Basic (To any members of Jee Troop reading this, I apologise in advance for any inacuracies and embelishments)

On a cold February morning, as I trudged up the steep, winding dirt track towards Keogh Barracks, carrying an enormous suitcase, I was grateful for sticking at the bodybuilding. I stopped briefly to switch hands and noticed someone had thoughtfully daubed ‘This way to Hell’ on an old public footpath sign, so we wouldn’t get lost.

As the path opened out I could see several recruits ahead of me. They too were stopping at various intervals to switch hands and re-check their joining papers. I wondered what had brought them to this point in their lives. Looking back to those ‘army barmy’ times I can only recall fragments of my 18 week basic training. As I write this I’m studying 2 group photos – one taken in civilian clothes on the first day and one in No. 2 dress uniform at the passing out parade. In the 'before' picture we are arranged in two lines of 16, one kneeling one standing. There’s a slight kink in the line at recruit number 10 where the ground fell away slightly. From what I can see, there are only two smilers, one grinner and 29 scowlers. This was obviously meant to be a serious passport style photo, one of the ‘say cheese and you die’ variety.

I’m bursting out of my light grey sports jacket on the back row with a German helmet haircut, dense eyebrow foliage and Arab moustache. My expression looks pensive with a hint of nervousness. I never dared commit myself to a full-blown toothy smile, on account of my overcrowded mouth and misaligned molars.

In the ‘after’ shot it’s difficult to see who’s who in the strip of khaki wallpaper with its repeating pattern of caps and crossed arms. I look a shade thinner with a more Mexican influenced moustache, and I’m definitely happy to be free - at last.

The period in between photographs was painful, exhausting and mind numbingly repetitive. The only way to survive all the relentless humiliations and spit-in-the-face interrogations was to switch your mind to a sort of closed-off autopilot setting. I took to reciting elegiac poetry and making up limericks about the abusive corporals and sergeants.

      “Private Daniels, are those salt stains on your DMS boots?” screamed a corporal, so close I could tell he’d eaten a curry the night before.

      There was a young corporal named skinner

      “Yes corporal. I mean no corporal.” I didn’t know what the fuck I meant.

      “Well, what is it, yes or no?”

      Who always looked forward to dinner

      “Yes corporal.” I braced myself for the onslaught.

      “Yes!”

      “I perspire heavily corporal.”

      He scoffed new recruits like raw bamboo shoots

      “Is that right?

      “Yes corporal.” Each reply was a shovel full closer to completing my own shallow grave

      No wonder he’s fatter not thinner.

My sleep-deprived brain wasn’t terribly adept at multi-tasking, so I stopped composing limericks and just ad-libbed myself into even more trouble.

      “When did you last have a neck shave Private Daniels?” enquired the C.O in a slightly feminine voice.

      “Half an hour ago” I replied, looking at the wall clock. Corporal Skinner stepped in at this point.

      “Next time stand closer to the fucking razor!” No curry breath this time, just lots of decibels.

I must have marched half way round the world, shuttling between guardroom and barrack room. The fun didn’t stop there though. At the end of every high speed march were certain specially selected cleaning duties for me to perform. My top three - in ascending order of excruciation were:

1

.. Brasso’ing the aluminium dustbin (which had first been thoughtfully kicked across the parade ground)

2. Cutting the guardroom lawn using a pair of child’s plastic nail scissors

3. Sweeping the parking space in front of the guardroom with a toothbrush.

These were the military equivalent of doing lines. Personally, I’d have preferred to write ‘I will not answer back’ until my fingers bled.

The coup de grace was losing my I.D card, which was historically a court Marshall Offence. I was shown some leniency by the C.O. who commuted my sentence to a week’s R.O.P ‘s (restriction of privileges)and 2 weeks cleaning duties.

Basic training wasn’t all bad. The R.A.M.C. motto, In Arduis Fidelis means Steadfast in Adversity. My band of brothers and I did share many unifying and uplifting experiences born out of adversity and misery. Any smart arses and determined loners were given short shrift before being read the riot act. Thankfully they were identified and weeded out quite early on.

It might sound corny, harping on about lasting friendships forged during difficult times. Soldiers sent to war zones such as Afghanistan or Iraq depend on each other for their lives every single day, and I would imagine unspoken kinships and loyalties probably last a lifetime.

There’s also nothing like a bit of extreme team torture to bring out heroes and shirkers. One such torture was the team log run, which took place in the penultimate week of training. It was a competitive 6 mile race over three infamous sand hills with a long flat sprint at the end. We’d gotten very 'up close and personal' with the 3 hills in question over the preceding 16 weeks - a little too much déjà vu for my liking.

On the day in question we were marched up to the start and split into teams of six. The logs were smooth telegraph poles complete with six hemp handles tied round the trunk. You could either run with the log at knee height, or as our team chose to do, balanced on shoulders. Neither method was fool proof. Arms and shoulders come in all lengths and heights. For us, it was a little like high speed coffin bearing with the tallest runners (me included!) taking most of the weight. The strap holders risked getting dislocated shoulders and sprained wrists.

Teamwork was paramount. Every few hundred yards the front runners disengaged and went to the rear to change shoulders or hands. A corporal ran alongside each team, shouting choice words of encouragement such as “drop off the log and I’ll kick your sorry fucking arse all the way back to camp”. If he spotted anyone ducking underneath, they were immediately sent to the front and beasted to oblivion. Beasting is an army term for verbal and/or physical abuse. There was a lot of beasting that day.

Without any shoulder padding, the accumulative effects of a half-ton log bouncing up and down were agonising. After 4 miles I could feel blood running down my arms. I’ve never heard so much profane encouragement in all my life. With every step the log felt heavier and more cumbersome, and our shouting got louder and more insistent. I only glanced back once, half expecting to see bodies littering the track, with the end of the log ploughing a sandy furrow.

Amazingly, we won the race and also set a new course record, although in retrospect, I think this announcement was a device to make us feel better. When I rolled the log off my shoulder   I couldn’t help but notice something glinting in the sunshine, surrounded by a large dark stain. On closer inspection I could see this was the tip of a six inch nail. 28 years later, the two inch scar is still there. I wonder if the nail was ever completely hammered in.

Our rivals in the log run were Russell Troop, a slightly smaller but no less determined group of soldiers. Once we’d passed out of basic training and were given our postings for the next year I met and befriended an ex- Russell troop private called Willis Pigeon. Willis was a softly spoken, old fashioned soul who still believed in practising out-dated courtesies such as standing up when a lady entered or exited the room. A Glaswegian accent is difficult to decipher at the best of times, a murmuring Glaswegian is virtually unintelligible. Willis was five-foot-six in his DMS boots with forearms like a mechanic. He had the largest penis I’d ever seen outside of a farmyard. The first time I clapped eyes on it in the communal showers I almost fell over my tongue. It was as thick as a coke bottle and hung just below his knee. During our pupil nurse training at Cambridge Military Hospital the legend of ‘Willis the Willy’ soon permeated the forbidden walls of the Q.A’s living quarters. This may have been helped by a Polaroid snap of Willis (taken by me) doing a spot of naked ironing, which I pinned to their notice board with the message Any Takers, scribbled underneath.

News travels fast in an army hospital and pretty soon women started giggling, whispering and staring during mealtimes. The more brazen QA’s slipped filthy love notes under his plate as they walked past. One gigantic woman even offered to pay five pounds just to see the extra limb. I volunteered to act as pimp, but Willis wasn’t interested. He regularly undersold himself and became embarrassed whenever we brought it up over a can of lager in the mess. I jokingly asked if he’d mind donating a few inches so that I could have it grafted onto my sorry specimen. This made him laugh, but at the end of the day, a no is still a no.

Willis was forced to take early retirement because some nameless numpty in a white coat failed to diagnose exercise induced asthma during a pre-selection medical. It was only picked up after he collapsed and almost died during a BFT in Hong Kong. He was bitterly disappointed at the time, but since leaving the army he jokingly refers to his army pension as his ‘army asthma allowance’.

I firmly believe I was attracted to people who were everything I wasn’t. At school, Nick Burden was a handsome, confident lothario; I found it hard to even talk to women. Steve Davies was a fearless pugilist; I ran away from other peoples fights. Willis could pole vault his way into bed; while my own diminutive ‘trouser treasure’ looked like a walnut whip rescued from the floor of a barbers shop. Out of all my friendships and acquaintances Mickey Reynolds (a fellow police cadet) was the only one who didn’t have something I envied or coveted, and he died before I could say thank you.