‘This last stretch before the Cray is bloody horrible. First there’s miles of moon grass, all tussocks. Then there’s this sod of a wood.’ I pointed to a triangular plantation cradled in a bowl of steep slopes. ‘It’s a hell of a long way round the wood, but going through it’s a bugger because of all the drainage ditches. So either way you’re in the shit. But, as I say, we won’t get that far today. What we’ll do is cross the road again at the AA box, here, and climb back over. Then we’ll go down through the woods to the reservoir, and the dam on which the route ends.’
‘Looks like some hike,’ said Tony.
‘It is. Even with our light loads it’ll take all day.’
We sorted our gear, locked the car and set off. As I expected, Tony moved easily, economically. He could have left me on the climbs, but that day we weren’t racing. Going up the steep lower flank of the Fan, we had no breath to spare for talking; Tony’s only utterance was one sudden, good-humoured outburst: ‘Nothing but rain, stone walls and goddam sheep!’
But then, as we came out on to the ridges, the weather began to break. The rain stopped, the clouds parted, and we started to see great green slopes sweeping away below us on either side. Our spirits lifted, and Tony set in to talk Spanish, slowly and methodically, asking questions about the landscape, describing things we could see. To my surprise, I found I could understand him pretty well, and answers came more easily than I’d expected. Alone with a good friend, and having no reason to feel embarrassed, I found that my confidence built quickly. All the lessons of the past few weeks began to fall into place, and at last the language was making sense. More than that, I found it a pleasure to use.
By the time we’d scrabbled our way up Jacob’s Ladder and reached the summit of the Fan the sun had come out, so we sat by the trig stone to eat our sandwiches. When Tony described the scenery as ‘real pretty’ I didn’t argue. I realized that, to him, used to the huge open spaces of America, the whole environment seemed dinky and small-scale — and on that hazy summer’s day the Brecons were looking their most serene. This, the highest point, might be only 3,000 feet above sea-level, but I knew what the hills could be like when they showed their teeth in the wind and sleet of a winter night. ‘The obelisk’s a memorial to a little boy who died up there one August,’ I said. ‘It was in 1900, and he was trying to cross from one farm to another when the fog came down. Tommy Jones, he was called. It was twenty-nine days before they found him, curled up in a hollow where the pillar now stands.’
From our vantage-point I explained how important it was to try to maintain our height on the way back across Fan Fawr, before the inevitable steep descent to the checkpoint by the AA box on the main road. ‘Thereafter, the route to trig-point 642 is really tough, an absolute ball-breaker: whichever way you go, you can’t avoid fierce climbs and drops.’
We could just make out 642 in the distance to the south. I told Tony that the stone bears a brass plaque in memory of Tony Swerzy, a member of the SAS killed on the Everest expedition of 1984.
And so we went on again, and kept going for the rest of that hazy summer afternoon.
Tony had been allotted a room in camp, but I suggested he might like to spend some nights in the cottage — an offer which he took up with alacrity. Apart from providing cheerful company, he raised culinary standards no end, as baked beans on toast gave way to steaming paella and chilli con carne. He had a heavy hand with the Tabasco, but that suited me fine, and one evening I was inspired to retaliate with the one sure weapon in my armoury, a curry as hot as Hades.
We went up to the Brecons several more times, and spent a couple of weekends walking some of the other routes, including Point-to-Point and Pipeline. We also went over the course for the Heavy Carry day — and with every outing I was improving my fluency in conversational Spanish.
The language course was a tough one, especially for guys like us who were used to a mainly physical existence. Our facilities were good — we had videos, audio-tapes and a separate audio-lab for making tapes of our own if we wanted — but the hours were long, and the lessons demanded a high level of concentration. We kicked off at 9.00 a.m., with the desks in the classroom set out in a horseshoe shape. Round the walls were big posters illustrating various weapons and armoured vehicles, with captions and statistics in Spanish. The poncified major in the Education Corps taught us grammar, and later in the mornings a Colombian professor would come up from Cardiff University to give us conversation. She’d chat to each of us in turn, starting off with ‘Buenos dios. ¿Tiene hora?’ and we’d answer, ‘Si, señora, son las doce menos cuatro,’ or whatever. The woman was a fearsome age, and knee-high to a piss-pot, but she had a great sense of humour, and generally turned the conversation into areas of interest to us: ‘¿Hay un bar por aquí?’ and so on.
By 12.30 everyone would be desperate to clear their heads, so it was into shorts, singlets and trainers and away for a run, five or six miles round the lanes at the back of the camp. On wet days some of the guys preferred a session on the weights in the gym. Then a quick shower, into DPMs again, and a dash down to the NAAFI for a sandwich or a pie, before being back into the classroom for 2 o’clock. By about 3.30 I’d see some of the guys dozing off. They’d have their heads propped in their hands, ostensibly concentrating like hell on their books, but then suddenly a hand would slip and a head would lurch downwards, and the owner would wake up with a start. By the time classes ended at 4.30, we’d all had enough — but then we had a pile of homework to take back with us.
Several months previously I’d applied to go on the Northern Ireland course, and now, one morning after Prayers in the Squadron Interest Room, the SSM said, ‘Right, as soon as we’re finished here, I want to see the following in my office.’ He read out a list of names, and mine was on it.
In we went, one at a time. Tom was sitting at his desk in one corner of the little room, and the squadron clerk was pattering away at his word-processor in the other.
‘OK, Geordie,’ the SSM began. ‘You want to go to the NI Troop?’
‘Right.’
‘We’ve got you down for troop training, starting July twentieth. You OK with that?’
‘Yep. That’s fine.’
‘Good. You want to get yourself down to see Johnny Hopton, who’s running the course. Find out if there’s any particular preparation you can do beforehand. Are you happy with that?’
‘That’s fine.’
‘Right, then. You start on the twentieth.’
I went out feeling chuffed to bollocks. Everyone wanted to get on the NI course, because a posting to Ulster meant live operations, rather than the endless training which otherwise was the Regiment’s lot in peacetime. Ulster meant danger, excitement and the chance to take on a real enemy. I knew that the posting was partly a question of seniority — the head-shed probably needed a couple of sergeants on the course — but I also knew they must have got together and talked about possible candidates, and I was glad to know they hadn’t been put off by my low patch after the Gulf.
The idea of a tour in Northern Ireland naturally made me think more than ever of Kath and Tim. What would happen if they were in Belfast and I got posted there? Would I be able to go and visit them, or would they be out of bounds? The possibility was way off, but I checked — and the answer was that, yes; guys in the troop were allowed to make social visits, provided the area was safe.