Immediate Action Read Online Free

considered a career in the infantry? There's a lot more potential. The battalions move every two or three years, so you're going to different places. It's a more exciting life for a young man.
        We have vacancies in the Royal Green jackets."
        "Right, I'll have some of that."
        I was quite proud of myself. I thought I'd cracked it. I was a man; I was in the army now. I couldn't wait to get home and tell my parents the news.
        "What did you land up in then?" the old man asked, looking up from his paper.
        "The Royal Green Jackets."
        "What's that?"
        "Part of the Light Division." I beamed. "You knowlight infantry."
        "You wanker!" he exploded, hurling his newspaper to the floor.
        "You're not going to learn anything. All you're going to do is run around humping a big pack on your back."
        But I was not going to be deterred. A couple of days later, when it was clear that my mind was made up, my mum handed me an envelope and said,
        "I think you need to know all about this."
        I opened the envelope and pulled out my adoption certificate. It wasn't a shock. I knew my brother was adopted, and I'd always just taken it for granted that I was, too. I wasn't really fussed about it.
        "I met your natural mother when you were about a year old," my mum said.
        "She told me that she worked for a Greek immigrant who'd come over to England in the fifties and was running a nightclub in the West End.
        She sold the cigarettes in the club and was seventeen when she fell pregnant by him. She told me neither of them wanted a baby so she left you on the hospital steps in a carrier bag."
        My mum and dad had fostered me more or less straightaway and eventually adopted me.
        "She wasn't really concerned about you, Andy," my mum said. "She said to me, 'I can always have other kids." In September 1976 I had what I thought was the world's most fearsome haircut and boarded the train to Folkestone West. Double-decker buses were waiting to take everybody to the Junior Leaders' Battalion camp at Shorncliffe. As soon as we got there all eleven hundred of us were given another haircut. A really outrageous bone haircut-all off, with just a little mound on the top like a circle of turf. I knew straightaway I was going to hate this place.
        The first few days were a blur of bullshit, kit issue, and more bullshit. We couldn't wear jeans; they were ungentlemanly.
        We had to stand to attention if even a private came into the room.
        I thought I was hard, but there were people here who made me look like the Milky Bar Kid. They had homemade tattoos up their arms and smoked roll-ups. If they couldn't find somebody to pick a fight with, they'd just scrap among themselves. Shit, I thought, what's it going to be like when I get to the battalion? I wanted out.
        It was a very physical existence. If we weren't marching, we'd be doubling. We were in the gym every day, running and jumping. I actually got to like it. I found out I was quite good at running and started to get more and more into sport.
        As a young soldier, milling was part of any selection or basic training at the time. They'd put four benches I together to make a square and say, "Right, you and you, in you go," and in we'd go and try to punch hell out of each other. Most blokes just got in there and swung their arms like idiots. The hard nuts from Glasgow and Sheffield were a bit more polished, but I was amazed to find that one of the best punchers of all came from Peckham. Before I knew it, I was on the company boxing team.
        One good thing about getting into any sports team in the army is that you're excused from all the other training. Another is that you get to walk around in a maroon tracksuit all day, looking and feeling a bit special.
        I won my two bouts at welterweight, and my company won the battalion championships. We got to the