Free Soldier Of The Queen by Bernard O'Mahoney Page A

British
    Army, but his intention was to get an up-to-date military training and then return home to bayonet some commie kaffirs.
    The army barmies would spend most of their time asking: "What do you want to be? Which regiment do you want to be in?" Some of the more crazed ones were desperate to join the Paras. I would tell them there was no way anyone could get me to jump out of a perfectly good aeroplane unless it was going to crash. At that time I had not grasped the meaning of regiments. I just thought we were all in the army and that was that. Alan explained the regimental system and told me he was going to join his father's Scottish regiment. He suggested I went with him, but my experiences in Scotland had left me with a jaundiced view of the Scots. I said: "I ain't going in no fucking jock regiment." So he suggested - because of my Irish background — that I joined an Irish one. He added: "Then you can be a war-dodger as well." I didn't know what he meant. He explained there was a policy not to send Irish regiments to serve in Northern Ireland.
    My mind had been so focussed on avoiding prison that I had not until that point properly considered the most unpleasant implication of joining the army, namely, that I might have to serve in the North. Alan's suggestion of how I could dodge the war struck me as excellent. I asked him if there was an Irish tank regiment. He said there was: it was called the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards. Towards the end of the selection process I was interviewed and asked which regiment I wanted to join. I told them I felt drawn to the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards. They asked me why. I said: "Because my parents are Irish."
    From Sutton Coldfield I was sent to start my seven weeks of basic training with the Royal Armoured Corps in the
    Yorkshire garrison town of Catterick. A childhood of verbal and physical abuse had prepared me well for the training regime. Indeed, some days I used to feel my childhood was being repeated as pantomime farce and, unlike most of my fellow recruits, I found a lot of the extreme behaviour extremely funny. None of the instructors ever talked normally: they barked, shouted or screamed every instruction and, perhaps through fear that you hadn't heard them, would often supplement their words with punches, slaps or kicks.
    My pre-existing prejudices against Scots became intensified by my encounters with the instructors, many of whom were Scottish. There was one small-arms instructor, in particular, whom we nicknamed McPsycho. He was about 6ft 1, broad-shouldered, muscular and intimidating - a real Action Man. Even his eyes moved. He lived in a state of unceasing rage, at times even frothing at the mouth, like a rabid dog that had just had its bone stolen. You dared not commit a misdemeanour on the firing range. If your weapon jammed or you fired after he had ordered you to stop or you failed in some way to follow the correct procedure he would bear down upon you, ranting hysterically, spit falling from his mouth or bubbling on his lips. The man was a health hazard. As you lay on the ground facing the targets he would stand on your back and shout about fucking idiots who did not want to listen. Then he would say something like: "Maybe they don't want to listen because their lives are so miserable they'd sooner be dead. They'd rather be buried underground so people could walk over them." At this point he would walk on the spot on the wrongdoer's back. Then as he squeezed almost the last breath from his victim's lungs he would scream: "Is your life so fucking miserable you want to die?"
    " No, corporal."
    " Then listen! Fucking listen!"
    He would also throw handfuls of gravel or dirt at those he thought were not paying attention. You never walked anywhere with him, you always ran. If he was not alongside you shouting insults, he would be behind you kicking your arse - especially on the forced marches. They called them marches, but you spent most of the five