An Officer and a Gentlewoman (20 page)

And then a miracle happened.

As I lay unconscious in the grass an angel appeared, haloed by the dawn sun. The angel shook me from my slumber and guided me to a Land Rover, its waiting engine growling in the morning mist. Blundering blearily, I was too tired to comprehend what was happening and blindly followed the angel's lead. On the hard seats in the back of the Land Rover I slept again as we bounced through the fields and along muddy tracks. Eventually, behind the barbed wire of a military camp, I was transferred into a white minibus and onto the main road. We sped south, along A roads to the motorway. Intermittently in my sleep I got a sense of traffic slowing with rush hour, stopping at traffic lights or the bus swinging around a roundabout, but I remained oblivious to my surroundings, wrapped in the soporific sounds of the engine. All my body could do was sleep, my brain had shut down, my eyelids clamped firmly shut.

Eventually we reached our destination – Aldershot in Surrey, 135 miles from my unfinished trench. The minibus parked in a car park and as the engine was switched off I stirred, waking in civilization. Still wearing the same clothes I had been in for
more than two days, I was unwashed; the sweat of digging had dried to my body, sand and mud clung to my boots and I stank. A foul putrid unforgiving stench, that lingered in the nostrils of the freshly bathed like a ripe French cheese. My hands were blistered raw and clenched from wielding the pick and my eyes had withdrawn to dark pinpricks in my skull, like an addict at the end of a high. Ours wasn't the only minibus in the Aldershot car park that morning. Around us others were disgorging groups of people in coordinated team tracksuits and trainers, with sports bags slung over their shoulders looking fit and competitive. We were all gathering here for the Army Swimming Championships. My race preparation could have been a little better.

Before I joined the army, a sage infantry officer had given me much valued advice on the emotional extremes of military life. He had warned me that in the army ‘the highs are higher but the lows are lower too'. And there, in Aldershot, standing stiff in the car park this maxim could not have been truer. Hours earlier I had been scrabbling around at the bottom of a hole, sick with fatigue, blistered, sore and stinking a rotting stench. But now my swimming had saved me. While the rest of Eleven Platoon was still trapped in the Worst Encounter nightmare, I was living a dream. I headed straight for the shower, plugging the drain with matted hair, filth and grass. I slept. I showered again and then slept. I curled up on the poolside and slept between races, oblivious to the rowdy competition goings-on, shaken awake for each of my races. I hauled myself up from under my towel, put on my hat and goggles and made my way to the starting blocks, and stood there gazing at the fifty metres of crystal clear water ahead of me, as the other competitors limbered up. Stretching their limbs and standing tall, while my shoulders hung. I was knackered. The last thing I wanted to do now was thrash myself in a swimming pool in front of a large crowd. But as the starter buzzer bleeped, I was in and it felt incredible. The cool water
rushed over me, the crowd cheered and the adrenaline kicked in to power me through the water.

As lunchtime arrived, I ordered Domino's pizza to the poolside, gorging on the fatty cheesy slices, and even sought out somewhere to launder the mud from my crusty combats. All the while back in Norfolk the big dig continued. Guilt did pass over me. As I bit into another slice of pizza, savouring the salami juiciness, I was forced to consider the boil-in-a-bag alternatives. As I stood under a hot shower for the fourth time, soaping away ingrained grime, I spared a thought for the grubby less fortunate. It was intensely selfish, but I challenge anyone to behave differently in the circumstances.

Back in Thetford, the rest of Eleven Platoon was suffering in the deep throes of serious sleep deprivation, and knowledge of my privilege would not have been greeted warmly. So that night, when I finally returned, clean, rested and fed, a gold medal tucked into my pocket, I kept my mouth shut. I paraded a sullen face, trying not to give away traces of the adultery I had committed. Not that anyone would have noticed. Because as I arrived back at my trench, smelling of shampoo and fabric softener, total lunacy had taken hold.

In my absence the platoon had been given just one more hour of sleep and were now delirious with fatigue. I became the only sober person at the party as hallucinations and disorientated mumblings set in. People were falling asleep standing up, mid-sentence and while eating. Someone had even conducted their own assault on an invisible enemy. But somehow through this mental imbalance the trenches had now been finished, complete with corrugated-iron reinforcement and the grassy turf replaced around them. But at six-foot deep, they proved difficult to get in and out of, especially when laden with kit, in the dark. That night our position came under a brief enemy mortar attack and my section were dispatched to investigate. Over the radio I was ordered to get One Section out and conduct a clearance patrol
to our east. I roused everyone in our two trenches to get ready and looked carefully at my map. I was still adjusting the helmet on my head when the Platoon Donkey declared she was ready to go. Already out of the trench, she whispered down to me, ‘Which way are we going, Héloïse?'

Goodness, maybe people weren't as unhinged as I had estimated, if the Platoon Donkey was still compos mentis. The rest of us got ready and clambered awkwardly out of the trench. I adjusted the settings on my radio and sent a message through to Platoon HQ to let them know we were departing. As I closed the cover on the radio pouch, I looked down at the Platoon Donkey's feet. They were bare. She wasn't wearing any boots. I looked up and realized she didn't have her body armour or helmet on either and her rifle was missing from the picture too. She seemed completely oblivious to these deficiencies. We didn't have time to now start doing up her shoelaces. We couldn't leave her behind either, she had to come with us. This was going to have to be quick.

So we hurried out of the trenched harbour, the Platoon Donkey following at the back in her socks. We disappeared off into the darkness between the trees and out of sight, hoping not to bump into any real enemy. Conducting the bare minimum patrol, we returned twenty minutes later, eager to get back into our trench and the Platoon Donkey out of potential sight. I set the bearing on my compass and headed through the darkness to where our trench should be, except when I got there it wasn't there. I paced left and then right but couldn't find it. I whispered out loudly hoping to catch the attention of someone in another trench. Then suddenly behind me the Platoon Donkey disappeared. I heard a muffled yelp and small crumpled commotion as she tumbled headlong into our trench, collapsing in a dishevelled heap at the bottom.

We grew quite attached to our trenches. They briefly became home. We cooked, ate, slept and lived our lives in them, like
scenes out of
Blackadder
, with Baldrick making tea and cunning plans. It was saddening on the final day to have to rip them apart and fill them back in. We stripped out the corrugated iron and sandbags, collapsed in the carefully cut walls and bulldozed all the dirt back over, leaving just a small scar on the surface as evidence of our occupation. On the final day, we clambered onto the magic bus, which whisked us back to Sandhurst, skeletons of the cadets we had been five days earlier. I was a mess. My hair had matted into a thick sandy knot with sweat and ground around my head by my helmet. My palms were blistered and chafed, my nails brittle and cracked. There was nothing whatsoever feminine about the way I looked, but in just twenty-four hours I had to become a girl again. I had to wash the war away because in just twenty-four hours Imjin Company were throwing a party.

There are times as a woman in the army when you have to sadly let go of your femininity, cast it to one side, and forget it. When you’re shoulder deep, digging a trench, salty sweat trickling down your spine; when you’re puffing up a hill with your bergen strapped to your back, dragging you down; when you’re on your stomach, crawling through the mud, your rifle cradled in your arms, waxy combat facepaint smeared across your face – in these situations any urge to be a girl gets lost in the rough, because sometimes being a lady in the army is just not possible. French manicures and beauty regimes have no place on military training areas. And on exercise there were no mirrors, no hair straighteners, no tweezers or shine control. After four days of living in a woodblock, you have to ignore the dirt tucked deep beneath your fingernails, forget about the windswept frizzy hair matted to your head, and ignore the absence of make-up and dignity, because joining the army means sacrificing girliness. To the army girl, perfume, lip gloss, mascara and style become abandoned relics. And on exercise, standards can’t help but slip, as there are no showers, no razors, no waxing strips nor mirrors. As you wash with a flannel from a mess tin of tepid water there is no cleanse, tone and moisturize routine, because ‘you’re not worth it’.

The appalling reality of how horrific this had become was then unceremoniously revealed to me when the Gurkha enemy started firing and I would leap to the ground, my body armour crushing to my chest, squeezing out a warm puff of noxious air from the
depths of my clothing. On exercise I smelled and looked like a tramp. And at the end of each exercise, the evidence of how far girly standards had declined, swirled around the plughole, as dirt and grass mingled in a soapy whirl, draining away my lost femininity.

When men put on an army uniform they become more attractive, women swoon after them, and even the most average Joe Bloggs develops something about him when wearing uniform. A bit of Richard Gere from
An Officer and a Gentleman
. A sexy masculine authority. But when women put on the uniform it has the opposite effect. Even Cheryl Cole struggles to make combat trousers sexy. They’re baggy, shapeless and unflattering; they obliterate feminine curves, because the military uniform is cut for the male form. Despite 10 per cent of the army now being female (that’s approximately 10,000 girls) we still all wear the same clothes as the boys. Clothes not designed for hips and breasts.

On our feet the footwear was equally graceless. No soft, calfskin Italian style, because army boots are big, thumpy, Doc Marten clodhoppers, which rub mercilessly, leaving weeping blisters and then dry calloused heels. And after six months of wearing them, I could no longer stand in my former towering City high heels, as my toes had been allowed to comfortably spread and they now protested at being squeezed back into a tight leather point. And although this may have been saving me from Victoria Beckham’s bunions, it was another nail in the coffin of my femininity.

There is nothing attractive about being a girl in the army. Nothing sexy about the uniform. No class or elegance. With my hair gelled and scraped back on my head, baggy combat pyjamas hiding my feminine curves and clumpy boots on my feet, the girl had gone. Banished. Her loss mourned. Which is why any rare occasion there was for us to dress as girls was grasped with overstated excitement. Nights out, dinners, parties, balls, our girliness would fight to the fore, and the masculine military
environment at Sandhurst actually exaggerated my femininity. Out of uniform, I embraced florals and pastels like never before. Pretty dresses and jewellery. Reds, pinks, silk and lace. I honed in on them. I lapped up copies of fashion magazines and luxuriated in the pleasure of ‘dressing up’. This bid for girliness was at its most extreme after I returned from Afghanistan, when, for a month, I would barely leave the house without perfect hair and make-up, having been deprived of a single girly day for four uninterrupted months in the desert.

So while on exercise girly standards slipped, out of uniform they became flawlessly upheld, with great effort going into the preparation for a night out, because it became a treasured treat; like a lazy Sunday lie-in or the taste of home cooking, it was something we yearned for and missed. I wanted to be a girl again and break from the army mould, express a bit of my individuality and feel feminine. So, as we returned from Exercise Worst Encounter, I scrubbed the war away. I rinsed the Norfolk sands from my hair and scoured Thetford’s dirt from under my nails. Lip balm was smeared over cracked lips and intensive moisturizer soothed onto dried skin. I selected an outfit to conceal the patterns of bruising on my limbs and applied make-up to mask the darkened circles under my tired eyes. Transformation complete, the tramp had been converted into a lady again. Ready to party.

And Sandhurst knows how to throw a party.

The commissioning ball held at the end of the course is rated by
Tatler
magazine in the top ten events in the social calendar. And during the course of the year, there are plenty of other smaller parties, formal dinners and charity fund-raising events, providing a balancing yin to the hard-working muddy yang of the rest of the commissioning course. All of these required us to morph back into ladies for the night, as officerly social decorum at these functions called for the girls of Eleven Platoon to be girls, to look pretty, act with grace, beguile, charm and forget that only hours earlier we may have been shooting to kill on the rifle range or thrusting the
cold metal tip of a bayonet into a bloodied sandbag. So with a ball gown on, we converted easily from Mr Hyde to Dr Jekyll.

When it came to organizing these parties, boy-girl stereotypes were adhered to fiercely, with the girls of Imjin Company typically tasked with arranging the decor, food and party theme, while the boys were responsible for the provision of alcohol. So on the last Saturday of term, as I carefully strung up bunting and helped lay out plates of nibbles in the cricket pavilion, the boys had gone on a gin binge in the nearest Camberley off-licence. Using one litre of spirits per person as their provisioning metric, they were loading trolleys with value vodka and never-heard-of branded Belgian beers, aiming to maximize quantity with no regard for quality in ensuring a fairly toxic and eventful evening.

Officer Cadet Peters was with me inflating balloons and flirting outrageously with one of the boys from Twelve Platoon in her young, naive and unsubtle manner.

‘Urgh,’ she said, stretching up to pin a balloon to the ceiling. ‘I can’t quite reach, can someone lift me?’ The Twelve Platoon object of her desire instantly took the bait, putting down the beer cans that he was loading into the fridge and coming to her aid. ‘Can you just lift me up so I can attach this balloon?’ she asked, touching his arm and looking doe eyed at him.

‘Of course,’ he said, putting his hands around her waist. ‘You just tell me when you’re ready.’

‘You’ll have to be very strong,’ she playfully teased, flicking her hair over her shoulder. ‘Let me know if you can’t handle me.’

I cringed as I listened to them.

They carried on like this for a few minutes. Him lifting her up, she coquetting in his arms, getting closer and closer to him. Nothing more intimate was going to happen between them with me there in the room like a lemon, but she was lining him up, ready to pounce later that night as the benefits of the boys’ alcohol ratio kicked in under the disco lights. He had a girlfriend at home of course, and he wasn’t going to leave her for Peters, but the boys
did strange things at Sandhurst and Peters would be an innocent victim. Filling in for those lonely nights he spent away from his real girlfriend.

In the all-boy companies these parties could be a bit Band of Thebes man-heavy, but in Imjin we had a ready-made mixed party crowd. The boys would then supplement this by inviting every girl they’d ever met, using the Academy backdrop as a means to impress the ladies, plenty of whom would have shunned their advances in the past, but now couldn’t resist the opportunity to be on the Sandhurst guest list. As well as the uniform, actually being at Sandhurst also enormously elevated the boys’ kudos and ‘pulling power’. Dating an army officer still holds considerable cachet among the fillies of a certain social set.

My jealousy would simmer slightly at the sight of these ‘civvy’ girls, with their freshly highlighted hair and salon blow-dries, their unblemished, smooth skin and florid complexions. At a party these spectres at the feast would teeter at the bar in heels my feet now rejected, flicking manes of rich thick hair with polished, manicured nails. I envied them. I envied their femininity. I envied that on Monday morning they wouldn’t have to be on parade. That on Monday no one would be inspecting their boots. That on Monday they wouldn’t even be wearing boots. I was jealous because on Monday morning as I scraped and gelled my hair back into a bun and put my uniform on, they would still be girls, retaining their femininity. Because unlike them, for me, being a girl had now become just the preserve of my weekends; it was a hobby like the weekend dress habits of a cross-dressing transvestite.

Now we were in New College there was more interaction with the other Platoons too, and more mixing with the male officer cadets. In the first five weeks of Juniors, it had been a punishable offence to be seen talking to one of the boys. A press-up-enforced gender apartheid was imposed. I was once severely chastised by Captain Trunchbull for accepting the hand of a male cadet who offered to assist me to my feet when sitting on the ground in an
outdoor map-reading lesson. Rebuked not only for holding his hand as he helped me to stand up, but also for accepting the help of a man. And for the first five weeks the only people I actually spoke to were female: SSgt Cox, Captain Trunchbull, Sgt Walker and the thirty-two other girls of Eleven Platoon. In a bizarre twist I’d joined one of the most masculine organizations in the world and found there to be only women in it. Sandhurst had become the most female-dominant environment I’d ever been in; my school days had been mostly boys, at prep school I was the only girl in my class, I’d read a science degree at university and worked in the male-dominated field of banking in the City. I was used to being a woman in a man’s world and it never bothered me. Suffragettes chained themselves to railings so gender would be irrelevant in my life decisions. So when I joined the army, I wasn’t fazed about being a female in the minority. Indeed I believe I had previously benefited from positive sexual discrimination in the City. Having a girl on the team in a bank brought a welcomed dilution to the testosterone and egos. My boss at HSBC found that bringing a girl along to the meeting table diffused tensions when the men began to lock horns. With a girl present, the ugly head of male bravado was less likely to surface and real business could be discussed (and my bottom patted patronizingly in the lift). Indeed this downplaying of testosterone worked in the army too. The effect of the girls’ platoon in Imjin Company was to reduce the competition between the two male platoons, and they became mutually supporting rather than trying to outdo each other, unlike the rivalry that existed between platoons in the all male companies.

Tellingly, I have never experienced sexism in the military, despite the machismo nature of the army. For an old and traditional organization, the army is actually quite progressive in its attitude to women and I genuinely believe that it recognizes the benefits of women in its ranks. If you are a competent, capable female you will have as equal and fulfilling a career as a military man, because despite the infantry frontline ban, doors in the military are wide
open for women and there is far less of a glass ceiling than I ever felt in the City. And if motherhood is on your agenda then the MoD is definitely a sympathetic employer, offering an unrivalled maternity package that my City friends balk green-eyed at.

Anyway, much of what they were trying to teach us at Sandhurst is already innate to women. Cleaning and ironing are traditionally women’s chores, while women are naturally more organized and tidy than men. Attention to detail, subtlety, organization, multitasking, smartness of dress: in all these, women have the advantage.

But finding your identity as a woman in the army, as in any male-dominated environment, can be a complicated and thorny process of trial and error, and, as I commissioned from Sandhurst, I still hadn’t found the balance I am now comfortable with. Conducting yourself as a female in a man’s world, you run the risk of being either too girly and not taken seriously, or too blokey and being seen as a fool. Many girls try to be ‘one of the lads’, attempting to match the boys at their own game, competing with them in the gym and then the bar. I unfortunately have the biceps and alcohol tolerance of a gnat so this tack would never have worked for me. When I first started working in the City I considered taking up football, not because I had any interest in the sport, but so that I could take part in 90 per cent of the conversations of my colleagues, but then I realized that it wasn’t my place to try to compete with them, because I was not one of the boys and there was no requirement for me to be so.

Being able to be comfortable and successful in a man’s world is down to the individual and for this precious girls need not apply. There is no space for marshmallow pink, fluffy softness among the hairy chests and belching. With men, crying, blubbering and stamping-of-feet have no currency, because for a job in a man’s world it is only puddle-jumpers who will be accepted, girls who are happy to jump straight in, feet first, mindless of the mud.

So there is no sexism in the military, but what about the sex?

Well, there were couples at Sandhurst. Three of the girls in Eleven Platoon arrived at Sandhurst with their boyfriends and all three completed the commissioning course with relationships intact (and strong press-up muscles). Others arrived with boyfriends outside the Academy but with the pressures and demands of the course these relationships soon fizzled out. Gill was different. Her boyfriend wasn’t at Sandhurst and wasn’t even in the military, a rarity for an army girl. She and Rich had met at university and went on to marry after Sandhurst and start a family together soon after (so she isn’t even Gill any more but New).