For our Mates

Living in the this part of Wiltshire its not possible to avoid the war in Afghanistan, for me that’s compounded by working for a defence contractor who manages the training infrastructure. The conversations in pubs are exciting, fascinating and moving.

A number of the conversations take me back to a dinner many years ago in Monmouthshire. I was having one of those getting to know you sessions with a chap who I hope I would be doing a lot of work with. I had come across him when he led a training course for charity trustees at the Directory for Social Change. His session was unusual as it was laced with quotes from the likes of Karl Albrechts The Northbound Training to the inevitable Balanced Scorecard. Business books in a charity seminar was then unusual, especially when talking to Trustees not Executives. His style, pulling together a wide range of ideas to create a primeval soup from which charities governors could evolve an approach, resonated with me. Not only was he widely read, with an amazing power of recall, but he was proving that the sum of knowledge is greater than its parts.

Over dinner we did that whole dance of getting to know each other, probe, answer, probe some more, follow an interesting idea up and then start all over again. I was really interested in how he ended up in management consulting and coaching. He had started life in 3 Para and been with them in the Falklands as a young officer. At some point he took the option of leaving and moved into business education and worked for the Ford group developing managers and leaders from the shop floor through to the board room.

Some where along this road we got on to the subject of motivation and why we do “it”. He recounted that he found the same motivations on the production line in Hailwood as he had witnessed at Goose Green with 3 Para. They all did “it’ for their mates. Why turn up to work and do a decent job?

“Because I don’t want to let down the guys I go for a drink or play footie with”

The same much quoted reasons that most soldiers get out from behind the safety of the stone wall or trench to help out a fellow warrior.

One of the many conversations in my local about the Op Herrick as with a regular drinking buddie just return form a tour in Bastion as a aircraft commander on Chinooks. This guys is starts of a rare example as he is a loadmaster, commissioned from the ranks and now commanding one of the most valuable assets in theatre for the armed forces of all cap badges. He was talking about a hold range of near misses, difficult landings, the amazing survivability of the `Chinook and a whole bunch of other stuff. The thing that stood out was the tone of the discussion about the IRT’s. These are the immediate response teams who at the drop of a hat get on board an aircraft and fly out of the safety of camp bastion to help a unit in trouble. By the vary nature of the task the job is dangerous. No one asks for help if its all going well. The guys on the flight deck as well as the self loading cargo in the back now that what’s waiting for them at the other end of a low level seat of the pants/nap of the earth flight are some mates who need help and some bad guys who want to do harm.

I refer to the tone as at no time was one member of an IRT seen to hesitate as they strapped on their gear and ran up the loading ramp of the aircraft or prepared their weapons for a “hot and hurried landing”. My drinking companion had seen many IRT go out to help their mates but they were not there mates, well the likelihood that those in need of immediate response were well know to the team members would be remote. The IRT’s are made up of starch teams from any unit that is not deployed. So the RAF regiment will be going out to help the Marines. Signallers to assist Infantryman and Paras to support the artillery. Do not misunderstand me they are all professional soldiers and medics, trained and equipment to do the job but they are not elite troops or US style Para Rescue Jumpers, just run of the mill Tommy’s. The bond is that of there but by the grace of good, and tasking, go I.

Or

“If it is me hold up in a FOB or hunkered down in a irrigation ditch with RPG’s streaming over my head I hope they will return the favour”.

They do it for their mates, we all do it for our mates. What is it about friendship that inspires us to do out best no matter what the circumstances? From production line to getting the sofa up the stairs; from IRT’s to turning out on a Sunday afternoon for the village eleven we do it for our fellow man and women, the people were share a common bond with. It in large part to have fun and if nothing else the bragging rights in the bar

I have no idea but I am glad that I both have mates who will help me and that I have mates to help.

Why I Become A Bunny Hugger

My eldest daughter turn six only five months after I drag myself to 46. If I keep this sort of thinking up I will be at “ I will be 58 when she thinking about university”. Be assured this will happen for two reasons: A. I am about as middle class as they come so wanting my daughters to go to University is hard wired into my DNA and B. by 2020 it will be the norm to have at least a first degree if not a post grad to be a wheel clamper.

So why have these thoughts? Just being more than 45 or getting fatter may be enough for most but for me it all stems from a series of fractious conversations with a former member of staff. Former because I how work for another employer in another sector not because I showed him the door, that might have been the best route but I value the power of discussion as a way of moving forward.

Our disagreement was about why our organisation owned and managed a protected landscape. He came from the “because it’s a SSSI, SAC. etc” school of thought I felt that in our role as a major open spaces provider to millions of people we should put their needs on at least the same level as stag beetles, oak polypores and beech pollards, preferably higher.

This got me to wondering why I am interested in “the environment” and have my views changed in the last six years.

I grew up in rural Cambridgeshire, a smallish village surrounded by typical East Anglian farming landscape, medium to very big fields, growing wheat, barley sugar beat, oats etc. The fields at the end of my road, a development of 100 plus early sixties, executive detached homes, were farmed by old and young Mr Barton. I never understood the exact relationship between the two, brothers, farther and son, it didn’t matter. These two gents were the custodians of my playground. Once I had escaped my parents garden it was straight off to the brook , the tree house and best of all, the fields up the hill. Now lets remember that this is Cambridgeshire so the hill is not much more than a slope but to me it was a long uphill, exhausting slog with a great prize at the top. A pile of sugar beat.

For the enterprising and enquiring mind this hypermarket of fun could not only be used to build myriad defences positions for the endless games of “war” we indulged in. Armed with a massive arsenal of politically incorrect wooden weapons lovingly crafted by my Dad. We could hold off waves of assaults, real but mostly imagined with shotguns, tommy guns, pistols, bows and arrows and I have fond memories of a bazooka. If not re-enacting a mythical battle from one of the many War Picture Library comics that littering my bedroom floor, I would dream up endless ways to turn this sugar beat into sugar, then into sweats. Once we had poisoned ourselves, our pets, our sisters and filled my mums kitchen with mud. Our next task was to create Halloween lanterns by cutting faces out of the beat and creating candles holders with the sheath knives none of us would be without.

Sugar beat is a winter crop and for most kids, then as now, it’s the summer and its long holidays that really get the imagination going. Plenty of time to plan the great expeditions or better still the next campaign, many involving long periods of diplomacy, not to create peace but to persuade Dad to construct the ever grander props needed to achieve victory. Best of all the summer meant fields full of standing crops, brooks full of small fish, and gardens full of bugs and weeds. As the appalling prospect of returning the school came closer the greatest building block of all started to appear out of our windows BALES. There was almost nothing the 12 years olds imagination could not envisage being constructed from this organic Lego on steroids. This being said the opportunities were few and far between and the Mr’s Baron were quick to remove the toys from our playground.

The last great agricultural entertainment was kept for last, stubble burning. The “Apocalypse Now Live!” of my youth. The sight, sound, smell and taste that triggered the approaching academic term and the first sign of autumn was a joy for all small boys.

How do these above notes turn a war-obsessed child into a committed bunny hugger? Simple it was available, any day, after school, at the weekend and of course all holiday long. There were no turnstiles, Rangers, Wardens, Keepers or rules.

Separating our gardens from the fields was a brook, with a small road bridge, old willow tree and tunnels of stinging neetles. Tucked away at the bottom of one garden was a fun house all of its own, our very own sewage works. In the day before mains drains the developer of Millers Road had provided a sewage plant the filter the waste from our homes. A large brick container full of clinker, with a spinning wand on top, that pored the sewage out to filter through the tank and into the brook. Many hours were spent working out how to scale the side of this brick castle. Even more were spent staring at the glistening clinker, noses held and poo stories told. Once the science of the giant garden sprinkler had been understood and tweenage mathematics worked out how long we had to run across the clinker beds it was the sewage farm Olympics. Who dares to leave the safety of the walls last and still reach the safety of the other side of the Keep before poo soup being sprayed our plimsolls. Next cane the standing jump over the arms of the sprinkler. Shot put with the larger lumps of clinker and the final challenge, getting back to terra firma. It took days to work up the courage to jump, first with the safety of an ash branch to steady us in flight and latter in full freefall.

So now our recipe for the bunny hugger is a large cupful of adventurous war stories, a serving spoonful of sewage and a generous handful of freedom. I have no idea id my parents were worried about where we were, would we be run over by the traffic on the roads or fall into the various unguarded farm machines operated by the Mr’s Barton. I have clear memories of Ladybird books that told of the dangerous of haystacks and slurry lagoons, The Green Cross Code man and the very occasional mention if “strangers”. Yes wee hurt ourselves, stingers, cuts, gashes even, one brother broke his arm, we burn bits of ourselves on hot stubble etc. Nothing serious, nothing life threatening, we were not lucky, we were just not that stupid and we knew if we got any of it wrong someone cold drown, break more than an arm of end up inside a bale.

We took risks, as did my parents and those of my friends. This has made me a better Dad and I hope that my kids will carry some off my pleasure at adventure and discovery of the natural world on to their kids. The signs are good, recently they bother spent an hour sitting a field fascinated by the shape, colour and feel of flints. Before carrying many kilos home to live in our garden.