Today Everything Changes: Quick Read (3 page)

To me, breakfast was yet more luxury. The
cookhouse always smelled of baked beans and toast, but at breakfast time there were eggs and bacon, too. You could have as much food as you liked but you had to eat everything you put on your plate. It was only a few months ago that breakfast was a can of Coke and a Mars bar for breakfast. Sometimes I would go mad and have a Flake instead.

We had to get the food down our necks fast because we had to race back upstairs to clean and dust the toilets, washrooms and bedrooms. They all had to look like new. The floors had to be swept, then waxed and polished to a brilliant shine every day. We soon found a work-around. We agreed to use only half of the toilets, so we’d only have to get to grips with the other half. The out-of-bounds bit would only need a quick dust.

There was a mad frenzy to make sure that everything, even the taps, was clean and dry, and the mirrors had to sparkle. The rooms reeked of disinfectant or floor wax. You could have eaten your dinner off those floors.

The worst part for me was making my bed. I had to strip off the sheets and the three blankets, fold two of the blankets and the sheets so they were exactly the same size as the pillow slip. Then fold the third blanket, wrap it round the rest of the bedding and place the parcel at
the head of the bed where my pillows would normally be. Then flatten the pillows, because they had to be all nice and smooth as they lay on top of the bedding parcel.

As we were doing our beds, we would hear shouts from one of the senior lads. They lived on the floor above us. Many of them were from the Scottish regiments. ‘Area cleaning! Get outside for area cleaning.’ Come rain, snow or shine, everyone was called out and lined up about the camp. Then we moved in one big sweep, like policemen looking for a murder weapon as we cleaned our company areas.

Of course, we were in the UK so the grass was always wet, no matter what time of year it was. That meant our boots were always damp and muddy. We had to wipe them with the cloth we kept in a pocket before we went back inside. The last man in would polish away the marks that our rubber soles made on the freshly cleaned floors.

Apart from Glaswegian grunts that the standard of today’s area cleaning was shocking, the only sound was the squeak of boots on waxed floors. There were no radios or TVs, not even a washing-machine. After every run, our PT kit had to be hand-washed, dried, then put back on its shelf, folded perfectly, with our other kit.

By ten minutes to eight, or 07.50 hours, as I now had to call it, I’d be standing on the edge of my newly brushed bedside mat, trying not to mess up the polished floor. I’d have checked that my locker was perfectly laid out, immaculate in the same way as everyone else’s. Army suitcases were packed and uniforms hung on rails in the same order. The front of a uniform always faced towards the right, and each right-hand sleeve was exposed at the front of the locker. There was a three-inch gap between the coat-hangers so that the right-hand sleeve just touched the uniform in front of it.

We were allowed two coat-hangers on the far left-hand side of the rail for our civilian clothes. They had to be cleaned and pressed, too, shirts with our new trousers. We never had the chance to wear them though. We trained for six and a half days each week. That left about four hours on Sunday afternoon to go into Folkestone and even that wasn’t allowed until you’d been at the camp for three months. When we went there
we couldn’t blend in with the locals. In 1976, everyone wore platform shoes and flared jeans, and had hair coming down to their shoulders. We stuck out like sore thumbs.

If the slightest mistake was discovered, like a sock being out of place, it meant big trouble. They certainly were making men out of us scrawny sixteen year olds.

I’d checked that the green face flannel that hung on the mirror inside of the locker door was damp. It had to be wet to the touch to show that I’d had a wash. But I couldn’t wash with it because it would get soapy, which in turn meant it would be dirty. I wetted it while I washed, but didn’t actually wash with it.

Shaving kit was laid out on the third shelf up from the bottom. That, too, had to look as if it had been used. The razor and the soap dish had to be dry, but the soap itself had to be wet. That was an easy one. Like everyone else, I kept extra washing and shaving kit hidden in a sock in my dirty laundry bag which, of course, had to contain dirty socks and underwear to show I had changed them. I only ever used the soap in the real kit, gave it a quick pat with toilet paper and placed it carefully in the plastic soap dish.

Then I’d checked my green army towel. Was
that folded correctly over the headboard of the steel-framed bed? Was it damp?

Then I would go for my boot-cleaning kit. The paint had been scraped off the polish tin, and the tin polished with Brasso. You had to use the tin: it had to have dabs in the polish to prove you were using it. But were there any finger marks on the metal?

Our best boots were heavy, with metal studs in the leather soles. We worked on them for hours, with spit and polish. Not just the uppers, but also the soles, so that every part of them shone. There had to be no dust as they lay just in front of the bedding parcel on the bed, the laces lying flat. Were they in good nick? Even the laces had to be threaded in the boots in the same way as everyone else’s. You tied a knot at the end of a lace, then started at the bottom of the eyelets and crossed over the boot into the opposite one as if you were sewing.

My final check of my kit showed me that everything was as it had to be. No dust, no fingermarks. Everything that should be wet was wet; everything that should be dry was dry. No creases, everything flat, everything perfect. Then I gave a zit that might still be weeping blood one last press and wipe with a licked finger, before I stepped off the bedside mat and
on to the lino. I stayed motionless now in case the floor polish got marked.

Seconds later, one of the sergeants entered the main door of our block with a boom, ‘Stand by your beds!’ They burst into our room at exactly 08.00, their shouts echoing about the room. ‘Room! Room! Attention!’

The floor would shudder as twenty-four young men slammed their right boot into the waxed floor as they stood to attention and messed up the morning’s polish.

Our two training sergeants were Sergeant Mann and Sergeant Gates. ‘Rocky’ Gates came from London and had the world’s squarest jaw. Mann came from Liverpool and wore half-moon glasses. As I was from south London, it took me about two weeks to understand what he was saying. He was just as confusing as the Scots.

They would each take a line of beds and start to inspect. They ran a hand over the radiators as they walked towards the beds, then along the window frames, looking for ‘lack of detail’ in the cleaning. They even checked that the light covers were spotless as they headed for the first soldier.

They looked at soap dishes and pulled out beds to check we’d cleaned and polished underneath.

Combat kit hung at the foot of each bed. Mann and Gates would pick out the water bottles to make sure they were full. If not, why bother having a water bottle? It should be full,
and full meant full. When they unscrewed the top, a little water had to tip out.

Mess tins were in the belt kit. Were they clean?

Then they went to the locker layout. Was the facecloth wet?

While this was going on, we had to listen hard. They would always be asking questions on the stuff we’d learned the day before. When you were being inspected, you looked straight ahead, never at the person inspecting you. Only, when they talked to you, you looked at them. We were told to have pride. We must look them in the eye and be sure that what we were saying was correct. Once you had stopped talking, you looked away and faced forward. I used the second glass pane on the left of the window as my focus. I stared through it to a tree on the other side. When I was spoken to, I’d look over, my eyes would lock on to the sergeant’s, I’d answer the question and then look away again.

Rocky Gates came up to me. ‘How much does a belt of two hundred rounds for a general-purpose machine gun weigh?’

I looked at him and replied, ‘Twelve pounds, Sergeant.’

They never told you if your answer was wrong or right. Gates just walked on.

‘What is the burn-out distance of a tracer?’ I heard him ask someone else.

‘One thousand metres, Sergeant.’

I knew that was wrong. I knew it was 1,100 metres.

‘What are the methods for judging distance?’

‘Er …’

‘You’ve been taught that, so why don’t you know?’

‘I don’t know, Sergeant.’

‘Well, try and remember while you do twenty press-ups.’

The lad hit the floor and started doing his press-ups.

A lot of junior leaders dropped out in those first few weeks. Maybe they reckoned army life was like that all the time. I hoped they weren’t right.

With the room inspection over, we were called out on parade for 08.30, then marched off for the day’s training. It could be anything from drill, getting screamed at by the drill instructor as he tried to get us marching properly, rather than looking like fifty cats being herded badly across the square to a long session in the gym, or getting fit for the first of many battle-fitness tests we’d have to pass.

Within just a few weeks, everybody had to be able to pull himself up ten times onto a bar, then carry another soldier, in full battle kit, for one hundred metres. The first test was to prove that we had control of our bodies. The second showed we were fit enough to carry a wounded mate to safety. It was full on all the time. We were forever running, jumping and climbing.

Up ropes, into nets, over walls; we pounded around, our legs aching and our chests heaving, knowing that awaiting us all was one of the scariest looking pieces of apparatus, the Death Slide. Without hesitating or looking down, I
climbed a series of metal ladders that took me 120 feet into the air. From the top I could see all of Folkestone, and everybody down on the ground looked the size of Action Man. Legs still burning from the climb, I was handed a T-bar that fitted across a metal line. The line ran back down to the ground at a forty-five-degree angle; the instructor reminded me that the idea was to hurtle down and take the impact at the bottom with your feet and knees together, and I jumped. My stomach hit my mouth and, before I knew it, I was executing a crap landing.

In classrooms, we learned all about our self-loading rifles, general-purpose machine guns and mortars. We had to know how they worked, how to strip them down, clean them, maintain them, and what to do if yours didn’t work when you were in a fire-fight. Later, on the ranges, we learned how to aim and fire.

The first time I fired a self-loading rifle 7.62mm, the kick was absolutely amazing. When I pulled the trigger, the butt dug into my shoulder and hit the side of my face as I looked through the rear sight. For those first few months, my shoulder and right cheek ached after every session. The same went for the general-purpose machine gun, which soon became one of my favourites.

Until I fired live, I hadn’t realized that every
weapon has to be adjusted to the person firing it, because each person has a different build, height and reach. It was a simple enough job to move the sight with the screwdriver in the rifle cleaning kit.

Whatever was going on though, it was always at one hundred m.p.h. As soon as you finished at the gym or on the ranges, you had to march down to the block, no running, to change into your best boots and drill kit, with your best belt and brasses. And all this had to be done in less than ten minutes, with the sergeant bellowing, ‘Get out on parade! Every minute late means twenty press-ups!’

Everyone would be running around, trying not to bash their best boots after they’d spent hours dabbing on the polish and working up a blinding shine. Just a tap against the wall or the bed frame, and you’d be in the shit.

There was yet more stress if we’d been doing weapon training in full combat gear and PT had followed it. The red V-neck T-shirt had to have creases down the sleeves, and be flat in front. The blue shorts had to have creases front and rear. Your canvas plimsolls had to be whitened. We had to get to the gym without losing any of the creases or getting any marks on our footwear. If it was raining, you were
allowed to turn up soaking wet, but that was about it.

As well as normal PT, there was ‘milling’ in which two teenagers tried to batter each other senseless. To get maximum points you had to go at it hammer and tongs, and show no mercy. Milling sounds barbaric and several lads did turn their backs and refuse to fight. They weren’t chucked out, but I wondered how they’d cope in a real war situation.

We were paired off according to size and weight, with the smaller guys fighting first. When my turn came, I told myself I was fighting for London and piled in. I kept thinking, Go for it. Don’t hold back. It’s only for a minute.

The day’s madness didn’t stop until five-thirty, when we had the main meal of the day.

At six-thirty, there was boot-cleaning, clothes-washing and making sure that all our kit was clean. At inspection the next morning, everything had to look as if nothing at all had happened the day before.

Friday was always a big day. It started off at 07.00 with a six-mile cross-country run. Anybody who came in behind the commanding officer had to run the six miles again on Sunday afternoon. All of us wanted to put one foot in front of the other as quickly as we could to stay in front of him. Besides, the quicker you got the run out of the way, the more time you had to get ready for the drill parade.

The whole battalion would be on parade in their best dress uniforms: gleaming boots and brasses, with scrubbed white belts. Inspection wasn’t in the rooms this time but out on the parade square. It wasn’t only our kit that the sergeant major was inspecting, it was also our bodies. He checked our ears to make sure we were cleaning them, and our hair, what was left of it, because it could never be greasy.