Life as an Army nurse. Part 7

The army nurse sees the absurd side of Army life on a posting to St Kilda, and then has a go at officer training.

Part 7

My tour of duty in Belize was coming to an end and I had kept up a faithful correspondence with my true love and was looking forward to seeing her again. However, she had in the meantime been posted to Northern Ireland and, unbeknownst to me, met a rather dashing RAF pilot, so I had ceased to be flavour of the month. Such is the pain of young love.

I arrived back in my unit in the middle of winter with a suntan and, on reporting to the RSM, was told not to bother unpacking as Matron wanted to see me. I marched in, saluted, and sure enough recognised the very same Matron. She enquired whether I had enjoyed my tour and very sweetly asked me to go and see the chief clerk. Upon doing so I was presented with another set of orders to St Kilda and was soon renewing my acquaintance with the sheep.

This tour proved to be far more eventful. St Kilda is an international first aid station and we were often called upon to treat fishermen from all nations who had lost fingers, cut themselves or broken their legs, and the time passed swiftly.

One of the things I love so much about the Army is the dark sense of humour that soldiers have. An example springs to mind where only through an act of God two soldiers avoided being killed. The winds on St Kilda can at times be deadly, and not just to the sheep. A Land Rover was going up from the base camp to the radar station when a gust of wind picked it up and threw it down a ravine, fortunately on the inland side. The two soldiers were badly shaken and sustained a few bruises, but all in all must have had charmed lives seeing the state of the Land Rover after it was pulled out of the ravine. Later that evening, in the time honoured tradition, the sergeant's mess adjourned to the Puffin Bar where, with great ceremony, the officer commanding deemed it necessary for good order and behaviour to court-martial these two soldiers for damaging Army property.

With due decorum the prosecution counsel was chosen, who just happened to be the RSM, and I was elected as defence counsel. The whole unit was present for the court martial and I offered a gallant and spirited defence against all the charges levelled at my men, such as driving without due care and attention, going out in bad weather, having a brain, being human, etc. Between each allegation there had to be the obligatory round of liquid sustenance in order to oil the wheels of justice. However, on the final charge I had no defence and my clients were found guilty. It was therefore entered on the record that soldier A and soldier B, whilst on Her Majesty's service on the sovereign island of St Kilda, did illegally fly a Land Rover without filing a flight plan to Benbecula Airport, this resulting in damage to Crown property and upset and stress to the local inhabitants, namely the sheep. One of the chief witnesses for the prosecution was a local ram of sour temper who was totally incomprehensible when presenting his evidence, which could have been due to the amount of beer he had drunk. I thought that I had defended the men well and that that would be the end of it, but that was not to be the case and I was myself court-martialled for being a QA with bollocks! Needless to say I was found guilty and a costly fine ensued.

This time on my return from St Kilda I had time to reflect on where I wanted to go with my career. The episodes of getting into trouble dating women of my own age with qualifications, who also happened to be officers, led me to think that perhaps I should become an officer myself. I applied to be considered for an Officer Cadetship and, much to my surprise, everybody agreed that this was a very sound course of action. My first hurdle was pre-selection with the Royal Corps of Transport Officer Training Wing, and this involved a weekend of tests of all sorts, aptitude, educational and physical.

To help with the educational tests I became an avid reader of the Times, Time Magazine and The Guardian, as current affairs were an important area, one which I enjoyed, and I found great satisfaction in the debates relating to foreign policy and global policy both military and civilian. The bane of my life, however, was still spelling and maths.

However, I passed all the selection tests with just two tasks remaining to be completed, the first a map-reading exercise over the Brecon Beacons and the second a team run on the para assault course. By this stage my map reading was pretty good and I had no problems with running over the Beacons. Several of the group were not so fortunate as they were schoolboys fresh out of A-levels, and I must admit that I became frustrated with their inability to focus on the task at hand.

The first stage of the team assault course was running above the ground. I fell off a rope, caught it again and then smacked into a brick wall, fracturing the big toe of my left foot. The pain was intense and the fracture was confirmed in my own casualty unit. The officer in charge of insisted that in order to be considered as a pass it was obligatory for me to complete the team assault course on the next day. A fractured big toe is such an injury that every step reminds you that it's there, and the only way that I was going to be able to complete that course was not to be able to feel the toe. So I applied a ring block anaesthetic which would dull the pain for approximately thirty minutes.

We won that team exercise despite the fact that the officer had placed in the team most of the young men that I had had such difficulty with in the Brecon Beacons. The only way to win was the team way, and at times I was throwing men over the wall and being pulled up by my colleagues.

The grading of the course was "A", meaning fit for immediate regular commissions board selection; "B" - needs grooming for commissions board selection; "C" - come back later; and "D" - don't call us because we certainly won't call you. I was awarded a "B". I was so excited that I had actually achieved something that was so important to me.

Being a potential officer cadet means that you wear white tabs on your shoulder, marking you out as a POC. These white tabs seemed to act as red rags to a bull for the NCOs, who seemed to take a malicious delight and satisfaction in making the life of a POC as miserable as possible. Perhaps this is an essential part of an officer's selection process, but my peers back at the hospital were not at all impressed; in fact, some of the people who I had assumed were my friends turned their backs on me.

This taught me the lesson that in the last analysis you are on your own and you answer to yourself. As long as you do your best with the right intentions in your heart, you can do no better.

© J K Adler-Collins 2008