Follow the button on the right for writings on my journey. If you have any questions on gender re-assigment, there's an FAQ section on the contacts page.

Below are samples of my recent writing.

Over the next few months, I'll be up-loading chapters from my up-coming book

On Men:

Men are weird. I mean, truly weird. I don’t actually get them anymore – and I was one for 42 years.  Not in how they relate to other men, that I kind of got, even if standing at a bar all night talking about football and sex didn’t exactly float my boat. No, I mean in how they treat us as women.

I’m now the hunted, not the hunter, and stepping my tentative toe into the perilous seas of the dating game. It’s a game I’ve never played before and. God, is it hard work. I don’t just mean the off-set of 90 minutes to get ready before I go out, but the whole flirting game. When I was a guy, I just went for it. It wasn’t hard, actually, just ask a girl about themselves and play down your own achievements and you are off at the races. I used to think I was such a stud-muffin but now I realise it’s because the women I talked to were just so grateful I didn’t regale them with tales of my new company car, how Newcastle never win a trophy, or admire their breasts at inopportune moments. “Yes!” they must have said, “he is wonderful, I’ve been recognized as a human being!” I am now learning to deal with the casual sexualisation of my gender, from the second I walk into a bar. Actually, I won’t go into a bar on my own any more, I will only go in with my friends, it’s too intimidating otherwise – and this from a former paratrooper! I did, early on in my transition, go down to a hotel bar in London. It’s what I would do as a man, just go to the bar for a quiet pint. Sitting there, on my own, it wasn’t long before I was pestered by a Ukrainian businessman. I couldn’t figure it out – why did he want to talk to me? Then it dawned on me – he thought I was a hooker! So that was that. Now, on solo business trips, I’m a prisoner of room service. It’s just easier – no sex pests.  

Just getting out the door is a trial too. I’ve developed a mental register of what dress I wore where. Well, you can’t be seen in the same thing twice, can you? Then there’s the crucial blend thing. Not outdoing your girl-friends – their husbands might like it if you turn up showing an acre of thigh but it’s unlikely you’ll get invited to the next girlie evening in. So a round of phone calls – “are you in jeans tonight?”, or the dreadful, “it’s smart/ casual”, which can mean anything to any-one. I mean, that would have meant twin-set and pearls to Mrs T, but my girlfriends span the bracket from seriously minted designer- top-to-toe to Mrs Primari and El Matalano. So now, it’s hours of wardrobe choices, all of which end up all over the floor as I get more and more desperate, before finally wearing what I chose in the first place. Of course, none of my male friends ever notice, nor care about the effort I have gone to. Then again, I don’t really dress for them, nor for myself, actually. It’s all about peer pressure. My girl-friends are not bad at genuine compliments, but they can instantly size up the cost of an outfit in seconds. And the put-downs can be really cutting: “How clever of you to combine that waistcoat you wore last week with some vintage jewelry…Don’t you think second-hand can still really work?” My, am I discovering how bitchy women can be.

Then there’s the grooming and the make-up – daytime to take off and then re-do. Just as well my hair comes out of a box or I would never get out of the door. I have a friend who turned lesbian simply because she “couldn’t be bothered with all that faffing, just for men to leer down (her) dress all night”. …I sympathise…

God, it was easy as a guy. Smart, you wore a tie, smart/ casual, you took the tie off. Go edgy and fashion forward? Put on a stripy shirt, wear it outside your trousers. Well, after a certain age all men do this to hide their wee pregnant lumps. Bless. Ever taken a look at the men’s clothing section? It’s a sea of beige, brown, blue and black. The most exciting it gets is two or three buttons on a jacket. Can’t be bothered shaving? Stubble is cool these days. Not so cool for us. I was out with a group of unshaven men the other week and got kissed on arrival by them all. I felt like I had washed my face in sandpaper. Fellas, it’s bloody uncomfortable for us. I couldn’t imagine kissing them all night. My face would look like I’d rubbed it on the asphalt.

I suppose it doesn’t help that I’ve heard all the lines before, I’ve even done a few myself. All that guff about stars from the skies being in my eyes just makes me laugh.  It’s worse when men start their BS about their past lives. The amount of ex-Special Forces men I’ve met, you would have thought the ex-servicemen’s clubs are over-run with ninja underwater knife-fighting experts.

I have a little experience I these matters, so it was with some amusement that a rather florid and overweight man told me recently that he had been in the SAS. “Oh, really”, says I, “and what unit were you in before that?” It’s impossible to join the SAS without being recommended from another Army unit, so I was a little surprised when he said he had been a Royal Marine. “Really”, says I, “how did you manage to transfer from the Royal Marines, who are part of the Navy, to the Army?” He was beginning to sweat a little by this point but managed to reply, “Well, I was in forty-two commando and they managed to make a special deal for my particular skills”.  I have to confess red flags were flying high by this point, so just to confirm, I asked, “and what company group were you in in the SAS?” Now a lot of men would have walked off moaning about psycho-bitch analyzing them, but he was in company, who knew about my past, so he had to face up to them. “Actually”, he replied, a little sniffily, “I was in headquarters company”. I have learned to prick a man’s pride in public as a woman at your peril, so I let the matter slide, until we were leaving. As he kissed me goodnight, I whispered in his ear: “you know, a marine would never call it forty-two commando, it’s four two, one of their oddities, and the SAS operate in squadrons, not company groups. Just so you know for the next time….”I have never seen a man turn more scarlet in my life.

Therein lies the difference, though. As a man, I would have openly called him on his fibs. As a woman, I wouldn’t embarrass him like that out of consideration for him. The payback is I get treated better by him now.  He always buys me champagne when I see him – I suppose it’s a private blackmail we have between us. It really is a more complicated game as a woman.

Then again I was out with a single friend of mine and we bumped into a married couple I like and enjoy talking to. He is quite handsome and they have a seemingly strong relationship. We all got on famously and swapped numbers, agreeing to meet again soon. Imagine my surprise when my single friend called me to tell me my married male friend had just called and suggested that the two of them get together for an evening that involved a bit more than just a glass of wine! What is it about men that they have to lead with their penises, even to the extent of putting their most precious relationships at risk? And why is it that my friend and I feel the need to keep it all quiet and not mention it again?

This thoughtlessness has extended into my own dating adventures. I met a man who assured me is beautiful. I did note he wore glasses to read the menu, so I thanked my lucky stars it was a dark room and he was facing into the sunlight. Accepting his compliment with a rapidity that made me blush at my shallowness, I was most grateful to accept his invitation to dinner on Saturday. He said he’d call with the details. That was four days ago. Since then, nothing. I don’t know what to think. I know if it was a business meeting, or even a night out with his rugby chums, it would probably be sorted by now. I am a little confused – does he, or does he not, want to take me out? Should I phone him, or is that surrendering the high ground? I know what I would do as a fella, which is call him without a shred of embarrassment to ask what was going on, but how do I keep my allure as a woman and find out what his plans are without chewing all my nails to pieces? My friends assured me he would call, probably on the day of the dinner, giving me mere hours to get it all together. They also assure me that if I remonstrate, he will not understand and automatically put me in the “carping female” category. Apparently, an ability to mind read the male of the species is a pre-requisite for women. It’s also worth mentioning that gleaning all this important information took hours on the phone, in between other important gossip about Angelina and Brad and how pasta has suddenly got sooo expensive. 

Actually, as predicted, he did get back to me on the day of our supposed date, a mere three hours before we were due to meet. By this stage, I was a nervous wreck, but bolstered by my successful resolution NOT to call him and debase myself. A resolution fortified by a boozy Friday night with my girl-friends dissecting said Mr Rat, as we christened him. “Don’t you f’ing dare!” exclaimed my close friend Diane, twice divorced, now living a single and affluent lifestyle, buoyed by two healthy settlements and a lifetime of male-directed cynicism. “He’s a rat – and probably only has a tiny willy. If you call him, I’ll never talk to you again!” Now, we both know that that will never happen but, after three bottles of cava, it had the resonance of Elizabeth the First facing the Armada. I was so moved to tears by her girlie bonding, we hugged and cried for ages, drying up just long enough to order another bottle. So it was with a sore head that I opened said Mr Rat’s text: “Sorry babes, can’t make tonight. An old girlfriend has just come back into my life, so can’t keep in touch. Michael”. Well, I knew it was coming, but I still felt awful - unattractive, unwanted and awful. Then the anger started – sod him! There was no way I would let him know I was upset, so I replied: “I give you plus points for the originality of your excuse. Most men just want to see the freak, then never get back to me at all”. He then had the cheek to reply:”Thanks, babes, you are a star”. Excuse me??? My blood was up. I replied:” Actually, you get no plus points for that last reply. I get told I am a star all the time”. No reply from Mr Rat to that one! Technical knock-out to the chicks, I think.

Which is another another big change – I just talk more, using language as a weapon. And I analyse stuff more too. Men really don’t do that. They are the centre of their own universe, not beset with doubt, always right. Even when I have an argument, I find myself apologizing for saying something I KNOW was right but which I feel terrible about saying. My former male friends just don’t get this – emotions only arrive one at a time for a man. Anymore and they go off for “cave time” to think it through on their own. When I was a fella, they used to think I was awfully odd when I offered to “listen to their problems”. Men NEVER  talk about their problems to other men – that’s weakness, and Steve McQueen never showed weakness! Now, though, I have a scatter-gun approach to conversation. I know why men can’t deal with women together – the chat just goes all over the place, all the time, with much touching and mutual sympathy. Something upset me the other day and I went for coffee with a male friend to talk it through. A big mistake. As I sat there snuffling, instead of just holding my hand and waiting for me to work it through, which was all I wanted,  I got a lecture on “pulling myself together” and “taking things one thing at a time”. Typical – I was more upset when I left than I was sitting down, but – and here’s the thing – I didn’t let on because I thought carrying on crying would upset him! Men just seem to suppose you can’t make a decision as a woman on your own. But I can, it just takes me a different road to formulate. They just don’t get it, which is incredibly frustrating as we compromise for them all the time.

Yet I do so enjoy having men around. There is something about their solidity and straight-forwardness that is immensely attractive. I had an electrician come around the other day to do something technical and I positively delighted in making him a cup of tea. It was just nice to have a man in the house doing manly things and smelling all manly too. I even feigned interest when he told me about how a fuse box was laid out. I haven’t got a clue what he was talking about but, whatever it was about, I did go a bit weak at the knees. He looked rather dishy in his overalls – and I was positively embarrassed at my delight when he handed me his empty tea cup to be washed and said, “thanks, missus, you make a good cuppa”. For all my independence, for all my get-up-and-go, I fell for a man complimenting me on my tea-making skills…..

Such a different World…..But men are still weird….

On Army Life:

This may come as a surprise to many of you – but it is an unalterable truth. Soldiers enjoy going to war. For all the horror of it, the thought of fighting for your country retains the attraction of glamour, honour and chivalry as recognisable to today’s generation of young men as it was to the legionnaires of Julius Caesar.

As we debate and agonise over the legitimacy of the conflict in Iraq – an agony I spent many hours conjugating in my own brain- if you asked the average infantry private, he’d be all for “getting stuck in. In fact, putting my paratrooper head on for a second, the recent debacle in Basra, where our own heavily-armed battle groups watched a nascent and badly led Iraqi army take a pasting while we sat on the side-lines, would have had me ripping my hair out.

As a soldier, you want to fight. After all, it’s what your country has rather expensively trained you to do. To NOT fight is a little like training as a football team and then spending your career in the dug-outs. How we used to admire the Israelis – “they take no prisoners, boss”, as my sergeant used to say.  Not for the soldier the debates of legitimacy and intent. Not for the soldier the vagarities of “dis-engagement policy”. Actually, when I first joined up, a tiny and singular part of the grandly-named British Army on the Rhine, as our forces in Germany were called during the Cold War, we were, in all honesty, totally bored. Life consisted of a series of exercises across the German plain followed by an equally diligently applied exercise in getting drunk. Alcohol was incredibly cheap and we were still the grand power that had defeated Nazism. I was stationed in Berlin, where, as the occupying power, we were immune from arrest. I well remember driving at speed down the Heerstrasse in a white coupe sports car, in full evening dress, lobbing empty bottles of champagne off the back.  Whilst I am sure the generals placed over us paid great attention to the idea of actually fighting the Russians, we were too busy fighting the locals on a Saturday night.”Letting off steam”, as fighting amongst the enlisted men was called. Or “High spirits”, as the same was described amongst the officers. A neat and defining class characteristic to describe the commissioned ranks, which were, and still are in certain units, a haven for public school boys, who merely exchange one type of uniform for another and continue to delight in teenage japes well into their third decade.

The end of those massive training exercises must have been a great disappointment to the average German farmer. We routinely put thousands of men and machines into action, ploughing up great swathes of the West German plain. As much as we wonder at the British Army putting 30,000 men into the filed for the recent engagement in Iraq, we did exactly that nearly every year in the 1980’s. I  remember with fondness taking a troop train from Aberdeen to Southampton, en route for Northern Germany, collecting doughnuts and beer through the windows at our various stops along the way, much the same memory my grand-father would have had when he followed the same route on his way to join the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940. Following in our destructive and tremulous wake came an equally vigorous compensation team, who generously assessed and rewarded farmers and land owners  for any damage caused. The more canny amongst them would openly offer tired squaddies hot food, in return for their Chieftain tanks taking a turn over old fencing or crops ruined by rain. We must have subsided the entire European  farming collective for forty years. Now, though, in our more restricted and eco-friendly times, our tanks no longer have free rein. Instead, our training areas have so many restrictions that soldiers are actually barred from digging trenches.

In those days, the opportunity for “active service” were very limited. The World genuinely was, for all the threat of nuclear war, a safer place to live for the average British squaddie. Uniform tunics were bare of medals, except for the General Service Medal for operations in Northern Ireland. The very lucky may have had two, the second for our still on-going UN commitment to Cyprus, and would  “clank” in Army parlance.  Which is a reference to the medals knocking together when marching – a characteristic much desired by all ranks as it proves you’ve been about a bit. A condition that remained the case right up to the Bosnian conflict, where a profusion of different micro-campaigns and command structures led to multiple UN  and NATO medals being awarded, all with a blue ribbon,  such recipients being accused of compound eating of a certain biscuit with a wrapper of the same colour. Being a Bosnia repeat offender was perfectly possible for supporting units, such as logistics troops, rather than infantry units, of which relatively few were committed. In turn, this led to much bitchiness, where NATO medals were denigrated as “chocolate medals” as they bore the NATO cross, not the Queens head, as British-issued campaign medals have. Nowadays, of course, the World is different, and many of my young paratroopers sported four or five medals. Much to the chagrin of visiting senior officers, relegated to desk service in the MOD, whose chests sported one, or in one memorably embarrassing case, no medals at all. Which is, of course, as any squaddie will tell you, why senior officers are awarded CBE’s and stuff for merely attaining high rank, to make up for any gong shortages.

I was in Bosnia when “Operation Telic”, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, happened. I had trained long and hard for that very invasion, in Oman and Kenya, the previous year and looked on with great envy at the non-stop coverage of our armour, medieval-style pennants flying from radio antennae, steaming across the desert. In fact, so desperate were we to escape our relatively safe toil in stabilising Bosnia that our battalion second-in-command could be seen spending many hours calling every senior contact he knew to volunteer our services if more troops were needed. I, myself, was delighted to get the call to go to Iraq, straight after my Bosnia tour, with The Parachute Regiment. A delight at selection to go that had changed to delight at getting the Hell out after seven months there.

 Indeed, that kind of “get up and go” spirit is much admired in the Army. It’s actually what keeps our Forces going. The public see our Army, and it is quite good at maintaining that image, as the best in the World. The reality is somewhat different. If the Army was a private company, it would have no staff – they would all leave in disgust. The pay is awful, the accommodation is poor, the absences from home are horrendous, the personnel management is woeful and the chances of getting your permanent retirement cuckoo clock rather earlier than expected are, nowadays, pretty high. No, the Army is the best, despite all that, because it has the most motivated and obliging work-force any employer could possibly wish to have. Most of that comes from astutely massaging the male need to bond –by giving out hats, badges, medals and uniforms as reward for personal achievement. Men set such store by badges. To the outsider, a soldier in camouflage looks much the same as another soldier in camouflage. To the serviceman, though, the devil is in the detail. Detail such as the colour of the belt, the colour of the head-dress, the badges on the arm. All of these are a kind of secret-squirrel, Masonic code. And don’t think the Army is all one big team – it isn’t. Rivalry between different units is very much part and parcel of service life. There is a definite pecking order of macho-ness. The Parachute Regiment, naturally, and with much justification, sees itself as the doyen of military killing efficiency. Yet let a Para mouth that next to a Scottish infantryman and there would be blood on the carpet. In fact, much jealousy surrounds the Paras in the rest of the Army, not helped by the fact that the Regiment, wearers of an exclusive maroon “Airborne” beret, openly call the rest of the Army “crap hats”.

It takes years to learn all the foibles of this “club”. Not just to differentiate the different units, but to decipher the Army’s own, unique language. Much of this comes from its Imperial heritage. “Dhobi” is still used to describe washing, originally used by the Indian Army. Phases of a campaign are still referred to in many cavalry regiments as “chukkas”. Officers, of course, have their own military doctrine. Much is made of the works of Von Clauswitz and Sun Tzu, two great military philosophers. Of course, a working knowledge of the Harry Flashman and Sharpe books is obligatory in the officer’s mess, even if more accessible television programmes such as “Ultimate Force” are denigrated as “Ultimate Farce”, although still avidly watched.

Officers, of course, like to show off their sophistication and intelligence, much to the bemusement of the private soldier. I well remember the Intelligence Officer in Bosnia, an individual whose job title was viewed as something of a contradiction in terms by his men,  who named various reconnaissance missions after his knowledge of opera. This was rather lost on his soldiers, who piped up in the platoon briefing with: “Sir, what the fuck is a Tosca?”

I, too, fell foul of this education and class divide. Once, on duty in Cyprus, we were surprised to see the Garrison Commander had arrived at the camp gate on one of those “surprise visits” that bored senior officers like to spring on unsuspecting and slumbering units. At that time, the most operationally ready we were was in taking on the Larnaca locals on a Saturday night, so this caused much flapping and confusion. As orderly officer,  I astutely left the detail to my fearsome sergeant-major to sort out – well, he scared me, and he had to call me “sir” – while I prepared  to do the usual sort of “smoke and mirrors” required of a junior officer on such an occasion. In other words, distract said senior officer away from the nooks and crannies no battalion ever wants to be seen, whilst buying time for the CO to wake himself from a slumbering Cyprus siesta. Fearing the brigadier might wish refreshment, I dispatched one of my soldiers to the cook-house to get some decent cups and saucers, in the event “tiffin”, as afternoon tea is still called, would be required. With much stamping of feet and salutes, said individual disappeared, to return with some rather weather-beaten mugs and a fistful of mayonnaise sachets. Now, private soldiers do exist in their own moral and mental vacuum at times, but this defeated even me. “What is the mayonnaise for?” I enquired. “Well, boss, you asked for cups and sauces”, came the pained, if honest reply. I pointed out that Hellmans had not been an active ingredient in tea for some time, to much hilarity amongst said soldier’s peers. “Well”, he replied, somewhat defensively, ”I know that – but it was for an officer – and you all know what they are like!” Much wise nodding of heads ensued amongst the guard - and it was difficult to refute the impaired, if illogical, sense of his reasoning.

There is, indeed, a massive divide between the ranks, deliberately enhanced by having separate “messes”, or living and eating accommodation. The Army is nothing if not hierarchical, and, dependent on rank, you could find yourself in with the private soldiers, the corporals, the sergeants, or the officers. The latter is also home to the Regimental silver and, the very embodiment of a regiment, the Regimental standards, known as “The Colours”, of which there are two. One is known as “The Sovereign’s Standard”, whilst the other is the Regimental banner. Each is emblazoned with “battle honours”, a record of where the Regiment has fought. Even these are hierarchical, with some ascribed to the Regimental banner and some to the Soveriegns’, these latter ones being in the gift of the reigning monarch and a singular honour for the unit concerned. Of course, in days gone by, the colours would have been the totems the unit rallied around. Even now, they are the very embodiment of a unit’s pride and are the responsibility, daily, to set out and remove, of the  junior subaltern, or lieutenant.

An officer’s mess is a bit like a living history museum, dedicated to the rites of war. The artwork consists of specially commissioned paintings representing soldiers from that unit displaying heroism and bravery in stylised poses. I served in one Highland Regiment where even the drinking goblets were made of silver, captured on the battlefield, or given to the regiment. We even had a snuff box, still, bizarrely, regularly and rather ostentatiously used by the older officers, made from an elephants foot, cut off the poor animal as a memento after one particularly vicious battle in India. I well remember the full panoply of martial commemoration being brought out during what the army called “Operation Fresco”, which grandiosely described the Army’s taking over of the duties of fire brigade during their recent strike. We invited the senior management of the fire service to lunch. Predominantly hard-bitten, working class men from the Glasgow estates, their eyes were like saucers as a piper heralded their arrival to a 30 foot dining table, strewn with solid silver. They would have recognised the food, Army catering being more of the solidly nourishing than the imaginative variety, but so stunned were they that I don’t think they ate a morsel.

Life for a young officer too, bears little reality to the outside World. It’s actually a little like a stuffy boarding school, with set traditions, dress codes, clubs and meal timings. Which is, of course, why so many officers come from public school – they readily adapt to the constraints of life. In the Highland Regiment I mentioned, on Monday nights, officers wore “mess dress”, the gorgeous red jackets much used by period film, on Tuesdays, suits, Wednesdays, dinner jackets, Thursdays, jacket and tie, whilst Fridays were “mufti”, as casual civilian dress was called. Even here, jeans were banned as too casual – the “Devils cloth”, as it is known in the Army.

A young officer arriving at his unit is usually accosted early on by the style police, the Army officer being keen to sport a style of dress that was old-fashioned forty years ago. I well remember the young lieutenants of The Highlanders, vintage 2004, going out in plus-fours and Sherlock Holmes hats, not one over twenty years of age. This monitoring task is delegated to the scourge of young officers, the adjutant, a middle-seniority captain, granted this august title to recognise his function as gate-keeper and dogsbody to the Commanding Officer, an officer of such reverence that young men will avoid crossing his path. A Commanding officer is usually late-30’s to mid-40’s, a young age in civilian life, but positively ancient in an institution that values above all else the recuperative powers and impressionable nature of the young.

The adjutant in a Regiment of standing will require the young officer to attend the Regimental tailor  the provision of two suits. One will be a brownish tweed, for country wear, and the other a blue pin-stripe, for city wear. The daring may request a red lining. On no account can said suits have less than two buttons and they must have two vents in the rear, known, for obvious reasons, as “buggers flaps”, a ventless sack suit being the ultimate mark of the working classes.  On no account can the tweed be worn in the city – “no brown in town”. Indeed, when I first joined the Army, an officer was forbidden to travel in London by the Underground, as a gentleman always took a taxi. We also had to wear bowler hats and carry a rolled umbrella. This was in the early ‘80’s.

Likewise, in sporting activities, officers are encouraged to have an interest in rugby and cricket. Football is not encouraged. That is a game for the other ranks.

Yet, for all its antiquity and regulation, there is an innate clubbiness that can be enchanting in its own right about Regimental life. For the most part, proximity in living and work can create a tolerance for a fellow soldier that can only be matched by close family. Once you have sat in your fellow paratrooper’s vomit as you wait to jump out of a Hercules flying at 400 feet, there is little left to surprise or shock you.

Likewise, class distinctions are celebrated, rather than denigrated. Being part of the team means being accepted. Nowhere is this distinction better celebrated than in the  leavening of older officers, known as LE’s, late entry officers, all of whom have risen to the officers mess via the ranks, and therefore have already served, on average, twenty years before the colours. You can usually spot these old soldiers by their gray hair and tattoos, a gentleman being discouraged from such body paint. These men are wise in the lore of the regiment and wise in the lore of life. A young officer does well to tread carefully around them and does well to avoid being led astray by them, baiting young officers being particularly rich sport. Indeed, there was a whole generation of Black Watch subalterns who were taken on a spree in Hong Kong by the LE’s, only for the entire group to wake up the next morning with a tattoo of a scorpion on their penises – and absolutely no knowledge of how it got there. The idea being, apparently, that a Black Watch officer should have a sting in his tail on every occasion.

Such happy times still continue, even in this time of war and political correctness, in itself a dichotomy that the Army itself is still trying to unravel.  Much has been made of the recent court decision to allow prosecution of the MOD for death caused by faulty equipment. However, it is a sad reality of war that there is always a shortage of equipment. War is a dangerous pursuit, it is not painting and decorating, and risk assessments in this profession we call combat always have to  include a box marked:”Potential hazard: death”. I am not sure how the Health and Safety Executive would view this – perhaps they should travel to Afghanistan with their clipboards to find out. It is certainly true that, in my own service career, equipment has improved beyond measure. Every soldier deploying is guaranteed a huge black hold-all, full of highly expensive and worthwhile stuff. The trouble comes in how much of this you can actually carry – take body armour, for instance. When I started out in the ‘80’s, the issue equipment dated from Vietnam and would stop a splinter or fragment, but definitely not a bullet. Nowadays, soldiers wear Robocop style sheets of Kelvar armour, front and back, that will definitely stop a bullet, but which are so heavy that commanders are forced to consider incurring casualties from dehydration caused just from wearing this stuff.

Which brings me back to my original point; soldiers enjoy all this. Despite our horror at the death and carnage on-going in Iraq and Afghanistan, our boys and girls are having the experience of their lives. While we may wring our hands at the losses – and God help us if we ever do lose compassion and a sense of national loss at the continuing casualty count – there is not a serviceman alive who has not made that mental calculation of working out the odds, and is prepared to live with the consequences.  

There comes a point, though, where the spirit wears out, not to mention the joints. Most of my peers still serving continue to do so with a resigned weariness. There are only so many times you can freeze to death on Salisbury Plain at 0300 in December before it loses its attraction. Likewise, the burden of wife and family can cause more tears than the adventure of operations can substitute. It is also inevitable that if you continue to roll the dice, there will come a moment when you will roll snake eyes.

Which is why, like many an old soldier, I look back on my days “in the green” with fondness and misty eyes – tempered by a “thank God I’m not doing that anymore”. It leaves its stamp, though. I think I can still spot an old soldier by his confident walk and appearance from thirty yards. I also think that, God forbid the day ever comes, we face invasion, I could still fire my rifle in generally the right direction. Nowadays, though, my nails cost too much to risk on cleaning the working parts of a gun.

May God keep safe, though, today’s keepers of the flame - and may they all come home safe to tell their tall tales of the days when they could run twenty miles without breaking sweat to the next generation of wide-eyed innocents.