Today Everything Changes: Quick Read Read online

  At the age of sixteen, I ended up in juvenile detention, or jail for kids.

  Detention didn’t help me at all. It just made me worse. As I saw it, the reason I was in there was everyone else’s fault. It just reinforced my belief that no one cared about me. And if they didn’t care, then why should I?

  Then, one day, the army came to see if any of us wanted to be soldiers.

  ‘I want to fly helicopters,’ I said to the sergeant. He said that I could if I wanted to. They couldn’t catch this boy out. He had shown me a film with a little two-seater helicopter (called a Scout) in it. The pilot wore a pair of shorts and a T-shirt as he flew really low over the beaches of Cyprus. He was waving down at the girls, and they were waving up at him. I rather imagined myself at the controls. My biggest decision, I reckoned, was the colour scheme of my shorts.

  There and then, I took a simple test in English and maths, which I failed. I was told I was ‘functionally illiterate’, which meant I could cope with only the simplest questions. My literacy levels were that of an average eleven year old.

  But what did I care? I was going to fly helicopters!

  I was given a train ticket and went to Birmingham where hundreds of other would-be soldiers gathered for three days of tests, to see if I was good enough for the army. We had medical checks, too, and did a bit of sport. We watched films and were given talks about army ‘combat arms’ and ‘support arms’ and where soldiers were stationed around the world. I loved it. The Army Air Corps seemed to operate everywhere. Cyprus and Hong Kong looked good to me for starters.

  As I was doing the tests, though, the terrible truth dawned on me that there was no way I could become a pilot. I didn’t have a qualification to my name. The thought of all the time I’d wasted, mucking around the estate, flashed in front of me as if I was a drowning man.

  At the final interview, an officer said to me, ‘You could go into the Army Air Corps and train as a refueller. However, I don’t think you’d be best suited to that. You’re an active sort of chap, aren’t you, McNab?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘So do you fancy travelling, seeing a bit of the world?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Well, why not a career in the infantry? The battalions move every two or three years, so you’d be 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.’

  After all, I was only going to do my three years, then go back to south London and become one of those well-paid panel beaters.

  Chapter Seven

  September 1976

  I’d got on to the train at Waterloo suffering from what I thought was the world’s worst haircut.

  There were lots of other lads on the train with their bags of gear, but nobody was talking to anyone else. We were still silent when we got into the fleet of white double-decker buses that were waiting to take us new ‘Junior Leaders’, as we were called, to the battalion’s camp at Shorncliffe, near Folkestone, in Kent.

  The idea behind the Infantry Junior Leaders Battalion was not only to train sixteen and seventeen year olds for a year to become infantry soldiers but also to become the infantry’s future leaders, the corporals, sergeants and warrant officers, the backbone of the army. Before that happened, though, we all had to be cut down to size. As soon as we arrived, from our various parts of the country, all 1,100 of us were given another haircut. A really outrageous bone haircut – all off, with just a little mound of hair on the top of our heads, like a circle of turf. I knew straight away I was going to hate army life.

  To make it worse, I found out that it was not just for three years that I had to sign up for but six because of all the extra training I needed. The army wanted its money’s worth out of me. I hadn’t really understood the contract, I just thought the options were three, six or nine years. I’d thought I’d signed up for the minimum three years, but I was wrong about that too.

  Chapter Eight

  The camp was very big, located on the high ground above Folkestone. Most military camps and their training areas were in the same sort of place, wet, cold and windy, maybe it was because nobody else wanted to buy the land?

  As we drove into the camp, I saw some lads in shiny steel helmets picking up leaves, cigarette ends, even matches. They were being told off by a big guy with two stripes, very shiny boots and a big stick under his arm.

  ‘Who are they?’ I asked the bus driver.

  ‘Prisoners.’

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Went AWOL, mostly. New recruits go missing, get picked up and brought back. Then they get all the horrible jobs.’

  ‘What about the guy with the stripes?’

  ‘The provost corporal. He’s going to be your worst nightmare. That’s all you need to know about them.’

  We drove past squads of junior soldiers marching or running all over the place, some with weapons, others lined up outside the gym getting shouted at by the man in charge.

  Chapter Nine

  The next day was a blur. We were given our kit, some documents and then more documents. There was more shouting and just ten minutes for food. We were told that we were not allowed to wear jeans because they were ungentlemanly. We’d been given a civililan clothes list for when we were not in uniform and from now on that was what we would wear. If we didn’t have a pair of proper trousers, we would be buying some at the first chance we could get.

  We had to stand to attention if a trained soldier came into the room, even if he was a private. We had to say to him, ‘Yes, Trained Soldier. No, Trained Soldier.’

  And then I found out I had to shave every day, even though I didn’t need to. I didn’t need to shave until I was nineteen. I had teenage zits all over my chin, which didn’t help me look like a soldier when I cut the tops off them every morning.

  They weren’t the only bits of blood I had to contend with. As a south London boy, I thought I was a bit hard, but other people there made me look like one of the Teletubbies. They had homemade tattoos up their arms, smoked rollups, and came from places I’d heard of but wasn’t exactly sure where they were, such as Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and, of course, lots of Scottish places. I couldn’t work out the names because I couldn’t understand what the Scots were saying. I’d only been north of the River Thames about three times. The furthest south I’d ever travelled was Margate. I hadn’t ever been on an aeroplane. After my third scuffle in as many days, I wanted out.

  I shared a large room with twenty-three other lads. The showers, toilets and basins were in a large room we called ‘the block’. For the first time ever, I had my own space. It might only have been a bit of lino the size of a broom cupboard, which I had to polish every morning, but it had a bed, a locker and a bedside mat that were mine. I paid for it and my food every week out of my wages.

  I’d never had a space of my own before. The last couple of years, I’d slept in the living room of our flat, having to wait till Mum and Dad were asleep or my younger brother went to bed before I could. The constant smell of cigarette smoke made the back of my throat sting. I used to hate it, maybe that was why I’d never smoked.

  We were allowed just three sheets of hard toilet paper at a time. There was a sign on the back of each toilet door to remind us: ‘Three sheets only: one up, one down, one shine.’ At least it was better than where I’d come from. On top of that, there was the luxury of hot water, plenty of it, and we were ordered to use it. Sometimes we had to shower three times a day, after PT in the morning, after further training in the afternoon and before lights out at night.

  I never got tired of hot showers. At night I used to take a plastic chair in with me and sit under the hot water for as long as I could. It made me feel like a millionaire.

  Chapter Ten

  Every day started at six-thirty, when the duty sergeant would burst in, turn the lights on and shout, ‘On with your socks, feet on the floor.’ Everybo
dy had to be standing on their bedside mat by the time he’d walked around the room.

  I was in C Company, which included my regiment, the Green Jackets, the Light Infantry and all the Scottish regiments. The Scots’ training sergeants always had a bagpiper in tow to wake not only us up but all the rest of the battalion.

  As soon as we were up, it was a mad panic. There was a lot to do before we were inspected at eight o’clock. We had to wash, shave and get dressed. Then we went to breakfast. This was the only meal we didn’t have to march to and from. Instead we ran. Everyone had to have breakfast. It was called the Queen’s Parade. If you flaked out on the assault course or on the drill square later and it was found out you hadn’t had breakfast, you were in the shit, big-time.

  To me, breakfast was yet more luxury. The cookhouse always smelled of baked beans and toast, but at breakfast time there were eggs and bacon, too. You could have as much food as you liked but you had to eat everything you put on your plate. It was only a few months ago that breakfast was a can of Coke and a Mars bar for breakfast. Sometimes I would go mad and have a Flake instead.

  We had to get the food down our necks fast because we had to race back upstairs to clean and dust the toilets, washrooms and bedrooms. They all had to look like new. The floors had to be swept, then waxed and polished to a brilliant shine every day. We soon found a work-around. We agreed to use only half of the toilets, so we’d only have to get to grips with the other half. The out-of-bounds bit would only need a quick dust.

  There was a mad frenzy to make sure that everything, even the taps, was clean and dry, and the mirrors had to sparkle. The rooms reeked of disinfectant or floor wax. You could have eaten your dinner off those floors.

  The worst part for me was making my bed. I had to strip off the sheets and the three blankets, fold two of the blankets and the sheets so they were exactly the same size as the pillow slip. Then fold the third blanket, wrap it round the rest of the bedding and place the parcel at the head of the bed where my pillows would normally be. Then flatten the pillows, because they had to be all nice and smooth as they lay on top of the bedding parcel.

  As we were doing our beds, we would hear shouts from one of the senior lads. They lived on the floor above us. Many of them were from the Scottish regiments. ‘Area cleaning! Get outside for area cleaning.’ Come rain, snow or shine, everyone was called out and lined up about the camp. Then we moved in one big sweep, like policemen looking for a murder weapon as we cleaned our company areas.

  Of course, we were in the UK so the grass was always wet, no matter what time of year it was. That meant our boots were always damp and muddy. We had to wipe them with the cloth we kept in a pocket before we went back inside. The last man in would polish away the marks that our rubber soles made on the freshly cleaned floors.

  Apart from Glaswegian grunts that the standard of today’s area cleaning was shocking, the only sound was the squeak of boots on waxed floors. There were no radios or TVs, not even a washing-machine. After every run, our PT kit had to be hand-washed, dried, then put back on its shelf, folded perfectly, with our other kit.

  Chapter Eleven

  By ten minutes to eight, or 07.50 hours, as I now had to call it, I’d be standing on the edge of my newly brushed bedside mat, trying not to mess up the polished floor. I’d have checked that my locker was perfectly laid out, immaculate in the same way as everyone else’s. Army suitcases were packed and uniforms hung on rails in the same order. The front of a uniform always faced towards the right, and each right-hand sleeve was exposed at the front of the locker. There was a three-inch gap between the coat-hangers so that the right-hand sleeve just touched the uniform in front of it.

  We were allowed two coat-hangers on the far left-hand side of the rail for our civilian clothes. They had to be cleaned and pressed, too, shirts with our new trousers. We never had the chance to wear them though. We trained for six and a half days each week. That left about four hours on Sunday afternoon to go into Folkestone and even that wasn’t allowed until you’d been at the camp for three months. When we went there we couldn’t blend in with the locals. In 1976, everyone wore platform shoes and flared jeans, and had hair coming down to their shoulders. We stuck out like sore thumbs.

  If the slightest mistake was discovered, like a sock being out of place, it meant big trouble. They certainly were making men out of us scrawny sixteen year olds.

  I’d checked that the green face flannel that hung on the mirror inside of the locker door was damp. It had to be wet to the touch to show that I’d had a wash. But I couldn’t wash with it because it would get soapy, which in turn meant it would be dirty. I wetted it while I washed, but didn’t actually wash with it.

  Shaving kit was laid out on the third shelf up from the bottom. That, too, had to look as if it had been used. The razor and the soap dish had to be dry, but the soap itself had to be wet. That was an easy one. Like everyone else, I kept extra washing and shaving kit hidden in a sock in my dirty laundry bag which, of course, had to contain dirty socks and underwear to show I had changed them. I only ever used the soap in the real kit, gave it a quick pat with toilet paper and placed it carefully in the plastic soap dish.

  Then I’d checked my green army towel. Was that folded correctly over the headboard of the steel-framed bed? Was it damp?

  Then I would go for my boot-cleaning kit. The paint had been scraped off the polish tin, and the tin polished with Brasso. You had to use the tin: it had to have dabs in the polish to prove you were using it. But were there any finger marks on the metal?

  Our best boots were heavy, with metal studs in the leather soles. We worked on them for hours, with spit and polish. Not just the uppers, but also the soles, so that every part of them shone. There had to be no dust as they lay just in front of the bedding parcel on the bed, the laces lying flat. Were they in good nick? Even the laces had to be threaded in the boots in the same way as everyone else’s. You tied a knot at the end of a lace, then started at the bottom of the eyelets and crossed over the boot into the opposite one as if you were sewing.

  My final check of my kit showed me that everything was as it had to be. No dust, no fingermarks. Everything that should be wet was wet; everything that should be dry was dry. No creases, everything flat, everything perfect. Then I gave a zit that might still be weeping blood one last press and wipe with a licked finger, before I stepped off the bedside mat and on to the lino. I stayed motionless now in case the floor polish got marked.

  Seconds later, one of the sergeants entered the main door of our block with a boom, ‘Stand by your beds!’ They burst into our room at exactly 08.00, their shouts echoing about the room. ‘Room! Room! Attention!’

  The floor would shudder as twenty-four young men slammed their right boot into the waxed floor as they stood to attention and messed up the morning’s polish.

  Chapter Twelve

  Our two training sergeants were Sergeant Mann and Sergeant Gates. ‘Rocky’ Gates came from London and had the world’s squarest jaw. Mann came from Liverpool and wore half-moon glasses. As I was from south London, it took me about two weeks to understand what he was saying. He was just as confusing as the Scots.

  They would each take a line of beds and start to inspect. They ran a hand over the radiators as they walked towards the beds, then along the window frames, looking for ‘lack of detail’ in the cleaning. They even checked that the light covers were spotless as they headed for the first soldier.

  They looked at soap dishes and pulled out beds to check we’d cleaned and polished underneath.

  Combat kit hung at the foot of each bed. Mann and Gates would pick out the water bottles to make sure they were full. If not, why bother having a water bottle? It should be full, and full meant full. When they unscrewed the top, a little water had to tip out.

  Mess tins were in the belt kit. Were they clean?

  Then they went to the locker layout. Was the facecloth wet?

  While this was going on, we had to listen hard. T
hey would always be asking questions on the stuff we’d learned the day before. When you were being inspected, you looked straight ahead, never at the person inspecting you. Only, when they talked to you, you looked at them. We were told to have pride. We must look them in the eye and be sure that what we were saying was correct. Once you had stopped talking, you looked away and faced forward. I used the second glass pane on the left of the window as my focus. I stared through it to a tree on the other side. When I was spoken to, I’d look over, my eyes would lock on to the sergeant’s, I’d answer the question and then look away again.

  Rocky Gates came up to me. ‘How much does a belt of two hundred rounds for a general-purpose machine gun weigh?’

  I looked at him and replied, ‘Twelve pounds, Sergeant.’

  They never told you if your answer was wrong or right. Gates just walked on.

  ‘What is the burn-out distance of a tracer?’ I heard him ask someone else.

  ‘One thousand metres, Sergeant.’

  I knew that was wrong. I knew it was 1,100 metres.

  ‘What are the methods for judging distance?’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘You’ve been taught that, so why don’t you know?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sergeant.’

  ‘Well, try and remember while you do twenty press-ups.’

  The lad hit the floor and started doing his press-ups.

  A lot of junior leaders dropped out in those first few weeks. Maybe they reckoned army life was like that all the time. I hoped they weren’t right.

  Chapter Thirteen

  With the room inspection over, we were called out on parade for 08.30, then marched off for the day’s training. It could be anything from drill, getting screamed at by the drill instructor as he tried to get us marching properly, rather than looking like fifty cats being herded badly across the square to a long session in the gym, or getting fit for the first of many battle-fitness tests we’d have to pass.