A Breed of Heroes (4 page)

Charles had no difficulty in sympathising. BSTC – Battle Selection Training Course – was the four-week selection course for the Assault Commandos with a failure rate of four-fifths.
The first ten minutes of the first day were spent seal-crawling and bunny-jumping across the huge gym in Tidworth, after which they were given three minutes to go out and be sick. From then on it
had got steadily worse. Looking back, Charles did not know how he had survived it. He had somehow muddled through by emptying himself of all thought or feeling for a month and never looking any
further ahead than the next NAAFI break, when there was one. Officers in the Depot Mess who were doing BSTC were always conspicuous by the difficulty they had in getting up and down stairs, by
their silence during meals, their occasionally alarming injuries and their practice of going to bed at about eight-thirty. Henry still had that mindless, gentle look that everyone acquired after
the first week or so.

‘It was the worst thing I’ve ever done,’ he said. ‘Even worse than the parachuting and the sea-landing from submarines. I still dream I’m on it. I think I only got
through because they needed another doctor so urgently. They said they were being kind to me and I think they probably were. I collapsed in tears pulling the Land-Rover up that mountain in Wales
and three of the NCOs kicked me to my feet, four times. I suppose it was kind of them, really. They could have failed me. Also, I was knocked out in the boxing.’

‘So was I.’ Charles was glad to find someone who appeared to have suffered like himself. He wasn’t sure whether everyone else was bone-hard or whether it was simply not done to
mention such things.

The two men became aware that the loud talk from the CO’s end of the bar was fading, and whilst they were still looking about it died altogether. This sudden loss caused other, lesser,
conversations to falter and fade. The bar was silent. Soldiers and civilians alike looked awkwardly at each other; it was as though someone had died. The CO’s face wore a look of frozen
disgust. For a moment Charles thought that the gaze was directed at him and then that it was directed at the doctor who at the very least must have exposed himself or been horribly sick. But the
doctor had done neither of these things and looked as uncomfortably puzzled as everyone else. The only sound was the hum of the ship’s engines.

‘Get out,’ said the CO, his voice low and taut with anger. ‘Get out and get dressed.’

Charles looked over his shoulder expecting to see a naked officer but saw only John, his fellow subaltern, blushing violently. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said John, in a voice that was
higher than usual. ‘I thought it was shirt-sleeve order.’

‘Get out!’ The CO’s voice made everyone stiffen and visibly startled the civilians. John left hurriedly, the CO turned back to the bar and conversation was hesitantly
resumed.

‘What had he done?’ asked Henry.

‘He wasn’t wearing his pullover.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Henry’s response was loud enough to bring all conversation to another temporary stop. He and Charles buried their faces in their drinks.

When they went in to dinner, Charles caught Edward Lumley’s eye. Edward was clearly despairing. Once again, C company had publicly sinned; once again, his career was in jeopardy. He went
through several crises a day. Charles grinned cheerfully at him.

At dinner they shared a table with a married couple from Belfast. The couple ran a business concerned with central heating systems and the husband had served with one of the airborne divisions
during the war. He was plump, jolly and balding; his wife was also plump but had dark hair and dark eyes that stared with disconcerting directness at whoever she was talking to. It was difficult to
tell whether she was unaware of it or was trying rather unsubtly to be noticed. They were both very friendly and talked about Northern Ireland for most of the time that they were all waiting to be
served.

‘Where exactly are you going?’ asked the man.

‘Killagh for three weeks, then on to West Belfast,’ said Charles.

‘That’s a very bad area, one of the worst, as you’ll no doubt know already.’

‘Don’t judge us all by what you meet there,’ added his wife, with a smile that made her eyes glisten.

The husband leaned forward across the table. ‘You could end the troubles tomorrow if you wanted. All you have to do is shoot two thousand Catholics. I think two thousand would be enough,
don’t you, dear?’

‘That would be about right, I think, yes.’

They were joined by Anthony Hamilton-Smith, the only man on the ship to be wearing a dinner-jacket. ‘Almost missed dinner. Nodded off on me bunk, would you believe? Old habits are hard to
break, even at sea on the way to the Emerald Isle. Wine for all, I take it?’ Regimental histories were one of Anthony’s interests and when he discovered the husband’s military
past there was much rejoicing and more wine. After dinner he and the husband moved off to the bar and the wife excused herself, saying she was sure the men would prefer to talk men’s things.
Henry took himself off and Charles went for a walk on deck.

It was cold, wet and bracing. The ship heaved and rolled as she ploughed into the night, though not enough to cause discomfort. There were a few other strollers and Charles stood behind one for
some minutes in the drift of his cigar smoke, which mingled with the tang of the sea. He returned to his cabin and, on opening the door, saw Henry on his bunk with the businessman’s wife. He
closed the door and went for another walk on the deck. This time he stood in the bows and felt the spray on his face and hair. When he returned to the cabin again he knocked and Henry, now alone,
opened the door.

Henry’s pale face was slightly less pale and he grinned boyishly. ‘Sorry to have kept you out, Charles.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘I meant to. I was in such a hurry I forgot to lock the door.’ He sat down on his bunk and giggled. ‘I saw it was there, you see, for either of us. But you didn’t seem
interested. Were you?’

‘No. Yes. I don’t know. I might have been.’ Charles paused. ‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘That’s good. I was a bit worried in case you thought I’d cut you out. Which is what I did, of course.’ He rocked backwards and forwards, giggling helplessly. ‘I
don’t often do things like that, really I don’t. Just – just whenever I get the chance. I needed something, you see, to wake me up. I feel much better now. I’m sure
it’s physiologically and psychologically beneficial. I haven’t offended you, have I?’

‘’Course you haven’t.’ Charles thought he must sound pompous and strained. ‘In fact, I rather envy you.’

‘You did fancy her, then?’

‘No.’

‘It must be an ego thing.’

‘I think it probably is.’

‘It’s partly that with me. I’m always afraid of not doing things that afterwards I might wish I had done, so I do all sorts of crazy things that afterwards I wish I
hadn’t.’

‘D’you feel like that about this one?’

‘Oh no, not at all, it’s made me feel much better. Though I didn’t think I was going to get an erection first of all.’ He lit a cigarette and lay back on his bunk.
‘It’s funny, you know, but they all seem to like uniforms. This is the second one that’s made me do it in my shirt hairy. Do you find that?’

Charles recalled Janet’s hysterical dislike of anything rough, hairy or military. She had a particular aversion to his hairy Army shirts, worn in cold weather and referred to, in typical
Army fashion, as ‘shirts hairy’. ‘Not recently. I heard of someone who used to do it wearing his webbing belt, water bottles and ammunition pouches.’

‘I’ve tried that. It’s all right so long as you remember to empty your water bottles. Otherwise you get a bruised arse.’

Charles undressed and climbed on to his bunk. The search for sex was the preoccupation of many in the Army, more so than the preparation for war. Since joining, Charles had found that he was
either in a mood of frantic sexual desire, in which anything female was acceptable, or he felt curiously asexual and remote. This latter mood corresponded to a feeling of remoteness from the Army
in general, whereas the former he thought of as a simpler and more aggressive form of escapism made stronger and cruder by the rough and ready nature of male companionship. Being in the Army was so
enveloping an experience that it did not occur to him that anything could happen independently of it. If he had developed appendicitis he might have been inclined to think it the result of too much
weapons training.

It was some time before he fell asleep. The events of the evening, the noises and motion of the boat, thoughts of what lay ahead all jostled for priority in his consciousness. Then, just as
drowsiness crept over him, Henry Sandy began snoring and making odd masticating noises, as though he were chewing in his sleep. These continued, on and off, for most of the night. Eventually,
Charles’s haphazard thoughts clustered loosely around the prospect of violence. The idea of suffering or committing an act of violence did not bother him at all, though he knew that for many
people outside the Army – Janet especially – this was of crucial concern. Or, at least, they thought of themselves as concerned. He suspected that most of them, just like most people
within the Army, would react to the fact of violence much as they reacted to the other inescapable facts of life – they would simply do what they thought had to be done. That, of course, was
a thought that had its own particular horror, but it was not something that would concern many people.

Even before joining the Army he had doubted his own capacity for decisive action, and now that the time for action approached – or so he thought – he doubted it more. He feared that
when the time came he would hesitate. He wondered now, as the boat took the swell of the Irish Sea, whether his real reason for joining was not, after all, an attempt to resolve this doubt about
himself. Perhaps he was doing no more than experiment with himself in much the same way as Henry did through sex; only more subtly than Henry, less honestly and no doubt less enjoyably.

T
hey were awoken early as the ship approached Belfast Lough. After a hurried breakfast there was the usual confusion in drawing weapons and kit and
finding men. Eventually Charles stood on the crowded deck with his platoon complete except for Sergeant Wheeler. Charles made the mistake of asking his enemy, the RSM, if he had seen Wheeler.

‘He’s with you, sir.’

‘He isn’t.’

The RSM had a stupid, brutal face but was nevertheless capable of sarcasm. He looked pained. ‘Is he not, sir? I thought he was.’

‘Well, he isn’t.’

‘But he ought to be.’

‘I know that, Mr Bone. That’s why I’m asking you.’

‘Bless me, sir, where d’you think he can have got to?’ The RSM obviously hated subalterns more than he hated anyone, and he hated Charles more than he hated any of them. Added
to the normal dislike that men with many years of service frequently have for newcomers was a special dislike for Charles because he had been to university. His manner was as sarcastically paternal
as he could make it. ‘Well, never you mind, sir, you just hang on here and I’ll go and see if I can find him for you.’

If people annoyed Charles it was always by what they did accidentally or unselfconsciously. Deliberate attempts to annoy him or slight him left him quite unmoved. This morning, in particular,
there was Belfast to consider. The water was calm, and in Harland and Wolff’s shipyard the two huge cranes, Samson and Goliath, towered magnificently. The harsh, disjointed cries of gulls
were thrown backwards and forwards across the harbour. The air was clear but there was already a dirty haze forming above the thousands of small rooftops of the city. Beyond them the hill called
the Black Mountain lived up to its name. Charles’s platoon was quiet for once. He imagined that each man was striving, like him, to see something in Belfast that differed from any other
industrial British city before breakfast. They could see nothing startling, and it made their own presence seem incongruous. On the quayside was their transport – lines of lorries, as might
be expected – but the sense of incongruity was heightened by the detachment of Ferret scout cars that were guarding them, their Brownings pointed at the main road. There were also soldiers
from the Wessex Scouts, the regiment that No. 1 AAC(A) was relieving, waiting in armoured Land-Rovers and Pigs – ancient one-ton armoured cars which no one had seen before and which had
appeared out of storage especially for Northern Ireland. They had long snouts and carried nine or ten men, lumbering along with a distinctive whine. There was little or no movement by the escorts
but a good deal of wireless activity. People walked past them to work without a glance. The whole thing looked absurdly tactical.

Sergeant Wheeler appeared suddenly. ‘Sorry about the delay, sir, I got collared by the RSM. He didn’t like the way I done me kit so I had to do it again. I did tell him I was
supposed to be here but you know what he is, sir, not a man of reason.’

Sergeant Wheeler was a very plausible liar, but so was the RSM. Charles could not be bothered at that moment to try to sort it out. He was reminded of the problem of his own kit. Getting it all
from the ship to the lorry without humiliation or undue delay would be a serious challenge. Then there was the problem of his respirator; everyone else had theirs, he noticed, but fortunately the
CO was neither to be heard nor seen.

In the event he was able to make the necessary two journeys with his kit, and they boarded the lorries after a surprisingly short period of the usual hanging around. They set off with an
impressive revving of engines, with the escorting vehicles from the Wessex Scouts and the military police interspersed between them. The soldiers stood in the backs of their Land-Rovers, one facing
forward and the other backwards, their rifles at the ready. The Pigs rumbled along with their rear doors open and the Ferrets followed up behind. Protruding from the turret of one was the pink face
of a young cavalry officer. He wore his beret and, round his neck, a dashing red and white spotted cravat that added a touch of quite startling colour to the scene. He had, though, taken the
precaution of fastening the see-through and sometimes bullet-proof macralon screen around the top of his turret. Charles had heard of a corporal who had been looking out of the top of a Ferret in a
similar fashion, though without the screen, and had lost an eye to an arrow fired from a crossbow.