially as he spent the rest of his time bollocking us.

    Then came the weapon cleaning, which took until the end of Saturday or Sunday morning. Then the weekend!

    We couldn't go home, and we were allowed out only until ten o'clock-and only to the local town. To the lads in Folkestone we were a nuisance because we had money. You could show a girl a really good time on three quid a week. I met a girl called Christine at the Folkestone Rotunda, and we started to see each other as often as we could.

    I really started to enjoy it all. I'd finally got to grips with the system of "bullshit baffles brains": just do what they say, even if you know it's a bag of shit, and it keeps everybody happy. And the more I enjoyed it, the more I didn't mind working at it, and the better I got.

    The exercises started to get more and more intense.

    We'd be out one or two nights a week, culminating in a two-week battle camp where all the different phases of war were practiced, with live firing attacks. Now, at last, I started to understand what I was doing.

    Before, I had just dug a hole and sat in it. Now I knew why I was sitting in it.

    Every eight weeks we had leave. I met up with my old mates in Peckham when I went back one time, but there was a distinct change.

    We'd drifted apart. Even after such a short length of time our worldviews had changed.

    All they were interested in was what I had been interested in when I left: mincing around. I didn't feel superior-the other way around, if anything. I thought I was missing out. They were talking about getting down to Margate, but on Sunday I'd have my best dress uniform on, marching down to the garrison church. Nonetheless, I couldn't wait to get to my battalion.

    I got chosen to take one of the passing-out guards and received a letter saying, "Congratulations on being presented with the Light Division sword. Well done, and I really hope your career goes well."

    I didn't have a clue what the Light Division sword was. I discovered that each regiment had this award, presented to the most promising young soldier. I also discovered that it meant a day's rehearsal where I had to practice going up, shaking the hand, saluting, taking the sword, turning around, and marching back off. At last the whole battalion had to get into the gym for presentations by the colonel to all the different companies.

    I thought the sword was marvelous and looked forward to seeing it mounted on my bedroom wall. But as I left the podium, a sergeant took it off me and gave me a pewter mug in exchange. The sword went back to the regimental museum.

    The passing-out parade was quite a big affair. My parents came down, and my older brother and his family. It was quite strange because they'd never been really that into it; Mum and Dad never even used to go to parents' evenings at my school. In fact, it was the first time any of my family had ever turned up to anything.

    It really was the day I thought I'd become a soldier.

    We wore I.J.L.B (infantry junior leaders battalion) cap badge and belt, and as soon as we came off the passingout parade, we could put on our own regimental kit, the Green jacket beret.

    There was another little matter to be attended to. Our beautifully hulled hobnail boots had to be returned to the stores, apart from those of the guardsmen who were going to take them to their battalion for ceremonial duties. So we all lined up and bashed them on the pavement until the bull cracked like crazy paving. No other fucker was going to get their hands on them and have it easier than we did. went on leave for a couple of weeks, then reported to the Rifle Depot at Winchester. I felt a mixture of excitement an worry as the eleven of us joined a platoon of adult recruits on their last six weeks of training.

    Compared with I.J.L.B, the discipline was jack shit.

    Once we'd finished our work for the day, we could get changed and walk but of the guardroom and downtown.

    At the end of the six weeks we got our postings. If you had brothers in particular battalions, they could claim you; otherwise, you just stated a preference and kept your fingers crossed. Third Battalion were known as the Cowboys and the 1st were the Fighting Farmers. two RGJ were in Gibraltar but due to come back to the UK quite soon for a Northern Ireland tour.

    I asked to go to 1RGJ because of the boxing and because they were due to go to Hong Kong. So of course, I was sent to 2RGJ. I wasn't best pleased-especially when I found out that they were called the Handbags.

    "Where do you come from?" the color sergeant asked me on the barrack square, as I stood blinking in the brilliant Mediterranean sunshine.

    "London."

    "I can hear that, you dickhead. Whereabouts in London?"

    "Peckham."

    "Right, go to B Company."

    My rifle platoon consisted of sixteen blokes. We'd been told that when we got to the battalion, they would get hold of us for "continuation training"-indoctrination into their special way of doing things. But 2RGJ was snowed under with commitments; they were all over the Rock, on ceremonial and border duties. Everybody was too busy to give the five of us any attention, and our first couple of weeks were spent just bumming around.

    " went into the main street the morning after I arrived.

    As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but shops full of cheap watches and carpets from Morocco, most of them run by Asian or Arab traders. I bought my mum a peacock carpet for a fiver, with a pair of flip-flops bunged in. I thought, This is wonderful; I've only been here a couple of days and already I'm cutting majorleague deals down the kasbah.

    Full of enthusiasm after my year of training, I was raring to go.

    I thought the posting was brilliant: We were in the Mediterranean; there were beaches; there was sun. It was the first time I'd ever been abroad, apart from my day trips to France, and I was getting paid for it. So the attitude of some of the other blokes came as a bit of a surprise. Some of the old hands seemed so negative; everything was "shit" and "for fuck's sake." Or, very mysteriously, it would be "I'm just going to do some business," and off they'd go. It took me awhile to find out what they were doing.

    The majority of teenagers who joined the army had been exposed to some illegal substances. It was part of the culture, and they took that culture in with them when they joined. I had never been interested in drugs myself, mainly because I hated smoking and had never been exposed to them. I'd heard all the terms but didn't exactly know what was what.

    And now when I did get exposed to the drug business, it scared me; it was something totally alien.

    Drugs, I was told, had always been a bit of a problem.

    Once, when the battalion came back from an overseas exercise, a fleet of coaches had turned up at two-thirty in the morning. It was the local police, come to raid the battalion as a matter of course.

    They didn't find any illegal substances on this occasion, but they did find an officer who was engaged in an activity that was even more naughty in the eyes of military law. He was in bed with a corporal from the mortar platoon.