‘I could tell you all this, and this is something within the spectrum of your own experience. We’ve all been in a snowstorm, we’ve all driven late at night through rain and snow and mist. I could tell you all this. But unless you had been where I was at the precise time I was there, you could not know, you could not feel, you could not be completely submerged in that total terror, that incipient suppressed panic. Your mind could not have been stretched taut in that relentless nerve-strain. Now look at that gap between my experience and your reaction to my relating it. Multiply that gap by ten, by twenty, by a hundred and you have some idea of the experience of war, the sense-crush of combat, the mind-blast of battle, the trauma of violent death.’
I looked at the psychiatrist and he showed no reaction. I wasn’t getting through to him. I was frustrated, angry. It felt as though I was trying to run through waist-deep water.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a detonation, a huge, cataclysmic detonation. The next moment I was coming to, lying there, dazed and confused, for what seemed like an age. I prised my eyes open. A shaft of light came in. I heard the sound of voices. It felt hot. I could smell the sweet, sharp, prickly smell of cordite. My mouth tasted dry and dusty. My hands were working, fists slowly clenching and unclenching. I felt the rough woollen material of a blanket.
A blanket! I sprang up with a start. Christ, I’ve been dreaming! A full technicolour dream complete with stereophonic sound. It was dawn. The ward was stirring into life. My new-found mate in the next bed had lit up a cigarette and was waving the match in the air to extinguish it. Red phosphorus – the smell of cordite! The nurse was pushing a metal trolley full of surgical equipment rattling on steel trays down the middle of the ward. The doors through which she’d just exploded were swinging violently, neon light glinting on their aluminium panels.
I walked slowly down the corridor towards the chief psychiatrist’s office.
‘You are a time bomb, trooper, a time bomb just waiting to explode. But we can defuse you!’ The Colonel’s words rang through my mind as footsteps echoed off the bare walls. I thought of Tommo the Scouse exploding with anger on selection all those years before. It hadn’t done him much good. Or maybe it had. Maybe he wasn’t meant to be in the SAS – he might never have made it past Operation Jaguar. That explosion might have saved his life. Maybe he was better off out of it after all. Maybe he’d got himself a nice little number back with the Royal Fusiliers and done very well for himself. Perhaps he’d found the secret: expression of emotion rather than suppression. Why bottle up all your feelings, build up the pressure, build up the stress until your heart fails, your stomach ulcerates, your liver collapses or your brain gets blown apart by a stroke?
The Colonel thinks I’m going to explode. Maybe I should explode, get it off my chest, go out with a bang rather than a whimper. I’ve fought my fights, I’ve waged my wars. Perhaps it would be a fitting end to a drama-filled career. Shit or bust! Attack – the best form of defence!
One thing is for certain. I’m not going to play second fiddle to some jumped-up civilian psychiatrist who doesn’t know the first thing about combat. I’ve never let the system get me down before. If I had, if I hadn’t shown initiative and self-confidence before, I wouldn’t be here now. If I hadn’t broken the rules at Mirbat and sent the first radio message to Um al Gwarif in plain-language morse, crucial time would have been lost; if I hadn’t used the knuckleduster in Hong Kong, I would have been dead on the street; if I hadn’t demanded that the hospital orderly in Stanley Jail give me a tetanus jab, I could have had serious health problems; if I hadn’t stood my ground with the RE colonel back at Southwood Barracks, I would have spent an unpleasant twelve months as a lance-corporal rather than a sergeant; if I hadn’t insisted on seeing the captain on the Andomeda, we would have lost a pallet full of vital equipment. I had never grovelled to another man in my life and I didn’t intend starting now.
I strode into the office without knocking. The psychiatrist looked up, slightly startled. He was as ugly as an iguana. Folds of yellow-green skin clung to his prominent facial bones, he had dark rings around his eyes and his expression was as bleak as a wind-ruffled winter puddle. He lit another cigarette from the remains of one he’d just finished, and screwed the bent dog-end into the layer of ash in the bottom of the ashtray amid the burnt-out remains of a dozen other cigarettes. Christ! Not only a civilian in charge of the mental health of the British Army, but a chainsmoker at that! What have you got to hide, mate? What’s gnawing away at your insides? Why do you need to smoke so much? I’ve no problem going three months in the jungle without a drink. You wouldn’t last three days there without cigarettes. You’d be crawling up the trees!
A thick blue haze hung in the room like a morning mist. I’m not having this. I’m used to the great outdoors. Plenty of fresh air. Without saying a word, I marched over to the window, rattled it open and took some deep breaths of the air wafting over Woolwich Common. He didn’t like it. It was late November and he got an icy draught on the back of his neck. I sauntered back round to the front of the desk and, without waiting to be asked, sat down. I was in a defiant mood. The psychiatrist picked up a folder, his eyes not leaving me for a moment. He placed it before him and grasped a pencil from a plastic container. Then he looked down. The pencil hissed across the page as he furiously scribbled notes on my report.
17
The Final RV
In the days before steam, when tall-masted clippers plied the tea route between China and Europe, speed was of the essence. The ship that reached port first got the benefit of the markets. Moreover, the quicker the journey, the better the condition of the cargo and the higher the price it could command. The speed of the ship depended on the skill of the seamen in unfurling and reefing the sails. The men with the most dangerous job on board were those who worked on the uppermost masts, hauling the huge sails in and out. Safety was not of paramount concern. It was not unknown for one of the topmost riggers, subjected as they were to the highest winds and the greatest pitch and roll of the swell, to lose his grip and go plunging down a hundred feet or more. If he hit the deck, it meant almost certain death. If he fell into the sea, he might just escape with shock and bruising. A seaman who survived the fall intact was encouraged by the older hands to climb straight back up to the top of the mainmast so that he might not lose his nerve forever. This was exposure therapy of the most immediate kind.
BET they call it today – behavioural exposure therapy – a legacy of post-Freudian psychoanalytical theory. I learned all about it in Ward 11. They gave me pills to break down the barriers and allow the traumas of my operational experiences to come to the surface. Through being exposed and confronted, the traumas could hopefully be cured. As I drove back from Woolwich to Hereford, I thought I would undertake a bit of freelance BET myself. I decided to pay a visit to the scene of my so-called crime. I would have a pint in the pub where the argument with the mayor had taken place. Not only would it satisfy my self-willed bloody-mindedness, but it would have the additional benefit of allowing me to re-orientate myself into familiar surroundings after the wasteland of Ward 11 before facing the Colonel on camp.
It was lunchtime and the tap-room was surprisingly busy. I was hoping to find Tak there. A drink and talk about the old days, a bit of exposure to his laconic Fijian humour would be just the aftercare I needed. I sat down at the bar, ordered a pint of draught Guinness and quietly smiled to myself. No one said anything. It was as if nothing had ever happened. I relaxed and let the normality flow over me.