Looking back allows you to see that some things in life are simply meant to be. You don’t appreciate that at the time, of course, there is far too much wood to see the trees, but hindsight allows you to see what actually was blatantly obvious.
My grandfather died either a few months before or a few months after I was born. Either way, to this day I wouldn’t be able to point him out in a photograph. No doubt this would shock my mother but the old cliché that blood is thicker than water means nothing to me. If you are an arsehole, why should a shared genepool allow you to be viewed any differently? Not that my grandfather was I am sure, but I am just one branch of a very large extended family tree. Stick a hundred people in a room and you will get all sorts. The fact you are related to me is simply coincidence. I don’t owe you anymore than the man or woman on the street. I have cousins who I love dearly because they are good people, not because my mother’s sisters slept with men unrelated to me, years before I was born. Harsh? Perhaps if you are a member of a close family. I’m not.
My extended family are scattered all over the UK, but all are from valleys stock. My parents left the Rhondda in the early sixties and headed to Cardiff. In those days that was a bold move, as the difference between the hills and the city was even wider then than now. As a result my contact with these family members was limited to summer holidays and Saturday afternoons. My Aunty Marg and Aunty Lil, were living on the same street, Darran Terrace, in Ferndale. My aunty Lil still had an open fire and I have lovely memories of her and her children, three girls and three boys. My Aunty Marg had a son and daughter, born a year apart. I rarely see them these days but those days are not tinged with nostalgic blurring, rather a very real recollection that these people were, and still are good people, some of the best in fact.
One in particular, is more of a brother to me than a cousin and has helped me in many ways over the years. Three miles further north and you hit Maerdy, where my Aunty Gwen, the eldest of my mam’s sisters lived. She had two boys and a girl. They are fantastic people too. I had two aunt’s who married two brothers from Sheffield. Cousins and uncles from that part of the world I respect deeply but distance has always prevented us being close, though this does not diminish my feelings for them. I had another aunt, Lynn, who passed away late last year. At her funeral, it was good to see so many old faces, but her own children I wouldn’t have recognised, or them me. Such is life, and as we get older, death.
Why am I rambling on about family, when this piece is about my time in the military? I suppose it is because there was a relation to me, not a blood one, who always knew my destiny, certainly before I did. Mr Carol Valek, Charles to his friends, Gunky to me. In 1938 when my unknown grandfather was chancing his arm with my gran nine months before my mother entered the world, and my father was drawing his first breaths and soiling nappies, this man was about to embark on a journey that would see him shape my life nearly sixty years later. A trainee journalist in Prague, one day he wrote a scathing piece about the Nazi party. Within hours two gestapo officers forced him to eat his article. He was Jewish, and despite how history likes to absolve our collective conscience, in mainland Europe at least, people knew before the invasion of Poland that those who read the Torah were in for a rough ride. With the money he had in his pocket he and a few friends set out on an 18 month exile which saw them pass through the Middle East, around the southernmost point of Africa before arriving at Barry Docks where they were immediately transported to RAF St Athan. With only the most rudimentary grasp of English, he soon found himself enlisted in the RAF. Britain was now at war and despite the shock when George Bush Junior (or thicker) claimed ‘you were either with us or against us’ in the war on terrorism two generations later, this was very much the case in early 1940. You joined the forces to fight for your adoptive country or were forcibly deported or sent to internment camps.
He served with pride, attaining the rank of Flight Sergeant and by the time the war ended, all his relations were dead, either in the flames of an Auschwitz oven or worked to death in other despicable extermination camps. It is telling that seventy years after the end of the World War 2 there are swathes of people, both home and abroad who would deny this, that a mass genocide of people who were of a set religion, or disabled, or simply not Aryan enough did not happen. It did happen, and will remain one of the most indelible stains on human history. Maybe that is why I feel nothing but utter contempt for those stupid enough not to see through the bigotry and hatred perpetuated by neo-fascist organisations like Britain First. The soap box they preach from was granted to them not only through the sacrifice of the good old British Tommy. It was earned by countless millions, from all denominations and backgrounds. Muslim, Christian, Jew and gentile, all fought, and died, and to see their sacrifice overlooked by wet lipped sycophantic imbeciles like Nigel Farrage, and other equally vile men, is a sad indictment on the gullibility and lack of education within our ‘glorious’ land.
The war left its mark, physically and emotionally on Carol. He died a matter of days before I left for America in 2008. I shed tears at his funeral that I couldn’t at my fathers a couple of years before. In his last years the newly formed Czech Republic would fly him and others of his brethren back to Prague and they were treated as the heroes they were. Honorary promotions saw him die as a Wing Commander, unpaid. To me? Simply the most amazing man I ever had the privilege to know.
He was a rear gunner in one of the illustrious bombers that devastated much of Germany. He survived a crash landing, living the rest of his life with a steel plate in his skull. I knocked him out once when I rose too quickly to greet him as a child and accidentally headbutted him. The first man I ever knocked out and I was about eight years of age. He wouldn’t be the last.
Appendicitis saved his life. A ruptured appendix saw him fall under the surgeon’s knife as his crew of three years was falling to anti-aircraft fire over Germany. He mourned that crew until his dying day. I played football in Germany once and he shook hands with men of his age and this troubled me. I was young and thought the world was black and white. As the only member of our touring party to speak German (he spoke several languages fluently), he was invaluable to our young team and touring parents. On a trip to Rhoose two years later I asked him how he could have done what he did. How could he shake hands with men who could have killed his parents, his siblings? I loved the man so much, for what he said I will never forget. He laughed and asked if I thought he was a weak man to do so. I nodded, angered at what I saw as a weakness in my hero. He sat me down and without once raising his voice, explained in his clipped Czech accent that there was once a man called Gandhi. I learned a quote, and the value of it, that day. I shall treasure it forever. An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. I got it then, I get it now. Revenge is not a dish best served cold, the errors of the past cannot be rewritten, and grief, no matter how crippling cannot be eased by causing further suffering.
Like everyone in life I have been wronged, accused of things that simply weren’t true. It happened only last year. Grand gesturing and pomp, they lay no foundation for anything other than amateur dramatics and histrionics. A woman I love once told me to speak my truth quietly. I did. I had nothing to gain then and nothing to gain now from perpetuating a myth, and I shan’t. I lost in terms of immediacy and intimacy and it will always hurt, always, but I also gained the knowledge that my integrity is resolute, and that allows me to carry on regardless of what the person who turned their wrath against me thinks to this day. Revenge would have been both brutal and savage (metaphorically, not physically) but ultimately serve only to appease my own ego. By doing so would bring such hurt to others that I immediately realised it was better to live a life in which I was the victim of malice, as opposed to destroying the lives of others just for the truth to be heard. To set myself free I would have had to sell my very soul and condemn those I love. I couldn’t and I won’t.
Anyway, the subject at hand! Destiny, kismet, fate? Why the RAF? Obvious you would think? Not at all. Whilst still in sixth form I applied to be a commissioned officer in the Royal Navy. To escape the pain of my ended football dreams, I thought I could sail away to foreign shores. I blitzed the aptitude tests in the recruitment office and before I knew it was on the three day Admiralty Interview Board at HMS Sultan. I was wet behind the ears but I was a leader and they knew that. I was offered a commission and went away delighted. However, I had not received my A level results at this point. When I did, the offer of a commission was withdrawn. Unperturbed I immediately applied to join the Welsh Guards. I passed every test and was raring to go, until a medical showed that I had a cartilage problem that would require surgery. Following that surgery I was then told I would need to wait six months to reapply. When you are eighteen, six months is an eternity. I wasn’t prepared to wait and applied for the Army that same day. I was successful, obviously my ability to colour within the lines impressed. I was offered my choice of trades and opted for physiotherapist. Three years waiting list? No way. That was it. Sod the military.
The next few years I held down a variety of jobs. Tax man, bouncer, salesman, butcher. By the time I got engaged on Boxing Day 1996 I had started work as a pension’s administrator at Legal and General, supplementing the hefty salary of 8.6k a year with four nights a week working the doors of many a less than salubrious nightclub. I hated my day job more than my night one. My boss was a foul woman. Incompetency, rudeness and poor hygiene were perhaps amongst her better traits. We were always going to clash. I spent more time in her boss’s office than I ever thought I deserved. I knew I had to get out the day I told him that I was finding it increasingly difficult not to knock him out. That lunch time I headed over to the Armed Forces Career Office.
The Army guy was in the process of chest poking a young acne ridden lad with the taunt ‘Are you ready to die for your country’. If the young lad was more worldy wise perhaps he would have responded by asking how dying makes you an asset. It isn’t Call of Duty. Good soldiers kill for their country. Regardless, that sort of machismo just turned me right off. The Navy man fulfilled every stereotype held about the Senior Service. I don’t care what a person’s sexual orientation is, but the little skip and curtsey to greet me was a step too far.
In stark contrast the RAF guy was just a normal bloke, no heirs and no graces. I was adamant that I wished to join as a scuffer (military policeman). He was adamant I join as an Intelligence Analyst (Voice) or Communications Systems Analyst (Voice) as it was known back in 1998. After two hours of wrangling he showed me the difference in pay and I signed on the dotted line.
Of course I then had to convince my wife to be this was a good move. I attended a three day interview/assessment in the week before my wedding and returning from honeymoon found a letter telling me I had been successful in my application. Of course there was more to it than this, including losing weight and generally improving my fitness. I needed to lose four stone to meet the requirements. At least that was the doctors’ initial assessment. Having been instructed to take my top off he saw that my muscle structure was going to make that an impossibility. He offered a compromise. Lose a stone and a half and he would apply for a waiver to be put in place. I was beasted by my fiancé’s father, an ex-boxer. I was made to run, something I hadn’t done for years and sit in a shed on boiling hot days, dressed in black bin bags. Two weeks later I had dropped the weight and a week after that the waiver was agreed. I was joining the RAF.
The years working as a doorman, where size was an advantage, had seen me develop a razor sharp and lightning quick repertoire of one liners and put downs. I could banter with the best of them. A simple deflection technique but it worked. If my weight was ever brought up I had an answer. That wasn’t going to cut it in the military though.
So to the RAF anyway, and basic training. I found it incredibly tough. Now I am sure anyone who has never been in the military has an assumption of what it is like. You’d be wrong. I hated it for numerous reasons but no one reason more so than the discipline meted out during these nine weeks. It is essential. I understand that. I understand both the logic and the reasoning behind it. However, I was 25 when I joined up, not 17 so I was seen as the elder statesman. If I could be belittled, with my stature and experience it saved the training staff the job of breaking sixty others, but of course I am too bloody minded for that. It coincided that the day 17 kit inspection was the day my absent wife was undergoing a foetal scan 200 miles away. I knocked on the Corporals door two days prior and informed him of that. I advised him that should he be looking to humiliate me on that day, and my mind being elsewhere there was a likelihood I would do one of two things, both career ending. In fairness to him, he was a human being after all, we reached a compromise. I would not be singled out but likewise, no slack would be given to me. I agreed and explained that I wasn’t looking for slack, but just for this one day could we drop the charade. I passed the inspection with flying colours. Others weren’t so fortunate. Five people failed and four left. It was too much for them.
This is exactly the reason why so much pressure is heaped upon you in those early days. You are deprived of sleep, bombarded with rules that the staff know you will look to break. If you cannot show a willingness to follow orders at that stage, there is no hope that in the height of conflict you will. The constant threat of a TOF (training occurrence form) serves as a constant reminder that you are being watched, that you are being moulded into an airman that will serve your country with honour and pride. That is why kit inspections were so important each morning. We were getting by on two hours sleep at most and pulling an all nighter had a completely different connotation to what it means on civvy street. We had bed packs but heaven forbid you actually use the bedding because putting it back together was both time consuming and a pain. You would sleep clothed in civvies and often on the floor. Of course the training staff were wise to this tactic and would place little bits of paper or cardboard inside the bedpacks. You had to check every night because if they found one on the morning that hadn’t been displaced you knew that you were on drill for hours on end as a result. Some people would choose to skip breakfast, but not me. You needed calories, and lots of them. Fainting on the parade square was a no no. It wasn’t just embarrassing, it was also a sign you were unable to regulate your energy expenditure.
Bull nights were an everyday occurrence, with jobs ranging from cleaning the ablutions, no pun intended but the shittest job of the lot, to polishing every shiny surface in sight. You were tested mentally more than physically. Again, this is entirely logical. At no point could you argue back for that was proof that you had lost the will to carry on. One lad who slept opposite me was an ex air cadet. He was impeccable in everything he did. The staff were not able to catch him on anything. His uniform was pristine, his bulled toe caps mirror like and his drills on the parade square perfect. He was an utter tool however. He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes outside of the training environment and if I could see that, you could be certain the instructors could. One morning, the Corporal marched behind him, out of eyesight of the lad but in clear view of me pulled crumbs out of his pocket, sprinkling them on the floor. He asked the lad why there were crumbs on the floor and the lad burst into tears, telling the Corporal that this was unfair. He was marched out and I never saw him again. I agreed. However underhand the tactics employed the point had been proved. We were being hones into airmen who one day could be at war.
I glibly pointed out earlier that a good soldier wouldn’t die for his country. I need to balance that now. Good soldiers do of course die for their country and so do bad ones. There is however more chance of a good soldier surviving because he can act under the most extreme of pressures, he can free a jammed weapon whilst under fire, he can coordinate firing lines and operate a radio regardless of what is happening around him. Unfortunately the biggest factor of all in a warzone is simply thus, luck. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time then there is no amount of training will save you. Conversely, if your luck is in no amount of bad soldiering is likely to see you harmed. That’s the harsh reality of it. You take the Queens’s Shilling, you take your chances.
Another lad cracked up in the early hours of one morning. We had a factory line in our barracks. I could iron, some lads could bull toecaps and others could sew. Rather than see the barrack suffer as a whole, you would utilise the strengths within your team. I would iron every shirt, others would bull shoes. Only one lad refused to join the fun. He had his logic but it was flawed. He thought he was being trained as an individual. Every day there would be team building exercises, you were being taught to be an airman yes, but ultimately you are having your individuality removed as well. This is the only way a battle commander can allow himself to operate as his decisions as to who moves into what areas of theatre must never be compromised by allowing himself the luxury of familiarity. We were being trained not to be individual, or maverick, but simply to be cogs in a far bigger machine. The loss of a life to enemy fire is always felt deeply at the platoon level but less so by those who have ordered the action in the first place. My trade was a very small trade, within a year or two you knew nearly every person in it so any loss was personal, but at bigger squadron levels and certainly at brigade and battalion levels it is easy to become more detached.
Done it again sorry and flown off on a tangent. This young loner, we were awakened at 0430 hours by a scream., followed by swearing and shouting as the lad jumped up and down on his shirt that he simply could not iron correctly. It was his fault. We could have helped him, we wanted to, but he had made his choice. He was gone by 0700 hours that day.
Another time we were on the parade square. We had drilled for two hours and been brought to attention. The station Warrant Officer (SWO) was a little shit of a man. Usually the longest serving warrant officer on a unit, his role is to uphold discipline and standards, and boy, did he not like me. After keeping us to attention he then marched up to me and threatened to throw me in jail for moving my eyes. This was their last role of the die with me, to see if I could be broken. I didn’t even flinch. We were due to pass out in the next week, the game was over and I had won.
There were good moments of course, swimming was always a good laugh, a moment of respite amongst the madness. The banter at times was both brutal and served to unite far more often than it divided. Firing a weapon legally for the first time was a good moment, and first aid lessons were always amusing. The introduction to CS gas was always going to be funny until was your turn. Name, rank, number and trade whilst stuck in 12 by 12 room with four tablets of CS gas tearing at your eyes, your throat and anything else that you had exposed. Sounds awful but it wasn’t. There is always one who is immune to the effects and a young Scouser was ours, singing You’ll Never Walk Alone to the Corporal’s dismay.
The worst bit for me though was the physical aspect. Every day my body reminds me of the broken limbs and other bones I have had the misfortune to suffer. Running around Aylesbury woods in minus temperatures was never going to be much fun. My level of fitness was awful, my stamina non-existent. At one point I wanted to quit but my recently wed wife had signed over her council flat and I couldn’t. I had to go on, so I did. If my physical strength was no longer a defining factor, m mental fortitude and resolve have always been beyond reproach. I knew what was right and it takes a lot to stop me fulfilling my word. Pure determination saw me through, but it nearly ended in disaster. We had an overnight exercise and about four hours before dark on that evening I felt my knee go. It was more than a sprain, I had the experience to know that. This was a bad one. I had two options. Crack on or give up, only giving up would mean me being back coursed, delaying my graduation, and the time until I could see my wife by about six weeks whilst the injury repaired. My wife had a daughter when I met her, Shani. She was my eyes. Still is though she won’t accept that. I told a boy from Bridgend who I had struck up the usual mutual military Celtic friendship, that I needed a word. I told him that I was in rag order, I was spent, but I couldn’t give up. I must get through this. In the cold hours that followed he never left my side. He swore at me, he told me what a terrible dad I was if I couldn’t get through this, if I couldn’t blank out the pain for the sake of my family’s future. I got through. I had no choice. When I graduated I was in agony. The parade, which should have been a highlight was an ordeal. Whilst friends and family gathered to congratulate their offspring, Sarah, Shani and I simply embraced. I, we, had done it.
So it was time to start work in the proper Air Force. For those hoping to get a glimpse into the murky world of military intelligence, you are going to be disappointed. The work I did involved holding a full DV security clearance. I was vetted far more rigorously than I dare admit to. Every aspect of my past was presented before me and there was a full disclosure of every last minutiae of my life. My sexual preference was probed in depth. Sorry to break a few hearts but I am straight down the line in every aspect. I support gay rights, of course I do, but I also support the World Wildlife Fund, with absolutely no desire to fondle a panda. As a result of the security clearances granted, the work I did is something I will not discuss with anyone outside of my own trade. This is not to add an air of mystery or make me appear like some sort of James Bond, for I wasn’t then and am certainly not now. The prison sentence for disclosure of information is harsh but the reality is more mundane, I give my word and I keep it, always, whether it is to you as an individual or an employer.
Whistleblowing is not something that should be applauded in the military arena, it is abhorrent. We worked to provide intelligence that allows the everyday lifestyle that so, so many take for granted to continue unhindered. This is why I find it laughable that people who call for boots on the ground so often, never their own though, are the first to complain their human rights are being violated because someone else may read their e-mails. There is a very good scene at the end of a film, A \few Good Men, where Jack Nicholson screams ‘The truth, you want the truth? You can’t handle the truth’. He was right. The truth is something that very few people can handle, and the intelligence world is one that deals in areas you don’t want to know about. Really, you don’t. Bodies in suitcases, poisoned umbrella tips, exploding pens….? If you want to know the truth, join up, you would be surprised but it isn’t James Bond I promise you.
It isn’t the Mafia style law of Omerta, it is not merely a privilege afforded to the few who have access to classified information, it is an absolute must should we wish to retain the very best strategic and tactical intelligence to ensure the safety of UK interests both at home and overseas. I have said before and I mean it, mistakes are made. That is life. For every death that potentially could have been avoided, there are a thousand that are. You just don’t know about it.
By the time I had leave and got down to trade training as a linguist, my knee was patched up. We had to attend three PT sessions a week, sandwiched between intensive language training. On my first two sessions I got through ok. They were circuit sessions and my upper body strength has never dissipated. The third session was a shuttle run session. I knew I was in trouble. I asked the PT instructor whether I could sit this out. I didn’t have a sickness chit however, and there was no way he was going to take pity. On the third shuttle as I looked to begin the fourth I felt a crunching, then the pain. My knee was gone. I sent the next three months in a leg brace from hip to toe.
So that was that then. My knee completely shot, and it has never been the same since. I managed to keep the weight down, not off, but no massive gain. This was down to a settled family life, regular mealtimes and such a poor wage through those trade training days that takeaways were simply not an option. I was a linguist by trade and I worked hard at it. I learned Russian. Eight hours a day every day. I would then come home and spend countless hours learning vocabulary with biscuit tins full of flash cards. In our regular progress tests if I scored less than eighty per cent overall I would have been devastated. I never was. I blitzed it and took pride in never dropping more than two marks out of a hundred in weekly vocabulary tests.
Fast forward two years and I received my first posting order, in the flat, mind numbingly boring landscape of Lincolnshire. I was there for only nine months before a posting to Cheltenham to work for a Governmental organisation. From a work perspective this was an exceptionally good move and gave me 18 months of stability, an hour from Cardiff. The downside was that by now I was earning decent money. There was no fitness testing, not then at any rate, and I was not required to wear military uniform. This was a bad thing. My weight didn’t balloon but it certainly didn’t stay static.
Then I had a rather fortunate, though terrifying turn of events. Eating an Admiral’s Pie one night I felt sick. I remember it vividly, as Shani’s dad was staying with us, and with the kids in bed we all settled down to watch American History X. I got half way through the film before making my excuses and going to bed hoping to sleep of the nausea. I had thirty minutes sleep before managing to crawl to the toilet to be sick. Assuming it was just food poisoning I then collapsed in the downstairs toilet. After a call to the NHS helpline, I was seen by an emergency doctor and was diagnosed with acute appendicitis and rushed into Cheltenham hospital, where I underwent emergency surgery. A burst appendix resulted in a far larger incision than was initially thought. I have an inch thick, six inch scar that will always bear testimony to this.
I signed myself out twenty four hours later though. I had been told I could not leave until I passed a motion but I wasn’t having that, I managed to get out by farting, proving my intestines were still working. I was off work for one week and on my return thought things would be ok. I got pulled into the toilets by my then boss, who asked me if I felt alright. I stated I was and then he pointed at my shirt. There was an ever growing claret patch radiating across my white shirt. The incision had reopened and I was bleeding out. I was off work for eight weeks and in that time I managed to pick up a nasty infection which led to a course of heavy duty antibiotics. This in turn led to thrush. I was far from impressed. I lost two stone in weight during this period and to this day hate the word yeast.
I never really settled back into work after that, so volunteered for a further language course, and was accepted. This led to a posting to Lympstone, in Devon. What should have been a brilliant posting turned into a personal disaster. We moved when my youngest daughter Grace had just turned a week old. It was no way to set yourself up for a language course, and my eating became out of hand as I struggled with the course, the commitments of a young family and the first signs that my marriage was on the rocks. I ignored these signs and carried on regardless, despite hating every second of my time on what should have been a great posting. I worked at most four hours a day in Exeter University, who were contracted to teach my group.
I also had the misfortune to meet the most irritating person, bar one of my entire military career. He was a phenomenal linguist but was no friend of mine, seeking every opportunity to ridicule me and make my working day, however short, a misery. What made it worse was that he was the senior rank in my class. After eighteen months I couldn’t have been happier to leave with a second rate qualification and the horrible prospect that this man, who was the biggest yes man I had ever encountered, would be my new boss. To further compound this I had broken my leg during a three week classified course, and so I was arriving on unit at a much later date than my classmates. So began the worst five years of my working life.
I was castigated for even the smallest offence, offences that others committed to a much larger degree and with regularity. I was constantly overlooked for professional development courses, and training courses overseas that were seen very much as not only essential, but also a huge perk. My mind was nowhere near as strong as it had once been and I had that awful gut wrenching feeling you have on the night before the summer holidays ended as a child, and you had school the next day. I was getting to the stage where I actually was beginning to hate life. If my phone went I was scared to answer, fearing it would be my boss getting on my back over some imaginary misdemeanour.
My marriage also ended, and with it the security I had known for the best part of my twenties. I moved out from a four bedroomed home into a barrack block. I had my own room, with a sink, but no cooking facilities and my bath was at the end of the corridor, a communal bath that any of the 15 new neighbours I had could use. I was beginning to change from a sometime sociable person to a complete loner. I no longer trusted anyone, other than a very select few.
At the same time my father was dying, terminally ill with stomach cancer. This was the worst of times but also the best. I took a month’s compassionate leave to be with my father. I was entitled to that. I originally asked for my shift pattern to be reshuffled as although it was clear my father was on his way out, there could be no guarantee when he would finally succumb to his illness. As my boss was such a deeply caring man, he made things impossible so I was forced, quite literally to take the leave in one go. This was going strictly by the book, but it was also totally lacking in compassion and not the way to manage an individual.
As my dad had been selfish enough to die over the Xmas period I was castigated in certain quarters for letting the team down. I have always put the needs of the team before my own, service before self, so that hurt. In the last week of my father’s life he was taken to a hospice, the nature of his illness proving too much for me to carry on caring for him at home. On the 28th day of my leave, my father without caring about my leave had not died. I was forced to get a letter from the hospice stating that his death was imminent and deliver it by hand to my boss. I did so. Two days before he died I made the 420 round mile trip to pass over a blunt letter that stated simply, my father would be dead within the week. I will never forget that treatment, nor the person who made those days so incredibly difficult. Our paths will cross again, of that I am sure, and when they do, we can sit down over a glass of sherry and discuss in a civil manner what a huge mistake that was.
I have always been a staunch advocate that a leader is a person who above all else can be trusted. The rank structure inherent and necessary to the role of the military machine is perfectly set up for genuine leaders to flourish, but they are often usurped by yes men. Men and women who place their own career ahead of the needs of their peers and subordinates. This invariably creates a morale vacuum and nowhere is morale more vital than in a job where you may one day need to lay down your life, or be complicit in the taking of others. To follow a leader to your death is not the stuff of anyone’s dreams, but should it happen you will go because you know your leader will go to. If you cannot trust your leader in an office environment to back you, you will not trust him when the stakes are higher on foreign soil. Nowhere is leadership more evident when it is executed well, or delivered so badly, than when it is done in the military. It doesn’t lose money or adversely affect profit margins, it is very often the difference between life and death.
I was both fortunate to witness the best and the worst in my time. One thing I always did when writing an annual assessment was to be fair. Just because you were good at your job, did not mean you were ready for promotion. Too many people would lack the moral courage to write a fair assessment and then deliver it in person, backing up their constructive criticism with the inner belief that they were right. Telling somebody who was a brilliant tradesman that they were not ready for promotion was not a task I enjoyed. In fact I hated it, but I was never prepared to jeapordise my principles. People in the military are not just soldiers, airmen and sailors. They are spouses, siblings, sons and daughters. When you see that how can you place their life in the hands of someone ill equipped to lead? It is morally incomprehensible to me that your own fear of being unpopular, should see you fail at your own task. So many people achieved promotions to get them out of a unit, to allow them to become someone else’s problem. This was wrong, it will always be wrong.
I made the rank of Corporal within two and a half years, Sergeant within six. I may not have been the most fitting of role models due to my shape but I knew I could lead, because I was unequivocally fair in everything I did. There were individuals I despised but would recommend them for promotion, whilst at times refusing to do the same for people who I deeply cared for. This is why I could lead. I had favourites, of course I did, and any leader does, but they never once received preferential treatment. In fact, they probably got it harder than the others.
I worked for two Majors who I remember for different reasons. One saw me suffer the marriage breakdown, my father’s death and still saw fit to make things so very difficult. Another, sat me down, told me he didn’t care what he had heard about me from her, I had a clean slate. Within two years he had a team that was awarded a commendation.
In 2008 I went to America for four months. I loved it, the best time of my career without doubt. I went there originally as part of a small, select team to learn how to operate a phenomenal capability and bring it back to the UK. My ex boss, the biggest yes man ever, was sitting at the helm of this project and his protégé, aptly nicknamed ankles because that was the only part of him you could ever see hanging out of the aforementioned bosses arse was the second in command (2iC). Now here is a strange thing. The 2iC is far more important than the commander in a small team environment. He is often the only conduit between the workforce and the heads of operations. He must be a leader himself, and strong, for saying yes to every question is not just morally wrong, it is operationally indefensible. Your team need to know that their worth is valued in real terms. Problems they encounter on a daily basis mustn’t be glossed over, they must be readily identified, evaluated and dealt with. When they aren’t you lose your team. It really is that simple.
I advised the 2iC there was a very real personality clash within our team. One of the lads had only recently found out his fiancé was expecting and had proposed. He also spent every spare minute he had liaising illicitly with another girl. It was affecting his judgement and he had fallen out with another girl on the team over it. One night we were all out for a meal and at the end the two of them got into an argument. Blows were exchanged and I stepped in immediately, and at one stage I threatened him. The very next morning I reported the incident and offered to return to unit in the UK, for threatening a subordinate is wrong. I was told not to worry about it and to let it go, it was not worth reporting the situation. I disagreed. I broke my chain of command and went to the Senior UK rank and explained the situation, and stated that this lack of harmony was detrimental to the operation, it was not acceptable and that something had to give. I was not prepared to work in conditions that were a threat to something far bigger than we realised when we agreed to the task in the first instance. Ankles was brought in to the room and said he did not like conflict, and sought to avoid it, that the situation was manageable. It wasn’t. My response was that he should immediately hand back his Sergeants stripes and wear the rank of a Leading Aircraftsman. Conflict in the Armed Forces is unavoidable, and whilst I agree you do not ever seek it out for the sake of it, when it does arise you resolve it, and you do so in a manner that is appropriate to your rank. I won. My four months was extended to a year, and I was rewarded with local acting rank of Chief Technician. Ankles went home on the same flight as the cheating boyfriend.
There is a saying in the Forces that ‘rank has its priveleges’. This holds true, of course. In terms of accommodation you are placed in a better Mess, your food is of a higher standard and you are allowed certain perks denied to you before. I accept that but to me there is another saying I followed, that rank has its responsibilities’. Stripes on your arm do not make you a better person, they do not afford you the right to a sense of superiority. Every day I would look at my Sergeants tapes and know that to wear them as a huge honour. I still maintain that.
That year in America was truly something else. The first four months was training from 0600 until 1400 hours. Then we were free. The base we were on, or rather fort, was huge, It had hunting grounds and a 27 hole Championship standard golf course. I played every day for those first four months. I was now a scratch golfer. The military are excellent if you are a sportsman, and cater for just about every sport under the sun. I had been captain of the unit golf team for a few years, and had organised a Transatlantic Trophy between this base and ours for the four preceeding years. Sixteen of the units finest against sixteen of the finest the US could offer. There would be three days intense competition sandwiched between ten days of friendly golf. Fantastic memories and lifelong friends I will cherish for eternity.
I served my year and then returned home. It was awful. The hard work we had done on one side of the Atlantic was being ruined by the incompetent manner my former boss and Ankles were doing things back home. They employed an Army Wo2 who in all honesty was a twat. I can’t think of another word to describe her other than that. She was foul in every way. She had her favourites and they received preferential treatment at every turn, whilst the rest of us were made to feel like peasants. We would work 16 hour shifts, with no lunch breaks, only to be called lazy, useless etc. Her marriage had recently failed and we were clearly going to be made to pay. Her approach to management and leadership were truly desperate. We were tasked with impossible targets and then humiliated for not reaching them.
On one occasion my team had just finished a sixteen hour shift, a shift in which they worked their socks off, dealing with life and death decisions. At the end of that they were subjected to a level of man management that I still, to this day, struggle to believe happened, but it did. Rather than a thank you, or a well done, fourteen of the hardest working people I knew were ushered into a room and tore apart. The phrase ‘dripping like a septic fanny’ may have scored well on Bad Lads Army, but this was real life, not a faux TV programme. ‘Dry your eyes cupcake’ was another oft used phrase that served to lower team morale to breaking point. It was hideous, a charade played out by the devil to punish us surely. If ever you read this I remember the night in America that you broke down in tears that I could show so much commitment, so much drive and so much leadership. You broke your heart and I let you cry on my shoulder. It wouldn’t be there for you now.
I endured eighteen months and then I met a man who changed the way I saw everything. He looked like Touche Turtle, was Scottish and was the best manager I ever worked for.
We hit it off straight away. He was so far up his food chain that he could not get promoted any further. We were a dream team in management. He would listen to me and I would learn all I could from him. Perhaps he was my Mr Miyagi, but I love the man to this day. He taught me that to say the truth was not a crime, to wear your heart on your sleeve over the rights of those you managed was exactly how it should be. For three years I was allowed to run the section the way I saw fit, he would be the face, the man whom senior officers would talk to but I would do everything else. I selected who worked for us, I selected the hours they worked and I backed them, unequivocally. If they needed something I made it happen, if they needed a kick up the arse, they got it but they also got the hug that they needed, the time off to deal with issues and the respect they deserved. I was fair, I was uncompromising in many ways but they knew me to be honest. I never once promised something I couldn’t deliver but they also knew that I would go into battle with senior management on their behalf and tell it exactly how it was.
I recall one incident where I had found out one of my Corporals had failed to gain a very much deserved promotion. I didn’t have to out of official duty, but moral obligation made me go round his house. I spoke to him and his wife and what was said will always be between me and them, but he had the right to know the truth about things, that I was gutted to my core that he had been shit on by weak willed superiors who couldn’t care for anyone but themselves. I have often been told I don’t care. Rubbish. I care more than I am capable of at times.
All things come to an end. After three fantastic years, my boss got a posting order. Just prior to this I had, been diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. I made a huge decision. I handed in my notice, one year, with immediate effect. I had to. Even though I had only seven years to push for a full, and immediate, military pension, I was going to die. I knew that as sure as I know my own name. For all the pride I had in my work, as a person, I had descended into a farcical, almost comedy caricature. Whilst I could perform the duties of a Warrant Officer with my eyes closed, I could no longer travel the 400 plus miles every weekend. I was too tired. I came home every weekend to see my girls, without fail. It involved finishing work at 3 on a Friday and driving back to Cardiff, and leaving Cardiff at 0300 hours on a Monday morning to drive to Lincolnshire. I crashed my car only once but it could have been a lot more. Money was never, and never will be my driving factor. Quality of life matters more to me than anything, other than the welfare of my own children. I had neglected both for far too long. I was coming home.
Then there was my love life or lack of it. I had very few encounters let alone relationships. The thought of someone looking at me or worse, touching me, sickened me. I sickened myself so it was hardly surprising. I did dabble very, very occasionally but always sought an excuse to prevent a fling turning into a thing. Then out of the blue, I fell in love. She loved me. She doesn’t now and that is ok, I can live with that. She did however make me believe in me. That I was not a fat mess, I was actually a good man. My heart, although pumping too hard to get blood around a bloated body, was definitely in the right place. I was honest, decent, I regained my sense of humour and for the first time in nearly twenty five years, truly believed in myself.
Work however was to end on a very sour note. The new boss was a total loser, in every sense. Devoid of any motivational skills, any leadership skills and with the emotional awareness of Pol Pot, we hated each other on first sight. He actually looked like Mrs Brown but did not possess either the charm or the balls of the Irish matriarch. In those last six months I was sidelined back onto shift, made to work my seventh Xmas day in a row and was nearly once charged for calling him a selection of names that I daren’t repeat but am still proud of. The sort of man who buys a t-shirt with lycra tattoo sleeves. The sort of man who deals in lies as his everyday currency. I never had a leaving do, I didn’t want one. What I had devoted five years of my life into building he managed to destroy in months. The reputation my team had tarnished by his managerial incompetence. So incredibly sad.
So I came back to Cardiff. I spent eight months out of work and I lost my home. I lost my work colleagues, and in some quarters I have been castigated as an unfit father, unprepared to work for his family. That obviously wrankles because whatever anyone may think, whatever their version of the truth is, I know the facts. I know how close I came to making them fatherless. I am working again now, I have been for a year, and though I am no catch for any woman to be fair, I can look in the mirror with a sense of dignity about who I am and what I achieved in those 16 years.
I look back at my career with a mixture of emotions but one will always take precedence over the others. Pride. I may not have been the most athletic of airmen, the smartest or the brightest, but I gave everything I had, and more. I saw things that will haunt me, I saw things that will keep me awake on the odd occasion but I would not change a thing. Not one. I look at the shape of the world today and I pray nobody ever has to go to war, to fire a weapon or to lose someone dear to them. I know this is a utopian, childish wish, but I wish for it nonetheless.
My role was always in the RAF. I should have known that. I followed in the footsteps of a hero, and it was an honour, an absolute honour to serve with many from so many nationalities. I made firm friends and as many enemies, but I know that if I should achieve not one more thing in life, nobody can take from me what I haven’t already given of my own volition. If I love you, you’ll know it, if I don’t like you, you’ll know it. I have taken many steps to the side and even been cowed at times, but I will never take a backward step. I know that in any situation, I give everything, or I give nothing. That is my way, and I shall die by it.
Photo credit: John Flannery on Flicker
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