The Grand Old Duke Of York

The four tonner had dropped the platoon off. We'd formed up into the formation we were going to move out. As platoon signaller I was located with the officer in charge of the platoon. He'd given the first leg of the march to a Junior NCO to navigate for us. The lead section snaked out across the Scottish countryside. We moved slowly along the valley floor - getting used to crossing rough terrain again.

I could feel the bergan straps digging into my shoulders. I was enjoying the physical exercise now. I was young fit and my legs were ups to the challenge. After a couple of miles it became obvious that there was going to be a large hill in the way shortly.

Now there are two ways to deal with a hill. You can take the shortest, and most difficult, route across it - up one side and down the other. Alternatively you can 'contour' around it - no steep slopes to march up but further to go.

On this occasion the NCO decided to go around. It was probably the right decision. The gradient of the hill was very steep and could have caused us problems. So we began to wend our way around the hill. It seemed to take forever. Surely it couldn't be that far around.

After a while things began to look worringly familiar. We hadn't gone half way around the hill - we'd done the whole f**king thing. Needless to say the soldier in charge was not the most popular of people.