Free An Officer and a Gentlewoman by Heloise Goodley

turned around in a crashing melee.
    Left, right. Left, right. Left, right.
    Then the complexities of a salute on the march: ‘SALUTE.’
    Up, two, three, four, down, swing. Poking out eyes and slapping the person next to you as your right arm shot up to your forehead.
    Followed by a hopping: ‘CHANGE STEP.’
    And another. ‘CHANGE STEP.’
    And another. ‘CHANGE STEP.’
    And another. Until we were strewn across the parade square, sweating in the frigid January air, legs sore and heels bloodied from the rasping of leather shoes, begging for the relief of ‘HALT’.
    The most feared of drill paces however was the ‘mark time’. This was an entirely pointless punishment, which had us all marching on the spot. Thighs raised parallel to the ground, going up, down, up, down, up, down, legs burning with pain as the lactic acid built up. Expending energy yet going nowhere. Stamp, stamp, stamp. On the spot. Eyes forward, chin up, mouth shut. Stamp, stamp, stamp. Steam would rise from us in the chilly January air as we willed it to stop.
    As we were put through our paces, SSgt Cox would strut up and down shouting commands and picking out errors: a dipped chin, bent arms, crooked legs, someone out of step, or someone out of time. With the eyes of a hawk she could spot them all and then would dive in and humiliate the offender. Which far too often was me.
    ‘Head up, Miss Goodley. Eyes front. You don’t need to look at your feet, they’re still there. Get the back of your neck touching your collar.’
    ‘What are you doing, Miss Goodley? You lunatic. Get in step with the rest of the platoon.’
    ‘Come on, Miss Goodley. Left. I said left. All those qualifications and university degree and you can’t tell left from right.’
    On the drill square SSgt Cox wasn’t the only demon in our lives. With the entire Imjin Company being ragged around changing step and marking time, the company sergeant major(CSM) would join the madness and make his presence felt. Company Sergeant Major Porter was a pocket-sized pugilist. A soldier at the top of his game, he was intensely proficient and had years of experience of training clumsy-footed soldiers to march. Shrouded in a long heavy overcoat, pace stick swinging in hand he would peacock around the fringes of the squad scouting for errors and leaping in to correct them.
    One morning, as I unwittingly performed a Prussian goosestep, at the halt he swooped in, darting across the parade square as if he owned it, halting sharply in front of me. He swung his pace stick into a hover, a hair’s breadth from the tip of my nose, and forced his scrotum through a mangle as he released the most high-pitched squeal.
    ‘What the fuck was that, Miss Goodley? If you can’t sort out your shagging legs, I’m going break them both. Then I’ll ram this pace stick up your fucking nose and use it to flick you into the lake. You useless idiot.’
    I hated being this useless. As the spittle of his anger landed on my cheeks I felt my bottom lip curl. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run away from it all. I wanted to be anywhere but this godforsaken miserable wet parade square. I wanted my easy London life back.
     
    With drill over it was non-stop to lunch.
    Each meal time at Sandhurst involved a mass stampede to the dining hall to get to the front of the 270-man queue in order to make the most of the preciously brief time allocated for feeding. Manners and chivalry were forgotten, as people tore along the corridor to queue impatiently boot to boot, craning their necks to see what was available on the hotplate.
    The dining hall, known in the army as a ‘cookhouse’, was the largest room in the College and could comfortably accommodate over 300 people at the long dark oak tables, seated on tall-backed chairs worn smooth from years of bottoms. Around the room, the walls were covered with deep scarlet glazed tiles and adornedwith plates of armour, swords and portraits of royalty. Chandeliers hung from the elevated