That night I relieved a flight lieutenant in the Regiment. He looked amused when I breezed in a few minutes before twenty-three hundred.
‘I heard you volunteered. You must have been out in the sun too long.’
‘The SWO advised me to get some time in as quickly as I could, and, with respect, there seems damn-all else for me to do.’
‘Camp Cinema?’
‘It’s turning out just about now, isn’t it? Besides, I saw them in Malta a month ago.’
Then he smiled, and held out his hand, ‘Just so. Sorry, I was being sarky: we don’t get many of Watson’s Wankers over here at this time of night.’
‘Is that what they call us?’
‘ ’fraid so. Can I take you over the maps before I go?’
The SWO clomped in a few minutes after my predecessor had left. The area was outside his direct realm of responsibility, so I did wonder what he was doing there. They obviously didn’t trust me to run the show on my own.
He shook hands, and looked down on me.
‘Good evening, sir: I thought I’d come and make the introductions, seeing as it’s your first night.’
‘You just didn’t trust me not to make a mess of it.’
He gave me that up-and-down look: I suppose that I could have been better turned out. ‘When did you last stand guard, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?’ He had me there.
‘I think that would have been at Padgate in 1942 – at the end of my induction weeks.’
One of the erks in the room sniggered, and Cox bit him like a rattlesnake. I’ve seen a rattler in action – in fact I was once rather fond of one – so I should know. Cox spun round and snarled, ‘What’s that, Hoskins?’
‘Nothing, SWO.’
‘See me tomorrow morning – 0830. I’ll find a cure for it. Understood?’
‘Yes, SWO.’
I have a piece of advice for you. Something I learned in the Forties. Never get between a Warrant Officer and his men. It’s not far removed from an act of suicide. So when he asked me, ‘Would you like me to show you the ropes, sir?’ I surrendered immediately.
‘Yes, please, Mr Cox. And shout at me if I’m too rusty.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.’
He had me strap on a .38 revolver, and drove me along my section of the perimeter in a jeep which had seen better days. Hoskins rode behind us with a Stirling on his lap and a miserable expression on his face. I reckoned he’d be polishing silverware in the Officers’ Mess by mid-morning. We were responsible for one side of the giant quadrilateral compound. Luckily it was one of the utilitarian wire fences I’d reconnoitred that afternoon. I wondered if anyone had seen me doing it and told Cox, and he’d made his deployment accordingly.
Apart from a full mile and a half of wire, I had a couple of two-man foot patrols, who met in the middle for a fag before they turned back, and two ramshackle observation posts. One of those was on top of a water tank, standing about twelve feet off the ground – it was supposed to cover a couple of stores buildings. I sat in a satellite guardhouse in touch with the outliers by a twenty-year-old radio telephone. Naturally, it was a useless piece of junk: because you wouldn’t send the British serviceman into a hostile country with decent equipment, would you? He might win a battle or something, and that would never do.
When I looked at the home receiver set – it was like a small, portable telephone switchboard – I could actually see the sharp blue flare of sparks from two of the wires at the back. They were continuously shorting across. I was surprised that the fucking thing hadn’t electrocuted someone.
Before he left me Cox pointed at it and said, ‘You can talk to your people on that if you like, sir, but you’ll find there’s massive interference, and you have to listen very sharply. It’s often difficult to make out what’s said. One of the squadron technical officers says it’s the atmospherics in this part of the world.’
After Cox left, Hoskins told me, ‘I wouldn’t touch it if I was you, sir. You get electric shocks off it all the time.’
I could hear the generator wheezing away outside: if the bloody system was connected to that they’d black the entire camp out one night.
‘That’s why you can’t hear what you’re saying to each other on the bloody thing. Do you want me to fix it for you?’
‘Can you, sir?’
‘Piece of piss.’
Hoskins visibly winced: I’d have to watch my language. He was a tall, gangly-looking man in his early twenties. He wore round wire-rimmed spectacles, and spoke with a plummy apologetic tone . . . you knew instinctively that he’d been a clumsy git all his life. He looked too old for a national serviceman. I remarked on that, and he replied, ‘I finished at university first. Then I had
