If we"d had a bad day, we"d get a "gypsy"s warning."
The sergeant major would say, "The following people, come and see me."
Those people would gather around him. He"d say, "You didn"t do very well yesterday. This is a gypsy"s; you"d better sort your s.h.i.t out because next time you"ll be gone."
If anybody had already had a gypsy"s and his name was called, he could a.s.sume the worst.
I"d be feeling fairly confident if I was in the first wagon on the way back. Second wagon, I was unsure but not too worried. Third wagon, I would have been shirting myself. It happened to me only once.
Most days, however, I was looking at other people, chuffed that these six-foot-four-inch blond-haired, good-looking thoroughbreds were getting the shove.
I"d say, "That"s a shame," but inside I"d be thinking, Good s.h.i.t!
Everybody was for himself; everybody wanted to pa.s.s.
"The point is," the DS said, "if you"ve got to be in a position to give covering fire with your GPMG (general purpose machine gun) in six hours and forty-five minutes" time, it"s no good being there in six hours, forty-five and a half minutes because you"re late. You might as well be ten hours late. If you"re given a timing, you must be there.
The attack group might have to go in without fire cover because their attack might be time coordinated with another attack that"s going in three or four kilometers away. You must keep your timings; lives might depend on it one day."
The training team did the course every day as well, and they would vary the time limit according to the conditions. If there was a forty-mile-an-hour wind, they took it into consideration. It was then up to us to be as good as they were.
The big thing was Platform 4. At Hereford railway station, Platform 4 went to London. "It"s Platform four for you" was the Regiment"s way of saying, "Thank you and good night."
Of course, by the time people got back to their units, the reason they left Selection was a "back or leg injury," but they shouldn"t have been embarra.s.sed: They had more guts turning up for Selection in the first place than the people they were giving excuses to.
The Royal Signals people definitely had the edge on tuning in and being happy with the environment. At that time, if a bloke wanted to go for the Regiment from the signals, he first had to be in 264, the signals squadron in Hereford. So these guys were in the environment to begin with, and they had the Black Mountains,forty-five minutes up the road to train on. A lot of them were going home of an evening. In the beginning I felt they had an unfair advantage. Then I came to see that when it came down to it, they didn"t; they still had to get the boots on and go up the hill with everyone else.
I was looking at the blokes who"d done Selection once already; maybe they had got up to the jungle phase of continuation training and then failed. I was hoping that they were going to pa.s.s this first stage again. If I got to the jungle as well-and I hoped with them-they would know what was going on.
Some people had turned up looking fearsomely fit. I judged myself all the time against them. A fellow called Andy Baxter was one of the training team. We went out for a run with him one day, stopping to do press-ups and sit-ups. Andy took his shirt off and revealed that besides film-star good looks he had a superb physique.
He should have been on the cover of Playgirl. I"d always been really fit in the battalion, but I thought, There"s no way I"m going to pa.s.s this; I don"t stand a chance here; how the h.e.l.l am I going to be like him? Nothing fazed him at all. We"d come back off the runs gasping for breath, and he"d saunter back in, laughing and joking, and have a cup of tea. It annoyed me that compared with some of these blokes, I was a bag of s.h.i.t, sweating and knackered. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn"t Baxter I was competing against; it was McNab.
If pa.s.sing Selection had been an obsession before I arrived at Stirling Lines, it was now a pathological fixation. The longer I was there, the more I wanted to stay.
The atmosphere was so different from an infantry battalion, so laid back, so reliant on self-discipline. Everybody was on first-name terms.
No one ha.s.sled us; all they would say was "Parade is twelve o"clock" and just expect us to be there. If we weren"t, it must mean we didn"t want to be there, so we could go. Each night I said to myself. "I really want to be here; this is the place I want to be."
If I didn"t pa.s.s Selection, I"d get out of the army.
There was no way I could see myself fitting back in the battalion.
I"d seen how the other half lived, and I wanted my share. All the facilities were there, everything from a library to a swimming pool.
The medical center was open for us every night when we got back.
I went there to get some bandages for my feet. it wasn"t like going into a medical center in the battalion, where I"d have been hanging around so long my feet would have healed of their own accord.
They treated me as a person rather than a soldier; as I limped back to my room, I said to myself again: I want to stay here!
All of us Green jackets got up to the third week; then Bob got binned.
His timings weren"t good enough. He didn"t seem too worried about it as he packed his gear to leave.
Next day we had finished one march and were moving to a forestry block to spend the next few hours sorting ourselves out and having something to eat before a night tab. Dave was not feeling too good about it, and he had already had a gypsy"s. As we sat around a hexy burner and sorted our feet out, waiting for dark, he said, ""That p.i.s.ses me off is that they don"t tell us if we"ve failed straightaway. I might be doing this sodding night march for nothing."
He was. The next day, almost the end of the third week, he was also sent to Platform 4, timings not good enough. And Max, who was starting to look the worse for wear, got a gypsy"s.
"It was because I kept falling over," Dave said to me.
"And the reason I keep falling over is that my feet aren"t big enough to support me. I"v-e only got size sevens."
I shook his hand and watched him go. I"d miss the silly b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
A couple of days after that, in the final week, I was coming off Fan-Fawr and saw Max still on his way up, water tube waving in the wind, wearing a T-shirt with a motif on it, something to do with oranges. His big bushy moustahe was full of snot, and he was in s.h.i.t state.
He said, "I"m having a bad time here, Andy. My timings are bad."
H was well and truly out of it-as if he was drunk, but without the happiness.
I nodded and said, "Sorry," but obviously I still had to crack on myself.
That night he went. Out of the original six Green jackets three were left for the last three days of Test Week.
Key went the next day. As usual, he wasn"t that fussed.
"I tried and failed." He grinned. "At least I don"t have to think of it again. Back to football and a few good nights out at Longbridge, that"s me."
I was sad to see them all go. I would miss their friendship and banter.
Johnny Two-Combs was still there, and no way was he not going to pa.s.s. I didn"t see that much of him as he was in a different block and by now, if I wasn"t tabbing, I was sleeping.
"Just got to carry on the way I"m going," I kept saying to myself.
"Just don"t get an injury."
I got a gypsy"s the next day.
We were on a thirty-five-kilometer tab in the Elan valley, and I"d had a really bad day. I had no injuries, but I just found it hard going. It was as If my legs didn"t want to play; my body was going at 100 mph but my legs were moving at 50. I used to have a dream as a child that I was running away from something and though my whole mental state was in a frenzy, my body would be in slow motion.
Now it was happening in real life. I was on the second group of wagons, which was dodgy ground.
The following morning we were waiting to be called on the vehicles. The chief instructor started to call out the names of people he wanted to see. I was one of them.
"Your timings were not good enough yesterday," he said. "You will have to pull your finger out for the last two days or it"s Platform four."
It p.i.s.sed me off, but there were only the Sketch Map and Endurance marches left.
Sketch Map involved using a hand-drawn map rather than a proper one. We had to cover thirty-five kilometers over different checkpoints. No problem, I was cruising. I thought I"d cracked it. I knew the ground because I"d done all the recces, I"d been up there; I knew where I was going.
I was coming up toward the Fan and came to a forestry block about a kilometer square that I would have to go around. It wasn"t a fluffy little wood; this was a major Forestry Commission fir plantation.
Looking down on it from the high ground, I could see that a firebreak went right through the middle. I started to push through, and made good progress for about the first two hundred meters. Then I got disoriented. I had to stop for several minutes and take a bearing.
I was severely p.i.s.sed off with myself. I had to get on my hands and knees and start pushing myself through because the trees were planted so closely together. I was shouting and hollering to myself.
I"d gone too far in to come back out and go around; it was just a matter of cracking on.
Deep down I knew I was going to be late. I knew I had f.u.c.ked up.
By the time I came out I had cuts on my face and hands, and I was covered in blood. But I still went on.
There might be a chance.
As I made my way up to the next checkpoint, which was on the top of Pen-y-Fan, my legs were aching something fierce. I was badly out of breath and drenched with sweat, blood, and mud. But the worst injury was to my pride. I knew I"d f.u.c.ked up good style by being too c.o.c.ky.
The sun was out, and it was quite hot. Half of Wales seemed to be walking on the Fan with their famillessmall kids with two-liter bottles of lemonade in their hands and mothers and fathers strolling along in shorts and sandals, enjoying the view. I screamed through them, p.i.s.sed off and muttering to myself, trying to make up as much time as possible.
The DS looked at my cut face and torn trousers and said, "You all right?"
I said, "Yeah, I"ve had a bad last leg."
"Never mind, just get down to the vehicle; that"s your next checkpoint."
I had been the last man to the top of Pen-y-Fan. Now I had to go back down to the last checkpoint I ran. I ran faster than I"d ever imagined I could, but when I arrived, there was only room on the third wagon.
That night my name was called. It was the day before Endurance, the last big test, and I was binned. It was my fault, being c.o.c.ky, thinking I"d cracked it, rather than just going around the forestry block and being sure of where I was.
Before you leave for Platform 4, you hand all your kit back to the stores. Then there is an interview with the training major. You can try only twice for Selection, unless you break a leg on your second attempt, in which case they might be lenient.
As I waited to go into the office, I wasn"t alone. Eight of us were sitting on a long wooden bench. I felt very much as I had done as a kid, waiting to see the headmistress or to go into a police station interviewing room. It was a hive of activity, people walking purposefully past, doing their own stuff. n.o.body was taking any notice of us.
I felt dejected. Everything was happening around me, but I wasn"t a part of it anymore.
The major looked up from his desk and said, "So what was the problem?
Why were you so late on the last leg?"
"Too c.o.c.ky. I went through the forestry block, and that slowed me down severly."
"Ah, well." He smiled. "If you come back again, you"ll make sure you go around that one, won"t you)"
"Yeah."
"Fine, maybe we"ll see you again"n."
"I hope so."
An hour later I was standing on Platform 4.
We boarded the train to Paddington. When we got to London, I would go to Brize Norton, and from there I"d get an R.A.F flight back to Minden.
As I lifted my holdall into the luggage rack and sat down, I found myself looking straight at the word "Hereford" on the station sign. It hit me that I hadn"t felt so devastated-and so determined-for a long, long time. ailing Selection was a bit like falling off a horse, only it hurt a h.e.l.l of a lot more. I somehow knew that if I didn"t get straight back on, I"d never try again, because I was so p.i.s.sed off.
Debbie was less than thrilled when I applied again, but the battalion were really good about it. They didn"t give me any time off for training this time, however, because there were too many commitments-i.e more bone exercises. % I made up my mind that if I failed Selection a second time, I"d get out of the army. I was writing away, in my naivete, to companies that had a lot of Middle East contracts: "Dear Sirs, I can work a mortar." As an infantry-" man I thought I was G.o.d"s gift to industry because I could fire a mortar, and couldn"t understand it when the polite letters came back: "Dear Sir, f.u.c.k off!"
Alex, the captain who"d done so much to help us get some training, took me aside one day and said, "Every morning when I was shaving, I got the soap and wrote on the mirror: Battalion No, Regiment Yes."
It had obviously worked for him. I was encouraged.
I did all the training I could in the, free time I had. it was much the same as before-lots of bergen work, circuit training, and running-building up the endurance of my heart, lungs, legs, and mind.
The only free time I had to get some more work in over the Beacons was during the Christmas leave period, which obviously p.i.s.sed Debbie off severely. We started to have rows about it. Our marriage was in name only.
She came home one evening, and we had a ma.s.sive setto.
"We"re hardly ever together," she said. "And when we are, all you"re interested in is Selection."
"I"m p.i.s.sed off with myself for failing," I said.
"Then that makes two of us."
I started to say that she had no idea about what was happening to me, that my whole world had fallen in, and if I didn"t get in next time, our future was uncertain, because I would leave the army and have to look for work.
It was a big allnighter, with enough shouting and slamming of doors to wake up half the block. I was just feeling sorry for myself and couldn"t handle being rejected by the Regiment. My only vent was Debbie, and she, I thought, didn"t understand. The Regiment was what I wanted, and if she wasn"t with me, then as far as I was concerned, she was against me. I told her she was overreacting, that if I got in, everything would be all right again and we would get back to where we were before. But Debbie was a bright girl, and she must have seen the writing on the wall.
What had started as an obsession and become a fixation was now a pa.s.sion. I was no longer concerned about anything that happened within the battalion, unless it was physical. Then I"d throw myself into it, purely because it was more training.
My mind was focused completely on the first month of Selection. I wasn"t worried about the continuation training at all; once I"d got over that first month, everything else was the unknown, so I couldn"t prepare myself for it. But I could prepare myself for the first month.
I knew I could pa.s.s it. I knew.
During Christmas leave Debbie stayed with her family and I went to Crickhowell, the training depot for the Prince of Wales Division.
Early each morning I put the bergen in the back of the motor and screamed up to the Black Mountains.
I had a rusty old black Renault 5. One of the wings was falling off and had to be kept on with a rubber bungee. Some mornings it lacked the power even to get up the hill to my start point. When the roads were icy, I ended up more than once in a hedge.
I"d train hard all day up on the hills, then drive back down to Crickhowell, have -my two pints of Guiness and a bag of chips, drink huge amounts of electrolytes, and strap myself up for the next day.
On Christmas Day I treated myself to a few hours off, staying where I was and watching all the old number ones on Top of the Pops. I had Christmas dinner at one of the pubs and gave Debbie a call. There was no reply.
Next day I did the Fan Dance. As I tabbed hard.up Pen-y-Fan with this big house on my back, sweating away, four or five blokes came sprinting past with track suits and day sacks on. As they went piling past the bag of s.h.i.t-me-they said, "Trying for January, are you?
Good luck."
I was expecting the winter Selection to be more severe than the summer one. Cold can be so debilitating; it would be tougher to wade through snow than move over the ground, and poor visibility would make the navigation a lot harder. People died on winter Selection.