Because a friend asked whether or not, as part of my training, I had to go through the “gas tent” — a process where newbies on receipt of fancy new NBC gear had to test it and our skills at putting it all on, in the correct order, and walk through a large green tent filled with CS gas — I thought I better recount my experience.

This was a test no one got out of doing. Funnily enough on the day I had to do my training with a couple of other newbies, we had the newly arrived Group Captain and a couple of high up officers there for training. Our little humble group sat on the same benches with the higher ups listening to the same training sergeant drone on, while watching a very graphic projection of soldiers and airmen dealing with fake injuries that included, would you believe, disembowelment.

It was fun to watch the men in the tent squirm at the vivid and graphic nature of seeing someone in their NBC gear trying to stuff what were essentially pigs innards into a writhing screaming airman. All simulated for us to learn what we might have to do in the midst of war. Not that we were there for emergency medical training. Not that that stopped them making us sit through 30 minutes of gore before we even started leaning about what our suits did, and did to do. And then, how to put them on properly while being timed with a stopwatch and yelled at to go faster.

Yes, even those senior officers.

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I was never thought of as being a sporty type by build and, in fact, was probably in that group picked last for any sporting event based on looks alone. Not tall, willow, thin or fit looking. But, as it turns out, given ample opportunities to prove everyone wrong, was quite good. I got to join in on just about ever sporting event going, on camp, by virtue of the fact they always needed the numbers. They needed warm bodies to make up any kind of team, whether it was netball, field hockey, or fencing.

Also, I got picked because I volunteered. As I said in my previous post, I was young, naive, and eager to be involved and volunteered for everything. As a result, I found out I wasn’t half bad at a lot of sports that would never, under any other circumstance, have been available to me to participate in. Take for instance, the fencing.

Stationed in Germany on a huge camp with just a small contingent of women, as was usually the case. A senior officer who was a champion fencer wanted to make up a contingent to go to Berlin to take part in the inter-military championships. So, without any experience whatsoever to my name, and after 8 weeks of intensive training with other warm bodies needed to fill the slots, I found myself, epee in hand, a part of a team that ended up in Berlin for a long week of intense bouts.

No. Before you ask, I didn’t win anything but I did hold my own among a plethora of high level players. The key to the team coming second over all, were points accumulated and that, in the end, was the reason I was there. I scored enough to help the team, over all, get a placing. And, of course, in doing so, got into the good books with that senior officer who, at a later date, invited me to join her MahJong group which played in the Officers mess once a week.

Now <em>that</em>, I was an expert at playing. But that’s a whole other post another day!

Other sporting events I found myself taking part in included, playing squash competitively, badminton, netball, field hockey, and swimming, something else I was born to do. I surprised my other swim team members when I won all 3 of the events I was signed up for. Excuse the pun, but the pool of talent among the women of the Army, Navy and Airforce, at the time, was limited. I was, therefore, bound to place somewhere.

Playing sport afforded me a great deal of time off to represent not only my camp, but at times, the Women’s Royal Air Force thanks to being a willing volunteer. It didn’t matter to me whether we won or lost, it was all about the team camaraderie, and the chance to travel all over. And for that, I will be forever thankful to the military for those amazing opportunities. Because I went to Berlin, as part of a team of fencers, I also got to see this famous city, it famous sites, including Check Point Charlie, the Opera, and a very famous beer garden, Prater Garten, where I had my very first Berliner Weisse.

Ah, those were the days.

Even though I had a vague understanding that I might be asked to work at any and all hours of the day and night, as a service member, it wasn’t really till I was posted to Germany on my first overseas assignment that it hit home exactly what that truly meant. Being in the military is a 24/7 commitment come rain or shine. There are no lie-ins, not taking a sick day because, no skiving off because you’re playing hooky with a buddy.

When the shit hits the fan you better be dressed and stood in front of it, ready for anything.

My first serious wake-up call happened not a month in after arriving on base. I was totally unprepared for the reality. Even though I had already been issued with my NBC (nuclear, biological &amp; chemical warfare) gear 5 minutes after my first work shift, it hadn’t quite sunk in that here, on this frontline base, Exercises (yes, capital E) were done on a micro level (your immediate team), mini level (your whole section, which, in my case, was air traffic control &amp; operations) and the dreaded TacEval (Tactical Evaluation), which was station wide and brutal on Newbies.

Guess who was woken at 2 am on my supposed day off for her first major Tactical Evaluation?

Yes, me … along with several thousand other personnel on camp. Sirens blare waking up not only us, but everyone three villages over. The tannoy announces we’re at war, and we’re all instructed to don our gear (in nine minutes of less please, we don’t want you to die from gas/chemical exposure) and report to our place of work immediately.

No wash your face or take a leisurely shower, no breakfast, you barely have time to take a pee. As every last person is timed getting into work down to the second. There are monitors everywhere, stop-watches in hand, jotting stuff down on clipboards. As if the sirens waking you were not terrifying enough.

Hell settles in pretty quickly when you realise you can’t breath, the mask you are wearing is fogging up and you’re trying to ride your issue bike 2 miles across camp at the same time as several thousand other people. It’s organised chaos. You can spot the Newbies instantly. Like me. Clumsily trying to avoid crashing into everything.

But there is worst to come. By the time your logged in at your place of work realising you’re last to arrive, you then have to quell your rising panic as you are briefed the Russians have invaded and, for the next 2 hours aid in the take off of four full squadrons of fighter jets on sorties to repel the Orange Force invaders.

Six solid hours of sheer terror later, usually somewhere around 8 am, the cookhouse delivers breakfast. And, if you’re lucky, by this time, masks off, you get to eat a slightly cold bacon and egg sandwich washed down by a large mug of bitter strong tea.

If you are unlucky, as I was this first time outing for me, the tannoy announces a gas attack from the enemy and you have sit, mask on, watching your breakfast congeal into a cold lump of stone, while clipboard carrying monitors stop by to spray you with bug repellent to check the seal and filter on your mask!

Yes, really.

There is, of course, so much more I could write about this, rest assured I’ll come back to the topic in a later post. For now, know this much, I learnt pretty quickly how to be in the right place at the right time for future evals.

Within weeks of arriving at my first posting to RAF Mountbatten, in Plymouth, Devon, I was being encouraged to sign up for, well, everything, including participating in helicopter rescue training exercises. Which wasn’t a stretch, given where I worked, at the RCC (rescue and coordination centre) Plymouth, an Air Force detachment working along side the Navy. They got all the new arrivals to sign up for this in the same way we were encouraged to be dead or injured bodies during Exercises, among other things. But those are a whole other post.

Signing up to do the helicopter rescue was made to sound wildly exciting and something we would receive a badge for doing. A fancy patch made especially for such exercises. Not that anyone told me it was entirely fictitious and a patch we’d never get to wear on our uniform. Nonetheless, wide-eye, I went into this endeavour, like ever other endeavour I got talked into or volunteered for in the next several years, eager as only youth can be.

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I didn’t join the military thinking I’d have a life of adventure but, as it turned out, adventure found me anyway.

I was young, too young, and had to have my father sign the papers allowing me to join the Woman’s Royal Air Force at 17 years of age. A decision he had a huge part in suggesting given, at the time, I was in a constant battle with my menopausal mother. And, had I stayed, one of us would have ended up strangling the other.

A solution was found. My father told me there was a way I could keep my sanity, have a job, and get paid to do my studies, a dream my mother had quashed with, “if you’re going to live here you have to contribute to the household,” meaning, get a job you’re not going to university.

With my dream in tatters, my father steered me towards putting me somewhere I was very familiar with: the military. I was after all, a military brat, and had travelled across the planet with my parents, going from one country to another. And, knowing that life already, readily agreed with my dad here was the answer to all my problems.

So, rather than murder my mother, I signed up, took the oath, and left to pursue a different path. And, in doing so, had a whole different set of adventures, while earning my BSc along the way.