Ignoring the NAAFI shop RSM Tessler headed out of the gate at the Petty France entrance to visit the local newsagent. Ray collided with a police officer who was exiting, and likewise wearing a civilian jacket over his uniform shirt and trousers, or ‘Half Blues’ as it is known. Mumbling apology’s to each other they went their separate ways, Ray to the back of the queue for the counter and Sir Richard Tennant back to his office.
It is always of immense value to proper coppers to know how thieves, burglars, car thieves and fraudsters, among others, ply their trade. However, it had been twenty years since a master pickpocket had shown Sergeant Richard Tennant of the Oxford Street ‘Dip’ Squad the techniques and sleight of hand by which he fleeced a mark. Twenty years is a long time for rust to set in if a skill is not practiced regularly, and Ray had felt the hand that had relieved him of the copy, but of course Ray had given no indication that he had just been ‘Dipped’.
As always, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Inspectors were awaiting the ferry, even at midnight. As the convoy reformed on the quayside a clutch of inspectors descended on the tank transporters, searching for the usual items soldiers attempt to smuggle back, usually alcohol, cigarettes and pornography.
The 4 ton trucks had camouflage nets rolled up and secured, tube-like, along each side in readiness for easy use. Once untied, gravity would do the rest.
Just two Inspectors searched these vehicles, one to each side of the line of vehicles and armed with iron bars they walked along the line, continually whacking the rolled camouflage nets with the iron bars and occasionally being rewarded with the muffled sound of breaking glass, followed by the leaking of the broken bottles contents onto the tarmac and a muttered oath from one or more of the soldiers in the back.
They did not bother to debus the men for a thorough search, they reasoned that they had been through enough. If bottles upon which no duty had been paid made if through then good luck to them.
Once the Customs men were done a BMW bearing the markings of the Metropolitan Police pulled in to the head of the convoy and a middle-aged constable emerged from it, offering Lt Col Reed a more comfortable ride.
The officer looked somehow familiar and it took a moment before it twigged. He looked at the name badge on the officer’s jacket, the lack of rank badges on his shoulders and at the twinkle in the officer’s eyes.
“Yes thank, I will.” And allowed ‘Constable’ Tennant to graciously hold open the back door of the police car and close it behind him. There was another passenger in the back of the car, one who had been Commandant at the Royal Military Academy when Pat was a cadet. He had a lot to say.
Twin 15” guns that had been fired in anger during the Second Word War sat as silent witness now as the transporters were unloaded in Lambeth Road outside the Imperial War Museum. It was a relatively short journey from there to Horse Guards Parade, where Pat’s orders stipulated they were to arrive at the dot of 0400hrs.
An early morning dog walker stopped to chat but made a face and departed again.
“Pardon me boys, but you smell a bit ripe.”
Back in Germany when it had been suggested that even if new uniforms were not being provided they should at least wash and dry the ones they had. Pat was not having it though, he wanted his men washed and shaved but if they wanted to play silly devils then he would go the whole hog.
In spite of instructions to continue the journey with only fuelling stops, before reaching the M25 motorway that encircles London, the police BMW had led them to Crowborough Camp in Sussex where a cooked breakfast had awaited them. A reorganisation had taken place and Pat issued orders accordingly before the journey, via the quiet road beside the museum, had been continued.
The press were briefed, not by the MOD Media Office, but by Danyella’s own PR officer, which in itself had the veteran reporters exchanging glances. If this was a simple symbolic ceremony, a hand-over of vehicles from the 1st Battalion combat veterans to the newly reformed 2nd Battalion, why was Downing Street even involved, and why was it happening before dawn?
There was only one spectator in sight, lounging against the Guards War Memorial with a radio in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
The cap badges on their berets caught the light from street lamps illuminated for the benefit of the press who took their early photographs of the 2nd Battalion drawn up on Horse Guards Parade. Three companies worth of their vehicles behind them, with an obvious gap that was to be filled by the 1st Battalions vehicles, the stated purpose of this exercise.
The cameras were rolling as on the stroke of 0400hrs a stony faced Lt Col Pat Reed, stood in the commander’s hatch of his Warrior IFV, drove off Horse Guards Road and onto the parade ground. It led the small convoy of armoured vehicles, a company’s worth, and the single surviving troop of A Squadron, The Kings Royal Hussars.
1st Battalion, its tiny remainder, lined up its vehicles facing Lt Col Manson and his men and shut down, debussing smartly and falling in with their weapons in three ranks. The Hussars left a lasting impression on the parade square with their tracks, as the two Challenger IIs and a thirty year old Chieftain 10 stopped, pivoted to face left, and halted.
There could not have been a greater contrast between the two units. The men of one, small in number and dressed in dirty, often torn and blood stained combat dress, with fighting vehicles to match, and the other at full strength, well rested and smartly turned out.
A microphone was in place on the saluting dais for the Defence Minister, the waiting press corps attentive and her expression that of the cat that had got the cream.
She began by apologising to the assembled reporters for a deception she had been forced to employ, but there would be no ceremony, just a reckoning, and the exposure of men who had dishonoured their flag. Rogue elements within the armed forces and their disobedience to orders, their arrogant refusal to accept the laws of the land had, with deep regret, necessitated her actions. How else indeed but a trick could have brought back the most blatant of the offenders, bringing them back to where justice could be administered, and the guilty punished.
She glanced over then at Pat Reed and his men. They stood stock still as if again on sentry outside Buckingham Palace, beyond the park. They did not appear to have reacted to her words in any way?
Probably she had used too many long words for them to understand.
The Defence Minister then read out the charges, the allegation that anti-personnel mines had been used at Wesernitz in violation of government agreements with the international community, of cowardice in the face of the enemy, again at Wesernitz, and of failing or refusing to accept the surrender of men of the Russian airborne forces at Leipzig/Halle airport, a capital offence under the Geneva Convention’s rules of war.
The men did not budge or move an inch.
As neither the civil or military police could be trusted she gestured with a wave to the smoking man with a radio. He crushed out the cigarette against the memorial to the Guards dead of the previous two world wars, and spoke into his radio. Two hundred members of T5S emerged from out of concealment inside St James Park, armed with riot batons and walking forward across Horse Guards Road en masse to disarm and arrest the 1st Battalion.
The man on the extreme left was the first soldier any of the T5S contractors reached, but he was not quaking in fear, he was grinning. The contractor grasped the barrel of the soldier’s rifle and attempted to wrest it from him, but Colour Sergeant Osgood was not a man to give anything up easily unless he was of a mind to. At that point it dawned upon the man before Oz that none of these men were wearing berets as they had been briefed would be the case, their heads were encased in Kevlar and their faces were painted for war. The glint of light off the belt of mixed link on a GPMG at the next soldiers feet had him realise that all the weapons had magazines attached, the tanks were buttoned up with the crews still inside and the soldier whose rifle he gripped was now openly laughing at him.