An Officer and a Gentlewoman (10 page)

Then finally, as midnight approached, I rolled out my sleeping bag and wriggled in.

Once the crawling and digging stopped I became painfully cold. My damp clothing and sodden boots chilled my body to the core. People don't realize quite how deadly the British climate is. That night, as the January air dipped below freezing, the day's drizzle turned to snow and I shivered despairingly in my sleeping bag, worried that if I fell asleep I might wake up dead, frozen in my self-dug grave. But I need not have worried because someone had come up with a ridiculously complex sentry rota that ensured none of us would be getting any sleep that night anyway. And after less than an hour of trembling in my sleep, I was shaken awake by Allinson for my turn to lie in the numbing cold on stag.
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I lay shaking with cold on the sentry position next to Wheeler, our breath forming little clouds in the cold air, watching the snow settle around us, as the forest floor got whiter. With my head in my helmet propped against my rifle I stifled yawns and wriggled my legs back and forth, trying to keep as little of my body from touching the painfully frozen ground. From her pocket Wheeler produced a packet of ration-pack boiled sweets and we talked of food fantasies in a hushed whisper to keep ourselves awake (her dreaming of a home-made lasagne, me a Sunday roast with all the trimmings). After an hour of staring into the darkness like this our duty came to an end and we stood to reveal a clear untouched patch of brown earth in the snow for the next two to lie in, creeping back along the track plan to our shell-scrape and climbing back into our sleeping bags for another allotted ninety minutes' rest.

On our second stag I saw two figures approach us through the blackness. I blinked to check, hoping that my eyes were deceiving me, wishing for an uneventful, peaceful hour watching the snow fall. But they were there and coming closer, walking straight towards us.

‘Stop. Who goes there?' Wheeler called out the challenge to them.

‘SSgt Cox and Captain Trunchbull.'

‘Advance one and be recognized.'

The unmistakable misshapen onion-seller's beret of Captain Trunchbull stepped forwards into view.

‘Evening, ma'am, staff sergeant,' Wheeler greeted them.

They walked straight past us, disappearing off into the harbour area, emerging a few minutes later with two rifles and heading back in the direction from which they had come. They dissolved into the night.

‘Oh dear,' Wheeler exclaimed.

‘What?'

We were supposed to sleep with our rifles uncomfortably inside our sleeping bags, so should the enemy creep up on us while we slept they couldn't be stolen, which is exactly what Captain Trunchbull and SSgt Cox had meanly done, plucking them from beside our sleeping comrades. Indeed as morning arrived two of the platoon were missing weapons, and we all knew what was coming.

More from Willy.

With the first light of dawn, I forced down another boil-in-the-bag breakfast (burgers and beans) and had a wet-wipe shower, then joined the Platoon lining up in a forest clearing to await the arrival of SSgt Cox and Captain Trunchbull. One of the benefits of being in the field was supposed to be a separation from the theatre of morning room inspections; freedom from the ceaseless ironing, polishing and cleaning crap. So as dawn arrived we were all rather perturbed to be standing with mess tins, boots and those weapons remaining laid out on the ground ready for inspection. And were even more pissed off to subsequently be running up and down a hill, knees to chest, doing press-ups in the mud because we hadn't passed. Captain Trunchbull and SSgt Cox screamed at our rancid ‘gopping' ill-disciplined selves, teaching us another brutally delivered lesson. The lax discipline of a few had brought collective punishment to us all. Those who had failed to clean their mess
tins, polish their boots or sleep with their rifle saw us all suffering, hounding home the need for us to stick together, if one person failed we all did. It didn't matter if you couldn't bear the person you were basha'd up with, you still had to work together to get through the hell of Self-Abuse.

Commanding soldiers under fire, in the heat of battle, is arguably the greatest leadership challenge. While the infantry accounts for less than a third of the army, the primary role of the remaining two-thirds is to support them. Whether it be providing radio communications, artillery fire, defusing bombs or flying helicopters, everyone in the army requires a basic understanding of what it is infantry soldiers on the ground do, and for this reason Sandhurst uses the infantry model to teach leadership.

Each of the three annual intakes to the Academy are split into three infantry-style rifle companies, each of these sub-divided into three platoons of around thirty and each of these platoons subsequently split into three infantry sections, consistent with real infantry rifle platoons.

In the army three really is the magic number.

On completion of their training the cadets from Sandhurst commissioning into the infantry would take command of a platoon. Though the army isn't foolish enough to grant custody of thirty soldiers to a young man in his early twenties, who only a year earlier had most likely been a jaunty, carefree student, so a young
second-lieutenant's
enthusiasm and naivety are reined in by a war-hardened platoon sergeant. Sergeants are hard-bitten experienced senior soldiers who have been promoted through the ranks from private to lance-corporal to corporal and then sergeant, toughened at each stage by arduous NCO
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leadership courses in Brecon. Although the second-lieutenant is officially in charge the sergeant can hold greater true authority, especially in the early months while the baby Platoon
Commander is still wide-eyed and wet behind the ears. Sticking to the infantry model at Sandhurst we cadets made up the platoon's number with Captain Trunchbull as the notional and uninspiring platoon commander while our real respect was for SSgt Cox. Over the year as we deployed on more horrific weeks like Self-Abuse and the exercises progressed we would each take it in turn to act as platoon commander and sergeant, being assessed for leadership ability in trying to command our friends and peers.

The manpower in an infantry section is further split into two four-man fire teams. At the lowest level these are the most basic building blocks in the British infantry. And on the second day of Self-Abuse we grouped into our own little fire teams, to build on the previous day's fire and manoeuvre training. This time four of us would do the dash, down, crawl routine together. We practised all morning, a team at a time, firing rounds at imaginary enemy in the copse beyond an open field. The snow and rain had finally stopped and, as I sat on my daysack waiting my turn, the sun broke through the clouds to warm my tired muddy face. As the sky cleared the picture-perfect rolling hills of Winnie-the-Pooh country unfurled in front of me, the open heathland brightened by splashes of yellow gorse and purple moor grass.

There was something restful in that physical landscape that gave me a small moment to extract and ponder, a brief peaceful interlude in the shouting-shooting-crawling exercise melee. I smiled inwardly to myself. It was my birthday, and I would rather have been here on this hillside, with newfound friends in the fresh open air, feeling the warmth of the sun on my cheeks than cooped up behind a computer screen like a battery hen in an office. Next to me Wheeler leaned over and snapped off a chunk of her Yorkie bar and handed it to me. And in that brief moment, with the sun on my face, looking at open fields, I felt content and, for the first time, that I wanted to be here.

That night after sundown we were sent out on a navigation patrol to put our orienteering skills to the test and prove that the compasses we had been issued could be used as more than just a short ruler. So with map in hand, I stumbled around Christopher Robin's playground in the dark on my own, finding my way from checkpoint to checkpoint through the night. For two hours, I crossed over forest streams, clambered stone walls, waded through tall deer grass and considered stopping for a snooze in an empty barn. By now the tiredness was dragging me down. It was only the second night of the exercise and I felt wretched. We would be getting minimal sleep again that night and I wondered how long my body could cope with the sleep deprivation until it packed up and I started to fall asleep on the march. Inside my head my brain had already slowed to mush and all I could think of was succumbing to the relief of sleep. My head grew heavy as I battled with my eyelids, forcing them open. I obsessed with thoughts of climbing into bed and surrendering to slumber. I fantasized about slipping between crisp clean sheets, laying my head on a plump pillow, inhaling Lenor Summer Meadows and letting the duvet envelop my drained body, taking it away to be renewed. But none of this could become a near reality, as the release of sleep was a long way off.

Two hours later, with all the checkpoints found, I eventually staggered to the finish point cold, wet and pissed off, then returned to the harbour area for another night of stag and half-sleep, shivering in my sleeping bag, desperately willing the ordeal of Self-Abuse to end. An hour later Wheeler and I were back at our sentry post together, sharing boiled sweets and discussing plans for our first weekend of freedom (she had a student party back in Cambridge to attend, I was going to Twickenham for Six Nations' rugby). Strong friendships are quickly formed in these situations of adversity. People I had never met four weeks earlier now knew me better than lifelong friends. Thrown together on the first Sunday in January, we were all enduring the same bad dream together and were bonding through the misery and hardship of it all.

Some of us suffered more than others during those long cold wintry nights, and none more so than the overseas cadets. The overseas cadets had been plucked from the comfort and familiarity of their native lands and thrust into the British weather at its most raw and unwelcoming. Each year about fifty foreign cadets from all over the world attend Sandhurst, integrating fully with the commissioning course. Sandhurst is hard enough if English is your indigenous tongue, but deciphering the excited shouting of an apoplectic Glaswegian colour sergeant when your brain works in Dari, or understanding drill when orderly queuing isn't even in your culture set additional challenges for the overseas cadets.

For some overseas cadets Sandhurst has become a rite of passage; a prestigious finishing school for Arab princes and future world leaders sent to learn the secrets of British leadership. All modern-day heirs to the Jordanian throne have attended Sandhurst, including the current King as well as the reigning Sultans of Oman and Brunei. Former Kings of Spain, Tonga and Thailand are all also among Sandhurst's alumni. Others represent the cream of their home armies, chosen through vigorous selection while an unfortunate few, like Mahmoud, had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mahmoud had left a wife and three children in Yemen to join Ten Platoon; chosen because he was simply in the room when his commanding officer was tasked with selecting someone. He wouldn't return home to his family for the entire year. And not only did Mahmoud have to contend with the inclement climate and strictures of British military authoritarianism, but he was also a devout Muslim and had to match his prayer timings, halal beliefs and Ramadan customs to the training programme as well; orientating to Mecca in the middle of a fire fight in Brecon brings a whole new dimension to covering your arcs and praying.

In Eleven Platoon we were joined by Officer Cadet Black from Jamaica, whose chilled, laid-back totally tropical Caribbean ways were in for a cruel car crash collision with the strict Sandhurst
regimen. Her Creole drawl brought a Malibu gloss to our little army and she shivered continually for the entire eleven months. We also had Khadka, our own bantam Nepali warrior, whose English was impeccable (I once heard her use the word ‘monocotyledon' in casual conversation) and despite coming from Kathmandu she too suffered terribly with the British weather. Although, in spite of the air miles, Khadka wasn't as far from home as you might expect in Surrey since Sandhurst and its neighbouring Camberley have a large army Gurkha population who kept her company.

Twelve Platoon were enriched by Maganizo from Malawi who had never seen snow and Karumba who was actually from
southwest
London but routinely mistaken for another external import.

With uncharacteristic humanity, Sandhurst did bestow small pity on these legal aliens (and Karumba), issuing them with
extra-warm
cold-weather clothing: thick down jackets, arctic gloves, socks and Gortex boots, all of which Black and Khadka wore religiously.

Eventually after four horrendous days and sleepless nights our angry camping ordeal came to its painful conclusion. In the darkness before the arrival of dawn, as the platoon innocently slept, the harbour got ‘bumped'.

The enemy had finally found us.

Panicked shouting and crackling gunfire suddenly shattered the early morning calm of Hundred Acre Wood. Through the darkness around us, pandemonium broke. Bawling and hollering, the enemy came, crashing through the forest to storm our position.

Rat-a-tat-tat.

Firing at us through the trees, they came thundering towards us.

Startled into consciousness, I was still wrapped up in my sleeping bag, rifle tucked at my side and sodden boots on. I tried to dismiss the noises around me as a bad dream. I just wanted to sleep and pretend it wasn't happening. Beside me, Wheeler was already
awake and galvanized into action, thrusting her sleeping bag into her bergen and tearing down our poncho shelter.

She shone the light of her torch at my face, rousing me out of my dream into the nightmare. ‘Come on, we've got to go,' she urged.

Behind her, I could see Allinson and Merv up and ready to go, lifting their bergens onto their backs. Reluctantly I left the relative warmth of my sleeping bag and joined the flustered confusion. By now the harbour area was a flurry of activity. The platoon were hurriedly gathering up possessions in the dark, stuffing them into bergens and webbing while Captain Trunchbull and SSgt Cox had arrived to add to the mayhem.