Guest post by ajlr
Rearguard Action
A long time ago, I was one of 76 people (ranging in age from 18 to 32) who started out on a five-month officer cadet training course in the RAF. The object of those in charge of tormenting us over the five months was to see whether we could make it to the end of the course still sane and (possibly) worthy of receiving the Queen’s Commission. Two weeks of the course, roughly half-way through, involved capering in energetic and hair-raising fashion round an area of England known as the Thetford Training Area (which is in Norfolk, mostly) – or ‘out in the bundu’ in the Services’ patois of the time.
Being in camp meant that all the theories about leadership that were being pumped into us in a bid to refine the character traits we had supposedly been selected for were put to rigorous test. Every day, one person in each group (we were in ‘flights’ of 8 – 10 people, with all of us eight females on the course in one flight together) was ‘offered’ the opportunity to take on the leadership role and get the group through the various cross-country obstacle courses that had been set up by those in charge. My turn duly came round after a couple of days and, once we had all clambered out of the back of the three-ton lorry that dropped the groups off in their different areas each day, I was taken aside and given our task. We were to take charge of a fire-cart* and somehow – crossing two small rivers (which meant dismantling it and putting it back together again after getting the bits across via rope pulleys and pine-pole tripods we would construct) and finding our way by map references – get the 10 miles to our rendezvous by a given time. I should add that this was November (and a chilly one), we were averaging about four hours sleep each night, and time for looking after ourselves in the sense of washing, eating, care of clothes, etc, was minimal. My task was to lead, inspire and motivate my colleagues in this task.
Goodness, I hear you murmur, what fun it must have been…
We had known that camp was coming, of course. We had eagerly gathered scraps of knowledge from those on the courses ahead of us and had devised what seemed like a small and cunning plan to help with one tiny element of it – we females (for some reason we didn’t mention this to our fellow men) had laid in a large stock of disposable paper underpants and were going to wear these under the usual attire of long johns and combat kit, thus removing one small washing chore and allowing ourselves, oooh, probably a whole six minutes extra sleep each day (we were only allowed to take three days-worth of clean clothes with us, heaven knows why…). Paper underpants, for those who weren’t around in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, were tough, reasonably durable, and we’d tried them out for comfort beforehand. Can you see where this story is going, yet?
Anyway, back to the bundu… I will draw a merciful veil over the pain, grief and anguish of that long day. We got the accursed fire-cart across the countryside, swearing under our breath at the observers allocated to us (one of the training officers, and our own Flight’s sergeant for comfort). I tried at every opportunity to appear keen, decisive, and a tower of strength to my team, sometimes scanning the horizon thoughtfully, with a hand shading the fierce tropical glare of the English November sun from my steely blue eyes… We made pulleys of marvellous complexity that (mostly) worked. We only dropped one wheel, in one river, and retrieved it at the cost of a modest outlay in blood, skin, and dampness. We got – eventually – to the end point and my team collapsed into our three-tonner. I was drawn aside and told that my/our performance had been ‘quite reasonable’.
On the way to that rendezvous there were – you will probably not be surprised to hear – one or two of those moments where life comes into startling focus. I remember the joy of realising that the moment in one wood where we had turned right on my say-so alone was, in fact, where the map and compass subsequently indicated we were correct to do so. I recollect the agony of forcing my (fit, 18-year old) body along the final couple of miles in the evening dark when all I wanted to do was lie down and die (in a suitably ladylike manner, of course). And I will never forget the gravely courteous tone of voice (‘just hold still a moment, ma’am’) and composed facial expression of our sergeant as he rescued me from the embrace of the previously unnoticed barbed wire strand running through the top of a hedge, at the top of a very steep bank leading up from the second river. I had tried to straddle over the hedge, you see, with the result that I had to be unhooked in a place I….couldn’t see for myself. The other members of my group were – curse them all – rolling on the ground on the other side of the river in a silent agony of mirth, where I’d left them when I went to reconnoitre the next stage. (I lost points for that – should have sent someone else rather than done it myself.)
When we got back into camp that night and headed for the showers, I think we’d all forgotten about the precise nature of our clothing layers. It had not been at the forefront of anyone’s mind during a day like the one we’d just had. There were shrieks of dismayed laughter from all of the shower stalls as we then peeled away the layers, to find that we were each wearing only three loops of elastic (waist + one for each leg) and a lot of paper fluff under the long johns. For heavens sake, why did the manufacturers not put on the packet that those underpants hadn’t been tested in rivers! They were supposed to be hard-wearing, for goodness’ sake! And that fluff took a lot of removing…
We were more circumspect for the remaining few days – enquiring each evening if the following day’s action was likely to include rivers and making alternative plans if it did (don’t ask). But I have never felt tempted to try paper undergarments again, no matter the supposed convenience.
* * *
* A fire-cart was a small two-wheeled, wooden vehicle, standing about two feet high at the axle and with handles at the front on the end of a six-foot carriage pole.
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