Q: What do you do for a living?
Me. I’m semi-retired but work part time in a bookshop.
Q: Semi-retired! What did you do before?
Me. I was in the Army.
Q: What bit?
Me. I joined The Light Infantry (my local regiment) at 16 yrs old then transferred to The Army Air Corps when I was 22 and left at 45.
Q: What did you do in The Army Air Corps?
Me. I was an Apache Helicopter Pilot.
Q: Somewhat bewilderedly “that’s a bit different”
I’ve lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had like that.
I count myself fortunate that, unlike many of today’s young people I always knew exactly what I wanted to do in life. For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a soldier and I joined the Army straight from school at 16. To this day Mum says she doesn’t know how she and Dad signed the papers and let me go.
As the father of an 18- and 21-year-old, I know exactly what she means.
Books have always been part of my life and I cannot remember a time that I wasn’t reading or being read to. I dreamt of being Danny Champion of the World or Fantastic Mr Fox outwitting Boggis, Bunce and Bean. I can vividly remember reading Lord of the Rings for the first time and being completely mesmerised by the worlds created by Tolkein.
When I was 11 or 12, I graduated to my dad’s bookcase where I discovered the likes of Wilbur Smith and his great African epics and was thrilled by tales of pioneers, diamond mines, Zulus and war..
As an aside I attended a ceremony on Saturday to unveil a new gravestone from a soldier who had fought the Zulus at Rorke’s Drift.
Next in line was Sven Hassel (reputed to have been a German soldier during World War 2) who wrote a series of books about a ragged mob of criminal soldiers in a penal battalion. I couldn’t read them fast enough
Still in school I was reading the likes of Colin Forbes and Gerald Seymour (who I had the pleasure of meeting many years later when we held a book event with him). Seymour’s research and attention to detail was and remains meticulous. The Journeyman Tailor resonated particularly, as it came out shortly after a tour of Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles, I had been posted there straight from basic training. It remains one of my favourite books.
When people ask me where I’ve served, I usually say something along the lines of “wherever we’ve (the British Army) been making mischief for the last 30 Years”. Slightly flippant but basically accurate.
Unsurprisingly, I have a keen interest in military history and historical fiction and my second posting only served to help fuel this. I was incredibly fortunate to be posted to West Berlin (as it was then) and was there to see the Wall come down and for Germany to be unified. A close friend of mine sparked a diplomatic incident, having been filmed playing an electric guitar on top of the Wall the night it fell, whilst still in uniform!
Len Deighton’s Bernard Samson Spy series was written just before and, during my time in Berlin. The fact I was there when I read them made them even more enjoyable. Thankfully I had gravitated from imagining I was the main character as I had with Roald Dahl but did enjoy knowing first-hand what it was like to travel from East to West Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie. I can also confirm Deighton’s accurate description of the incredible eye-opening Berlin nightlife.
Keep checking back for Ben’s next instalment..