Ministerial Meandering

The taste of coffee

It was howling cold like you wouldn’t believe, and the rain was lashing in horizontally, stinging our faces; visibility was down to about 20 feet.  Every step was risky, as tussock grass is clumped, and threatens to turn your ankle over with each footfall.  We had been walking with heavy bergans (military backpacks) for several days, across the higher reaches of West Falkland, camping at night wherever we could find shelter, and under canvass when we couldn’t.

This was supposed to be fun - and it had started out that way.  The moral is; Never believe the Met Officer or the weather forecaster.  They lie.

It had been sunny with a light breeze when we set off - that means around 35 m.p.h. for the ‘normal’ Falklands breeze - and a party had set off from our Type 21 frigate (HMS Ambuscade) to walk across West Falkland in the footsteps of our intrepid Royal Marines, who had done it a couple of years earlier to re-take British sovereign territory back from Argentina.  It was supposed to stay sunny for several days.  It didn’t.  The ‘breeze’ was supposed to be light for those days.  It wasn’t.

As the only officer in the party, I had for responsibility for the group, although I was not the ‘leader’ - one of our number, a senior rating, had been designated as the orienteer, and had old contacts with local farmers.  I think I was there as medical support and someone who would carry the can if it all went pear-shaped.  It did.

It was clear that the route chosen was not the same as the Marines, who had not spent so long on the traverse, so by the third night we were all getting a bit fed up.  My map-reader was sure where we were, though to be fair, it was damned difficult to see our surroundings with the foul weather conditions.

That night we found an old barn that still had three walls, so we gratefully got out of the wind and set about finding bits of wood and using our own ponchos to keep the rain off.

I had not expected to be doing this yomp (RM-speak for tough forced march with kit), so had not taken my field boots with me on deployment.  Consequently, I had to draw another pair, brand new, from Stores on the ship.

You might think this was a real privilege, but stiff, new boots are no fun to walk in, especially on rough ground, and the pain of their chafing was getting beyond a joke.  Each night I had taken my socks off to wring the blood out of them.  And it was difficult to keep feet dry in those conditions, besides, I was not the only one to suffer.  I carried out a foot inspection on the whole group (6) of us each night, to see that others - though not so bad - were getting very sore too.  And we had only brought a couple of extra pairs of dry socks each for this ‘fair-weather’ jaunt.

We were all pig-headed stubborn and not wanting to pack it in, but common sense was starting to tell me that if we carried on like this, we would all be ‘op-def’d’ when we returned to the ship.  That means that you are now ‘operationally deficient’, and can’t do your job.  You need good feet and ankles to get around a Type 21 in the seas of the South Atlantic; ladders, narrow gangways, high hatch seals, and a rolling ship require solid footwork.

After some discussion we called up the ship Comms, and asked for helo (helicopter) transfer back to the ship.

We were - as expected - welcomed with jeers and jibes about how we couldn’t ‘hack it’, until people saw the state of our feet.  I spent the next ten days in flipflops, with my Medical Assistant gleefully spraying neat iodine onto my raw, blistered feet twice a day.

But what I remembered most of all on our return was my friend, the ‘Schoolie’ (Instructor Officer), taking me into his cabin whilst I was still shivering and handing me a hot cup of coffee; ‘Here you are, Doc, - get this down you.’

It was bliss.

Philip+

 

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