One lesson we quickly learned in those first few weeks was that our skills were varied, and in order to get through the commissioning course we were going to have to work together as a team. Those who could fold folded, those who could iron ironed and those who could do drill showed the rest of us, as the platoon clubbed together realizing that collectively we were greater than the sum of our parts. The fostering of this team spirit is one of the marvels of the training process we were in. Sandhurst forced us to build a team, otherwise we would never be able to reach our goal. We were all in it together and all had to muck along. Unfortunately for me I was still searching for my talent to share; I couldn’t do any of the things that mattered in those first few weeks and became reliant on the others to help me out, leaving me feeling like the platoon’s handicap.
Among my many ineptitudes was shoe shining.
As you might imagine, the military is big on shiny shoes. The sergeants who ran Sandhurst were like magpies drawn to glint and shine. Brass glistened, buttons twinkled, metal shone and floors were polished. And shiny shoes were an especial favourite. Hours were spent on it. And the bane of achieving and maintaining a glistening mirrored surface that SSgt Cox could see her face in was continuous, as we scuffed it away each day on the drill square. We were all issued with two pairs of lace-up brogues, one black and one brown, which were made of dull leather; our task was to convert this into a sparkling patent shine. So each evening when the marching and shouting had stopped, we spent hours in ‘bulling parades’ trying to perfect it. The entire platoon sat on the floor in the corridor outside our rooms, passing around contraband sweets, patiently applying layers of shoe polish and making gently sweeping circles with a damp cloth in an effort to achieve the smooth glassy surface required to pass SSgt Cox’s scrutinizing eye. My shoes spent precious more time on my hands than feet as they assumed almost religious properties. But shoe polishing is a black art and proved to be something else I was incapable of, Merv and Allinson taking it in turns to make the magic happen for me.
Even Sunday wasn’t a day of rest at Sandhurst.
We were given the luxury of a brief lie-in until 7 a.m., but straight after breakfast were lined up on parade for a service in the Academy Chapel and, this being Sandhurst, the occasion still involved ironing, polishing, marching and an inspection, this time of us.
Inspections of our turnout were regular and, as well as perfectly pressed clothes and shiny shoes, our hair came in for scrutiny too. Large quantities of hairspray and hair gel, not seen since the eighties, were used to glue each stray strand to our heads in a slicked-back bun like those of SSgt Cox and Captain Trunchbull, which were held tightly with a hairnet. For church a forage cap was perched atop, which refused to sit squarely on my head, insisting on drifting askew.
Captain Trunchbull would arrive smartly in her Blues, sword clinking by her side, to take the inspection, as we all stood stiffly to attention in the freezing cold. She would slowly move along the ranks, picking fluffs of dust, strands of hair and adjusting forage caps, as we all stood chattering with cold until the purpose of messing us around on a Sunday morning had been achieved and we were gratefully dismissed inside the Chapel. Once inside the men had to remove their hats but we ladies wore ours, to great advantage. When tipped slightly forwards on our heads the forage cap peak masked your eyes, so with head bowed in prayer no one need know that I was having a sneaky sleep. God knew I was in need of it.
Sunday didn’t stop there either and after lunch we put on our most restrictive uncomfortable clothes for running in and went orienteering. Thick cardboard cotton rugby shirts were tucked into olive, high-waisted trousers that held water when wet, clinging to the skin, and were called ‘light-weights’ with irony. And so, with compass and map in hand, and dressed like Enid Blyton’s Famous Five we trotted off into the woods in search of checkpoints. In the first few weeks, the orienteering courses were run around the grounds of the Academy, but they later progressed to outside in the surrounding area and this involved something of great excitement – leaving the Academy.
All 270 cadets boarded a convoy of coaches that snaked its way out of the Academy gates. We peered out of the window with wonderment at normal life, like shrouded East German communists crossing Checkpoint Charlie. Everyday people walking the dog, shopping at Tesco, holding hands and talking on mobile phones. No one was marching, men had beards, people wore denim and clothes without creases. I gazed longingly at them, deeply jealous of their ordinary freedom.
Sundays also brought a small slice of faux-freedom to look forward to each week, as in the evenings we were afforded the opportunity to run our car engines over, to prevent the batteries from being as dead as we would be at the end of week five. Every Sunday night, in the darkness, for half an hour the Academy roads became gridlocked as cars cruised slowly around camp adhering to the twenty miles per hour speed limit. Each week I would savour this moment, turning up the volume on the Girls Aloud CD, singing loudly and biting the heads off the jelly babies Deborah had left in the glovebox. There, behind the wheel of my car, I felt normal again: no ironing, no polishing, no marching, no one shouting at me. For just a short while I was cocooned in a blissful bubble.
The crippling routine in these first five weeks was endless and incessant. Days fused together as January became February and I lost track of time, falling out of touch with the outside world. Our days seemed filled with the most inane brainless activities: hospital corners, smiling socks, shining shoes, hairspray and fluff. I couldn’t see how any of this was readying me for the challenges of war, or what exactly it was teaching me about command and leadership. It all felt so meaningless and required zero intellectual concentration; inside my head my brain was shrivelling to an obedient, saluting, nodding nothing as we were becoming institutionalized. We all slept in identical bedrooms, wore identical clothing, behaved in an identical manner and were being prescribed an identical way to live our lives. To stand out was a dangerous heresy. Independent free thought was discouraged, as we were being turned into submissive ordersobeying clones. I began to question what I was doing here. Had I made the right decision giving up a well-paid City career for this? I wasn’t even good at any of it.
As a military virgin I was struggling too, everything was new to me, and I was pretty terrible at all the important stuff: marching, saluting, shoe shining, weapon handling. At least the others had the prescience of OTC or Cadets so their learning curve wasn’t as steep and they already knew how to play the game, but I was floundering like a fish on a line and it was draining my self-confidence. I couldn’t adjust. I craved some individual freedom and, having been accustomed to vague successes in life, I found it particularly difficult being placed firmly at the bottom of the class. I began to sense that I wasn’t quite cut out for life in the army after all and maybe years of Excel boredom were my destiny.
One evening after another pointless day of marching and being shouted at, I came back to my room utterly deflated. Physically and mentally exhausted, my self-confidence was at an all-time low, shattered to pieces. I began to despair. I closed the door behind me, sat on the edge of my bed and wept. Life was thoroughly miserable. Sniffling into a tissue I considered how demeaning it all was. I was being treated like a badly behaved child: pocket money stopped and banished to tidy my room. My liberty and privilege were denied. I did as I was told and there was no apparent reward. As I sat on my bed with my head in my hands, I realized that I’d made a huge mistake in joining the army. I was wretchedly unhappy here, and couldn’t comprehend a whole eleven months of this unrelenting drudgery. More tears welled as I seriously contemplated leaving. It was obvious that Sandhurst simply wasn’t for me. I leaned over and plucked another fresh tissue, and blew my nose. As I fumbled with the wrinkled white tissue between my fingers I decided that I would persist until the first leave weekend. Then, as I relaxed in abstract freedom away from the intensity of the Academy, I could make my decision on whether to return or drop out. Until then I would grin and be
ar what they threw at me.
And unfortunately it was all about to get worse as this proved not even to be my nadir.
On the Friday of the third week I woke clammy with sweat and inside my head was foggy and befuddled. My limbs were weak and aching. I felt dreadful. I struggled to stand to attention outside the sergeant major’s office for the morning ‘sick parade’ (the army even make the frail and feverish parade) before traipsing to the Academy Medical Centre. I barely had the energy to sit and lay on the floor of the waiting room until a nurse thrust a thermometer in my mouth. Forty degrees. I had a high fever. Nauseous and pallid, I was ‘bedded down’ in the ward upstairs above the doctors’ surgery, where I was to lie for three days sweating it out of my body.
With sickness came a break from the training that I should have been grateful for. I should have appreciated the respite and valued time away from the room inspections and drill square. I should have lain there taking comfort from the fluffy duvet and a bed I wasn’t required to get out of, let alone iron and make. I should have enjoyed my days in bed with toast and Jeremy Kyle, but flashing hot and cold, surrounded by sickness, was even more depressing than the martinet regime. Being in the Army is all about virility, health and fitness. It’s about strong young men and women bounding with energy and vigour, society’s peak of physical prowess, not high temperatures and feverish sweats. Being ill doesn’t fit the army image. It looks weak, and I felt like an outcast separated from my platoon. I lay in bed woefully bored, wallowing in self-pity, fighting the flu, my desolation spiralling, until I was well enough to be discharged and rejoin the training.
And then just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, when I thought I’d hit my absolute rock bottom, someone handed me a spade.
1 The accepted abbreviation for staff sergeant.
2 University Officer Training Corps (OTC) is an army club where university students can pick up all their bad habits before they go to Sandhurst.
3 The Army Cadet Force is the 50,000 strong army youth organization for twelve-to eighteen-year-olds.
4 Welbeck Defence College is a mini Sandhurst where sixth-form students can study for their A-levels while also marching and being shouted at.
5 Sadly not Cosmopolitan or Marie Claire, these are the slim metal canisters which hold rifle ammunition and fix onto the rifle. They consist of a metal container, spring mechanism and metal holding plate, all readily disposed to rusting and quite tricky to clean. We were issued with eight of them and for an inspection they all had to be broken down into their component parts and displayed, lightly oiled and rust free.
6 Number One ‘Blues’ Dress, or Blues was our super smart tailored uniform, worn on special occasions, which usually involved lots of marching.
7 ‘Gopping’ isn’t in the Oxford English Dictionary yet, but my understanding is that SSgt Cox meant its use to convey something that was contemptible, soiled and disgusted her.
8 There is one small exception to this: the army’s padres are permitted to conduct their work unarmed, protected instead by God.
9 Colour sergeant (CSgt) is the equivalent rank of staff sergeant but applies only to the infantry. So called because colour sergeants marched into battle carrying the battalion’s colours (regimental flag) and staff sergeants carried staffs. Both are one promotion rank above a sergeant.
4
EEYORE’S GLOOMY PLACE, RATHER BOGGY AND SAD
Sandhurst isn’t meant to be easy. A Queen’s commission can no longer simply be bought if Daddy has enough money and knows the right people.1 At Sandhurst the training is tough and uncomfortable because the reality is even more unpleasant. The commissioning course is about physical and mental robustness; it’s about toughening up floppy-haired students and pampered civilians for the realities of war. It’s about learning how to live and function in discomfort, about overcoming how cold, tired, wet and hungry you feel and getting on with the job. Eventually, at some point it may even be about enjoying it.
But I was not tough, I was dysfunctional in adversity and I was not at any point enjoying it.
So far I thought life at Sandhurst had been pretty harsh and uncomfortable. Death o’clock starts in the morning followed by room inspections and parade square humiliation made my days fairly unpleasant. But then as CC071 deployed out into the field on our first ‘exercise’, the comforts of fresh food, running water and sprung mattresses quickly came into perspective. For life in the field was the real test of continuing to function in adversity and would take my misery to a whole new level.
Like so much of Sandhurst, I had no idea what to expect of a field exercise. Initially I thought some time away from my ironing board and broomstick was to be welcomed, a break in the countryside, taking in lungfuls of fresh air miles from Old College. I was wrong. As D-Day approached Exercise Self-Reliance was spoken of with sore foreboding, and fearful anticipation pervaded as preparations got underway. We were given maps of the training area to fablon,2 boxes of foil-wrapped boil-in-the-bag rations to pack and a long list of issued equipment and clothing we’d need. Keenly prepared, I packed the prescribed kit list into waterproof freezer bags and the freezer bags into watertight canoe bags and the canoe bag into my weather-treated rucksack, as reports of the week’s weather forecast reached us. And then, having struggled to close the straps on my bulging rucksack lid (which in the military is called a ‘bergen’ and I came to rename my ‘burden’), I tried to lift it off the ground and onto my back.
I couldn’t.
It weighed almost as much as me.
I rolled it over, lay with my back on it and wiggled my arms through the straps, then tried to stand from there with it on, flailing instead like an upturned beetle.
I released myself and manoeuvred to try sitting on the floor and standing up with it on my back from that position.
I still couldn’t.
In the end Officer Cadet Wheeler came to my rescue and lifted the bergen burden onto my back and I stumbled precariously top-heavy downstairs, fearful at the prospect of walking any great distance with it on.
Officer Cadet Wheeler was the platoon darling and my polar opposite: intelligent, highly capable and taking everything at Sandhurst in her unfazed stride, she was Eleven Platoon’s poster girl. A Cambridge graduate and OTC veteran, she had far too much God-given compassion to be in the army, and watched out for each one of us like a guardian angel. She was strong, both mentally and physically, and always went out of her way to come to the aid of someone who needed it.
Eventually with ‘burdens’ packed, maps fabloned and rain forecast we were ready to deploy into the field.
Much like my father, the organizers of the training programme at Sandhurst like to avoid the traffic and, with this planning parameter in mind, we were dragged from our beds at 3 a.m. to parade in the dark at the back of Old College, ready to board the coaches.
It was already raining.
Exercise Self-Reliance, or Self-Abuse as it soon became dubbed, was to take place amidst the quaint wealth of the Sussex green belt. And it is here, tucked away where expensive Range Rovers cruise leafy lanes, the idyllic beauty of Winnie-the-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood can be found, whose childhood innocence was about to be shattered. As the coaches wound their way along the forest track from the main road, I caught glances of gentle rolling woodland, deer skipping through the trees and picnic clearings; how bad could this place be? This wasn’t the wilds of Brecon or an inhospitable Scottish training area. Normal sane-minded members of the public came here to walk the dog, for Sunday strolls and to throw Poohsticks from the bridge. But then normal sane-minded members of the public wouldn’t choose to spend five days here, sleeping in a woodblock exposed to the cutting midwinter weather.
Exercise Self-Abuse was all about introducing us to the baby basics of field survival and infantry tactics: Boy Scout survival lessons followed by running around with guns playing soldiers. The boys beamed with excitement; this is what they were here for. I was never enough of a tomboy to have
tried either, but I had once enjoyed a camping trip to Devon so while my ironing board and parade shoes were a safe distance back at Sandhurst, life looked good.
SSgt Cox started by giving us an introduction to field hygiene: how to keep clean by washing with water boiled in a mess tin and using a scrap of soap; avoiding trench rot and, for the girls, what to do with the indignity of having your period while living rough in the field (frequent trips to the Portaloos or an injection from the Medical Centre nurse). Colour Sergeant Rattray then gathered us in for a cooking lesson and introduction to army twenty-four-hour ration packs.
CSgt Rattray, or ‘the Rat’ as he was known out of earshot, was Ten Platoon’s CSgt. A broad Scot, originally from somewhere near Glasgow, he was thickly accented and proud to hail from north of the border. Through his ‘achs’ and ‘ayes’ I rarely understood what he was saying but that didn’t matter because he was devilishly good-looking and knew it. A flashy playboy, he would show off in his red convertible sports car, screeching through the Academy, slowing to wink at the girls’ platoon with handsome charm.
On Exercise Self-Abuse we all sat on our day-sacks in the wet field adoringly around him, as he produced champagne, caviar, Gentleman’s Relish and a copy of the Telegraph from the small cardboard box on the ground, like Mary Poppins, chuckling that this was a wondrous ‘officer’s ration pack’. If only that were reality, because no amount of mesmeric swooning over the Rat could excite us about the contents of our real ration packed meals. That night, huddled over a small hexamine stove tired and hungry, I found the sight and consistency of chicken stew and fruit dumplings in custard gag-inducing. I prodded the brown congealed gloop with my spork3 and realized the boil-in-the-bag horrors would have to be eaten in the dark when too tired and ravenous to care. The alternative Lancashire hotpot, corned beef hash and treacle pudding may have been appetizing recipes for eating in Cold War trenches, but in the heat of Iraq and Afghanistan they are less palatable. What we really wanted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Rat told us, was to get our hands on American MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat). With fajitas and buffalo chicken on the menu, complete with squeezy cheese, peanut butter cookies, M&Ms and HOOAH! bars, they provide a whopping 4,000 calories a day so camp-bound Americans can continue to conform to international stereotypes.4
An Officer and a Gentlewoman Page 7
