And finally, Tommo the Scouse, Royal Fusiliers. Tall, muscular in a compact sort of way, with tufts of blond hair as stiff as a yard-brush sticking straight up. Snub nose, and ears bent over slightly at the top. He looked like an overgrown leprechaun – and a malevolent one at that. The nearest he ever came to a smile was a cross between a leer and a snarl, which would slowly appear as attempts to engage him in conversation were met with a sullen ‘yeah,’ ‘that’s right,’ ‘dunno.’ I never could guess what was going on in his mind, and for that reason never felt comfortable when he was around. In fact, I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw a fully laden bergen.
After the first rush of food had hit our stomachs, I said to Jim, ‘There’s a lot of you lads down here. Talk of the Charge of the Jock Brigade!’
‘Yeah, it is a bit like that. But when it really hits you what it’s like up there – the perpetual rain, the decrepit tenement blocks stinking of urine, the empty rusting yards of Clydeside, the brawls on Buchanan Street on a Saturday night – you know you either take to the bottle or you take to the road. Me, I was down the mines for six years before I joined the Army. I looked around me one day and couldn’t see a future. So I said to myself, “Jimmy, if you join the Army what would you be leaving behind?” And you know the answer that came? A living hell, a long, slow, coal-dust-coughing hell. I decided to take me chances in the Army, I knew it couldn’t be any worse. If I could survive six years down the pits, I figured I could survive anything.’
‘Even the SAS selection course?’
‘Believe me, pal, it’ll be a piece of piss in comparison. Have you ever been down a pit?’
‘No.’
‘I thought not.’
‘But why the SAS?’
‘Oh you know, the adventure, the excitement, a chance to be more involved. A chance to do the special jobs.’
‘What about you, Geordie?’
‘This is why I applied, the food.’
We all looked at him, slightly puzzled.
He went on, ‘I wouldn’t say we’re poor back home, but when it comes to tea-time, the wife nails a kipper to the back of the kitchen door, and me and the kids, we all line up with a slice of bread in our hand and wipe it on the kipper as we file past.’
The eternal joker. It was a tendency no doubt triggered by the nerves of the moment. Geordie used his humour like a shield, to ward off people or situations he felt uncomfortable with. In spite of this, I was rather warming to him; I felt I could detect a real thinker beneath the surface.
We looked at Tommo, waiting for his story. He pushed his chair back suddenly and stood up. ‘Anyone for a brew?’ he asked in an agitated voice. He slouched across the room to two large aluminium tea-urns next to the hotplates. One of the urns was dripping tea onto the floor from the black plastic tap. No one seemed to bother. Tommo returned with three huge mugs of tea in one hand and one in the other. He was totally unconcerned that two of the three mugs were tilting and splashing scalding tea over his hand.
‘Tommo, what’s your story? Why did you volunteer?’ I asked as he put the mugs on the table and sat down again.
‘Dunno. A change of scene I suppose.’
We waited patiently for a few moments but nothing more came.
‘It was the boredom of garrison duties that got to me. Standing on guard in some obscure camp in the middle of nowhere in Germany, where you knew there was no threat. I ask you, were the Russians going to march hundreds of miles through hostile territory just to take out our insignificant little camp? Two hours on, four hours off, two hours on, four hours off. So it went on and on and on. Tedious in the extreme. I’ll tell you something. Did you see the grass inside the camp gates when you arrived here? A foot high if it was an inch! Hell, I thought, I’ve got the wrong place here! Can you believe it – an Army camp with grass a foot high! That’s why I joined, to escape the bullshit. They’ve obviously got a sense of priorities here. They don’t do things for the sake of it, I like that. Beat the boredom, beat the bullshit, beat the clock, that’ll do me.’
Even as I spoke, I felt slightly uncomfortable with what I’d said. It was true as far as it went, but somehow I felt it didn’t go far enough. I sensed that something deeper was driving me, something that as yet still eluded me. I decided there were too many new things happening right now; my brain was having the luxury of sorting through the debris of the old.
‘I reckon selection’s a real cartilage-cracker,’ pronounced Geordie with the hint of a frown.
Tommo looked at him but said nothing.
‘Piece of piss,’ reiterated Jim, confidently waving a teaspoon in the air to emphasize his lack of concern.
‘Well, I for one will be glad when it’s all over and we can get stuck into the real business we’re supposed to be here for,’ I said firmly.
‘Whatever that might be,’ added Tommo out of the blue. The three of us looked at him quizzically as we drained the last of the tea from our mugs.
That afternoon was spent doing preliminary weapons training and then a four-mile run. We had a training run every day around the leafy lanes of the Herefordshire countryside bordering the camp on the opposite side to the town. The gently rolling hills in the immediate vicinity were deceptive. They often concealed small but steep-sided valleys. There also seemed to be at least two of these valleys near the end of the run, where the incline would tear viciously at already tired leg muscles. If anyone was going to fail at the weekend, it wouldn’t be through lack of basic fitness.
The rest of the first week passed swiftly, each day following a similar rhythm and merging into the next. I got to know my patrol better as the week wore on, but we didn’t bond together as mates. We were all still wrapped up in our own personal battles to prove ourselves. And anyway, I thought most of these men will fail the course and you don’t want to get friendly with failures. As the weekend loomed ahead, I could sense all around that the nervous bravado of the first day was gradually giving way to deepening apprehension. Indeed, as more detailed rumours began to circulate about Sickener 1, the very thought of it was enough to break some men. ‘Crap-hats,’ we called them. They’d collected their rail warrants and were on Hereford station, Platform 4 homeward bound, before selection had even begun in earnest.
We were given the Friday evening off and advised to get an early night. The afternoon’s training run had finished around five o’clock. I had just enough time to shower, change and head into town before the shops closed. If I failed selection it couldn’t be through lack of preparation. From the previous candidates who’d failed the course and from the information I’d gleaned during the week, I’d worked out what I would need: two dozen Mars bars, a bottle of olive oil, a Silvas compass, squares of foam padding, two sheets of clear Fablon, curry powder, Tabasco sauce, powdered milk and waterproof walking gear.
I stepped onto the bridge crossing the River Wye and leaned over the parapet. ‘Welcome to Hereford, Historic Capital of the Wye Valley,’ the sign on the bridge said. The water flowed lazily by beneath me. I gazed at a much older and smaller stone bridge, which crossed the river about a hundred yards downstream from the modern road bridge where I stood. A neatly manicured lawn behind a church manse fell steeply down to the water’s edge just beyond the stone bridge. Newly leafing trees clung precariously to the riverbanks and dangled long thin branches into the water. A young couple were locked in an embrace under the trees by the putting green, luxuriating in the warm evening sunshine. Very nice too, I thought, feeling slightly envious.
I quickly located the shops and bought the necessary items, loaded up and headed back for camp.