Seven Troop Page 4

  Tiny and Nish were in Chris's patrol as well. Frank was the other patrol commander.

  I looked around me. It was like a switch had been thrown. All of a sudden these guys were alert, professional, businesslike. They moved with purpose. It seemed I might have some role models after all.

  'Speed, aggression, surprise.' Chris gave a sniff. 'SAS – get it?' He slid off into the jungle.

  I was number two: butt in the shoulder, sights up, safety on single shot.

  The jungle canalizes movement. The dense vegetation, deadfall, deep gullies, steep hills, ravines, and wide, fast rivers make cross-country movement difficult unless you use high ground and tracks. But that's where every Tom, Dick and enemy moves, and where ambushes are laid – so it's not where the SAS goes. That day we navigated across country, using a technique called cross-graining. Up and down, up and down, not keeping to the high ground.

  We didn't so much move through the jungle as melt into it. We didn't use gollocks to cut our way; we bent the branches aside and eased ourselves over obstacles as we came to them. Always, butt in the shoulder, sights up, safety off.

  Rivulets of sweat carried the mozzie rep into my eyes and stung them severely. This issue stuff was almost 90 per cent Deet – strong enough to melt plastic.

  We'd been patrolling for about half an hour when up popped a Figure-11 target, then another, five metres ahead.

  'Contact front! Contact front!'

  I moved to Chris's right and opened up. I expected him to turn back on his point, so he didn't cross into our arcs of fire, and move past me, while Nish and Tiny, still behind me, peeled off to one side and got some fire down so I could also move back. That way there was always fire heading towards the enemy while we broke contact. Shoot and scoot, that was the name of the game I'd been trained in. But it wasn't happening.

  As I turned to move back, everybody else started coming forward, firing as they went. Chris stood his ground, still giving it a full thirty-round mag on auto. The weapon's gun-oil coating burnt off and formed a grey cloud around him. When he ran out of ammunition, he dropped to his knees and slammed in another mag.

  Tiny and Nish ran past him, stopped and brassed up the targets.

  Then it was Chris's turn again. He moved ahead of the other two and looked back for me, staring at me like I was a total dickhead.

  Nish and Tiny joined in. 'What the fuck you doing?'

  The pall of smoke and smell of cordite from the contact hung heavily beneath the canopy. I narrowed my eyes and shrugged sheepishly. 'We weren't taught like that on Selection.'

  Nish got a fag on the go and gave me a sympathetic grin. 'You can forget all that shit. The fun starts here.'

  6

  Every squadron had its own way of doing things, and so did every troop within it.

  For the rest of the day it was me, Chris, Nish and Tiny patrolling by our own rules. Fuck the shoot-and-scoot I'd been taught, there was none of that falling back and boxing round shit. With Air Troop it was just go forward. Chris had me running to and fro on the range until I was decimating targets with the best of them.

  By the time we'd finished that night and rocked up at the troop location, soaking wet and plastered with mud, my gear looked the same as everyone else's. All I needed now was the beard.

  Later that night, we sat round the fire. The smoke stung our eyes, but who cared as long as it kept the mozzies off? I sampled my very first jungle cocktail. It was a big-time B Squadron thing, made from all the boiled sweets out of the rations, with a lot more sugar poured in for luck. Well, I thought it was sugar, but in fact it was rum. The Regiment was still eligible for a gunfire ration and wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Al held court on his new private armchair. Ages back he'd put in a request for a large bag of rice, and instead of a two- or three-pounder, a fifty-pound sack had turned up. The only problem was, every time we scooped some out, his arse got lower. 'There'll have to be rationing,' he said, without smiling. Not for him the troop banter. He preferred to sit back and listen.

  The mail had come through with the same drop. Al sat on his rice chair to open his letters. He looked inside the first and gave a grin, the first I'd seen from him. 'I think this must be a hint.' He held up three sheets of paper, a stamped, addressed envelope and a pencil. It was from his parents. I'd overheard Al talking to Frank about them. They were obviously a close family.

  Nish lay back in his pit again and pulled out a book. Everybody else was cooking and sorting themselves out around the fire. Chris had gone with Tiny down to the HQ area for squadron 'prayers', Boss L's daily orders for the squadron. Chris was the only one of us who had to attend, but you never went anywhere alone in the jungle at night. We weren't tactical, so you could use a torch, but you still went with another lad and never without your weapon, belt kit and gollock.

  I cooked up my dehydrated lamb stew and some ration-pack porridge, while Nish read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by candlelight, and treated us to his full repertoire of nose-picking, farts and burps.

  'Oi, Frank.'

  Frank glanced up. The look on his face said he knew what was coming. 'Come on, lads, not again . . .'

  Frank had fine ginger hair, not dark and thick like Al's, and the fair complexion that tends to go with it. He was slim and a little taller than me, and had eyes of the palest cornflower blue. He sounded like he came from slap-bang in the centre of Geordieland, but he never raised his voice. He seemed more forthright than blunt, unlike Chris.

  'How do you get around all this thou-shalt-not-kill business? How does that work?'

  Frank shook his head and laughed. I kept my head down. This sounded like piss-taking, but it was family shit.

  Nish took a big puff and really went for it. 'Come on, Frank, how do you get out of it? Soldiers kill. It's what we do. How do you square the circle, mate?'

  Al shook his head. I still couldn't place him. I definitely knew him from somewhere. Nish grinned at me. 'Frank's a new boy too. Fresh to the God Squad – born again.'

  Yesterday I was a crap hat, now I was sort of all right. Someone even passed me a brew. But I still didn't know what the fuck was going on.

  Frank nodded at me and I nodded back.

  Chris delved into his Bergen and produced a Bible. 'Yep, it says it here, Frank, "Thou shalt not kill." Come on, we've got to think about this – what are you going to do?'

  Nish started humming a hymn. 'Know what, Frank? You haven't quite perfected the turn-the-other-cheek thing, have you? I read that you lot have killed about six billion in the name of religion.'

  This was getting more surreal by the minute: eight rough, tough Special Forces soldiers comparing passages from the Bible in the middle of the jungle?

  'Tell you what, your boss's boy didn't walk on water, either. My dad was in the Middle East during the war and he visited the Sea of Galilee. He got all the int. Not many people could swim in Roman times, especially in the desert. No wonder the crowd on the shore was gobsmacked. The gospel writers were as bad as the tabloids today, mate – swimming across to his mate's fishing boat somehow became walking on water. Simple as that.'

  Frank smiled quietly to himself. He wasn't biting.

  Al sat on his throne and scribbled the letter to his parents.

  Everything went quiet until Nish sat bolt upright and swatted at something on his neck. 'Jesus Christ!'

  Frank flinched. 'Nish, have you ever stopped to think what you're saying?'

  Nish rolled over. The tip of his cigarette glowed in the gloom.

  Everybody laughed – except Al and me. And it was then, as I watched him scowl into the fire, that I remembered where I'd come across him. Alastair Slater was the training corporal I'd seen about a year before I went on Selection: he'd been giving recruits a hard time in the BBC series Para. He'd gone to public school, and although you wouldn't know it, he was a Scot. The army had wanted him to be an officer, but he'd chosen to be a tom (private soldier).

  I remembered one t
hing in particular that he'd drilled into the recruits. 'Getting noticed,' he'd growled, 'is absolutely the last thing you want to do.'

  7

  The next day started the same way, only without any nuggets standing to. The troop dossed around again, brewing up and frying luncheon meat. Tiny and Saddlebags were enticing Stan, whoever he was, with dried lamb, while Nish came good with his promise on the porridge.

  Food plays such an important part in anybody's life in the military – not so much for the calories as for the fact that it's one of only three sources of entertainment in the field. The other two are taking the piss and honking – or ticking, moaning, whatever you wanted to call it.

  In the infantry, we'd spent more time than Gordon Ramsay talking about what we were going to cook and how, and all the different mustards or spices we'd be using. Everybody here seemed to have brought their own Tabasco, Worcester and other more exotic sauces to jazz things up.

  Sitting in state by the smoky fire, Al Slater looked every inch the tribal king. Occasionally he leant down to scoop another handful of rice out of his throne for those who'd decided to go the risotto route with their Spam. 'I wish to look after my people.'

  I sat in the middle of the kerfuddle, sipping a brew, but still only looking and listening, speaking only when spoken to. I was beginning to measure the various friendships.

  Al Slater and Frank Collins were close.

  Al was a freefall nut, just like Frank. The pair of them jumped at Peterborough Parachuting Centre every weekend they could. Al got on really well with Frank's family, and so did his parents. They all got together whenever they came south.

  I never met another soldier's parents my entire time in the army, and I never introduced anyone to mine. Mind you, I'd never met my biological parents either – though I knew that whoever my mother was, she must have wanted the best for me. She left me on the steps of Guy's Hospital in a Harrods carrier bag.

  I was fostered from the age of five by a South London couple. They brought up three boys – I was the middle one – and had to take every low-paid job going to make ends meet. My dad drove a minicab; my mum juggled office cleaning and factory work. Like most kids I knew, I wore welfare clothes and ate free school dinners. I slept on a camp bed in the bathroom for a year because there was nowhere else. It never got steamed up; there was no hot water. A bit later on, my parents must have decided I was OK because I got promoted to the front room, and they adopted me.

  I wasn't abused, I wasn't beaten, I wasn't mistreated, but I still couldn't wait to leave home. I felt a little jealous of Al. I bet his parents turned up at open evenings and knew his teacher's name.

  Frank's wife didn't like Regiment guys as a rule, but Al was the exception. She was house-hunting for him, and had even promised to find him a wife while we were away. From what little I'd seen, I wasn't too sure that Al was the marrying type just yet. He was more Action Man than Barbie and Ken. I decided every square inch of his room back in Hereford would be crammed with diving, climbing and parachuting gear. No space to store an engagement ring.

  I liked Al. I didn't think he was Mr Grumpy at all. I reckoned he didn't say much because he spent a lot of time thinking. Whenever he did open his mouth, what came out was sensible and to the point. I liked that. But I also liked his nickname. Great Piss-take.

  Chris was strong mates with Frank, despite the divide over Frank's new-found religion. Tiny was pretty much mates with everyone, perhaps because he didn't give a fuck about anything: he just got on with the job and gave everyone a hard time. As for Saddlebags, he was much like Tiny, but talked quite a lot to Stan, who never seemed to join in the conversation.

  I thought some more about Frank and the banter the night before. How did it work, being a Christian soldier? When I was a sixteen-year-old recruit, the only time we had off was Sunday afternoon – but every other Sunday we were marched down to the garrison church for an hour of hymns and a padre moaning about this and that. It meant we only had the evening free, when we weren't bulling our boots and doing all the rest of the stuff for Monday-morning inspection. So I'd never had much time for religion. Quite frankly, I hated it.

  The metallic clang of a gollock rang out behind me. Chris looked over my shoulder. 'What the fuck you doing now?'

  I swung round to see Nish leaning forward with his gollock in one hand and the other down his trousers, scratching his bollocks. He was inspecting the cuts he'd made in a massive buttress tree.

  'Thought we'd have a Seven Troop sun-trap, somewhere we can wear our shades. The Ice Cream Boys have a reputation to maintain.'

  'For fuck's sake.' Tiny stood up from his brew and headed for the tree surgeon. 'It's going to land on top of us if you keep fucking about.'

  Nish grinned. 'Nah, nah, nah. If I do the cuts right it'll fall down towards the river, no problems.'

  'Sure?'

  'Trust me.'

  Al picked up his belt kit and weapon. 'Don't believe a word of it.' He headed down towards the river, passing Nish on the way. 'Going to get some mud off me. I'm not waiting to be crushed by that thing.'

  'You'd better watch yourself when you get back, mate. Careful the sun don't catch those freckles.'

  We went back to sharing brews around the fire as Nish resumed operations for the next twenty minutes. Behind us, the massive buttress tree began to creak.

  The creaks turned to groans and the next thing we knew, Nish was running towards us, laughing his head off. 'Might have fucked up! Save Stan!'

  We grabbed our belt kit and weapons and ran for it. Nish stopped by Stan's hole and checked he wasn't outside having his breakfast.

  There was an almighty scream of splintering wood and the tree smacked down just inches from the pole-beds.

  'There you go.' Nish grinned. 'A very professional job.'

  A shaft of sunlight streamed through the canopy and I could feel the warmth on my face.

  Nish lit up as he surveyed his work. 'See, Frank? God. You got a direct line.'

  Chris wasn't impressed with the near disaster. He told us to kit up and move out.

  Almost immediately, we heard a couple of five-round bursts down by the river and went to see what was going on. Al appeared with a big multicoloured snake slung over his arm. Hissing Sid had crept up on him while he was washing and paid the price.

  Frank clapped a hand on my shoulder. 'You're with me today. More contact drills. Let's see if you're as bad as Chris makes out.'

  8

  We were practising two-man contact drills, the lead scout and number one in the patrol coming under attack. I was ahead of Frank, moving tactically: butt in the shoulder, safety catch off and, after my day with Chris, finger on the trigger, on full automatic.

  I came to the crest of a hill and gave the hand signal at waist level to stop. Frank waited while I crawled forward to see what lay in the dead ground beyond.

  We were already soaked to the skin from the morning rain and the jungle was sticky and steaming. I had sweat running into my eyes again, and it stung like fuck.

  I stared at the jungle and listened. Everything more than ten metres ahead merged into a big haze of green. I literally couldn't see the wood for the trees.

  As I snaked through the mud and leaf litter, a Figure-11 target popped up about five metres in front of me. I opened fire and hosed down the area with a full thirty-round mag.

  Frank came up on my right and moved two paces ahead. He put down some quick bursts while I dropped to my knees and changed mags. I got up, advanced another four or five paces, loosed off more rounds. The target was so close I could see the wood splinters flying.