The Crown thrives by dint of its massive military. How eager they are to sink their bloody hooks in you, to fight for Queen and Country in some far off land to secure “national interests”. And they hook you good, they do.
I was but a wee lad by the time I knew I wanted to join. My Da had fought in the Big One, the Pacific War, back in his day. I had wanted to be just like him. Something happened though, as somethings are wont to do.
My Da killed himself on April 11th, 1970. I wasn’t home, I didn’t find him; hell, I didn’t even have a bloody clue as to why for ten more years. But by then it was too late. Not only was the Royal British Army the only thing I could think about, it was my only escape.
I’d like to say that up until then we lived well, but I know that we really didn’t. I’d like to say that up until then, we all loved each other like a family should, but I know that wasn’t true either. These are childhood memories, tainted by a child’s innocence.
After da offed himself, it was me and my ma and my sister Eileen living in a box in Huyton. Ma tried her best to take care of us, but she wasn’t very good at working in the factories nearby or in any of the stores further away. Da had killed himself, so his pension had stopped coming. This didn’t leave much else for Ma to do. Of course, we didn’t know at the time the bread she brought home was earned from bearing other men’s weight throughout the night.
A couple of years later I found out the truth. It was, as these sorts of revelations are often made, in the company of other young men of my age who began to tease me mercilessly about my Ma, the whore. I took a good beating, but gave just as well that day. One of the boys left the field with less than half of his right ear left on his head. I spat the rest out as I watched he and his two friends skulk away with glances threatening a beating to come.
Someone had been watching me during that fight. I hadn’t known it at the time, but an old friend of my Da’s from the Royal Irish Rangers had been keeping an eye on me. He followed me on my long walk home that night, limping and bruised but triumphant against superior numbers. I never once noticed him.
When I got home that night, a new fellow had taken up residence with Ma and Eileen and me. He was obviously a drunk, and he dressed much better than anyone I’d seen in Huyton even in their Sunday best in some time. He told me he was there to take care of my Ma, and by extension we wee ones as well. His name was Pete Holcroft.
He was basically Ma’s pimp from then on, and not a kind one at that. Eileen and I learned quickly to heed his words else his belt would find us. He beat Ma on the occasion she held out a farthing from him. How I hated the man. He was one more reason to dream of leaving what my life had become, and one more reason to never want to return.
Archibald Lector was my benefactor, my savior. My Da’s old chum, he decided to make himself known about then. Over the course of the next year, he and I became friends once he made his introductions. He regaled me with tales of glory from The Big One, and of him and my Da’s partnership during those times. I ran minor errands for him in exchange for these stories.
His stories filled my head with ideas of glory and heroism, and of the honour and bravery of the Royal Irish Rangers. So I pushed myself from then on to feats of physical endurance and strength, honing my body with one goal in mind; to become myself a Royal Irish Ranger. He saw what I was doing, and encouraged it. He also encouraged my growing distance from my Ma and Eileen, and from Pete Holcroft.
By the time I was eighteen, I was ready. I immediately applied to the Royal British Army, in hopes of joining the Royal Irish Rangers. I left my home in Huyton, my Ma, my sister, my abusive common-law stepfather and even Archibald Lector. I was ready to become a man, to serve Queen and Country, and more than anything else, to escape from my home.
It was two years before I found myself in the unit I had longed to join. My Ranger training lasted eight long months, and almost immediately I was deployed to Korea in an operation which was highly secretive and completely deniable. I killed my first man there, at 500 metres. That definitely takes the sting out of it, I’ll tell you.
Five years later, with numerous decorations, sniper qualifications beyond any that had come before me, and more mission objectives completed than I have fingers to count, I found myself on a leave. A leave which I had been told I could return home to attend my Ma’s funeral.
I cut a fine sight in my dress uniform that day, or so everyone told me. Eileen cried on my shoulder. Pete Holcroft was there, but he had a strange hollow look in his eyes. Had he truly loved my Ma, even as he had whored her out nightly and beat her when she had spent “his” money on toys for Eileen or a new shirt for me? I left the funeral with little to be said.
I had wanted better for Eileen, but I learned on my leave she had left home over a year before and had begun work in a factory. She could care for herself. Besides which, I had my duty to perform.
I gave her a place to write me, and at first the letters came weekly. They taught me of the woman she was becoming, and in return I revealed very little to her of the man I had become. They slowed to monthly, as I knew they would; she had her own life to lead, and hers was not to worry for me for I was protecting her and everyone in our great Empire.
I never thought of it any other way. At least, not until that fateful day when finally there was a mission in which everything did not go as was planned. The mission cost the lives of several of the friends I had made, good men devoted to their country. The survivors, I among them, found that it cost their freedom when we were imprisoned by Portuguese forces for a brief time before our rescue. And it cost me my arm.
I was laid up in a Royal Army Hospital in North Africa for almost a year, healing from my injuries at the hands of the Portuguese and learning to cope with my loss. I was told I’d receive a cybernaughtic replacement for my arm, which spurred hopeful thoughts of returning to duty. It took me almost as long to learn to use that mechanical dreadnought of an arm with four hinged joints as what passed for fingers once it was attached.
But no return to duty was given to me. Instead, I received in a brief ceremony an honourable discharge from the Royal British Army, my new replacement arm, and a pension. The pension was rather generous for a Royal Irish Ranger, and no sooner was I notified of its extent was I certain that this was hush money from the powers that be.
They’ll hook you good, they will. And once those hooks get in you, they’ll use you till you are no more use to them. They’ll use you until you know too much about the way they operate. And then they discard you like a broken toy.
I met my friends Ambrose Lewis of the 4th Mechanized Division of the Royal British Army, Meriwether Thomas of the Corp of Royal Engineers, and Winsel Pande of the Brigade of Gurkhas, in the RA Hospital. Ambrose had lost his legs in the field when his commanding officer had ordered him to run their transport through what had been a minefield at one time in Korea; apparently, not all of the mines had been found after all. Meri had crushed both of his hands in an engineering accident; he only ever told us that it had been in an effort to play a practical joke on one of his commanders that he’d placed himself in such jeopardy in the first place. Winsel had lost his eyes from shrapnel when Indian terrorists had tried to blow up the Colonel he had been protecting as part of a guard detail.
We spent a lot of time together, musing over our collective experiences and our newfound sense of abandonment. The others often reminisced fondly of home, and had much to say whereas I rarely contributed. They were all very curious, from the day we met all the way to our shared boat ride home, as to why I had no real desire to return home.
I never told them the truth.
We stood on the docks of the Mersey on that cold and wet November day of 1984 as we arrived in The Great Metropolis, soldiers tossed aside, and bid one another a fond farewell, swearing to meet up again and knowing deep inside that we probably wouldn’t. I shouldered my rucksack, and prepared for my long walk home.
None of us knew then what fate, cruel mistress she is, had in store for us.
