An Officer and a Gentlewoman (16 page)

On our second stag of the night we once again lay with our heads propped against our rifles, staring into the inky void waiting for something to happen, but rather hoping it wouldn’t.

‘God, I’m so cold I can’t even move my fingers,’ Gill moaned. ‘If the enemy suddenly appear in front of us I don’t think I would actually have the movement to grip the trigger and fire at them.’

‘I’m so tired I think I’d offer myself up as a hostage,’ I said.

‘Only so long as they didn’t feed me any more corned-beef hash.’

‘Urgh.’ I made a gagging noise. ‘Where have you put that CWS thing we’re supposed to be using?’

We’d been given a ‘night-sight’ to use and, after fiddling with batteries, knobs and eventually removing the lens cover, we managed to turn the darkness around us into a view of soupy neon green. In the distance I could make out the outline of a ridgeline and forest block on the horizon. I played with the new toy for a while, scanning around the field in front of us, picking out sheep and turning around to investigate the harbour area behind me. Among the lines of thin pine trees the platoon slept, cocooned as little sleeping bag mounds at the bottom of their coffin holes. I switched it off and decided I needed to go for a wee, so, leaving Gill behind on her own to keep sentry, I nipped off into the wood with my rifle in search of a suitable spot.

Away from the platoon harbour the forest floor was marked with shallow ditches where previous exercises had dug their
shell-scrapes
and I stumbled about in the dark until I selected one, carefully putting my weapon down on the ground beside it. The ditch was only about a foot deep, and I stepped in, unzipped, lowered my trousers and squatted. I was mid-relief when a terrible thought crossed my mind: we were not the only people in this woodblock. The two boys’ platoons of Imjin Company were also harboured up in here. I wasn’t sure where, but I was sure that they too had night-sights. Suddenly, I was gripped by stage fright. I pulled myself together, zipped up, gathered my rifle and hurriedly made my way back to the sentry spot, hoping the super-keen infantry boys were not keeping a vigilant watch in my direction.

By the third day we were completely exhausted and utterly fed up with flogging ourselves up hills after the enemy. As the day came to a close, we anticipated another night shivering in a woodblock harbour area somewhere, feet frozen to a crust at the bottom of
our soggy sleeping bags. But as we plotted and followed the given grid, instead of leading us to another dense forest, we arrived at a farm. A delightfully dry farm. No digging shell-scrapes and lying contorted on the wet forest floor, tonight we would be sleeping in the sheltered warmth of a barn, with the comfort of a roof over our heads and solid floor beneath us. It was basic but total luxury.

When we got there, the Company Quartermaster appeared with big green thermos containers full of steaming stew and we queued eagerly to fill paper bowls with as much as they could hold. I dipped slices of bread into the thick brown gravy and scooped chunks of potato with a clean plastic spoon rather than the dirty one that I had licked, wiped on my trousers and stored in my pocket for the last three days. That night, sheltered in our new sanctuary, we would be rewarded with some sleep too. I stripped off my boots, wriggled my damp toes in the fresh air, changed my clothes and boiled a mess tin of water for a soapy wash. After three horrendous days these were all the luxuries we needed: warm food, a roof over our heads, sleep and clean clothes. Brecon had reduced us to these bare essentials, to the primal needs of man.

The reason for this relative luxury was to give us a well-earned break, to allow us to recoup, recharge our batteries and energize ready for one final big push, our first Company attack. Because the next day, relatively refreshed from the gift of four uninterrupted hours of sleep we began the preparations, plotting, planning, scheming, rehearsing, thinking of every eventuality. Coordinating 100 wannabe officers in the dark with tactical aplomb soon translated into a complex feat of organization. The enemy were holed up in a farm and, with the first light of dawn the next morning, we would be there to bring them the good news. Storming their hide and winning our five-day war.

As Imjin Company consisted of one girls’ platoon and two boys’ platoons the boys were going to be doing the hard work, while we
lay along a ridgeline in fire support. After all, this is what the boys had joined the army for and they didn’t want us coming along and ruining their fun.

That night we set off in the dead hours on a torturous long walk across the training area, sneaking along a roundabout route to avoid detection. One long silent line of troops marching quickly through the night. As we trudged along the darkened track, it continued to rain, driving harder as the wind whipped droplets towards us. The drops prickled on exposed skin, making me screw up my eyes and draw the hood of my jacket in closer. I hummed along quietly to myself, needing a distraction to keep me from falling asleep on the march, and after a while the chorus of a James Blunt ballad became stuck on an irritating loop inside my head. James Blunt had been an army officer, he had been through Sandhurst and Brecon, and probably attacked this very barn, probably even trudged along this very track in the rain. And now, amid the misery of exercise, I completely understood his capacity for such self-pitying song writing.

After two hours of head down, sleepy walking, we got to the form-up point and Eleven Platoon separated off into the woods to shuffle into position on the ridgeline overlooking the enemy farm. Below in the farm’s yard I could see a group of Gurkhas sitting comfortably around a bonfire, snug and warm, their faces glowing in the firelight. They knew we were coming. Lying in position, we waited, checking watches, waiting for H-hour. Minutes passed, the big hand moving slowing around the clock face. I rested my head against my rifle, watching the view in front of me move up and down with each breath. I was tired and it was a strong battle of wills with my eyelids, as they drooped heavier and heavier. Eventually the inevitable happened, as from the far end of the platoon row came a loud truffling snort as someone drifted into sleep.

At H-hour, flares lit up the purple sky and the air filled with the volley and thunder of gunfire as we started firing, jolting those
snoozing awake with a shot of adrenaline. To the left flank the boys’ platoons came racing in, charging through the morning mist, across the field and fences, into the farm and clearing through the buildings, killing the enemy as they found them. Moments later, we ran hurriedly down the bank to join them in the farm complex, securing the area and checking the enemy dead. The whole operation was all over rather quickly. Everything had gone smoothly and exactly according to the well-rehearsed plan. Now all we had to do was walk back to Dixies Corner and catch the buses back to Sandhurst. I was almost excited; the sun was coming up, another hellish week on exercise was over and in one week I’d be on Easter leave. Life was good.

Then a loud explosion boomed into my ears and reverberated through my guts.

What the hell was that?

We were being mortared.

Suddenly the perfectly planned, slick operation descended into chaos and mayhem as more explosions bounced around us knocking the wind out of my chest.

And as we started to run, fleeing the farm, the first casualty fell, Captain Trunchbull picking them off, telling them to lie down immobile. Fortunately, Lea was the smallest, lightest member of Eleven Platoon and Wheeler quickly scooped her up and staggered forwards with her slung in a fireman’s lift over her shoulders. But a fireman’s lift was not going to get her all the way back to safety and more explosive bangs detonated along our escape route. We quickly created a makeshift stretcher using a poncho and took it in turns to haul Lea back up onto the ridge. Halfway up another casualty fell. Picked off in the midst of the melee by Captain Trunchbull. And then just as we tried to establish a method for moving two casualties we were struck with another. And with three the platoon were crippled.

We made two more poncho stretchers and loaded the fresh casualties in, then hauled the three of them up the steep ridge
slopes, seeking safety at the top. Dragging the heavy loads was agonizing, back-breaking work. My lungs wailed in pain as I tried to hold up my corner of the poncho as we struggled to the top, bumping the casualty indelicately along the ground. My ears filled with screams of urgency and, with each explosive boom, the pit of my insides resonated. With each step the body hanging in the stretcher cradle got heavier and heavier. Rifles swung into the way and daysacks slipped from our backs. I felt as though I couldn’t carry on. We were never going to make it. I had to stop. This was too much. But there was no option to stop or slow down. Dragging those bodies back to Dixies Corner was worse than marking time on the parade square, worse than leopard crawling around Hundred Acre Wood, worse than loaded marches and worse than digging my own coffin hole. Red-faced and shattered, we finally got there, but I felt no elation at the finish line. It wasn’t real, nowhere near real, but it was horrendous. And casualty evacuation like this was to become a routine fixture on exercises for good reason.

At Dixies Corner I sat on my bergen awaiting the arrival of the coaches, my head cupped in my raw chapped hands, chest rising slowly to the rhythm of my lungs. Brecon had been as horrid as advertised. The rain had fallen, the ground squelched, the temperature plummeted and the winds stripped and squalled. I wiggled my frozen toes in the bottom of my soggy boots and wondered if they would ever thaw and regain feeling. My fingers were numb, limbs bruised and my eyes were tired from lack of sleep. On the distant horizon the coaches appeared like a mirage, coming to rescue us, and I looked out beyond them, across the mountains and hilltops, taking in the dramatic setting. Over on a far crest the grey clouds were parting, breaking for beams of sunlight to shine onto the fields of sheep below. It was beautiful, a picture-perfect scene, and one I should have felt privileged to witness, but it was ruined for me. Crychan’s Challenge had stripped Wales of its majesty and beauty. I would be going home with no desire to ever return to this stunning corner of Britain, plagued by
the memories. Tired and silent, I boarded the coach, asleep before we rattled back over the cattle grid, fleeing to sanctuary in the fields of Elysian.

A few hours later the coaches came to a stop and we stepped off at a motorway service station, walking down the coach steps and entering the strange humdrum of civilization like submariners emerging from a submarine that has been roaming the seabed for months. Dazed, bleary and confused, it felt like being a tourist in a foreign land, gawping at the pleasures of normal life: newspapers, magazines, hot food, fast food, chocolate, freshly ground coffee, people in everyday clothes from all walks of life. I wandered across the car park with Merv and Gill, staggering on weary legs through the throng of commuters and Friday traffic, searching for the relative luxury of a porcelain toilet. Eyes followed and stared as we made our progress, fascinated by what must have looked like 270 scraggy and unwashed tramps flooding the services, stinking of the slime on a sewer rat’s belly. Inside everything felt so clean and polished after our feral woodland existence. In the toilets I caught sight of my reflection in a mirror and balked at the hollow mud-smeared face blinking back at me; no wonder people were staring. In W. H. Smith, Gill and I queued for an ice cream and sat outside on the grass with them, soaking up the sunshine, letting the warmth return feeling and form to our broken bodies.

Looking around, I noticed that the service station seemed particularly busy, heaving with families and cars laden with luggage; bikes clung to roof racks and back windows were obscured by bags and bedding. Children ran up and down outside, skipping between benches and picnic tables with an excited holiday spirit. I sensed a feeling of careless freedom in the air.

‘It’s really busy, isn’t it?’ I wondered out loud. ‘What’s going on that we don’t know about?’ I poked the wooden stick of my now finished ice cream into the grass.

‘I don’t care as long as it doesn’t stop us from getting home, to a shower and my bed,’ Gill replied, closing her eyes and tilting her face towards the sun. ‘This sunshine is lovely, isn’t it? Why couldn’t we have had weather like this for the last five days? Brecon would be a totally different place if the sun ever shone there.’

I continued to watch the merry children skipping outside, their smiling parents, wagging dogs’ tails and cars packed high with luggage, and then the reason for this convivial scene dawned on me: it was Good Friday, the beginning of the long Easter weekend, and everyone here was on holiday. I was so out of touch I hadn’t even known that it was Easter weekend. Stranded in the remote isolation and seclusion of Brecon had completely cut us off, severing my grasp of normal life. I had only been away for five days but it felt like an entire lifetime.

Crychan’s was over. It had been hell, but it was over and we were shattered. It had been far more miserable than even Brecon had promised, but we all passed the end-of-term test and now just a mere week separated us from three weeks of gluttonous freedom beyond the Academy gates.

And during that week, while the Intermediate and Senior intakes spent their days pacing the parade square rehearsing for the Sovereign’s Parade, we suddenly had relatively little to do. After thirteen weeks in the fast lane, life slowed to walking pace and in Eleven Platoon we found ourselves absurdly bored. Confident that we could now iron and polish, SSgt Cox left us to it, while Captain Trunchbull disappeared into her study to write completely bipolar reports on us all. Without someone shouting and ordering us about we suddenly didn’t know how to behave, lost without the regulated guidance we had grown accustomed to. And soon we became bored, bored, bored.