Killing Time at Catterick

by Jan Needle

  Then it got sectarian, in a way – one group of Proddie Glasgows who’d been supporting England (for real) got turned on by the Celtic fans. They teamed up with the little Welsh contingent (“Free Wales with every twenty litres,” as the petrol slogan used to say), but some Irish Guardsmen decided they hated the Taffs more than they liked the Catholics and soon it was a free for all.

  Not everyone was fighting. Not me, for starters – I like my anger personal – and it was easy to avoid if you kept your brain switched on. I quit after about ten minutes, but before I got back to the lines I was overtaken by lads from the Naafi who were foaming at the bleeding mouth, and then I passed them rushing back into the fight again two minutes later with knives they’d picked up in their rooms, and madness in their pissed-up little eyes. Not long after that the barking started, and the RMPs turned up in droves and went in with the dogs. Then blokes came running back towards the blocks with blood and slobber on them, and their trackies torn to buggery.

  After that, more or less, it became a spectator sport. Lots of us just stood about and watched the dogs and MPs chase the squaddies, then sometimes the squaddies chase each other or the dogs. Big Dave told me that the corporals in the mess were having the same fight on their home ground, and he said he’d seen Mart Martin smack another lancejack with a waffle. Yeah, a waffle, not a bottle, that’s what Big Dave said, and I didn’t like to comment. But I did hear Sarnt Williams forcing some lads back when he saw them sneaking off. “Oi,” he said. “Don’t you know there’s a war on? Go and get the Jock cunts, you lazy little bastards!”

  It was reckoned later that the fight went on for two full hours, but that don’t seem very likely in my book. But there was skirmishes and boozing late into the night though, I’ll grant you that, and Catterick that evening was not the sort of place you’d want to take your granny for a cocktail, even though a good half of camp couldn’t get passes out for love or money. The shouting and the smashing up of furniture in the rooms and corridors got right on Ashton’s tits because of his mood, and when I saw him he was furious and kept muttering that we ought to tell the papers, to let the outside world see just what shit the army really is. He’d been on the phone for two days on and off, to the fiancée mainly, and the bank, and quite honestly he didn’t know what to do.

  “Our boys!” he said. “That’s what they’re always on about, the Daily Mail and shit, our marvellous, wonderful, fantastic fucking boys. And they treat us like animals, and that’s what we fucking are! Our fucking, fucking boys! It needs shutting down, Ti. It all needs fucking shutting down.”

  And not much later, when he’d cooled off a bit, and I’d persuaded him to have a suck or two out of a tin, he said, “I’m running, mate. I’ve had enough. I’m gone.”

  “Shit, Ash,” I said. “But why, though? I mean, like, where to?”

  “Why? Because I’ve changed me mind, you dick. Why? D’you really have to fucking ask? I can’t do it, Ti. I can’t stay here no more, I’m off for bleeding good. I’ll go up and hide with Carole and the girls in Newcastle, the RMPs won’t look for me up there. The girls’ll put me up okay till Manchester’s clear of the bastards, won’t they? They’ll see me right.”

  “She’ll bleeding kill you, mate.”

  “Who? Carole? Why?”

  “Not Carole, you twat, bleeding Sonia. You’ve lost your honeymoon already. What good will it do to go on the run? She’ll see you even less, won’t she?”

  They’d sprung the honeymoon disaster in the way they do these things to squaddies – just in a sudden meeting that they’d called us to, the whole damn lot of us, not just poor old Ashton. We’d been sat down and left waiting in a room for half an hour, then an officer and a sergeant had waltzed in, all smiles, and announced that “normal scheduling was up in the air” – i.e. cancelled – because we “might be moving out.”

  Moving out, sir? Where, sir? Why, sir? When? No answer, there’s never any answer – but mysterious smiles, as usual. We’d find out “soon enough.”

  Ashton had went hairless.

  “Soon enough, sir! But I’ve got leave, sir! It’s booked, sir! I’m going on my honeymoon to Cyprus! I’ve had the dates for weeks!”

  The bringer of bad tidings was only a second lieutenant, about ten years old, but smugger than a newly-polished arsehole. He’d looked at Ash like he was the lowest form of life.

  “Getting married are we, Private? Is this official? Do the office know?”

  Like buggery they did. Marriage wasn’t in it, for the moment, it was not even official in Ashton’s book. Just the honeymoon. His fury grew. You could see it building up inside him. His tongue was tying up in knots.

  “But I’m off, sir! It’s been cleared for weeks! I’m going Cyprus with me girlfriend!”

  “Your girlfriend or your wife? Is there some confusion in your mind?”

  Everyone was laughing, naturally – kick a bugger when he’s down. Ashton tried to speak again, but lost his words.

  “But sir,” he said. “But sir, I mean – but sir, the whole fu…but it were all fixed up, sir. The whole… I’ve paid!”

  Oh how happy did that make the young lieutenant! How happy.

  “We’ll I’m sorry, Private, you know the rules. You’re in the army 24/7, you can’t just take time off because you fancy it. Good heavens – we’re at war. They need us out there. They need fresh blood, fresh bone, fresh sinew. We can’t stop so that you can get some shagging in, can we, be reasonable! This could be your chance to be a hero, and think how proud your girlfriend’d be then! Much more exciting than a honeymoon, I can tell you.”

  End on a joke, that’s the golden rule. The unfunnier the better (though that one was worth the laugh it got, fair play). But it was the end, Ashton didn’t get the chance to witter on for longer, the sergeant made it clear he’d play the heavy if need be, the time had come. We trooped out in silence, and Ashton was the silentest of all.

  Over the next two days, though, he forced himself not to just give it up completely. He spoke to everyone he could, hung round the offices, wheedled the liaison clerk, the RSM (tried to see him; failed), he even thought of writing to his MP, except he didn’t know he had one, or if he did do, who it was or how he could find out. The upshot was, the simple fact, the inevitable, unvarnished truth – he was fucked. It had started with a minor row with some pay clerk corporal about his overdraft, we were all agreed on that. But you can’t ever prove it, can you? It’s just one of those little army things.

  After the riot, as we sat drinking Stella in his room and listening to the chaos still going on outside, he brought me up to speed. “I’ve been onto the travel agents three times again today,” he told me. “I tried to get my money back, or switch the dates, they told me to piss off. That’s why I’m going, Tiny. Too many bastards saying just piss off. Well I am. I’m leggin’ it.”

  “Life of crime, mate,” I said. “Ain’t that what you said you was afraid of?”

  I thought that he might dob me one, but then he laughed.

  “D’you know, mate,” he said, “I joined up first to keep me from a life of bleeding crime. I had to earn a living and I couldn’t do nowt else, there weren’t nothing. Now I’m destitute, even if I fucking stay. I can’t afford to fucking stay. Sixteen grand a year, mate, and I’m meant to get married on it. I’m gone. I’m getting out of here.”

  Like I’ve said before, when Ash reckons to do something, it gets done. I had a growing feeling in my stomach. I was getting right pissed off.

  But I didn’t have another word to say.

  Five

  Shahid’s case, when we finally got to see him again on Sunday night, turned out to be completely different. We hadn’t seen it happen, but he’d been lifted by the RMPs on Friday and given five to pack a bag, they’d been as crafty as a gang of shithouse rats. The story later, that went round the lines, was he’d been fingered by Goughie as a Muslim terrorist, and was took off to be shot. We didn’t buy that shite, we knew Shahid too well, but
we wondered how he’d wriggle out, big style. And in fact, he said – he’d gone to get promoted.

  He came back into my room about eight o’clock, where me and Ash were drinking, and he looked pretty pale, for an Asian. Ashton was still depressed – he’d picked a fight with a lancejack office clerk after the Sunday service and was probably on a charge next morning – and I was getting that way too. The whole deal seemed just pointless, ridiculous, it was like a bear pit, not a bleeding army. And I’d heard as well that old Ken Rogers had just got “sent away.”

  “Christ, where you been, Sha?” I said. “We thought you’d been locked up in the fucking Tower and that was that. Didn’t they believe you were in love with Alkie Ada after all?”

  He threw his bag down on a bed, and picked up a can of lager.

  “I ain’t been no farther than the other side of town,” he said. “I tell you, when they do exotic, they do it bloody marvellous. They didn’t even have halal meat for me.”

  “You don’t eat halal,” said Ashton. “What you on about?”

  “It’s the principle, you twat! They were trying to butter me up, weren’t they? They wanted to get me on their side. And they couldn’t even work out that Muslims don’t eat roast pork.”

  “But you do eat pork,” Ashton gives it. “I’ve fucking seen you!”

  “Oh shut up, Ash,” I said. “If you don’t get it, just shut up, why don’t you? There’s more Stella in me locker, get some out. Shahid – who did it to you? Was it Goughie? Who was there? Was it the ginger bastard?”

  He looked at me as if I’d gone stupid, too.

  “Were it fuck as like. I told you, din’t I? It was the Captain, and two blokes from somewhere else. In civvies, but I figured out they must be special branch or summat, although I don’t think they’d ever met a proper Paki face to face. They asked me if I spoke Arabic. I said a bit of Urdu, I din’t bother with the loonies at the mosque no more. That seemed to perk ’em up a bit. They asked me what I thought about religion.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Ash. “Lecture time. I bet you bored the bastards half to death.”

  “Hope so. I don’t think so, though. They seemed to be a bit pissed off more like it. I said I thought anyone who believed in God was pretty much insane in my opinion, whatever name they called the bastard by. The OC went bright red. But one of the civvy men goes ‘At least Christians don’t blow their fellow men to pieces, do they,’ and I gives it, ‘I thought that’s what the army paid us for.’”

  “Fuck me,” said Ashton. “You din’t really did you, Sha? You bullshitter.”

  “Well, it were something like that,” said Shahid. “We talked round and round in bloody circles, it went on for ages. Most of the time I din’t know what they were trying to say, it was like in riddles. They asked me what I thought of terrorists, I know that much. And if I thought suicide bombers had a point. We know all about suicide bombers, us Pakis. You ask anyone.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “What did you say?”

  “I said I were a bloody Asian, not insane. I said that’s why I joined the army, weren’t it – because I were worried sick about poor dicks who listened to the Stone Age mullahs and blew up people in the street and fucking babies in the name of fucking Allah. Din’t say fucking, come to think of it, but I nearly did. I were getting kind of mad with ’em although I still didn’t realise what they were driving at, exactly. Then the OC put me right, poor bastard. I hadn’t really noticed till then what a prat he is, ain’t he? He is really, really thick.”

  “They all are,” Ashton said. “That’s how they get the job. They’re mental.”

  “Yeah well,” Sha goes. “He used that word an’ all. He told me Muslims are mental, borderline insane, he actually said that, then he said, ‘not all of them, of course, not all of you!’ And then he goes, ‘you must agree?’ The funny thing is, he was trying to make it better. He was trying to make me understand the problem. Then he must’ve saw my face, and he goes: ‘I’m not a racist, Khan, of course, but...’”

  Even Ashton fell about at that.

  “Not a racist but what, for Christ’s sake?” he hooted.

  “He lost his thread a bit,” Sha said. “He were embarrassed, like. He wan’t a racist, he goes on, but lots of ‘my lot’ were, maybe. Well, pretty sort of crazy, anyway. Funny ideas. Worshipped a sort of... The upshot was, the army needed guys like me. Role models. Example to the fruitloops to get real. Did I agree? The others didn’t help him out much, they looked at him as if he was a proper twat, I were almost tempted to tell them I agreed with him. Then one of them come out with it. The giveaway that they were special branch or something.”

  He necked the tin and took a good long pull.

  “‘If it’s really why you joined the army, Mr Khan,’ he gives it, ‘if it’s because of worrying about extremists an’ all that, how would you like to do a little bit more? For your country. I take it you see yourself as British, do you?’”

  “Cheeky bastard,” Ashton says. “I bet he wan’t born in fucking Oldham like you wa’!”

  “Mister Khan though, eh,” I said. “It’s a start Sha, innit?”

  Sha carried on, despite the piss-takes.

  “‘A little bit more what?’ I asks him. ‘A bit more persuading Muslims to join the army? Or just spying on my mates? I see myself as English because I bloody am, and I joined to show some people we’re not all fucking mad. Is that what you’re saying? Sleeping with the fucking enemy?”

  “Good film that,” said Ash. “Is that the one where you get to see her cunt?”

  “If you want to see a cunt,” I said, “look in the mirror, Ashton, the professor’s talking. Go on Sha. What’d he say then? I’m listening.”

  Sha shook his head. And Ashton only grinned.

  “Oh, he asked me if I knew there was a war on. A fucking war on terror, you know, east v. west. Democracy. Teaching human rights to backward nations, great things like that. I said I didn’t know what great things he meant. Half a million civilians killed in Iraq, maybe? Bombing raids from unmanned drones, wedding parties our speciality? What’s that teaching anyone? Except they’ve got to fight us to the fucking death. I asked him if he’d ever thought of that.”

  He took another slug of lager.

  “And then I said we’re going to lose,” Sha said. “Even the Yanks have give a sort of date, which means they’re moving out whatever state they leave the country in, and we stay till then or even later, their loyal fucking poodle. We’re only hanging on to save a bit of face, we had no pissing right to be there in the first place, and the more Muslims get killed, the more Muslims’ll try and kill us in revenge. And fighting an invader ain’t illegal, in anybody’s book.”

  “Pissing hell,” said Ashton, when Shahid ran out of steam. “Did they call a redcap in? You’ll get done for treason you will, Sha.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. They started muttering and mumbling, and one asked me how I could claim to be a loyal soldier if I thought we’d got the whole thing wrong, and how dare I say it wa’ illegal which it bloody wan’t, and how the fuck would I know? I stared him out. I said I’d changed my mind, and a loyal soldier who saw something wrong were duty bound to say so, surely, it were logical. I said I joined up because I thought we weren’t the enemy, we wa’ there to do a proper job, and if I’d realised… Oh I don’t know, I sort of packed up then, I were getting me knickers in a twist. I thought one of them wa’ going to hit me, in actual fact. He went black, it were amazing.”

  “Black?” said Ashton. “I knew they couldn’t be completely bad!”

  “Fuck off, daft twat,” said Shahid, but he had to laugh. “Anyway, you ain’t heard the best bit yet. The OC agreed with me, the gutless pillock! He said a soldier had to think, it was how you could pick a good ’un from the rest. And he said he’d brought me in to make me up to lancejack!”

  This was a real stunner. Me and Ashton goggled.

  “He didn’t?” Ashton breathed. “What, you a lance? Lance Corporal
Fucking Khan?”

  Shahid emptied the Stella can. And crushed it with both hands.

  “Not likely, is it? I’d like to say I turned it down, but I never got the offer. He just said he’d brought me in to – and told me what I’d missed because of my attitude! The other two nodded like two clockwork arseholes, but they didn’t dare to smile. Then the OC said ‘Better luck next time,’ and they both muttered something and he went bright red again. From where I were sitting, I’d say my future in the army don’t look very bright. What d’you reckon, lads?”

  He clicked a ring-pull open and took a hefty slug. He didn’t seem right bothered.

  Ashton said another funny thing. It must’ve been his day for it.

  “You’re better out of it, ask me,” he said. “Whatever they say, they hate your lot worst of all, deep down. But just because you keep your arseholes pointing west to pray, don’t mean you’re arseholes, does it? ’Ave you ever thought of driving cabs?”

  Shahid smiled.

  “What about your uncle what nicks buses? Could he get me one, if you have a word with him?”

  “They wouldn’t let you go, though, Sha,” I said. “It would look terrible for the army racial quota figures, wouldn’t it? Bloody Ada, Ash’d be the only black twat left, except for Wasambu-Sambo – and he’s a bleeding foreigner!”

  “Aye, well I ain’t hanging round if Shahid goes,” laughed Ashton. “If they can see you as a lancejack, Sha, they’d make me up to general if I was the last one left, wouldn’t they! Oh Christ, the responsibility! No way. No fucking way…”

  Which only left one question, as far as we could see. We’d need more Stella. We’d need to put our bloody minds to it.

  Three Ways to Leave the Army

  One

  That was it, really, for all of us – although I’m not saying there was anything dicey about the way we did it, you never know who’s listening do you, and you never know how long the army’s memory is. The fact is that we did. We got the bullet. Three bullets, three of us. It was pretty neat.