Immediate Action Read online

  I managed to get extra pallets of drinks put on the wagons, sold them to the pubs, and pocketed the proceeds.

  In the wintertime I delivered coal. I thought I was Jack the lad because I could lift the coal into the chutes. I couldn't move for old ladies wanting to make me cups of tea. I thought I knew everything I needed to know. I pitied the poor dickheads at school, working for nothing. I was making big dough; I had all the kit that I'd wanted two years ago.

  I lost my virginity on a Sunday afternoon when I was fifteen. My mate's sister was about seventeen. She was also willing and available, but very fat. I didn't know who was doing whom a favor. It was all very rumbly, all very quick, and then she made me promise that I wasn't going to tell anybody. I said that I wouldn't, but as soon as I could, like the shit that I was, I did.

  The contract work finished, and I started working at McDonald's in Catford, which had just opened. Life there was very fast and furious.

  I was sweeping and mopping the floors every fifteen minutes. I could have a coffee break, but I had to buy all my own food. There was no way I could fiddle anything because it was all too well organized.

  I hated it. The money was crap, too, but marginally better than the dole-and besides, the McDonald's was nearer to home than the dole office.

  I started to get into disappearing for a while. A bloke and I did his aunty's gas meter and traveled to France on day passes, telling the ferries our parents were at the other end to collect us. On the way back we even stole a life Jacket and tried to sell it to a shop in Dover.

  I had no consideration whatsoever for my parents.

  Sometimes I'd come back at four in the morning and my mum would be flapping. Sometimes we'd have the police coming around, but there was nothing they could do apart from give me a big fearsome bollocking. I thought I was the bee's knees because there was a police car outside the house.

  I started going off the rails good style, sinking as low as tipping over Portaloos so I could snatch the occupants' handbags. One day three of us were coming out of a basement flat we'd just burgled in Dulwich when we were challenged by the police. We got cornered near the railway station by a handler and his dog.

  As soon as the police gripped me, I was scared. I bluffed in the van because the other two weren't showing any fear. But as soon as we got separated at the station, I wanted to show the police that I was flapping. I wanted them to take pity on me; I wanted them to see that I wasn't that bad, just easily led.

  The station was a turn-of-the-century place with high ceilings, thickly painted walls, and polished floors. As I sat waiting in the interview room, I could hear the squeak of boots in the corridor outside.

  I wanted so badly for somebody to come in; I wanted the police to know that I wasn't bad; I'd fucked up, but it was the other two's fault.

  My heart was pumping. I wanted my mum. It was the same horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I'd had running home from Maxwell's Laundry.

  I had visions of ending up in Borstal or prison or being the new young meat in an overcrowded remand wing. I'd always looked up to the local characters who'd been in prison, and I thought they were really hard.

  Now I knew that they must have hated it, too. All their stuff about "being inside" must have been hollow bravado; it wasn't glamorous, and it wasn't exciting. It was horrible.

  When my parents came up to the police station and I saw the shame and disappointment in my mums eyes, I thought: Is this it? Is this what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life? Having a cell door slammed behind me, was bad enough; it was claustrophobic and lonely in there, and I was very scared. But I'd never seen Mum like that before, and I felt terrible.

  I decided I was going to change. Alone in the interview room I said to myself: "Right, what am I going to do? I'm going to start getting myself sorted out."

  There had been one brief spell at school when I'd really got into English. I did a project on Captain Scott and got an A. I thought it was really great, but then I just dropped it. I got into history for a short while and enjoyed making a model of an Anglo-Saxon village.

  Maybe I could make a go of it. I didn't want to land up as just another local nutter who thought he was dead cool because he had a Mark III Cortina and a gold chain around his neck.

  So what was I going to do? There was no way I could get a decent job in South London. Academically I wasn't qualified, and certainly I didn't have the aptitude to work in a factory.

  In the back of my mind there had always been ideas about the army.

  When my uncle Bert had lived upstairs, I'd heard him talking to my mum once about the army.

  He'd joined just before the Second World War because they were going to feed him three meals a day. And I knew they educated you because my mum had said so about my brother. Aunties and uncles would say, "John's away now." My parents would reply, "Oh, yes, make a man of him."

  I'd seen all the adverts for the army-blokes on windsurfers who always seemed to have loads of money, going places and doing stuff.

  And at least it would educate me. Why not do three years, I thought, and see what it's like? My brother had enjoyed it, so why not me? If nothing else, it would get me out of London.

  As soon as the interview started, I said, "Please, I don't want to be in the shit because I want to join the army. It wasn't my idea going in the flat. I was just dragging along. They told me to keep dog. Then they came running out, and I ran with them," And I kept on bubbling.

  I got put into a remand hostel for three days while I waited to go in front of the magistrates. I hated every minute of being locked up, and I swore to myself that if I got away with it, I'd never let it happen again. I knew deep down that I really would have to do something pretty decisive or I'd end up spending my entire life in Peckham, fucking about and getting fucked up.

  On judgment day the other two got probation; I got let off with a caution. I was free to carry on where I'd left off, or I could show everybody, including myself, that this time I meant business.

  I jumped on a bus that would take me past the army recruiting office. want to fly helicopters," I said to the recruiting sergeant. "I want to go in the Army Air Corps."

  I took a simple test in English and math, which I failed.

  "Come and try again in a month's time," the sergeant said. "The test will be exactly the same."

  I went down to the public library and studied a book on basic arithmetic. If I could master multiplication, I told myself, I'd never again have to hear the sound of a cell door slamming.

  Four weeks later I went back in, sat the same test, and passed-by two points. The sergeant gave me a pile of forms to take home.

  "What are you going in?" my dad said.

  "Army Air Corps."

  "That's all right then. We don't want any of that infantry shit.

  You don't learn anything in that."

  I was given a travel warrant and went off to Sutton Coldfield for the three-day selection process. We were given medicals and simple tests of the "If this cog turns this way, which way does that cog turn?" variety and did a bit of sport. We watched films and were given talks about teeth arms and support arms and where the army was in the world. I was loving it. The Army Air Corps seemed to operate everywhere; Cyprus and Hong Kong looked good for starters.

  As I was going through the tests, though, the terrible truth dawned on me that there was no way I was going to become a pilot. A lot of the other candidates were in the brain surgeon bracket, loaded down with 0 levels and going for junior apprenticeships to become artificers and surveyors. You'd have to be in their same league to go for pilot training, and I didn't have a qualification to my name. All the time I had wasted humping coal and lemonade flashed in front of me as if I were a drowning man. For the first time since I'd been old enough to do something about it, I was surrounded by blokes who had something that I wanted, but this time it was something that couldn't be nicked.

  At the final interview an officer said to me, "You can go in
to the Army Air Corps and train as a refueler.

  However, I don't think you would be best suited to that.

  You're an active sort of bloke, aren't you, McNab?"

  "I suppose so."

  "Probably fancy a bit of traveling, seeing a bit of the world?"

  "That's me."

  "Well then, have you considered a career in the infantry? There's a lot more potential. The battalions move every two or three years, so you're going to different places. It's a more exciting life for a young man.

  We have vacancies in the Royal Green jackets."

  "Right, I'll have some of that."

  I was quite proud of myself. I thought I'd cracked it. I was a man; I was in the army now. I couldn't wait to get home and tell my parents the news.

  "What did you land up in then?" the old man asked, looking up from his paper.

  "The Royal Green Jackets."

  "What's that?"

  "Part of the Light Division." I beamed. "You knowlight infantry."

  "You wanker!" he exploded, hurling his newspaper to the floor.

  "You're not going to learn anything. All you're going to do is run around humping a big pack on your back."

  But I was not going to be deterred. A couple of days later, when it was clear that my mind was made up, my mum handed me an envelope and said,

  "I think you need to know all about this."

  I opened the envelope and pulled out my adoption certificate. It wasn't a shock. I knew my brother was adopted, and I'd always just taken it for granted that I was, too. I wasn't really fussed about it.

  "I met your natural mother when you were about a year old," my mum said.

  "She told me that she worked for a Greek immigrant who'd come over to England in the fifties and was running a nightclub in the West End.

  She sold the cigarettes in the club and was seventeen when she fell pregnant by him. She told me neither of them wanted a baby so she left you on the hospital steps in a carrier bag."

  My mum and dad had fostered me more or less straightaway and eventually adopted me.

  "She wasn't really concerned about you, Andy," my mum said. "She said to me, 'I can always have other kids." In September 1976 I had what I thought was the world's most fearsome haircut and boarded the train to Folkestone West. Double-decker buses were waiting to take everybody to the Junior Leaders' Battalion camp at Shorncliffe. As soon as we got there all eleven hundred of us were given another haircut. A really outrageous bone haircut-all off, with just a little mound on the top like a circle of turf. I knew straightaway I was going to hate this place.

  The first few days were a blur of bullshit, kit issue, and more bullshit. We couldn't wear jeans; they were ungentlemanly.

  We had to stand to attention if even a private came into the room.

  I thought I was hard, but there were people here who made me look like the Milky Bar Kid. They had homemade tattoos up their arms and smoked roll-ups. If they couldn't find somebody to pick a fight with, they'd just scrap among themselves. Shit, I thought, what's it going to be like when I get to the battalion? I wanted out.

  It was a very physical existence. If we weren't marching, we'd be doubling. We were in the gym every day, running and jumping. I actually got to like it. I found out I was quite good at running and started to get more and more into sport.

  As a young soldier, milling was part of any selection or basic training at the time. They'd put four benches I together to make a square and say, "Right, you and you, in you go," and in we'd go and try to punch hell out of each other. Most blokes just got in there and swung their arms like idiots. The hard nuts from Glasgow and Sheffield were a bit more polished, but I was amazed to find that one of the best punchers of all came from Peckham. Before I knew it, I was on the company boxing team.

  One good thing about getting into any sports team in the army is that you're excused from all the other training. Another is that you get to walk around in a maroon tracksuit all day, looking and feeling a bit special.

  I won my two bouts at welterweight, and my company won the battalion championships. We got to the army finals, and I won the welterweight title. As far as I was concerned, my future was sealed: I'd go to 1RGJ, the boxing battalion, be a boxer for three years, then get out. What was even better, 1RGJ were off to Hong Kong.

  A lot of the other blokes resented us sports people.

  Maybe it was the color of the tracksuit, or maybe it was because we were allowed straight to the front of the dinner queue as a privilege.

  The boxing team swaggered in one lunchtime, went to the head of the queue, and started slagging off the other blokes.

  "You think you're fucking it, don't you?" said one of the Glasgow boys.

  I answered with a smirk and walked on to the front and waited for the doors to be opened.

  A Glaswegian mouth came very close to my ear and said, "What's the difference between your leg and maroon tracksuits?"

  Ishrugged.

  "None," he said, "they're both full of pricks," and with a massive grunt he rammed his fork straight into my thigh.

  I staggered back a pace and looked down. The fork was embedded in my leg right up t'o the ends of the prongs. I grabbed hold of it and pulled gently, but my leg muscle had gone into rigid spasm, and I couldn't get the thing out. I wrenched as hard as I could and pulled it free. The prongs were red with blood as I did an aboutturn an. d marched from the canteen. There was no way I was going to say anything.

  It wasn't until I got around the corner that I covered my mouth with my hand and screamed.

  Boxing finished. I went back to the platoon, still with at least six months to do with the same intake. I was way behind. I'd done the weapon training, but I hadn't had time to consolidate it. I was really brought down-to-earth; they knew a lot more than I did. But I worked hard at it and even got a promotion. For the last three months we were given ranks, from junior lance corporal to junior RSM. It meant jack shit really.

  On Friday mornings we had the colonel's cross-country over a six-mile course in and around the camp. The whole battalion had to race. If you came behind the colonel, you had to do it again on Sunday, whether you were staff or a junior soldier After that, we'd go to a training area to practice being wet, cold, and hungry. I enjoyed it; at least we were away from the camp. I got better and better at it, and it made me feel good.

  There was a ritual. The provo sergeant would come out of the guardroom and greet everyone back. It was the first time we had been given any respect. We would be staggering back as a platoon, with our silly tin hats on, kit hanging off us, stinking, our faces covered in cam cream, and he would come out and give praise.

  "Well done! Keep it going!" he'd boom.

  It gave me a sense of pride that I'd never felt before, especially as he spent the rest of his time bollocking us.

  Then came the weapon cleaning, which took until the end of Saturday or Sunday morning. Then the weekend!

  We couldn't go home, and we were allowed out only until ten o'clock-and only to the local town. To the lads in Folkestone we were a nuisance because we had money. You could show a girl a really good time on three quid a week. I met a girl called Christine at the Folkestone Rotunda, and we started to see each other as often as we could.

  I really started to enjoy it all. I'd finally got to grips with the system of "bullshit baffles brains": just do what they say, even if you know it's a bag of shit, and it keeps everybody happy. And the more I enjoyed it, the more I didn't mind working at it, and the better I got.

  The exercises started to get more and more intense.

  We'd be out one or two nights a week, culminating in a two-week battle camp where all the different phases of war were practiced, with live firing attacks. Now, at last, I started to understand what I was doing.

  Before, I had just dug a hole and sat in it. Now I knew why I was sitting in it.

  Every eight weeks we had leave. I met up with my old mates in Peckham when I went back one time, but there was a
distinct change.

  We'd drifted apart. Even after such a short length of time our worldviews had changed.

  All they were interested in was what I had been interested in when I left: mincing around. I didn't feel superior-the other way around, if anything. I thought I was missing out. They were talking about getting down to Margate, but on Sunday I'd have my best dress uniform on, marching down to the garrison church. Nonetheless, I couldn't wait to get to my battalion.

  I got chosen to take one of the passing-out guards and received a letter saying, "Congratulations on being presented with the Light Division sword. Well done, and I really hope your career goes well."

  I didn't have a clue what the Light Division sword was. I discovered that each regiment had this award, presented to the most promising young soldier. I also discovered that it meant a day's rehearsal where I had to practice going up, shaking the hand, saluting, taking the sword, turning around, and marching back off. At last the whole battalion had to get into the gym for presentations by the colonel to all the different companies.

  I thought the sword was marvelous and looked forward to seeing it mounted on my bedroom wall. But as I left the podium, a sergeant took it off me and gave me a pewter mug in exchange. The sword went back to the regimental museum.

  The passing-out parade was quite a big affair. My parents came down, and my older brother and his family. It was quite strange because they'd never been really that into it; Mum and Dad never even used to go to parents' evenings at my school. In fact, it was the first time any of my family had ever turned up to anything.

  It really was the day I thought I'd become a soldier.

  We wore I.J.L.B (infantry junior leaders battalion) cap badge and belt, and as soon as we came off the passingout parade, we could put on our own regimental kit, the Green jacket beret.

  There was another little matter to be attended to. Our beautifully hulled hobnail boots had to be returned to the stores, apart from those of the guardsmen who were going to take them to their battalion for ceremonial duties. So we all lined up and bashed them on the pavement until the bull cracked like crazy paving. No other fucker was going to get their hands on them and have it easier than we did. went on leave for a couple of weeks, then reported to the Rifle Depot at Winchester. I felt a mixture of excitement an worry as the eleven of us joined a platoon of adult recruits on their last six weeks of training.