REVOLUTION
There’s an old joke:
Officer: “Are the men happy, Sergeant Major?”
CSM: “Oh yes, Sir. They’re very happy, Sir.”
Officer:”Well, fuck them about a bit, will you?”
The fact is there is a lot of truth in that joke. There were times when none of us could work out why we were doing some of the things we were told to do. It seemed as if they had been invented for the sole purpose of denying us time off. Often a senior rank would wander up, give us a task, then wander off again not to be seen for hours. In between times, another senior rank may have wandered up, given us a conflicting task and wandered off again. What we did know was we never saw this type of senior rank with any sweat on their brow.
An example: once, we had to move lockers from the top of the Duty Room building to the cellar and then back up the stairs again to the loft. No one gave us the keys to empty the damn things and when we asked, they went off saying they would find them and never came back. We eventually figured out we were caught in the middle of a dispute between two SSgts.
After we’d been up and down at least three times, someone came up with the only sensible option; stay on the stairs halfway up and play one off against the other. We managed to screw two Naafi breaks out of it that day. Naafi breaks are important events in a soldier’s life, even if you didn’t have a Naafi. In our case, we’d usually go to the unit dining room for tea, coffee, biscuits, cake and the inevitable smoke.
A colleague of mine was once, as a punishment, ordered to paint a crime prevention Land Rover white. He asked if he was to paint all of it. Due to the answer he received, and the manner it was given, he then painted the vehicle white; inside and out. Windows, wheels, seats. The senior rank went puce and put him on a charge which had to be withdrawn when witnesses agreed that he had in fact told the Cpl to paint all of the Land Rover white. The Cpl spent the next week scraping paint off various things and making good the ‘damage’ but as he merrily declared, “whilst I’m doing this at my pace, I can’t be doing other shit at theirs.”
It was little moments like this which gave many of us the will to carry on. Well, that and the Corporal’s Mess where, no matter how bad your day had been, you could always go and relax by getting pissed. Unless, of course, certain individuals were seated at the bar. Quick witted and sarcastic, they could reduce you to a stuttering wreck if you’d cocked something up that week or had expressed an opinion on anything they saw the opportunity to destroy. Quite often they would start a discussion, expressing views, that in private they didn’t personally hold, in order to generate an argument which they could slip away from and watch from the other end of the bar. They were experts at it.
One of the chief practitioners, who became a great friend, had always given me a hard time in my early days but I came to realise that if he hadn’t, I would’ve still been bimbling around pretty clueless. I credit him with putting me on the right track and developing a character in me I wouldn’t have had otherwise. What I mean is, he helped me to function in an atmosphere which I probably wouldn’t have survived if he hadn’t, initially, been such a twat.
But it wasn’t all about rapier wit for me. I became adept at reading his and his colleagues mannerisms, the glances that passed between them so, in a crowded and noisy Mess, I was able to effect a look of incredulity, mockery or bafflement that suited the occasion, despite often not being able to hear what was being said. I’m not sure if ‘it gave me more respect from people’ is the right phrase but it certainly made them more wary of me, which gave me the respite from pisstaking I needed to grow and develop into a high functioning Aspie.
The problem with my growing confidence was I became a little cocky with it, which I only realised on a night duty when I drove the Duty Sgt to distraction over some trivial matter. Instead of chinning me, which is what he probably wanted to do, he went the other way and calmly informed me it would be more helpful to all concerned if I could just shut the fuck up and get on with what he’d told me to do whether or not I thought it was below me as a Corporal or seemingly pointless because someone had to do it whilst he sorted out somebody else’s cock-up. He did it so well it changed my whole opinion of him. It was a side to him I hadn’t seen before.
It was this same Sgt who went ballistic on exercise once. It was Exercise Chinese Eye. We were racing only minutes ahead of a large military convoy; 4 Guards Armoured Brigade on the move, and had to drop pointsmen down at selected spots. There were no signs for the troops to follow and the pointsmen were to direct them at several critical junctions. The back of our Land Rover was crammed with Military Policemen. The Sgt had been very particular about the order we got in the back for he had it written on a ‘piece of paper’. Every so often we would stop and he would call out a name from the list and out would get the relevant pointsmen. I was stuffed in the far corner and knew already I would be the last out, having caught a glimpse of his ‘piece of paper’ earlier on. During the journey I fell asleep. Eventually, the vehicle stopped and, probably because he’d made good time, the Sgt came to rear to tell me to hop out. He was actually saying the words as he walked round. When he got to the back he was still smiling. Not for long though. His face turned ashen, his eyes looked like they might pop out of his head and he’d begun to tremble. “What the fuck! Why are you still here!? “ he screamed, spittle spraying the canvas roof. Lcpl Taccinelli, who sat patiently opposite me, replied, “Waiting for orders, Sar’nt.”
He’d obviously fallen asleep himself and missed his spot; the Sgt and driver thinking he’d got out had driven off. I was unceremoniously assisted from the vehicle and left in the middle of the road as they screeched away to drop Taccinelli off before Brigade arrived. Seconds later, a squeal of brakes and the Land Rover reversed at speed, halting closer to me than I would have wished. The Sgt stuck an arm out of the window and shouted, “Send them that way!!” So I did.
Later, I understood what the bloke’s distress had been all about. Careers hang in the balance on such events going smoothly. Luckily, he salvaged the situation but Taccinelli was the receiver of dark and dastardly glowers for a good while to come.
We had a ‘revolution’ once. It was following our defeat in the Stanley Cup, a prestigious RMP football trophy. My company had won it the previous two years and were expected to do so again.
Although I’d played for my school teams and for a team in a local kids league, whenever I said I played football, I found myself looked at in the same manner as General Custer, in the film ‘Little Big Man’, had looked at Dustin Hoffman, when he declared he was an Indian Scout (having lived with the Indians for years). Custer told him he wasn’t because, being a good judge of character, he could see he was a mule skinner. I got much the same reaction.
Due to postings, the team had lost a few key members but were still confident. They needed some dedicated people to practice against though, so me and a few others volunteered (it got us out of unfolding and refolding camouflage nets and brushing leaves from one end of the Unit lines to the other and back again). Things were going well, I hadn’t played for a good few years but was enjoying it and relaxed, inadvertently displaying a modicum of skill. Unfortunately, a couple of injuries occurred over the next weeks and I suddenly found myself propelled into the position of the reserve. I was a bit nervous but was assured I’d never be dragged on the pitch. That was the plan.
As with all plans, they seldom work in the original format and the only plan I ever found that did was ‘as and when necessary the plan will change’ or as the civvy Police know it ... ‘we’ll play it by ear’. In a blink of an eye someone broke a leg or got posted and I was in the team, standing on the pitch, at the kickoff.
We had a really smart kit with some natty lightweight red and white zip up jackets with our names on the back and looked the part. Our opponents, from Berlin, looked as if they’d rummaged through the kit bin for whatever didn’t smell too much. They also looked suspiciously as if they were a rugby team and certainly played like one. In short, we looked like the flashy Leeds United of the 1970s and they played like they’d been personally coached by Norman ‘bites yer legs’ Hunter. We lost, 3-0, I think it was. I was offside for our only goal but by that time we were two nil down. I've convinced myself our goal, had it been left to stand, wouldn't have made a difference to the final result. You can but hope.
The Company hierarchy had told us we would be getting the following day off. It seemed, now, they meant if we won, but they never actually said it in those terms so although disappointed we returned, after a few beers in the Mess in Werl where the game had been played, and dived into our own for more beers, commiserations and what ifs. Now, it wasn’t just what happened next that resulted in our little ‘rebellion’. I seem to recall that things had been simmering for a while.
Anyway, someone checked the daily detail and discovered we’d been rostered for Duty and various ‘available’ tasks. It didn’t go down well and as a result the entire team decided not to turn up for parade the next morning. And that’s what happened, with one exception.
The bloke who did turn up I met many years later. Strangely, he denied he’d ever been posted to Münster.
We were roused from our beds by an apologetic duty crew and told to wait outside the RSM's office. I’ve never seen such a motley crew and I don’t think the Razman had either. A wet bloke in a towel, several dressed in dodgy underpants, some in shorts and T shirts and Savage, our Sgt, stood in his socks, boxers and a vest carrying one shoe. No one was standing to attention. Savage went in and strong words were heard.
He made it quite plain the extra Duty personnel were not needed and that all the tasks delegated had already been done in the days before so it was simply an attempt to fuck us about. Suddenly, he poked his head out and told us to go for a brew in the dining room. Half an hour later, he told us to go home, back to bed or just ‘fuck off into town.’ I was soon to leave the Army but I sometimes wondered how the others’ careers fared later, especially Savage’s.