Killing Time at Catterick

by Jan Needle

  Sarnt Williams would’ve, if he’d been able to. Sarnt Williams would have killed me. I’d got the taste though. What could they do to me? More punishment? Bollocks to ’em.

  “PT, then,” I said. “One hour, two, depending on how the sergeants feel that morning. It’s usually a TAB or a boot run or maybe circuits. If you’re in Sarnt Williams’s company you’re fucked, because—”

  I had to stop then, because there was a gale of laughs and shouting. Shocked, they were, pretending to be scandalised. It’s funny, innit – swearing in front of an officer was the big taboo, it was like farting in front of the Queen or some bloody bishop. But officers swear, I’ve heard them, and anyway they must do, it stands to reason – like the Queen must lay a good stiff shit from time to time. But I must admit I’d shocked myself, thrown myself out of synch. Not least because the sergeant’s look was black and stormy, like a bloody hurricane. I’m not stupid. I went for the recovery.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, “that just slipped out. The reason you don’t want to be in the sergeant’s company is not because you’re…you know…but because it’s the best, the boss company, so if you’re lazy, like I am, you get thrashed worse than in the others. The fat blokes all end up at the back, and the rest of us get beasted because we should make sure that everybody’s fit. D’you get it? If some bugger can’t run, or won’t run, it’s your fault, all of you. And everybody hates the Jock bastards, because they don’t even try.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, because it sounded a bit like racism, and officers are very hot on that in theory, in case there’s anybody listening. But Williams approved, and the lieutenant didn’t notice, far too thick. So thick in fact I got another little dig in.

  “It’s worst in winter obviously,” I said. “Okay now, but in January they make you parade outside your CHQ and stand still in your shorts for hours. You can see the officers and senior NCOs inside, having a laugh at you and drinking tea. It’s worse though if you’re fat and podgy like I said, because then they take the piss as well. If you’re unhealthy, see, it’s bad. People look down on you.”

  I looked at all the pasty faces and got a big smile on my mush.

  “The best thing if you really do it hard, is that you feel good,” I said. “After the graft the pay-off. Back in the shower for a good long time, hot water, steam and a bucketful of gel. I got switched on dead early when I joined – I always had ironed DPMs and polished boots to get into. Do ’em the night before, it makes you feel great, no shit. Oops, sorry sir. There I go again!”

  He looked at me like a friendly teacher (if these kids had ever seen one, which wasn’t likely when you think about it), and waved his hand like I should carry on. I was on a roll. I was enjoying it.

  “After that you’ve got an hour to yourself, more if you’re crafty, like. Nine thirty shower, change, and then sit in your room and play computer games, or watch Ballamory if you’re a real sad bastard, there’s no one in England knows more about kids’ and daytime telly crap than squaddies, you can win pub quizzes on it. Then at eleven someone comes and says ‘what you on?’ And you say ‘Oh, I’ve got to go and see Lieutenant Blah, or the dentist, or the clerks about me pay,’ and at half past, maybe, someone else says ‘Warrior crews to report to garage after scoff,’ so then you’ve got to work out another reason, like a brain tumour or a heart attack, to keep you sitting on your arse. I’m telling you, it’s a hard life. Thank God we get well-paid!”

  Wasn’t there nothing I could say to rile this twat lieutenant? The kids were rolling in the aisles and he was smiling like Father fucking Christmas. I didn’t dare to look at Sarnt Williams, there was no percentage there, no way. I just enjoyed the laughing and the whoops and cheers. I’d never spoke like this before about the army. I’d never told it like it was. Not to me mother, anyway. Not to her in any way at all.

  “Lunch,” I said. “Let’s say burgers pie and chips. Baguette on the side, with rice and extra bread and butter. And more chips. There’s salad – there’s even pictures of it on the walls, to show it’s good for you – but I’ve never seen no-one actually eat any, it’s fucking rabbit food. Then from thirteen hundred on you sit around a bit, play football if you’re any good and get pissed on from a great height if you aren’t, then from fourteen thirty, that’s half past two in English, an NCO might try and nab you for a job, unless you can dodge again. Everybody loves that, don’t they Sarge?”

  I risked a look at him and his eyes were fucking gimlets, willing me to die. The NCOs are there to keep you keen, see – if you ain’t, it’s them that’s failures. I was digging him deeper and deeper in the shite, and the trogs were loving it. They were delirious. And he couldn’t make me stop. He was completely bolloxed.

  “Anyway,” I said, “sometimes they’ve got you skewered, haven’t they? Say I’m on CFT Warrior – sent down to the garage, full checks, right? But even that’s not too bad when you get used to it, is it? There’s ways and means.”

  The lieutenant was looking interested, so I pulled back a bit. Didn’t want to drop me in it as well, did I? I winked at them, my “audience,” out of his line of sight.

  “Course, this isn’t me that’s talking now ’cause I’m a good boy, but there’s some awful skivers, Sergeant Williams’ll back me up, it makes his life a ruddy misery sometimes. Let’s say it works like this. This squaddie – anyone but me – gets sent down to do full checks, but he doesn’t have a clue. The other driver might know what he’s doing, it’s just possible, but he’s fast asleep in the back, hung over. So the squaddie looks around to find out if the Colour’s lurking, and if he ain’t, he does a crafty bunk. Hide in me room until parade and fall-out – then fill up on scoff again. After that the meatheads go back to the gym, the pissheads hit the pubs – not an option for you lot, yet – and the bad boys do some smoking in their room, know what I mean, nudge nudge? Keen lads like you’ll box up your kit, polish your boots for morning, and that’s you squared away. The night is young and Catterick’s stretched out like a... like a...”

  I fell about all of a sudden. I lost it. Like a pile of diamonds, or a pile of horse manure? Oh Catterick, world capital of the Shit Night Out! The boggin’ slags, you wouldn’t touch ’em with a bargepole. The Kingo hardmen in the pubs, the Jocks sky high on crack, the Yorkies saving money, the Scousers nicking it, and everywhere the crowds of scruffy civvy wankers, as miserable as prisoners of war. Then all get drunk and back to bed as pissed as arseholes, night after night after fucking night. I’d stopped laughing. It wasn’t really funny any more.

  “You can go to the gym, of course,” I said. “You don’t have to go out drinking, there’s lots to do around the camp, there’s got to be, ain’t there? Then in the morning...SSDD.”

  “I know that one,” said the lieutenant, proud as Punch, the daft soft sod. “It means Same Shit, Different Day. And I say Private Hassan deserves a clap for that talk, chaps, don’t you? Cynical but stimulating! Well done, Private Hassan!”

  He started, and poor old Williams joined in as well, he had no choice, did he? Christ, that must have hurt. I managed to avoid him in the crush to reach the canteen, because Lieutenant Bonehead wanted to have a word with him. I actually heard him congratulate him, on my “performance.” It was rough, he said, raw, a wee bit cheeky – but “pretty darn authentic.”

  Yeah, thanks a bunch, I thought. Plenty there for Sarnt Williams to pay me back for. Oh Jesus – was I going to suffer.

  Four

  I got a call from Sha that night, from Sha and Ashton down in the soft south. I was feeling pretty pissed off anyway – and hung over from mad old Ken next door – and it didn’t bloody help, no way. They sounded high as kites, and Ash was up to his old giggling. Sha said the crack was excellent, the weather was fantastic and they were “really, really missing you, know wha’ ah mean, ya wankah!”

  Fuck off, I thought, that’s all I need, me best mates turning gay. Oh yeah, I said, pull the other one, why don’t you, it’s got bells on. />
  “No seriously,” he said, “you’re doing a great job up there, ain’t you? Keep an eye on him, keep the bugger in your sights. We’ve only got a few weeks more down here, then we’ll have the bastard proper.”

  “What bugger? What bastard? What the fuck you on about, Shahid? The only job I’m doing is getting in the shit. What you on about?”

  “Goughie,” he said. “The great big streak of yellow piss. He’s been telling people you beat up a cop girl. That’s why you got busted back. He’s been on the phone to Bollocks Bowyer. He’s been telling people I’m a fucking terrorist!”

  “You fucking are!” goes Ashton in the background. “Osama Bin Liner, you fucking Paki twat!”

  “I’ll stick a rocket up your arse if you ain’t careful,” Shahid told him. “Listen, Tiny, what do you think? That ginger SAS bloke that went on the train with you is definitely an undercover man, Goughie told Bollocks. And Goughie’s told him everything. Straight up.”

  “But I didn’t hit the cop girl! It was the Colour! Fucking Goughie saw it! I was with him! Why would he say that?”

  “Because it’s true!” went Ashton. “Confess! Repent! Sing halleebleedinglujah!”

  “Ash,” said Sha, “fuck off. This is serious. Look, I’ve got a strawberry condom in me pocket. Go and get some tart to suck it for you.”

  “But I didn’t hit her, Sha,” I said. “I fucking didn’t, he knows it. What did Bollocks say to him?”

  Bollocks, apparently, had told Goughie he was barking, and liable to lose his face. But Bollocks was a friend of Martie, wasn’t he, so Martie would get fed the stupid tale in any case. That was Sha’s theory.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sounds dead on to me. But no one’s going to believe it off of Goughie, are they? I mean – you a terrorist! You joined the fucking army!”

  “Yeah, and I did it for the cover, didn’t I? Even I can see how that would sound. I’m a Muslim, therefore I’m a terrorist, so I join the army and no one’ll know. To the Intelligence Branch that probably sounds intelligent, and to put the tin lid on it, I’m always eating bacon and hanging round outside Mecca drinking lemonade and praying.”

  “You don’t drink lemonade,” went Ashton. “You drink like a fucking fish.”

  “I don’t play bingo either, you prat! Or pray to Allah, come to that! Ashton – go away!”

  Sha wasn’t really worried, in the end, he’d just rung up to have a laugh. But it explained why Gough was avoiding me, I spose, and I wondered if there’d be any comeback. I tell you what though – next time I saw him he’d get my toecap up his arse.

  Next time I did see him, in fact, was quite a long time after, when the trogs had been trained up enough to fire a live round on the ranges. I was Williams’s sidekick as per usual, and all us spare squaddies were there for safety, like, to “keep an eye on things.” It wasn’t dangerous, though, they were always telling us there’d never been an accident, and quite honestly, most new kids thought it was the funfair, with real guns and bullets to make it pretty cool. Plus the added bonus there was lots of live rounds lying in the dirt to take home to impress your mates and family afterwards.

  Sarnt Williams was showing off as usual, and beasting me to show he was the boss. He’d got them all sat down in rows, and lectured them on how guns could kill you and crap like that, and when it wan’t their turn they had to be like cunts in a kindergarten, not move a fucking muscle.

  “Most of all, no talking, yeah? I want dead silence or some one of you’ll end up really dead, geddit? See that range-flag over there? Well if you talk, you crawl to it on your belly, then fucking back again. You don’t believe me? Hassan! Come ’ead and tell ’em ’ow it’s fucking true!”

  I was sitting on me arse but I got up to answer, I knew his funny little ways. Oh no I didn’t though. I wasn’t even fully on me feet before he screamed at me in a mock rage dragged up from nowhere. Hopping up and down, he was. What a bastard.

  “Are you takin’ the piss, Hassan?” he yelled. “Do I look like I’ve got all day! Well you can give us a demo can’t you, you fucking asked for it! Range flag – go!”

  They were all goggling at me, half-smiling at the sergeant’s fun because they had to, and I noticed the one called Jeff, his “Al Bino,” was the only squaddie there who showed no interest. I’d noticed already that he was pretty miserable these days, and the night before, old Ken had told me why. It turned out that his “mother,” the one that he’d been fool enough to say had bought his coat for him, wasn’t his real mum after all, she was a sort of carer. He’d been in a kid’s home till eleven, then farmed out into foster, and it was round the camp like wildfire. He was “Billy No-Mum,” now, or “Little Orphan Annie.” He was “such a fucking loser, his folks gave him away.”

  “Well,” said the sergeant. “What you waiting for? Go! Not on your legs, you twat! Crawl, you knob-end! Crawl!”

  In my best combats too. Creases like knives. Boots bulled up to buggery. I crawled. It was when I reached the range flag I saw Goughie, over with another lot of trogs on another section, and I had my choice. He’d been avoiding me like mad, and there he was – so I could either shout out the big hello from Sha and Ashton to show I knew what he’d been up to, or I could let him get away with it. If I shouted and Williams heard, I was in the shit. If I said nowt, how would he know I knew?

  Logistics. Tactics. Easy. I went on one elbow as I crawled, and made like I were flipping open a mobile, and clamped it to my ear and sneered at him. Then I snapped it shut (my fist), and pulled a finger across my throat, like a butcher’s knife. All done in deadly silence, and even Goughie, thick as pigshit, would get the message. But he’d seen me crawling, he’d seen me being beasted by the sergeant, and he couldn’t keep the smile off of his face. Right, you twat, just keep on fucking smiling. A knife across the neck won’t be the fucking half of it.

  The rest of the range-time was just boring. It was the crap-hats’ first go at it, so they were interested for a while, like you always are, but it soon wears off. Ashton reckons that if all the English “Yardie twats,” the would-be Jamaica gunmen, the black doods and rappermen who make it impossible for a “good class niggah” to walk down the street without a stop’n search – if all of them was given guns at school, by the time they was eleven they’d be bored titless of the fucking boring things. I can strip down an SA80 in three seconds in the pitch black dark with six fingers up my arse. And if I never saw another one again it would be much too bleeding soon.

  One little laugh at dinner-break, though, if you like that sort of thing. There were two veggies in this new mob – two who admitted it anyway, slow learners – and when the “range poo” containers were opened up, the only stuff the cooks had sent out for them to eat was leftover veg from yesterday. One of the daft bastards, a Wigan lad, dared to half-complain, so the sergeant tipped it out onto the grass, for both of them. Then his lancejack got out some spare cheese sandwiches, and made the veggies reach for them. They never got close enough though, did they? Sandwiches on ground, boots on sandwiches, “apologies” all round. Ooh, how we all giggled at his brilliant sense of humour. I tell you, it’s like watching savages. It’s like watching people with no brains.

  I did another piss-up with old Ken that night, and asked him what he thought of the army, honestly. I went into his room to do it, and I took a bottle of brandy that I’d gone down and got at Tesco’s. He was sitting on his bed in a pair of tatty boxers, fat as a Buddha wreathed in smoke, and about half pissed already. I went in cautious, in case I wasn’t welcome, but he didn’t give a bugger, you could tell.

  He raised a buttock first, to ease one out, and just said “You married are you, Hassan?” as if we’d been in the middle of a conversation.

  I shook my head, but didn’t answer. I’d had a text off Bridgie earlier as it happened, asking for the money that I owed her, lying cow. I waved me bottle at him, opened it, and found a cup for me. His guitar was on the floor beside his bed, but he was doing nowt when I went in. Tw
iddling his thumbs.

  “Bleeding right too, son,” he said, “you keep it that way. It don’t go together in my experience, marriage and the army.” He took a drink, and coughed. He sucked on his cigarette till the filter went red hot and nearly melted. He coughed some more, and dropped the dog-end in an ashtray, where it smoked and stank. He laughed.

  “Marriage and anything, in actual fact,” he said. “Men and women, that’s the problem. Without them two ingredients it would be a damn good thing all round. We’re incompatible.”

  “I won’t get married, Ken,” I said. “I can guarantee it. No normal girl would even look at me.”

  His belly jigged about a bit at that, and he lit another fag.

  “No guarantee at all, that ain’t,” he said. “There ain’t no normal girls in Catterick to start with, they’re so desperate they’ll fuck anything that moves. It’s the wives you want to go for, though, the wives are easy, ask your Uncle Ken. The secret is to screw ’em when the old man’s posted, and drop ’em fast when Johnnie comes marching home again. Deny everything, and if anyone gets hurt it isn’t you. Are you with me?”

  Not really, but what do I know, eh? Sure as shit unfaithful didn’t mean a thing to Bridgie, and if I got hurt, well fuck my luck. But Ken had lost his interest now. He’d picked up his guitar and was strumming through the last verse of a song I’d heard before. A soldier’s song about a lad that’s buggered off and left his wife and kid to starve while he goes finding glory. And then comes marching home again. Well, not exactly marching…

  You haven’t an arm and you haven’t a leg,

  Haroo, haroo.

  You haven’t an arm and you haven’t a leg,

  Haroo.

  You haven’t an arm and you haven’t a leg,

  You’re an eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg.

  You’ll have to sit out with a bowl and beg –