Soldier F: Guerillas in the Jungle by Shaun Clarke

Author:Shaun Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1993-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Looking down through one of the many windows of the almost empty Beverley, Dead-eye could see the canopy of the jungle, stretching out to the horizon like a green sea gaining colour in the brightening pearly-grey light of dawn. The trees looked impenetrable, like an almost solid mass. It was hard to believe that beneath them were streams, waterfalls, swamps, a myriad of wildlife, thriving Sakai kampongs – and approximately 2,000 Communist guerrillas. It was also hard to believe that you could actually parachute down and find enough space between the trees to reach the ground. Nevertheless, that was what he would be doing in a few minutes’ time.

‘We’re coming in low,’ the RAF Loadmaster said. ‘Three hundred and fifty metres, to be precise. So you better be quick, boys.’

‘No sweat,’ Sergeant Lorrimer said. ‘We’ve often come in even lower than that, so we’re not so concerned.’

‘The brave lads of the SAS,’ said the Loadmaster in an ironic voice. ‘I’d like to recommend my mother-in-law to the Regiment. I desperately need to get rid of her.’

It was a backhanded compliment that made Lorrimer grin, while also reminding him and Dead-eye that the jump they were about to make was not without danger.

‘You OK?’ Lorrimer asked.

‘Sure,’ Dead-eye replied, meaning it, secretly thrilled that Lorrimer had chosen him above all the others for this special task.

Inevitably, the rest of the lads had given him a terrible ribbing the night before, making the anticipated jokes about ‘hot-bedding’ with Sergeant Lorrimer and how older men lusted after white-cheeked cherry boys. It was all good-natured fun and Dead-eye didn’t mind it a bit, though he wished they’d stop calling him a ‘cherry boy’, which was a George Town whore’s term for a male virgin. He didn’t have a steady girlfriend, but Dead-eye was no virgin.

In fact, he’d lost his virginity at sixteen to an older woman, a so-called ‘aunt’, actually a girlfriend of his father’s. Since then he’d had it pretty regularly, occasionally with girls his own age, but mostly with rather older women, whom he found were content with the sex and didn’t expect too many sweet words from him.

Dead-eye was uncomfortable with conversation in general, but even more so with the endearments that most girls of his own age expected. Having spent his formative years watching his father beat his mother, he didn’t have much faith in romantic love.

His father was a long-distance lorry driver, born and bred in West Croydon, which he had never left, except when driving across Britain or on the Continent. Parker senior was an alcoholic who liked football, darts, horse-racing, the dogs and women, in that order; but his wife came last on his long list of the latter.

Dead-eye had spent most of his childhood huddling in corners in his parents’ house on a West Croydon council estate, looking on in terror and incomprehension as his father, roaring drunk, took out his spleen with fist and boot on his wife. Eventually, when Dead-eye was twelve or thirteen, he attempted to defend his mother and was pummelled almost senseless for his troubles.

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