As I stepped through the gate, a rickshaw driver gestured to me. I winced violently at the thought of being clattered through the streets on the hard seat of that solid-wheeled springless contraption. ‘You must be fucking joking, mate,’ I said to him, but I doubt he understood. I stood there, my rear end throbbing like a cross-Channel ferry’s engine. Suddenly I saw a movement out the corner of my eye – and there they all were, waiting for me: an ambulance, CBF, the colonel of the legal services. I nearly collapsed with relief.
CBF approached. ‘Hello, Sergeant. Did it hurt?’
The understatement of the decade. I just looked blank, didn’t answer.
‘Right! You’d better get on this ambulance and we’ll take you to BMH.’
My entrance into BMH was made in total secrecy. I was taken round the back to the tradesmen’s entrance, and up in a service lift. At the top, the stretcher was wheeled into a sterile wing of the private officers’ suite. They did not want it to become known that a member of the SAS had been in trouble.
I was put into bed face down. A medical orderly told me, ‘The hospital dermatologist will be along in a few minutes to investigate the wound.’ And with that he disappeared. I was still in acute pain, but the friendliness of the surroundings began to act like soothing balm.
When the dermatologist arrived, he looked down at the wound and exclaimed, ‘I’ve never seen a wound like this in the whole of my Army service! Can I take a photograph of it for my records? It really is a unique specimen.’
‘Well, I’ve been humiliated enough already today, so I suppose a photograph won’t make any difference now. You can send a copy to Reg the medic back at camp for his photo album.’
The dermatologist went away and returned a few minutes later with his camera. He took shots from different angles, at one point placing a biro pen on my thigh to get the scale. As he flitted around the bed he muttered, ‘This is a real prize specimen.’ Snap. ‘This is definitely one for the archives.’ Snap. ‘My colleagues must see this one.’ Snap. I consoled myself with the thought that if I didn’t do anything else with my life, at least I’d made medical history. As for treatment, all the dermatologist could say was, ‘There’s not much we can do, I’m afraid. It’s got to heal on its own. You’ll have to spend a few days in BMH on your stomach. There’s no point putting any dressing on it. It needs plenty of fresh air. Do you want any painkiller?’
‘Yeah, give me a shot of morphine, but make sure it’s in the lower thigh.’
After he’d gone, the medical orderly returned and said, ‘CBF’s coming to see you.’
CBF in all his glory duly appeared. ‘Do you realize what you’ve done, Sergeant?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘What on earth possessed you to become involved in this escapade? Do you realize the publicity it could attract?’
I just looked at him and said, ‘Yeah, I know. It’s real headline materiaclass="underline" the only sergeant in the British Army with twelve stripes – three on each arm and six on the backside. I’m going to sell my story to the News of the World when I get back!’
CBF looked rather shocked. ‘I hope you are not serious, Sergeant.’ His voice, ringing with uncertainty, tailed off. He disappeared, unsure of whether I was joking or not.
I remained there a further week, being looked after by my own personal captain from the QA’s – the Queen Alexandra’s Nursing Corps. My own personal nurse. She really had the tender touch. It was almost worth getting whipped for. Apart from the captain I saw no one else. I was left to my own devices and my own thoughts. After a week I was told that I was fit enough to make it back to the UK and that I would leave on a hospital plane from Kai Tak airport the next day. I drifted off to sleep, happy at the prospect of going home.
12
A Visit from the Colonel
I awoke to hear voices in the distance. I was lying face down on the bed, hot, not quite sweating, but covered in a fine film of body moisture. My nose was blocked, pressed into the pillow. I’d been breathing too long through my mouth; my throat and lips were like burnt cardboard. I turned my head to one side and coughed away the congestion in my chest. The voices were closer now. Must be the orderlies coming to prepare me for the journey to Kai Tak airport and then back to the good old UK.
Good old UK? I wasn’t so sure that I was relishing the prospect after all. First there would be an extremely uncomfortable flight lasting several hours, throughout which I’d be lying on my stomach on a stretcher strapped to a rack on a medical C-130. Then, once I was home and had had a couple of weeks’ R & R, I’d have to face the wrath of the Colonel. The big interview! My future in the balance after the drama of Hong Kong.
Doors were banging. The orderlies were shouting. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. I shifted slightly on the bed. The muscles in my buttocks and upper thighs were locked solid, as rigid as ships’ girders. Something wasn’t quite right. Something was out of sync. It was like hearing a blackbird, fooled by a neon streetlight, singing its morning song in the dead of the night. I began to prise my eyelids open.
‘Come on, you lot, out of the pits! Every able-bodied man to assemble in the yard at 0600 hours. You’ve got five minutes.’
‘What the hell…?’ I finally managed to lever open my bleary eyes and look around. The room was full of coughing, cursing, fumbling shapes. I slid my hand down the side of my body and gingerly fingertipped my buttocks as if feathering a sleeping baby’s head. Nothing! Satin smooth. Not a mark. Then it dawned. Ward 11! The early-morning run!
This I was going to relish. Thursday. Action at last after six days of lethargy and boredom! I jumped into my trainers and shorts and trotted to join the rest downstairs. They were all there: doctors, male nurses and patients. That was the system. The doctors had to be seen to be leading from the front. They had to show a good example – a healthy mind in a healthy body and all that. It was part of the occupational therapy.
Twenty minutes and three miles later, I’d outstripped the lot of them, I was on the finishing line way ahead of the rest. I grabbed my chance. As the first of the medics puffed into sight around the last hundred metres, I gave it Sickener 1 for all I was worth. ‘Come on, you lazy bastards! You should be fitter than me. You do this every morning. I’m supposed to be a burnt-out alkie and I’ve left you standing!’ I beasted them like a veteran instructor, relishing my moment of glory. ‘What kept you? I’m thirty-eight. I’m fifteen years older than some of you guys and I still came in way ahead of you. You should be fitter than me. I haven’t been running for ten days.’
They weren’t amused.
Nor was the doctor I bumped into coming down the corridor later in the day. He looked tired, stressed and overworked. I said to him, ‘What’s up, doc, got problems?’
‘This job is really getting to me,’ he muttered. ‘I’m up to here with the pressure of work.’
He had fallen headlong into the trap. I lowered my voice, and with a concerned look and in hushed tones of mock-sympathy I enquired, ‘Do you want to sit down and talk about it?’
A psychiatrist! Depressed! And we were the ones who were supposed to have the problems!
A sense of humour works wonders – the best therapy imaginable. I didn’t fancy lying there for days on end like an inanimate cabbage. That would be too much like toeing the line – far too boring, far too predictable. I sensed another opportunity a few days later, when the hospital Colonel was about to make his weekly visitation. He would normally sweep around the ward in magisterial style, his sycophantic entourage clucking behind him, enquiring of people lying on their beds or sitting in their chairs how they were feeling. I secretly had a word with the other lads in the ward, then primed the newly arrived lancecorporal from the Royal Irish Rangers, who’d been given the bed nearest the door. ‘Hey, Shaun. When the Colonel comes in, bring the ward to attention. He expects that. It’ll go down well on your report.’