by H. C. Tayler
I invested the remainder of the afternoon in getting quietly sozzled and chatting to the assorted chaps in the room, gleaning as much information as I could about the forthcoming operations and the various characters I would need to interface with. The artillery officer was particularly useful to talk to, since he was also an attached Army rank. He had admittedly completed his Commando Course so had turned partly native but nevertheless he saw the Corps of the Royal Marines through Sandhurst-trained eyes, which was helpful, at least to me. I knew the layout of a brigade operations room well enough to know that during the deployment, nestling among all the other staff officers and watchkeepers, the artillery (or “Arty”) desk would be a pretty central feature. With a bit of luck and a following wind I could arrange for the desk labelled “Armour” to be next door to him, which would at least mean I wouldn’t have to speak exclusively with Royal Marines morning, noon and night. A seasoned artilleryman, he had been attached to the Brigade since its return from Kabul a year earlier and was on good terms with almost everyone in the headquarters, and wasted little time introducing me to most of the gaggle involved in that afternoon’s conversation.
By early evening the bar had filled up significantly with a variety of souls mainly sporting combat clothing. The Royal Marines have a peculiar obsession with hygiene and widely consider it inappropriate or downright rude to dine without washing and changing first. (Fortunately the Army is a little more pragmatic and has no such hang-ups about eating in work clothes.) Sure enough, as the dinner gong drew nearer, they began to depart, returning en masse a few minutes later sporting jackets and ties and smelling faintly of soap.
I made my way to the bar to line up a last pint before supper and was startled by a swift punch on the arm and a thunderous “Hallo!” I turned around to be confronted by the grinning face of a disgracefully irreverent media liaison officer with whom I had got into several scrapes in Kabul a year earlier. I shook his hand like a man being rescued from a sinking ship. A demon skier, the man had initially been commissioned into the Army back in the 1980s but had transferred his Commission to the Marines almost on a whim after just a few years’ service. He had long since been discharged and retrained as a solicitor. But after a short time in civilian life he had joined the Reserves, risen to the rank of major, and become a seasoned war-tourist volunteering (insanely, in my opinion) for deployment after deployment on the basis that it was more interesting work than life in his law practice. He was truly his own man, someone who did as he pleased and took nothing in life too seriously. Keeping him in check was practically impossible - his CO once remarked that he would rather administer bollockings to anyone else in his unit, since it was a racing certainty that they would be ignored, which was not only frustrating but served to visibly undermine his authority too. I noticed that he was walking awkwardly and remarked upon it.
“My back’s trashed,” admitted my media liaison chum. “I broke it skiing last year. Total nightmare. Had to spend months in a body cast so I’m weak as a kitten at the moment. Can’t run either - it hurts too much. Hope no bugger asks me to carry a bergen on this trip, because I don’t think I’ll be able to lift the thing, let alone walk anywhere with it.”
“Then what the Dickens are you doing here?” I blurted out. “Surely you should have been medically downgraded by now?”
He met this outburst with a wry smile. “Of course I should. But I couldn’t let the opportunity of a good old-fashioned war pass me by. And the quacks at Chilwell are atrocious, everyone knows that. (3) Admit nothing and they’ll never find out for themselves. So I kept schtum, told a few half-truths and ta-da! Here I am, S02 Media.” (4)
“You must be bloody mad,” I told him. “A perfectly good excuse to avoid this idiocy and you not only volunteer for it, you hide the fact that you are crippled in order to join in.”
We agreed to differ and shuffled through to dinner. In fairness to Stonehouse, one of the absolute joys of being based in Plymouth is the extraordinarily friendly nature of the mess staff. A posse of largely middle-aged women make it their mission in life to fuss over the officers as if they were spoilt children. Nothing is too much like hard work, everything is delivered with a smile and an old-world charm which I have seldom seem matched in the best London establishments, let alone the provinces. Yet another reason why Stonehouse is wasted on the Marines - if it were up to me, I would have the entire place moved to Salisbury Plain and given over to the Hussars. Still, their jollity and eagerness to please, coupled with the company of S02 Media, made dinner a significantly happier affair than it otherwise might have been. For reasons unknown I was as hungry as a horse and thirsty to boot, so I set about leveraging the goodwill of the mess staff in order to get second helpings of everything, while a couple of the chaps joined me in putting away a couple of bottles of Amarone, which fairly hit the spot.
I was all for whiling the evening away in the mess bar but S02 Media was having none of it. It was, he pointed out, potentially our last-but-one opportunity to paint the town red and we had nothing to do the following day but the nauseating tedium of traipsing round RM Stonehouse’s many administrative offices to draw desert kit, sign forms, and have Lord-knows-how-many inoculations. Not the kind of day which requires much brainpower. He called a cab and we made the short journey to the Barbican, always a good spot for a jar or two and for ogling the local talent which, it being Plymouth, is far from shy. It was a frigid evening but this seemed to have no effect on the attire of the local girlies, who thronged from pub to pub wearing little more than their underwear - a truly enjoyable spectacle. We descended on a wine bar and began working our way through their stock of Italian reds whilst putting the world to rights. After an hour or more I had comfortably settled in and was sporting the kind of rosy glow that comes from coupling excess food and booze with cold winter air, when I felt an unexpected tap on the shoulder and looked up. There, looking down on me with her trademark haughty smile, was Kate Gibson, a filly over whom I had spent many an idle hour fantasising during our days at Sandhurst together. She was vacuous, conceited bitch - but stunningly good looking and fit as a racehorse, which more than compensated for any failings of character, at least in my book.
“Harry bloody Flashman!” she explained. “What the hell are you doing in Plymouth?”
With transparently false modesty, I explained the current situation, leaving little room for doubt that I now stood head and shoulders above my peers in terms of being selected for such an operationally vital mission. She looked less than impressed, while S02 Media looked suitably quizzical as I introduced him. He disappeared to the bar to get some more wine while La Gibson, before I had chance to ask her, drew up a chair and the two of us descended into the usual “Whatever happened to such-and-such . . .?” conversation that one invariably has with old colleagues. Kate, it transpired, was attached to the Navy for a couple of years on some job creation scheme dreamt up by the Second Sea Lord’s office. She was currently stationed in Plymouth and had tentatively agreed to meet an old university friend for a glass of wine that night. At least that was her story and to be fair, I could see no sign of any lingering bloke whom she might be seeing. Equally, there was no sign of the university friend either which, given her unusually friendly overtures, I was rather glad of. S02 Media reappeared with the wine and three glasses and we set about getting more merrier than we already were. Shortly before we reached the bottom of the bottle, Kate departed to powder her nose and I seized my opportunity to get shot of my Media Ops colleague.
“Look, I wouldn’t ask this of you unless you were a real chum. But would you, ahem, push off somewhere else?”
“You jack bastard,” he retorted, clearly unhappy.
“You’d ask the same in my position.”
“Balls,” he replied. “I’d stick to my guns and have a lads’ night out.”
“Be that as it may, this bird is clearly gooey at the forks -she’s putty in my hands! And I’ve wanted to get stuck into her since Sandhurst. Now b
e a good sport and disappear, eh?”
With that he got up, called me a tosser, winked, and vanished towards the door. I felt a vague pang of guilt but it soon evaporated when Kate reappeared, all T&A and sporting freshly applied gloss lipstick.
“Where’s your friend?” she asked.
“Ah, I’m not sure,” I stuttered. “His mobile phone rang and he had to shoot off somewhere.”
Kate looked deeply disbelieving but said nothing. Conversation resumed and I plied her with more vino. The evening disappeared in a haze of wine and reminiscing about the bunch of wasters with whom we had passed through officer training. Then, just before the bar called last orders she stood up, looked down her nose at me and held out her hand. I stared at it dumbly, frustrated that she was calling time on the evening.
“Come on Harry,” she cajoled. “Let’s get back to my place. There’s a stash of wine and you might as well spend your last real night of civilisation enjoying yourself.”
I chortled at my good luck, downed the remnants of my wine, grabbed La Gibson by the arm, strode out into the freezing night air and hailed a passing cab. A few minutes later we tumbled through the door of her flat, a delightful little place on the Hoe. She practically tore the shirt off my back and I reciprocated by relieving her of her skirt and blouse. My Camberley fantasies were rapidly being fulfilled - she had the body of a gymnast and was clearly proud of it. I pulled down her bra and grabbed a handful of breast while she wrapped her legs around my waist and lowered herself onto me. I was so taken aback by her impatience for a good seeing-to that it took me a moment or two to get into my stride. But before long I was bouncing her for all I was worth, while she cried out like a banshee and dug her fingernails into my shoulders. Her physique was matched only by her stamina and when we eventually called it a night I was a spent force, albeit a very contented one. In the morning I awoke shortly before six, mouth parched from all the wine and the vigorous exercise that had followed it. My previous night’s conquest lay tucked under the duvet in blissful ignorance. I shuffled through to the kitchen for a glass of water before getting dressed as quietly as I could manage. Kate still hadn’t stirred and I really couldn’t be fagged with the usual morning-after pleasantries or any more of her banal twittering, so instead of waking her I stole quietly away, shivering in the chilly pre-dawn sea air.
By the time I had a shower and a shave and presented myself for an early breakfast, the first glimmers of dawn were showing themselves and Stonehouse was brightening up. As usual the waitresses were a joy and, presumably from years of experience, could home in on a hangover from a thousand paces. I was duly plied with lashings of coffee and toast, followed by a full fried breakfast which would have been a challenge for a gang of Irish navvies. By the end of it all I was pressed to work out whether I was fortified or simply more tired and sleepy than I had been at the outset. I didn’t have long to ponder the question though as just at that moment my media and artillery brethren appeared, both looking as rough and hungover as me.
“Ah, Flash, you disgraceful excuse for a friend,” commented S02 Media, perhaps justifiably. “And did Sir get lucky last night? Or did the stuck-up cow blow you out?”
I shot him a victorious grin. “I was invited back to her place, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Don’t avoid the question, Flashy. Did you, or did you not, give her the good news?”
I confessed and, at the insistence of the boys, spent the ensuing five minutes giving them a blow-by-blow account of the bedroom gymnastics the previous evening, my story being punctuated by the occasional comings and goings of the mess staff. When I had finished there was a brief silence, eventually interrupted by the artilleryman.
“You fluky bastard,” he said coolly. “I’ve been here for months and nothing that good has happened. You come down here for one night and get the jump of your life immediately before departing for operations. That’s not far short of winning the lottery.”
Kate certainly wasn’t the jump of my life - several conquests vied for that honour and, for all her bedroom prowess, Ms Gibson was not even on the shortlist. However, I had to admit that he had a point - but then his lack of success with the ladies was hardly my problem so my response was not entirely sympathetic. I asked for yet more coffee and shuffled off to catch the morning news bulletin on the TV.
I had a check-list of admin tasks to carry out during the remainder of the day, none too onerous but all frustratingly time-consuming. The first of these was to draw my desert clothing from the stores. I was prepared for a bust-up here, since most of the Brigade had already drawn its kit and there would presumably be a shortfall, especially of larger sized items. My intuition was correct and I departed the stores an hour later only partially equipped. The rest of the gear would be available from the Quarter Master’s store in Kuwait, I was assured. I was far from convinced but I had no choice in the matter, so I took what kit there was and dumped it in my room.
Next on the list was a round of paperwork which was dull as ditchwater and took up most of the morning. Military bureaucracy is an incredible thing and seems to grow inexorably, made worse by the small-minded little men who dream up most of the regulations I am faced with these days. But eventually the forms were all filled and the boxes ticked and finally it was time for a visit to the sick bay for my jabs. I knew perfectly well that I was in-date for almost everything but, not having had time to extract my medical documents from the clutches of the Army, I knew equally well that the Navy would take the belt-and-braces route of giving me the inoculations all over again. After a short wait, the doctor called my name (no rank either, the impertinent bastard). Sure enough, I had more needles stuck in me than if I had run naked through a cactus grove. Typhoid, hepatitis, yellow fever, and various other assorted nasties all entered my bloodstream via a syringe. The doctor was an unsympathetic devil too, not slowing for an instant despite my wincing and wriggling. After what felt like an eternity of acupuncture came a line I shall never forget.
“And would you like anthrax, Sir?”
I looked at him in disbelief. Right now I could think of nothing I would like less.
“The anthrax vaccine? Would you like the first shot?” he said, growing impatient.
Happily, my bemused look disguised my complete conviction that, under no circumstances, was I going to accept yet another pathogen in my bloodstream, especially one as lethal as anthrax. “You must be bloody joking,” I responded, scoffing. The old sawbones looked piously at me. “I assure you I am not,” he said, labouring his delivery as if I was some kind of halfwit from the Pioneer Corps. “It’s a probability that Saddam Hussein has anthrax in his arsenal and there is a distinct risk that, in the event of hostilities, you may be exposed.” With that, he passed me a MoD-published idiot’s guide to the issue.
“So your solution to this problem is to expose me to it now?” I retorted. “Well that’s a work of genius on somebody’s behalf. Thank you for your kind offer, Sir, but if it’s all the same to you I shall decline it.” I had seen and heard quite enough horror stories of Gulf War Syndrome following Operation Desert Storm back in ‘91, and I had no intention of joining the poor buggers on the sick list in five years time. Besides, at the back of my mind there was the glimmer of hope that, if the intelligence community did ever manage to prove conclusively that Iraq had stockpiles of biological weapons, then those of us who had refused the jabs might be kept back from the front line. With this in my mind I turned on my heel and strode out of the clinic, leaving the doctor and his anthrax jabs for some other unfortunate soul.
The various vaccines left me feeling rather washed out, so I spent a quiet afternoon and evening tinkering with my kit and feeling ever more sorry for myself. By the time I had finished packing my bergen it weighed a good forty pounds and I had yet to add any field equipment such as a radio or ammunition.
Add the prospect of my webbing and weapon and I would probably be carrying over 80lbs, which is (presumably) fine for Royal Marines b
ut is a stomach-turning prospect for a cavalry officer. That kind of weight is precisely the reason that Land Rovers were invented. I said a quiet prayer that the Brigade Headquarters staff would not travel anywhere on foot further than the distance from the transport aircraft to an awaiting staff car, but in the back of my mind doubts were beginning to grow and I was far from hopeful that this would turn out to be the case. Even a steak dinner and the bonhomie of the mess staff did little to raise my spirits, so I turned in early, hoping to sleep off the nausea which I presumed had been brought on by the typhoid jab. Bloody doctors. I also had a suspicion that an early night might be a good investment, for tomorrow we would be in the hands of the RAF movements staff - and that could make for a very long day indeed.
The following morning dawned crisp, bright and chilly. The watery sunshine brought with it an added air of industry -everywhere were bootnecks doubling back and forth, carrying bags, loading vehicles, drawing weapons, mustering troops and issuing briefings. (5) In short, it was one of those mornings which tells you that a unit is on the move. I joined forces with the other officers and we drew our shiny new SA80-A2 rifles from a rather grumpy armourer who complained bitterly that he was not deploying with the rest of the headquarters but was forced to remain with the rear party. (6) I completely failed to understand his point of view - surely the idiot should have been celebrating, but there’s just no telling some people. By 10 a.m. coaches were lining up outside the barracks, accompanied by a line of 4-ton trucks to transport our baggage. After the usual rigmarole of loading, unloading and reloading equipment, we hit the road shortly before midday, armed with a paper bag filled with pasties, sausage rolls, scotch eggs, and other cheap muck procured from the Naafi to keep body and soul together during the coming hours.
