Soldier I

by Kennedy, Michael

  As I stepped through the gate, a rickshaw driver gestured to me. I winced violently at the thought of being clattered through the streets on the hard seat of that solid-wheeled springless contraption. 'You must be fucking joking, mate,' I said to him, but I doubt he understood. I stood there, my rear end throbbing like a cross-Channel ferry's engine. Suddenly I saw a movement out the corner of my eye – and there they all were, waiting for me: an ambulance, CBF, the colonel of the legal services. I nearly collapsed with relief.

  CBF approached. 'Hello, Sergeant. Did it hurt?'

  The understatement of the decade. I just looked blank, didn't answer.

  'Right! You'd better get on this ambulance and we'll take you to BMH.'

  My entrance into BMH was made in total secrecy. I was taken round the back to the tradesmen's entrance, and up in a service lift. At the top, the stretcher was wheeled into a sterile wing of the private officers' suite. They did not want it to become known that a member of the SAS had been in trouble.

  I was put into bed face down. A medical orderly told me, 'The hospital dermatologist will be along in a few minutes to investigate the wound.' And with that he disappeared. I was still in acute pain, but the friendliness of the surroundings began to act like soothing balm.

  When the dermatologist arrived, he looked down at the wound and exclaimed, 'I've never seen a wound like this in the whole of my Army service! Can I take a photograph of it for my records? It really is a unique specimen.'

  'Well, I've been humiliated enough already today, so I suppose a photograph won't make any difference now. You can send a copy to Reg the medic back at camp for his photo album.'

  The dermatologist went away and returned a few minutes later with his camera. He took shots from different angles, at one point placing a biro pen on my thigh to get the scale. As he flitted around the bed he muttered, 'This is a real prize specimen.' Snap. 'This is definitely one for the archives.' Snap. 'My colleagues must see this one.' Snap. I consoled myself with the thought that if I didn't do anything else with my life, at least I'd made medical history. As for treatment, all the dermatologist could say was, 'There's not much we can do, I'm afraid. It's got to heal on its own. You'll have to spend a few days in BMH on your stomach. There's no point putting any dressing on it. It needs plenty of fresh air. Do you want any painkiller?'

  'Yeah, give me a shot of morphine, but make sure it's in the lower thigh.'

  After he'd gone, the medical orderly returned and said, 'CBF's coming to see you.'

  CBF in all his glory duly appeared. 'Do you realize what you've done, Sergeant?'

  'How do you mean?'

  'What on earth possessed you to become involved in this escapade? Do you realize the publicity it could attract?'

  I just looked at him and said, 'Yeah, I know. It's real headline material: the only sergeant in the British Army with twelve stripes – three on each arm and six on the backside. I'm going to sell my story to the News of the World when I get back!'

  CBF looked rather shocked. 'I hope you are not serious, Sergeant.' His voice, ringing with uncertainty, tailed off. He disappeared, unsure of whether I was joking or not.

  I remained there a further week, being looked after by my own personal captain from the QA's – the Queen Alexandra's Nursing Corps. My own personal nurse. She really had the tender touch. It was almost worth getting whipped for. Apart from the captain I saw no one else. I was left to my own devices and my own thoughts. After a week I was told that I was fit enough to make it back to the UK and that I would leave on a hospital plane from Kai Tak airport the next day. I drifted off to sleep, happy at the prospect of going home.

  12

  A Visit from the Colonel

  I awoke to hear voices in the distance. I was lying face down on the bed, hot, not quite sweating, but covered in a fine film of body moisture. My nose was blocked, pressed into the pillow. I'd been breathing too long through my mouth; my throat and lips were like burnt cardboard. I turned my head to one side and coughed away the congestion in my chest. The voices were closer now. Must be the orderlies coming to prepare me for the journey to Kai Tak airport and then back to the good old UK.

  Good old UK? I wasn't so sure that I was relishing the prospect after all. First there would be an extremely uncomfortable flight lasting several hours, throughout which I'd be lying on my stomach on a stretcher strapped to a rack on a medical C-130. Then, once I was home and had had a couple of weeks' R & R, I'd have to face the wrath of the Colonel. The big interview! My future in the balance after the drama of Hong Kong.

  Doors were banging. The orderlies were shouting. I couldn't quite make out what they were saying. I shifted slightly on the bed. The muscles in my buttocks and upper thighs were locked solid, as rigid as ships' girders. Something wasn't quite right. Something was out of sync. It was like hearing a blackbird, fooled by a neon streetlight, singing its morning song in the dead of the night. I began to prise my eyelids open.

  'Come on, you lot, out of the pits! Every able-bodied man to assemble in the yard at 0600 hours. You've got five minutes.'

  'What the hell…?' I finally managed to lever open my bleary eyes and look around. The room was full of coughing, cursing, fumbling shapes. I slid my hand down the side of my body and gingerly fingertipped my buttocks as if feathering a sleeping baby's head. Nothing! Satin smooth. Not a mark. Then it dawned. Ward 11! The early-morning run!

  This I was going to relish. Thursday. Action at last after six days of lethargy and boredom! I jumped into my trainers and shorts and trotted to join the rest downstairs. They were all there: doctors, male nurses and patients. That was the system. The doctors had to be seen to be leading from the front. They had to show a good example – a healthy mind in a healthy body and all that. It was part of the occupational therapy.

  Twenty minutes and three miles later, I'd outstripped the lot of them, I was on the finishing line way ahead of the rest. I grabbed my chance. As the first of the medics puffed into sight around the last hundred metres, I gave it Sickener 1 for all I was worth. 'Come on, you lazy bastards! You should be fitter than me. You do this every morning. I'm supposed to be a burnt-out alkie and I've left you standing!' I beasted them like a veteran instructor, relishing my moment of glory. 'What kept you? I'm thirty-eight. I'm fifteen years older than some of you guys and I still came in way ahead of you. You should be fitter than me. I haven't been running for ten days.'

  They weren't amused.

  Nor was the doctor I bumped into coming down the corridor later in the day. He looked tired, stressed and overworked. I said to him, 'What's up, doc, got problems?'

  'This job is really getting to me,' he muttered. 'I'm up to here with the pressure of work.'

  He had fallen headlong into the trap. I lowered my voice, and with a concerned look and in hushed tones of mock-sympathy I enquired, 'Do you want to sit down and talk about it?'

  A psychiatrist! Depressed! And we were the ones who were supposed to have the problems!

  A sense of humour works wonders – the best therapy imaginable. I didn't fancy lying there for days on end like an inanimate cabbage. That would be too much like toeing the line – far too boring, far too predictable. I sensed another opportunity a few days later, when the hospital Colonel was about to make his weekly visitation. He would normally sweep around the ward in magisterial style, his sycophantic entourage clucking behind him, enquiring of people lying on their beds or sitting in their chairs how they were feeling. I secretly had a word with the other lads in the ward, then primed the newly arrived lancecorporal from the Royal Irish Rangers, who'd been given the bed nearest the door. 'Hey, Shaun. When the Colonel comes in, bring the ward to attention. He expects that. It'll go down well on your report.'

  I went back to lie on my bed, thinking Shaun would forget all about it – he was after all looking a bit dazed. I was wrong. Half an hour later, the Colonel marched in. Without a moment's hesitation, Shaun leapt to his feet, roaring, 'Ward! Ward! Shun!'

  As
one man, all the alkies shot to attention with a stiff salute and stood there rigid. The Colonel, an astonished look on his face, was rendered nearly speechless. 'Er… Oh. Very good, chaps. Very good. Carry on.'

  You didn't need a sense of humour for the videos they showed us, they were funny enough in themselves. They were meant to convey the evils of drink and inspire us to mend our ways. It was difficult taking them seriously. There was the Jimmy Greaves' story – a famous footballer hits the net, then hits the bottle. Then the Glasgow rubber men – drunks staggering down Buchanan Street in broad daylight. When this particular one was shown I used to play 'Spot the Jock'. Jimmy the Jock who'd saved Ginge on the death march claimed that he had a leading role in one of the street scenes. And finally, the third video, the main attraction, the X Certificate horror film: cirrhosis! Full technicolour close-ups and cross-sections of gory livers – dark red healthy ones wobbling on mortuary slabs and then alcohol-sodden ones looking like jellies at a kids' party that someone had been sick over. Aversion therapy, they called it – just like a scene from A Clockwork Orange. Or it would have been if anyone paid any attention.

  'The liver becomes congested with blood, first grows very large, and then begins to shrink and harden…'

  The film quality was poor – the soundtrack scratchy, the pictures flickering and popping.

  'Haemorrhage from the stomach may arise, the blood being vomited or passed through the bowel…'

  It was like an out-of-date training film for student doctors, the medical equivalent of Mrs Beeton's cookbook.

  'The urine becomes scanty and turbid. Ascites or dropsy of the peritoneal cavity is very often present…'

  I looked around the room at the other half-dozen lads in the audience. Two were asleep, one was staring out of the window, one was reading a magazine and the other two were watching the film with dramatic indifference.

  Phase two of the treatment was nearing its end: ten days of lectures, videos and interviews, and an LFT count every morning. The results of the count were transferred to a graph. If the line dropped below the critical threshold and stayed below, they considered you fit enough for release – physically fit, that is. If any psychological stress fractures were detected, that was an altogether different matter. And they were clever. They shifted, prodded, probed, searched the defences, sought the chink in the mental armour, X-rayed the brain for hairline cracks. If any cracks were found and they were serious enough, the brain would be stamped 'Rejected' and cast down the chute into the Stygian depths of Ward 5 below.

  Twelve per cent of casualties in any major battle are psychiatric cases, soldiers suffering from combat stress. For many, the symptoms are temporary and manageable. The rest are the ones with unseen wounds. You can see an arm in a sling, a leg in plaster, but you can't see their wounds. They are shunned by society with even greater revulsion than those who have obviously horrific wounds – severed limbs, faces grossly disfigured by burns, sightless eyes. The ones with the mental wounds are often the ones who have done and seen things that the ordinary man in the street couldn't even begin to conceive of, in order to safeguard the well-being of that same man and to allow him to continue walking down that same street in freedom. Their reward is to be entombed in their own minds, like a dead Pharaoh's followers doomed to remain in their master's burial chamber, deep in the centre of a pyramid, listening in horror as the sand that held the great building blocks in check trickles away and the stones come crashing down to seal off the passageways to the world outside.

  Some of the characters in Ward 11 looked like prime candidates for demotion to Ward 5, first-class specimens just waiting to slide down the chute. One of them had built up an irrational grudge against his orderly officer. One day, while the officer was doing his regular rounds, he'd jumped on top of him out of a two-storey window and broken his collarbone. Another character was worse still. He'd attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. He'd been in Northern Ireland and couldn't stand the stress. The crazy thing was, when I questioned him further, I discovered he hadn't even been on the streets: he was a mechanic with the REME! Yet a third bloke, only about twenty-three years old, had a severe case of the DTs. He had to be kept locked away. He was only ever let out to go to the toilet, when two orderlies would march him through the ward, his feet dragging along the floor, his body shaking like a leaf.

  My case seemed minor compared to these people's. I should never have been there in the first place. I'd already proved I was physically fitter than the rest. I now had to prove I was mentally fit. Tomorrow, I would face the big one. My interview and assessment with the chief psychiatrist. It all now depended on one man.

  13

  The Embassy Siege

  The interview was preying on my mind. I'd tossed and turned all night, and now a fog of tiredness clouded my brain. I took some deep breaths of air to try to clear my thoughts. When I reached the office I knocked on the door sharply and confidently, just once, summoning up some strength by doing so, letting the person inside know I was a force to be reckoned with.

  'Enter.' It was more formal, more authoritative than the polite, 'Come in'.

  I went inside. The owner of the voice was speaking on the telephone. I looked at the chair. He caught my glance and gestured to me to remain standing exactly where I was. That was ominous. He continued with the seemingly leisurely conversation on the phone. Delaying tactics. Power games. I'd seen it all before. They try to belittle you by showing who's in control. The big desk, the impressive chair, your small chair, lower than his – it's all part of the strategy.

  The conversation finished and the Colonel put the phone down. He paused for a moment, then picked up a thick sheaf of papers from his desk and waved them furiously in the air. 'Look at these, Sergeant! These signals from Hong Kong, they're all about you!' As he spoke the word 'you' his voice rose several decibels. He flung the signals towards the rear of the room. They hit the back wall with a crash and fluttered to the floor in an untidy heap. 'We are the people who go into these places, do the job, keep quiet about the job, and at the end we leave the job silently, and we return to the UK as if nothing has happened. What do you have to say in your defence?'

  I launched into my plea of mitigation modelled on the one in Kowloon Court, focusing on the self-defence angle and ending with, 'You don't have to go to the jungles of Malaya to find a jungle.'

  The Colonel pondered for a while, then said, 'Well, Sergeant. You should not have been there in the first place. But there are certain mitigating circumstances surrounding this case. Therefore, although I could RTU you for life and you would never return to the SAS, I am going to RTU you for only eighteen months.'

  So it was back to the Royal Engineers, back to Southwood Camp.

  I decided to start off as I meant to go on. I would seize the psychological initiative and gain the upper hand. I knew the very first thing they would do would be to order me to get a short back and sides. This was their way of humiliating people, suppressing the individuality. I beat them to it by having my hair shaved virtually down to the wood before I left Hereford.

  As I strode confidently through the gate of the RE depot, a regimental police corporal bawled, 'Hey, you! Come here!'

  I thought, he can't be shouting at me. I haven't been shouted at for ten years! I looked behind me. I couldn't see anyone else.

  'Yes, you! Come here!'

  I looked behind me again. Still no one there. 'Right, you bastard,' I thought, as I walked up to him. He was in his little sentry box, behind his little pigeonhole. He opened the window, about to say something more, but before he could utter another word I grabbed him by the throat, looked him straight in the eye and snapped, 'You! I'm a sergeant from the SAS. Where's the RSM's office?'

  He suddenly turned pale. 'Sorry, Sarge. I thought you were one of the new recruits,' he mumbled apologetically as he furiously dusted himself down.

  I strode into the RSM's office and announced boldly, 'I'm posted in from the SAS.'

  The RSM looke
d up slowly from the carefully printed duty roster he was studying. 'You mean you're here on a course, are you?'

  'No. I'm posted in.'

  'You mean you're on a course.'

  'No. I'm posted in.' I was determined to give them a hard time.

  'Where are your documents?'

  'Have they not sent them yet?'

  'No. We haven't got any documents. Wait here.'

  He went off to check with the Colonel.

  'Right. Come in and see the Colonel.'

  I strode into the Colonel's office, and it started all over again.

  'Are you here on a course?'

  'No. I'm posted in.'

  'Where are your documents?'

  'I haven't got any documents.'

  'Where are you from?'