Hellfire. Ed Macy

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       ARRESTED AND TESTED

      I’d joined the Paras in 1984 and thought I’d found my niche in life. Being accepted by this elite regiment had been my sliding-doors moment. The accident had slammed the doors firmly back in my face.

      I was born and raised in the north-east, but, as a kid, constantly found myself in trouble. My parents split up when I was very young. Against my will I remained with my mother as did my younger brother. He was even more out of control than me and ended up in a secure institution; a boarding school for the ‘socially challenged’ they called it back then. One day he was with us, the next he was gone. He was the closest thing I had-the only real constant in my life-and I was angry that ‘they’, whoever they were, had taken him from me.

      I didn’t know at the time that my mother couldn’t cope. Looking back, though, I wasn’t surprised. We were like the Bash Street Kids on crack, my brother and I; trouble through and through.

      When I wasn’t skipping school, I was fighting the playground bullies and generally causing mayhem. It was only by a complete fluke that I managed to avoid a correctional institution. I had good reason to be grateful. However hard I thought I was, I’d seen the movie Scum, starring a young Ray Winstone, and didn’t like the look of it one little bit. A Residential School for Boys, Special School, Borstal or whatever you want to call these places-it would have killed me. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill my brother.

      As soon as I could leave school, I did, and without a qualification to my name.

      Finally back in the company of my father, I took a job as an engineering apprentice at a small workshop ten miles from home. The high point of my apprenticeship was turning, milling and drilling the portholes for Britain’s first iron-hulled warship. HMS Warrior was under restoration in Hartlepool dockyard and I had an important job to do. It was the early eighties, unemployment was going through the roof, and I thought I’d live and die in the north-east.

      A thousand fox doorknockers and sixty-seven poorly paid portholes later, my work on Warrior was done-and so was I, until I met Stig down the pub one day. A local hard man, he was home on leave from the Paras. Two things impressed me about Stig. He had money-more money than I thought possible-and he could tell a story. Most of his stories concerned the Falklands, where the Paras had just been in the thick of it. If I could join the Parachute Regiment, I reasoned, I’d not only have money, but would end up seeing the world-even better, fighting in far-flung parts of it.

      Stig laughed when I told him this, but when he saw I was serious he told me I’d have to train and train hard. So I pounded the beach every day before and after work; come rain, wind or snow, it didn’t matter. Gradually, I built up my fitness. When it became easy, I tied a rope to a tractor tyre, fixed it round my waist and ran up and down the beach dragging the tyre behind me. People thought I was mad, but in August 1984 it got me where I wanted.

      I was a fully fledged member of 2 Para by April of the following year, but as time passed, even that wasn’t enough: I set my sights on joining the SAS. Being in the Paras was no guarantee of passing Selection. The SAS needed specialists, so I concentrated with every fibre of my being on becoming the battalion’s best signaller, then on coming top of the combat medics’ course. Nothing was going to stop me achieving my goal. Or so I thought.

      On a cold, rainy October night in Aldershot, the Paras’ garrison town in Hampshire, some twat in a Volvo clipped my bike and sent me over the handlebars. Flying through the air, upside down and facing backwards, I was hit by a car driving too fast in the opposite direction.

      With their unorthodox methods, the surgeons saved me from death by internal bleeding. Too bad the hospital didn’t also check if I’d broken any bones before it discharged me. By the time I’d got a second opinion, my right foot, both ankles and right hip had set in the wrong positions. They were completely fucked, as were my back, knees and right shoulder. Not only was I out of contention for the SAS, I was medically unfit for duty in any front line regiment.

      To compound matters, the hospital had ‘lost’ my medical records. Closing ranks, they’d removed all the evidence. It was like my case never existed.

      As far as the lads alongside me saw it it didn’t make much difference: my soldiering was over. But I refused to accept a desk job and the quest was on to find a way back into combat without a Bergen.

      A mate of mine suggested I should apply for the Army Air Corps (AAC). ‘You want to be in the thick of it?’ he said. ‘You could end up flying for the SAS.’

      He showed me a book. Inside was a photo of a pilot in an army helicopter, his eyes blacked out with censor-ink. Behind him were four fully tooled-up members of the Special Air Service. He was right. If I couldn’t fight for the SAS, maybe I could fly for them. How cool would that be? I could get back to the front line without getting off my arse.

      All I had to do now, I figured, was to con my way past the medicals that awaited anyone who wanted to become a pilot. Fate had already stepped in and given me a hand. Because I had no recent medical records, there was no paperwork to attest to the fact that little over a year ago I’d been mangled in a life-threatening accident.

      Although 2 Para weren’t keen on anyone leaving eventually my application was processed. I passed the aptitude tests and managed to bluff my way through the medicals.

      Switching from the Paras to train as a pilot-provided I was accepted-meant I’d be stuck as a corporal for another four years, but I wasn’t rank hungry. I was on a mission.

      Within weeks I was told I’d been accepted for ‘grading’ at Middle Wallop, the AAC’s main airfield a stone’s throw from Salisbury Plain.

      Grading was a process for assessing a potential pilot’s ability to listen, absorb and replicate simple flying manoeuvres. It was a baseline test that included ground school and was designed to see if we had the ability to cope with the army pilots’ course.

      I was to start in July 1991.

      I didn’t know if I could fly or not, but by hook or by crook I would give it everything I had.

      I was waiting outside the clothing store for my flying suit when a giant of a man nudged me out of the way with a dismissive, semi-hostile look and threw a pair of tatty old gloves onto the counter. The civvie СКАЧАТЬ