Killing Time at Catterick Read online

  Killing Time at Catterick

  ‘Reading it was like being back in the mob’

  Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, who served four months in jail for refusing to return to duty in Afghanistan. He told ten thousand demonstrators in Trafalgar Square that he thought the war was neither legal nor in Britain’s interests.

  Daring, immediate, painful, powerful. It’s the stuff we’ve got to confront in order to figure out what is being done in our name. There’s no point in delivering up sanitized stuff. It won’t tell us anything.

  Michael Rosen

  Killing Time at Catterick is an important book about how we lure our young men into the armed forces, how we train them, how we treat them while they’re there and how we treat them when they come out. The occasional bits and pieces of bad behaviour that emerge on the news are, as always, the tip of the iceberg and this is a timely reminder than any organisation that trains people to be killers is going to have a dirty side - something which we all find it easy to forget when we want to go to war. If this is the kind of thing we visit on our own forces, it’s worth asking what kind of damage we’re inflicting on the many equally innocent people who get caught up in our military adventures abroad.

  Next time you see an ad on the TV suggesting the armed forces are like some kind of adventure playground for men, think again.

  Melvin Burgess

  It was a little like watching a car crash, horrifying but compulsive viewing.

  John Thompson, critic and legal draughtsman

  Reading this book gave me a feeling of inescapable immediacy. It’s so vivid and it really buttonholes you and the prose is so urgent and gripping. Envious. It’s bloody fantastic.

  Frank Cottrell Boyce

  Very powerful, very tough, people should know this stuff. Loved that you could make room for the joy of a great curry, amidst all the violence and the bullying. Thanks.

  Laurence Boswell, director/writer, Royal Shakespeare Co., West End, Broadway

  BRILLIANT. It’s one of the most startling, shocking, funny, tragic, and truly political books I’ve ever read about this country.

  Carl Grose, writer, director at Kneehigh Theatre, actor/writer for National Theatre and Radio 3 and Radio 4

  Other ebook titles by Jan Needle in Skinback Books

  For children:

  Albeson and the Germans by Jan Needle – a group of children are sucked into a world of violence. Featured on Radio 4

  My Mate Shofiq – exciting and uncompromising story of a dangerous friendship. Runner up for the Guardian Children’s Award

  For adults:

  Kicking Off – This new novel offers a unique perspective on the social ills of our country and an uncomfortable insight into the powder keg that is our prison system, all delivered at break neck speed with an uncompromising hardness that reflects the seriousness of the subject matter. The complex plot will keep you gripped and guessing – and thanking your lucky stars that this is fiction.

  Cally Phillips, indie ebook review

  Killing Time at Catterick – Nominated for the Orwell Prize, this book – originally published as The Skinback Fusiliers, by Unknown Soldier, with an afterword by the author – is a no holds barred look at the way the British Army treats some recruits.

  Also in Skinback Books:

  Grass Roots by Barry Purchese – an idealistic dad sets up a team for the duds and deadheads, then has to fight the demons of corruption. Bitterly funny book by one of Britain’s leading TV writers.

  Summertime Blues by Barry Purchese – 1959. Rock and Roll music is starting to take hold in England. Fifteen year old Jimmy Shine wants to dress up, jive around and go with girls, but no-one takes him seriously. Then Freddie Ricoba arrives from New Jersey and Jimmy’s life begins to change in ways he has only ever dreamed about.

  Killing Time at Catterick

  by

  Jan Needle

  Published by Skinback Books

  Copyright 2012 - Jan Needle

  Previously published as Skinback Fusiliers

  Cover design and layout by Matti Gardner

  [email protected]

  Learn more about the author at janneedle.com

  Read his blogs at Authors Electric

  Jan Needle has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Twelve Good Men and True

  One

  I know the meaning of a really bone night out, and it hit me there was a good one coming up when our corporal suggested we went out on the town to kick-start a few Pakis. It wouldn’t have been that unusual, I suppose, except it was about an hour after we’d had a mega bullshit talk on race relations. The major finished off with “be nice to Johnny Wog, it’s what the British Army do, it’s called building trust,” and it made me wonder if I’d made the right career choice. Better off as a shithouse cleaner, say. Better paid, in any case!

  The weird thing was, he wasn’t a Colonel Blimp-style crusty, although he did tend to talk like something off the films. He was quite young, and seemed quite friendly in a stuck up kind of way, but he was completely out of touch. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Johnny Wog. Embarrassing. What school do these wankers go to?

  The Lance Jack’s name was Martin, talking of race relations, and he was a Scouser, which meant he was a fully paid up hater anyway. He hated blacks (nignogs) and Asians (Pakis), and worst of all he hated cops – it came with the territory. In fact he hated everybody, really, except for other Scousers, it was like something in their mother’s milk, and if there hadn’t been any Asians in this one-horse town, he’d have chosen someone else to give a kicking to. But there were Asians, and they were Banglas, which meant the Asians in our crew could join in the battering as well, which was handy.

  The thing was, it was like at school. White kids beat up the Pakis, that was normal. Then the Paks beat up the Bangladeshis, and we all joined in to give the gippoes shit. In some schools black kids were in the mix, but we only had two in my dump, and they were ginormous. Even the teachers didn’t shit on them.

  When I say the Asians in our crew I mean just one, in actual fact, and I glanced across to see how he’d reacted to the corporal’s crack. His name was Shahid, and by one of those things you can never understand, he’d got to be my sort of mate. He was sort of lanky, sort of soft-skinned, and he had these big brown eyes that could have caused him lots of aggro in the army if he hadn’t been so hard. In the navy he’d have been rammed to death, if you get my drift. But he had this way of smiling at people he despised that really put them on the spot – because they didn’t know if he was being submissive or tekkin piss, and he had that look on now. Just to confirm it, like, he winked, on the side the corporal couldn’t see.

  “Well, you’ve got a problem there,” he said, with his funny little crooked smile. “There ain’t no Pakis in this town to kick. Tek it from me.”

  “Fuck off,” said Martin. His eyes were small and glittery, because he guessed he was being set up. “What you on about, you fairy? Place is fucking crawling with ’em. Fucking vermin.”

  “Ah,” said Shahid. “There you might be right. But I promise you they’re not from Pakistan. They’re Bangla men. A very different kettle.” He gave a little tiny pause. Timed to a millisecond. “That’s the problem, innit? We all look the same to a Scouser.”

  There were ten or twelve of us in the room, and we took the chance to have a little laugh at that. Martin didn’t mind because
he’d got his dig in first – he’d called Shahid a fairy – and he hadn’t kicked up about the basic proposition, which was to go out looking for a bit of white supremacy, when it boiled down to it. It would be a pretty craphole Friday evening if we didn’t have a fight – black, white or khaki – specially ’cause the billet they’d tipped us into was the pits. The so-called Naafi bar had one pool table and no Sky, and the lager you could tell was piss just by looking at it. In any case it was full of Paras, and you don’t mix with them, do you? If you want your face.

  “Banglas, is it?” Martin answered in the end. Dazzling Scouser wit coming up, you could tell it from a mile off. “I don’t care if they’re the wild men of Borneo. They live in this dump, so they deserve a kicking. Who’s in? Everybody? Gough?”

  We looked at Goughie then like a band of monkeys, like Mart had knew we would. Psychology he’d’ve called it if he could pronounce the word, but it wasn’t rocket science, trust me. Every unit’s got a Gough, and everybody looks at him, because to look at him is to give yourself a boost. Feeling down? Look at Goughie. Feeling clumsy, dozy, lost? There’s your man. Wondering if you’ve reached the bottom of the slide, if there’s nowhere further down to go? Well, you get my meaning.

  He didn’t have a first name, Johnnie Gough. Whoops – giveaway. He’d been older than most of the recruits when we started, maybe nineteen, maybe even twenty, and he was born to fail, it was writ all over him in letters ten foot high. He was tall, and pale, and spotty, and after the first few weeks he never spoke, unless a corporal or a sergeant made him, just to have a laugh. The best bet was he’d be a suicide, a Deepcut Diver. I shared with him up at camp in training. He used to cry himself to sleep.

  “Eh, Gough? Eh? Are you fucking deaf, or something? I said are you fucking deaf? Geddit?!”

  Goughie nodded. “Yes, Mart.”

  “Yes Mart what?”

  Gough blinked at him. The corporal sneered. “What, Mart?”

  “What Mart, yes Mart, what? Kick a Paki is what. Is that what you want to do, eh? Is it?”

  Gough blinked again. His spots stood out against the skin. There were small cuts on his face, from shaving. “Yes, Mart.”

  Mart crowed triumphantly.

  “So you’ll be on a charge then, won’t you, you racist twat? It’s against the law to kick a Paki till we get to fucking Helmand!”

  Shahid put in quietly: “He’s in the clear then, ain’t he? He’ll be kicking Banglas. You’re all right, Goughie. Panic over.”

  “Soft get,” the corporal told Shahid, but not with any poison in his voice. “You’ll get a reputation you will, Stanley, standing up for wankers. Goughie got you on a promise, has he?”

  Shahid just grinned, ignoring him (and the joke: Paki-Stan, geddit?) and everyone started sorting out their gear. We were on a course down in this barracks, half uniform, half coveralls, so it was a case of out of work clothes, shower, dress up in finery, stuff some scran down our necks, and wander. The fact we wouldn’t be in uniform meant nothing in a town like this – they were trained to instant recognition. If there was any slappers looking for a bit of beef-bayonet, there we were, and the local lads would keep well clear because we were mob-handed. The normal plan was get tanked, get laid, and find someone to batter who wasn’t in the Paras.

  It all went pretty well, up to a point. It was a right old dump to start with, and you had to work dead hard to get a buzz. It was way out in the country, see, but not the real country, like we were used to, hills and rocks and stuff like that, it was all green and rolling with piss-wet trees and woody stuff, on the edge of the training ranges. The barracks was just out of town, on a quiet leafy road, and it was raining, but we didn’t mind the walk, we didn’t have to. Back in Catterick it would have been taxis, or some lads who had cars, but here the taxis wouldn’t pick up squaddies, on account of too much vomit, we’d been told, too much fucking off without paying. It was a pisstake really, I reckon: we had no trouble getting taxis other times. But it suited the landlord of the nearest pub, didn’t it? I mean, anyone who’s got a licence and a garden shed in falling distance of a barracks has died and gone to heaven. Simples.

  I was first up to the bar for my shout – me and Shahid – which was a trick I’d been trained up to by my sister, who’s done bar work since she was knee high to a turd. The landlord was a fat aggressive sort of bloke, and he didn’t bother with a smile.

  “Two pints of lager, please, mate.”

  “We don’t do lager.”

  I was gobsmacked. “You what?”

  “No call for it.”

  “Come on, Tiny! Get your finger out!” That was the corporal. Pissed off I’d got served first. Stirring it.

  “What d’you mean no call for it? There’s twelve of us here, we’re calling for...”

  A smile began to form.

  “You can always bugger off,” he said. “It’s only two miles to the next good pub.” Two lies in two seconds: not bad, eh? But while I was wondering how far to push it, Martie Martin took his chance. He elbowed me to one side, grinning at the landlord.

  “Four whiskies, mate, and make ’em big’uns, eh? For the grown-ups in this sorry fucking lot.”

  I got in second, though, that was something. Scotch for me and gin for Shahid, with a tonic (“Fucking hell, Stan – you really are a poof,” said Mart), so the rest decided they’d go exotic too. It was Pernod, Drambuie, Pernod AND Drambuie, rum and ginger wine, you name it, and the landlord raked the cash in with a happy Christian feeling in his heart. No smile, though, although his prices were sky high.

  If we’d had brains, if we’d had any common sense at all, we’d just have had the one, then gone on and found a proper place to have some fun in, wouldn’t we? But we didn’t. It was just one more, and just one more, and then one for the road. If we’d had brains we wouldn’t have been there in the first place. If we’d had brains we wouldn’t have been in the army, would we?

  Next stop the ’Stan, know what I mean, the fucking Sandpit? Next stop mopping up the shit the Yankies’ve laid out for us, the burned up babies, the blown up brides and grooms, the bits of hearts and minds they scatter round the place. They kicked us out of Sangin because our government starved us of the gear to do the job with, and next stop is catch the bullet. Corporal fucking Martie’s Volunteers. The Skinback Fusiliers…

  Two

  Next stop, in fact, turned out to be a lot of drink, a few taxi rides I don’t really remember, Martie Martin getting completely arseholed and pulling rank like there wan’t no tomorrow, and a little bit of sweet revenge. It cost a tooth or two, a drop of blood, a fair few swollen lips, but it was worth it. It was down to Shahid, too. It was Shahid’s big night out.

  It was the taxis started it. When Mart had had enough Grouse down his neck he got fed up of the Pub with No Beer, and tried to shift us out. He couldn’t get a cab for love or money, and the landlord wasn’t going to help clear out his only customers, was he? Then Shahid disappeared into the rain to use his mobile, and turned up two shagged out old Nissans, three times round the clock, with two shagged out old Bangla drivers who took all twelve of us, because the price was right. I could see the tarmac through the hole underneath my trainers, which was a good thing really. It let in enough air to blow the exhaust fumes and the farts away.

  “Christ, what a shitheap, couldn’t you do no better than this?” said Martie, with Scouser gratitude. “Ask him where the best place is. Booze and tarts, that’s all we want. It’s not a lot to ask, is it, you useless Paki twat?”

  The driver, a harmless sort of geriatric without a lot of teeth, glanced back with a big smile on his face.

  “Sorry, sir, I am a Muslim. I do not drink.”

  He and Shahid laughed out loud, then talked quietly and rapidly between themselves. Urdu or something, maybe, like the kids back at our school. Then Sha winked at the lance corporal.

  “The Southern Cross,” he said. “All tastes catered for. Best fucks, best fights, best fixes. And he’ll
tell me where we can go on to after, if you really want some trouble. The Bangla boot boys, where no white man dares to tread!”

  “Just fucking try me,” said Corporal Martin. You could see his chest and shoulders swelling. And his head. “Just let ’em fucking wait and see... Ask him! Go on! Ask him!”

  “I will,” said Shahid. “It’ll be a pleasure. He’ll want a big tip, though. He’ll be letting his own side down, won’t he? That must be worth a few.”

  “How much spare you got?” said Martie, punching Goughie in the ribs. “Come on, you tight cunt, it’s a fair point, ain’t it, la’! You’ll be my fucking friend for life.”

  It’s easy in the army if you know the rules. Poor Goughie did. He’d learned the hard way.

  As shit pubs in shit towns go, the Southern Cross was pretty normal for a shit night out, and at least the landlord knew what lager was. We did drinking, smoking, chatting up the local talent, dancing, shouting till your bloody voice went hoarse, you name it. Some of the totty looked half-willing in a dozy, empty Friday night sort of way, but I wasn’t in the mood to try it on. My mum – who shouldn’t know, as far as I can see – told me when I joined up that the uniform would have them flocking to me, and God knows why, it seems to work an’ all. She told me to be careful, and she blushed dead scarlet, and I thought of her one night when I was having some tart up against a wheelie bin, and it ran away from us. I thought of my mother and my sister, and I picked myself up and buggered off and left her lying there. She shouted something that I didn’t want to hear, and I got put on a charge next morning because I’d tore me keks. Yeah, mum was right. I should’ve been more careful, shouldn’t I?

  By the time Martie told us we were moving out, everyone had had enough and didn’t bother arguing. Our resident druggies, Josh Peters, Chas Hicks and Geordie George had scored thanks to Wasambu (Sambo – he was Ugandan) who homed in on anything illegal, didn’t use it, but always took a cut, while the booze fanatics Timmo Hawes and Big Dave Hughes had got their skinful along of Mart. Ashton, who was as black as Sambo but English and a total gash hound, led the charge towards the tarts, followed by Pete Bollocks Bowyer (more bollocks than brains), and Billy Simmonds, known as Billy ’Unt because he was one. Ashton was my mate, along with Shahid, and denied he was a gash hound through thick and thin, because he was engaged to a girl in Manchester who’d cut his balls off if she knew. To prove his purity, he’d settled for just a blow job round the back.