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By now the other patrols were alongside. Tim walked stiffly to the front of the shredded soldiery. ‘Fresh orders from the top,’ he boomed. ‘The transport has been called away on a rush job. Alternative transport is to be found ten miles from here,’ and he rattled off a new grid reference.

Suddenly, Tommo exploded. He lunged at Tim with clenched fists, screaming, ‘You bastard!’ I just managed to push him to one side and the punch whistled past Tim’s ear. Two of the other lads knocked Tommo to the ground and restrained him until he was led away, muttering and snivelling, and thrown into the twat wagon.

‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen him reveal any real emotion. Mind you, I can’t say I’m surprised at what happened. I didn’t like the look of him from the start.’

‘That’s what happens when you bottle it up so much,’ said Tim knowingly. ‘You can only hold it back for so long, then you explode.’

We set off on the compass bearing, heads bowed, a Para NCO at the front. I was determined not to end up like Tommo. The pain returned in all its throbbing sharpness. All I could see in front of me, through glazed eyes, was yet another hell. Suddenly, as we struggled over the brow of a hill, we could not believe it – salvation! There they were – the Bedfords. We looked back at Tim. He was expressionless. Nobody dared say a word. We just plodded on in stunned silence. As we got nearer we realized that the Bedfords were definitely on our compass bearing. I strained my ears for the sound of an engine starting. Surely they wouldn’t do it twice, would they? A hundred yards, fifty yards, twenty yards. I was praying harder than I’d ever prayed in my life. Ten yards, five yards.

Tim moved to the front as we reached the wagons, gripped the tailgate of one of the Bedfords and said, ‘Think yourselves fucking lucky they’re not really ten miles away!’

I collapsed into a corner of one of the Bedfords, totally exhausted, but exhilarated at having passed my first big test. ‘Only two more weeks to go,’ was the last thing I remember thinking before dropping into a deep sleep that even the rattling, jolting Bedford could not disturb. A blissful interlude. A lull before the next storm.

4

Sickener 2

All too soon we were back to the familiar hard physical grind. Week Two. The future didn’t look too bright to me just at that moment. We were down to ninety out of the original 135, and the worst was yet to come. I was tormented by the possibility that I might be No. 89, the next candidate for Platform 4. My desire to succeed was strong enough, but all the time I wondered whether my mind and body would carry me through. I certainly got to know myself better during the three weeks of selection. I discovered to my surprise that just when I thought my energies were totally spent and failure was beckoning with open arms, I would suddenly open up reserves of stamina that I never knew existed. It was as if an inner resolve, so deep I couldn’t truly fathom its nature, lay at the very core of my being, like a steel rod refusing to bend or break.

It was on Day Three of Week Two that we were introduced to the controlled agonies of the Skirrid, a stark, barren monolith that towered ominously 500 metres above the surrounding flat green countryside near Llanfihangel. From the trig point at the top there was a commanding 360-degree view of the land for miles around, and for that reason it was ideal for map-reading exercises. The problem, of course, was that you had to get to the top first, saddled with full kit, and inevitably we were assembled not at the gently sloping side, but at the foot of the near-vertical side. So fierce was the slope that when I checked the map, all I could see was a brown blur of bunched-up contour lines floating threateningly in a sea of green.

I set the bearing on my Silvas compass and lined up the arrows. They pointed straight to the top, directly up the steep side. We set off wearily, a private in the REME up front. When we reached the summit, it was down again, change the leader, then back up. Tim kept us at it all day without respite. Beads of perspiration fell from my forehead and clouded my eyes with a salty film; sweat trickled down my spine and collected in the small of my back. The bergen pounded with each painful footfall, the straps pulling viciously at my shoulders. My calf and thigh muscles gradually tightened until they were virtually locked rigid, and the blisters on my feet grew larger and more inflamed by the hour.

The only relief came at midday, when we paused to take a visual map-reading test. When my turn came, the more I tried to concentrate and stare at the map, the more the contour lines and compass settings became first a blur, then a swimming morass of shapes, like a crowd of elvers in a fast-flowing stream. It was almost as if my mind had become disconnected from my optic nerves. I could still see the shapes and lines, but no message was getting through to my brain. I shook my head and tried to clear it, and fortunately managed just in the nick of time to remember one of Tim’s survival rules: calmness and coolness at all times. I took a deep breath, determined not to be hurried beyond my own judgement. Mercifully, the features on the map gradually came back into meaningful focus, and with them Tim’s magic formula for mapreading: grid to mag add; mag to grid to get rid. It worked.

I passed. My blisters didn’t, though. After touching the trig point on top of the Skirrid for the last time and beginning my final descent, all I could think of during the journey to the bottom was getting my boots off and hitting the blisters with another shot of Jenson’s Violet!

As we drank our final brew of the day, Geordie exclaimed, ‘I’m going to get rat-arsed when this lot’s over!’

Tim looked at Geordie and frowned. ‘It’s not the answer to everything, believe me. I remember when we were on operations in Malaya, one day we decided to march over the hill and visit one of the other troops. When we came down towards the beach we found the building the other troop had been using as a base. It was empty and no one was around. I began to feel apprehensive. My heart pounded as we reached the beach and saw what appeared to be bodies scattered around on the sand. My God, I thought, they’ve been ambushed! They’re all dead! They were dead all right – dead drunk, lying face down, their mouths full of sand. It turned out they’d found a native still, together with several large tin cans full of sansu – that’s rice wine. It took us ages to bring them round and they were really ill. It was days before they were fully recovered.’

Recounting this anecdote, Tim was beginning to warm to us. Stories from his days in Malaya now started to flow freely.

‘As the Colonel explained to you,’ he went on, draining the last of the tea from his mug, ‘we are essentially a unit that keeps a low profile and jealously guards the secrecy of our operations. Even a winged-dagger badge spotted in the wrong place can blow your cover completely. I remember in the latter part of 1952, A Squadron were called up to Penang from our base in Kuala Lumpur to deal with an outburst of terrorist activity. On the move up to Penang we endeavoured to conceal our identity by sporting the blue berets and cap badges of the Manchester Regiment. But as soon as our squadron HQ was installed in Mindon Barracks, our OC, a colourful ex-Indian Army officer, quickly dispelled any notion of a low-profile operation by driving around in a scout car, flaunting his winged dagger for all to see and ostentatiously smoking cigarettes through a long cigarette-holder. Can you imagine the scene! He quickly acquired the nickname El Supremo. He managed to get away with it, but it’s not to be recommended I assure you!’