Immediate Action (64 page)

    On Remembrance Sunday the Regiment gym becomes a church. Every member of Stirling Lines-Regiment and attached personnel, serving and retired-who can be there is there. So, too, are their wives, girlfriends, and families and the families of people who have died.

    Serving members of the Regiment wear full-dress uniform, the only time it is worn. This year I was in civvies as I was part of the protection outside the camp during the service.

    After the service everyone moved outside to the Clock Tower.

    Wreaths were laid by all the different squadrons, and all the different departments and organizations that were in and around supporting the Regiment. There was a two-minute silence, and then it was into the club for drinks and food. Many saw it as a chance to talk to ribtired members-the old and bold-because a lot of them only appeared for this one occasion a year. The party would go on for the rest of the day and well into the evening.

    Instead of doing all that, I went with jilly down to the graveyard.

    The regimental cemetery isn't in the Lines, it's in the local church; the Regiment has its own plot, and it was almost full.

    "They'll either have to buy a bigger plot or stop all the wars," I said. jilly gave a smile that was more of a wince.

    One or two other people were there to pay their respects to old friends.

    One of them was an ex-B Squadron warrant officer who'd got out a couple of years before. It was the first time that I'd seen him in a suit. He had nothing with him-no flowers or anything like that.

    He wasn't going to any grave in particular; he was just walking up and down, alone with his thoughts. His shoes and the bottoms of his trousers were wet from the grass, and his suit collar was turned up against the cold.

    Jilly and I fell in step beside him.

    "You going up the camp?" I said.

    "Fuck that. There's too many people up there as it is, desperate to be part of the show. This is where people should be."

    He was right. The Remembrance Day service was packed with camp followers and hangers-on who seemed far less interested in what was being commemorated than in being able to. say afterward that they'd been there.

    Blokes who really are in the Regiment either feel sorry for or loathe those who've had some sort of contact and make themselves out to be more than they are or were.

    They must have very low self-esteem if they feel the need to bluff, but what they perhaps don't realize is that they are normally found out. It is a very small world, and everyone knows one another or can connect.

    Such characters would not be worthy of licking the mud off the boots of the people in the "plot."

    I thought about the blokes I worked with. They were as much of a cross section personality-wise as would be found in any organization.

    They ranged from the slightly introverted who kept themselves to themselvesto the point of training in the gym at 1:00 A.m.-right the way up to the total and utter extroverts who moondanced all over the place.

    There's a hill outside Hereford called the Callow; as you hit the brow of it at night, you see below you the lights of the town. On their way back from a trip a lot of the singley party animals call it Hard-on Hill; they've been away for six months, and all they want to do is get into camp, have a shower, and scream downtown. At the other extreme was a single bloke I was flying back with from a trip who turned to me and said, in his thick Birmingham accent, "I can't wait to get back to clean my windows."

    Then there were all the people in between. Everybody from a Hell's Angel to an exotic butterfly collector, and men of all colors and creeds-Australians, Kiwis, Fijians, Indians from the Seychelles.

    Blokes were doing Open University degree courses; one wanted to become a physics teacher when he left. People who'd really got into the medical side had gone on to become doctors.

    There were other blokes who really got in to a country where they'd been operating-in particular, the Arab countries. A lot of them became very proficient in the language and got interested in the culture, the people, and the country itself and ended up going and living there.

    In B Squadron there was a former taxidermist who was also an ex-convict and boxer. He had a deep freezer in one of the spare rooms in the block where he lived.

    Inside, instead of frozen pies and fish fingers, there were dead foxes, owls, and salmon and cartons of chemicals.

    Some blokes would bring him back dead animals from trips; others would use his services to get their pet dogs stuffed.

    A lot of people got into anything to do with the air; once they joined a free fall troop, they got this fixation with anything to do with flying and free fall. Nosh had bought himself an old Cessna in the States and flown it over to the UK-an outrageous journey on a single engine. The fuel ladder in the back was leaking, it looked like the thing was going to fall apart, so he put his parachute rig on, took out all but two screws in the door, and flew high enough so if the bladder went, he could just jump out. The radios were not the sort for transatlantic flights, so he put out the antenna, which was a wire tied to a brick, and then measured it out to get the frequencies to hit the stations.

    There were people who were severely into the old jap-slapping; they got to international level sometimes.

    Others got into weird, obscure sports, especially the Mountain Troop blokes. They nearly always got into sheer-face climbing and developed an obsession with climbing Everest.

    There was also Mr. Normal, Mr. Family Man with the house and 2.4 kids; he'd get back from a job, do all the debriefing, and then it was a total cut. He went home, mowed the grass, found the lost cat, and replaced the tile on the roof.

    A major part of what made the Regiment more professional than the normal military unit was that it was staffed by people who could.-tell the difference between work time and play time. When you're working, you're working; when you're not, then it's time to be the idiot.

    You can do whatever you want: You can go and get drunk out of your head or you can go home and mow the grass, it really doesn't matter.

    But everybody has to be able to cut between when they're working and when they're not.

    There was one particular crowd that came from all squadrons, called the Grouse-beaters-all the Highland jocks who used to get together and go downtown and drink. At New Year the Grouse-beater would hit the town with their skirts and fluffy shirts. Such occasions apart, the ordinary man in the street would find it very difficult to pick out Regiment blokes. Anybody seeing a squadron away would probably think it was a school outing.

    With such a cross section, there were bound to be personality clashes now and again; it's just a normal human reaction, and it clears the air.

    Fortunately the Selection process cancels a lot of that out because they're looking for blokes that can mingle with one another in closed environments, but it's bound to happen.

    We'd just come back from over the water one Christmas and were in one of the bars downtown. Eno, the midget, was drunk; he was getting behind Regiment blokes that he knew, jumping up and slapping their heads, then disappearing giggling into the corner. It pissed off one of the blokes so much that he turned around and dropped him. In the morning Eno phoned me up and said, I don't know who it was, but I was obviously out of order." A couple of days later he found out it was one of his really good mates out of the same troop that had decked him.

    "Ah, well," he said, "that's all right, as long as I know."

    The culture is downbeat. Elitism is counterproductive, it alienates you from other people, and we depend on a working relationship with many other groups like Special Branch or the security services. After all, the Regiment is there as strategic troops, to do tasks that enhance other groups' capabilities. It was always hard, however, to break down the barriers. I remembered going on courses or being seconded to other units. I'd be sitting there on my own for a couple of days before anybody would talk to me. Everybody would stand off because of the mystique that was created in the army about the Regiment. We had to make an effort to go and talk to people, to show them that we were normal, approachable, and just like everybody else: We had grass that was overgrowing; we had a cat that was missing.

    That wasn't to say that we didn't know we were very professional and very confident in what we were doing, but that had nothing to do with elitism. Blokes just looked at it as a job, as a profession.

    Soldiering was something that they found they had the aptitude for, and they wanted to take the profession to another level.

    It was sadly ironic that because they were so good at what they did, they were more likely to be at the sharp end; because they were so good, they were more likely to end up getting killed. What it all boiled down to was that if we were there shooting at somebody, chances were that he'd be shooting back at us-which meant that we were in the shit, and we could die.

    A lot of the time to be shooting at somebody means that the task is being compromised. The Regiment is not a big, aggressive, overt force looking for trouble; it's about small numbers of strategic troops, a covert force that spends as much time intelligence gathering as anything else.

    The Regiment's roots were in the Second World War and the Malaya conflict, both of which involved a lot of information gathering and quick strikes. It wasn't about inflicting massive casualities; it was about destroying equipment and communications, and lowering morale.

    As a small force during the Second World War, killing forty Germans meant little in the scale of things. Destroying forty aircraft, however, was a different matter: It embuggered the enemy, and it saved Allied lives.

    My own ideas about killing had changed a lot since I was young. I killed my first man when I was nineteen.

    There was a big celebration purely because I'd done what I'd joined the army to do. But now I got a kick from stopping death, not causing it.

    It certainly didn't worry me when enemy were killed in contacts.

    I didn't celebrate the fact, but there again I didn't lose any sleep about it. I understood that they had sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, but they were big boys, like all of us, and they knew what was going on. They knew that they stood a chance of being killed, the same as we did.

    I'd never met anybody who kept a running total or said, "Yeah, good stuff, I've killed so-and-so." If it had to be done, I didn't know anybody who wouldn't try to make it as quick as possible-not so much to make it a nice clean way of dying for them, as to make it safer for himself. The quicker they were dead, the less of a threat they were; it's no picnic getting shot. In the films it's all rather nice: The guy takes a round in the shoulder and is still running around shouting good one-liners. Load of shit: You get hit by a 7.62 round, and it's going to take half your shoulder off.

    During the Second World War David Stirling," the founder of the Regiment, threw a grenade into a room and killed several Germans. He didn't need to do it to achieve his aim, and he bitterly regretted it.

    He said it was a waste of life and it pissed him off.

    We walked home through the park, taking the cold November wind full in the face. Leaves swirled in small typhoons, and it started to pour with rain.

    "I love this weather," I said. "Best part is knowing I'll be home in a minute with a brew in my hand."

    Jilly turned to look at me. She looked strained.

    "It's going to be a bit hotter where you're going, isn't it?"

    "You what?"

    "Kuwait. You can't kid me you won't be going if it blows into a war."

    In the short time that I'd known her, she was always all right if she wasn't aware of the dramas. She knew very little of what I did and had never asked questions because, she told me, she didn't want the answers.

    "Oh, you're off, when are you coming back?" was the most she would ever ask. But this time it was different. For once she knew where I might be going.

    I didn't want to mess things up between us. I wanted this to be it. My marriages had failed mainly because of my commitment to the army. Now I realized I could have both-a career and a strong, lasting relationship.

    Our future was together.

    "Don't worry, mate," I said. "There's more chance of Maggie getting kicked out of Downing Street than there is of me being sent downtown for a new pair of dessies and some Factor twenty."

    As I put my arm around her, I only hoped she didn't notice that my fingers were firmly crossed.

    

    Glossory

    

     203 M16 rifle with 40MM grenade launcher attached 2 i/c second-in-command 66 lightweight, throwaway antitank rocket 109 or Agusta type of helicopter 109 A.R.F airborne reaction force A.P.C armored personnel carrier Atap foliagf-covered A.T.O ammunition technical officer basha shelter beasting army slang for a beating or very hard run with kit bergen pack carried by British forces on active service BG Bodyguard biwi bag Gortex sleeping bag cover blue-on-blue friendly fire bone narr brick four-man infantry Patrol in Northern Ireland C130 Hercules transport aircraft C4 U.S plastic explosive can Saracen armored personnel carrier hexamine (hexy) small block of solid fuel chinstrap, be on really knackered, as in "I can't go H.M.S.U headquarters mobil support unit your on, I'm on my chinstrap here" I.A immediate action C.O.B.R cabinet office briefing room ID identifylidentity CQB close quarter battle I.E.D improvised (or identified) explosive CRW counterrevolutionary warfare device CTR close target recce I.J.L.B infantry junior leaders battalion CT team counterterrorist team infil infiltration Cuds countryside mt intelligence Delta Force U.S. equivalent of 22 S.A.S iv intravenous drip Regiment jark technical attack on weapons or dicker IRA observer improvised (or identified) explosive DMP drug manufacturing plant device DPM disrupted pattern material leak sweat (camouflage) LMG light machine gun DS directing staff (instructor) L.O.E limit of exploitation DZ drop zone long rifle dry bag diver's dry suit LS landing site E&E escape and evasion L.U.P lying-up point eppie scoppie tantrum M.O.E method of entry E.R.V emergency rendezvous mozzie rep mosquito repellent exfil exfiitration ND negligent discharge of weapon F.O.B forward operations base net communications network Foxtrot on foot NVA night-viewing aid fresh fresh food NVG night-viewing goggles FRP final rendezvous O.C officer commanding fuddle or getting together and having a brew OP observation post kerfuddle OPSEC operational security Gemini inflatible assault boat P.E plastic explosive GPMG general purpose maching gun pinkie 11 0, a long wheel-base Land Rover green slime (or member of Intelligence Corps PIRA Provisional IRA slime) QRF quick reaction force HE high explosive R.T.U return to unit head shed nickname for anyone in authority. rupert nickname for officer, not always From Malaya days, this is what derogatory any form of leadership in the RP rendezvous point regiment has been called, after the Sat nay satellite navigation term for the start of the river scaley signaler course scaley kit signals equipment SF security forces short pistol sitrep situation report SLR self-loading rifle sen sergeant Major SOP standard operating procedure ssm squadron sergeant major stag sentry or sentry duty stand to prepare to defend against attack tab hard long-distance march wirn R.I.T T.A.C.B.E tactical beacon radio TCG tasking and coordination g?u-p vc voluntary contribution to squadron funds VCP vehicle checkpoint