Soldier I

by Kennedy, Michael

'I'm posted in from the SAS.'

  'Are you on a course?'

  'No, I'm posted in!' I must have seemed like a PoW giving only name, rank and number.

  'Oh, well, what rank are you?' The Colonel was struggling to inject some logic into my presence.

  'I'm a sergeant in the SAS.'

  'No, in the RE.'

  'I don't know. I haven't been in the RE for ten years.'

  'Right. We'd better find out what your rank was in the RE.' He rang up RE records at Brighton, put the phone down and said, 'Well, Sergeant. I've got some bad news for you.'

  'What's that?'

  'You're now a lance-corporal in the RE.'

  'I can't be a lance-corporal at my age. I'm thirty-three! I'm a substantive sergeant in the SAS. You can stuff that idea for a start!'

  I argued all the pros and cons for the next fifteen minutes, emphasizing my point of view by banging on the table at regular intervals. In the end, the Colonel couldn't hack it any more. He called out, 'Captain Edwards. Come in here. Send this man on three weeks' leave while we sort out his case.'

  They would no doubt soon find my precious documents. Without documents the British Army would grind to a standstill. From when you join the Army to when you leave, or die in between, every single second of your life is documented. Every precise detail is recorded. More effort goes into keeping accurate files than went into winning the Second World War.

  The irony is that no matter how thorough the paperwork, like everything else it is subject to human error. While I was away on leave, word obviously got around the RE depot about the new upstart recently arrived from the SAS, and the spineless wonders in the sergeants' mess evidently decided to try and teach the new boy a lesson. They tried to recall me from leave and put me on guard duty on Christmas Day

  1977. There's no way I'm going to work Christmas, I thought. There's no way they're going to rip me off. I'll beat them at their own game.

  I ignored the phone calls and stayed at home. Conveniently catching flu, I made damn sure I got my insurance. They'd obviously decided to put the recall in writing so that it could be entered in my documents for a potential future disciplinary hearing. An OHMS telegram duly went out on the morning of 24 December saying, 'Report back to Southwood Camp for duty by 0830 hours 25th, repeat 25th, December 1977.'

  The trouble was they addressed the telegram not to me but to my sixty-six-year-old father, a Dunkirk veteran. He'd been on the Reserve for ten years after the war, but he certainly wasn't expecting anything like this at his stage in life. He took the telegram to the local police station and asked them to sort it out. The military wires started buzzing, and an hour later he received a message from the embarrassed authorities to say that he wasn't needed after all and that the telegram was really meant for his son. They'd tried to knock my morale and it hadn't worked. They'd ended up looking complete fools.

  I returned to Southwood three weeks after Christmas and once again stood in front of the Colonel.

  'We have now got the blueprint of your career.' His voice sounded enthusiastic, as if he'd been primed by a higher authority. 'I have looked in your documents and I have found that you have done an HGV 2 driving course. Do you realize that with that HGV licence, if you do a month's theory study on MT regulations and pass the Driver REB1 course, you'll be qualified up to Regimental Sergeant Major in the RE?'

  'That's all very well, but what's my rank right now?'

  'Well, for the duration of the course, we'll make you up to Local Sergeant.'

  'Thank you very much.' Local Sergeant unpaid and unwanted, I thought as I quietly closed the Colonel's door behind me.

  I passed the course with ease. I was then called back in to see the Colonel.

  'We've got a little job for you. We've had an officer cry off from running a recruit troop. Would you like to become an acting troop officer to run the troop?'

  I quite fancied the idea of playing God. It meant that I had beaten the career boys back in Hereford to a commission. Visions of going down to the station with a four-tonner to pick up a batch of Sid Vicious lookalikes with purple socks, leather jackets and razor blades and safety pins through their ears, and then beasting them into shape, were rather appealing. I said, 'I'll run a mini-selection. Their feet won't touch the ground.'

  'Carry on, Sergeant.'

  I must have achieved some kind of record. I went from sergeant in the SAS down to lance-corporal Royal Engineers up to acting troop officer. All within two months!

  After eight months as acting troop officer with a sergeant, a corporal and three lance-corporals pandering to my every whim, I was told an officer was moving in to take over my role and I would then be secondin-command. The character turned up: warrant officer second class. He wasn't a bad bloke really, but I resented his authority. I decided to shortcircuit the developing personality clash; I took him to one side and said, 'I can't hack this. I've been running this troop very well without you for eight months. I'm off.' I went to the nearest telephone, rang up the second-in-command of the SAS and said, 'You've got to get me out of here or else I'll throw another wobbler. See what you can do.'

  He contacted Group HQ. A meeting was arranged. I discussed it with the Colonel, who said, 'Right. We'll get you on next selection in January 1979.'

  I was pitched straight into test week. I was given the option of missing out the endurance march if I got A grades in each of the first two marches. It was a great incentive. I didn't stop running for two days, and duly got the grades. I was back in the Regiment, back in business! There was just one catch. Having left the SAS as a sergeant, here I was at the age of thirty-four rejoining as a trooper.

  8.30am, Wednesday 30 April 1980. Fifteen months had passed since my return, fifteen months of routine, boredom and lack of action. The rugby-club hangover combined with the noise of the other team members pulling on equipment, filling magazines and cocking weapons made me feel as cheerful as an abattoir-bound pig. I resented that upon my return to the Regiment I'd been unable to get back into my old troop, Eight Troop, the lads I'd fought at Mirbat with. There were no vacancies.

  My separation from my old mates in Eight Troop had been made all the more acute when in February of the previous year I'd heard the news of Mike Kealy's death during a forty-mile endurance training march in the Brecon Beacons. The hero of Mirbat six years before, a major and DSO, he died of exposure during a cruel combination of snow, ice and fog. It was a tragic loss and saddened me deeply.

  With an ill-disguised lethargy I pushed open the door to the Killing House. My mind was barely in focus as I threw down my holdall of assault kit and began pulling at the wire seal on the box of 9-milly ammo. I broke a fingernail in the process as it stubbornly refused to open. I cursed. When you're not in the mood for a job, even inanimate objects conspire against you. They seem to assume a life of their own and to frustrate your efforts at every turn. I tore off the loose piece of fingernail. It came off at a deeper angle than I'd expected, biting into the skin at the side and drawing blood.

  Another routine day was in prospect, a day of shooting neat holes in Figure 11 targets. I was beginning to get bored with this place: the oppressive sameness of the range practices, the same six rooms, the target paste-pots always empty. And the Figure 11 targets themselves. In the old Operation Jaguar days, they came properly trimmed with the corners neatly cut off so that they fitted the wooden veneers exactly. Nowadays, the picture of the sinister-looking Russian storm trooper was stamped onto an oblong sheet of brown paper and you had to fuck and fart about fitting the target facing to the trimmed veneer. And then there was the problem of lead in the enclosed atmosphere of the killing rooms. Firing our submachine guns on automatic over long periods of time filled the small rooms with lead fumes. It occurred to me more than once that breathing the thick smoke couldn't be doing my lungs any good. Only yesterday I had coughed up a large black ball of phlegm at the end of the day's training.

  As I pulled on my assault kit, a pain in my temple throbbed cont
inuously. I looked down at the heavy Bristol body armour lying on the bench-seat next to my holdall. Fuck the high-velocity plates! I thought, I'm not in the mood for training with that ton weight today – and I threw the ceramic plates back in the holdall. With the now much lighter body armour secure in place, I drew on my skin-tight aviator's leather gloves, cocked the action of my Heckler & Koch MP5, introducing a live round into the chamber, applied the safety-catch, carried out the same operation on my Browning pistol and realized I had begun to sweat. It was going to be a long, tedious day.

  * * *

  9.00am. Six Arab revolutionaries – Makki, Ali, Shai, Faisal, Hassan and Oan, the leader – assembled on the blood-red carpet in the foyer at 105 Lexham Gardens in Kensington, London. They belonged to the Mohieddin al Nasser Martyr Group, fighting for the autonomy of Arabistan, an oil-rich province in the south-west of Iran, annexed by the country in 1926. In their small, lightweight holdalls they had a veritable arsenal. It included two 9mm machine pistols, accurate up to 150 metres and firing 700 rounds per minute; three Browning automatics with thirteen-round magazines loaded with Winchester hollow-point ammunition; one .38 revolver and several Russian hand grenades. They bade farewell to the handful of unwitting residents who had befriended them and headed for their rendezvous with destiny.

  * * *

  11.20am. 'Split down into three teams of four again.' Tak's voice boomed across the small changing room, his beetle-black eyes, the eyes of a deep thinker who weighs up the options carefully before acting, slowly scrutinizing the assembled team members.

  My one consolation amid all the monotony of routine training was that Tak, my brother-in-arms since Mirbat days, had also found his way into Six Troop. A powerful bond of friendship had developed between us. In his assault kit he looked large and menacing. With his big hands he took a firm grip on life, with his wide feet and muscular toes he stood his ground unyieldingly, and with his broad forehead he faced the world square-on. In his solidity and steadfastness he was extremely placid. When fooling and rolling around with the Firqat children in Dhofar he had been like a cuddly teddy bear. Nothing appeared to bother him. He would take everything in his stride – or so it seemed. Yet there was a distant point, a point that was rarely reached, but once it was, Tak would explode with an awesome temper. He would then become as ferocious as a grizzly bear.

  'The game plan is the same. Head shots – double taps or single only. Limits of exploitation are your allocated rooms.' He pointed to the blackboard, circling every individual's responsibility with the barrel of his 9-milly. 'Be on your doors in five minutes. I will initiate with a burst of fire into the long gallery. Any questions?'

  'Will there be any distractions this time?' My voice cut through the tedium.

  'Yeah, I got a thunderflash on ISFE for this one. I'll detonate after the burst of MP5,' replied Tak, replacing his 9-milly pistol in the quickdraw holster, snapping closed the securing stud on the thumb-brake with a well-practised ease.

  * * *

  11.25am. The terrorists worked quickly. Shamags were pulled tight across dark Arab features, holdalls were unzipped, weapons produced. Then they were up the steps and bursting in through the slightly ajar main door of 16 Princes Gate. Oan, well-built, square-bodied, the first man in, made straight for PC Lock, who was standing by the door to reception at the bottom of the stairs.

  * * *

  11.25am. The combination of the twenty-round burst from the MP5 and the deafening explosion of the thunderflash on the ISFE rocked the Killing House. My number three on the Remington blasted the lock of the small combat room with a blank cartridge and then kicked the door in. Drag – the range warden – will go mad if he finds that one, I thought, as the door flew open. In I went and headed straight for the cluster of Figure 11 targets propped up in their rickety stands in the far corner. Usual thing, I thought quickly, my eyes doing a radar scan of the room. Four terrorists and three hostages.

  'Ba-bang, Ba-bang, Ba-bang'. Three double taps in less than three seconds, six neat holes in three terrorist heads.

  'Ba-bang'. My number two neutralized a kneeling target behind the chair in a corner.

  'Paste up,' shouted Tak from the door, adding to the tedium of the moment.

  * * *

  11.26am. 'Don't move! Don't move!' screamed Oan in Farsi. Then came a deafening burst of submachine-gun fire. All Trevor Lock could see was confusion, disorder, chequered shamags and automatic weapons. A hand came forward and ripped the radio out of his tunic.

  'OK, OK,' he found himself saying, as he brought up his hand to investigate a sharp stinging pain in his cheek. The Iranian Embassy siege had begun.

  * * *

  11.40am. I applied the safety-catch to my MP5, pushed the S6 respirator onto the top of my head and reached for the paste-pot and patches. As I pasted over the neat holes with a grubby Woolworth's paste-brush, a thin, gluey, poorly mixed paste wormed down the handle of the brush and slithered over my fine leather gloves. I cursed inwardly and began applying the one-inch square brown patches to the bulletholes.

  * * *

  11.44am. At the precise moment that the first blob of sticky white glue slicked into contact with the smooth black leather gloves, a telephone rang in the Kremlin. Dusty, ex-D Squadron and now serving with the Metropolitan Police, was ringing the Head Shed to warn them about the developing drama. His information was sketchy: a group of armed men had taken over the Iranian Embassy in Princes Gate, and a police constable from the Diplomatic Protection Group was being held at gunpoint. More disturbingly, a burst of submachine-gun fire had been heard. That was all the information he could offer.

  * * *

  11.48am. 'Be-be-be-be-bee-beep'. I had just finished patching up my second double tap when the whole building was filled with the sound of a dozen electronic bleepers.

  'The scalybacks have pressed the wrong button again,' shouted my number two.

  'Or it's another lemon,' I added sarcastically. My thoughts went back to the last lemon, a couple of years before, when we had roared down to Stansted Airport to stop Idi Amin getting access to the UK. He had allegedly been circling the airfield in his private plane asking for permission to land.

  Suddenly Rusty's harsh voice, calm with certainty, pierced sharp and clear through the high-pitched electronic bleeps echoing round the rooms and corridors of the Killing House. 'From Crocker. This is the real thing. Pack your gear, then move into the hangar for a brief.'

  As I dashed for the door, I watched with satisfaction as the cheap Woolworth's paste-brush arced through the air and hit the paste-bucket with a watery splosh.

  * * *

  11.55am. 'We are members of a democratic revolutionary front for the liberation of Arabistan. We are the Martyrs.' Oan's cold, chilling voice penetrated the tense atmosphere of Room 9 on the second floor. Before him were gathered twenty-six frightened hostages: seventeen Embassy staff; eight visitors, including Harris and Cramer, two BBC men who had been visiting the Embassy to secure visas, and Ron Morris, the chauffeur; and Embassy security policeman Trevor Lock. Oan viewed his captives with satisfaction, his dark eyes beneath the frizzy Afro hairstyle darting from one figure to another. He felt well pleased with himself. He had struck the first blow for the freedom of his beloved Arabistan.

  The terrorists' demands were now issued. 'One: we demand our human and legitimate rights. Two: we demand freedom, autonomy and recognition of the Arabistan people. Three: we demand the release of ninety-one Arab prisoners in Arabistan. If all three demands are not met by noon on Thursday 1 May, the Embassy and all the hostages will be blown up.'

  * * *

  11.30pm. 'Toad, how are we doing for time?'

  'We're doing just fine. Keep the speed down,' replied Toad, an assault-team leader, the bowl of his meerschaum pipe sparking and glowing in the darkness.

  I eased my foot off the accelerator and watched the needle of the speedo drop to a comfortable seventy miles per hour. I was experiencing the usual tight feeling, the strange ting
ling alertness I always got when I was heading into a situation where a real enemy might be waiting. As my right foot pumped fuel to power the engine, my heart pounded adrenaline to fire my body to peak alertness.

  As we reached the outskirts of the capital, Toad suddenly sat upright and reached for the London A to Z. We had come off the M40 and hit the Marylebone Road. The meerschaum pipe had disappeared and the flexi map-reading light had been switched on. 'Once we're past Madame Tussaud's, take the next main road on your left. That will lead us to the barracks.'

  The signpost for the A4201 appeared and I swung the Range Rover left into Albany Street. We motored along for 300 metres and then turned right in through the main gate of Regent's Park Barracks, the holding area. The guard checked our IDs, the barrier went up and I eased the vehicle into the parking zone. We unpacked the assault kit in the sparse surroundings of the holding area. The weapon bundles were laid out, boxes of live ammunition broken open and magazines charged. By now it was the early hours of Thursday morning. We had arrived.