A CLASS APART

Alan Cochrane fails to live up to the high standards of his military mates

It was a strange request to make but the masculine voice on the other end of the line seemed fairly sure I could oblige him. ‘I’m a man short, Alan, for a team clay pigeon shoot and wondered if you could help me out.’

I had to decline, explaining that I’d only fired a shotgun twice in my life and assured him that I’d be no good to him – not if his team had any chance of winning. After suggesting a few other likely crack shots to my caller we parted company amicably enough, even if I thought I detected a slight note of disappointment in his tone.

It was only after I’d hung up that I realised the complete absurdity of what had been suggested. Here was I being offered by a soon-to -retire senior officer in one of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces the opportunity to take up arms in a no-doubt serious competition.

However, after the immense nature of the honour that had been bestowed upon me finally sank in, I texted the great man’s lady to explain my shock and awe at such an invitation and apologise for letting him down. Her reply suggested that she was not in the slightest sympathetic to my feeble excuses and insisted that I’d better get some practice in – as there was always next year!

Next year? It would take me a lot longer than that, if at all, to get up to the standard required by the team of elite servicemen. And, anyway, as a colleague pronounced: ‘ They’d probably have shot you, Cochers, if you’d let them down.’

Mind you, this episode is possibly more than a bit typical of servicemen of all ranks in that whilst they try their best to fit in with the rest of us, they really are a class apart and always try to hide their disappointment when we fail to measure up to their extremely high standards.

Thus it was with my senior soon-to-retire officer. How could an acquaintance of his – me – who for many years rented a house – me again – near his home in the Scottish countryside, not be able to competently handle a shotgun? (Perhaps I should also add that another supposed qualification for shotgun proficiency would be that I write for this magazine. However, please don’t mention my deficiency in this regard to the dead-eye-dick Editor).

This regret that we ordinary mortals don’t ever seem to match them is much the same in all the services. It’s not that they’re show-offs, well not entirely; it’s just to a certain extent they’ve got to display their talents to their superiors and thus seek advancement. But am I wrong in thinking that there appears to be nothing they like better than letting us lesser mortals see and admire their ability in all manner of fields? They’re not bad at admiring themselves, of course. I know of one retired general who has the greatest trouble indeed in passing a mirror.

Still, I digress – but only slightly. Dancing, especially in Scottish regiments and especially at this festive time of the year, is of course one area where it appears compulsory to be not just proficient but absolutely bloody marvellous. And as dancing is often accompanied by dressing up, then you can’t beat a soldier, sailor or airman for all manner of uniforms – the more elaborate and colourful the better. So much so that it’s often difficult for their womenfolk to keep up.

As a result their ladies are no slouches on the dancefloor, either, and many’s the time I’ve been pushed and prodded and cajoled into the proper steps by at least one general’s wife.

On a much more serious note I’ve found that the men and women at the top of our armed forces are in my opinion better able to deal with everyday life than their equivalents in civvy street. For a start, they can usually write in sentences; indeed some even write books, whereas t he level of bog-standard grammar missing in the scribblings of some of our captains of industry and commerce is truly lamentable.

Unless, of course, they hire journalists to write the stuff for them; and needless to say I’m all for that. Not as exciting, I admit, as shooting clays – but, as they say, it’s a living.

So what’s a chap to do? Take the senior officer’s wife’s advice and ask for some practice clay pigeon shooting as a present for Christmas? Or concentrate on the day job? After all, I’ve been at it for a lifetime.

‘ There appears to be nothing soldiers like better than letting us see and admire their abilities in all manner of fields’