Immediate Action (34 page)

    I turned up in July. There were people there that I already knew, like Solid Shot, jock, and Johnny two Combs, though Two-Combs was due to return to the UK soon.

    "You'll hate this place," were his words of welcome.

    He was right. To a man, we loathed the garrison on sight. Our rooms were in semicircular tin huts with no air-conditioning, a really good idea in Central America.

    The first thing we did was go and buy fans that then stayed on for the whole tour. In the rooms there were two metal lockers and two beds, and that was it. I shared a room with Solid Shot. The first evening there we lay on our beds putting the world to rights and thinking of ways to make our fortunes. Outside we could hear Des Doom hammering the "face of the day" on the punch bag. Des's arms and chest were covered with tattoos. "When I was single," he said, "My chat-up line was: 'If you don't find me interesting, you can always read me."' He was due to get out; he'd decided he wanted to pursue other things after only four years in the Regiment; this was deemed to be disloyal, and he'd been sent to Belize for the whole duration of B Squadron's tour. He was severely bitter and twisted about it and forever on the bag; he always had many faces to "talk to."

    There was a swimming pool, but that was put out of bounds because someone had shit in it one night in protest about the timings that favored the "families of," not the rest of the garrison. Apart from the punch bag, the only training facilities consisted of some catering-size baked bean cans, filled with concrete with an iron bar stuck into each of them to form makeshift weights.

    F Troop was part of a garrison and all the bullshit that that entailed.

    Our hut was part of the sergeants' mess, but unless we were a Regiment corporal or above, we couldn't use it, even though we were still expected to pay the monthly fee the mess claimed.

    The team was therefore split into two groups, those who could go in the mess and those who couldn't, and I hadn't joined the Regiment for that sort of bullshit. Tiny was with us for three weeks, filling in space between changeovers. Being a regimental corporal, he could have gone in the sergeants' mess but chose to come down to the cookhouse with us lowlife, but then that was stopped. In the end just four of us lepers would walk down to the cookhouse; in fact it turned out for the best as they used to put on a great Gurkha curry.

    Part of F Troop's job was to be first-response unit if a commercial or military aircraft went down in the jungle.

    We would be the ambulance brigade, steaming in with all the emergency equipment and medical aid kit in a Puma. Having stabilized any casualties, we would then establish a base and try to enable other helis to get in, which might entail anything from blowing winch holes to creating full-size landing sites.

    Our entry into the crash site would not necessarily be straightforward.

    We would hope to get in where the aircraft had crashed as the ground might now be flattened, but what if it was still a ball of flame or just a light aircraft? We therefore had to practice abseiling into I the jungle and getting in all the emergency equipment that would be needed.

    There were four of us on standby at any given time; the rest went patrolling in the jungle for a week or two. I hated being in the camp almost as much as I loved being in the jungle. There was nothing to dc in the camp apart from going for a run, then waiting for the most exciting event of the day, tea and toast at 11:00 A.M.

    I had a definite feeling of: What have I done wrong to be here for the next five months. We felt like social outcasts. I'd wondered why people tried to avoid being sent here at all costs; I now knew the reason, One of the small reliefs from the boredom was practicing entry into a crash site. It required enough kit to fill two Land Rovers: five-gallon jerry cans of water, medical equipment, a generator, lights, food, shelters-everything we would need to get on site and start to sort these people out-plus our own bergens.

    On practice days we drove down and met the pilots by the Puma ' At this time of the year the main topic of conversation was what crews were going to be on standby over Christmas, as they wanted to book a car and drive to Cancun for the holiday.

    The pilot would say to me, the sucker with the kit, "Same place?"

    "Why not?" I'd reply. "We have to keep the troops entertained."

    They would stand there drinking Cokes and watch us load all the equipment, rig up the ropes, put our harnesses on', and sit in the heli; we'd then wait for the rotors to wind up and cool us down. The weather only ever did one of two things: It was either pissing down with rain or scorching hot. The Royal Engineers would be coming out of their own little camp they had made for themselves; using all their skills, they had constructed a bar and barbecue area with chairs and benches, and without a doubt it was the most organized area on the camp. I wished at times like this that I'd stayed at school and got some 0 levels.

    Off we went flying around Belize for a while, doors open and enjoying the view and the cool wind. The heli came to a hover at 1SO feet'above the football pitch, and the engineers, dressed in shorts and flip-flops, and by now on their second bottle of ice-cold Coke, had their scorecards ready.

    The first two at the door got ready, and I threw the jungle penetrators out. One of the blokes was Terry, an ex-Royal Marine now in Mountain Troop and known among other things as Fat Boy. Not because he was, but he had the largest chest I'd ever seen. He was about five feet ten inches and built like a brick shithouse. One of the downsides of working with the SBS-come to that, all Royal Marines-was that they seemed always to be tall and good-looking. This made us come across like a bag of shit. We decided that Fat Boy had come to the Regiment instead of the SBS because he would have failed the Good Looks Selection; his face looked as if life had been chewing on it.

    The other man, in the opposite door, was the troop senior, Joe Ferragher. Joe was a monster of a man, sixteen stone, and over six feet. He was very quiet; it was like getting blood out of a stone to get him to talk sometimes, but when he did, there was no stopping him.

    He was the gentle giant, except for one occasion when travelers took over his house while he was away. Joe went to visit them on his return, and after ten minutes they decided that they didn't want to exercise their squatters' rights after all. To show that there were no hard feelings, Joe sent flowers to all of them in hospital.

    A "jungle penetrator" is basically a heavy sack containing a rope inserted in such a way that it doesn't tangle. Because it has a weighted bottom, it smashes into the canopy and allows you to work your way to the ground. Once the two-hundred-foot abseiling rope was on the ground, Joe and Fat Boy would start to ease themselves out of the heli so that their feet were on the deck and their bodies were at forty-five degrees to the ground.

    The abseller is attached to the rope by a figure of eight device.

    He remains locked in position until he pulls up some slack from beneath him and feeds it into the figure of eight; the best position is one that gives least resistance to the rope as it travels through, and that is a crucifix position with the body araliel to the ground p and arms running along the rope, controlling it. If there is a drama, the' man on the ground pulls down on the rope, locking the figure of eight.

    The first two down did not have that luxury. Out they went, the weight of the rope making it extremely hard to pull up enough slack.

    The effect was the same as if someone was on the ground pulling the rope, which was why Fat Boy and Joe went first; it took a lot of aggression. Sometimes it all went to ratshit and people landed up banging into the heli and getting caught up. This was a quite funny sight, especially if they then started to lose control of the rope and got to the ground with lumps all over their heads and hands that looked as if they'd been in a toaster.

    The engineers were by now giving points for style.

    "Not as good as the team last month, but the heli has stayed in the hover better," they were probably saying as they went for their third Coke and changed position for a better tan.

    Once the boys were down they would man the ropes and control the kit that was to follow. We would rig it the same as if it was a body and then heave it out one at a time after the count of three. We tried a different method every time, but it was just reinventing the wheel; we decided the best way was to grab it and just throw it out. Once all that was done we followed; the heli' would then leave and get back to base as soon as possible. Like us, the pilots were hoping to get back for 4:00 P.m. tea and toast, the second most exciting thing to happen in camp. The Land Rovers would come and pick us up; the Royal Engineers would drag their chairs back to their lair.

    "Not as fast as D Squadron when they were here, but there you go.

    Shall we have another Coke?"

    The rest of the time we'd go out and patrol, gathering information and basically preparing for if the Guats invaded. We'd go as maybe a four- or six-man patrol, dropped in by helicopter, and spend ten to fourteen days on different tasks in and around the border. I loved it.

    The only local industries seemed to be grapefruit, 'juana, whoring, and supplying and working for the marl British Army. I was told that a third of Belize's income came from cannabis. Apparently there used to be big frenzies where the police would go over and burn a couple of fields just so that the government could say, "That's it, we're fighting the drug problem." But for every field it burned, there were another twenty left. It brought in revenue, so there was no way they were going to destroy it. We had nothing to do with countering the drugs problem in Central America; everybody just accepted it as part of business that went on in that part of the world.

    About an hour away from our camp on a dirt road lived Gilbert. He was an Indian with a smallholding that fed his large family. To help him make ends meet, he would come into the jungle with us and help build shelters and tach helicopter crews and Harrier pilots jungle survival; if they were still living once they'd creamed in, they could keep themselves ticking over until we got there. He would also come with us when we trained NCOs of the new battalion manning the garrison in jungle tactics so that they could teach their men. Belize was an operational posting, and the battalion had hard job ahead of it. This was the good part of the tour for us as at least we did achieve something.

    Gilbert's house was built from breeze blocks, corrugated iron, and noise. Inside was just one very big room, with a curtain dividing off his bedroom from the two double beds that housed his eight children.

    The running water was a hose pipe connected to a main; the outside toilet was a pit. He always made us welcome with coffee and some food; we would take a bottle of Famous Grouse to return the hospitality. He had lived in and around the jungle all of his life, and there were always new things that he could show us. We drove up to see him about a course that was going to be happening and started talking about the amount of drugs that seemed to leave Belize for the U.S.

    He said, "People do not see it as a problem here. if they want to use it, fine; people here are more than happy to make money from it.

    If you go thirty minutes further along this road, it becomes very good, no potholes and each side is cleared of trees and bush. This is where the drugs are picked up. They mark the road with cars, and it's used as a runway. At night you can hear the planes coming in to pick it up.

    Who cares? If America wants to use drugs, let them."

    It was a relief to get away from that sort of stuff. In the bergen we'd carry just enough food for the duration of the patrol. We had just one main scoff a day, which normally consisted of rice or pasta, something that was dehydrated that we'd add water to; as in all jungles, there was no problem here with water.

    As my dry clothing, I took a pair of trainers, a pair of socks, a camouflage T-shirt, and a pair of OG (olive green) shorts-fifties khaki National Service Far East shorts that look like something out of It Ain't Half Hot Mum. I had a'space blanket to wrap around me at night, a poncho, and a hammock, and that was it. The less I had to carry, the less knackered I would get.

    Belt kit consisted of spare magazines, a T.A.C.B.E (tactical beacon radio) per man, water, first-aid kit, and emergency rations. On my belt kit I used to carry three water bottles-six pints of water-but would continually fill them up anyway, always adding Steritabs for decontamination. The water tasted shit, and tea made with it tasted no better. Part of the SOPs (standard operating procedures) was that every man carried a fifteen-meter loopline (inch-thick nylon webbing strap) and carabiner.

    We had to cross a lot of rivers; the first man put the snap link around him with the loopline and swam like a man possessed over to the other side. He rigged up the loopline and everybody else came over with his kit attached to it. The rivers were incredibly swollen and screamed along.

    On my body all the time were my two Syrettes of morphine, my golack, my watch, my Silva compass, and my map. My golack hung on a bit of paracord around my waist, and was now a Gurkha kukri rather than the British Army issue, known as a tree beater, which was no good to man or beast; all it did was beat the tree up, it didn't really cut it.

    Indigenous people in the jungle use a golack where the top of the blade is heavier, so that the momentum of the blade does the cutting.

    Most people tended to use the old Than type of golack or, like me, a kukri. It had a nice heavy bit at the top and could slice through trees like a chain saw.

    Kit-for-task included the patrol radio and medical pack. If we were doing anything around the borderputting an observation post in, say-all the materials for that would have to be taken in as well.