Shaun Clarke - Heroes of the South Atlantic

Ricketts, as he often did these days, was groaning and punching at thin air as he awoke from his nightmare. He soon realized that in fact he had been woken up by a mate, SAS Corporal Paddy Clarke, who was excitedly jabbing his finger at the TV in the barracks, saying, ‘Sit up, Ricketts!’ Everyone called him by his surname, or ‘Sarge’. ‘Look! A bunch of Royal Marines have been forced to surrender in…’

Gumboot started his weekend leave with a quick fuck with some bint he’d picked up in King’s Cross. As he sweated on her passive body, propping himself up on his outspread hands, he was thinking about how the break-up of his marriage had reduced him to this.

Of course, he knew what had caused it – the good old SAS. His wife, Linda, had been torn between fear of what could befall him and anger at his going away so often. What she had hated, Gumboot loved – both the danger and the travelling – so what happened had to happen eventually – and finally did. Linda turned to another man, shacked up with him, and when Gumboot returned from Belfast, where Lampton had bought it, his wife and kids were missing from his home in Barnstaple, Devon, though a note had been left on the kitchen table, kindly telling him why.

Linda had been having an affair with a local farmer, James Brody, and had decided to move in with him ‘for the sake of the children’. She wanted a husband at home, Linda had written in her neat hand, preferably one not slated to be killed or, worse, crippled for life. Sorry, Gumboot, goodbye.

Bloody slag, Gumboot thought with satisfying vindictiveness, as he laboured on the whore stretched out below him. They’re all the same, if you ask me. He knew that wasn’t true, but it made him feel good saying it – just as it had made him feel good when, in a drunken stupor, he had gone to Brody’s imposing farmhouse, called him to the door, beat the shit out of him while Linda howled in protest, and then returned for another bout in the local pub. He had drunk a lot after that, mooning about his empty home, and was delighted to be called back to the Regiment and posted to Belfast.

Most of the men hated Belfast, but Gumboot had found his salvation there. Even the banshee wails of contemptuous Falls Road hags had helped to distract him from his sorrows. He had loved being in bandit country, away from Devon and Linda’s betrayal – loved it even after Lampton bought it with three shots to the head. Blood all over the fucking place. Lampton dragged out by his ankles, down the stairs of the housing estate as Ricketts, his best friend, released a howl of grief and rage, then raced on ahead to find the killer.

No such luck. That estate was a labyrinth. The kid with the gun was protected by the housewives and ‘dickers’ – the gangs of kids who monitored the movements of the security forces and passed on the word. Ricketts had been distraught. Lots of nightmares after that. But Gumboot, though angry at Lampton’s death, still liked it in Belfast.

Fighting was better than sex or booze, though few would admit it. In fact, this whore was pretty good and Gumboot was almost there, which prompted him to think of other things and delay his climax.

Sex was fine, but not enough. He needed to be back with the Regiment. Even when not engaged in a specific operation, he preferred it at the SAS ‘basha’ in Hereford, cut off from the normal world. A basha is the place where an SAS man is based at any given time – whether it be his barracks or a makeshift shelter erected in action.

Gumboot lived for the SAS. Life with so-called ‘normal’ people was boring and offered no satisfaction. Gumboot liked his bit of action, the danger and excitement, the thunder of the guns and the reek of cordite, and so he constantly yearned to be overseas, risking life and limb.

Even right now, as he climaxed, Gumboot was yearning for that. He groaned, convulsed and then relaxed. The tart patted his spine in a friendly manner, then glanced at her watch.

‘You’ve still got twenty minutes,’ she informed him.

‘I’m amazed,’ Gumboot said.

Rolling off her, he lit a cigarette and thoughtfully blew a couple of smoke rings. Then, realizing that he had nothing more to say to the woman, he switched on the radio beside the bed.

‘…islands,’ a BBC newsreader was announcing grimly, ‘were invaded earlier today by…’

‘Fucking great,’ Gumboot muttered.

Corporal ‘Jock’ McGregor and troopers ‘Taff’ Burgess and Andrew Winston were having their regular Friday-night piss-up in their favourite pub in Redhill, Hereford, not far from the ‘Kremlin’ – the Intelligence Section – and their barracks. Jock was short, lean and red-faced, Taff was of medium height, broad-chested and pale-faced, and Andrew, who towered over his two mates, was as black as pitch.

Well into his third pint, Jock was staring up at Andrew, thinking what a big bastard he was, and recalling that if anyone called him ‘Andy’ they were asking for trouble. Born in Brixton, to a white man from the area and a black mother from Barbados, Andrew felt at home in England, but even more so with the Regiment. After transferring to the SAS from the Royal Engineers, he had soon become renowned for his pride and fierce temper. He was also widely respected for the bravery and skill he had shown during the SAS strikes against rebel strongholds on Defa and Shershitti, in Oman, in the mid-1970s.

Taff was a big man too, though not as tall as Andrew, and his smile, when he wasn’t annoyed, was as sweet as a child’s. On the other hand, when he was riled, he’d take the whole room apart without thinking twice. A good trooper, though, always reliable in a tight spot, and like Andrew one with plenty of experience of the kind that mattered most. Not bad for a Welshman.

‘Now me,’ Jock was saying, although it was not what he was thinking, ‘I say that while it’s nice to have a wee break, a long break is misery. Men like us, we’re not cut out for all this peace. What we need is some action.’

‘Oman,’ Andrew said, nodding vigorously, deep in thought. ‘Damn it, man, I loved it there. That desert was livin’ poetry, boys, and that’s what I’m into.’

‘He even writes it,’ Taff said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand and grinning slyly. ‘I think it’s a lot of shite he writes, but it keeps him from mischief.’

Jock and Andrew laughed. It was true enough, after all. Inside Andrew’s huge, badly scarred body a fine poet was struggling to get out. Even natural killers like Andrew, thought Jock, have their sensitive side.

‘I just do it for fun,’ Andrew explained. ‘They’re poems about the Regiment. Some day I’m gonna put them in a book and give the book to the Imperial War Museum. Then I’ll die happy.’

Human nature, Jock thought, studying his friend’s ebony face and huge body. There’s a tender wee soul hidden somewhere in there. Though at times, like when you’re on an op with him, you’d never believe it, so savage the bastard turns.

‘I’ll die happy,’ Jock said, ‘if they just find us something proper to do, instead of more pointless field exercises. I don’t mind a “sickener” occasionally, but now we’re just killing time.’

‘Right,’ Taff said, swigging his extra-strength beer, licking his ever-thirsty lips. They pull us out of bloody Belfast, leaving only ten behind, and now they don’t know what to do except keep us busy with bullshit. That’s the only point of those bloody exercises – it’s just keepin’ us busy.’

‘Also keeping us fit,’ Jock said, automatically stretching himself, recalling the endless repeats of Sickeners One and Two – the four-mile runs, cross-graining the Brecons – running from summit to summit across the Brecon Beacons – setting up primitive base camps on the same freezing hills, the horrors of the entrail ditch, lengthy swims in OGs – olive-green battle dress – weapons and explosives training, map-reading, language and initiative tests, parachute jumps, combat and survival, escape and evasion – in fact, endless repeats of everything they had endured during Initial Selection and its subsequent five months of murderous tests – all just because they had no war to fight and had to be kept on form.