Matt Posner's Blog: You've Been Schooled - Posts Tagged "stray-bullet"

Here is an out-take from Simon Dusty Duringer's interview at my School of the Ages site.

Tell an interesting story from both your writing life and other.

This is one that covers both your questions; within yet not quite within my writing life. I apologise for amalgamating the two… but you readers may appreciate it as this is a fairly long story in its own right.
This 100% true story reinforces the words of the English Author Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who in 1839 coined the phrase; “The pen is mightier than the sword”.

Furthermore, perhaps it may offer hope an alternative to fists for those who have found themselves, through no fault of their own, to be the subject of bullying…

I joined the Royal Air Force much older and (I thought) wiser than most other recruits. I had completed what you might call my first ‘tour’ in life; I was married and my eldest son Jonathan was a toddler. I had been a multi award winning salesman and experienced various degrees of success in the world of business.

Prior to joining I had researched what is expected of recruits during training and felt well prepared for the challenge. I set about doing my best from Day 1…

What I had never considered was that my evaluation might have been flawed and in actual fact the measure of a good recruit was not by being competent from day 1, in fact quite the opposite, it was by demonstrating continuous improvement, regardless of actual ability throughout training. Therefore by starting off firing on all cylinders with a bucket full of knowledge had actually been a real and distinct disadvantage.

Looking back, it was probably for my own benefit that, instructors appeared to concoct inefficiencies and discrepancies with my work. This would enable them to report a gradual improvement in my performance. But, I was naïve of this possibility; I wasn’t having any of it. I mean, I was either going completely bonkers or I was being set up. My first few weeks during training were therefore about as miserable as they could possibly be. Things came to a head when I was called to the Sergeant’s office….
I entered, approached the Sergeant sitting behind her desk and brought myself to attention. But, within moments a hefty corporal who had stood behind the desk approached me. He became up close and personal. The proximity of the man’s face to mine set me slightly off balance at which time; his temper became apparent, his pitch became a squeal, and he ordered me, though I wonder to this day given the volume of the order how many recruits stopped abruptly in their tracks around the base and followed the order, back to “Attention”.

Now, fear affects different people in different ways, I couldn’t afford to fail this training, but for me fear, in the short term anyway, certainly did not help my cause.

Firstly, my brain engaged with the “Attention” command, I raised my leg high and brought my foot down hard, figuring to make as much noise as I could when my boot made contact with the ground, and achieving just that.
As my size 9 boot slammed against the wooden floor with an immensely gratifying crack, the expression on the corporal’s face changed. Not the change I had anticipated. Rather a brief look of surprise, quickly reverting to the bulging bloodshot eyes and most fierce of war faces…. Now standing to attention and at a loss for words I completely froze. I stood there waiting. I think he might have taken this as a form of challenge and for several moments neither of us retreated an inch.

But he had clearly breached my airspace, any closer and his immaculately cropped moustache might have tickled my top lip. I was confronted by a man drunk, nay paralytic, on the power of his chevrons, and whilst he appeared to be in a battle of stares, I was simply frozen to the spot, terrified to move…

To this day I don’t know where, why or how this situation gave rise to a wandering mind… But, I was suddenly reminded of all manner of big screen, stereotypical, drill instructors; Heartbreak Ridge and Full Metal Jacket were in there somewhere before my mind finally came to rest with some characters from the legendary U.K. television comedy called Dad’s Army.
Now, hindsight is a wonderful thing…
I know now that I should have recognised immediately that once my mind had drifted off into this chain of thought, that one way or another, I would be doomed. Perhaps then I might, whilst I still had an opportunity, have launched some sort of ‘thinking’ counter measure. In my defence I do recall, the more I tried to dismiss the thoughts, the worse my predicament became, until eventually, I simply couldn’t contain myself. My tugging and flinching stomach muscles had forced all the air to my mouth, which in turn was already beginning to make my face twitch involuntarily, the corners of my mouth rising inappropriately.

I was sharing airspace with a corporal whom had complete control over my fate and the only ‘uncontrollable’ thought I could muster up was that of one of the most hilarious wartime comedies I have ever seen. I did what any individual drowning in panic might have done in that situation really…. I attempted to relax my body muscles as best I could. But as the tension in my facial muscles dissipated a huge smirk began to replace the look of pain and any hope that the pressure of the air would disperse gently disappeared. It didn’t happen. In fact it was like the opening of an over pressurised valve. Things got incredibly worse, very quickly, and as the pressure of withheld laughter grew to an uncontrollable level I bowed my head to avoid further eye contact and let the air splutter out as I tried to catch my breath and gain control of myself….
Now you’d be forgiven for thinking that was the end of this escapade…

Surely nothing else could go wrong, indeed nothing else needed to go wrong, yet sadly that’s not the case. What I noticed next reversed all previous evidence of laughter or smiling from my person. Indeed, I felt such powerful shockwaves through my body that I do believe I was experiencing a panic attack. It was as though the used and exhaled air, that moments previous had fought to escape my lungs, had now appraised the situation outside my body and quickly decided it might be safer returning from whence it came and, without any element of oxygen it previously carried, it re-entered my body as Carbon Dioxide, creating an impasse; no air in, no air out! The cause of this sudden reversal in expression and subsequent panic attack had been that as I had bowed my head, my eyes had naturally followed and on seeing the floor realised that my right size 9 toecap was perched on top of where his left, meticulously polished toecap should have been.

Running out of ideas and realising I was about to experience the effects of napalm up close and personally, and in a last ditch attempt to get out of the office in one piece, I remembered the proverb; “Attack is the best form of defence” and I purposefully stood back up and locked eyes with the corporal to divert his attention, knowing full well if he looked away first he would lose face yet simply terrified of what would almost certainly come next. It kinda worked, temporarily anyway.

I was ordered out of the office by the sergeant who had remained silent throughout. So, with no explanation as to why I had been summoned in the first place, the corporal marched me out of the office, slamming the door on my back as I went.

For all of about 5 seconds I actually convinced myself that might be the end of the matter, but before I had got out of sight of the office, I am guessing the beast that remained within it, must have caught sight of his irreparable toe cap, and he immediately, and very audibly, erupted….

Whilst I could go on to explain what took place next and over the coming days, perhaps I should save that for my memoires! But all in all I think you have the gist that I was in big trouble and remained so for a number of weeks until I was called back into the Sergeants Office. She had with her some paper of mine and it made me scared…. The paper was a first draft of a short and satirical story about life as a recruit. It took on a very light hearted and sarcastic viewpoint of training and the characters I had met during training so far. But to my incredible surprise and relief the Sergeant brought me in to the office not to discipline me, yet to inform me that she had confiscated the story which would be published within the Halton Gazette! A number of months later it was also published nationally….
As a result of the article, rightly or otherwise, the instructors changed favourably towards me, I actually enjoyed the remainder of my training and went on to design the flight shirts and win The Best Shot Award…. So, it really does go to show that Edward Bulwer-Lytton was right:

“The pen is mightier than the sword”.