And then there was Checkpoint X-ray, lofting high up in the clouds, 500 metres vertically above us.
To get to the summit we zigzagged our way along a steep, precipice dirt track, tripping over stones, our legs now clumsy with exhaustion as the bergens on our backs dragged us down. This was Wales at its most unforgiving and the climb to the top took over an hour. We bowed our heads into the driving rain and shuffled our feet slowly to the peak in silence, too tired to even speak. Peering out from my shrouding hood, I watched the neon glow of Crickhowell village as it disappeared into the grey mist below and I felt surprisingly content. Here we were in the middle of one of the most arduous challenges we’d do at Sandhurst, if not our entire military careers, but as I trudged to the summit in search of Checkpoint X-ray, I could see my circumstance broaden into perspective. I wasn’t crawling. I wasn’t digging. I wasn’t ironing or marching. I wasn’t being shouted at and I wasn’t polishing my shoes. I was walking in the hills with friends, albeit in the freezing darkness of midwinter, but this was tangibly normal and it put a small smile on my face.
As dawn approached on the first morning we descended west from the summit of Checkpoint X-ray into the tiny hamlet of Cwmdu. Climbing down I could see a tiny speck of light shining from the village pub below drawing us in, radiating the rich malty warmth of real ales and farming men with their dogs. We prayed that through the darkness next to the pub there stood a village church (place of worship with tower), not so as to hear our prayers but because if the church wasn’t there then this wasn’t Cwmdu but Pengenffordd and we were too far north. A church alone however wasn’t confirmation enough; if a church was present but without a tower (place of worship without such additions) then this was Tretower and we had stumbled too far south and had more unwelcome walking ahead. Every cluster of houses here seemed to have a church. We checked our compasses, hoped and prayed.
As we neared the village, stepping down onto the gentle flattening river plain, we joined a meandering footpath with tall thick bramble hedges on either side. We were all tired now and walked in silence, the grumble of our tummies the only sound, as we had agreed to stop for breakfast after our next checkpoint. On the track ahead of us, I could vividly see a lady approaching. She was dressed beautifully in old Victorian fashions, her bustle and flouncing petticoat trailing in the mud. An open parasol rested on her shoulder and there was a genteel frilly bonnet on her head. I stared at her for quite some time as we moved closer. She looked completely out of place on a boggy wet path in a National Park. I wondered if the others had noticed her, but I was too tired to speak out, and glad that I hadn’t because of course she was out of place. As we got nearer she disappeared, replaced by a signpost and overhanging tree. I had begun hallucinating. In the early morning half-light, tiredness was winning and playing havoc with my brain. Later, as we walked up a steep slope on our way to another towering summit Merv swore she saw a drove of pigs, rosy pink and incongruous on the Welsh mountainside; she was adamant that they were there, but the rest of us saw nothing. Then at dusk my eyes deceived me once more as a looming farm building morphed into a singing ice cream van.
The tiredness frayed tempers too.
As the hours clocked by there were tantrums and tears as the Platoon Donkey stubbornly refused to continue. Sitting down on a slippery wet rock in a tight river gully, she refused to take another step. Not a budge. The agony and exhaustion had pushed her past her breaking point.
‘I can’t do this any more,’ she blubbered between gasps of tears. ‘This is fucking killing me, I can’t go on.’
‘Come on, don’t cry. Look, you can do this,’ Rhodes soothed. ‘Just think, it’ll all be over soon and you can rest. It’s nearly the weekend, and you’ll be back at home with your boyfriend in no time,’ Rhodes reasoned. ‘So let’s keep going, shall we?’
‘No, no. I can’t,’ she wailed as she put her head in her hands and started to sob loudly. ‘Honestly, this is the end for me. I can’t go any further.’ She was broken. Mentally, she had given up, as the Long Reach challenge had taken its first victim.
I looked over at her. Crying here was going to achieve nothing. We were nowhere near a road or access track and Mountain Rescue would hardly scramble to save an able-bodied adult having a petulant strop. There was only one way off the mountain and that was to continue walking. But what exactly were we supposed to do with her?
‘Here, have one of these,’ Evans said, walking over to her and offering an open packet of Haribo sweets. ‘A couple of these and you’ll get your energy back. You just need a little boost, that’s all.’
The Platoon Donkey looked up, her eyes wet and puffy, a little bulb of snot at her nose. ‘Thanks,’ she said quietly, taking one with a sniff and popping it in her mouth. She chewed on it as we all held our breath, waiting for her to snap out of this malaise and get back on track. But she just sat there, staring into space and feeling sorry for herself. Now I just wanted to walk over and throttle her. This was so selfish. No matter what, we still had to get to the next checkpoint and all she was doing was slowing us all down. But I bit my tongue and kept quiet. This was not the time for a temper tantrum.
‘Do you think you’re ready to try and carry on?’ Rhodes tentatively quizzed. ‘We can take it slowly if you like.’
Slowly! Slowly was not going to get us there by our six o’clock deadline, but I knew Rhodes was right, the Platoon Donkey was being stubborn and needed gentle coaxing. I looked down at the map and moved slowly to lead the way. I knew it was going to take us at least two hours to reach the next checkpoint, even more if she continued to be precious about it.
‘We don’t have much further to go,’ I said, pointing at the map and trying to encourage her to her feet. ‘It’s no more than an hour to the next checkpoint.’ It was a lie. My grandfather used to use this trick on me for years before I realized what he was doing. As my brother and I would sit in the back of his blue Ford Fiesta on long car journeys he’d always promise us that we were nearly there. When we pressed him for a specific time, he’d always half it, turning forty minutes into twenty, twenty into ten, psychologically making it seem more bearable.
‘Here, do you want to take some of the load from your bergen and put it in mine,’ Merv offered. ‘It’ll make things easier.’
And at that she saw her window of opportunity. ‘Oh, if you don’t mind. That would help,’ she said, lifting her head to look at us.
And so as the tears dried on her cheeks, Merv squeezed the Platoon Donkey’s sleeping bag and half of the contents from her bergen into her own. I was grateful that we would finally be moving again but incensed that she had given up so readily. It felt wrong. Alone she would have failed, but for us to pass as a team, some of us would have to work harder than others. However, in the army that is just the way it is sometimes.
By six o’clock on the second evening we had been walking for twenty-four hours without rest. We were shattered with exhaustion and ravenously hungry. Ahead lay one more checkpoint challenge before an enforced four-hour rest. As we staggered along a stretch of quiet country road separating checkpoints seven and eight CSgt Gleeson suddenly jumped out of a field beside us. CSgt Gleeson was a bit of an unknown to Eleven Platoon. He was a Physical Training Instructor (PTI) in the Academy gym and we saw him occasionally strutting around Sandhurst in his tight red and white PTI vest tucked neatly into a pair of navy bottom-skimming shorts that perfectly framed his toned backside. He was body-beautiful and knew it. As he leaped from the bushes that evening in Wales he was freshly shaven and undoubtedly freshly fed, and looked far perkier than our lack of sleep would allow. Behind him a mud-splattered green Land Rover chugged noisily, the engine ticking away keeping the heating on and inside enviably warm.
‘Ladies,’ he grinned as he eagerly greeted us. ‘How are you all this fine evening?’
‘Fine thank you, colour sergeant,’ Thomas piped up chirpily (never let them know you’re broken).
‘And where are you heading to now?’
he asked as he unfolded a map out in front of us on the bonnet of the Land Rover.
I peered in. Looking down at the map as I hovered my right index finger over where I thought we were, jabbing to a point on the map.
‘We’re walking along this road here, colour sergeant; from checkpoint seven to eight,’ I said, tracing my finger along a small yellow B road on the map. A fatigued error on my part because in the Army you never use the inaccuracy of a fat finger to point on a map.
‘Oh dear, dear, dear, Miss Goodley. What have you been told about pointing to maps with your finger?’ CSgt Gleeson said, reaching behind him into the Land Rover. ‘You must always point at a map with something pointy,’ he said, bringing out a fresh, warm triangular slice of pizza, oozing with oily cheese and succulent pepperoni. We couldn’t believe our eyes. He used the pointy tip of the pizza slice to trace our route on the map and then took a large satisfactory bite as we stood salivating helplessly in front of him.
Exercise Long Reach was emotional. We returned to the Academy scarred, beaten, stumbling wrecks. For the next few days, cadets hobbled around like battery hens on swollen, broken legs and feet. Leg muscles were tight and unwilling, forcing people to walk slowly and deliberately with the precision of a geriatric. Raw, open blister wounds wept and the softer soled limped weakly to the medical centre for sick notes to wear trainers instead of boots, their pain excruciating enough to suffer the mocking ridicule of the rest of us.
But with the pain of Long Reach had come my Sandhurst turning point.
Looking back I now see Long Reach through heavily rose-tinted spectacles. I know I must have hated it at the time, but now all I feel is nostalgia for the Black Mountains: their quaint National Park status, the clearly marked footpaths, enchanting Welsh cottages and Crickhowell’s peculiar charm. Today I can’t recollect any of the pain or blisters that I must have suffered. I don’t remember struggling with my bergen for forty hours. I don’t recall getting lost and I don’t even think we were that cold. Hindsight is a most dangerous and deluded perspective. Our brains are cleverly wired to forget pain (otherwise women would never give birth a second time). Pain isn’t lasting and blisters heal, but it’s glory that is laid down in history, to be exaggerated by each generation of story-telling. What I do remember of Long Reach is the euphoria of crossing the finish line, the satisfaction of having achieved something quite special, the coming of age, passing the Sandhurst initiation test, completing a rite of passage and finally, after weeks in the wilderness, finding my talent. Because Long Reach changed my Sandhurst fortunes. For it was on Long Reach I found my place. Finally I could take part, because on Long Reach I discovered my useful skill. I could read a map.
In Australia the Pormparaaw tribe of Aboriginals don’t have words for left or right; instead they use the cardinal compass points. A sixth sense means they always know their orientation, even when in an unfamiliar darkened room. I’ve always been fascinated by this skill and, while nowhere near this talented myself, I can competently use a compass and read a map. I was aware that I could do this before I went to Sandhurst, but I was not aware that so many others couldn’t. In the army, officers have a dreadful reputation among soldiers for being incapable of reading a map and routinely getting lost,1 and conforming to female stereotypes should have further compounded this for me, but instead in this instance two wrongs make a right. And with map in hand I finally became a useful addition to the platoon. My parade square ineptitude and inability to shine shoes became forgivable, because at last I could join the club, no longer standing in the queue outside feeling useless, racked with guilt and incompetence. I could take part. My special skill meant I could contribute after all. I could hold up my side of the bargain. While the other members of the platoon helped me shine my shoes, dig holes and disguise my two left feet on the parade square, I became indispensable with a map.
I desperately hadn’t wanted to return to Sandhurst after that first long leave weekend. And as Sunday night arrived I slipped into a deeply depressive ‘Sunday blues’, moping around Deborah’s flat, like a child reluctant to return to school at the end of the long summer holidays. I dragged my heels to the car, wishing for any excuse to escape: lightning strike, alien abduction, natural disaster: anything to get out of going back to boot camp. My first weekend of freedom had brought a taste of the free world and I so much wanted to be part of it again, and the thought of returning to the oppressive Sandhurst regime filled me with dread. The endless cycle of cleaning, polishing, marching, meals on the run, incessant shouting and the feeling of continually being on edge, trapped under a fear of misdemeaning and recrimination, filled me with anxiety.
As I had left the Academy at lunchtime the previous Friday, screaming my way up the M3 motorway as fast as my VW Polo would carry me, Deborah’s jelly babies long demolished, I made a personal promise: if things didn’t improve, if I didn’t improve, on my return I would jack it all in and return to the City to ask for my old job back,2 the itch scratched. There seemed no point in flogging the dead horse. If I was going to suffer the slashing pay cut, the demeaning indignities and back-breaking, blister-giving, muscle-snapping training, I should at least be competent at it, and right now I wasn’t.
But that was until Long Reach.
Long Reach changed my fortunes and, with it, it changed my Sandhurst experience. With Long Reach the course of my fate jibed around the buoy and onto the right tack, as I had my lucky break. Back at the Academy, while cadets limped around on languid limbs I had a small spring in my step, because finally I got it. I understood something. Just because I could read a map, it didn’t suddenly overnight mean that I could shine shoes and march, but it did give me a tiny little break. A modicum of skill with which I could play the game, like everyone else.
Those early days of the commissioning course were all about weeding out the unsuitable. Identifying those who wouldn’t last the course, whose absenting potential may have been missed by the filtering sift at Westbury. If you were struggling, as I was, you found yourself under greater staff scrutiny. The magnifying glare honed in, focusing unnecessary additional heat to the pressure cooker we were already in. The only way out of this was to excel at something. Getting top marks in a map-reading exam allowed you to bask in the glow of being top of the class for long enough to overshadow other inadequacies. Having an immaculate room bought more time to practise the slow march, the shiniest shoes provided a smoke screen under which to improve press-ups and being fast at running protected you from everything. The Sandhurst vultures circled for the weak and the lame, the ones who universally struggled, and then they hounded them.
So for now I was safe.
Just.
After the rigours of the first five weeks, we returned to an ever so slightly relaxed regime at the Academy after our first leave weekend. From now on our days would begin with a generous lie-in to half past six, the national anthem dawn chorus stopped, the chocolate ban was lifted, our mobile phones were released from SSgt Cox’s office, but only to be used in our rooms, and meal times were extended by a lengthy five minutes (although by now my eating habits had adapted to the breakneck pace of feeding, much to my mother’s disapproval). Our rooms became our own space, as we no longer had to adhere to the prescribed layout. Kettles, photographs, personal effects and homely touches were allowed, as the farcicality of room inspections relaxed, but unfortunately didn’t stop. In my room, I added a pot plant and a rug, and replaced the army-issue quilt with a brightly coloured duvet-cover set. On the bare shelves, I placed books and photographs, while at the back of my underwear drawer I squirrelled away bottles of wine to get me through the late evenings of polishing and shining. Alcohol was strictly banned in our rooms, and being caught with it would have been a serious offence, but as I was now twenty-eight years old I felt responsible enough to control my own consumption so hid it away at the back of the drawer behind my bras and pants.
So with the shock of capture over, we began to grasp the essentials and Academy lif
e got fractionally easier. Occasionally we would get too comfortable and a healthy dose of maddening nonsense would be dealt our way: a late-night parade, early-morning inspection, guard duty or threat of return to ‘weeks one to five’, but on the whole we settled into the routine and started to play the game, as the remainder of the Junior term subsequently passed in a forgotten blur. The cycle of drill, inspections and parades persisted, interjected occasionally with glimmers of academic lectures to awaken our brains.
*
In keeping with the ideals of sound Christian leadership, religious ceremony was a weekly fixture in our new world. Each Sunday during weeks one to five, we paraded in Chapel Square dressed smartly for inspection and then took our pick from the faith options on offer. There was the choice of joining either the large Anglican congregation in the Academy Chapel where the service was lengthy but provided plenty of scope to fall asleep unnoticed in prayer, or the shorter, smaller Roman Catholic ceremony where the slumber potential was much reduced. The overseas cadets were all excused to the ‘multi-faith room’ where none of them ever went, instead sloping off to their rooms for an extra hour in bed. I like to think that everyone’s God understood our unanimous pan-faith requirement for sleep.
And at some point I do recall my parents coming to one of the twice-termly Chapel Sundays when the whole of Sandhurst, all of the cadets and staff, marched to church to a brass band and filled every seat in the cathedral-like Chapel. On these occasions the euphony of 1,000 people belting out ‘I Vow to Thee my Country’ to resounding organ pipes, made proud shoulders bristle and spines stiffen, as the music echoed around the eaves and pews.
On my parents’ visit my mother fussed terribly over how tired and gaunt she thought I looked, shocked by the dark circles under my eyes and pallor of my skin. My father belted out the hymns and couldn’t resist the urge to execute some Nazi-style marching, demonstrating for SSgt Cox and Company Sergeant Major Porter that my drill ineptitude was not due to personal ignorance but the fault of my unfortunate genetics.
An Officer and a Gentlewoman Page 11
