An Officer and a Gentlewoman (22 page)

The exercise started with us capturing Cilieni village from the Gurkha enemy, chasing them out and then securing defensive positions in the buildings to wait for the inevitable enemy
counterattack
. Eleven Platoon were assigned a three-storey house near the church to occupy and defend, and 4 Montgomery Drive was what an estate agent would probably have described as ‘a well-appointed family home in need of some cosmetic improvement’. We set to work at it straight away with barbed wire, scaffolding poles, sandbags and sheets of corrugated iron, barricading doorways, blocking windows and constructing obstacles in the ‘bijou’ garden, building up a den and fortifying our new home. We became quite house proud of and even attached to the combat shabby chic decor,
insisting on maintaining the integrity of a family home with a welcoming front door and even a dining room table. And this is where Eleven Platoon’s home at 4 Montgomery Drive differed from the rest of the houses in Cilieni, because while the girls continued to keep a tidy organized home, even in war, the boys had ripped out all their furniture, barricaded their front door and were climbing in and out through a ladder propped against a first-floor window. It just didn’t occur to us to be so destructive (and tactically astute). We still saw this pile of bricks and mortar as a house, something to covet and inhabit, whereas the boys were in role; they had made their house a fortress. So while at Number 4 we were measuring up for soft furnishings and arranging flowers, the boys were splintering tables and chairs into timber to block the stairs.

A girls’ and a boys’ castle are clearly very different creations.

As we were finishing off the final touches on the second morning, CSgt Bicknell came in to have a look around.

‘Very nice, ladies. Very nice. I like what you’ve done here,’ he said, taking a step back to admire our barbed wiring. ‘Miss Wheeler, are you watching your arcs in there?’ he hollered through to Wheeler who was sitting on some empty ammunition boxes at the window on stag, peering between a gap in the hessian curtain we had made to cover the window.

‘Yes, colour sergeant,’ Wheeler shouted back.

He continued on his tour upstairs, noseying around, checking sandbags and the steel picks we had used to block a window with. As he poked his head around a doorway on the top floor, a couple of us were sitting around a burning hexi stove making breakfast.

‘Morning, ladies,’ he said, coming into the room. ‘So, who’s going to make me a lovely cup of Rosie Lee this morning then?’

CSgt Bicknell had the endearing habit of sprinkling his speech with Cockney rhyming slang that often left us baffled as to his meaning. On the drill square, he’d chastise you for shuffling your ‘plates of meat’ or during a morning inspection he’d pick you up
for mud on your ‘daisy roots’. He’d learned his lesson about the peculiarities of dealing with girls and now understood our ways. As Merv leaned forwards and offered him a black plastic mug of hot tea he knew he had been welcomed back into the Eleven Platoon fold.

Unfortunately, the problem with FIBUA is that when war comes to town everyone dies, as the stakes go up at close quarters. History can testify to this overwhelming bloodshed with case samples from battles for Stalingrad, Budapest, Berlin and even Fallujah. And when the Gurkha enemy eventually returned for their counterattack we got hammered. They stormed our stockaded buildings and flushed us out, crashing through our front door, storming the stairs and overrunning the village. Bodies lay everywhere – killed off by the directing staff – among the empty brass ammunition casings that carpeted each room of Cilienigrad. And when Captain Trunchbull started screaming at us to retreat to the hills, we had to take the wounded with us, and the resultant drudging withdrawal ranks as one of my top five worst moments at Sandhurst.

The woodblock we sought refuge in couldn’t have been more than three miles away from Cilieni village, but getting there with bergens on, dragging the bodies of the wounded, was as emotional as childbirth, and the closest I ever came to public tears at Sandhurst. To get there we first slogged our way along a muddy flood plain, its river in full swell, schlepping in our heavy boots, drawing them deeper into the mire. With the weight of bergens and casualties dragging us down, we floundered dreadfully, stumbling and slipping like drunks on the greasy mud. We plugged onwards, as Captain Trunchbull hopped about with caged fury, screaming expletives and bawling senselessly at us to get a move on as the mud sucked us further in. The going was slow and demoralizing, each step getting harder and harder as cracks soon started to appear in the platoon.

Eventually, after a mile we turned left, moving away from the river’s banks, heading upwards to join a narrow faded track that
traced the steep slopes of a hill. The ascent to the top was utter agony. My bergen pressed down so heavily on my back I thought I might faint with fatigue and pain. I was by now completely exhausted from the mud plain march, my legs stung with an excruciating pain, which seared up through my spine and screamed at my brain to STOP. Which others did, only adding further to the suffering of those of us left on the march, since their bergens were handed to us to pick up and soldier on with. I was in astonishing amounts of discomfort, suffering under the weight of my bergen and struggling up the steep hill without the aid of crampons and a rope. Inside my head I was having a fierce mental battle to keep going, and using all my concentration to stop tears from welling in my eyes.

CSM Mockridge strode up next to me. ‘Come on, Miss Goodley,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘I know you can do this. You’re not going to let yourself down. Keep going. Head up. Focus, Miss Goodley. Focus.’

I was on the verge of giving up. I couldn’t see the summit and, as each crest ahead proved to be another false one, our goal remained tantalizingly out of sight. I knew I couldn’t make it. At this Sandhurst had now pushed me too far. Here was going to be the point at which I finally broke and failed. As each step became more of a struggle and my legs trembled under the strain, failure looked more and more attractive. I could easily stop and give my bergen to someone else to struggle on with, and join the ranks of others who had already dropped out. I could shoulder the disappointment and shame of having let myself and everyone else down instead. While keeping my vertebrae intact.

Listening to CSM Mockridge I lifted my head and looked up from my boots to see the Platoon Donkey ahead of me wavering too. Faltering more with every step, she was crying freely with tears of pain and frustration. ‘Come on,’ I willed her on. ‘We can do this.’ I knew that if she gave up, her bergen would fall to me to carry, and that would be the final straw breaking over my back. If she went I knew I would too. And sure enough, she soon broke,
collapsing to the ground in front of me, her cheeks streaked with tears, refusing to take another step. I went to her, hovering over the desperate heap lying in the grass, trying hopelessly to encourage her to her feet once more. The thought of having to take on her bergen as well as mine enraged me and I swore at her for being so selfish.

As she turned away from me, sobbing, Wheeler appeared and released the bergen from the Platoon Donkey’s back, rolling it free. She lifted up one of the straps in her hand and, motioning for me to take the other, we lifted it off the ground between us. We shared the bergen like this as we continued on up, leaving the Platoon Donkey to stagger unburdened behind us. We moved in silence, struggling too much with our own mental battle to keep going to be able to speak to one another, resorting to just sideways smiles of encouragement. But it spurred me on.

From somewhere I found strength in pain, finding energy in not wanting to let the side down and a pride in being one of the few left. Somewhere inside my body a little box of reserve energy was found and opened, driving me to the summit, where finally I was overcome with relief, flopping down in the wet grass, as every muscle in my body flooded with elastic release. I had made it. I couldn’t believe it. On my own there was no way I would have achieved what I had just done. As a pampered City girl, it would have been completely out of the question. Sandhurst was teaching me a stubborn resolve, a pride and bitter grit to keep fighting on, to battle with the pain and ignore my demons.

As I breathed in a light sigh of relief, CSM Mockridge appeared again and gave a gentle nod of his head in my direction, a rare smile spreading across his thin lips.

‘Told you you could do it, Miss Goodley, didn’t I. Well done.’

The middle term at Sandhurst was chaotically busy, with no chances to come up for air as our feet barely touched the ground. There was no time for a Kit-Kat break, no slippers-and-pipe moments, no opportunity to put our feet up and chill out; we sped from exercise, to war studies, to the assault course, to exercise, to international affairs lectures, to drill, to thrashing PT sessions, to the rifle ranges, to another exercise. All the while the instructors crammed activity after event into the timetable until it was bursting, and all along the standard Sandhurst nonsense continued too. Where room inspections and water parades had become a thing of our Old College past, a new method of messing around our days was introduced instead in the form of the ‘show parade’.

The show parade was a punishment handed out by the CSgts for any minor indiscretion, and was given as freely as the kisses of a whore, as they sought to ensure every waking hour of our day was tied up with something. A show parade meant having to parade at nine o’clock in the evening, a time selected for perfect inconvenience, and involved, as the name might suggest, showing something, which usually was your indiscretion rectified. For example, if on the morning inspection parade CSgt Bicknell spotted mud on your ‘daisy roots’, you would be required to parade at nine o’clock that night with all the other day’s ‘defaulters’ showing ‘boots without mud’. Simple. But with all the other business in our days it was an annoyance you could do without. And there was plenty of scope
for comic humour in this too, as the CSgts stitched each other up, as it was they who had to inspect the parade. I was once required to show ‘ladder removed from tights’ and paraded that night with a fresh pair of tights on and a step-ladder, along with ‘show bed made’, who had dragged his bed outside onto the parade square and ‘show bright’ who had come with torches taped to his body.

Another way Sandhurst used to occupy and waste our evenings was by employing us to guard the Academy. Since we had now learned weapon handling and visited the rifle range a couple of times we were deemed to hold the requisite qualifications to walk around the grounds at night armed, with real, live, bang,
shoot-you-dead
ammunition and a torch. We were after all trained and now equipped to kill, but God knows what would have happened if an intruder had actually tried to scale the fence because I didn’t have it in me to pull the trigger. For the rest of the night, in between these armed-patrols of Surrey, we had to sit behind a desk in the College Guard Room and answer the telephone, and then when it rang we had to write out the account of the phone call in the Daily Occurrence Book, but not in normal joined-up handwriting, but in BLOCK CAPITALS, against a ruler and only in black ink. (All army correspondence is only ever written in black ink. Colonels can write in red, and generals write in green.)

Squeezed around this hectic Intermediate Term timetable, we were also busy writing academic essays, one for each of the academic subjects: War Studies, Defence & International Affairs and Leadership Management. I liked the academic side of the commissioning course. I found it in complete contrast to the military skills and all the polishing-cleaning-shining-
shouting-running-
about that I was so useless at. Writing essays was the only prior skill I brought to Sandhurst. Instead of standing stiffly in the cold on a parade square or polishing brass buttons and doorknobs, the academic stuff was conducted in a serene, almost civilian environment. We sat in small groups in warm comfortable classrooms in a building called Farady Hall (nicknamed Faraway
Hall), which was far away from the Colleges and gymnasium, far away from our cleaning products and far, far away from the CSgts’ prying eyes. The staff who taught us were all academics, bespectacled civilians wearing cardigans and comfortable Hush Puppies, with not a combat trouser or polished boot in sight. The classroom atmosphere was relaxed and unpressurized, much like being back in a university tutorial. The academics didn’t even mind if you closed your eyes and slept, taking pity on the thrashings we received elsewhere in the Academy. But what I loved most about Faraway Hall was the biscuits. The staff smuggled them in for us to have in the more than regular tea breaks (now CSgt Bicknell was our platoon colour sergeant the chocolate biscuits had stopped) and a charitable donation had to be made in exchange for them, raising thousands of pounds each term by doing this.

I can’t remember what titles I chose for my War Studies or International Affairs essays, but I do remember the research I did for the Leadership essay, which dug up some rather frightening findings. I wrote my essay on transformational leadership in religious cults (Churchill or Nelson seemed a little too trite and military for me). And for the essay’s research, I ventured, for the first time, into the Academy library, another of Sandhurst’s CSgt-less oases. Today the library occupies the former Academy gym in what is a distinctly average building when settled alongside Old and New Colleges. Inside, this quiet, whispering sanctum was quite impervious to the shouting and marching that dominated much of the rest of the Academy’s grounds, and the few moments we could steal in there were like dipping into the tranquillity of a health spa.

For my essay I plucked a dusty book on ‘exploring the CULT in culture’ from the shelves of books and between its musty pages found a list of the mind-control techniques used by cult leaders, some of which rang with sinister familiarity:
1

I was standing in the corridor in New College looking up at a noticeboard, flicking my eyes over the details on Company orders, checking for my name among the dentist appointments and timings for tomorrow’s day on the pistol range. It was a Wednesday afternoon and I was wearing my Academy tracksuit, the staple blue baggy bottoms and red fleece-lined sweatshirt that was our only escape from army uniform. On my back was a little rucksack with my wet swimming kit rolled up in it, as I’d just finished in the pool. Around my eyes the red trace of where my goggles had been pressing against my cheeks was still visible and I smelled of chlorine. To my left a door suddenly swung open as CSM Mockridge strode out with some paperwork and drawing pins clasped in his hand.

‘Ah, Miss Goodley. Just the person I wanted to see,’ he said as he came to stand next to me and started pinning the pieces of
paper to the noticeboard. ‘How do you fancy being on a committee?’

‘Er, what sort of committee, sir?’ I asked, a little unsure what he was lining me up for.

‘The Academy Adjutant is putting together a Mess Committee,’ he said, finishing his pinning and turning to me. ‘I thought you’d be the perfect person to represent Imjin Company,’ he said. ‘I need someone who won’t take any crap in there. Someone who’ll stick up for what the cadets want. You’ll get stuck in and stand your ground, won’t you, Miss Goodley? Give them some stick. Like Margaret Thatcher.’ He chuckled to himself.

‘Erm, yes, sir. I’ll be happy to do it if you want me to,’ I said, a little puzzled by his analogy. Where had CSM Mockridge got the opinion that I was like the Iron Lady from?

As he flitted back through the door to his office, Fergus came darting out through the brief gap and into the corridor beside me. Fergus was the dog belonging to the Officer in Command (OC) of Imjin Companys’ and was having a great time at the Academy. army officers and dogs go perfectly together, like cheese and pickle, and an army dog’s life has to be one of the best. They can revel in plenty of open fields to run around, mud to roll in, and they get to come to work all day, where crowds of people fuss over them all day in the Mess. For a dog the army is a dream. But this dream is not open to all breeds, because officers’ dogs typically conform to one of two types: Labradors or retrievers. A bit of variety can be brought into this by having a chocolate Lab rather than the standard black, but aside from this, army dogs come only in a standard issue. Although somehow Fergus had managed to buck this trend, as he was neither a chocolate nor black Lab, not even a retriever, for he was a scruffy little Border terrier and was totally apathetic to the importance of his surroundings. The complete antithesis of an officer’s dog, he had flagrant disregard for the commands of his owner and the OC could regularly be seen standing on the steps of New College
entrance calling Fergus’s name as the little dog disappeared off into the distance with two fingers up to any promise of coming back. At home he had cunningly found a gap in the fence at the bottom of the garden through which he came and went as he pleased and we would often bump into him during a platoon run or loaded march as he went about his business on his own, returning home in time for his dinner. When he was in the mood to follow his master he would come along to Company meetings and sniff around at the back, looking for the best lap to curl up on. Though sadly for Fergus this treat came to a comic end one morning as he joined a gathering of Imjin Company in which the OC was handing out a Company-scale bollocking. That morning Fergus was obviously having a good day and feeling a little frisky, so while the OC stood gravely at the front raising his voice to us in a serious tone, Fergus was busying himself at the back of the room inappropriately humping the Yemeni cadet’s leg.

I went along to the Mess Committee meeting as CSM Mockridge had asked, ready to fight a battle. In my mind my combats were a sharp suit once more as I felt all boardroom and power heels again. I hadn’t lost my City edge. It was still there underneath the layers of green and boot polish. I relished being given a cause to pursue, a principle to stand up for. I may have even slammed my fist on the table at one point, frightening the Adjutant in his chair. And CSM Mockridge knew exactly what he was doing in selecting me to represent Imjin Company. He knew that I didn’t shine on the drill square and got left behind when it came to exercise skills. He knew that digging trenches and leopard crawling were not my forte. He’d sussed out where my strengths did lie, then spotted somewhere I could prove them. I left the meeting triumphant, having successfully brokered the removal of yoghurts from our exercise packed lunches to be replaced with something sturdier. It wasn’t a new corporate loan deal or rescue finance package that would have been an achievement in my former City days but it felt good to be in control of something again.

Things were now ticking along quite nicely at the Academy. I was comfortable with my surroundings, I was coming to grips with the military way and I’d made some good friends. I was even enjoying it. My early fears of incompetence had faded, and slowly I was creeping up the class. I no longer felt alone or useless and had earned my place in the platoon. In between the digging and crawling there was a lot of camaraderie and laughter too, as Eleven Platoon became a group of firm friends. The army is famed for its gallows humour and this is bred at institutions like Sandhurst, where often the only way you can get through the day is to laugh at it. When a CSgt is screaming at you on the parade square and threatening to flick you into the lake with his pace stick, chuckling behind fixed eyes is the only safe way to take it. Up in Norfolk as we had sat at the bottom of our trench, Allinson, Rhodes and I had howled with laughter at the ridiculousness of our situation: unearthing a Second World War bomb in sleeping rural East Anglia. In Cilieni village we had giggled between snatched breaths as we ran from house to house, leaping through windows and watching Captain Trunchbull getting stuck in the loft hatch, her bottom wedged in the square hole, legs kicking out for freedom.

We’d now spent a total of twenty weeks in training, and life had smoothed to a busy but manageable routine. We had learned to play the Sandhurst game, and were now quite good at it. We knew our way around and knew the shortcuts too. In CSgt Bicknell we had also found an ally at the Academy, having successfully converted him to the female approach, as he now embraced the subtle feminine touches with mugs of Rooibos ‘Rosie Lee’ (tea) supped from Cath Kidston china in the Pink Palace (the Pink Palace was Eleven Platoon’s common room which we had painted a hideous, sickly Pepto-Bismol pink, in a bid to apply a feminine streak to our surroundings). And the platoon was settled. We were getting the hang of Sandhurst, but were nowhere near the finished article yet. We could dig trenches, fortify a house and advance to contact, but anything more complicated or contemporary was still
beyond us. My initial terrifyingly steep learning curve had lessened and I was on the right course, although the thought of standing up in front of real-life soldiers and commanding them was still hugely daunting.

But by now real-life soldiers were already going to war. Because after just twenty weeks of their training, they were done. Trained. Good to go. From high school dropout to gun-wielding teen
2
in a mere twenty weeks. An infantry soldier spends just twenty weeks in training and some even graduate from the infantry training centre in Catterick and get straight on the plane to Afghanistan. It’s a frighteningly quick process.

But I wasn’t worrying about any of that, because at Sandhurst we were off to the pistol ranges.

There is something undeniably sexy about being armed with a pistol. Holding it tightly in your grip, clasping your fingers around the cool metal of its body and smoothly pulling the trigger towards you. Then feeling the power of the weapon as it kicks back and the round fires out, keeping your grasp steady and firm ready to aim for the next shot. Pistols feel racy and 007. Like being a Bond girl or one of Charlie’s Angels. Its holster straps suggestively around your thigh and unlike a rifle there is no lying prone on the ground getting wet and muddy, shuffling about in the dirt as you try to tuck the weapon into your shoulder. A pistol is small, sleek and pocket sized. It’s a girl’s weapon. Stylish and sophisticated, it’s easy on the arm muscles and would slip nicely into a handbag. As I stood at the firing point on the pistol ranges, pointing the weapon at targets, I wanted a cape and eye mask, a black leather catsuit and Farrah Fawcett’s flick. I felt the rounds spitting out, knocking down the life-sized figures twenty-five metres away and it felt so much more glamorous with a pistol.