Page 47 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

When he dismissed us, I was approached by my class mates who almost in
unison said they were so glad it wasn’t them and that they would make sure I
passed muster the next morning. One bloke, whose name I’m ashamed to
say escapes me after all these years, told me he had been in the RMP (Royal
Military Police) as a Drill Sergeant and he’d help me get my appearance up
to parade ground standard.

True to his word, he showed me the
best way to bull my boots and
sharpen my creases to precision. He
threw my tatty clothes brush in the bin
and showed me how he removed
every speck of dust by wrapping
Sellotape around his hands and using
that to remove any flecks. He also
confided that Drill Sergeants must find
a victim, any victim on the first day, so Figure 23 Best Bulled Boots
I shouldn’t take it personally. ‘Scare
one, frighten thousands’ is the motto. His final thought was that Sergeant
Trickett wouldn’t be on the parade square at 6am but that I most certainly
should be.

A 5:50am looking better than I ever imagined I could, I stood stiffly to
attention on the parade square. 6am came and went, then 6:30. I looked
across the square to the drill Sergeants quarters. The curtains opened and I
saw my nemesis looking out across at me, smiling and drinking a mug of tea.
Seconds later, the window flung open and I heard him shout ‘That’s better
Bennett lad, now piss off unless you want your eggs to go cold’ and he
waved me away in dismissal. I marched off the parade square and bless
them, a few of my class mates were waiting for me in the side road. They had
got up early and seen it all and I had earned a new-found respect as the
bloke who ‘took one for the class’.

I hadn’t suddenly made a friend of Sergeant Trickett, or TT as I silently called
him, far from it. He was to ridicule me once more a few weeks later as you will
hear, but next time, it would be more of a laughing matter.

The one thing that upset TT more than unkempt appearance was the ‘Tick
Tock’ marchers.

You’d think that anybody could learn to march, since it’s only an
exaggerated version of normal walking. We had a fella who couldn’t march.
He also couldn’t learn to march. It wasn’t as if he was too thick or anything,
for he had a couple of GCEs and a ready and sharp wit about him that we
Page47
all appreciated, which made him very popular in the class.