An Officer and a Gentlewoman

by Heloise Goodley

  I was the only military debutante among this number, everyone else having either attended the Officer Training Corps2 at university, the Army Cadet Force,3 Welbeck4 or served with the Territorial or regular army as soldiers. I had no prior military experience and in those first five weeks I was enormously disadvantaged, relying heavily on the kind patience and generosity of the others to guide me.

  We represented a broad spectrum of individuals, from plump to petite, wealthy to working class. Almost a foot in height separated the tallest and shortest among us. There was a wide range of physical abilities too, with no common physique on display to typify the Army girl. Some could run the mile-and-a-half army fitness test in just eight minutes while others took over twelve. But what was quickly apparent was that we all shared a common courage and mental resolve. A tenacity and a will to keep going. Those that didn’t wouldn’t survive.

  Initially everyone was very friendly, in that way people are when they join a new group. Slightly false and overly keen to quickly make new friends. I went around introducing myself, shaking hands and hearing everyone’s name, later forgetting them all, and thankful for the nametags that we had to wear. Despite the high concentration of women in close proximity there was no time for bitchiness at Sandhurst. We all had to get along together over the next year or we would fall apart, and if there was someone you didn’t like it was just going to make life harder.

  The indignities of this basic training saw my humanity stripped to its bare essentials, as life became a daily struggle for survival under the oppressive regime. Almost every action seemed punishable as I became moulded from a carefree civilian into a soldier. We marched everywhere, even inside, up and down the corridors, slouching was forbidden, no hands in pockets, no leaning against walls, only speaking when spoken to; being late was the most grave of offences. Press-ups were the favoured tool used to teach most of these lessons, and as the weeks went by I got quite good at them.

  As well as years of beating men at their own game SSgt Cox had been further hardened by her northern roots and Hull upbringing. She implemented a painfully strict reign and the first of her repressive rules was the banning of chocolate and mobile phones. The implication of doing this to a group of girls was catastrophic, and with the joy of texting and the serotonin release from a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut unattainable, morale quickly plummeted. This became further compounded when we realized that we were interned at the Academy for five long unremitting weeks until we could demonstrate the requisite standard of marching skill to ‘pass off the square’ and would be allowed home for the first time.

  Although not very tall in stature, SSgt Cox more than compensated for this with a powerful punch and terrifying pitch in her raised voice, which could make hounds whimper and hide. Her uniform was always pristine and immaculately pressed, her boots (though only about a size three) were polished to perfection, while her dark hair was always gelled flawlessly to her head, and wound up at the back into a firm bun, with never a stray hair free to flutter in the breeze. A career spent surrounded by men in the army had sharpened her tongue to a razor wit too and she could cut down any male who dared to stand in her path. And years of military marching had given her a masculine gait, with any trace of a feminine hip swish eliminated, leaving a boot-crashing stomp.

  I was petrified of SSgt Cox. When whipped into a rage she was as terrifying as a baited bear, and in those first five weeks I gave her plenty of reason to become angered. She ruled our every waking and sleeping hour. In her presence the platoon maintained a fretful watch, desperately not wanting to incur her wrath and avoiding her attentive glare at all times. So like a lightly sleeping monster, we tiptoed carefully around her in the shadows, not wanting to draw attention nor awaken her from her moments of calm to be punished with yet more press-ups.

  Even to speak to SSgt Cox you had to successfully get through a pantomime of staged formalities. If she was to be found in her office I would have to march up to the office doorway, arms straight and outstretched, shoulder high, coming to a halt exactly at the office entrance with a ‘check, one, two’, foot stamp, then freeze to attention. And then request politely, ‘Leave to enter, Staff Sergeant, please.’ Which sounds all rather straightforward, except it isn’t. I simply could not do it. I would muddle my halt, stamp with the wrong foot, gauge the distances wrongly or fluff my lines. Every time. The pressure was unbearable. And each time SSgt Cox would send me back to try again, three, four, five, six times over.

  ‘Go back and try that again, Miss Goodley,’ she would say as I did a Michael Flatley hopping skip in her doorway.

  ‘Again, Miss Goodley.’ An irate undertone in her voice, as I swung an errant arm into the door frame.

  ‘No, Miss Goodley. Check, one, two.’ Her patience would be wearing thinner and her voice pitching higher with each of my attempts. Until finally she popped: ‘MISS GOODLEY, GET AWAY FROM ME AND DON’T COME BACK UNTIL YOU CAN SHAGGING WELL DO IT PROPERLY!’ she would scream in full falsetto, the veins in her forehead pulsating as she yelled in frustration at me.

  Each time my burning question for her became less and less important as the humiliation of not being able to execute the simplest routine shamed me to the point of wanting the ground to swallow me whole. I had a university degree. I had been a City professional. I used to advise on the future of FTSE 100 companies and now I was being belittled and torn to shreds by a small woman from Hull.

  And then eventually when the day came that I did get it right, I danced a celebratory jig, which unleashed her fury anyway, getting me into even more trouble. And more press-ups.

  A typical day in those first five weeks started with a rude awakening at the deathly early time of 5.15, an hour when only bakers, milkmen and people going on skiing holidays ought sensibly to be awake. I would painfully extricate myself from bed and my first action of the day was to switch on my iron.

  Our beds comprised a simple single iron bed frame with plain wooden headboard, firm mattress and army-issued bedlinen of rough white cotton sheets and scratchy woollen blankets. All this had to be carefully ironed and crease free each day, then the bed made with meticulous exactness for the morning inspection. Folding angled ‘hospital corners’, turning down the sheet and tightly tucking it in, no evidence of the bed having been slept in was to remain, not a stray hair on the pillow nor a crinkle in the sheets. Many people slept on the floor for good reason, but with sleep at such a premium and bed being one of few luxuries, I persisted in ironing my sheets each morning, cutting corners by leaving them still on the bed as I did so. This went disastrously wrong one morning for one of the girls as she sleepily dropped her blistering hot iron onto her bare foot.

  At 5.25 we were to be lined up in the main corridor of our Platoon Lines in alphabetical order, me sandwiched between Gill and Gray, with a full litre water bottle for the daily ‘water parade’. This would then commence on the arrival of SSgt Cox at 5.30, when we would tunelessly sing the national anthem and then drink the entire litre of water, choking and spluttering it down, so that at a completely inopportune moment later in the morning we would all be bursting for the loo. Over the weeks variety was introduced to this morning service as we were required to learn all six verses of the British national anthem and those too of our foreign cadets (Nepalese before breakfast is especially demanding).

  Then, with the Queen sent ‘happy and glorious’ by our cats’ chorus, we were dismissed in a hurried panic of dressing gowns and slippers to shower, dress and race to breakfast. The boys were also required to squeeze the nuisance of shaving into these precious few minutes and those who had once proudly cultivated premature sprigs of stubble at fourteen were cursing as the baby-faced blonds had grace. At Sandhurst the men must be clean-shaven at all times, including even when in the field on exercise, and stringent stubble and sideburn rules are applied. If facial hair is your preference then the Navy is the service for you.

  Breakfast was a swift moment at the trough, in which we had to consume as many c
alories as possible in the allotted four minutes to sustain us through the morning of standing to attention in the freezing cold. Then we all traipsed outside into the darkness for another utterly bizarre Sandhurst ritual: ‘Areas’.

  Areas involves a litter sweep of an allocated part of the Academy grounds, and Eleven Platoon’s area was the western side of Old College Parade Square stretching all the way down to the tennis courts. As a platoon we were required to walk methodically around our area and collect any unsightly litter and dispose of it; except that it was always dark at this ungodly early hour and this was Sandhurst so in fourteen weeks I never once found anything on the parade square other than a fallen leaf. It was a completely pointless activity and characteristic of many duties we performed at the Academy.

  Then after this the cleaning began.

  Most mornings were room-inspection mornings and this included the Platoon Lines too. Some highly organized OTC keen-bean had divided up the cleaning tasks in the common areas and created a rota of ‘block jobs’. Operating in a three-week rotation, I escaped surprisingly well, being only required to polish the brass on the inside of the main door, the outside of the main door and then sweep the central corridor. To my great relief, my name was not in the rotation to clean the showers of stray hairs nor scrub the toilets. Again I felt the cleaners actually employed to clean Sandhurst got off very lightly.

  One morning, as I swept the ruddy red linoleum flooring with a wooden broom, forming small piles of mud and dust before the London stock market had even opened, I thought how drastically different my life had become. I was waking even earlier now than when I had worked in London. I was certainly getting shouted at more. And my appearance had transformed too. My City friends would barely recognize my uniformed self. Former chic shoes had given way to ogreish boots, while City fashions had been replaced with unshapely combats and my hair was now scraped tightly back and wound away. After just a few weeks I realized that the army was already changing me.

  *

  My room in Old College was a high-ceilinged modest abode, in contrast with the grand opulence of the staterooms to the front of the College. Devoid of character and individuality, it was simply furnished with a wardrobe, a bare desk, a chest of drawers and bookshelves empty except for a Bible. A heavy white porcelain sink hung from the wall below a mirror and a single tall window filled the room with winter light. The floor was covered with dark-red bristly carpet tiles and the cream walls remained unfurnished apart from a small grey lockable safe in which I hid the contraband chocolate my grandmother sent me.

  Prison cells contain more.

  For an inspection, the room’s contents had to be displayed according to a prescribed layout. Everything hung in the wardrobe in a specific order, shoes aligned exactly and drawers were progressively pulled out in a stepped manner, revealing a cascading sequence of T-shirts, jumpers and ‘smiling socks’ (folded with the bundle-fold facing up in a smile rather than sadly downwards, as I felt). We were allowed a few basic personal belongings: a radio that had to be tuned to BBC Radio 4, a hairbrush and minimal toiletries. Every item of clothing had to be meticulously ironed, with creases down the sleeves and trouser legs and folded garments were to be precisely to the dimensions of A4 paper. All surfaces had to be clean, polished and dust free, the carpet vacuumed, the mirror shining without blemish and the sink dry and spotless. The crates of cleaning products I had brought with me were soon put to good use.

  For an inspection issued items of military kit were displayed on the shelves including mess tins, cutlery, water bottles and magazines;5 along with a set of unused ‘show home’ toiletries as a squeezed toothpaste tube or used toothbrush were fallible offences. On the bed would be the white Number One ‘Blues’ Dress6 belt with its polished brass buckle, navy-blue and red Blues forage cap (a magnet for dust) and shiny black Blues shoes. All displayed for scrutiny.

  Hours of preparation were required for the inspection, causing us to work late into the night ironing and folding each item of clothing with great care, polishing mess tins, brass buckles, shoes and anything else that could be forced to shine, while the room was cleansed of dust. The following morning after breakfast there would then be a frenzy of activity in the moments before the inspection began, adding final touches and titivating to perfection. A quick blast of furniture polish and flurry with a yellow duster, a wipe down and dry of the sink, fix the window open to the specified four-inch gap and plump pillows: it was like preparing a potential medal-winning garden for the Judges’ Committee at the Chelsea Flower Show.

  Then, like a lion spotted on the prairie, we’d all stop what we were doing and scurry into position at SSgt Cox’s arrival, standing ‘at ease’ outside our rooms. The whole inspection was carefully stage-managed and as she burst into the corridor we all ‘braced up’, springing to attention as she approached our individual rooms and announcing name, rank and army number (which I was still learning and would become terribly tongue-tied with under the pressure of her glare).

  ‘Whiskey, one, zero, six, one, four, five, one, Officer Cadet Goodley. Room ready for your inspection.’

  I then stood outside in the corridor facing away and holding my breath as she prowled around my room finding fault: litter in the bin, laundry in the linen basket, water in the sink, a speck of toothpaste on the mirror, a trace of mud on the sole of a running shoe. As I stood outside in the corridor I was unable to see what was going on inside and would look to the face of the person standing opposite me for an expression to indicate how the inspection was going, waiting for a little nod or sideways eye movement. Was SSgt Cox looking in the wardrobe or simply out of the window? The longer the silence, the greater the tension as I awaited her verdict; which was always a fail.

  Misdemeanours were slight but the punishments severe as all my hard work would come crashing out into the corridor, pulled down off shelves, flung out of drawers or hauled out of the window into the puddles below, leaving me to pick up the pieces and start the ironing, folding and cleaning all over again in time for the following morning’s inspection.

  The mercurial moods of SSgt Cox made every morning a gamble to see what she would fail you for, as she hunted through drawers and cupboards looking for imperfections. Then when she found something she would gleefully pounce at it and tear you apart, like a terrier with a rat.

  ‘Miss Goodley, what do you shagging call this?’ she barked at me one morning, brandishing my water bottle under my nose.

  ‘Er, it’s my water bottle, Staff Sergeant.’

  ‘No, you idiot, this, here inside your water bottle.’ She pointed at a tiny drop of water near the rim where my water bottle hadn’t yet dried out following that morning’s water parade.

  ‘Erm, it’s water from this morning, Staff Sergeant.’

  ‘I don’t want your shagging excuses, Miss Goodley,’ she said, scolding me like a young child. ‘It’s gopping.7 If you don’t clean out your water bottle, it’ll breed germs, you’ll go down in the field with scurvy and die. And it’ll be your own fault for being so f-ing gopping,’ she screeched, tossing the offending water bottle on the floor of my room and spinning on her heel to storm off and attack her next victim, leaving me relieved another inspection was over, but questioning my understanding of the causes and infective severity of scurvy.

  The worst inspections were on the occasions when SSgt Cox was accompanied by our platoon commander, Captain Trunchbull.

  Captain Trunchbull was a bulky, angry lady, with a most vicious tongue and flaky temperament. As strong as an ox, she towered over each member of Eleven Platoon in a frightening manner. On duty she wore her ill-fitting uniform stretched taut over her plump backside and constricted in tightly at her waist with a belt, like a knotted sack of spuds. Like SSgt Cox she too, scraped and gelled her hair back into a small bun fixed smartly to the back of her head like a button none of us would ever dare press. Across her lips she maintained a permanent disapproving pout as she scowled and prowled around the Academy, poised like a
jack-in-the-box ready to spring with menacing terror at anything she disapproved of.

  SSgt Cox and Captain Trunchbull made a terrible twosome, working in tandem as they scrutinized each room, goading one another like a pair of Roald Dahl’s witches.

  ‘SSgt Cox, would you say you could see your face in this mess tin? It doesn’t look very shiny to me.’

  ‘Nah, ma’am, it’s gopping.’

  And then smashing out into the corridor would come the offending mess tin.

  ‘Oh dear, SSgt Cox, this looks like rust on here to me. Here on this magazine.’

  ‘Certainly is, ma’am.’

  And another clatter as rifle magazines, springs and metal came smashing out into the corridor as the cackling couple would move on, revelling perversely in the moment. This charade would go on from room to room until the corridor was full of an assortment of clothes, shoes, rifle magazines, mess tins, spilled washing powder and other military paraphernalia.

  Not all of us saw the seriousness in this whole charade. The more experienced, the Welbexians and ex-rankers, had been through the rigmarole of a room inspection countless times before. For years they had stood to attention at the end of their beds in basic training or the army Sixth-Form College, as the contents of their lockers and bed space were vandalized, their effort and hard work strewn across the floor and trampled over. They knew it was all a game. They didn’t seek logic in the strange false drama as I did. They knew we would all fail and were blasé about it.

  One was Officer Cadet Van der Merwe (Merv). She occupied the room at the furthest end of my corridor and had been to Welbeck and Shrivenham, the military university. She was completely unfazed by SSgt Cox and Captain Trunchbull. She didn’t get tongue-tied in the pressure of their glare, she didn’t stumble when reciting her Army number, she could march and halt in the doorway of SSgt Cox’s office. She knew how to fold hospital corners and smiling socks. For her the ironing and folding was effortless, her shoes shone the brightest, and there was never a hair on her head out of place. Because at twenty-three, she was already a veteran of the institution.