The Making Of The British Army (78 page)

BOOK: The Making Of The British Army
5.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

‘Proud, plodding, peerless P.B.I.’

 

Appendix I
 
The Anatomy of a Regiment
Morning in an imaginary infantry battalion
 

IT IS A LITTLE BEFORE EIGHT O’CLOCK – 0800 HOURS – IN WATERLOO BARRACKS,
Colchester, Aldershot, Catterick, Tidworth or wherever the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of M—ster’s Regiment are stationed. They are an infantry battalion in the ‘light’ role – they move on their feet, or in ‘soft-skinned’ vehicles, or by helicopter – but they are not historically ‘light infantry’, for the Duke of M—ster’s Regiment was formed in 2006, an amalgamation of three ‘county regiments’ from the north of England. This ‘regional regiment’, as the new entities were gracelessly dubbed by the defence secretary at the time (and inaccurately, for the Royal Regiment of Scotland, the Royal Welsh Regiment and the Royal Irish Regiment – others in the great reorganization – are national not regional), has three battalions each some 650 strong, each stationed in a different place. Unlike in the past, when a battalion moved en bloc from one station to another every four or five years, individual soldiers will now be posted from battalion to battalion as the need arises. But these are early days, and no one quite knows how this ‘trickle posting’, as it is called, will work out; though other arms and services – artillery, engineers, logistics, etc. – have always done it this way.

The 2nd Battalion is predominantly the old Royal —shire Regiment. The 1st Battalion is in the armoured infantry role in Germany (equipped with Warrior), and the 3rd Battalion is in the light role in
Cyprus (but currently on operations in Afghanistan). The 2nd battalion – 2DMR – returned from Afghanistan six months ago, and have been warned for a further tour in eighteen months’ time. A few officers and other ranks have come and gone from one battalion to another, but by and large the three battalions are trying to ‘keep things in the family’ – and at the moment the ‘close family’ is the battalion; those soldiers in the other battalions are more the distant cousins.

Outside B Company’s lines men are gathering for muster parade. The single soldiers have shaved and showered in their en-suite rooms (for Waterloo Barracks have been modernized: elsewhere there are still six-man ‘barrack rooms’ with communal ‘ablutions’) and breakfasted in the ‘Wellington Restaurant’, which most of them still call the cookhouse. The married soldiers have driven in by car, or walked in from their married quarters nearby.

One of the latter, Corporal Steele, thirty-two years old, with thirteen years’ service, calls ‘Fall-in first section.’ Six private soldiers, or Dukesmen as they are known in this regiment,
295
and Lance-Corporal Takavesi, a 25-year-old Fijian, automatically form two ranks side-by-side with second and third sections of 7 Platoon (10 per cent of the battalion are from overseas, an increasing number of late from West Africa: a trend replicated throughout the army). The three section corporals take post in the front rank and report ‘all present and correct’ to the platoon serjeant (in the 2nd battalion ‘serjeant’ is spelled with a ‘j’, because the Royal —shires always spelled it that way. The other two battalions spell it with a ‘g’. The concession took many hours of negotiating in the amalgamation process.)

Serjeant Acton is two years older than Corporal Steele, and next month he will be promoted to Staff-Serjeant (but called Colour-Serjeant), when he will take over as company quartermaster-serjeant (CQMS) responsible for all B Company’s equipment and accommodation: on operations the CQMS is the focus of resupply for the company, except for ammunition, which is the business of the company serjeant-major.

Serjeant Acton gives the platoon a quick ‘once over’. They’re all decently turned out – unlike some of 6 Platoon, evidently, for Serjeant Prince is ‘bollocking’ a lance-corporal for letting Dukesman Dolan
come on parade with a button unfastened: a button unfastened on parade reveals a sloppiness – barks Prince – which on the battlefield might be manifest in failing, say, to load his rifle correctly (though Serjeant Prince puts this to Dolan in different words, of course).

Meanwhile this same falling-in procedure is also taking place in 5 Platoon, the third ‘rifle’ platoon in B Company.

The company serjeant-major (CSM), who has been watching from the wings, marches to the front of the company, pace-stick wedged firmly under his arm. Warrant Officer (Class II) Barrow has been eighteen years in the army, winning the MC in Iraq as a staff-serjeant platoon commander (when there are not enough officers, a senior NCO will command a platoon), and CSM of B Company for two years. He will probably be the battalion’s next RSM in a year’s time.

From around the corner come four officers – Captain Pattinson, B Company’s second-in-command, and three subalterns (lieutenants and second lieutenants), the platoon commanders. They are all bachelors living in the officers’ mess, and have walked the couple of hundred yards to B Company lines together, chatting about last night’s news and the day’s training ahead. They wait at the edge of the parade for the arrival of the company commander.

A minute or so later Major Farrell appears. He is thirty-five, married, and has been with the battalion off and on for thirteen years. He has been B Company commander for just over a year, having previously been chief of staff of 23rd (Armoured) Brigade in Germany. While with 23 Bde he was appointed MBE for the brigade’s tour of duty in Iraq, his second stint in ‘the sand pit’ (the first was as the battalion’s adjutant). He won the MC on the recent tour of duty in Afghanistan, and it is odds on that he will command the battalion, or one of the other battalions of the Duke of M—ster’s, in about three years’ time after an appointment as a lieutenant-colonel in the MoD.

CSM Barrow marches briskly up to him, halts and salutes, and reports the ‘parade state’ – two sick, one absent, ninety-seven on parade (2 DMR are more or less up to strength). Major Farrell calls ‘Fall-in the officers,’ and Captain Pattinson marches to the rear of the company and waits while the platoon commanders take post in front of their platoons. ‘Platoon commanders, carry on,’ orders Major Farrell.

Lieutenant Burgess turns about to Serjeant Acton, who informs him that
all 7
Platoon are on parade – as usual, for no one in 7 Platoon
ever
goes sick, let alone AWOL. Together they inspect the platoon, the
lieutenant chatting easily with the riflemen, for Burgess has had 7 Platoon for two years, and in that time they have been to both Iraq and Afghanistan together. He is an Old Etonian, twenty-six years old and a graduate of the university of St Andrews. At Sandhurst, where he was a junior under-officer, the Coldstream Guards and a cavalry regiment tried to ‘poach’ him, but his grandfather had commanded the Royal —shires in Korea and his father had been killed with the regiment in Northern Ireland (where he had earlier won the MC), and the young Burgess had been determined to wear the same cap badge as they. He drives his father’s old Alvis, which he has restored with the help of a fitter from the battalion’s REME detachment, and plays cricket for the army. He is unofficially engaged to a doctor (an admiral’s daughter) whom he met in his second year at university.

5 Platoon is (unusually) commanded by a non-graduate: 21-year-old Second Lieutenant Ferrier, whose father had been the regiment’s second-in-command in the Falklands, and who from an early age had wanted only to join the army. He went to Sandhurst straight from Wellington, and hopes for a trial for army rugby next season.

6 Platoon is commanded by 24-year-old Lieutenant Crosthwaite. His father had been regimental serjeant-major (RSM), then quartermaster, of a fusilier regiment. The Crosthwaites had managed to send their only son to public school, Pocklington, by supplementing the boarding school allowance (Mrs Crosthwaite ran a laundry business – took in washing – for the officers in Catterick garrison). Young Crosthwaite had won a scholarship to Brasenose, where he took a first in PPE, was elected secretary of the Union and gained a blue for fencing. His father had been anxious when he hadn’t joined the OTC at Oxford, but the other honours were recompense – as was the Queen’s Medal for academic studies at Sandhurst (second only in prestige to the Sword of Honour, which is awarded to the best cadet). Crosthwaite reads for an hour before first parade each day, and listens to Radio 3 every evening. The other officers think him rather intense.

The rest of the battalion call B Company ‘Guards Company’ because all the officers were at public school and the CSM has been an instructor at Sandhurst. The other two ‘rifle’ companies, A and C, are a more mixed bunch. One of the company commanders is newly arrived from the 1st battalion, and the other is an acting major.

Two further companies complete the battalion. The ‘Manœuvre Support’ Company consists of the battalion’s ‘heavy weapons’ (mortars

and anti-tank missiles) and reconnaissance platoons – and the assault pioneers, the battalion’s own jack-of-all-trade ‘sappers’. The pioneers are traditionally commanded by a serjeant permitted to (in the Duke of M—ster’s
required
to) grow a beard. The officers in Support Company have previously commanded rifle platoons, and the company commander is on his second tour as a major, having previously commanded C Company.

Headquarter Company comprises the battalion’s command and administrative elements – clerks, signallers, drivers, quartermaster’s storemen, the REME detachment, etc. – in which are found several other cap badges, notably the Adjutant General’s Corps (whose initials are sometimes irreverently spelled out as the ‘All-Girls Corps’), who are responsible for pay and documentation, and the RAMC (the medical officer and assistants). HQ Company Commander is an ‘LE’ (‘Late Entry’) officer – i.e. commissioned from the ranks after twenty-two years’ service. The battalion has five LE officers.

While each company is holding muster parade (or fitness training, or however the company commander wishes to start the day), in battalion headquarters the routine business of running an enterprise of 700 or so military souls is getting under way. The adjutant, the commanding officer’s executive, is reading the outgoing orderly officer’s report. An orderly officer is a subaltern nominated each day. His job is to carry out a number of standing inspections and to oversee the guard each evening, and to be the point of contact for any action required in the ‘silent hours’. The adjutant is the battalion’s brightest and best captain, the commanding officer’s confidant and the scourge of the subalterns. On operations he runs the battalion’s headquarters and radio command net, the CO’s right-hand man.

Down the corridor the RSM is receiving the orderly serjeant’s report. The RSM runs the NCOs in the same way that the adjutant runs the junior officers. Warrant Officer Class I Banks has been in the battalion for nearly twenty-one years, and apart from two years as a corporal away training recruits, and two as a signals instructor at the School of Infantry, has served the entire time at ‘RD’ (regimental duty). It is expected that next year he will be commissioned and will take over as quartermaster. He has been in uniform since the age of fourteen, having first been an army cadet and then at sixteen going to the former Infantry Junior Leaders’ Battalion where his leadership potential was developed. His eldest son is at the Army Apprentices’ College, whence
he will join the Royal Engineers. At nine o’clock RSM Banks and the adjutant will meet with the commanding officer to run through the company commanders’ nomination of Dukesmen for promotion to lance-corporal.

The commanding officer and the RSM have known each other since they were both fresh faces in C Company of the Royal —shires. Lieutenant-Colonel Hills, forty, has been in command for almost two years, and wears the ribbon of the DSO from the battalion’s recent tour in Afghanistan, as well as a Queen’s Gallantry Medal from Bosnia. He had never intended joining the army – there wasn’t even a CCF (Combined Cadet Force) at Bryanston – but in his last year at Edinburgh University he had watched the Gulf War daily on the news and found himself surprisingly drawn to the idea of army life, so decided to join for three years. Six years later he was a troop commander with 22SAS.

After the promotion meeting Colonel Hills will have a long session with his second-in-command (2IC), Major Copeland, and the operations/training officer, Captain Hodges, to plan the training year ahead and to make sure they have enough suitably qualified instructors. Hills will not take the battalion to Afghanistan next time: he has been selected for promotion to (full) colonel and six months hence will go to the MoD for his first tour in the ‘Main Building’ (as something on the operations staff).

Other books

The MacNaughton Bride by Desconhecido(a)
Last Message by Shane Peacock
Just One Taste by Maggie Robinson
You're Still the One by Darcy Burke
The Monster Within by Darrell Pitt
Storm Rising by Mercedes Lackey
A Boy and His Tank by Leo Frankowski
Sanctuary by Christopher Golden
Hell and Determination by Davies, kathleen