Where To Start?
As a nipper, the only thing I ever wanted to do was join the army. It seemed the only way to escape the fate of most of the rest of my generation in the North East of going down the pit and being a miner.

So I joined the army and hated it. I had, and still have, an inbuilt inability to respond to authority.

"Right lads. We're going to run 10 miles across this moor and crawl through a swamp" says our Rodney (officer)

"Why?" says me. "It's February, it's fucking freezing and you want me to crawl through a swamp when there's a perfectly good road that goes around it - you're off your trolley"

Rodney and sarge go postal, I go to the guardhouse and am severely beasted for two weeks. It was after that that I decided that the army wasn't for me and spent the next few months trying to get out. That wasn't as easy as the recruiting guys told me. Legally, as I was under 18, they had to let me out on demand. Practically, as I had very high scores on my test they did their damdest to keep me in as they had me pegged as a technician and they didn't have many of them.

They claimed that they couldn't find certain forms that needed to be signed before letting me out. They put all sorts of barriers in my way and they constantly badgered me to change my mind and stay in.

Eventually I got sick of this and decided that if they couldn't find my records then I wasn't in the army anyway and fucked off home. AWOL is the technical term. After a few days the military police turned up and escorted me back to base and locked me up again. Then they tried to make me do lots of totally pointless tasks as punishment. Amongst them was:

Brushing up all the gravel on the parade ground into a big pile and then taking it by wheelbarrow to the shower block and washing it clean before spreading it back on the parade ground.

Digging out the rifle range's sandpits and separating out all of the spent ammo.

Clearing out the officers pond by standing waste deep in freezing water and dragging out the shit on the bottom with a rake.

And similar tasks.

Eventually I lost it and told them to go fuck themselves and refused to soldier. I sat in my wee cell in the guard room and swore at anyone who tried to make me do anything. After a few days of this they seemed to realise that I wasn't going to change my mind and knuckle down to army life and the miraculously found my records and, after a lot of form filling, let me out.

Childhood ambitions? Fuck 'em.....

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Sat 31 Mar 2007, 11:44, Reply)