Today Everything Changes: Quick Read (5 page)

It was really cold that morning as a dozen squads passed us along the road in front. My hands and ears were freezing. I could see my breath in front of my face. Where were we going? I didn’t care, as long as it was warm.

Then the corporal waved us on and Rocky Gates screamed, ‘FORWARD! Left, right, left, right.’

We stopped outside the education centre. I hadn’t known that the army had schools. How could I? I’d been busy running around with a steel helmet on out in the field, boxing or marching.

We all got put into classes, about fifteen soldiers in each. We were told to take off our belts and berets and sit down. I wasn’t too keen on it, but at least this place didn’t smell like school. School smelled of boiled cabbage. This school smelled of floor polish and by now I was used to that.

We sat and waited … and waited.

We sat there for what seemed hours, no one saying a word. Everyone in the classroom was probably just as fed up as I was at going back to school. Then, all of a sudden, the door burst open and an officer walked in. We all jumped up to attention.

But the officer wasn’t having that. ‘Lads, sit down, sit down.’

He wasn’t a young captain who’d done six or seven years as an officer. He was really old. Well, he looked old to us teenagers. He was fit, like a PT instructor, but small and bald with deep lines in his face after so many years out of doors.

He looked around the zit-faced room and smiled as we sat down again behind our desks. His face was even more creased now, as if life had been chewing on it.

‘Lads, I was once sitting where you are today and what I’m going to tell you will change your life for ever, so listen in.’

Our heavy pullovers had green cloth shoulder and arm protection. His were so pressed they
were shiny and starchy. Everything about him was immaculate.

As he walked between the desks, the steel wings in his boot heels echoed around the room. He looked at each one of us as he passed. Then he went to the window and pointed towards the perimeter fence and the barbed wire that lay on it. ‘Everybody out there, the men and women on the other side of the wire, they all think that you’re thick. They think that because you’re in the infantry.’

He went back to the front of the class, fifteen pairs of eyes following him. ‘All of you have the reading age of an eleven year old or below.’ He paused. I knew he was telling the truth. The three-day selection course had found that out about me and the rest of the class very quickly.

The captain pointed a finger at us. ‘But …’ He jabbed the finger at each of us in turn. ‘… you’re not thick, you’re just not educated. The only reason that you can’t read is because you don’t read. But from today everything changes.’

It was less than a week before I had read my very first book. Its title was
Janet and John, Book 10
, and it was for ten-year-old primary school kids.

The Janet and John books had been used in schools since the 1950s. They were very simple, with lots of pictures and not too many words. Janet and John always did quite normal things, like running around, playing, climbing trees, kicking the dog and helping their parents with the gardening.

I had the book for a couple of days to get to grips with it, then stood in front of the captain and read it to him. When I had finished, he said, ‘Now close it.’

I did as he told me.

‘McNab, remember this moment. The moment you closed the cover of the very first book you had ever read.’

‘Yes, sir, I will.’

‘So, McNab, what have you learned?’

‘Well, that Janet and John like climbing trees and some new words.’

‘Exactly. And the next book you’ll read, you’ll learn more, won’t you?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And the book after that, you’ll learn something else. And then you might decide to go and read a different sort of book. Maybe a science fiction book, maybe an adventure book, maybe a non-fiction book.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘McNab, never forget that reading gives you knowledge, which gives you choice and opportunity in whatever you want to do in life. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He sent me back to my desk, and another lad went forward to read.

It wasn’t until I sat down that I felt the thrill of having read a book. I had actually read a book!

We later discovered that our teacher had joined up as a boy soldier with the same reading age that we had. He had served twenty-two years in the infantry and had risen to the highest rank he could reach as a non-commissioned officer. He had become a regimental sergeant major. Then he was granted a Queen’s Commission and had become a captain. We were very impressed by that.

But we were even more impressed that he had chosen to become an officer in the Army Education Corps to give us lads the same chances he had had.

You can be the best soldier on the planet, the hardest and the fittest, but you won’t get very far unless you pass exams in these subjects: Maths, English, Geography and Politics, and Man-management.

I could just about look after myself, but I was going to be a leader in the infantry, so I had to learn about Man-management.

The captain told us, ‘And, gentlemen, you will
pass all these exams before you leave this training camp.’

The only way I would pass those exams was by being able to read. If I couldn’t read, I wouldn’t pass my exams, I’d never become a corporal and there was no way I would ever reach sergeant major.

So, just like everything else in the army, there was a reason why I had to learn how to read.

The captain was right. Every time I read a book I learned a little more, and because of that I enjoyed it and it became infectious. I was learning and I was growing up, which made me want to learn even more. Every time I got stuck on a word, or found it hard to write down what was in my head, I didn’t worry. I knew I would soon learn what I needed to know.

I’m not thick, I thought. I’m just not educated yet.

Boxing soon finished and I’d done pretty well. I’d won at my weight for the inter-company boxing, and then was picked for the battalion boxing team. I went on to win the army’s under-eighteen welterweight title.

I was still doing normal training, cross-country runs and parades, but I was also in a classroom and had loads of homework. I was always reading, always learning, and preparing for the exams I needed to pass if I was going to get on in the army. At the same time, I was learning much more than just how to read. The more I read, the more knowledge I gained about the world.

I started to understand how the government worked from reading magazines I hadn’t even noticed when I used to buy
Whizzer and Chips.
Once, I’d bought the
Sun
for two things: page three and the football. Page three was easy enough because there weren’t too many words to worry about. But the sports pages could be difficult. Sometimes I would jump a word because I didn’t understand what it meant. Often
I didn’t understand what a story was about but told myself it was OK, I’d find out later on the TV news.

But that had changed. Now I could read and understand what had been written. Soon I was no longer reading for the sake of promotion, but because it made me feel good. I was proud that I wasn’t thick and I’d never felt that before. I really enjoyed learning. And the more I enjoyed it, the more I wanted to read and the better I got at it. Also, of course, I learned more. There was a whole world out there that I’d never known existed until I started to read.

I must have bored my mates silly with what I’d just read about. To me it was new and exciting and I wanted everyone else to be excited and interested too.

I even read a series of novels about German soldiers fighting the Russians in the Second World War. They were written by a Dane who had fought alongside the Germans during the war. Our training was a picnic compared to what those guys had had to do. But now I could read, those books were able to take me to another world. I could feel the cold Russian winter as the German troops lay in their wet trenches. The stories came alive as colour pictures formed in my head.

My infantry training was going very well. For the last three months of the year’s training, we were given ranks and I was promoted to junior sergeant. Now I was shouting at the new boys to get out on to the grass for area cleaning. It was the turn of the Scots not to understand a word I was yelling at them. And, of course, I was telling them the standard of their cleaning was rubbish.

I couldn’t wait to pass out of training and get to my battalion. One morning I received a letter, which was strange. It was probably the first I’d had since I’d been at the camp – perhaps the first one ever in my life. It was very official with the Green Jacket and Light Infantry cap badges printed at the top and had been sent from the headquarters of the Light Division. It said, ‘McNab, congratulations on being presented with the Light Division sword.’

I didn’t have a clue what that was until it was explained to me that each regiment presents
this award to the most promising young soldier in that division every year.

On the day I was to receive it, the whole battalion was in the gym for the colonel to make the presentations to each of the training companies. I thought having a sword would be great. I was looking forward to seeing it hanging above my bed space. But as I marched away from the colonel, a sergeant took it from me and gave me a pewter mug with my name on it instead. The sword went back to the regiment’s museum. And I kept spare change in my mug.

The passing-out parade was very big, with 1,100 junior leaders on the parade-ground. I now understood why the sergeant major had the whole battalion out on parade each Friday morning. He was preparing us for this special day.

That day, I thought I’d become a soldier. For the past year I had worn the training camp’s cap badge and belt, but as soon as I’d marched away from the passing-out parade, I could put on my regimental kit, the Green Jacket beret. I had become a rifleman.

There was just one little matter to attend to. Our beautifully polished boots, which we’d slaved over for hours and hours, sitting at the
bottom of our beds at night, had to be returned to the stores. You could only keep them if you were joining a Guards regiment and would be standing in them outside Buckingham Palace. The rest of us lined up and bashed them on the pavement until the polish cracked like crazy paving. No one was going to have it easier than we did.

I wasn’t even eighteen when I joined my battalion. I spent the next eight years getting promoted quickly because I had passed my exams and liked being a soldier.

I became a platoon sergeant, and it was then that I decided I wanted to join the Special Air Service. Nobody taps you on the shoulder and offers you the chance to become a SAS trooper. You have to apply to join, and then you apply to attend one of their seven-month-long selection courses.

Out of the 180 on my course, only eight of us passed at the end of the seven hard, long months. That’s normal.

It was, without doubt, the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. Finally the day came when I was going to see the colonel of the SAS, get my badge and become a SAS soldier.

We eight new boys hung around in the SAS headquarters in Hereford. I felt so proud. Everybody who walked past us knew why we were there. They would stop, say, ‘Well done,’
and shake our hands. Everyone in the regiment could remember how they had felt the day they got their badge.

The sergeant major came out of his office, which was next-door to the colonel’s. He shook our hands and said, ‘Well done, lads, congratulations. The colonel will give you your badges and then you’ll be sent to your squadrons.

But, before that, I’ll give you one word of advice: when you get to your squadron, look for someone you think is the perfect SAS soldier, the one you would like to be. Copy him. Learn from him. Don’t go thinking you know it all, because you don’t. We never stop learning. Keep your gob shut, look, listen and learn.’

That was all well and good, but the sergeant major didn’t tell us what to do when we met the colonel. Did we slam to attention and salute? Did we march into his office?

There is no marching or saluting in the SAS. Everybody calls each other by their first names. It’s not like being in the army.

The sergeant major opened the colonel’s door and ushered us in. We semi-marched, semiwalked, all a bit uncomfortable. The colonel sat behind his desk, a pile of sand-coloured berets with the famous ‘Winged Dagger’ SAS badge in front of him. They were stacked like pancakes.
He flipped one to each of us. No formality, no handshake. ‘Just remember, these are harder to keep than they are to get. Good luck.’

That was it. We turned and shuffled out, and I started Day One, Week One of the ten years I served in the Special Air Service.

The first thing that happened to me as I walked out of that office was that I lost my rank. No longer was I a sergeant in the infantry. I was now a SAS trooper, the lowest rank in the SAS. I had to start again, work my way through the ranks, but I didn’t mind. The only thought in my mind was that I was actually in the SAS.

For the next ten years, I did the things that the SAS do. I took part in undercover operations, walking around cities with long hair, jeans and trainers and driving little sports cars. I lived under a shelter sheet in the jungles of south east Asia. I worked in Africa and the Middle East.

But the one thing I learned very quickly was that life in the SAS wasn’t like the TV shows that showed troopers dressed up in black gear smashing windows to storm an embassy building.

Education was just as important as all the bang-bang. In fact, the education centre in Hereford was three times the size of the one in the training camp at Folkestone.

That was because the first skill you had to learn was how to communicate. You’d be no good in the field if you couldn’t tell everybody where you were, what you’d seen and what you were going to do about it.