Whilst carrying out my basic training in sunny Catterick Garrison up in rainy North Yorkshire we had the unmitigated joy of meeting some of the best soldiers in the Corps of the Royal Signals who (like me later on in my career) were posted back to the training depot to pass on their skills to basic raw recruits.
One of my favourites was a Drill Sergeant known as Sgt Mountcastle, this guy could have been wearing hessian sacks and he would still have looked smart, amazing man who I often looked up to even after the trials and tribulations of basic training, apart from being a great drill sergeant he also had an incredibly keen sense of humour which, (so long as you were not the nub of his jokes) we all considered as the best ever.
One fine day we were on the parade square practising for our pending passing out parade when a pair of NAAFI beauties happened to walk past the parade square.....
"Eyes Left"..... screamed Sgt Mountcastle and dutifully 31 heads and eyes shot 90 degrees to the left in absolute unison as if we were one large green monster, you could hear our necks click as we followed his instructions to the letter for fear of making a mistake and having to run round the parade ground with our SLR 7.62mm Weapons above our heads for the rest of the afternoon.
"Eyes Front....right you lot..... all those who would like to spend a night with those two lovely ladies one pace step forward..... MARCH"
Instant and worrying dilemna.... if we dont step forward we may be seen to be of the homosexual persuasion (at that time illegal in the british forces), failure to comply with one of his drill instructions could also result in immeasurable pain physical and mental, so of course every man jack of us made the cursory step forward bringing our trailing knee up to ensure it was parallel to the ground and smartly stamping our feet down to the tarmac again in perfect unison, the sound of 31 feet being stamped into the ground simutaneously is an amazing thing to behold almost like a strike of lighnting along with the cursory thunder, feeling quite proud of ourselves and obviously having demonstrated our manly prowess we all had a slight smile on our faces, thinking for some naive reason that we had got one over on our god the drill sergeant.......
"Right you lot rifles above your head in double time march around the parade ground until I tell you to cease...... that was my wife and bloody daughter you horrilbe little monsters were drooling over....Left Right Left Right..... get them knees up. move it move it"...............................
