REVELATION
The impetus for my joining the Army had been the fact that my then girlfriend was pregnant and I knew from my meagre wages that I could never afford a place of our own. I also knew, from being an ‘Army brat’, a child of a soldier, that the Army supplied everything needed for a happy home life.
The year was 1975, long hair and ridiculous pants were the fashion, and I’d just handed in my notice as the Delicatessen Manager at the flagship Lancastrian Co-op shop in Chapel Street, Southport.
I hadn’t always been the counter supervisor. I started my retail career as a trainee manager but seeing as the Co-op’s policy seemed to be ‘sack the store manager at least every 4 months’ my terms of employment had become lost in the fog of battle. This was only discovered when the new boss politely asked me what the fuck I was doing signing till receipts, and other such managerial tasks, between trips to the internal warehouse for more cold meats and cheese.
Our discussion led to the discovery they didn’t actually have a contract of employment for me but seeing as I’d been working there for over 12 months, and they admitted they’d been paying me, he offered me the full time post on the finest delicatessen counter in the Northwest of England. Neither he nor I were boasting. Several other retailers had told me and him apparently. He was not only impressed with my counter displays (the result of an ‘O’ Level in Art, I like to think) but also the fact that, since the last bloke had left, the profits had gone up under my ‘temporary’ stewardship. I put it down to my wonderful displays; he bluntly told me, with a look of disbelief and suspicion, it was down to my not stealing the takings. My position was later sealed when I regularly achieved takings of £1000 or more per week, something that had, he told me, never been achieved before.
I can recall a number of things of note from my days at the Co-op.
The sugar shortage. This was the closest I’d come to unbridled violence until the Toxteth riots of 1981 and 1985. It was impossible to get a trolley of sugar out of the warehouse to the display stand without attracting the attention of hordes of middle aged and elderly women who made the wrestlers Giant Haystacks and Mick McManus look like a couple of wusses. It was even worse than the previous year’s toilet roll debacle. Me and Rob, the warehouse guy, took to just pushing the wheeled pallet through the plastic hanging ‘doors’ and watching the ‘piranha’ devour it from the safety of the dark.
Rob. A nice guy who’d applied for a shop floor post but was persuaded his future lay in the internal warehouse mainly due to the fact that he looked and dressed like Alice Cooper. He’d introduced me to some of the album’s, which nearly led to my future wife deserting me when I used a record voucher she’d been given for her 21st birthday to buy Billion Dollar Babies and played ‘I love the Dead’ more often than I should’ve.
The security personnel were from the headquarters in Preston and were led by a thin woman with a jet black beehive, almost like a miniature bearskin. She looked like a Dr Who villain and would sweep into the store flanked by a couple of male flunkies which always created a sudden exit of the heads of various counters dashing to fill the lift to the first floor where their personal lockers were stashed. My last manager was particularly fond of her. He once told me, “I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.”
Christmas. It was always a good time. Together with the lad off the fruit and veg and the butchers I would resort to a local hostelry and have a swift lunchtime drink. Unfortunately none of us appeared to know the meaning of the word ‘swift’ and I discovered I couldn’t drink the amounts they did. They seemed impervious to the alcohol. I, on the other hand, wasn’t and so I was found two Christmas’s running sat on a till dispensing huge amounts of dividend stamps from the auto dispensers, for the merest of purchases. No one got me on M.O. because we’d had three different managers since the last time.
So, back to the Queen’s shilling. I don’t recall ever being given this item but the nice man at the recruiting office must have given us a banknote or two because I and my newly found, although brief, friends decamped to the nearest pub, after saying some magic words, and got pissed. Only one of those who were sworn in that day didn’t come with us but it was probably because he was quite decrepit. He was 28. We were 18.
My father, the ex-soldier, gave me some advice. Good; “Don’t let them talk you into going in the Infantry” and not so good; “Here. Use this for your boots” as he handed me a tin of cherry blossom. As every soldier knows, this is not what will get you a good shine, or ‘bull’, on your boots. When I asked him years later why he’d done it, he simply said, “Well, we didn’t have any Kiwi in the cupboard.”
After an introduction to Army life and the discovery their barber’s knew only one style of haircut, which last reached its height of popularity during the summer of 1910, I bid the Selection Centre in Sutton Coldfield farewell, fresh faced and eager but somewhat nervous. I was on my way to the Depot of The Royal Military Police.
Why them? I blame Dixon of Dock Green, John Thaw in Redcap and the stories in ‘Commando’ and ‘War Picture Library’ comics. Originally I’d been accepted for Lancashire Constabulary’s Cadets but had bottled out about a week before I was due to turn up. That’s how I ended up in ‘retail’ as we shop workers like to call it. Now, I was in desperate need of some cutlery and a plate or two that came with a free roof.
Dad was right. They tried to tell me I wasn’t the sort the RMP were looking for. I wasn’t so sure because none of them were actually Military Police themselves. They were very keen though that I was the right material for ... the Infantry. After signing a form to leave the Army my only thought was, ‘Fuck and I’ve got this stupid haircut.’ I was privy, however, to the following conversation a Sergeant had with an unseen Officer.
“What? He’s signed the chit?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“Why did you let him do that?”
“I couldn’t stop him, Sir. He was most insistent.”
“Bloody hell! Well, let him go to the RMP. We’ll pick him up when they get rid of him.”
It was a plan, I suppose, but fatally flawed. The RMP never did get rid of me.
The five month training period at the Depot in Chichester was a bit of a blur to be honest. The longest 6 weeks of my life were spent on basic military training. Shouting was very popular amongst the staff.
Some were nice shouters; Staff Sergeant (SSgt) Mick Conoboy, a man who looked like the archetypal scary Military Policeman but who was in fact a good mentor and fine example and SSgt Mick Berger, drill with him was always hard work but always a pleasure because he had a sense of humour and possessed amazing God like abilities (he once threw his pace stick into the grass, behind him, where it stood rigid for a few moments then slowly started to fall. Without being able to see it, he shouted “stand still!” and it did). Then there was Sgt Frank Quigley, who took us for weapons training which included intervals where he would have us doing all manner of odd things because “I can’t do this myself but I’ve seen it done on the telly.” He introduced us to the word ‘Pucking’. He used it a lot. Finally, there was Cpl Bert Johnson, our beloved squad Corporal whose hero was Battery Sergeant Major Williams from the then popular comedy series, ‘It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum.’ He’d perfected the accent and technique and loved to whisper in our ears, “Oh, dear! How sad! Never mind,” whenever he thought it would cheer us up, which was often.
The not so nice shouters? Any Military Policeman from this period will know who they were. It wasn’t the manner in which they shouted. Everyone did it the same. It was just some did it with malice.
There was one chap I thought I’d made my mind up about but, now, I’m not absolutely sure. He was the training Company Sergeant Major (CSM) and it’s fair to say he had a pretty fearsome reputation. Even the VTs (Voluntary Transfers: soldiers of experience who were trying to transfer from one branch of the Army to another) were, at the very least, wary of him. A Northern Irish accent added to the level of menace.
If he took a dislike to you then that was it. To pack your bags and leave was about the only option unless you were on a ‘mission from God’ or mentally deranged. Certainly, all the DEs (Direct Entries: straight from Civvy Street) were terrified of him. The mere sight of him approaching would bring the less firm to a state of panic bordering on incontinence.
I was once part of a number of soldiers walking from the NAAFI block towards the main entrance. We weren’t in the same squad, just spread out along the road, marching in groups of two or three, all with a different end task in mind. Suddenly, people were calling his name back to the others.
There he was, on the far side of the main sports field having just left his married quarter. If the unmistakable huge golf umbrella wasn’t a dead giveaway, the voice that followed was. Before he’d even spoken, the panic had set in. The marching, that had been going so well, briskly fell apart because people were trying too hard not to. He’d found displeasure in someone but no one had a clue who.
Like something from a comedy film, it all started to fragment as some detoured down a convenient side road and others turned round and began to swiftly march in the opposite direction. There was at least one guy who couldn’t make his mind up and so ended up going round in circles. I could hear whimpering. Luckily, my colleagues and I were quick to reverse our course and set off to go round the back of the accommodation blocks from where we could use another road which would bypass him, we hoped. I’d never marched so fast.
It worked. We were able to sneak past whilst he strode across the field to berate several individuals who’d been captured by their own indecision.
I only ever had three personal ‘meetings’ with the CSM. The first when I was given a ‘show parade’ because my boots were considered not to be of the right standard by a Corporal who had the power to think such a thing, another when I was entertaining the lads in our block with my pretty accurate impression of him and the last time was when I formally ‘passed out’ of training which resulted in him putting me on a charge of being on parade with a ‘dirty’ white belt.
The Corporal (Cpl) who stuck me on the show parade took great delight in telling me the CSM would be officiating that night. I knew where he was coming from, so stood outside the block with my best boots in hand almost wetting myself. Next to me was a bloke I knew only from having seen on the morning parades when all the squads would be present. I knew the CSM didn’t like him because I’d noticed, several times, my ‘friend’s’ own squad marching over his boots whilst he watched in his socks and the CSM, pace stick rammed under his arm, looking like a cat with a bowl of cream.
The bloke gave me a friendly smile. He was a South African or New Zealander but it was hard to tell from a smile, friendly or not. His boots were immaculate. Like shiny black glass. I looked down at mine. A decent effort for someone just about to reach the end of their second week but I hadn’t yet got the knack or the passion. I was fucked. I was going to jail!
The CSM arrived and walked down the long path. He was an awesome and terrifying spectacle. It was all I could do to stop myself farting. To cut a long story short, his dislike of this individual was so strong he bawled him out and cited my boots a shining example. Apparently, the logic was I’d only been there two weeks and was producing boots of ‘considerable’ quality but he’d been there much, much longer and could only produce “this shite!” the CSM hissed, flinging them onto the manicured grass.
One day, having perfected my impression of him, I thought it would be a wizard wheeze to prank everyone on our side of the accommodation block.
“Stand by yur beds!” I called in my best Northern Irish/Belfast accent then followed it with a number of carefully chosen expressions littered with expletives, to good effect. In I went and oh how we laughed as I strutted up and down. I was enjoying myself so much it took me a while to recognise the change in mood and the fact they were all now staring steadfastly into infinity. Someone desperately caught my eye. I fell silent.
He approached from behind, and slowly, menacingly, whispered in my ear. “So, yuh think yur a funny mahn, nigh?” I was chilled to the bone; my head empty apart from a high pitched little voice repeatedly sobbing, ‘Fuck!’
After a stroll around the room, occasionally poking something with his golf umbrella, he returned. I’m sure he could see the fear in my eyes; the muscles in my anus were working overtime.
A sinister little smile and he leaned in, “Very good. Carry on, why don’t yuh?” and then sauntered away. It was several minutes before we felt brave enough to make sure he’d gone.
My last encounter was the fateful passing out ‘parade’. At some stage of my training someone must have shown my squad how to whiten the webbing belts we were required to wear over our blue best service dress (known as No1 Dress). I don’t remember being there and can only surmise it must have been on one of the many nights I fell asleep in the bath, waking up in the dark, shivering. How hard could it be anyway? All I had to do was wipe the belt over with Meltonian shoe white and let it dry. Little did I know, there was a fine art to getting the water to shoe whitener ratio correct and to how it was applied.
Although I was lucky enough to be in one of the first squads who were allowed to wear the easy clean plastic white belts for everyday parades, because this was the Army, the sensible course of being able to wear these almost always pristine items on a important occasion was forbidden. That morning, armed with the single stripe of a British Lance Corporal (Lcpl - commonly referred to as a lance jack), I put my belt on and the shoe whitener promptly cracked. It was too late for running repairs so I, together with two immaculate VTs, went to be inspected by the CSM before we were presented to the Commanding Officer (CO) who would give us all a little certificate. The CSM seemed a tadge on edge and, leaning close, sprayed me in a fine mist of spittle as he hissed his favourite phrase into my face: “You dozy fockin’ mahn, you!”
I’d expected more, to be honest, but time seemed to be running on so he had the two VTs tidy me up as best they could. I wasn’t a shambles but I wasn’t immaculate and only immaculate was good enough.
The only thing I remember about the charge I faced was that, quite rightly, I was found guilty by the American exchange Captain who told me my failure to keep my belt nice and white would cost the lives of my colleagues... or something reasonably similar. I’ve no recollection how much it cost me. When I came back out the CSM simply looked at me, shook his head and said, “Get along nigh an’ get outta mey sight.” It must have been the sad gormless look on my face or maybe he needed a bigger challenge that day, maybe I touched a chord somewhere deep inside or perhaps it was just wind.
I went back to the block, changed and dragged my kit down to the train station to go home on leave. It was all a bit of an anti-climax.
My career as a Military Policeman started well. Posted to what was called the British Army Of the Rhine (BAOR), a place the rest of the world knew better as West Germany, I misread the dates on my plane ticket and travel docs and arrived a day late.
I had chosen to dress in my best going out brown, wide lapelled, blanket material jacket, thick ‘woollen’ flares and stack heels. I was in Osnabruck on a sweltering day and my fashionable shirt stuck to me like the proverbial shit on a wet blanket. To make matters worse not only was I carrying a bulky kitbag, and toting an Army suitcase, but I got off at the wrong entrance to the Barracks and had to ‘walk miles’. Being in mainland Europe, where they measure things in ‘kilometres’, it was even further!
Considering I was late, everyone seemed fairly pleasant, maybe because I told them it was all down to a misprint on the forms. When asked for them, I said the RAF had taken them off me.
A quick interview with the Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) and a swift beer in the Corporal’s Mess and the barman ferried me in a little Land Rover to a halfway stop off point, on my way to Münster, the company’s detachment that policed the 4 Guards Armoured Brigade garrison. En route he told me about some ominous thing called ‘the Boot’, which he advised, as most of my Unit were away on exercise, I was best to get out of the way before they returned. He told me it would be more civilised that way.
At the drop off, I was collected by a chap who introduced himself as ‘Andy’. He was the first person from Münster I met and it was to be he who ferried me back the other way when I left the Unit two and a half years later. A nice guy, he earned himself the sobriquet of ‘the smiling assassin’ because of the little look and smile he would give his policing partners to signify his patience with a squaddie was exhausted and an arrest was imminent.
I was greeted at the Duty Room with the news I was supposed to have been on the exercise but because I hadn’t turned up one of the others had to go in my place. He’d been looking forward to some down time doing garrison duties with no bosses around to complicate things and was, apparently, not very happy but, they told me, when last seen was looking forward to meeting me when the exercise was over. The CSM was also itching to meet me. What nice people!
I was rostered for duty the following morning. It would be a 24 hour duty with one day off afterwards, then back on duty for another 24. This would be life for the next two or three week duration of Exercise ‘let’s thrash the Russians’ or whatever it was called. I took advantage of the evening off by going to the Mess where I found myself alone with the barman until two of the blokes from the single men’s accommodation strolled over and advised me to get the initiation ceremony of ‘the Boot’ out of the way. Apparently it could get quite ‘messy’ if I waited for the rest of the detachment to return. Solemn agreement from the barman. It was only some time later I realised that whilst it was indeed sound advice, the barman’s enthusiasm for the event was coloured by the fact that he was due to hand over his responsibilities after the Exercise and thought it best that he benefit from my deutsch marks instead of the next guy.
Enthusiastically, he poured a sample of every beer he had into a large boot shaped glass. I’ve no idea how much it held but it was probably around the three litre mark. To follow this I was told I would have to chase it down with a half pint glass of every short behind the bar. All of this, of course, I had to pay for. Apparently it was also traditional for me to buy the whole Mess a drink as well. I looked at the company, two pints already under my belt, and declared I’d buy them two.
A stool was drawn away from the bar counter and an empty fire bucket placed upon it. They smiled. I would need it. The rules were simple. Down the beer in one go, without taking the glass from my lips, then down the shorts in one go too. To the accompaniment of some cheery chant like singing, I began.
It started well, surprisingly; I’d quickly figured out the toe of the boot should face upwards or else I’d be wearing a lot of the contents (it must have been because I was half pissed already). It proved harder than I had thought but I soldiered on. Half way down an explosive burp produced a beer facial but still I went on until the last of the beer had been swallowed. At this point I felt madly pissed. I handed the boot back to the barman, involuntarily belched twice then threw up in the bucket, declared I was finished then threw up again ... and again. I’m not sure how I felt at this point but good wasn’t a word I would have used to describe it. Now for the shorts. Down in one go. I waited to puke again but no, I actually felt great and promptly ordered a double Bacardi and coke. I necked it down and ordered another. The last thing I remember was the barman placing it on the counter and then, I was told later, I fell off my stool and had to be carried across to my room. The thing was they didn’t do it straight away, in case I made a recovery and wanted another drink. So, I lay on the floor for another two hours while several others drank around me. The following morning I was woken by the night shift at 7am. I felt surprisingly good!
Luckily, I’d pressed my kit before I went to the Mess but my best boots were now stuck to the plastic bag I’d put them in for transport purposes. Prior to leaving the UK I’d tried a little trick I’d been told and painted them with Dulux polyurethane black gloss paint. They’d looked superb but I hadn’t understood how long they would take to dry properly (set would be a better word actually!). Evidently, two days wasn’t enough.
My ability to bull boots had been honed during many a late night at Roussillon Barracks in Chi. The result of my efforts on my spare pair was passable and so I started my first day as a real live Military Policeman.
I was paired with a full Corporal for a mobile patrol. I was a bit anxious. Not only did it involve driving on the wrong side of the road but, after passing my driving test, I’d only ever turned left in anything I’d driven. It was the same for most of the chaps in my squad who were direct entries. The only driving experience we got was doing security duties at the Barrack’s Duty Room when we were required to do a mobile perimeter check to counter supposed IRA threats. Everyone I knew would turn left out of the gate then do multiple left turns until returning back through the camp gate. That was a left turn as well! Trying to turn right was considered far too complicated. I was coping though, until we approached the British Military Hospital.
Jim, my Corporal, told me I would soon be taking a right turn into the entrance. What he failed to tell me was the entrance wasn’t marked with a large obvious sign but with a small military tac sign and that the entrance didn’t look as grand as I was imagining because it was a simple narrow roadway that disappeared behind a wall 50 metres away. I steamed on up the main road. Jim suddenly called, “Slow down! It’s this one!” By the time I’d recognised it, it should have been too late. Anyone else would’ve probably driven on to turn safely around further up. Not me. A quick but largely ineffective stamp on the brakes and I swung us into the entrance, catching and mounting the high kerb and demolishing the speed sign. When he’d recovered his composure, Jim was very good about it but for some reason insisted on being the driver from that point on.
Back at Winterbourne Barracks, a former Third Reich supply depot, discussions were held. The options were: the matter be reported formally and the offender (me) put on a charge or, as the damage resulting from the sign post was a simple re-paint and the kerb damage could be hammered out by a suitably skilled person, the wheel could be taken to a local garage and I’d pay for the repair after I’d painted the bumper bar. Happily, they chose the second option because it eliminated a huge amount of paperwork and negated an issue over some sort of ‘tick test’ to do with local road signs that I should have taken before being allowed to drive in the first place. Personally, I was reasonably sure I’d already done that at Chi but thought it best not to say anything.
To say, at 19 years of age, I was fairly naive and somewhat immature is probably an understatement. The problem was, as with many of the same age, I didn’t think I was. I think, to many people, I appeared as a ‘pleasant idiot’. It’s been said in another book of this nature that there was a tendency for there to be no mentoring ability in the British Army at this time and I would have to agree. You passed through basic training and the Army considered you a soldier, so you were (even if you didn’t feel like one). You were expected to know all manner of things of which you had no real experience because ‘you did it in training’. Yes, you did, but probably only the once. You were also expected to know all the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and local garrison orders. No one explained them to you. You were given a huge book, told to read it and the only thing that was explained was that not knowing its contents was no defence to a contravention and was, in itself, an offence which would find you ‘tapping the boards’ in front of the Officer Commanding (OC). More money down a bottomless drain.
It would be wrong of me to give the impression that everyone in the unit left me to my own devices. Some people did try to take me under their wing, particularly during the first few weeks; invites to one or two of the married men’s quarters for tea with the families but I didn’t seem able to socialise properly and it wasn’t just the immaturity.
I had a strange spatial awareness thing going on. Not all the time, just in certain situations that I still find difficult to quantify. The nearest I can get to describing it for you is to say, think of a photograph of someone that has a ‘double exposure’; one person slightly off centre of the other but they are the same person. Often, I would know I was in a place physically but wasn’t quite there mentally, almost as if I was standing to the side watching. Also, I hadn’t yet developed a conversationalist ability, although I found alcohol helped, surprisingly! It was only some 40 years later I discovered a set of ‘symptoms’ that fitted me like a well loved hat. Asperger's syndrome or, as it’s known today, mild autism spectrum disorder. Knowing this, now, certainly helps explain a lot of things to me about myself.
All this was compounded by the fact I basically knew fuck all and had a bit of a job disguising it. This carried on for about 9 months until one morning, I remember it distinctly, I woke up and a light bulb flickered in my head. By the time I’d dressed for duty and walked around the corner to the Duty Room (I was now living in a married quarter with a new wife and a beautiful baby daughter) the bulb was glowing brightly and I knew exactly what to do.
No longer did I arrive back from a job to be questioned by a Duty Sergeant who would discover I had omitted to obtain some pertinent important detail or complete a relevant form. I wandered out that day and completed my first solo job without a single mistake and I knew I’d done it. It was only a traffic accident involving a civilian teacher working in one of the British schools but I knew it. I suddenly understood what it was all about and where I fitted in the big plan. Granted, it didn’t stop me buying a metallic bronze Volkswagen beetle (air cooled) and trying to find somewhere to put the antifreeze I’d also purchased but cars were never my forte. In later life I would be taught to drive them well, as a Police pursuit driver, but somehow the mechanical side never quite sank in. First parading a vehicle? Not a problem ... if I could get the bonnet up.
By the end of the following year I’d established myself as the member of the Unit with the highest number of Police case files completed, and completed well (for the most part). I’d usurped the holder of the previous two years. He took it well and we retired to the Mess that night and celebrated hard until, in the early hours, drunk as skunks, we drank each other’s urine from tumblers then supped more double Bacardi cokes until the barman begged us to leave.
Passing the morning shift standing on parade, several of whom chuckled whilst others shook their heads in what we thought was admiration, we declared our undying love for one another, for we were now ‘piss brothers’ a bond much closer than blood. The next day we decided never to mention the subject again. The temptation not to do the same was to prove too much for some people for a good while to come.