Soldier Of The Queen (7 page)

I stayed in Codsall for a while, but I kept getting into trouble with the police, who hated me. I was in a local pub one evening; a group of about nine men were singing rugby songs and generally being loud. They were nothing to do with me. A woman of mixed race came into the pub with her white boyfriend, who was about 30. The rugby group started singing a song which included a line about Zulu warriors. The woman's boyfriend must have assumed I was with the singers, because he came over to me and told me to tell the men to stop singing as his girlfriend was getting upset. I told him the singing was nothing to do with me. He became aggressive and said he would "do" me if the singing did not stop. I was not going to wait to get done by this man, so I hit him over the head with a cider bottle and ran out of the pub. He chased after me. I ran down someone's driveway and picked up two empty milk bottles from a step. The man lost his nerve and began walking away. I ran after him, but stopped after 100 yards. I thought the matter was closed, but the man called the police and moments later I was arrested. I was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, threatening behaviour, possessing an offensive weapon and theft. "Theft? What the fuck did I steal?" I said. "Two milk bottles," said the jubilant policeman. The Codsall police had hit me with every possible offence, presumably in the cherished hope that I'd finally be sent to jail. I think they almost regarded that end as a performance-target. I was already under a two-year Supervision Order for the Birmingham mugging, so having breached that I thought there was now a good chance I'd be sent to jail at my next appearance before the magistrates. I had turned 18 some months earlier and I knew that the leniency usually extended to juvenile delinquents tended to cease sharply when they turned into adult delinquents. I was given bail and a date was set for my case to be heard.

I decided to move to Telford in Shropshire where I stayed with a friend called Chris. I started selling eggs and potatoes door-to-door from an old Transit van and was earning a reasonably good living. Chris only worked sporadically, so I started paying the rent, leaving him the money every Friday. At weekends I would take him out and buy him drinks. This arrangement existed for months, but the more I did to help him, the less he did to help himself. On top of that I felt he was becoming almost resentful of me.

One Sunday evening we went for a drink at a pub which we hadn't visited before. The locals of our own age made it clear that we were not welcome. They divided their time between glaring at us and mimicking us. I felt it was pointless waiting for the inevitable, so I punched one of them in the face. Others joined in, while Chris stood on the sidelines watching. I do not know why, and I have not seen him since to get the answer, but instead of coming to help me Chris started punching me as well. I knew I had not always been wise in my choice of company, but this was extraordinary. I got a good beating — my eye was split and someone smashed a bottle over my head. I staggered home, dazed with alcohol and violence, but through the haze I felt pure rage at Chris's treachery. I waited up all night for him, but sensibly he stayed away.

He knew I had to go to work, so I assumed he would sneak back when I was out. I decided to forgo work in order to have a chance of catching the treacherous shitbag. I hid in the laundry room, having armed myself with a bread knife from the kitchen. I was not going to stab him: I just wanted to torture and terrorise him with it before giving him a good beating. Around 10 a.m. there was a banging on the front door. I thought that either he had forgotten his keys or he was checking to see whether I was at home. Either way I had him. I ran on tiptoes to the door, bread knife in hand, whisked the door open and ... It was the rent man. He said good morning and tried to act normally, but I could tell he was a little anxious. I put my knife-hand down and told him he had caught me in the middle of cooking. He said: "I'm glad I've caught you. You owe me nine months' rent." I said I didn't owe him anything: I had given my flatmate the rent. We chatted for a few minutes before I realised that Chris had been spending the rent money. My face must have contorted with rage, because I could see the rent man beginning to get anxious again. I said: "You better go, mate. Come back another day." He left rapidly.

I think if Chris had turned up at that moment I would probably still now be serving a life sentence for his murder. Instead, I had to be content with taking out my anger on his property. I pulled his double-bed out of his room, dragged it into the back garden, piled everything he owned on top of it and set fire to the lot. I gathered up what was mine and left, leaving open the front and back doors for would-be burglars. The bonfire raged in the garden.

It was the middle of winter. I spent a week sleeping rough in an old caravan at the side of a restaurant. A good friend called Jayne let me stay at her flat occasionally, but her boyfriend got the wrong idea, so I stuck to the caravan to save her any trouble. I have never been so cold in my life. The caravan was full of old beer crates, so there was barely room to sit down. I had no bed or blankets and had to sleep on the floor, huddled in a ball: I remember waking up one morning to find that the milk in the bottle had frozen and pushed its way out an inch to look like a red-top stalagmite. To make matters worse I lost my egg-and-potato round when my van broke down, and because I didn't have an address I couldn't get any other job.

One Saturday I met up with a known thief in Wolverhampton. It was late 1978. I had been making an effort to stay out of trouble with the police, especially as I was still on bail, but I was about to find myself led astray by a dark blue velvet jacket with huge lapels, the sort of garment Marc Bolan might have worn. This one was hanging in a shop that we were browsing through. I told the thief that I liked it. He offered to steal it for me if I paid him half its value. I agreed and waited up the road while he went shopping. He arrived back 15 minutes later with a smile on his face and the jacket in his hand. Unfortunately, he had been spotted by store detectives who had followed him to see if he was planning to go anywhere else. When they pounced I had the jacket in my hand, so I was charged with theft. I didn't need my solicitor to warn me that I was almost certainly going to jail.

The velvet-jacket case was given a date at the magistrates' court before the milk-bottle-and-assault case. Any slight hope I had of avoiding jail evaporated when I arrived at court and discovered my case was to be heard by a fearsome stipendiary magistrate with a reputation for harsh sentencing. He adjourned the case for reports, but said I had already been given every chance and warned that he had in mind to impose a custodial sentence. I walked out of court knowing my luck had run out. I was homeless, jobless and facing a prison sentence that was unlikely to enhance my future employment prospects. I walked aimlessly around Wolverhampton until, near the offices of the
Express and Star
newspaper, I saw a sign in a window saying "Join the Professionals!" It was the army recruitment office. An idea bubbled up in my mind: I didn't want to become a soldier, but I thought that if I signed up I could go back to court, wave my recruitment papers at the magistrate, be let off the sentence and then before I got anywhere near a military base I could say I had changed my mind and resign.

I congratulated myself on my cunning, then walked in to join the "Professionals". Inside the office was a shiny sergeant with a moustache. "Can I help you?" he said. I told him I was considering joining the army and wanted to know more about it. His uniformed fellow "Professionals" smiled out from posters on the walls. The sergeant had a spiel as polished as his boots: he outlined enthusiastically the exciting future that awaited me. For one demented moment I half thought that joining the army might be a good idea anyway, but I snapped out of it. He asked me if I had any criminal convictions. I said I hadn't. He said it would take six to eight weeks to process my application, but he could see no problem. Once the initial processing had been done I would be sent to St George's Barracks in nearby Sutton Coldfield. He said this was a selection centre where all recruits had to go through various written and physical tests before being chosen for a specific corps or regiment. After that I would be sent for basic training with my new regiment. I filled in some forms and asked him if he could put in writing that I had applied to join.

A few weeks later I returned to court. The magistrate told me that after considering my appalling record he had contemplated sending me to crown court for sentencing, because he only had the power to give me six months' imprisonment. Before he went on to sentence me I played what I thought was my trump card: I told him I was joining the army. He had spent his life listening to the often pathetic gambits of criminals trying to avoid punishment and he tended to treat them with contempt. However, he had the air of a man who felt that most young people — certainly all young
working-class men - ought to spend their youth in the army.
He asked me if I could prove my intentions. I passed the army recruitment papers to the court usher who handed them to the magistrate. While he looked at them suspiciously I said that becoming a soldier was something I'd wanted to do for a long time. He said: "You might just be saying this." He spent another short while staring at the papers in front of him before turning to me with a slight smile, as if he had had a devious brainwave. He said he intended giving me a total of six months' imprisonment, a term which would take into account the most recent offence, my previous record and the breach of my current Supervision Order (thankfully, he didn't know I was also on bail for the earlier offence which had yet to be heard). However, in the light of my good intentions he was prepared to defer sentencing for a little while. What that meant, he said, was that if I was not in the army on the day he set aside for sentencing then I would be sent to jail. However, if I was a soldier by that date he would suspend my prison sentence for two years.

I walked glumly out of court thinking my trump card had been trumped. I was faced with a dilemma: either the army for three years or prison for six months. It was coming up to Christmas and I thought of the misery of being stuck in prison with people as anti-social as I. At least in the army there would be better food, a bit of money and free time. And perhaps the moustachioed sergeant was right: it might open up other opportunities for me in the future. All in all, it seemed the least unsatisfactory alternative.

The night before I went to St George's Barracks I stayed with my mother. She was pleased I was joining the army. She had never lectured me, but I knew she had been worried about where my life seemed to be leading. I had long hair then, and she was also pleased I was going to have to get it cut.

"If any of you are lying, you are going to be in serious trouble," said the serious uniformed man seriously. "SER-I-OUS TROU-BLE."

I had only been in the army for one hour and could not yet distinguish between the different ranks. I was standing in a large gym with around 100 of my fellow new recruits. The serious man's face exuded doom: "So if any of you have a criminal record that you have not yet told us about, then declare it now." Such people would be discharged immediately without being punished for having lied in their application forms. However, he said, people who had lied and did not take this opportunity to come clean would be dealt with severely when the army uncovered the truth. "And, believe me, we will find you out. Our checks are stringent. STRIN-GENT."

He walked down the line, looking into our eyes. I stared straight ahead as he plodded slowly past me. I felt uncomfortable and knew that if they did carry out any checks I'd be found out. I was still under a Supervision Order for the mugging almost two years earlier - I even had my own probation officer; I had not completed the 240 hours of community service that had been imposed some time earlier for going equipped for burglary; I had a six-month prison sentence for theft hanging over me; and I was on bail for the milk-bottle case — assault, theft, threatening behaviour, possessing an offensive weapon - which had yet to be heard. Telling the army the truth was not an option. As far as I was concerned I had nothing to lose by keeping quiet: if I confessed I would be discharged straight into prison. A few people put up their hands. One had been convicted of dangerous driving after clipping the kerb in his Mini; another had been caught shoplifting when he was 13. They were hardly infiltrators from the criminal underworld, but the serious man told them to step out of line and report to the administration office.

For the next few days we had to perform written and physical tests. Their main aim was to weed out the seriously unfit and the acutely stupid, but they were also supposed to identify aptitudes that might make you suited for a particular role. I did well in both sets of tests — and was told I might make a good tank gunner. I couldn't see how such a trade would equip me to earn a living in civilian life, but the job did have some appeal. It would mean I could travel everywhere on wheels, rather than having to blunder through countryside on foot carrying a huge backpack and a rifle. So I didn't question their assessment. In any case, I had only joined the army to avoid prison, so as long as I achieved that aim I didn't really care what I did.

I didn't have much time for most of the other recruits: many of them seemed terribly keen to make the army their life. I came across the term "army barmy" for the first time as a way of describing people who loved being soldiers and adored everything to do with soldiering. The army barmies were certainly the dominant group in this intake.

There was only one recruit I got on well with. His name was Alan and he was from Rhodesia. He was bright and amusing and had done some strange things in his life. He hated blacks, especially black Rhodesians, and followed intently the progress of the war in his homeland between the whites and the black "commie bastard terrorists". He could not understand why English people seemed to treat blacks — he called them "kaffirs" - as equals. He said that when he had first arrived in England he had taken the underground from Heathrow Airport into central London. Further down the line a black man had got on and sat in the same carriage. Alan could not believe the cheek of the man: he thought blacks were forbidden to travel in the same compartments as whites - as was the case in his own country. He got up and told the man to get out of the carriage. Not surprisingly, the man refused. So Alan pulled the communication cord to stop the train. When the guard arrived to see what was wrong Alan told him to remove "the kaffir" immediately. The conductor explained that blacks in England had the same rights as whites; and he warned Alan that people who stopped trains without proper excuse could be prosecuted. Alan spent the rest of the journey in culture shock. Alan's father was Scottish, so he had no problem getting in to the British