Today Everything Changes: Quick Read (4 page)

The only concession was zits. If you had zits, you had zits. Not even the British Army could get rid of them. Shaving rash, on the other hand, was a big no-no. The sergeant major would want
to know why you had it. Hadn’t you been shown how to shave or how to deal with a rash? If not, the training sergeants had some explaining to do. He even looked at our fingernails. If anyone bit them, and I did, their name was taken and their nails were checked the next week. If they were no better, the sergeant major would say, ‘That shows a lack of self-respect, and you’re going to get fat. Stop it.’

Sometimes a tiny patch of Brasso would dry in the corner of one of the belt brasses, or a fleck of mud would get into the welt where the boot was stitched to the sole. To the sergeant major, either was a worse crime than murder or armed robbery. ‘Lack of detail,’ he’d bark, and demand your name and number, which his staff would note down.

From then on, you had to go to the guardroom every night and show the bit of kit that had not been properly cleaned. It was a nightmare. Once the scary provost sergeant had you, you never escaped him. The kit was never, ever clean enough, no matter how hard you worked at it.

Once the sergeant major had inspected us all, we would march around for a couple of hours so that he could check our standard. That always made the drill instructors very nervous. If the drill wasn’t good enough, they weren’t good enough.

After the parade was over with, it was panic again as we changed into full combat gear for company training. From midday Friday until midday Sunday, we’d learn how to fight in the field. We dug trenches, used hand signals, laid ambushes and learned about camouflage and concealment. The sergeant major would have checked our ears to make sure there was no dark-green camouflage cream left from the week before.

On the two nights each week that we camped, we learned how to live under our shelters and how to use our rations. Soldiers have to be able to make themselves equally comfortable in a blizzard or a heat wave. I learned some important rules. First, make sure your kit is
always packed away. Second, keep your feet and sleeping-bag dry. Third, make sure your weapon is close to you at all times.

I never minded being wet, cold and hungry. No matter how long we were outside, I knew a hot shower was waiting for me at the end.

Every Sunday morning we had to run the ten miles back to camp in full combat gear within two hours. With a sleeping-bag, rations and ammunition, we were carrying thirty or forty pounds of stuff. That’s quite a lot for a sixteen-year-old who hasn’t slept for two nights, has a heavy steel helmet on his head, wet clothing and boots, plus a rifle. But moaning was pointless. You had to do it whether you liked it or not, so it was best just to get on with it.

It was all about teamwork. It was not as if you could do your own thing, get your head down and go for it. You could only move as fast as your slowest man. That meant finding the weakest guys, and helping them. One of us would carry their backpack for a while, then pass it to another lad.

No one was allowed to help a slow man by carrying his weapon. Once we left training, our rank would be ‘rifleman’. Without a rifle, even the fastest man is no use to anyone. We were
learning that you couldn’t do anything unless you were part of a team.

The sergeants taught us by example. They carried weapons and the same amount of kit as we did. They didn’t run in shorts and trainers. Their aim was to get us to the camp main gate as a platoon. Four hundred metres before the final corner, we would stop. The sergeants would get everyone together. ‘Deep breaths. Sort yourself out. Show some pride. When we go into the camp, we go in together. We work as a team.’

That was exactly what we did. Through the main gate, we would see the provost sergeant outside with all the prisoners. They were made to stand to attention as we ran through. The sergeant praised us as we ran, pointing his stick at us and shouting, ‘Well done! Keep your heads up, show pride. You’re starting to look like soldiers.’ Then he’d turn to the prisoners, jabbing his stick at them. ‘Work hard, and one day you’ll look like them. Soldiers.’

When we reached the block, we wouldn’t go straight in and have the long shower I always looked forward to. We still had jobs to do. The sergeants had taught us: ‘First your weapon, then your kit, and only then yourself.’

We’d sit on the grass outside the block, wet, dry or covered with snow, and start to clean our
weapons. Even the platoon commander, a tall, frightening man with a booming voice, and the sergeants would sit down and clean their weapons while they waited for us to have ours ready for inspection.

Then one of the sergeants would go to the cookhouse. He’d come back pushing a trolley, on which was tea and cake. As he cut up the sponge, we’d get our huge mugs out of our belt-kits, and fill them with tea. The sergeants made sure we spooned in lots of sugar, and we’d carry on cleaning our weapons with a bit of cake and the tea.

Say what you like about the training sergeants, and I often did, but despite all the shouting and the hundreds of press-ups they made us do, they looked after us well. They showed us how to use wet rags to press uniforms, how to sew buttons on and darn our socks.

Some evenings in the block were like a women’s social. We were told to get out our army-issue ‘housewife’ – a roll of sewing kit – and sit round the sergeants in a semi-circle so they they could show us how to use it.

They also taught us how to wash ourselves when we first joined up. Every night we had to wash our hair properly, clean our teeth, and use our dirty socks as flannels on both hands to do our bodies so they were cleaned with the soap too. Many of us, like me, had never had a house with an inside bath or shower. We didn’t know what to do.

After each long run, the sergeants would make us take our boots off. If we had blisters, they would show us how to treat them. One
prick with a sterile needle, just where the skin met the blister, squeeze out the fluid and cover it with a plaster.

Even our commander would check our feet every couple of weeks. If your feet were in a mess, you couldn’t run, and that meant you couldn’t get to the fight. We were shown how to cut our toenails the right way, then to powder our feet to prevent fungus getting in.

When the sergeant praised us on Sunday as we came back from training, I felt proud. The shouting and screaming at other times didn’t bother me, then. Neither did the locker inspections or standing to attention to everything that moved, apart from stray dogs.

After a while, I started to understand why. My anger was starting to disappear as well. Perhaps that was because I had to work so hard and was just too tired to think about anything else. Or maybe it was because I felt valued and cared for.

Whatever the reason, I took pride in how I looked and in myself. We had to do things that at first seemed stupid, but now I saw that they weren’t. We did them because that was how the army turned thousands of young men from across the UK into soldiers.

During my training I learned why I had to tie my bootlaces in a particular way. If a soldier gets blown up or shot, and his boot’s got to come off so a doctor can treat him, all anyone has to do is run their bayonet up the front of the boot and the lace will fall away so the boot can be taken off.

I also found out why I had to learn the weight of a machine-gun belt. One day, perhaps, I would have to work out the weaponry loads our guys had to carry so we could share everything around equally.

I needed to know the burn-out range of tracer because it helps you to judge distance. A tracer burns out at 1,100 metres.

It took me a bit longer to work out why we all had to keep our lockers in the same, tidy way. It wasn’t like we had lockers in the field. The reason, though, is very simple. If you can keep your kit and your body in good order in camp, then it will help you do the same out in the field. As a soldier, that’s where you spend most
of your life, so it matters. If you look after your kit and know where it is, you will be able to live and fight outside in the rain and wind for a lot longer than if you treat it carelessly.

The water bottle that had to be filled to the brim? That made sense too. If you got used to doing it in the camp, you would do it in the field. If one day you found yourself lying under your shelter in thick snow, an extra two mouthfuls of hot tea might make all the difference to how you feel. There was a reason for everything.

After about three months, everything was coming together for me. I knew the three things I always had to do in the field. I had to avoid being (1) wet (2) cold and (3) hungry. If I managed that, everything else would be a whole lot easier.

I also understood why my weapon must be close to my body at all times in the field. What is the point in having a weapon if you can’t get it over your shoulder fast and fire it when you need to?

It was weird, but I began to enjoy all of the screaming and running around. I really liked this army stuff.

If Rocky Gates or Sergeant Mann had said,
‘McNab, jump in a barrel,’ then I’d have jumped, no problem, because I knew that the training was turning me into a soldier.

And not just any soldier, but a member of the infantry, a future leader of the infantry. I started to think that six years in the army would be OK. In fact, if things went well, I might even stay longer. I might never leave. For the first time in my life, my little world looked good.

It was about now that ‘milling’ became a more regular part of our training when we went into the gym. All the hard nuts from Scotland and the north of England had a bit more polish than me, but I was amazed to find that I had one of the best punches. Now I understood why milling was so important. It was because all the training sergeants were picking their company boxing teams for the inter-company boxing matches.

The good thing about getting into any sports team in the army is that you’re excused some of the other training because you have to train for your sport. And, of course, you get to walk around in a maroon tracksuit, looking and feeling a little special.

It was always a massive scrum to get fed at breakfast, dinner and tea with hundreds of skinheads queuing up for food. But this was the British Army, so it was a strictly organized scrum. You weren’t allowed to head for the cookhouse on your own. You had to march in
groups of no less than three. Whatever training you’d been doing in the camp before a mealtime, and wherever you’d been doing it, you had to march back to your room and dump your belt and beret on your bed.

Then you grabbed your white china mug, your knife, fork and spoon – which we called ‘eating irons’ – in your left hand. You rested this lot on your left hip and set off, swinging your right arm and moving as fast as you could without breaking into a run. It was like Wacky Races as a thousand sixteen-to seventeen-year-old infantry soldiers marched hard and fast to get to the front of the cookhouse queue. Unless, that is, like me, you were in the boxing team.

But there was a problem. A lot of the others resented us sports people. Maybe it was the colour of the tracksuit – or maybe it was because we were allowed straight to the front of the dinner queue as a privilege. Until you were brought back to earth.

One dinnertime the boxing team swaggered into the cookhouse and headed for the front of the queue. The others jeered at us as they tried to hold their places in the queue. With only half an hour before they were back on parade, eating was always a contact sport at the training camp.

Somewhere behind me, a Scottish voice growled, ‘You think you’re hard, don’t ya?’

I carried on to the front of the queue and waited for the doors to be opened.

The Scotsman’s mouth came very close to my ear. ‘What’s the difference between your leg and maroon tracksuits?’

I shrugged.

‘None,’ he said. ‘They’re both full of pricks.’ With a massive grunt he rammed his fork straight into my thigh.

I staggered back a step and looked down. The fork was embedded in my leg. I grabbed hold of it and pulled gently, but the muscle had gone rigid and I couldn’t get the thing out. I tugged as hard as I could and pulled it free. The prongs were red with blood as I did a quick about-turn and hobbled away. At that moment, the doors were thrown open and everyone rushed into the cookhouse to get their food.

There was no way I was going to report him or say anything to anyone, first of all because I’d sound stupid. I hadn’t been knifed – I’d been forked. It hadn’t happened in a fight, it was in a dinner queue. In any case, I didn’t want to be out of the boxing team with an injury. So it wasn’t until I got round the corner of the
cookhouse that I covered my mouth with my hand and gave a silent scream.

I limped back to my room unfed and feeling a right idiot.

But even that incident had an up-side: now I had a spare army fork. The one in my locker layout could stay there, always clean and ready for the inspection.

It isn’t only the boxing team and the fork-stabbing incident that I remember.

There were parts of the infantry training that all the boxing guys still had to do, as well as train for the fights.

One morning, at room inspection, my spare fork was found hidden with my dirty socks and I was given an extra cleaning duty in the toilet as punishment. Then we were marched off towards a part of the camp where I hadn’t been before. I didn’t know it at the time, but that day would change my life for ever.

Marching around the camp after morning room inspection was like being in London’s rush-hour. Our roads didn’t have traffic lights, but instead were policed by the provost. Just like traffic cops, they directed all the squads of marching soldiers as we headed for our day’s training. We were all in different uniforms, some carrying weapons, some with logs on their shoulders, going to PT. Others were in best dress and boots, marching towards the drill square.
While we waited at a junction to let another squad pass, we had to mark time. We’d bring our knees up level to our hips, then slam our boots into the Tarmac.