First Man In: Leading from the Front. Ant Middleton
Had I disappointed her?
Back at the barracks the next morning it was more of the same. Out once again with the heavy bergen, eight miles of raw pain, all the way up Craphat Hill, dragging myself across the hellish Seven Sisters, pushing myself through what they called the ‘Hole in the Wall’, which involved crawling through a pit of stinking mud that was full of smashed glass bottles that civilians would throw into it, then squeezing through a narrow gap in a brick wall. As I slogged, I stewed over my nan’s reaction. I knew she had my best interests at heart, but I also felt that she thought I was better than that. What should I do? I couldn’t just chant a magic spell and put ten fucking inches on my legs.
I came last again, that day. It was my worst time ever. As I was catching my breath, alone by the wagon, one of the lance corporals beckoned me over. ‘Middleton, come here,’ he said. I staggered over to where he was standing. ‘Listen, lad, you’ve got the drive and will, nobody can take that away from you. It’s why you’re still here. But you’re too small. You’re not like the others. You haven’t got the build.’ There was nothing I could say to that but, ‘OK, Corporal.’
As the wagon bounced us back towards the barracks, I watched the mud track and military fencing pass by outside the canopy. I finally decided that that was it. They were obviously going to RTU me soon, and I might as well go out with dignity and save them the trouble. I imagined Cranston’s expression when he found out, that nasty grin. ‘You’re not like the others,’ the lance corporal had said. Not like Cranston? Not as good as him? I found myself filling with a sense of angry defiance. And then something odd happened. The angrier I felt, the more the pain in my back seemed to fade away. I remembered how I’d got through that first Basic Fitness Test by using my hatred of him as a source of energy. I focused on him, hard. I felt pumped. Violent. By the time the wagon pulled up, I was almost ready to ask the driver to turn around and take me back to Craphat Hill, so I could do the tab again.
Just by chance, another new intake arrived two days later. One of the boys happened to be slightly overweight, and this meant that the limelight, finally, was taken off me. It also meant that I didn’t come in last. As well as using my rage at Cranston to fire me up, I allowed myself to use someone else’s struggle as my strength. With each tab, from thereon in, I slowly became better and better. That improvement was one hundred per cent psychological. I started climbing the ladder again, getting faster and faster, closer and closer to the front. And before I knew it, there were probably two or three of us going on the next course, and it seemed clear I was going to be one of them.
That experience gave me a lesson I’ve never forgotten, and it’s one I still use regularly. Your enemy is fuel. He is energy. Hatred can be the most powerful motivator there is. In life you’ll always come across jealous and negative people, or people who simply don’t believe in you. Every single one of them is a Duracell battery. Plug them in. Give yourself that edge by using their own electricity against them. Success isn’t only the most satisfying form of revenge – it’s the only positive one there is.
But using your enemies like this can also be dangerous. I only truly learned this during my time in the Royal Marines, many years after my endless struggles up Craphat Hill. It was just before lunch on a sunny day in July, and I’d returned from a session on Woodbury Common military training area. I was outside my accommodation block removing the twigs, leaves and grass from my gillie suit, and was about to go back inside when a young guy I’d been chatting to a few days previously in the mess hall passed by.
‘Hey, Ant, did you hear about that Marine who died in Afghan?’ he said.
My heart thumped. ‘Who is it?’ I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t know. It’s going around the drill quarters. They’re planning the funeral back in the office. Right in the middle of it now. Didn’t get a name. I was wondering if you knew?’
‘No, mate. No idea.’
Once he’d left I paced as quickly as I could to the Sniper Troop office and knocked on his door.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ I said. ‘But I’ve just heard that one of the lads has caught it up in Afghanistan. Is it true?’
‘I can confirm that,’ he said.
‘Who is it?’
‘I can’t say any names, Middleton,’ he said. ‘We haven’t released the news to his family yet.’
‘Mate, please.’
There was a long silence.
‘What I can say,’ he eventually replied, ‘is that he liked to juggle.’
This was impossible. It was Lewis. He was a good friend. I’d got to know and trust him during my counter-terrorist sniper course, but everyone at Lympstone knew of him. He was unusually well-spoken, relentlessly positive and a bit kooky. It wouldn’t be unusual to see him walking through the accommodation blocks in rest periods practising his favourite hobby, which was juggling. Sometimes he’d be throwing sparkly balls around the air, sometimes knives. If you met Lewis in the street, you might guess that he was a lawyer or a kindly geography teacher. In fact, he was one of the most efficiently deadly men in the British services.
Of course, deaths like his were part of the deal. You heard about military people being killed in action all the time. But it was a shock to hear that one of our guys had caught it up. There was just something about being an operator that made you feel invincible. It sometimes felt as if we could dodge bullets. All I could do for the next few minutes was sit on the edge of my bed, looking at my phone. I wondered how it had happened. Enemy fire? An IED? A corrupt Afghan who’d been employed by the British military? There were plenty of stories of those flying about. Ten minutes later I stood up, brushed myself off and began preparing for the afternoon’s exercise. Because what else could I do?
Within the week, Lewis’s body had been repatriated. Ten days after I heard the news, I arrived at a huge, dark, stone cathedral for his funeral. He was sent off with full military honours, including a ten-gun salute and a ceremonial flyover by two Hawk jets after the service. I was invited to join the burial party too, about an hour and a half’s drive from the cathedral, and be one of the pall bearers. There were only ten of us there, including the family. I watched his wife and two daughters, aged eight and ten, stand beside the dark, damp, black hole in the ground. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head – their husband and dad was going in there. They read poems and managed to somehow hold themselves together. I was struck not only by their courage but by the endless depth of their love for their man who was now gone.
When the time came to finally say goodbye, the coffin was lifted into the air by ropes. I removed the metal stands from beneath it and guided it over the pit. Then, slowly, it was lowered in. Lewis’s family stepped forward to throw roses into the ground. They tossed in handfuls of dirt that clattered on top of the coffin. That was when it became too much. The daughters broke, sobbing desperately, their hands pressed to their faces, tears leaking out from between pale fingers. It was hard to know how they’d ever learn to live without him. Maybe they wouldn’t. Their despair was such that it felt like a fog that had escaped from their hearts and was enveloping all of us.
What affected me most was the bravery of Lewis’s wife, who steadfastly held it together for the sake of her children. When the ceremony was over, I approached her.
‘Lewis was an honourable man,’ I said. ‘If there’s anything that I or any of the lads can do, we’re always here.’
She gazed back at me emptily. I could tell she wasn’t really present, that the reality of what she was going through was simply so unbelievable that some protective instinct in her mind had removed her from the moment. Glassy eyed, she gave that generic answer, ‘Thank you, thank you.’
I was just about to move on when something stopped me.
‘I want you to know that Lewis’s death is not going to go unanswered,’ I said.
With that, she clicked into focus and looked back at me directly. Suddenly present, she said