However, I was grassed on by one of the others and picked up by the police as I arrived at school the following day. I spent half that day in a cell waiting for my father to come and get me. He was not all that angry and most of his lecturing was done at the police station for the benefit of the police. Not that he didn’t mean every word of it. He knew I was not a bad kid at heart. Petty things seemed to upset him more, like making holes in the knees of my trousers. After I did that to my first new pair within a few days of having them, it was all second-hand clothes from then on. The air pistol incident put an end to my night activities and, although I had lied to the police that I had ditched it as I ran from them, I threw it away the next day anyway. I could not have imagined that only a few years later I would embark on a career that would see me operating mostly in the dark hours and carrying weapons many times more lethal than that air pistol.
I stayed at home in the evenings after that. I had few friends anyway and no money. I went to an all-boys’ school, William Blake Secondary Modern, which was only a mile and a half from my home. I was not into football – I have never liked crowds – and I could not afford to keep up with clothing fashions which seemed to be the main interests of most of the boys in my year: Ben Sherman button-down collar shirts, stay-pressed, two-tone trousers and tasselled loafers. The group I hung out with most were five Jamaicans. It probably appeared to others, the white boys in my school in particular, that what I had in common with them was a lack of money. The truth was the six of us shared a pleasure for extreme mischievousness.
Our everyday aim was to get one another into trouble, and the deeper and more serious the better. While passing through shops one of us might slip something into another’s bag or pocket in the hope they would be caught by the store detective for shoplifting. On one occasion we were having lunch in a pizza restaurant and, after the meal, I collected all the money we had between us and went to pay the bill. Moments later they saw me outside, across the street, waving and holding up the money with a sadistic grin. Naturally, on my way out I had told the lady at the cash register that the others did not have any money and she should warn the manager. It was entertaining watching them scramble out of the place, under and over tables while dodging the manager and staff. When we travelled on the underground, none of us would buy a ticket. On reaching our destination, when the automatic tube doors opened, there was a frantic, jungle-rules sprint from the platform, up the escalators and along the crowded corridors. Just before the ticket collector, the leaders slowed to a walk so as not to attract undue attention then jostled for position to get through the gate.
The first through the narrow opening would indicate the one behind, saying, ‘He’s got the tickets.’
The following person would say the same, and so on, until the ticket collector cottoned on and made a grab for us. The first three usually had the best chance of getting through. If you had not passed through the gate by the time the game was rumbled, you had to run back down and take a train to the next station and try again. If you were caught, it meant being taken to the station office and your parents or the school were contacted. I was blessed with a set of powerful legs and always managed to be one of the first to the ticket collector and was never caught.
In the five years I spent at that school, apart from an Irish and a Polish boy I was friends with, the Jamaicans were the only boys who invited me to their homes for supper with their families. They also liked to come around to my house for a bite to eat because of the food I always had available. At that time, I thought most people, except my poorer friends, ate smoked salmon, pheasant, and rump steak – food my father always brought home from the fine hotel kitchens.
I did not know a single girl by name during my school years. I had not even spoken to one until my last year and that was a few fumbled sentences after she was introduced to me by her brother outside school one day. They were alien to me and gorgeous and I watched them from afar. In that last year, I had the confidence to be head boy of the school but not enough to walk up to a girl and introduce myself.
There were two reasons why one day, at eighteen years old, I decided to catch a bus to Kilburn and London’s military careers offices. Firstly, the two dust-men who collected the rubbish from my council estate had engineering degrees and could not get better paying jobs, which made college seem a waste of time to me. Secondly, my relationship with my father was deteriorating and I felt I could no longer live at home. By that time I had finally lost my virginity to a girl from Tooting Bec who had picked me up off a street in France, which perhaps helped make me feel a bit more manly. That trip was my first time abroad. I was sixteen and with my Irish friend, Patrick. He was an artist, sensitive, somewhat frail, though by no means a wimp, and as penniless as I was. We owned bicycles we had built out of second-hand parts and had scraped up enough money, or so we thought, whilst working over the first part of the school holidays, for a two-week cycling trip across western Europe. We visited First and Second World War battlefields in Belgium and France, with a brief stop at Waterloo. By the time we reached Strasbourg we were very short of money, though that didn’t faze us. I suppose it was because we were always short of money. To add to our problems, our bikes were vandalised by the Alsatian French. Patrick had covered both our bicycles in detailed miniatures of his favourite subject, the World War Two German war machine, which included details of its hardware and emblems of some of its infamous fighting divisions. Not very smart, but then we did not really understand what that war had meant to so many people. We did a bit of shoplifting for food, feeling a little justified since it was the locals who had wrecked our transport. Our luck changed when we were picked up by a couple of English girls in a car on their way back to London having just toured France themselves. The driver fancied Patrick, which left me in the back seat with the girl from Tooting Bec who was slight and pretty. In such close proximity, wedged between baggage and blankets for many hours, I discovered that women could bring out the very best of my wit and entertainment, and that there were heavenly rewards for making them laugh.
I stepped off the bus in Kilburn and headed for the RAF Careers Office. I fancied myself as a fighter pilot after reading a RAF newspaper advertisement and discovering that I had the minimum educational requirements to join, but as I walked around the elaborate showroom nothing sparked in me and my interest dwindled. I left the building and headed down the street wondering ‘What now?’ Then I saw the little Royal Marines Careers Office.
I stopped at the window to stare at the action-packed posters. I had heard the Marines were some of the toughest and most highly trained soldiers in the world – that was all I knew about them. I began to wonder, if I could get through the training, whether it might do me some good and I could see the world for a few years, after which things might be a little better on the home front. Curiosity nudged me forward and I stepped into the building to look around. The marketing frills were nowhere near as elaborate as in the RAF office. Perhaps that’s why I felt more comfortable there. A pleasant old Marine in uniform – a sergeant – approached me and began to chat with me about the job. Before long, I was sitting opposite him at his desk filling out an application form. It was a spontaneous move and I felt strangely free from any doubt. The size of the step I was taking had little effect on me. I would have put more time and consideration into buying a new pair of running shoes.
One of the last things he asked me was, ‘Do you think you’re fit, lad?’
I had a green belt in judo by then and attended regular classes. When I answered yes he chuckled, as if he knew something I did not. It was a long time before a Royal Marine sergeant was to be quite so pleasant and cordial to me again.
There was one thing that worried me about joining the Marines, and it was not a small problem either. I thought of myself as something of a coward. There was no one I could discuss it with, nor did I want to. I would get scared before a fight, and when I dreamed of being in one I moved as if knee-deep in mud while the other person pounded me relentlessly. Dare-devil stunts didn’t worry me as long as I did not pause to think about them. I once somersaulted from the highest diving board in Crystal Palace without any coaching (I landed badly and burst an eardrum that day) and I performed mindless Evil Knievel-style jumps and crashes on my bike, but the threat of a fist-fight made me go shamefully weak. My strength would drain before it began.
One day at school, my cowardice became public knowledge when I lost control when confronted by a class-mate and I ran away. I didn’t stop and continued out through the school gates and down the street. By the time I slowed to a walk I hated myself completely. I could never go back. It was the worst feeling I had ever experienced. As I walked the streets the self-loathing got a desperate hold of me. I have never felt more alone in the world than on that day. What was wrong with me, I wondered? What exactly was I afraid of? I knew so many boys who seemed completely fearless when it came to fighting. How had I ended up with this disability? I had other fears, normal ones it seemed, such as fear of the dark and close confinement. I knew I had to do something about this one though, but what? How do you deal with cowardice?
I took a long and different route home that afternoon while I thought about it. My route led me past a rival school which was emptying out for the day. I was wearing my school blazer and it was not long before I heard a shout, ‘There’s a Bill Blakey.’
I instantly knew this meant trouble, but something kept me from running. I don’t remember making a conscious decision to stay. They were far enough away at first for me to get away. But I walked on, aware they were running towards my back. Perhaps I wanted to punish myself. I had run away enough that day.
They soon arrived and quickly crowded around me, six or seven boys of about my own age, pushing and shoving me between them. I did not say a word. The first punch came and then it quickly escalated into a frenzy of kicks, punches and karate techniques learned from movies. I tried to cover myself as the blows rained down. It seemed to go on for a long time, but it was probably less than a minute.
‘Why don’t you run?’ a voice asked.
When they finally stopped hitting me they ran away laughing. I lowered my trembling hands, trying to shake off the mild concussion and ignore the bruises that felt like they were all over me. I was in pain, but it actually had not been so bad. I took a few deep breaths and walked on. Then I heard shouts and the sound of running. They were coming back. It had obviously been too entertaining for them and they were not fully satisfied. Again I refused to run. I covered myself as the kicks and punches came, with more confidence and enthusiasm this time. I felt fists come through my hands and wallop my face – someone was chopping my neck repeatedly. I could not protect my sides. I had to keep one hand over my balls as someone was repeatedly trying to kick them. There was a general effort to get me down on the ground, and although I was not defending myself I backed up against a wall and had no intention of going down. Perhaps it was my judo skills that kept me on my feet. They broke off and ran away again, but they were soon back. This routine of breaking off the attack and coming back to resume the punching and kicking went on a few more times, I don’t remember how many, until they finally left me alone.
I arrived home battered and shaken with my clothes torn in several places. I was not crying, but I wanted to. I was bleeding from cuts and welts all over. My knuckles were skinless from protecting myself. A couple of my teeth were loose and my lips were cut in several places. I think my nose was broken, but I was never sure, and my jaw felt the same, but it was not. My father had already left for work, which was a relief. I did not want to talk to anyone. I set about cleaning myself up.
I was a dab hand at sewing by then and did a pretty good job fixing my torn clothes. But as I put myself back together I felt neither cleansed nor braver. I did note, however, that the body can take a great deal of punishment. It became obvious to me I had to fix my mind, not punish my body. I suppose I was not too bright to go to such lengths to come to such a basic conclusion, but even by going the long way around, I was finding the answers to some questions in life by myself, and that was the whole point, wasn’t it? But solving this one was not going to be easy. How do you correct the feeling of being a coward? I wish I had known then how much I was trying to rush things. I was so eager to get out of this irritating stage of life and on to the next. I had no way of knowing it was life’s experiences that formed certain parts of a person’s character. But I also later learned, as a special forces operative, that a little bit of cowardice – or fear, as I later came to recognise it – was not altogether a bad thing.
The following morning, although I was stiff and bruised, I did not feel all that bad physically, and mentally OK to go to school. My father was asleep and I left the house without him seeing me. As I walked down the road I recognised one of my assailants from the previous day coming towards me. I locked my eyes on him, but nothing stirred in me – no hate or anger. About twenty yards away he recognised me. He was alone and I felt strangely superior to him. If he and five or six of his friends could not break me he did not have a chance alone. He must have come to the same conclusion because he ran across the road through busy traffic to avoid me. It was obvious who the greater coward was and I ignored him.
A month or so after my interview at the Royal Marines Careers Office a letter arrived addressed to me headed Her Majesty’s Royal Marines. It was the first letter I had ever received and it contained joining instructions typed on military paper and a railway pass. In six months I was to report to the Royal Marine pre-commando training depot at Deal in Kent. I immediately felt butterflies in my stomach. I was really going to do it. I don’t think a day went by when I did not look at that letter on my bedside table. I had left school by then and so, to pass the time, I took a job in a Mayfair hotel as a ledger clerk.