The Army nurse finds himself attacked by drunk soldiers in Germany and women at Greenham Common

Part 12

On my discharge from the hospital I was determined to get fit and continue with my career. My personal life had improved, for I had met a wonderful young lady, named Elizabeth, whose father I had nursed, who unfortunately died from a brain tumour. We married and set up home in Aldershot and I commuted to work in Windsor.

At this time I decided that I would retry for the Parachute Regiment and entered a serious training programme. During this training the Colonel asked me if I had considered volunteering for the SAS; I hadn't, but quickly did. I then spent months running around with a backpack, up and down my old friend Flagstaff Hill and across the Brecon Beacons. I became determined to get fit although the injury to my calf continued to cause me problems. However, I was interviewed for the post of SRN attached to the SAS and was successful.

I then expected to be posted to SAS Headquarters in Hereford. However, in an interview with the Colonel he asked if there was anything that I was unsure about, and I replied that my knowledge of dentistry, in particular infections and extractions, was nil, and he advised me to go to the Dental Corps Headquarters and ask if I could sit in on some training lectures. This I did, and on my arrival at the Dental Corps I presented my case and was locked in a room with another sergeant while telephone calls were made. What I hadn't appreciated was that by making this move I had compromised my posting to Hereford, which was duly cancelled, and I was posted to BMH Rintel (Germany). This is probably the only time in my military career when I became really angry with the system, for in my eyes I had only done as I was instructed. However, in some ways the system had indeed, in the great scheme of things, done me a favour.

BMH Rintel is a beautiful building, surrounded by a forest which has a backdrop of spectacular hills. The hospital itself was quite busy and I was the charge nurse on a medical ward doubling up for casualty. The unit was very tight knit, and had a great rugby team. I was soon back playing rugby and I had qualified as a tug-of-war coach and had moderate success with our hospital team.

The unit RSM then decided that it would be a good idea to have a senior NCO trained as a cell operator and controller for NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) and I was sent back to England. At this time my wife was expecting and was particularly unimpressed, as the baby would be due on or about the time I completed my course. However, I attended the course and really enjoyed it, achieving a good pass.

This level of training gave me insights to a whole darker side of warfare. We saw evidence of the effects of nerve gas, biological agents and chemicals. It was a pretty tough course and one of the most enjoyable parts was blowing things up and setting explosive training devices to simulate gas attacks. This culminated in the letting off of an ABS (atomic bomb simulator) which is a really impressive device!

On my return to the unit, NBC became an obsession. I organised drills and training and took great delight in gassing the female officers to see if their gas mask containers actually contained gas masks and not make-up, spare tights and sanitary towels. The frightening aspect of this was that nobody took the threat seriously and, even though we had some of the best NBC equipment, unless it fitted and had been tested, most of our command structure would have become casualties. To say that the Army did a good job in training me can be evidenced by the following example.

The warning for a gas or nuclear attack varied by location; a gas attack was identified by the banging of metal on metal and shouting "Gas, gas, gas". The warning of a possible nuclear attack was the wailing of a siren which would peak and fall away and repeat itself. Imagine then this scene: In the middle of the night I was asleep in my quarters, not having been in Germany long, when the sirens went off. A split second after the first siren my wife was woken from her sleep by me sticking a gas mask on her head as I scrambled for my equipment, which I always kept ready with my bug-out kit. In record time I was in my suit and heading down the hill through a sleeping German village, convinced that we were under attack. I arrived breathless in Casualty to be confronted by a sleepy desk lance corporal who was wondering what this apparition was that had just appeared in front of him. "What's the drill?" I asked. The lance corporal looked at me and said "Are you okay sergeant?" "Of course I am", I said, "but didn't you hear the siren?" to which he replied, "that's the local call-out for the part-time fire brigade." It was a bit difficult to extract myself, in full NBC combat kit, from the hospital and get back up the hill without being noticed, as I shamefacedly walked back to my quarters. Needless to say, I was not allowed to forget this incident for the rest of my career.

Alcohol was cheap in Germany and was the cause of several incidents, both on and off the camp. Young soldiers would often drink themselves into trouble, and an incident that marred my belief in justice, particularly military justice, unfolded as follows. Late one night, while I was at home, a commotion broke out outside. The quarters were in blocks of four, and one senior NCO was allocated to each block. Two soldiers were fighting on the floor below, and a next-door neighbour and I went to investigate. The soldiers turned on us both and we had to restrain them. Having successfully done this, I went back into my house, expecting the incident to be over. However, one of the soldiers, as drunks often do, decided that he would take matters further and kicked my door down. In the ensuing brawl, my nose was broken and my wife was hit. The soldier, having gone berserk, was eventually restrained and was duly arrested by the Military Police. Three days later my wife went into premature labour and my son was born. At his delivery it was found that, being premature, his lungs were not functioning properly and he suffered from respiratory distress syndrome. It was touch and go whether he would survive, but thanks to the dedication and skill of the SCABU (sick children and babies unit) he survived.

The case against the two soldiers was referred for court martial, written statements were taken and the military justice machine ground on. When the Colonel of the hospital reviewed the case, he decided that there was no case to answer for court martial and that the soldiers had served sufficient time in jail. Both soldiers proceeded to taunt me and my wife, in fact one was so unbalanced that it was necessary to request that the Army should do something. They did nothing and, one year after I was posted back, this very same soldier murdered his wife.

At this time, fate once again took a hand and the wound in my right leg became really bad, causing me serious problems. Despite my continuous efforts to maintain my fitness, something just wasn't right. While playing a game of rugby, I wasn't quick enough and got hit by two players going in different directions and my right knee popped. When the surgeon was examining me for what he thought was a torn cartilage, he noticed that the scar on my leg was looking unhealthy and decided to do a scar revision. The operation was performed but unfortunately I developed a deep haematoma (blood clot) which became infected. This led to a sinus which discharged a lot of pus. The wound would close and I would develop a deep tissue abscess. I recovered enough to be fit for work, but the underlying problem was still there.

I was then posted back to the Cambridge Military Hospital. Upon my return I once again met my old friend the Matron and once again was on my travels, being posted as medical cover to the Greenham Common cruise missile base.

At Greenham Common, the Army had the thankless task of guarding a US base from our own people. The Americans provided little or no support and we lived in huts surrounded by mud and miles of fences. The women who were demonstrating had that right, and a whole new face of human behaviour presented itself. After a period of time we became expert at predicting when trouble would occur. It was usually preceded by the arrival of International Greenpeace coaches and TV cameras.

Sometimes feelings ran high and, instead of just demonstrating and chanting, the women would force entry by cutting the fence, and our job was to stop them. A crowd turns into a mob at a very noticeable level of noise, the singing stops and a sort of primitive growl erupts as the mass surges forward. The defences in the wire were quite complex, yet somehow these women, supposedly untrained, could cut S razor wire in a few seconds and storm the gap. I doubt if soldiers could have done it any better, and I am certain that some of these women were far from being ordinary housewives. However, I noticed that the soldiers were reluctant to touch the women and would move back, but their NCOs and the Ministry of Defence police would push them forward to contain the women.

The pattern of confrontation was that the women who lived by the fence would throw shit and abuse at us, the soldiers, who were bored, cold and fed up, would taunt the women, and so the cycle continued.

The situation changed when we started to take casualties. Some of the women sprayed mace, threw pepper and stuck us with knitting needles. Once the soldiers saw their comrades going down, the situation deteriorated and women started to fall. In one incident, I went to the assistance of a child who was caught in the wire, and the next minute my face was a mass of blood as I was hit by a brick. In the next fifteen minutes or so that it took to regain control, I fought with every ounce of my being just to avoid going under this mass of women. I suppose I forgot that there was a TV camera pointing in my direction.

At the end of my tour I went back to the hospital and was called in by the Matron and asked about my experience. I said little and she said that she had something she wanted me to see. She played a video and there on the video was this soldier with a red cross on his arm thumping the daylights out of a bunch of women. Well, as you might have guessed, I was posted straight back to St Kilda!

© J K Adler-Collins 2008