Today Everything Changes: Quick Read Read Online Free PDF

everyone together. ‘Deep breaths. Sort yourself out. Show some pride. When we go into the camp, we go in together. We work as a team.’
    That was exactly what we did. Through the main gate, we would see the provost sergeant outside with all the prisoners. They were made to stand to attention as we ran through. The sergeant praised us as we ran, pointing his stick at us and shouting, ‘Well done! Keep your heads up, show pride. You’re starting to look like soldiers.’ Then he’d turn to the prisoners, jabbing his stick at them. ‘Work hard, and one day you’ll look like them. Soldiers.’
    When we reached the block, we wouldn’t go straight in and have the long shower I always looked forward to. We still had jobs to do. The sergeants had taught us: ‘First your weapon, then your kit, and only then yourself.’
    We’d sit on the grass outside the block, wet, dry or covered with snow, and start to clean ourweapons. Even the platoon commander, a tall, frightening man with a booming voice, and the sergeants would sit down and clean their weapons while they waited for us to have ours ready for inspection.
    Then one of the sergeants would go to the cookhouse. He’d come back pushing a trolley, on which was tea and cake. As he cut up the sponge, we’d get our huge mugs out of our belt-kits, and fill them with tea. The sergeants made sure we spooned in lots of sugar, and we’d carry on cleaning our weapons with a bit of cake and the tea.

Chapter Seventeen
    Say what you like about the training sergeants, and I often did, but despite all the shouting and the hundreds of press-ups they made us do, they looked after us well. They showed us how to use wet rags to press uniforms, how to sew buttons on and darn our socks.
    Some evenings in the block were like a women’s social. We were told to get out our army-issue ‘housewife’ – a roll of sewing kit – and sit round the sergeants in a semi-circle so they they could show us how to use it.
    They also taught us how to wash ourselves when we first joined up. Every night we had to wash our hair properly, clean our teeth, and use our dirty socks as flannels on both hands to do our bodies so they were cleaned with the soap too. Many of us, like me, had never had a house with an inside bath or shower. We didn’t know what to do.
    After each long run, the sergeants would make us take our boots off. If we had blisters, they would show us how to treat them. Oneprick with a sterile needle, just where the skin met the blister, squeeze out the fluid and cover it with a plaster.
    Even our commander would check our feet every couple of weeks. If your feet were in a mess, you couldn’t run, and that meant you couldn’t get to the fight. We were shown how to cut our toenails the right way, then to powder our feet to prevent fungus getting in.
    When the sergeant praised us on Sunday as we came back from training, I felt proud. The shouting and screaming at other times didn’t bother me, then. Neither did the locker inspections or standing to attention to everything that moved, apart from stray dogs.
    After a while, I started to understand why. My anger was starting to disappear as well. Perhaps that was because I had to work so hard and was just too tired to think about anything else. Or maybe it was because I felt valued and cared for.
    Whatever the reason, I took pride in how I looked and in myself. We had to do things that at first seemed stupid, but now I saw that they weren’t. We did them because that was how the army turned thousands of young men from across the UK into soldiers.

Chapter Eighteen
    During my training I learned why I had to tie my bootlaces in a particular way. If a soldier gets blown up or shot, and his boot’s got to come off so a doctor can treat him, all anyone has to do is run their bayonet up the front of the boot and the lace will fall away so the boot can be taken off.
    I also found out why I had to learn the weight of a machine-gun belt. One day,