Bert took to falling asleep listening to the music with his headset on at night. The player had an auto-reverse and so Bert’s music was piped into his brain continuously while he slept. Bert now hummed and sang the tunes out loud, a direct result of his brainwashing. This was particularly annoying for anyone who had to spend a day in a car with him. He’d apologise once he realised, or was asked to shut up, then without knowing it slip into another song a few minutes later.
This problem was discussed in Bert’s absence one night and it was decided to try an experiment that might confuse, or even better, alter his taste in music.
While Bert was asleep, with his headphones on and listening to Slim, we crept into his cabin and changed the cassette to Ian Dury and the Blockheads. We chose Ian Dury simply because Bert detested his music and would walk out of the bar if anyone played it. Bert never woke up and spent all night listening to the tape on auto-reverse.
Bert always slept later than most of us, and walked into the galley the following morning while we sat around chatting after breakfast. It was noted that he was humming one of Ian Dury’s songs. He got a few bars into it and stopped himself with a pained expression.
‘Foock sake, there I go again singing that foockin’ rubbish. Who put that foockin’ crap on my tape deck when I was asleep? Bastards!’
The astounding thing is, Bert eventually got to like Ian Dury and the Blockheads, or so it seemed, because he borrowed the tape and would sometimes even play it in the bar. For most of us the Blockheads were not a lot better than Slim, but it was a fascinating phenomenon.
A few days later, Bert walked into the galley humming a new tune. He stopped himself when he saw us grinning at him.
‘What the foock am I singin’ now?’
‘Prokofiev’s
Romeo and Juliet
,’ someone said.
‘Bastards,’ he said as he sat down to eat. ‘Sounds more like an army marchin’ than a couple of lovers.’
He hummed a few more bars over breakfast, then admitted, ‘It’s better than that Blockheads crap anyout.’
Bert completed three tours in Northern Ireland with 14 Int over six years before retiring to civvy street.
12
By the time I reached the end of my tour in Northern Ireland I was twenty-three years old and aware of an acute change in my attitude towards life. I had been preparing myself, mentally, to return to the SBS, but there was something nagging at me. At first, I wondered if the work had affected me in some way. I don’t mean I had gone a little loopy, although 14 Int did have a history of the occasional operative being ‘touched’ by the job. There was a rumour of one operative some years before who had died in mysterious circumstances a few months after leaving Northern Ireland. The suggestion was that he had killed himself. A fellow operative, a former Green Jacket, threw a wobbly in the Det bar one night shortly after I left and threatened to shoot one of the women. Some said there was nothing unusual about that: it was the woman and not the job that drove him mad.
I had gained an unflattering reputation for being cold and unemotional while in 14 Int, an odd accusation to be levelled at a special forces operative, one might think, but not so. I was simply used to internalising certain things, as I had learned to do during my childhood. But something had changed in me in the previous two years, or something that had not had a chance to develop was aching for attention now.
The thought of going back to the SBS, a comparatively regimented lifestyle compared with the Det, working with larger teams than in 14 Int, and being a smaller cog in a bigger machine seemed to have lost some of its lustre. My only other options were to stay with 14 Int or go outside. But I had grown bored with Northern Ireland and there was little attractive about civvy street either. It was also true that I had not given civvy street a fair crack. I wondered if by being in the military I was missing my true calling in life, whatever that might be. I had to find out what was nagging at me, and if I needed to go back into civvy street to do that, I would. But what if I was wrong? What if civvy street was not where the answer lay? Then what would I do? Like Huk, two years earlier, I spent my last few weeks in Northern Ireland in a quandary over my future. I too needed to bounce my thoughts off someone, but someone who could give me sound advice.
During my final week at the Det, while I was taking a Marine through his orientation, the commanding officer of the SBS happened to be visiting and took the time to drop by each Det location to say hello to his lads. At that time I was the only member of the SBS in South Det, Luke having left six months previously. Over a cup of tea in the cookhouse and after some polite chit-chat about the job, I confided my concerns to him. He was an understanding man and to my surprise simply suggested I took a year off. He explained that it would mean resigning from the military, but, he assured me, with my record, I could return to the fold as long as I didn’t stay outside too long.
This made me feel a whole lot better. I could go in search of myself without burning my bridges. If I found what I was looking for outside, then this would be the end of my military career.
When I caught my flight out of Aldergrove Airport I looked down on the land and wondered if I would ever be back. I had a strong sense of nostalgia even then and expected I might return when I was old and retired. I did return a few years later, but not in a way I expected.
I returned to the SBS in Poole just long enough to carry out my leaving routine and drove out through the main gate a civilian. Not many operatives noticed I had left. I had been away for so long anyway. It all felt very strange. The SBS had been the family I had never had, and now I was alone in a way I had never been before. I had left home, I was my own boss and could go where I wanted, when I wanted. I was not so naïve as to expect things to be quite that simple. To live I needed to make some money. I was thinking like a civvy already; money had never mattered before. Now it was of prime importance. The first thing I had to do was get a job. But what on earth was I going to do?
I spent the next twelve months roaming the world doing many things – from troop-training in foreign countries to deep-sea diving, living in parts of Europe and West Africa for most of that time. But I never found whatever it was I thought I was looking for. Perhaps the timing was wrong. Maybe I had just needed a break. Job offers were coming in, the result of feelers I had put out earlier. I had an opportunity to become a saturation diver in the North Sea, diving deep and earning a packet for every day under pressure. I could own a big house in the country with a new Jag in the driveway within a few years if I could put up with the unhealthy existence. Long-term security jobs in the Middle East and Asia offering twice the money the SBS paid were also cropping up. I passed on them all. I was not ready for life as a civilian.
Amongst other reasons, civvies seemed generally weak and soft to me, and I did not share their interests or their heroes, who were either sportsmen or pop stars. I am aware it is I who am in the wrong century. I was always impressed by those in history who could take great hardships without complaint. I would prefer those days when, if a man was injured, no matter how seriously, in battle or otherwise, it was self-discipline that kept him composed and in control. Today our heroes, all fictional, for we have no real ones in the classic sense, are admired more for their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, except female warriors, who appear to be adopting those classic male qualities. Another reason I wanted to return to the service was because as a civilian I was like 99.99 per cent of the population: a nobody. By that I mean I did not feel in any way different or special, nor a contributor any more. I had known what it felt like to be somewhat special or important. As a British special forces operative I was one of the few. It was not a macho thing being in special forces, not the way civvies seem to think. No one outside my immediate circle knew what I did. I felt special to myself, even if I was not to anyone else. And that was important to me and what I missed.
I telephoned my old commanding officer, the one who advised me to take the break in the first place, and he immediately invited me up to the squadron lines for a chat. Things were busier than ever, he told me, and the service was expanding to accommodate the SBS’s increased worldwide responsibilities. On my way to meet the boss I bumped into Lieutenant Smith, who had just come back from a two-year stint with the SEALs in Norfolk, Virginia. Smith was the only officer on my SBS selection course. He had fully embraced the easy life in the States, even in the SEALs, and had put on about forty pounds to prove it. He told me with great enthusiasm that I was wise to come back, as life in special forces was going to get pretty exciting in the coming years. He never explained further than tapping his nose and winking. Of the ten of us who had passed selection together, he reminded me, there were only six left. We were down to five a few months later after Smith died while diving in Scotland when he pumped the wrong gas into his breathing apparatus. He entered the water for a simple jackstay swim, a quarterly requirement, and never came up.
At a short meeting with the boss, I gave a brief run-down of what I had done with myself while in civvy street.
He stood up and shook my hand. ‘Welcome back to the SBS,’ he said.
I walked out of his office and through the lines. There were many unfamiliar faces, but then I had been away for over three years. The way I was greeted by some operatives, I don’t think they realised I had been a civvy for the past year. It just goes to show how busy we always were and how little we sometimes saw of each other. It was good to have a normal conversation once again with people who spoke my language. It was good to be home. But there was one small obstacle I had to overcome. A little bit of bureaucratic nonsense that should have been a simple formality but almost turned into a nightmare.
Prior to returning to the ranks of the SBS, I had to go back to the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone and do a refresher course on basic weapons and drill. This course was for everyone who had gone outside for over a year – I overshot by a day or two.
Our course sergeant major was a crusty, stiff, humourless, old-fashioned man of war. He was a platoon weapons instructor (PWI) by trade and had spent much of the latter part of his career dealing with raw recruits. After all those years of being treated as a god by thousands of noddies, who jumped at the sound of his voice and obeyed his every whim like lightning, it appeared he had developed a bit of the Roman Emperor syndrome not uncommon amongst certain PWs. He had just been transferred to running the rejoins and did not like the job one bit, I suspect mainly because we did not react to him in the same way noddies did. In his welcome speech he said that he did not approve of Marines being allowed back in once they had gone outside. As far as he was concerned, we had returned because we could not make it in civvy street, and that was not a good enough reason to be a Marine. There was some truth in what he said. As it turned out he disliked me more than the others, for two reasons. Firstly, I was too relaxed and had a far too familiar air about me which he described as ‘verging on insubordination’. The other reason, which I did not discover till later, was that he had failed an SBS selection twenty years earlier. When he learned I had gone straight from CTC into special forces, and at just nineteen, it irked him even more. I did all I could to avoid him, but it seemed he had plans for me.
On the final day of the two-week course there was no formal passing for duty parade. The corps wanted us away without fuss, as if this sort of thing, people coming back inside and all, never went on. That suited us just fine. We each had our reasons for returning but none were because we missed parades. I could not get into my civvy clothes, bundle up my bedding and equipment and return them to the main store quick enough, so I could hit the road to Poole and the SBS.
I parked my car outside the main store and walked briskly in carrying my bedding and equipment. I plonked them on the hundred-foot long counter and drummed my fingers as I waited for the storeman on the other side of the cavernous room to move his arse out of his chair and come over and sign them off me. A door opened and closed on the far side of the room. It was the sergeant major, immaculate as always, and he was staring straight at me. He kept the other side of the room so that he could use his well-practised booming voice.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he bawled.
‘Leaving routine, sir,’ I replied smartly. You didn’t need to shout to be heard in this building. The acoustics were fine.
He was theatrical in the way he slowly walked around the counter towards me as he talked. All sergeant majors were like that, hands behind their backs, chins sticking out and looking at subordinates as if they were odious.
‘What leaving routine?’ he asked.
‘I’m going to my unit, sir,’ I replied.
‘Where are your draft orders?’
I didn’t have any. They had never even crossed my mind. I had not reached a rank yet where paper administration meant anything to me, apart from target and sit-reps.
‘You can’t go where and when you want to, laddie. You need signed pieces of paper that inform us you are moving from point A to point B. Without that paper I can’t let you go.’
He knew I didn’t have the papers. The SBS were in their own world and no one in our admin block probably remembered I was even here. The usual routine for Marines rejoining was to visit the PSO after the refresher course, just like noddies on completion of training, and wait for him to sort out a draft. I knew where I wanted to go, that’s the only reason I returned. The SBS wanted me, were expecting me, so why wait for orders that were inevitable? But knowing the SBS and how busy it was, it might be a month before someone in the admin block asked, ‘Where the hell is Falconer – didn’t he rejoin?’ Even if I had thought about the draft orders, I wouldn’t have thought anyone here would even have noticed I was gone. How wrong I was.