Strictly Regimental

If I close my eyes and put my mind in neutral, I can see Fletcher as he was fifty years ago when I first met him. I can see his tousled head with its tight blond curls, his broken nose, his battered ears and his lean frame, always bent slightly forward. I can see his grubby overalls and his boots, not well dubbined as one might have thought, but doused in kitchen grease. Fletcher was the officers' mess cook, not a member of the Army Catering Corps but one of those dedicated band of men from within the regiment whose tools of trade are rifles and bayonets (first) with ladles and saucepans (second).
I do not remember Fletcher for the excellence of his cooking, which was never more than 'simple', but there were things that happened to him - which involved me, that are still pin-sharp in my mind.
He came to see me one day when we were stationed in Pembroke Dock and told me he could not find his boots. He had looked throughout the kitchen and his bunk, which adjoined the kitchen, but they had been missing for three days and he felt they were irretrievably lost. He told me he put his boots outside his door when he went to bed. I asked him if he expected someone to come along and clean them, but he replied saying he had a skin complaint which caused a bad smell and if he opened the window to clear the air, he got a stiff neck. Why anyone would want to pinch Fletcher's boots was difficult to understand; there were far better pickings in the batmen's quarters - but there it was, the boots had gone and he would have to pay for a new pair. For the next few days Fletcher paddled around in a pair of daps which soon became embalmed in kitchen waste and resembled footwear of a low caste native sweeper.
It was not until the end of the week that the mystery was solved. Friday was the day when Fletcher emptied the stock pot. As he winched the large stainless steel container over to one side and deposited the contents into swill bins, a pair of boots came into view among the debris of bones, skin and vegetables at the bottom. With a shout of joy he recovered them and rinsed them off under a tap. He let everyone know he had found his boots and that after a week in the stock pot they were far more comfortable than they had been before. A week later he told me that the skin complaint, which had troubled his feet for years, had completely disappeared. He was oblivious to the sick looks on the officers' faces whenever he mentioned soup and was quite upset the following week when he had to throw away an almost full stock pot. We never found out who played the prank on Fletcher, but it was not hard to guess who was to blame when the Adjutant started to drink soup again.

When we went to Cyprus two years later Fletcher, after a tour of duty in the soldiers' cookhouse, came back to the officers' mess. The national service officers were a new bunch and they knew nothing about the 'stock pot' business, but some of the old hands looked upon Fletcher's return with suspicion. He settled down quite well and cemented good relations with the locally employed civilian staff who worked in the kitchen.
We had a marvellous camp on the north east coast of Cyprus. Behind us towered mountains covered with pine trees and before us lay a beach of golden sand lapped by the warmest, clear blue water in the northern hemisphere. In front of the officers' mess was a rocky promontory which, by a freak of nature, was formed in a number of parallel ridges with water filled gullies between. The largest of these gullies was an almost perfect water polo pitch, except for one thing. Right in the middle was a finger of rock, like a stalagmite, which gave centre forwards a painful experience if they swam into it.
It was an easy matter to rectify, so one morning I went along to the pool with some plastic explosive, gun cotton primers, electric cable and detonators. I dived to the bottom and packed the explosive into as many cracks around the base of the rock that I could find. Then I connected all the bits and pieces and came ashore to the battery terminal. When I was sure that the 'coast was clear' (literally), I pressed the contact on the battery. The finger of rock took off like a rocket and, quite by chance, a shoal of fish happened to swim by at that very moment. The force of the explosion lifted them en masse out of the water.
Fletcher and some others of the mess staff had been watching from the mess veranda and within seconds they had equipped themselves with buckets and bowls and were in the pool collecting fish I had killed. They looked like trout and were about one pound in weight. Not only was there an ample supply for the officers' mess, but Fletcher was also able to feed the sergeants' mess and still have enough to give to the civilian staff to take home. I tell this particular part of the story at length because never before nor since have I fed so many people with a single shot. I was mindful of someone else who, two thousand years previously, did much the same sort of thing - not so very far away either.
I was excited at the prospect of producing a splendid feast of fresh fish and I explained to Fletcher that I wanted him to cook them as if they were trout. But instead of serving them complete with head and tail, he cut them up and covered the pieces with a thick white sauce. 'Presentation' was never one of his strong points and I blame myself for not checking sufficiently.
A few days later, the CO, who now looked upon me as a sort of wizard who could produce shoals of fish at the drop of a hat, asked me to get him a fish for breakfast. Wearing my flippers and mask and armed with a spear gun, I entered the water on the far side of the water polo pitch. Usually there were plenty of fish about but, in the aftermath of the explosion, it seemed as if they had gone away to find a quieter place.
I had almost given up hope of catching anything when I saw movement on the sea bed. It turned out to be a bottom feeder with ugly teeth, golf-ball eyes, snake-like feelers and a body covered in warts. At first, I rejected the thought of shooting it, but when I was unable to find anything else, I went back and speared it. It was even more repulsive when I got it out of the water, but I could see there was plenty of good flesh on it. I gave it to Fletcher and told him to prepare it for the CO's breakfast the following day.
Fletcher's mind worked like a computer. He had been programmed to keep the heads on 'trout-like' fish so, as far as he was concerned, anything that came out of the sea kept its head on when it went into the frying pan.
I heard that the Commanding Officer nearly leapt out of his chair when his breakfast was put in front of him. Fletcher, with a rare flash of imagination, had put a piece of lemon in the monster's jaw, but it did nothing to improve the Colonel's appetite or temper. He was convinced it was a practical joke and when I was summoned to appear before him, he told me that the dining table was 'holy ground' as far as he was concerned and that I would lose my job as messing member if there were any more pranks.

The Colonel had mentioned on a few occasions that he wanted Fletcher to produce West African peanut stew. It was a particular favourite of his and he was anxious to try it out on the rest of us. I carefully recorded the Colonel's instructions about how to produce this exotic dish and then went in search of Fletcher. I passed on the CO's recipe and told him to be ready at 07.00 hrs the following day to go with the quartermaster's convoy to the supply depot in Famagusta, from where he could nip across the road to the market and collect the items he needed for the peppery stew.
He returned in the late afternoon and I saw him walking towards the mess kitchen carrying a bag. I asked him if he had managed to get everything the CO wanted and he replied: "Yes, sir, everything except red chillies - so I got green ones instead." The CO had stipulated that red chillies were essential for a good West African peanut stew, so I was somewhat reluctant to give Fletcher orders to go ahead before checking with the Colonel. I took a few green pods out of the bag and inspected them closely. "Are you sure these are chillies?" I asked, "they look like beans to me." "Oh, yes, sir, they're chillies alright. I picked ‘em special," he said. I selected one and bit it carefully. There was no burning sensation as one would expect from a chilli and when I opened the pod I could see it was, without doubt, a bean. "You're an idiot, Fletcher," I said. "Now, I shall have to tell the CO that the peanut stew is off." Fletcher slunk off to his tent as I went in search of the Commanding Officer.
The Colonel was sitting on the veranda reading a newspaper. I told him about the mistake with the chillies and he said: "How could he possibly confuse beans with chillies? - let me have a look at them." One of the mess servants was told to find Fletcher and tell him that the colonel wanted to see his bag of beans. He appeared a few minutes later and gave the Colonel the brown paper bag. The CO withdrew a pod and studied it carefully. He turned it over and smelt it and then said it was quite suitable for making his favourite stew. "I'm sorry, sir, I must disagree," I said. "It's not a chilli, it's a bean - I've just eaten one." The Colonel once again picked up the green pod and polished his glasses before confirming that it was a chilli. I knew I was on firm ground, so I extracted a pod from the bag, slipped it into my mouth and chewed it up. "There you are, sir, they're beans," I said. It was a convincing demonstration, so the Colonel, feeling I had proved my case, selected a nice big one, popped it into his mouth and chewed it.
What the subsequent investigation revealed was that Flutter's bag contained a mixture of chillies and beans. The Colonel, who had been unfortunate in his choice, turned purple and tears spurted from his eyes like a garden sprinkler. I told Flatter to get some bread and butter, as someone had once told me that this was the antidote to chilli burn. I spread thick wedges of butter on the bread as Flatter and the mess sergeant stuffed it down the CO's throat. This brought on a choking fit and we had to slap him on the back to allow him to breathe properly. At last, all his tubes were clear and we managed to cool him down. The cooling process went only as far as his mouth and throat were concerned, and when he recovered his composure I became the victim of his anger and lost my job as food member of the mess committee. West African peanut stew was never mentioned again.

Once a week an Army Kinema Corporation film came up from Famagusta with the ration truck. When the officers' turn came to see it, we erected a projector on the mess veranda and beamed the film to a screen on top of a pair of six foot tables. Occasionally, when the wind blew hard and the screen was not tethered properly, the contraption would topple over and fall into the water polo pool.
One evening after supper, we were sitting on the veranda watching a 'western'. There had been a gun battle, but the action switched to the bedroom, when all of a sudden shooting started again. It took a second or two for us to realise that this time real bullets were flying through the air and we all dived for cover as lead thudded into the wall behind the projector. There was only one officer who had the courage to get up and find where the shots were coming from. He sprinted around the side of the building just in time to see HQ Company arms storeman reloading a 9mm Browning automatic pistol and then pumping another magazine of rounds through the side of Fletcher's tent. The would-be assassin was brought down in a flying tackle, disarmed and marched off to the guard tent. After the commotion had died down, Fletcher was found cowering underneath his bed none the worse for the experience.
The evidence produced at the court martial of the arms storeman revealed some details about Fletcher's psyche which many of us had suspected. 'Personal relationships' is a delicate matter in the Army and, in those days, if you stepped out of line, you could find yourself in serious trouble. Nevertheless, we felt the unilateral action of the arms storeman was rather heavy handed.
Fletcher left the battalion soon after the attempt on his life. Besides, the Army Catering Corps were getting into their stride and he would never have been one of the 'Professionals' - he was strictly regimental.