I joined the British Army as a ‘boy soldier’ at the age of sixteen in 1968. Some thirty-nine years later I was head of a United Nations team tasked to remove ‘soldiers’ of a similar age from the ranks of the Maoist army at the end of the civil war in Nepal. While my friends at the grammar school I had just left were enjoying their final two years of education, I was part of a hard regime which was ‘beasted’ from before dawn until well after normal people would have gone to sleep.
Most of the instructors who guided us through those embryonic days of our military service were experienced soldiers, well-skilled in passing on their knowledge, but there were the exceptions. The last post-Second World War conscripts had left the British Army in 1963 and in 1968 the odd instructor still relied on harsh bullying from this era to guide their charges.
I have few fond memories of those exacting days, except for the times, every three months, when we were given the opportunity to take part in adventurous activities. I canoed, climbed and went on a parachute course, but it was my experience at the Army Outward Bound School that was to have the most long-term effect. In those days we were graded on the course and I was fortunate enough to be given a rarely awarded ‘A’ grade, which was to have an impact on my career. It certainly helped to counteract the report I received at the end of my time as a boy soldier, which to some extent reflected my response to an ogre of an instructor. At some stage during most weeks of my last term, I appeared for a disciplinary interview in front of my company commander, on a trumped-up charge made by a particular bully of an instructor.
I knew a lot about the weapons of the British Infantry when I became an ‘adult’ soldier in 1970, but I knew very little about life outside of the army. I was naïve and rightfully failed a selection process to become an army officer, and this led to disillusionment with my chosen career. It wasn’t, however, a case of giving a month’s notice. Having ‘signed on’ for a number of years, the only way to get out of the system – and even this took many months – was to purchase a discharge and the army made sure that this was a very expensive option.
I transferred to an air despatch unit at Thorney Island on the south coast of England. This was the start of four very happy years, during which I changed from a disillusioned teenager into an ambitious adult. The unit was tasked with delivering supplies and equipment by parachute to forces around the world, and also with providing support during civilian emergencies, such as the distribution of food during the famine which hit Nepal in 1973 – a task I sadly missed.
In the early 1970s Britain’s army was focused on operations in Northern Ireland, a necessary security role, but somewhat separated from the type of soldiering I dreamed of being involved in when I joined the army. The enemy could have been anyone who you passed on the streets of Belfast, a city hardly different from any other part of the United Kingdom. The extreme verbal abuse – which would have offended a sailor in Nelson’s navy from the mouths of children not old enough to go to school – through to elderly people older than my grandparents, was a sad reflection of the depth of hatred which existed in post-war twentieth century Britain. It would be years before I would experience a similar level of hatred in the war in the former Yugoslavia.
One of the tasks of 55 Air Despatch Squadron was to support Britain’s Special Forces, and in the early 1970s the opportunity to be attached to an SAS squadron during the war in Oman’s southern province of Dhofar was as emotionally exciting at one end of the spectrum as soldiering in Northern Ireland was emotionally depressing at the other end. I first went to Dhofar in 1971 when our crew of four was attached to G Squadron of the SAS. Our arrival was delayed because the enemy was firing at the airfield at Salalah, but we got down eventually after the guns defending the airfield located and destroyed the enemy.
This was Britain’s secret war, unpublicised by the government of the day, fought against the tribes of the Dhofar province who had been encouraged to rebel by a Maoist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf. It was so secret that when two SAS soldiers were shot and evacuated to Sharjah, where they died, we were tasked to load the coffins, ‘camouflaged’ by a surrounding crate and fly with them to Bahrain, where I last saw them as they were trundled, like any other piece of cargo, on a forklift from the aircraft to the hangar.
I returned to Dhofar in 1973 attached to B Squadron 22 SAS. By this stage of the campaign the SAS, and the local forces they led, had established bases across the mountains bordering the coast of southern Oman. This part of the world suffers from the ‘Khareef’, a seasonal monsoon which starts in June and lasts for some weeks. This weather system causes the mountains to be covered in cloud down to ground level for much of the time, which prevents daily supply flights to the small bases in the mountains. For a large part of the time I was located at a base called White City, which was usually reached by an easy thirty-minute flight in normal weather. During the Khareef it took two long days to get there, first on a flight over the mountains into the desert, then in a convoy led by vehicles designed to detonate mines, and protected by guns and overflying jet aircraft and, lastly, as part of a heavily armed foot patrol through thick fog with the potential for ambush at any time.
Our position was commanded by Fred Marifono, one of several Fijians in the SAS, and a giant of a man in both body and personality. A year before, two of these Fijians, ‘Laba’ Labalaba and ‘Tak’ Takavesi had displayed great courage at the Battle of Mirbat when a large enemy force attacked the coastal town. Nine SAS soldiers were largely responsible for holding off an enemy force numbering hundreds until being reinforced by G Squadron who had just arrived in Oman to take over from B Squadron. At the height of the battle Laba had single-handedly loaded and fired a vintage World War Two artillery piece. After Laba was wounded Tak volunteered to move hundreds of metres to the gun to support his friend. Together they continued to fire the gun at point blank range, until Laba eventually received a fatal wound. Propped up against sandbags and having been shot through the shoulder and stomach, Tak continued to fire his rifle at the enemy. For his part in the action Tak was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal and Laba was mentioned in despatches – many of his comrades believe this should have been a very well-deserved Victoria Cross.
A year to the day after the battle I was based at Mirbat, where I was responsible for the airfield operations. Having been soundly defeated a year before, the enemy didn’t reappear, but as the anniversary dawned I was struck by an emotionally charged visualisation of the great feat of arms which had taken place a year before on that July day in 1972.
I had decided to make the army my career, which was a significant change from my period of disillusionment some four years before, and I applied again to become an officer. While waiting to attend the Commissions Board I was posted as an instructor to the Joint Services Mountain Training Centre, which was based on the windswept west coast of Wales. It was partly a result of my performance at my Outward Bound course in 1969, and of my participation the year before in the annual joint British/Italian mountaineering exercise in the Italian Alps, that I was able to secure this job. Every year a group of British army climbers would spend two weeks in the mountains of Wales or Scotland undergoing a tough selection process to decide who would then go on to spend three weeks climbing in the Alps with the Italian Alpini (mountain regiment).
As a keen climber this was a fabulous opportunity to spend weeks at the army’s expense doing what I did most weekends at my own expense – it was a no-brainer. I had previously taken part as a relative Alpine novice in 1972, but in 1974 I was back as a climbing group leader. The Alpini were superb instructors and we were given their best to work with. Two of our instructors, Virginio Epis and Claudio Benedetti, were particularly note-worthy having become, in 1973, the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth climbers to reach the summit of Everest, and it was this experience to climb with such outstanding mountaineers that moved my interest in climbing up another gear. It was also my first experience of just how fragile life in the mountains could be. I had led a steep but straightforward ascent on hard snow when the second climber, who I was belaying from above, slipped just short of my stance. I watched with horror as he fell down the slope, very concerned that I wouldn’t be able to stop him falling and even more concerned about what would then happen to me because I wasn’t overly confident about my belay. I soon had my concerns answered as my belay gave way and I rocketed out into space and then tumbled downwards before coming to an abrupt stop some twenty-five metres down the slope, overlooking a series of deep crevasses. The number three on the rope, who had been belaying from below, was fortunately a very experienced Alpini climbing instructor, whose strength and skill certainly saved us from serious injury, or worse.
Interestingly, there was a link between the 1973 and 1996 Everest seasons. In 1973 the Italians had used a Hercules aircraft to fly a helicopter into Kathmandu which they subsequently used to supply their expedition up to Camp 2 in the Western Cwm. During a rescue mission on 17 April the helicopter crashed, fortunately without loss of life, and its remains stayed in the Western Cwm until it was recovered in 2009. The next time a helicopter landed in the Western Cwm was twenty-three years later, in 1996.
During my time as an air despatcher I had spent my free weekends climbing on the cliffs near Swanage in Dorset or on the crags of Snowdonia, and to now be able to do this full-time and get paid for it was more than I could have wished for. All instructors had to be at least sergeants in rank and in one of the strange ambiguities of the British forces, my records showed that at the age of twenty-one I was a substantive lance-corporal, acting paid corporal and a local acting sergeant all at the same time.
It wasn’t all about canoeing, rock-climbing and hill-walking in the Welsh mountains. The centre still ran the occasional outward bound course for boy soldiers. These lasted three weeks and although it could be the middle of winter, on the first day of the course and on the last day of the course all of the instructors had to run the mile to the beach at dawn with their groups, where they all had to submerge themselves fully in the Irish Sea before running the mile back to camp before breakfast. The students had to do this every day and, besides the first and last day of the course, only the duty instructor had to accompany the students on the other days. Oh how I hated the experience – if only the students knew what was going on behind my cheerful expression when it was my turn to lead them to the beach. I rarely slept the night before each brutally cold plunge and I have had an aversion to cold water ever since.
It was during my time at the centre that I met and became a friend of Peter Boardman, one of the greatest mountaineers of his generation. I was planning to climb with another instructor in Alaska and sought advice from Peter Boardman, who at the time was the national officer at the British Mountaineering Council. In 1974 Peter and his climbing partner Roger O’Donovan had made the first ascent of south face of Mount Dan Beard, which was also the second ascent of the mountain. Pete had a generous personality and was always unassuming – seemingly embarrassed by the fame caused by his brilliance on a mountain. In September 1975 at the age of twenty-four he became, after Doug Scott and Dougal Haston, the third British climber to reach the summit of Everest, when he climbed the south-west face of the mountain with Pertemba Sherpa, who was also to become a close friend of mine in future years. Mick Burke also reached the summit on that outstandingly technical expedition, but sadly died on the way down. Of the other four who made it to the top, two more died in mountain accidents during the next eight years. Dougal Haston was killed in an avalanche on 17 January 1977, while skiing close to Leysin in Switzerland, where he was director of the International School of Mountaineering. My friend Pete Boardman took over as director of the school until he too died in the mountains on 17 May 1982, when he and his climbing partner Joe Tasker perished while attempting to climb the north-east ridge of Everest.
In April 1975 my plans to climb in Alaska were cancelled when I entered the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst for the start of what was then a six-month course to become an officer. Sandhurst was as tough as it was fair. All the instructors were carefully chosen to play their part in turning raw material into what we euphemistically called a ‘chappie’. We called the warrant officers and non-commissioned officers by their rank and they called us ‘sir’. Given that warrant officers were also addressed as ‘sir’ it did lead to some strange conversations between themselves and the cadets, but, as the traditional explanation goes, the difference between the two was when a cadet called a warrant officer ‘sir’, he meant it.
There were generally two types of cadets on the Standard Military Course, those who had already been in the army for some time and those who were fresh from school. In the first few weeks the old military hands had a significant advantage as those new to the military learned to accept its discipline, to polish their boots to a high gloss and to press their trousers to achieve a razor-sharp crease. This advantage, however, was eroded as the two groups progressed to learning the skills needed to command groups of soldiers, which was readily picked up by the often more intelligent former schoolboys than by those with previous military experience, who had to change from their previous ways of soldiering.
Sandhurst accepted overseas cadets for training by charging ‘fees’ to their governments. Many came to be schooled for future royal duties as leaders of their nations rather than to be turned into soldiers. Had they been British, many would have been sacked from the course at a very early stage, but Britain’s need to retain good working diplomatic ties with certain governments and the additional income meant that many completely incompetent overseas cadets finished the course. I recall one afternoon when we were due to take part in a particularly tough cross-country competition: an hour before the start a Rolls Royce turned up with embassy staff to snatch a ‘prince’ away for duties at the embassy, to save him losing face by failing to complete the competition course.
I was sponsored to go to Sandhurst by the Parachute Regiment, but during my time there I became impressed by the soldiering skills of the Gurkhas, who were used to demonstrate military tactics as well as play the part of the enemy in exercises. When it came to the part of the course where we applied to join regiments, the Gurkhas became my first choice.
For me there was a huge contrast between the thought applied to training boy soldiers, and the science applied to training officers at Sandhurst. The training of the former in the late 1960s was often unnecessarily brutish and lacked finesse which ignited my rebellious side, while the latter built on lessons learned over 300 years of producing officers, and was an environment in which I thrived. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was awarded the Sword of Honour at the end of my course, the first former boy soldier to gain this prize, but it was, and still is, a double-edged accolade. On arrival in your regiment you are more closely watched and more is expected of you, when all you want to do is get on with learning the trade of being an officer.
The first task on joining 2nd King Edward VII’s Own Gurkha Rifles was to learn the language, without which it would be difficult to command Gurkhas in peacetime, and almost impossible in war, when the need to communicate clear understandable commands in the heat of battle would be essential. The second task was to transfer from my working class background to a way of life which had changed little since the days of the Raj in India. Many of my fellow officers had ancestors who had served in the regiment well back into the nineteenth century in battles which impacted on the growth of the British Empire, while mine were toiling in the rigging of Royal Navy ships or trying to crawl out from the slums of cities in the British midlands. Most of my new colleagues looked beyond family background; there were some who could not, but this didn’t overly bother me. I was in the Gurkhas, in Hong Kong, and a new and exciting way of life lay ahead.