Nicolas Ridley

UNARMED COMBAT

It’s a pleasant spring day in early April and we are learning how to kill people. Or disable them. Or maybe both. I’m not sure yet. Together we chant the sergeant’s mantra:
 

One-two-three-four,
Step-on-his-jaw,
Just-to-make-sure.
‘Next!’
 

Last winter we slept in our boots on Dartmoor. We learnt the lesson on the first morning. If you leave your boots outside the tent, they freeze solid. The answer is to keep them on all night. This means lying on your back in your sleeping-bag with your feet pointing upwards, which is awkward at first but you get used to it. When you’re fourteen years old, sleeping isn’t usually terribly difficult.

One-two-three-four,
Step-on-his-jaw,
Just-to-make-sure.
‘Next!’
 

This spring the school’s Combined Cadet Force is camping in the Thetford battle area. We have spent much of the week crawling through damp bracken and sheep’s droppings but we’ve camped in worse places before and we expect we will again.

This afternoon a group of us has volunteered to undergo training in unarmed combat. It sounded more fun than signals, mortars or map-reading. We are in the care of our instructor, square, unhurried, amiable, Sergeant Jones.

Methodically, almost languorously, Sergeant Jones disarms, maims and dispatches us by numbers.

‘You take the arm. You break the arm. You twist the wrist. And over he goes.’

It’s oddly hypnotic.

‘You take the arm. You break the arm. You twist the wrist. And over he goes.’

One at a time, we rush at Sergeant Jones with a wooden weapon. Step-by-step he goes about his business.

‘You take the arm. You break the arm. You twist the wrist. And over he goes.’

I’m not certain what we’re learning except that Sergeant Jones is the master of his craft. If we have to watch him for the whole afternoon, we may become bored and restless but, for the present, it passes the time.
 

One-two-three-four,
Step-on-his-jaw,
Just-to-make-sure.
‘Next!’

The sun shines down on us benignly and tonight we will sleep peacefully in our socks.