First Man In: Leading from the Front. Ant Middleton
and correct outside at 6 a.m., kit on, bergen packed, water bottle filled all the way up. All the craphats were lined up in formation on a small patch of concrete that was being used as a makeshift parade square. In front of us stood a lance corporal who looked as wide as he was tall.
‘To join this squadron you’ve got to be the best of the best,’ he said. ‘Every fucker wants to get into 9 Para Squadron, and they want to get in for a reason.’
My gaze drifted to his maroon beret. I felt my body tense in anticipation of the extreme exertion I was about to put it through.
‘So if any of you new lads have tipped up here today with the idea that we’re about to accept any old shit, you’re sorely mistaken. We will begin with a basic fitness test. We’ll be doing a mile-and-a-half run and you’d better fucking keep up.’
A run? This was perfect. My legs fizzed with energy. I was a pent-up racehorse. All I wanted to do was launch into the run and show this guy what I had.
‘But before we begin, water bottles,’ he said. ‘Let’s see ’em. Come on. Open ’em up.’
We did as he asked, removing the caps and lifting the bottles up gingerly for inspection, making sure we didn’t spill a drop. I could hear him going up the line as he checked each one, ‘Put it away … put it away … put it away …’ Then he got to me. He stopped. He stooped. He peered into my bottle. He grimaced. He smelled of soap and fury. ‘What. The. Fuck. Is. That?’
My eyes flickered to my bottle.
‘I don’t understand, Corporal.’
‘Why is your fucking bottle not full to the brim?’
I glanced down at it again, just to make sure I wasn’t going mad.
‘It is full, Corporal.’
‘Get out there,’ he said, pointing to a central space on the parade square in front of everyone, ‘and pour that fucking water over your head.’
I stepped out, turned to face the lads and did as he asked. The water was absolutely freezing. It ran down my neck and back, trickling down the crack of my arse and hung heavily in the cotton of my T-shirt. All the guys were staring directly ahead of them, showing me the respect of not watching in an obvious way. All except Cranston, that is, who was eyeballing me throughout with a subtle but undeniably smug expression on his face.
‘Now go and fill it up to the brim,’ said the lance corporal.
I bolted back up the stairs to the accommodation, the saturated material of my T-shirt slapping against my skin, and ran the bottle under the tap again. I made sure not to panic, to take my time, and to make sure it was absolutely as full as it could be. No more than forty seconds later I was back out in front of the lance corporal on the parade square again.
‘Middleton!’ he shouted. ‘Are you fucking stupid or are you fucking deaf? I said full to the brim.’
It was full. It was touching the brim. It really was. There was literally no way I could get it any fuller.
‘I don’t understand, Corporal.’
‘Get out there and pour it over your fucking head.’
I poured the water over my head again, trying to avoid Cranston’s shithawk squint. What the hell was going on? Why was I being singled out? How had I highlighted myself? I took a guess that the lance corporal checked my records. Maybe he’d seen how well I’d done at Pirbright and was putting me in my place. Or what if it was worse than that? What if he was trying to break me?
‘Now fill it up to the brim,’ he said.
I ran up the stairs again. Painstakingly, I made sure every last drop of water entered the bottle and, with the care of a master watchmaker, gently fastened the lid.
Forty seconds later: ‘Are you deaf or fucking stupid? Pour it over your fucking head.’
When I’d tipped four full bottles of freezing water over me and somehow managed not to show one glimmer of distress, he finally relented.
‘Will one of you craphats show this dickhead how it’s done?’
That evening one of the lads demonstrated the proper technique. You had to fill a bath with water, fully submerge the bottle, bang it to get all the bubbles out, then put the lid on in the bath, with the bottle still underwater. That was the only way you could get it filled up to his standards. And that wasn’t all. When the lance corporal came round to inspect it, you had to squeeze the bottle a little bit so the level came right up to the brim. Everybody knew how it was done except me.
I couldn’t believe that Cranston hadn’t told me this the night before, and then had rolled around in every second of my humiliation like a pig in shit. But, I told myself, at least the lance corporal hadn’t been singling me out. On the contrary, he was teaching me something that I’ve never since forgotten. It’s the attention to detail that’s important, even with something that seems so irrelevant as having your water touching the bottle’s brim. On the battlefield, those last two sips might be the ones that save your life. I’ve carried that lesson through my career. If you fuck up the small things, it leads to a big fucking disaster.
But this wasn’t much help to me during our Basic Fitness Test that morning. By the time I finally started out on the first mile-and-a-half run I had four bottles of freezing water hanging in my hair and clothes, and was wet, cold and humiliated. I realised right then that I could either allow what had happened to eat away at me or I could use it. Rather than trying to squash the anger, I let it grow. It became an energy. With every stride I visualised Cranston’s smug look, turning his animosity and betrayal into a battery that powered me. This, I knew instinctively, was the best revenge I could have possibly taken.
Despite the events of that morning I managed to come in second. Cranston, meanwhile, had finished somewhere near the back. At the end of a hard morning’s PT, we filed in for lunch. As ever, I sat alone on the corner of a table with a beaker of water and my rice and fish. Over my shoulder I could hear some of the boys talking to Cranston about me. ‘That Ant’s a fit lad,’ someone said. I couldn’t make out what he came back with, but I ate the rest of my meal happily. It wouldn’t be long until I’d be far away from that loser, earning my maroon beret up at Catterick. No doubt he’d be RTU’d before long and I’d never see him again.
After lunch it was time for another run, but this time with weighted bergens on our backs. They call it ‘tabbing’ – Tactical Advance to Battle. We had eight miles to cover with the forty-pound bergens we’d packed the night before using appropriate kit, a combination of our sleeping bag, mess tins, rations – anything we’d actually take into the field as a serving Para. At the allotted time we reported to the lance corporal, all lined up in formation once again with our bergens between our feet. On one side of him was a duty recruit with a set of scales. Spine straight and chin up, I watched the lance corporal going round, lifting up the bergens one by one and weighing them. He and his partner had arranged themselves so only they could see the result on the scales. This was no accident. It meant each one of us was shitting ourselves until the moment we were nodded through.
It was all I could do not to break out into a huge smile when Cranston’s bergen came in a pound under. ‘Go and get a rock,’ the lance corporal told him. He pointed to a particularly large specimen beneath a tree in a small patch of greenery on the other side of the road. As Cranston waddled back with it, I realised it must have added at least ten pounds to his bergen. Soon it was my turn. As I watched them lift my bergen onto the scales, I noticed Cranston was showing as much interest in the result as I was. A thought flitted through my head – maybe he’s tampered with it. For the longest two seconds, the lance corporal didn’t say anything. ‘All right, put it on your back,’ he said, finally. Thank God for that.
Then, the second our bergens had all been weighed, it began. ‘Follow me!’ shouted the lance corporal. With that, he and the duty recruit set off. And when I say ‘set off’ I mean, boom, they were gone, as if on rockets, out of the parade square,