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overlooked by Baruki sangar, which was less than a hundred meters away from the security forces base that we lived in.
        Named after a paratrooper called Baruki who got blown up, the sangar was a big corrugated iron and steel structure. Inside were three GPMGs (general purpose machine guns), an M79 grenade launcher, smoke dischargers, radios, and, most important, flasks of tea and sandwiches, because we were up there forever. There was one electric heater. Stag duty in the sangar was incredibly cold and very, very boring. It had to be manned by two of us all the time. To get to it, there used to be this mad dash. The two men on duty in the sangar would man the guns; we'd go out and run down the road; the two we were replacing would get out and run back.
        I was in Baruki sangar one day with a lance cor oral p called Bob, short for Billy One Bollock, I never knew where the nickname came from because he looked as if he were complete. A foot patrol came out of the base, and after the usual pound of running feet, all I could hear was "click, click, click." What the hell is that? I wondered, and looked out of the side hole. Standing nearby was the smartest man alive, posing in front of a camera for the battalion magazine.
        "That's Johnny Two-Combs," Bob said. "Comes from the Midlands, loves football. Plays for the battalion. Looks good, doesn't he?"
        Indeed he did. No one wore rank in XMG, and everyone normally looked like a bag of shit, wet, cold, and covered in mud. But this guy was wearing corporal's stripes, and his uniform was immaculate. He was about five feet ten inches, with blue eyes and perfect teeth, and not a single blond hair out of place.
        "He was playing in an army cup match, and the battalion started throwing combs'onto the pitch," Bob went on. "He picked one up and used it, asked if he was looking good, then carried on. I think he scored the winning goal."
        I watched as Johnny carried on posing, winning the war on his own for the camera. "The thing is," Bob said, "he is really switched on.
        You're looking at a future RSM there."
        The rifle company lived in "submarines" in the security forces base, long corridors three beds high but without lockers. Where you were, that was your space: You put your kit on your bed or under the bottom bed. I shared an area with Reggie, a corporal and my patrol commander, and Gar, a newly married rifleman who kept his photo album under his pillow.
        Reggie was twenty-five and rati the company seven-aside rugby team. He was tall and well built; his "egs were so large he walked like a bodybuilder. He had black, curly hair and the world's biggest arse and bad breath that he was forever making excuses about.
        Gar was aged about twenty. If he hadn't been in the army, he would have been a male model. He was very fit and had a perfect body.
        His ambition was to become a P.T.I (physical training instructor); every morning he would jump out of his bunk and shout, "Twice round my beautiful body-go!"
        The security forces base was laid out in a spider configuration, with submarines coming off a central area.
        All the support troops, plus any of the rifle company who couldn't fit in the submarines, lived in garden sheds in the compound, linked by duckboards over the mud that was ankle-deep. The whole compound looked like a building site, which it was, covered by antimortar mesh.
        The atmosphere inside the main base was very smoky, and at any time of night or day I could smell the odor of egg banjos (fried egg sandwiches) and chips coming from the cookhouse. There was a permanent smell, too, of damp clothing and wet floors. The heating didn't work very well, so it was either very hot or very cold.
        There were no windows.
        In the late seventies it was very much a foot-soldiering conflict in South Armagh. If we weren't in the town patrolling, we'd be in the cuds (countryside)