Rik's Army Career

By Rik Roots

Know this: I never wanted to be a soldier! People in uniforms scared me. My brothers - who were a lot older than me - scared me and they were all in the Army Cadets. I was happiest with my nose in a book, because you know where you are when someone else is describing their adventures on an Alien Planet.

And yet in 1988 I, Richard Roots, accidentally collided with the British Army. There were triumphs, and there were tears. There was even some mud involved!

Here is a truth: I was not a brilliant soldier - I was not as good as I now think I was.

But I was, according to Major M in his final interview with me, second in the Troop rankings at the time of my departure, and he was sweet enough to write 'Exemplary' on my Discharge certificate. So I wasn't a bad soldier either.

Another truth: I served for 57 days, 50 of them in basic training. Mine was not a long military career.

As - 30 years later - I look back on my Army career, I can't help but believe it was an adventure that was destined to happen to me. A second puberty, if you like. I can come up with no other explanation for why I did what I did. And why I abandoned it all so quickly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rik Roots
• Release date: Nov 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463665954

Rik Roots

Rik lives in London with his partner, Nigel, and their two cats. As can be seen, he does not photograph well.

Book preview

Rik's Army Career

in its full and awful glory

(June – December 1988)

Rik Roots

Published by Rik's Sparky Little Printing Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2019 Richard (Rik) Roots

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Contents

Meet Rik (before he grew the fuck up)

Not a natural squaddie

The downhill jog to adulthood

How to join the British Army

Recruitment

Final selection

Attestation

Basic training - daily memories

Initiation

Battle

Ceasefire

Negotiation

Disengagement

Resolution

Aftermath

The Honourable Artillery Company

Ghosts

Afterword

Meet Rik (before he grew the fuck up)

I need to write all this down because age is a fucker and I have a habit of fantasizing my life-to-date into a series of What-Ifs and What-Could-Have-Beens and now - as I celebrate the 30th anniversary of what I often describe as the greatest, scariest adventure holiday of my life - I'm worried that I'm losing the ability to remember what actually happened to me back in 1988. The real story, if you like.

Earlier this year [August 2018] as I was clearing through some stuff I came across a brown 'On Her Majesty's Service' envelope containing papers. I was about to bin it when I noticed that the hand-written address was to my birth-home in Dymchurch, Kent. So I checked the contents - not much to look through - and found the last remnants of my Army career folded inside.

All of my pay-slips were there, four of them, in duplicate; a cardboard copy of the oath I swore on my attestation day; two copies of my Discharge certificate (one completed by hand); the cover letter for my last pay-cheque, which I had to cash at Dymchurch Post Office; a still-very-neat loop of thick ribbon, bright blue and flattened, to be worn on an epaulette strap; my Army vaccination card, barely started; and my basic training timetable.

It was the timetable that gave me the idea of writing this account. Reading through it, I realised that it gave me a source of truth that had long slipped from my mind. When the timetable said Tuesday 6 December: Drill 30 - Slow March And Halt (0820 - 0900) I could locate that memory, quite insignificant in itself and thus largely untouched by my fantasy re-imaginations, and place it as a True Event in my historical timeline.

By building up a number of these little recollections I could begin to fix my larger self-tellings into context. And by remembering the 'true' stuff I could start to unpick my taller tales, unwrap the layers of New Story I've laid over them to uncover the bones - the reality - of what happened. Relive some of the feelings and emotions I experienced at particular points along the journey. Learn to be honest about what happened, and what didn't happen: the actuality of my Army career.

---

Here is a truth: I was not a brilliant soldier - I was not as good as I now think I was.

But I was, according to Major M in his final interview with me, second in the Troop rankings at the time of my departure, and he was sweet enough to write 'Exemplary' on my Discharge certificate. So I wasn't a bad soldier either.

Another truth: I served for 57 days, 50 of them in basic training at Keogh Barracks on the Surrey-Hampshire border, near Aldershot. Mine was not a long military career.

As I look back on my Army career, I can't help but believe it was an adventure that was destined to happen to me. A second puberty, if you like. I can come up with no other explanation for why I did what I did. And why I abandoned it all so quickly.

---

… Destiny?

In early 1986 me and my sister Shirley, along with a friend, all unemployed at the time and bored of looking for work, went to visit a psychic in a neat little bungalow along the coast in Greatstone-on-Sea. The woman was nice and pleasant and asked us why we were late for the appointments.

She should've known why, was Shirley's comment as we all giggled about it down the pub later. Some fucking psychic she turned out to be! Ten quid wasted on fuck all!

The woman read tea leaves left in our cups. Hold the cup in both hands, she told me when my turn finally came, and swirl the dregs, dear, and ask me the question.

I did as she asked: What career will I have?

She took the little cup from my hands and upended it onto a saucer, then spent about a minute staring at the wet mess dumped over bone china.

I see flags on your shoulders.

Flags?

Yes, dear. Flags.

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about - a confusion which must have shone in my face because she quickly recovered with some generalities about a healthy and productive lifetime of work, and some unexpected-yet-profitable turns along the way.

I finally learned what the psychic meant by 'flags on your shoulders' on All Saints' Day, 1988. I'm still waiting for the 'unexpected-yet-profitable' stuff to turn up.

Not a natural squaddie

Know this: I never wanted to be a soldier!

People in uniforms scared me. My brothers - who were a lot older than me - scared me and they were all in the Army Cadets. I was happiest with my nose in a book, because you know where you are when someone else is describing their adventures on an Alien Planet.

Now don't get me wrong: I was not one of those sad and lonely kids. I had plenty of friends at school. I have old report cards describing me as 'well liked', even 'popular'. I was good at the school thing: quick to learn, happy to take part in stuff, never in trouble. But I always made sure that my friends stayed in the World of School, where they belonged.

The other half of my life was the World of Home, which was where everyone who was family belonged. Family and friends - they were separate things that should never mix. Once a year there would be a birthday party where I had to invite friends around to my home. I didn't like my friends seeing my home: it was wrong. After my tenth birthday I refused to have any more parties.

My parents were busy people during their younger days and had managed to get themselves four kids, all under the age of five, when brother Alan was born. By the time I turned up, nine years later, my siblings had beaten the last vestiges of the Will-to-Parent out of them. After I started crawling I spend most of my awake time with Bruce the Dog, living and playing in his corner of the dining room.

'Dog' was my native language until I was well over two years old. I still understand dogs better than I do humans.

When not with Bruce, I attached myself to my poor Mother's hip. She says I was too needy; I say she wasn't to be trusted not to run away and thus required my close supervision. She was extremely happy when I started to teach myself how to read (in case she was making up the stories) because she could get back to walking without a limp.

So there were my two Worlds: Home, and School. Which left no space for other things like Cubs, or Scouts, or Cadets.

Mum did try to trick me into going to Sunday School - by slipping the word 'school' into the organisation's name - but I wasn't having it. I stormed out of Sunday School, soon after my fifth birthday, at the culmination of the Incident of the Disappearing Threepenny Bit. After that, nobody had the nerve to suggest I should join any childhood group not officially affiliated with school.

So at school I did (mostly) what I was told, and at home I did (mostly) what I pleased. I grew up happy in a reasonably loving if erratic family, in a long, thin village that had a fantastic seaside beach on one side and wonderful (if flat) countryside on the other. We were poor, compared to a lot of the kids I knew at school, but all my cousins were just as poor too and, being of Marshes stock, I had an awful lot of cousins.

That's what the Romney Marshes breed: sheep; and big families of mildly dysfunctional humans.

The Marshes are also home to two Army Ranges, with big Army camps at Lydd (right at the end of England) and Shorncliffe (to the north of the once-important town of Hythe). The land of my birth is a border area, with England on the other side of Lympne Hill, and France and Belgium just across the busy, narrow Channel. Come the invasion - whether Napoleon or Hitler - we lived on Ground Zero.

So I knew about soldiers from an early age. They were the big men in funny green uniforms and big black boots who would sit in the back of smoky olive lorries as they were trucked between camp and range. They were loud and had very short hair (for the 1970s) and swore a lot. Squaddies caused Trouble and were Bad News!

All my brothers were in the Army Cadets when I was little, which meant the World of Army invading my perfectly reasonable World of Home. Though if they ever swore inside the house they'd soon feel the back of Mum's hand. None of us swore in the house. She didn't hit us often, but when she did we'd get 3 clouts: the first for pissing her off; the second for failure to stop crying when told. The third was for making her hurt her hand. As mothers go, she could be pretty hardcore at times.

The World of Army also invaded the World of School on a semi-regular basis. After Dymchurch Primary, I went to Southlands School in New Romney. Southlands was the only Comprehensive School in Kent (motto: one Marsh, one People, one School); all the other schools were either Grammar (for clever kids) or Secondary Modern (for the 11+ rejects).

The most obvious invasion would be the big Army display truck which would pull through the school gates and open its sides to teach us kids about the wonderful opportunities and adventures we could all have once we enlisted in this Regiment or that Corps. The recruiters were all good looking men steaming with health and vitality: the boys envied them and girls wanted them. I hated them.

Unlike most other parts of the civilized world, in the United Kingdom you can enlist in the British Army at the age of 16 - though recruitment is itself a fairly slow business so you can apply to join 15 years and seven months after taking your first breath. Hence the presence of Army recruiters inside the school gates.

Some of my friends were less dismissive of the displays than me. The Marshes were fertile soil for the recruiters to tend because while the area can offer a kid an idyllic childhood, the limits of the place quickly become apparent after puberty hits: there's fuck all to do there, and everybody has their noses in everybody else's business. You can't shit in the gutter without Aunt Mabel, whom you haven't spoken to in years, knowing every detail about the damn turd the very next morning.

I hated the recruiters because, deep down, I knew they were an option for me. Dad's side of the family were Army through-and-through; Mum's family were split between Army and Navy. Ancient and grumpy old Grandad Roots had fought in the Great War and won himself a Distinguished Conduct Medal. Grandad Last had been a career soldier between and through wars, though he was pleasant enough when I knew him. Most of my uncles had served, with Dad himself called up for 3 years National Service just after the Second War finished. And so on.

I had other plans. I was going to pass exams and go to a University to get myself a Degree in whatever. Nobody in my extended family had a proper Degree - even Aunt Doff, Mum's my-shit-smells-better-than-yours sister, only managed to land a teaching degree.

I had my 'careers advice' chat a couple of months before my 'O' level exams started. The advisor - a young teacher bloke with jet-black hair who didn't much like me - made the mistake of starting the interview with the question: So, which Regiment are you planning to join?

I laughed in his face. I could afford to. A few months later I had 7 'O' level exam passes to my name: three at A grade, four at B.

The downhill jog to adulthood

Everyone transitions into adulthood in their own, unique way. Moving away from home, first sexual encounter, first job … whatever. In our newly-minted modern world of social media and #metoo we can all be honest with each other about our various traumas. For instance I never had a #metoo moment, but I did suffer a bit of personal tragedy.

My Mum walked out of the house I was born in, dragging me with her, when I was 15. A few months later I smashed her heart to dust by deserting her to return to the house. My parents divorced when I was 16, and Dad died a year later.

Fucking up my 'A' Level exams (equivalent to SATS exams in the US) in 1983 iced my life-cake perfectly.

I was spudding that summer - harvesting potatoes for 10 hours a day and pulling in around £50 a week, depending on how hard I had laboured. The exam results derailed my plans completely because, without the grades, I couldn't go to University.

A couple of days after getting the results letter I headed inland to the town of Ashford, to the Education Advice Centre. This advisor - nondescript in an ex-teacher sort of way - was a lot more abrupt than the previous one.

What you need to do, Mr Roots, is get yourself a proper job.

… The fuck?

There was one place that might take me, the Advice Man told me. A college called the North East Surrey College of Technology was running a two year Higher National Diploma course in Applied Biology, and were accepting applications from people with grades as dire as mine. Was I interested in being a lab technician?

I walked out of that building gutted. It was a nice morning, with some good August sunshine. I sat on the wall outside the place for half an hour or so, smoking a ciggie and watching a stream of lorries and cars hurtle past on the big road.

On the other side of the traffic I could just about make out an Army Careers Office.

I had another ciggie while considering the possibilities. Could I be a squaddie? By the time the fag was smoked I had made my decision: I walked back into the building, filled out the application form and, a month later, found myself surrounded by a bunch of strange, new people in a strange, new environment.

---

How can I sum up my time at NESCOT? Put it this way. I have many friends on Facebook: none of them are from my college years.

I did get a qualification - a Certificate rather than a Diploma; the college sent it to me by post. I was never invited back for their graduation ceremony.

… Some memories, I reckon, are best left undredged.

---

So in 1985 I was back in Dymchurch, looking for work and a purpose in life. I was also still looking to lose my virginity because, like learning to talk, I was a late starter.

It took me 13 months to find work. Unemployment was bad back in the 1980s, when Maggie Thatcher ruled supreme and the England I had been born into was in the process of being shredded forever. The place that finally took me was called Portex, one of the biggest employers in the District at that time.

Portex was in the business of manufacturing medical equipment - basically anything to do with tubes. I got a job in their microbiology lab partly because of my Higher National Certificate, and partly because my brother Alan was working there in the materials lab, but mainly because my boss - Mr V - had read about me in the local paper and liked the fact that, out of all the candidates, mine was the dryest handshake.

… Yep - I got the job because my palms didn't sweat.

In the world of microbiology a dry handshake is an indicator that someone may have a good aseptic technique; the less a person sweats when taking samples for testing, and performing the various tests, the less likely that they will accidentally contaminate the sample and cause inaccurate results.

The reason Mr V had seen my name in the local paper was because of the athletics. When I returned from college I developed a painful knee. I went to the doctor who told me I probably had rheumatoid arthritis and would end up in a wheelchair in 5 years time, but doing some regular exercise might help ease the pain in the meantime.

I didn't have arthritis. It turned out the doctor was diabetic and in the middle of a hypo attack - which I should have realised, given the family history. But I liked the idea of doing some exercise (to relieve the boredom of being unemployed) and, because I had been a fast runner when I was a kid, I decided to join Folkestone Athletic Club.

I joined in October. For the next two-and-a-half years athletics became my life. I attended training religiously on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and Sunday mornings. I gave up smoking. I gave up drinking. I gave up socialising with old school friends. For a while I even gave up caffeine, which introduced me to the hippy-strange world of herbal teas.

During the winter months we trained in Folkestone, mostly going on runs centred around the County Cricket Ground. Folkestone has many steep hills: I came to know most of them intimately. Sometimes we would train on Folkestone beach - I have fond memories of cinching a weightlifter belt around my waist and spending a couple of hours dragging a big tyre behind me through the freezing February waters of the English Channel, dodging the waves it threw over me.

When spring arrived, our training venue shifted to Shorncliffe Camp - home to five large Army Barracks and, just outside the perimeter fence, an Olympic-sized cinder running track. Here I learned how to run and jump like a proper athlete, how to hurdle, how to throw sticks and balls and stuff. I concentrated on sprints and the long jump and, by the end of the second summer I was winning some competitive races. My Personal Best for the long jump was 6.01m; for the 100m I recorded a PB of 11.9secs. Not Olympian standards, but faster and farther than most.

Training at Shorncliffe also meant I got the chance to see soldiers in their natural environment. Soldiers marching around; soldiers shouting orders and reprimands at each other. But no longer big, scary alien creatures - these were men of my age who chose to wear uniforms and big boots, chose to accept orders and be shouted at. I still thought the whole Army thing was silly nonsense - why would anyone want to risk their lives to dash around and shoot other people in the head? But it was weird to see them enjoying their jobs.

It was worrying to feel attracted to them.

---

I suppose I have to address the G Thing here. I certainly couldn't deal with it back then.

A lot later in life, after the advent of Facebook and other social media venues, I started to reconnect with long-lost relatives and old school friends. While reminiscing with various people, I was a bit shocked to learn they had all known - for decades! - that I was Gay.

Back in the 1980s I didn't know I was Gay. I was a bit frustrated that my life wasn't following the normal Marshes pattern of: meet girl; get girl pregnant; move in with girl; marry girl soon after the kids hit puberty, etc.

I did have an understanding of what a Gay man was supposed to be like - limp-wristed, talked queer, a bit too keen on the eyeliner … which, to my way of thinking, meant I didn't qualify.

Nobody in the family, and none of my friends, bothered to correct my understanding. Older cousins of the female variety would tell me not to worry about 'it' - whatever 'it' was - and that 'things' would all work out fine in the end.

… Yeah, right.

There were definite