Colin White's Lecture In The Cold
So, referring back to Colin White’s ‘Military Honours’, posted on this glorious site on July 11th, I was in the middle of a heatwave on Salisbury Plain when suddenly, without warning and around the vicinity of the last paragraph of the post, you found me in the sub-arctic climes of Northern Germany, lecturing in front of a load of army personnel. This post goes some way towards explaining this disjunction.
The Accidental Lecture
Looking out of the metal-framed windows onto the parade ground, all was white fresh snow. Not what you would call useful snow; not snowball snow, tobogganing snow, snowman snow. When the temperature has been locked below minus fifteen degrees Celsius for six weeks, the snow is as dry as Death Valley, a snow-blinding moon powder; neither slippery nor viscid.
The lecture theatre was more than adequately heated by oil-filled electric radiators of a certain period (and probably safety standard). The room could hold 60 or so students in tubular steel and Formica benches, tiered so they had an unimpeded view of the blackboard on its easel, and the notice board with an exploded view of a military radio pinned to it; the subject of this lecture. The problem was, the wall clock high above the easel told me it was 10:55am and yet, thus far, not a single student had arrived for this 11:00 scheduled event; my first lecturer ever, ever.
I’d been on the base in the far north of Germany for several weeks now and knew many of my ‘students’ personally. The boys (and in those days they were all male) were efficient, tight; they would not let me down. And, sure enough, at precisely 10:57 they entered quietly, seemingly in lockstep, and in rank order, each carrying their caps folded in their left hands. The Privates first, followed by the Corporals. Then the Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains, Majors and finally, judging by the wall of medals and ribbons on their decrepit frame, a Colonel or two bringing up the rear. The class maintained that order as they took their seats with the Privates on the front two rows, and the Majors at the back with those Colonels squashed into the back, right-hand corner. To this day, I know not whether the metronomic precision of their strides, or indeed the systemised rank order of their entry were regulation, accident, coincidence or simply ingrained social custom.
Nervous? I shouldn’t have been. I’d given plenty of boardroom presentations and progress reports to large groups of my peers, managers and even occasionally, potential customers. And discipline for this specific lecture was hardly going to be a problem; not with the threat of a court martial hanging over their heads. But, most important of all; I knew my subject in some depth. You see, my project, and the subject of this lecture, had been calculated by the managerial Gods as an eleven-man-year assignment. Now, as we know, this can mean anything from forty-four people working for three months, eleven for a year, or, as in my case, one man for eleven years. At the time, I was twenty-six years old and, four years into the project, I would not complete it until I was …damn it, you do the sums! So yes, I knew my material. No reason on earth not to be confident, then. Except…
As I said, I knew some of my audience personally. I’d eaten, drunk and even shat in the woods with them (See my previous post of July 11th for details if sincerely required - weird, but I shan’t tell if you don’t). We had discussed very personal matters, nursed one another in the battlefield that is peacetime army life (i.e. applied sympathy and liver salts to the hangovers). Good grief! The last time I saw those three in the second row there we were all singing Silvia’s Mother around the back of a Portakabin at the far end of the quartermaster’s store. This level of familiarity with your pupils does little to raise one's confidence level.
The thing is, I should not have even been there. I was a software engineer, for heaven’s sake, working on the automated repair software for the aforementioned radio equipment. As such, I knew how the radio worked and how to repair it; well, for the most part. So, when one broke and my software program couldn’t find the fault, I was shipped out a) to repair the knackered equipment, and b) to edit my program so that the next time that same fault occurred, the software would correctly detect it.
So, the first time, I was sent to Malvern camp, Worcestershire, to repair the pesky pig. But it turned out my software couldn’t find the fault because the radio wasn’t actually faulty. It had just been connected wrongly. I showed the soldiers the error of their ways and headed home back down the M5 motorway. Next, I was called out to Blandford Army Camp, in Dorset. A different manifestation of a non-existent fault, but the same actions, and outcome. Then my first experience of real army life as I was sent for my induction week onto Salisbury Plain, with the ‘pongos’, as we ‘civis’ referred to them, not always unjustifiably. Four more no-fault incidents (as they were rapidly becoming known). Then came my first trip to Bremen, North Germany. Things were starting to become expensive as a pattern began to emerge. The problem turned out to be nothing more than a massive case of ‘RTFM’ (for those who don’t know; ‘R’ = ‘Read’, ‘T’ = ‘The’ and ‘M’ = ‘Manual’. ‘F’ clearly stands for ‘Flippin’’ in standard soldiers’ parlance).
Anyway, the military management knew there was no way these hardened killers (Umm, I might come back to that one, later) were ever going to be persuaded to ‘RTFM’, even if their ‘F’ life depended on it. An alternative solution had to be found, and I, of course, was that solution. So, rather than me being repeatedly sent to the furthest corners of the NATO strategic command areas, to explain to each squad or troop of soldiers what they were doing wrong, instead, they would all muster to me.
Right now. Right here, in this lecture theatre.
I had arrived in Germany by military transport plane; not so dissimilar from an ordinary chartered budget aircraft; only without carpets, seats or anything to soften the screams and vibrations from the jet engines. It appeared quite a large plane but that may have been because it had been designed for a hundred plus passengers together with a quartermaster’s store load of equipment, but now there was nought but seven people on board. Six were pongos, and they sat on their kitbags. One was a civilian and I sat on my very hard shiny Samsonite clamshell suitcase. The only conversation that passed between us was when one of the pongos passed me what I thought were a set of headphones, and he shouted at me, “Yer ear defenders, chum.” And people moan about budget airlines. Mind you, there was no shortage of toilets on board. When the military converted it from its original civilian design to its cargo use, they curiously left all the toilets in situ; eighteen of them.
We arrived in Bremen Airport at one or two in the morning and, as we exited the plane, the six pongos walked together laughing and joking. I walked behind them trying to look like I was entirely comfortable inhaling on blocks of solid ice. It was so cold it wasn’t cold. Only readers who have experienced minus double figures would understand that notion.
I had been told that transport had been laid on for me to get me from the airport to the base at Hassendorf. And it had. The customs man directed me to an army Land Rover in the pound. The keys were in the ignition. The canvas top was in place. It was minus 15 degrees in a country where they don’t speak English, and they drive on the wrong side of the road. Oh, and one more thing. I had been advised that, should I happen to come across a local or two still up in the early hours of the morning, it would probably be best not to ask directions to the base as, “The locals don’t really like us squaddies that much.” Suffice to say, it was 40 odd kilometres down the E234 autobahn and, well, I wouldn’t be telling this story if I hadn’t survived.
Back to the lecture.
My task was easily defined. I was to pre-empt all possible misunderstandings regarding the connecting and use of the radio, and then present the chosen army representatives with a thorough and correct working scenario. Thereby, NATO, the British Government and the contractor employing me would save on my travel and living expenses, and the Army would be spared embarrassment. Basically, we were addressing their reticence to RTFM by employing me to be their ‘FM ’.
Five minutes into the lecture and all nerves had evaporated. I’m ashamed to admit I was vigorously enjoying the ‘performance’. I felt I had my soldier students engaged, each with their quartermaster-issued pens, pads and their furrowed brows. I was at home using my language, my body movements and my brain to convey what were, I suppose, quite complex issues. I was in charge. I knew it. I loved it. In short, I probably came across as a complete and utter tw*t.
I was about three-quarters the way through my exposition and I’d just finished marking the input/output interfaces to the unit, when something meteoric and transformative happened. I was just turning from the blackboard to get the coloured chalks to highlight something or other, when I sensed something moving high in my peripheral vision. It was sleek and graceful. It was aerodynamic perfection. It wasn’t one of those sophisticated origami exercises where the dart is made from separate fuselage and tailpieces. No. It was simple, streamlined, elegant, chic even. Its roll and yaw were wonderfully invariant. Its pitch was, well, pitch-perfect, throughout its flight. It had clearly been crafted by a practiced expert. Perhaps an expert who had been party to the flight dynamic design of some military projectile death bringer. It landed square middle of the narrow Formica worktop towards the left-hand corner at the back of the room and slid to rest by the work pad of one of the ‘higher-rankers’. He picked it up to investigate it; admire it maybe. I had just reached my highly complex rendition of the High Density Bipolar 3 Communication Channel, but my eyes extrapolated the flight path backwards to its possible launch site.
There was no mistaking the miscreant. He was the one sitting in the far-right corner of the theatre. He was 95 years old. He had more medals, flags and pendants attached to him than Montgomery of Alamein, and his salary was undoubtedly an order of magnitude higher than my own. For about half a second our eyes met, and maybe in that instance I was at a loss with regard to how to handle the situation. But any action on my part was annulled by him breaking eye-contact. His head slowly and steadily drifted down to his writing pad as if any sudden movement on his part might ignite my wrath. And if he did it slowly enough and with enough apparent contrition, he might just get away with a hundred lines. I was looking at a man who firmly believed he was in danger of being reported to his parents.
For my part, I’m proud to say I don’t think I missed a beat. I simply launched into my discussion of error rates in HDB3 bipolar signalling techniques. I say ‘proud’, but I guess there wasn’t any real alternative. Making him stand in the corner of the room with his back to the class for the remainder of the lesson just didn’t seem appropriate somehow.
When the lesson was over, the troupe exited the room in perfect reversal of their entrance, except for one man who remained seated. As the rest of the company filed passed me some thanked me, even calling me ‘Sir’. The ones I knew better, maybe the ones who knew all three verses to Tony Orlando’s Knock Three Times, smiled and even slyly winked at me as they withdrew. As the stragglers made for the door, the arch-criminal arose and slowly made his way along his aisle and then down the central steps to meet me at the bottom.
“Sir. I want to apologise for my behaviour in your lesson. I do hope you can forgive…” and this continued for quite some time; in fact, it felt like for the rest of the afternoon. All I had to do was stand there and try not to look embarrassed. I had to try my utmost to appear professional, mature and, above all, in control. To be honest, I’m blowed if I remember how I reacted. If I was cool, I could have commented on the quality of his projectile, ask if anything was written on it, a sort of inter-lecture theatre carrier pigeon. But I probably didn’t.
I suppose he eventually left because I do remember the room being empty, except for a blackboard full of scribbles, a flipboard with an image of the innards of a military radio pinned to it, a paper dart still on the back row in the left corner, and me. I walked up the steps and picked up the dart. Nothing was written on it. And as I cleaned the board and collected my belongings, I paused to look over the empty room and to ponder the last hour. I did good.
Two points emerged:
You place anyone, and I do mean anyone, regardless of how esteemed or distinguished they might be, in a classroom environment, and they are capable of regressing to a youthful, exuberant and potentially obnoxious hooligan.
There is absolutely nothing on this earth guaranteed to create instant and deep respect than to stand in front of a new class of students. (Note: thirty-five years of lecturing later and I’m not altogether certain that this point is entirely valid).
And, following this experience in frozen northern Germany in the late 70’s, did I want to be a lecturer? … Do pongos shit in the wood?
