Taming The Phobes

I'd become rather pissed-off about two things. I'd joined the Army at eighteen and done nearly twelve years and, although I'd done pretty well I was unsure of my future. I couldn't make up my mind if I wanted to extend my signing and secondly, my boyfriend, now thinking about leaving the Army too, wanted me out. He wanted me out in more ways than one but I said I would try one of these to start with - just out of the Army.

Then there were the third and fourth pissing-off occurrences. I'd been told, because of Treasury cutbacks, that the probability of any further advancement was minimal - there were new faces in charge too, then Roddy, the boyfriend, had the offer of a lifetime to take himself off for several years to Canada and the States in the aftermath of September 11th if he left the Army, but wasn't sure if I could be included. Some job - as I put it - what did he know about conning rich suckers to put their money into holes in the ground? Really though, he said he could make an awful lot of money himself in his ostensible job as an investment broker in his brother Walter's bank and promised to keep me in the life to which I was beginning to be accustomed. And with my brains and his connections, who knows? However, things were taking a turn for the better as I found in the letter I received today. But, first things first.

Roddy was about four years older than me and had been a Second-Lieutenant when I was a wee sprog Private of eighteen. Now he was set to leave to join big brother's firm of stock-brokers and general wheeler-dealers to the rich and famous - and not-so-famous but still rich - all over the globe, almost twelve years and many nights of secret passion later. Roddy was the perfect product of a Scottish public-school education and development. Perfect manners, perfect body, five feet ten, dark hair, blue eyes and a nice six-inch uncircumcised cock.

Me, I'm Edward Boon, Ted to my friends and enemies alike, and six foot two of muscle, bone and a few brains. My story was I joined the Army through boredom having managed to get three reasonable A levels and no wish to spend three years at fucking university. Not that the fucking would have been rebuffed. I had had a very willing partner in my sexual activities from the age of thirteen and a half - my next-door neighbour - same age - same proclivities and a nice arse to boot - or to fuck. Which I did on a regular basis. Jake - short for Jacob - Manners had in fact taught me to wank - a skill he had learned after a stay with a slightly older relative and a skill he passed on to our joint delight.

We discovered the other delights from hours of experimentation in the shed at the bottom of his garden. In fact, I celebrated my fourteenth birthday not only at the bottom of his garden but for the first time up his bottom. From that day on we alternated, tit for tat, suck or fuck, wank or whatever, best of pals and never dropped a grade in school - ten top-grade O levels each, followed by two more years of extensive fucking and sucking ending up with three A grades at A level.

Jake, industrious as ever, went off to Uni, Oxford in fact, and got a First in Medieval History. I went down the Recruiting Office and got a first in square-bashing, rifle-toting, boot-bulling and latrine-cleaning. The last through making unwise remarks about a rather choleric Sergeant who didn't take kindly to the overheard nickname he had of Bungalow - a play on his name and an undoubted fact, as he had nothing up top. Thick as the proverbial brick shithouse and overflowing with the ordure of non-human unkindness to new recruits. I was marked. Having `education' was not looked on with any favour by those who had fucked-up in some way and had to join the Army. Here was I - brains - and the bewilderment on Bungalow's part turned to suspicion and then downright hatred. The pity of it was this rebounded on the rest of our squad.

We were a collection of life's misfits. Some wanted to join the Army. An experience of the camaraderie of Army Cadet life at school probably sparked their desire. Some were given the option by friendly magistrates, probation officers or the neighbourhood bobby - join up before you get something worse. A few were seduced by the telly ads - a life for you! More had had a life of broken homes, foster homes, failed adoptions and needed some sort of stability. Some, like me, had an innate fear of drifting but didn't want responsibility. Actually, my old man had had fifteen years as a Regular and was always praising it up. I half believed him, though Pam, my elder sister, said I was a fool but she loved me dearly. Mum wept a bit and Dad wasn't too sure even up to the day I kissed them all goodbye and caught the train to the barracks even though he'd told me, this, or else!

I, of course, was missing Jake terribly. Barrack room life did not include the sexual release I was more than accustomed to. The first fortnight was the worst. Every night after lights out there were farts, groans, grunts and snores. No sound of bed springs gently vibrating, no murmurs of ecstasy as a hand-held weapon fired its arrows, I mean, bullets of desire. In fact, desire was pretty low on the list of priorities.

We were harried from dawn to dusk, here, there, everywhere, marching, trotting at the double, rifle drill, physical jerks, cross country, cleaning and bulling equipment, bedspace tidying and barrack room buffing and then there were the bloody injections. I think the general idea was to keep us so occupied and tired out from, query, healthy activity that once allowed the luxury of bed there was no yen for that supreme activity of horny eighteen-year-olds. I know my horn lay dormant through sheer fatigue, if not through the bromide my school pals had jokingly told me they put in the tea for new recruits when they learned of my destination in life.

Nonetheless I managed two solitary wanks in the said latrines in fourteen days just to make sure I hadn't lost the art without constant practice. The first was behind a closed door making out I was having a lengthy crap at the time. Just a release of pent-up juices listening out for entrances and exits, knowing that if someone suspected there was hands-on activity, then no end of it would be heard in the barrack room, with the high probability of the handle of 'Wanker' being attached to one's given name.

The second was on the second Sunday. I had woken up some time before six o'clock, then remembered as it was Sunday we were being allowed to rest in our beds until seven. I was wide awake and needed a piss. Christ Almighty, as I lay there I sensed a stiffening in my now normally flaccid organ. I crept out of bed, clad only in regulation khaki boxers, shuffled into the flip-flops under the bed and made my way as silently as possible to the latrines in the adjacent corridor. No one was about at that hour, just the dim light from the regulation night bulbs guided me as I went into one of the cubicles rather than standing at the urinal as I knew I needed to experiment. While emptying my bladder I peered at some of the myriad graffiti adorning the bog walls. From 'Please do not stand upon the seat, the crabs in here can jump ten feet', through somewhat exaggerated drawings of all sorts of incredible cocks and tits and other portions of male and female anatomy to a large, well-inked in, 'My mother made me a homosexual' - with the response under it - 'If I send her the wool would she make me one?'

Those two were new on me and I grinned to myself as I shook the last drops away and stood, my boxers round my ankles, gently caressing my now hardening and lengthening rod. I was just getting into the swing of things, or the stroking of things, when I heard the main door swing open and shut. Someone entered the cubicle next to mine and after the initial standing piss the unmistakable sounds of a heartfelt wank were evident. Whoever it was wasn't a jot concerned that they were next to an occupied stall, and, whoever it was was fully aware that the silent occupant next door was there for the same purpose but he, that is, I, was too shit-scared to continue. My hardon remained, gripped viciously, but my hand refused to move. Next door the unhurried slap-slap of flesh round flesh went on until that instinctive speeding-up began and there were evident moans and grunts as whoever it was reached a more than satisfactory climax. That wasn't all. In tandem with the intakes of breath and puffings out a low voice murmured, “Thank God, I thought the bugger had died on me!” A shuffling told me that undies were being raised, then the door was opened and footsteps retreated through the swinging main door again.

I went, peered into the now vacated stall next door, saw in the dimness the copious evidence of a much-needed release, proceeded much more silently through the door than he had and almost tiptoed into the barrack room. All were asleep, snores and slight movements were the only evidence of living bodies under the covers. I slid back into bed in the first corner of the room. I turned and saw the bright eyes of Taffy Williams peeping out from the covers in the bed next to mine. One eye closed in a huge conspiratorial wink. A wank and a wink.

Taffy said nothing. We had exchanged names, addresses, likes and dislikes over the previous fourteen days. Like me he had left school in Wales but with little prospect of a job. He had gone to Sixth Form College and had a couple of A levels, not enough for Uni, and had been told by his father to join the Army, or else, just like me. He was a knowledgeable lad nonetheless and the pair of us had been given the honorary ranks of Unpaid Squad Lance-Corporals after ten days purely on the strength of being a bit brighter and taller than the others. This meant we had the unenviable tasks of seeing that all the real NCO's orders about cleanliness, tidiness and general bullshit were carried out. As we were all in it together this wasn't too bad but we could get the flak from either side of the fence, us and them. Them, in more ways than one, was Sergeant Bungalow Bigelow. But his story comes later.

Of course, I'd been a bit apprehensive knowing that Taffy knew about my solitary activity, but then I knew about his. And being called 'Wanker' was the biggest put down of any in my experience. At school, everyone knew that any hint that one's hands didn't remain outside the bedcovers at night would invoke the call. I knew, and we all knew, one's hands were not made to remain outside the covers at night. Even with universal central heating these days it was too cold and we all knew it was much cosier to have a hand wrapped round one's trusty hot-blooded pole. It was even better to have someone else's hand round it and from careful listening and discerning of friendships and black rings under eyes I and Jake knew that our contemporaries were just as involved in single, dual, or even multiple effusions of our teenage liquor every day, either in solitary splendour, or with help from congenial company.

In fact, both Jake and I had had, respectively, two and three experiences of this sort quite independently with age mates, not counting the learning experience he'd had with his cousin. As I knew all three of my squirters, by almost eager confession, had tossed off and been tossed off by others, and Jake told the same tale when we compared notes, this meant the total accounted for at least half of my age group at school. And these were the ones we knew about! In fact, we agreed, the two biggest shouters of the soubriquet were the pair who had most to fear as they were, undoubtably, the most avid offenders in the realms of self-abuse and the 'I'll do it to you if you do it to me' trade. Their other fault was the ready way they labelled other kids as 'poofters', 'arse-bandits' or 'nancies'.

Luckily they never suspected Jake and me of being in that category. Both of us were early developers and big with it. I had reached six feet by sixteen and had what my sister Pam called, to my youthful embarrassment, “rugby-players' legs” designed to get any girl's vaginal juices flowing. She didn't mention the vaginal juices but I gleaned gobbets of mis-information of that sort from her copies of Cosmopolitan and other such-like academic literature. Jake was the same size as me all over, even rising to the six and a half inches I fully attained at seventeen and he in the last few months of school. He was thicker than me - I did get a better grade than him in Maths at GCSE level and he admitted that - but he said he made up for that positively in the slight excess in circumference of his shaft over mine. I said what a good friend I was to him to be able to accommodate any excesses of his.

However, the two loudmouths, Troy Pearson and Terry Mole, overstepped the mark in Jake and my opinions. In the first term we were all in the First Year Sixth their phobia attached itself to a harmless lad in the group, Harry Christopherson. Admittedly, Harry was smaller than average for a seventeen-year-old, he wasn't sporty, he wore glasses - so did Jake for reading - he still had a rather unfocussed voice, his biggest interests were English Literature and being editor of the school magazine, but, in his favour and the annoyance of many less-endowed schoolfellows, he did have a lanky cock attached to his rather puny frame.

This all started with a few uncalled-for references to Harry dealing with younger members of the school who had to come to see him in the Sixth Form room to hand in their contributions to the magazine. If they were boys, either Troy or Terry would make some reference such as 'nice arse on that kid' as they went off with Harry looking rather non-plussed and, also, rather embarrassed. Unfortunately, Troy, whose apparent loathing of the Greek practices his name fitted him for and the possessor of a less than normal-sized seventeen-year-old rod, later discovered a poem poor Harry had written which Troy discerned, quite rightly as it transpired, was in admiration of the bodily attributes of a fair-haired Year Ten lad. Troy, for some reason, had told Jake about his discovery. Jake had nodded sagely and wisely said Troy should keep his mouth shut because he couldn't be sure. As Jake was four inches taller than Troy, was obviously brighter, and had a slight air of authority gained from a couple of years as a Patrol Leader in a local Scout Troop, Troy held his peace.

This lad adulated in the poem, Andrew Forbes, was in the throes of the adolescent growth spurt but it hadn't yet ravaged his looks with that scourge of the teenage years, acne. In fact, his blond hair, limpid blue eyes, clear complexion and full red lips were what one would die for, in the parlance of the racy tales I found much later on certain sites on the Internet. Both Jake and I had fantasized about what we could do with young Andrew, with or without his permission, in or out of bed. He was that innocent abroad, the Billy Budd of Mortfield Comprehensive. He was constantly in trouble with us Prefects - not through naughtiness or rudeness or plain downright adolescent contrariness. Rather it was the blissful unawareness of his surroundings, the ignorance of Rules with a capital R, etc. etc. All those petty annoyances which these youngsters have in drawing attention to themselves for those in Higher Authority. Andrew found himself in detention quite often and I must admit on the two occasions I had to sit and watch over the assembled miscreants - just Andrew and another Year Ten kid who had both fallen foul of Mrs Pendleby-Smyth the Geographic ogress on each occasion - I spent the half hour, which sped by like five minutes, ogling those perfect features and wondering what lay beneath that smartly ironed grey school shirt and well-pressed grey trousers.

By the way, I did get a chance a couple of weeks later of ogling the whole of Andrew as I was commanded by Badger Bollocks (not his real name by any stretch of the imagination and a nickname not repeated anywhere near his formidable presence) our senior games master, to oversee a Year Ten game which also entailed checking that the young darlings showered properly after the match. As most were at that shy-making stage of puberty, where hair in the right places and the length of developing juvenile penises were of prime concern, a certain amount of energetic cajoling of their nude bodies was called for. I and Gutsy Pringle, my co-director of the athletic activities of the afternoon, had not only to verbally drive their muddy selves into the steamy room but use the knotted end of handy towels to sting a few recalcitrant backsides. One lad had the audacity to say 'Fuck off' to Gutsy, our First Fifteen's corpulent tight-head prop forward, when told to shift himself and was rewarded with three red welts across a very pert butt.

Of course, young Andrew was last to strip off. This was done, under my watchful eye, with an unstudied nonchalance. Boots were unknotted slowly, football socks removed at a leisurely pace. A very muddy rugby shirt was hoisted heavenwards exposing a perfect chest and two delectable rose-pink nipples. A touch of blond fuzz was discernible under each armpit. Then came the slow descent of extremely muddy shorts.

Andrew was in this mired state as he always seemed to be in the line of someone's exit from a scrum with a ball and was almost always cast aside like some unwanted possession, then to be trampled underfoot by the pursuing masses. He always picked himself up, shook himself in a puppyish manner and followed a few yards behind only to be in the line of fire as the battlelines changed direction again. He never complained, just went doggedly on.

Anyway, his shorts were off and placed on the bench behind him. A fully-formed bubble butt was now in my line of sight. I moved forward a pace or two as his fingers were inserted into the waistband of the tight blue briefs covering those delectable globes. As he raised himself, after divesting himself of those skimpy garments and turned, so part of me raised itself of its own accord in sympathy. Luckily I had the towel which I, cooly and deliberately, held in front of my bulging shorts. He was a perfect picture. I suppose Michelangelo's David at fifteen rather than seventeen would have looked like him. A soft haze of blondness surmounted a perfectly formed young cock sheathed in a pale pink foreskin. Two small but slightly hanging plover's eggs swung below as he turned to face me. There was no embarrassment. I would dream and daydream about that sight for years to come. In fact, I came to many daydreams of young Andrew. I spoke, not quite knowing what to say. I knew what I wanted to say but that wasn't possible.

“Sorry, I wasn't thinking....” he paused, giving me more time to take in the young god before me. I wanted that form imprinted on my brain and I stared quite openly from blue eyes down and back again. “Actually, I was thinking...?” he continued, gazing at me with a questioning look on his face. What question? My prick did a twitch and I flapped the towel to set up a cooling breeze. “...You can help me,...” He smiled and my hard heart melted. No, I hadn't got a hard heart, but I felt something go 'zing' and it wasn't the elastic on my rugger shorts though the front of those was stretched out somewhat. “....I was just working out the number of distinct arrangements of the letters of my name compared with my friend Jeremy. I make it seven hundred and twenty for mine, and three hundred and sixty for his. I think that's right?”

“Yes, it is,” came a voice from behind me. It was Gutsy - real name Jeff - and a whizz at Maths in the Second Year Sixth. “It would be the same for friend Edward here,” he continued, with Andrew's big blue eyes now fixed on him, “But for me, Jeffrey, J-e-f-f-r-e-y, it would be...?” A hesitation, then a big smile from Andrew. “More difficult, seven and two, so that must be twelve hundred and sixty!” A nudge in the back for me from Gutsy, then, “That's right. Now come on and get in that shower.”

I was no great whizz at Maths, certainly not at Gutsy's level, but I was doing it for A level, and I had cottoned on to Andrew's problem and had also realised he was no blond airhead. Andrew gave us both another gorgeous smile and proceeded into the showers to be greeted by friendly shouts from his class-mates. He was obviously popular and when I heard about the poem I was determined not to let Andrew suffer in any way.

There was something about Gutsy that I knew I could confide in him. I told him all. In five minutes he knew I was gay, I was really only interested in one person, Jake, and that Jake and I were lovers but certainly not committed to each other. He smiled his lop-sided smile and said if ever I needed to talk he would be there. In all, Gutsy turned out to be a real friend. He's now the beloved curate of a difficult London parish and I go to see him, his wife and two-year old son whenever I can. In fact, Edward Boon is a proud godfather of young William Arthur Pringle.

I'd better say that the other person who I had confided in was my sister Pam. That was at New Year, just a week or so before I had my talk with Gutsy. Pam had been a real sister, a friend and confidant for years. She was four years older than me and was at that time in her final year at Uni reading Psychology. No, I didn't recline on a couch for her to give me a session of unburdening my unconscious. I knew all about the id, having perused, out of curiosity, one of her textbooks. My id, I knew, was rampaging overtime and had been since my balls dropped, with my subsequent discovery of the joys of masturbation and all else, and my superego was having a heavy job clamping down on its wanton expression in a non-heterosexual way. Pam, in her sisterly way, knew there were seethings. She was quite forthright. She asked her seventeen-year-old brother outright if he and his constant companion, Jacob Manners, were lovers. Brother blushed, nodded and Pam rushed and hugged him tight. Told him she'd guessed years before and said I'd better not say anything to Mum and Dad yet. So it was while thinking over implications of saying or doing something which would alert my doting parents that Gutsy had caught me in a contemplative mood that day.

But, back to Troy and Terry. They, however, engineered their own downfall, or at least one of them did. They had labelled almost all the Year Tens and Elevens as wankers - which they undoubtably were - the Year Tens fourteen or fifteen and the others rising sixteen or over, and rising sixteen centimetres or over as well no doubt - and had hinted of their knowledge that at least half of them were poofters. Their own trouble was they were turning into a couple of real slobs. Both were getting overweight; junk food, lager and cigarettes seemed to be the mainstays of their diet. They also had difficulty in getting hold of tottie, as they rather disparagingly referred to the girls at our school.

Girls, of course came with the school as we were a large mixed Comprehensive and most of the boys of my age and acquaintance had gone through, in the metaphorical sense I was certain, at least two or three before settling to one or none. Jake and I had made the effort and a few foursomes to the local multiplex and a few fumbles on the backrow had convinced both of us there was nothing in the pursuit for us. Having made the effort, and having been seen to make the effort, we were above suspicion.

Troy and Terry tried, but in the end their overtures were more often than not spurned. Their zits and acned visages, plus their increasing weights, choice of haircuts and out-of-school designer wear, were not the come-on for the rather more desirable females who abounded from Year Eight onwards - girls mature earlier so I was led to believe. The pair seemed to be mainly in the sad company of Rosina Pickles who was known, without affection, as the school bike. As neither Jake nor I had ridden that particular ill-favoured specimen of the female species, nor wanted to, we couldn't comment However, the whispered comments of contemporaries who had, for them, certain knowledge of how many times a friend or acquaintance had inserted his shaft into the rumoured well-used orifice was, for them, phroooah, a wish to be desired.

“Bloody wankers themselves,” was Jake's sotto voce comment to me one Friday morning at break in the common Room after Troy had denounced three of the Year Ten lads he'd found skulking in the bogs as persistent onanists rather than being smokers, which they were as well, and then called over to Terry not to forget to stock up with enough Frenchies for the weekend because he was ready for anything with you know who. “If Rosy had any sense she'd be on the Pill,” Jake continued, “But I bet anything to prevent their vile bodies touching her sensitive parts is better than nowt!”

The crunch for the pair came when Georgie Carter, a six foot three streak of skin and bone and a superb photographer, was ambling around looking for shots for his ever growing portfolio ready for his entry to Art School. He was doing some angle shots of dingy corners in the school when he saw Troy going into the bogs at the end of a corridor, first looking around in a furtive way but not spotting Georgie who was bending down beside a cupboard sighting up some bit of useless educational architecture. Georgie did the only thing possible. He scooted along the corridor and as silently as possible pushed the door open, Troy wasn't in sight so he crept in stealthily thinking he might snatch a photo of Troy crapping as one of the cubicle doors was shut. He went into the next one and, being so tall, was able to hold his camera over the top of the partition in the gap between its top and the ceiling and clicked. A muffled shout came from Troy but Georgie was gone before he could be pursued. The resultant ten by eight photo was eagerly perused the next day by the assembled males of the Sixth Form while Troy, oblivious of this, was marshalling the hordes of wankers into their form rooms ready for first period.

The photo showed a startled Troy's upturned face, with a downwards shot of opened flies and an erect penis held delicately between two fingers and thumb. As Jason Griggs remarked, you can't piss with a hardon and why go in a cubicle for that purpose - “WANKER!!”. Neither Troy, nor Terry, through association with him, ever mentioned the word again, nor did the poem get an airing. Jake suggested to Troy that if given to him he would return it. It was, after we had both read it and commented to each other that Shakespeare's Dark Ladyboy would have been flattered by the compliments therein. So, one set of 'phobes had been tamed.

I suppose I was contemplating young Andrew one afternoon during my fourth week of basic training. We had, inexplicitly been given the rest of the Wednesday afternoon off through some mix-up over time-tabling of how to bayonet a stuffed sandbag, or how to remember to throw the grenade after the pin was withdrawn, or some mind bending similar activity. Still I was reasonably happy. Three square meals a day, money you couldn't spend in your pocket, muscles developing through all the exercise and the sure knowledge that, although I was constantly dead-tired, my spunk squirting apparatus was still in working order if sadly under-used. My musings were interrupted by Taffy who, holding a cigarette in time-honoured squaddies manner, cupped in the palm of his hand, asked if I wanted a walk.

Sensing something was afoot I agreed and we sauntered off in the general direction of some unused barrack huts left over from the general National Service of some thirty years previously. After he'd puffed through the cigarette he asked if I knew anything about Ferdy Pacchelli. I said I didn't except from the facts I'd gleaned from our personal tales we all told in the barrack room in the hour or so before lights out.

I knew Ferdinando was a fourth generation Italian immigrant. His great-grandfather, after whom he was named, had come to England with a circus, as Flying Ferdinand on the Flying Trapeze, in the thirties and had stayed. His father had a share in the usual Italian restaurant which was a family run business in a wide extended family. Ferdy had been caught by father nicking some of the takings and had been forcibly taken to the Recruiting Office by two burly uncles who, in the past, had served in the Paras. Ferdy was short, dark, black-haired and at nearly nineteen had a mat of black hair on his chest. None of us English, Welsh or Scottish lads of the same age had more than a hint of pectoral hirsuteness. He was the envy of all for that attribute. We all looked at him in the showers, his pubic bush was immense and his legs were so hairy it looked as if he was wearing black long-johns. However, although his balls were pendulous and well-sized his dick, circumcised and dark hued, was of a really moderate size, curving out no more than about three inches from the curls above and around it.

An Army trait is to label everyone anyway with a nickname. Not just the usual Dusty for the Millers or Dinger for the Bells, but also where you came from, Taffy for the Welsh as he was, but George Parrish came from Yorkshire so Yorkie he was. Yorkie was also another bright spark, he'd come under suspicion of driving someone else's car without their permission in the village where he lived. The local bobby had a chat with him and suggested he could learn a trade as well as occupying himself usefully in the service of his country. Yorkie said the copper was fingering his hand-cuffs at the time and the message was clear. He was down for transfer to the Army Logistics Corps - drivers etc., as soon as he'd finished basic training and he was looking forward to that. Also, Yorkie was the only one in the barrack room who had volunteered the information that he hadn't even had an erection, or 'time to have a fucking hardon' as he put it, since he'd joined up. This was one evening when there were general moans about the unaccustomed pressures we were experiencing.

Anyway, as we wended our way round the deserted huts Taffy said there was a plan. The lad the other side of Ferdy had also noted the night-time activity and they had decided to provide a bit of night-time entertainment. He wouldn't say what and I didn't pursue it because, quite naturally, we found an unlocked door and entered the dank-smelling room which had housed a host of conscripts those many years before. We surveyed the dusty emptiness.

Without waiting for my consent or agreement he dropped his combat trousers and skivvies he was wearing under them. His cock was already at half mast before I had copied his disrobing. I stood at an angle by his side and stared downwards. Our short singlets only came to our hips so we both had a good view of each other's rapidly rising shafts. We matched about evenly in size and when both our rods were fully erect we, in military fashion, copied each other's movements exactly. On the first downstroke our foreskins were retracted and two bulbous rapidly darkening knobs were exposed. We then set up a slow steady pace until Taffy let go of his cock.

He took hold of the last three inches of my rod as my hand was at the bottom of a downstroke. I let go and reached for his prick. We kept in strict rhythm with each other and my balls soon came to the boil. I squirted my usual five or six ribbons of cum moments before he gave a sigh and unleashed a flurry of spunk which spurted up and away from him splattering on the dusty floor some three feet away.

“My Da found a letter from him. He'd been arrested in Cardiff for giving a blow-job to a copper...” He paused. “I'd better start from the beginning. I was at school with this friend, he's a year older than me and lived in the next village. I'd got to know him through travelling on the school bus and his Dad and my Dad had been pit deputies at the mines in the two villages before they closed so our families knew each other anyway. And after he'd left school and started on a catering course I used to cycle over to see him and we used to go to the old mine. He'd found a key to the old offices and we used to go there and... Well, just like this and a bit more...”

“Shut the fuck up, I guessed about you when you had that first letter from home, I saw the way you read it and I knew it wasn't from any girl 'cause of the handwriting, so, but this is my tale, you can tell me yours another day.” He took a slow deep drag on the fag cupped in his hand. “Well, as I said, Estyn and I were very close, very good friends and perhaps a bit more - then, just after last Christmas he was found in bed with the Pastor's son....”

“Fuck it, stop that.” I composed my face “It was bloody snowing anyway and the lad's father came home early from his visits and there they were, hammer and tongs in the lad's bed. Estyn's Dad was summoned and Estyn was told to pack his bags and go. I heard about it next day from a lad who'd seen him getting on the bus. He told him he was going to Cardiff.”

“Estyn wrote to that lad and asked him to pass a couple of letters on to me and he told me all about what had happened - said it was on the spur of the moment and the kid wanted it. He said he was looking for a job and had also applied to do another catering course but he couldn't start immediately. Then I heard nothing until that last letter arrived. He'd written straight to me. Luckily I saw the postie as I was going to catch the bus and he gave it to me.”

“He said he'd been skint so went cruising around, saw a toilet, went in and a young fellow was in there leaning against the wall holding a twenty pound note. He said something like 'OK mate' and got Estyn in a cubicle who gave him the blow job. No sooner had he got him off another bloke appeared and it turned out they were two cops. Estyn was arrested and released to appear the next day. The only good thing was the young cop had tucked the note in his pocket. He thinks the magistrate suspected something fishy so he got off with a caution, but he was dead scared the news might get back to his family. Luckily his name is Jones and there's plenty of those about in Wales.”

“I was a fool. I should have destroyed the letter but stuck it in my big dictionary. My Da found it when he wanted to look up a word for a crossword. He asked if I and Estyn had relations of any sort and when I said yes, that, plus the fact I was in the shit over not trying hard enough to get a job decided the matter and I'm here. I was sent first to stay with an aunt in Llandudno, as far as possible from Cardiff! Out of harm's way there and learning to be a man now here, according to Da!”

He shrugged. “I don't really know. Rumour has it he was prayed over for several hours for unknown sins and then shipped off to some distant relative because he wasn't around when I left for my exile.” He shrugged again. “Poor little bugger, he was shagging Estyn when his father walked in, 'cause I heard more about it when Estyn 'phoned me at Auntie Glad's and he was worried what had happened to the kid. Kid! - poor bastard was seventeen!” He pursed his lips. “Don't forget, in Wales the chapel rules and the Calvinist mind sees sin everywhere...,” He grinned at me, “...Especially when two lads are in bed together, but I do know I miss Estyn.”

Dwayne was from Liverpool. Boasted of being a hard man. But shit-scared of most things I would say. Always the last to get in line for anything new. He and Ferdy got on my tits as well but I wasn't too bothered although I'd noticed when they made their bigoted phobic statements they seemed directed mainly at a couple of lads towards the other end of the barrack room.

These two, Pete and Frankie, were quiet, weedy looking, not seeming to be eighteen - they looked more like fifteen or sixteen-year-olds. They were below average height and were products of broken homes, Children's Homes and finally foster homes. They looked as if life had been none too kind to them. I must say though that they mucked in with everything and scoffed the food as if there was no tomorrow and were both beginning to get a bit more flesh and muscle on them even after about three weeks. I'd noticed they were neither very well endowed and they spent a lot of time in each other's company. One had a rather high-pitched giggle and I suppose that gave root to Ferdy and Dwayne's exclamations.

Another pair in the squad were a couple of black guys. Dwayne, especially, avoided them but neither he nor Ferdy could say anything derogatory or they would be in deep shit for racial harassment. Actually Royston and Jason were fun. Royston was a couple of inches shorter than me and we were always comparing heights because he kept telling me he was still a growing boy. He had also spent a lot of time in the gym, so he said, and because of this he had the best definition of all of us. Not too obvious, but his pecs were firm and he had the makings of a nice six-pack. He and Jason also belied one of the great beliefs of white youngsters - that black kids' cocks were at least twice as long. Both had healthy sized drooping lengths which might have been a bit bigger than average but they certainly weren't immense. Both had joined up as they put it 'for their mother's sakes', one was from South London, the other from Luton, which I knew to be two enclaves of numerous ethnic immigrants and not very salubrious areas to live in. Both were very religious and this pissed off Dwayne even more as he was nominally Catholic and had been to a strict Catholic Boys' School. They were Pentecostal and were always singing hymns quietly in, I considered, very melodious voices.

Some of this was evident in an exchange between Dwayne and Ferdy during the first week when we were still getting to know everyone. Dwayne had somehow hitched up as Ferdy's best friend and Ferdy, rather loud-mouthed, had reciprocated. That meant there was a constant dialogue between them though their bed-spaces were not close. Usually the dialogue was on veiled or even overt sexual matters, often Page 3 girls in the Sun as that was the principal reading, or viewing, matter of most of the lads in the room. “Cor, look at the tits on that” was a common exclamation. But there was the underlying homophobic chatter as well.

This day there were just a few of us around. I was bulling my best boots, getting a mirror shine on the caps. Taffy was lining up some pieces of card to put in his sheets for bed inspection. Ferdy and Dwayne were at their usual positions, flat out on their beds perusing the day's issue of either the Sun or Mirror oblivious of the fact that next morning we had a kit inspection. Along the row Royston and Jason were sitting side by side on Jason's bed, also bulling boots. Quite a few of the others had sloped off to the NAAFI for a tea and wad but there were about four others including Frankie and Pete further down the room. A typical evening's gathering and activity!

“Don't know, I was told it. He was a couple of classes above me. Fucking poofter, got the push from school 'cause he use'ta go down the clubs for the oldies to get him off. Fucking wanker! Like that kid we had from that Home. Use'ta go to the bogs and suck off the hurling team. Fucking poofs should have their balls off!”

But a chance for getting at Dwayne did occur that same week. One of the duties of the Squad Lance-Corporals was to go to the post-room attached to the Company Office each morning at ten hundred hours to collect the squad's post. Taffy and I took it in turns. It also meant, if the mail wasn't ready we missed a bit of the next training session. Neither Taffy nor I worried about this, especially if it was some lecture on how to pull-through a rifle, or the naming of parts of said rifle, but it was one of Sergeant Bigelow's means of getting at us, and especially me.

On the Thursday it was my turn to collect the mail. I got permission from the squad NCO to go and made my way to the Post Room next to the Company Office. I was a bit later than usual as we'd had PT from O nine hundred hours and the PTI had kept us at it because some lad had riled him and he made us do a whole set of exercises again. This meant we were late for a shower and my feet were still damp when I tried to get my socks on, and so on... Little troubles to cloud the day. Anyway, I was last of the Squad Lance-Corporals to get to the Post Room. It was empty except for a Corporal I hadn't seen before. I said I was from F Squad.

“Bollocks! True, the bastard use'ta to wave his whang around but I can tell you Dwayne's been on his knees receiving communion many times... Whopper got the push 'cause he'd confessed a few unusual sins to some fake Yank priest who told the Reverend Father when they found he was a fake.” He paused. “Shouldn't be telling you all this but I never liked Wayne's brother or the little fucker himself.. Both loud-mouthed shits. But, Whopper was a great lad - big cock, big heart!”

The usual bed-time ritual began about twenty-one hundred hours - sorry military ways, I mean 9 o'clock - as stragglers came back from the NAAFI which closed at ten. We had one drill parade scheduled for the morning and organised games in the afternoon. I was glad to get to bed as we'd had a pretty heavy day and I relished the thought of a good night's sleep.

By half-ten everyone was in bed and lights out. It was almost pitch black in the room and the only light was from the dim night-bulbs in the corridor outside. I was in that just before dropping-off state when there was a light scurrying across the intervening gap between the end of my bed and - I realised - Ferdy's bed. Suddenly the beam of the powerful torch, usually hanging by the door in case of emergencies, illuminated a very strange sight. Two figures, on either side of Ferdy's bed had whipped the covers off him downwards, exposing an eyes-tight-shut figure, furiously wanking a short, fat, rigid cock. The torch beam magnified this so that bizarre shadows of a huge prick and a flying fist danced on the wall behind the bed. There was a general upheaval as figures either sat up in their beds or rushed along from the other end of the room.

Ferdy was too far gone to notice. In fact, without the restraint of the covers his fisting accelerated in those last ten seconds when the universe stands still and the Big Bang occurs again somewhere in the region of the base of one's balls. A final pull down and four squirts of white cream shot up and landed. There was dead silence in the room. Four gobbets of spunk glistened on the black mat on Ferdy's chest in the light from the torch. Slowly two dark eyes opened, then blinked in the beam of the torch.

Yeah, I'd noted the effect Ferdy's performance had had on the populace. In the dim light I'd seen the mound under Taffy's covers next to me moving up and down and I'd heard the unmistakable rhythm of beds being set in motion. In fact, later that morning, after I'd fetched the post and Taffy had offered to take it round the room he came back with the head count that everyone had had a wank. So, which wankers were to lose their balls in Ferdy's opinion?

Perhaps he was becoming a little braver. Perhaps he'd noticed that Ferdy, although a champion of his art, only had a small weapon. Anyway, on the Tuesday after that high-lighted demonstration and consequent release of much pent-up spunk, there was the usual gathering of industrious souls, less industrious souls and plain idlers during the evening. Dwayne was again idly looking at a tabloid and also eying the backs of the two black lads, Royston and Jason. You could almost see the cogs turning. What have they got? Big black lads?

By straining my eyes - I had twenty twenty vision unharmed by that activity which previous generations had been informed would send you blind - I had also noted the vertical movements, at least in Jason's bed on two nights. As Dwayne was nearer he must have noted it too. I giggled inwardly. If Jason and Royston expanded mightily did they have to have a more prominent pleasure dome than the rest of us? In my own case in bed I tended to use a finger and thumb, almost delicately, along the length of my cock which habitually - much to the past amusement of Jake - rose stiffly along my belly to my navel rather than out at an angle like his. So although I sported a good six and a half inches I only raised the bedclothes a couple of inches. All these differences between boys, my my!

At that moment I felt very sorry for Dwayne. He was sobbing and ranting now in an almost incoherent way. I got up and walked slowly to him. I took him by an arm and sat him on his bed. Strangely, Royston also got up, came over, and sat the other side of him. We both put an arm round him and sat there while his sobs subsided. The whole room was in silence. Several more came in but were quickly hushed by the others who sensed that Dwayne was going through a very traumatic experience.

It was revelation time. Taffy said he was sorry he'd said about it. Dwayne said he was glad it was in the open now. One of the lads who'd been in a Home came up and said he'd been raped when he was seven by some bigger kid. All in all it was a sombre evening. But, out of such gloom several good things emerged. I learned a bit of good advice - don't under-estimate people. Dwayne came to me the next day when I was standing outside, contemplating the infinite, waiting for the next encounter with the drill Sergeant or something, and said thanks for supporting him the night before, he was glad he had such good mates.

Ferdy, Dwayne and Royston became good friends. Dwayne blossomed - an odd word perhaps - but he certainly now buckled to and improved as a member of the squad remarkably. The other lads in the squad, when they heard about the outburst were more than sympathetic. Out of the twenty of us it transpired that quite a few had experienced a rude introduction to sex in some form or another. No wonder, I thought when Taffy, very contrite in a way but glad he'd done it in another way, and I had discussed in great detail the events and how lucky we had been in our own initiations into the mysteries and joys, there were so many unhappy, frustrated creatures in the world around us and in the columns of the Sunday newspapers. At least, there was another topic of conversation in the evenings to keep our minds active. One lad's tale of how he'd been seduced by the mother of a friend at the age of fourteen set the bedsprings zinging that particular night, especially as he was asked to repeat the narrative twice more in the darkness, and he had to repeat it several more times before we finished training, so perhaps it wasn't only our minds were kept active!

Disaster struck though the same week. Our squad NCO was a fairly ineffectual soul. He was coasting along as he only had about six months to do before his seven year enlistment ran out and he was leaving to join the police. He was a fairly diligent instructor but we, as a squad, were mostly unnecessarily slow in absorbing all the finer intricacies of marching smartly, handling the rifles, which we all thoroughly hated because of their ill-balance and general clumsy construction, and becoming total killing machines. The last was Jason's jocular remark which earned him a regular tongue-lashing from his pal Royston who pointed out most of our duties would be peace-keeping. That set off another round of nightly argument and we concluded we had to be both, but... After that, poor Jason was nick-named Terminator much to his chagrin. One lad said he was more likely a Dalek in disguise, so he was changed to Exterminator which cheered him up a bit.

Anyway, Perce as we called him behind his back, the squad NCO, didn't turn up on the Tuesday morning. We waited, all expectantly, in the barrack room for the usual first thing in the morning inspection. No one came until a blustering Sergeant Bigelow appeared, announced that Perce was in hospital with appendicitis and he would be looking after us, this said in a very menacing voice, until a replacement could be found. “Get fell in, smart!”

Get fell in was the order of the day. We had never been worked so hard. Because we were “a shower of shit” in his quiet words - NCOs are not allowed to swear directly at their unbeloved charges - he was cancelling most of our timetable for the day and we would be taught to be “proper soldiers, not the fucking nancying, poncey shower” he could see before his very eyes. He denounced two of the lads as coming on parade looking like a sicked-up dog's breakfast That generated a nickname for me - Boon was transmogrified into Bonio, a known dog's breakfast.

After three-quarters of an hour of relentless marching up and down he then decided we ought to have some proper rifle drill with full packs on our backs. Five minutes to get ready and we were off again. Taffy was told to shut his row when he asked permission to go and get the mail. Jason was ordered to double up the parade ground and back when he almost turned left instead of right. Ponyboy (real name Tony and a nickname not given because of largeness of parts) Thomas was told to put his rifle down and do fifty press-ups when he didn't salute neatly enough when an imaginary officer passed. And so on.

By lunch-time we were all sweating like pigs, hot, bothered and bewildered and wishing Bungho (another name we'd already christened him with) to all sorts and shades of Hell. Dante's seven levels weren't in it. We had three-quarters of an hour for lunch - he couldn't deprive us of that - and strict orders to appear in PT kit, carrying towels, outside the barrack room in three ranks at fourteen hundred hours on the dot.

Onslaught it was. We were doubled to the gym where Bungho had offered us to a Sergeant PTI pal of his to use us as guinea-pigs while a new PTI was put through his paces. The pair of them, urged on by Bungho on the sidelines, used the next hour and a half with careful sadism. Each exercise was started slowly, then hotted up and we were kept at it while the Senor PTI went over finer points of the torture we were under.

Even though we had never experienced an afternoon which had been so wearing and tiring there were jocular moments to lighten the torment. For one ligament-tearing exercise we were around the gym hanging on the wall-bars by our stretched-out arms facing into the gym. Part of the exercise was to open and close our hanging legs, slowly at first, but quickening up. The Senior PTI was striding up and down urging us to `Fucking make some effort'. Having just completed about twenty vaults each over a horrendous piece of apparatus we were all a bit more than knackered.

The PTI Sergeant stopped between one of the lads who had been in a Home and Royston. Most of us had slipped on briefs or jockstraps when we had donned our rather short military issue shorts. Terry and Royston hadn't. They had unsuitable boxers on underneath and thus as they opened and closed their legs their equipment must have been on full view and full droop.

“Are you laughing, soldier?” he demanded as he stood in front of Yorkie. He didn't wait for an answer. Anyway, we'd quickly learned that most NCO-produced questions were rhetorical and required no answer but were designed to induce a fearful rigidity. “Just you keep quiet,” he said and turned to look at Ferdy's dangling legs, richly coated in black fur. “You there, you hanging there like a bloody hairy-legged spider in the bath. Shut your row too! Watch I don't flush you down the fucking plug-hole!”

But, the afternoon was not over. We ran laps, did handstands, cartwheels, climbed ropes, balanced on beams and were completely shagged out when the PTI and his mate, with a nod from Bigelow, who had stood with a fatuous grin on his face all afternoon, called a halt and twenty dripping bodies filed into the showers. God! Weren't we glad of the life-giving heat of the water. Too bad we were only allowed five minutes before being told to dry off in one minute flat and still damp were doubled back to the barrack room.

We all lay almost demented on our beds and bemoaned our fate. Two of the lads said they were all for chucking it in and getting an immediate discharge. One wag said you could only get that by fucking the Colonel's daughter. Another said as far as he was concerned it wouldn't matter if the Colonel only had a son but he wouldn't be able to get a hardon even for that as he was too fucking tired. After a bit we decided that Bigelow wasn't going to win, fuck him! Nil carborundum was going to be the squad motto!

So, fucked as we were we dressed, went to the cookhouse and than began the process of shining the barrack room up. Taffy and I divided the lads into five groups of four, including ourselves, each group with a specific task. We even made Spider and Dwayne task-group leaders and we swept and polished, had all the beds out and even made sure the springs were dusted. `Fuck Bigelow!' was the rallying cry! And everyone worked like stink. Several of the lads even folded their bed blankets up that night and slept with just a sheet over them. Also, I know I didn't indulge in one of my favourite activities that night because as soon as my head hit the pillow I was fast asleep.

At Reveille next day there were plenty of grumbles but Taffy and I managed to get everyone by their clean and neat beds when Sergeant Bigelow swept in dead on O nine hundred hours. He was like a fucking tornado. He pulled half the beds apart to see if things had been folded properly. I saw one lad blushing when a sheet was held up which had a huge wank stain on it. Luckily, Bigelow ignored it and told the lad to report to him at seventeen hundred hours with his eating irons polished and shining as they were a sodding disgrace. But, he couldn't really find any major faults which riled him. So, leaving the room in a bit of a shambles we were told to assemble pronto on the parade square, packs on, collecting rifles on the way.

He was in his element now. We were inspected first. Most were OK. He told three others to report with cleaned-up boots or buckles at fifteen hundred hours. We were then marched up and down doing all sorts of left turns, right turns, about turns, sloping arms, arms here, there, until poor Jason was in the shit again for almost going the wrong way. He had another bout of doubling to do and this made everyone else get in a state of panic. At last we were halted and he strode up and down the ranks berating us for being such an idle, good for nothing shower. He stood in front of one lad and bellowed at him.

“Well don't. Keep your fucking eyes to the front...” He stepped back to the front some yards away from me. “You're a shower,” he reiterated, “You stand there like a set of girls' blouses.” He paused to let that sink in. “You march worse than a herd of cows with loose udders.” A longer paused ensued and he was getting rather red in the face. “You shower,” he said through gritted teeth, “In all my years.... You look just like.....”

“Corporal, I advise you to keep your mouth shut. I'll decide when the fucking post is ready, ten minutes or not!” Some of the others had heard what I'd said and were obviously openly grinning. Bigelow turned on them. “What are you fucking laughing about? You colossal shower. Left turn, Quick march. Left, Right, left, right...”

Some were caught on the hop - we set off - a raggedly bunch with Bungalow ranting at us to smarten up or we would be for the high jump. Memories of the previous afternoon and the high jumps, low jumps and other tortures were enough to concentrate the minds so we only lost five minutes of our needed break before the next session which was, guess what? Bayonet drill!

That was another nightmare. I was accused of running like a turd in a trance. I had a great desire to shove my bayonet right up Bigelow's fat little arse. He obviously wasn't finished with me. He had guessed what I'd said didn't relate to the collection of the mail so I was subjected to several oblique allusions to my parentage and other characteristics with a number of extra tasks allotted to me in reference to the disembowelling of the imaginary enemy. I cut and thrust and parried and plunged and thought I did pretty well. My efforts were not appreciated and the squad came in for more.

My apparent lack of effort meant that the others were also made to run back and forth numerous times using me as the scapegoat. It didn't work. At one brief respite where one of the smaller lads was being castigated and made to repeat the stabbing motion with cries of “Come on lad, I've seen a cockerel fucking a hen with more thrust than you've got!”, Dwayne came up behind me and whispered “Don't worry, mate, we'll have that shit one day!”

That shit pursued us relentlessly every day. Every day we were made to work twice as hard as any of the other squads in training. I and Taffy, by association, came in for a great deal of flak. I did everything I was told but whatever he thought I'd said on that day still rankled. At the end of a disastrous parade on the Friday afternoon, where, mishearing his command, half the squad turned right instead of left, he'd gone nearly berserk and came up to me.

“Corporal,” he said, his piggy eyes glinting malevolently, “You and this squad are the biggest load of.....” He must have seen the glint in my eye. He knew if he swore then I would be tempted to report it as one of the Squad NCOs had been reprimanded by the CO two days previously after the Chaplain had overheard him call his squad a herd of fucking dinosaurs. He looked at me again having stepped forward a couple of inches. Being shorter his peaked cap had to be up at quite an angle for his eyes to meet mine. He stepped back a good foot to get a better angle on me. In his mind I was probably the major part of the biggest load of...... “Instead of you lot enjoying a quiet Saturday afternoon idling the time away on your beds playing with yourselves you can all clean the latrines in your block. When I went past there this morning it smelt something horrible. What did it do, Corporal?”

“Then you and this shower can make it all smell sweet and lovely and those floors had better be clean enough for...,” He turned his head slightly and fixed his gaze at some miscreant in the row at the back further on. He pointed his swagger stick at him “...You, lad, face the front..., better, fall out and double round the parade ground, hadn't you! And you!..., and you!...” He pointed his stick and two more took off like startled rabbits. “As I was saying, the whole place had better be clean enough for you lot to eat your dinner off that floor.” He took two steps back. “Left turn, dismiss!”

There was almost universal silence as we trooped back to the barrack room. The three lads came in puffing and panting and swearing vengeance. Four of the other lads had been picked to play in a soccer match at fourteen thirty hours the next day. I volunteered to plead with Bungalow in the morning when he inspected us before the two scheduled lectures.

By the time for lights out we'd cheered up somewhat. No more so than when some clot further down the room, in almost perfect imitation of Bungalow's accent piped up, “No idling in your beds and playing with yourselves tonight!” A general rejoinder of “Shut your row!” or “Shut the fuck up!” was the prelude, I know, to a most satisfying wank on my part and from the sounds I heard, on the part of many or all of the others.

I was surprised next morning. I asked Bigelow's permission to speak after he had done no more than a cursory inspection of the room and contents, namely us and our military possessions. I asked if four of the squad might be excused latrine cleaning duty that afternoon as they were representing the squad in the soccer match that afternoon against the Gunners team from a nearby camp. All sweetness and light he said yes. There must be more to it than that but all he said was that the rest of us would have to make up for the absence of the footballers.

We assembled in stripped-down order for the cleaning at fourteen hundred hours. Six, with Taffy were sent off and returned with an assortment of brooms, mops, hand brushes, cloths and buckets and canisters of disinfectant and other liquids. Usually latrine cleaning was done by those on jankers and confined to barracks as one of the more unpleasant tasks allotted to them. Other more pointless tasks given them were clipping the edge of the lawn outside the Company Office with nail scissors and painting everything that didn't move with white paint, checking first by saluting it to see if it was an officer!

After seeing the assembled squad was all present Bigelow departed and said he would be back in two hours and he would leave the organisation to Squad Lance-Corporals Boon and Williams. We quickly divided everyone up into four groups of four and two groups were set to clean the two sets of cubicles. My group had the urinals to deal with and Royston, or Knobbo, and his three had to wash, scrub and buff the tiled floor.

I know little boys like to have “I can piss higher than you” competitions. Grown boys had also had the same idea so not only did we have to wash and polish the urinals themselves but had to find a step ladder to tackle the yellow-stained tiles right up to ceiling level much to the disgust of Jason who had been volunteered for step-ladder duty.

There was also a murmured discussion of whether it was true. Someone said it probably accounted for his hatred of his fellow men. Someone else said he had watched us in the showers after PT one morning so was getting at us because we were better endowed than him. Our contemplation of the possible smallness of Bungalow's dong and the continued ohs and ahs of the graffiti readers helped time pass.

One hour and fifty minutes after we had started we decided that the place looked spick and span. It did too. The brass-work shone, the tiles above the urinals were white again, the tiles behind the toilet bowls showed no evidence of solitary activity, the red floor tiles were no longer inlaid with accumulated dirt and grime, ledges and crevices had been dusted and washed over. Fuck Bigelow! We had done a good job and were proud of it.

Our new Squad NCO was OK. He was about thirty, had a cropped military hairdo and a small bristly fair moustache and a wildly Scottish accent. He was even freer with the swearing than Bigelow - not directly at anyone but his phraseology was peppered liberally with the `fooks' and `fooking'. His speciality, other than an insistence on being smartly turned out on drill parades, was map-reading.

We'd had several lectures on map-reading from an old Staff-Sergeant who had done them so many times he made the whole subject as boring as hell. Our NCO was roped in to supplement the lectures as during the basic training on three occasions we had to be taken out, dumped in small groups, given a map and two references and told we had two hours to get to the second point, and `Gawd fooking help you wee fookers if you ain't fooking there!' Before he arrived our first essay into the wild left four of the lads temporarily stranded as they had argued which way up the map went. I was at an advantage as having done Geography at both O and A level I knew the map conventions more or less off by heart. The two daytime excursions after the guidance of the new NCO were not too bad but the things we all dreaded were the two exercises where we had to bivouac out.

When the time came for the first one we were taken out the first morning and played silly buggers all day crawling through undergrowth and along ditches keeping out of sight of a very loud-mouthed Major who directed the `campaign'. That evening we were taught how to construct fairly waterproof dwellings and, tired out, crawled in wrapped in a blanket carried in our overflowing packs and slept dreamless and chaste. I didn't. I woke with a start having dreamed I was being pursued by a tribe of angry Red Indians wielding nasty-looking tomahawks threatening to scalp me. I also had a raging hardon. I thought you couldn't be scared and have signs of sexual arousal at the same time? I'd read in one of my sister's textbooks about fight and flight and had also read surreptitiously in her notes the underlined aphorism, which no doubt one of her male lecturers had emphasised hoping to cause a frisson of embarrassment, that `Men cannot have an erection while being chased by a tiger'. I had one, rampant even with the imaginary tomahawk about to descend. Oh God, I wanted a wank but within three feet was the recumbent body of Royston. He was flat on his back, snoring gently. Oh my God! His blanket had slipped and he'd divested himself of his combat trousers as the night was warm and there, extending for seven full inches, was the fattest, blackest, stiffest cock I'd ever seen. Correct me, I hadn't seen a black one in that state before!

Unhurriedly I undid my combat trousers and eased out my rather restricted hardon and very slowly gave myself a most satisfying wank. But just before my balls began to harden and rise I wondered how was I going to clean up? Desperate times involve desperate measures. Just as I shot I cupped my left hand over my knob end, causing me to whistle softly as my knob felt extra sensitive, and caught the six squirts more or less comfortably. I'd tasted my own and Jake's semen many times so I just slurped up my own effusion and, to use a hackneyed phrase, licked the platter clean. I fell asleep again almost immediately and was awoken by a grinning Royston poking me in the side..

“My turn now, Corp!” he said, twisting me round to face him, “Get those fingers working, ma...aan!” The last said in the most West Indian accent he could muster. He turned and I gave his muscular back a good working over. I also developed another smoldering hardon. The hard globes of his buttocks were outlined in his combats. I could have fucked my friend Royston most happily. That bit of repartee and the friendly massages sent messages of friendship and trust. If only! I wouldn't mind a piece of the action with that body and, more importantly, with that person!

My years of quite intensive wanking, sucking and fucking with my good friend Jake were now over. We had both realised, although we were great friends, we were not made for one another. At the end of one of our last sessions together we had both confessed of our lust for each other, our friendship, but not our love. We parted wishing for each other that we would each find a true loving partner. In one of Jake's letters to me in the past week or so he'd implied he was too busy with his most interesting and demanding course to pursue his search and I inferred he was living a celibate life. I'd written back with some descriptions of barrack room life with my own undertone of a continued search. Some day, some place! I knew that the connection would be made but, even with someone so open and friendly and sexy as Royston, my inner self would not be satisfied.

We all got through the next day of continued harassment, this time with dummy bullets firing and explosions set off by the Major and his more-than willing to-scare-the-poor-rookies helpers. It wasn't too bad though, the only casualties in the squad being a sprained wrist, a twisted ankle and Yorkie's pride as we had full sight of his bare bum for the rest of the day after he'd ripped his camouflage combat trousers to shreds negotiating unexpected barbed-wire.

Whether Bigelow's hand was in the selection I do not know but I had Ferdy, Dwayne and Royston in my group. It turned out to be a good mix. Dwayne had annoyed Bungho on several occasions because of his unwillingness to take any initiative. However, over the past fortnight or so I'd noted he had determination once he'd mastered something. Ferdy went at everything bull at a gate. Bungho was always bellowing at him to keep in step or be smarter and not so impetuous when doing rifle drill. He was also a born follower. In one of our head-to-head heart-to-heart chats one afternoon he'd said he was led into pinching his father's money because of the friends he'd got at the time and he made the point he didn't grass on them. Royston, on the other hand, I knew was totally dependable. Honest and willing. But, our little massage session was a hint of something else I was sure.

He pointed just down the track at something I had just noted as well. A small signpost which the deviser of this task must have missed. I signalled him not to say or do anything. The four of us hunkered down behind the convenient hedge, out of sight. Ferdy and Dwayne both wanted to piss so we had to wait for them which gave Royston and myself time to look at the rudimentary map, the instructions for completion of the two tasks and the directions for the trek.

The map was standard Ordnance Survey with principal towns and villages heavily inked out. If the signpost wasn't a lure and the map reference we'd been given was correct I was able to pinpoint our present location with surprising accuracy. Royston had a look and concurred. The other two appeared, adjusting their dress. I handed the map and the first page of instructions to them.

No need to deal with the tasks or the trek but we accomplished the first two days easily. The only problem was Dwayne and his appetite. He'd eaten ninety per cent of his rations by the time we had finished our stop for lunch on the third day. We told him he'd starve by the time they came looking for our lost bodies as the next phase looked pretty formidable. However no worries - we met no enemy although we did surprise a courting couple behind a haystack. We bet the chap's hardon wouldn't return for a week after the fright we gave them - three blackened-up, and one greened-up natural black, faces peering round at them just as he'd got his hand down her blouse and her hand down the waistband of his trousers. Royston rolled his eyes at them and Ferdy gave a low wolf-whistle as we disappeared off down another obscure country path.

That night we bivouacked in pairs as we'd decided if we were to be attacked it would be better for pairs to be on guard with one sleeping while the other watched. Royston and I found a snug corner about a hundred yards from Ferdy and Dwayne and after magnanimously donating a few crumbs of comfort from our own depleted rations to an ever-hungry Dwayne we settled down for the night. I volunteered for first watch for our pair and settled down, back against a convenient tree as Royston settled under he hastily erected canvas cover. It was a starlit night and after a while as Royston appeared to doze off I thought I would check on the others. In true commando style I crept up to their hide out. They were well-hidden but I had a good view as I approached. Dwayne was flat out on his back, flies open, skivvies to his knees while Ferdy was slurping on his well-formed, erect shaft. I watched and waited, my own rod stiffening and lengthening. I'd never witnessed another pair in the same position I and Jake had been in, oh so many times.

With that he twisted round and clamped his jaws round my cock in full imitation of Ferdy on Dwayne. Not to be outdone I scooted round and down him, opened my mouth as far as I could and took in the head of that biggest cock I'd experienced. Actually it was only the second one I'd had in my mouth. I pursed my lips and his foreskin slipped back and I was able to bathe and lick that huge head slowly and sensuously. My own cock was having the same treatment and the pair of us were oblivious of the world around us. What would have happened if we had been suddenly attacked by the marauders I do not know. All I know was that two very satisfied lads ended up, after two mammoth outbursts of cum, in each others arms and deep sleep with no thought of who should be on guard.

Later that morning as we tramped up the last long lane behind the other pair to the pick-up point he filled me in on his past life a bit. He said he'd slept in the same bed with a cousin who was three months older than him from the age of seven until the cousin had left to go to Uni and he'd joined the Army. The cousin had been dumped on Royston's mum by a rather wayward sister who had conveniently disappeared so Baron had been brought up with Royston almost as a twin brother. They were ardent wank-, suck- and fuck-buddies and he confessed he missed Baron although they had both fucked girls as well and he had to balance all this against his mother's and his own religious principles. Without asking him how, he said he'd figured out if the Good Lord had given him a nice prick, a nice body and a sturdy right hand then if he used them for his and other's pleasure without harming anyone it must have been the Good Lord's intention for him to do so. He did say that what had triggered his mother's worries about him and his decision to join up was his performing as a strip artist at a club. He shyly said it was a gay club but he never got involved with the clientele but his mother had somehow found out he wasn't always down the gym!

I liked Royston more and more as we talked and I `fessed up I'd also had a very close friend and we'd satisfied each other's urges since that momentous time I'd first experienced orgasm. I asked him about his growing friendship with Wayne and Ferdy and he said they had been most welcoming to him after that episode in the barrack room. They realised they were also minority as well, Italian and Irish, so they'd better stick together. Actually, he said, he felt very much at home with all the members of the squad and even Jason, who was still a bit wary, was feeling wanted.

We were on time, the truck was slightly late as it had to wait for a tardy four who, collectively, were very dirty, dishevelled and stank, having tried to ford a stream before realising it was an outflow from a farmyard. We got back in good time and were showered, shaved, etc., etc., before most of the others returned with tales of being ambushed, chased by cattle and, in one envious case, being fed cream teas by a sympathetic farmer's wife.

So, basic training was fast coming to a close. At the beginning we had been given a number of tests to do and also had interviews to find out what we thought we wanted to do in our Army career. I hadn't been very positive - I thought being in the Army meant you had a rifle and you went out to war or to keep the peace.. Yep, there were those roles but quite a few had chosen to join up because of the promises of trade-training. That meant as the last three weeks progressed so more interviews took place and promises were made. The two lads from the Homes who had become very friendly both wanted to become cooks. Both were accepted. Two others were going to use already acquired driving skills, and so on. Then, on the Thursday before the final week of training with our passing-out parade on the Wednesday, just as we had fallen in for drill at O nine hundred hours Bungho came marching up very importantly.

Every time we saw him somebody suffered - the previous week he'd threatened two stragglers to put them on a charge - a fizzer - for being late and to relegate them for a fortnight. Bluster, but effective. No one wanted to spend their evenings washing down the Company Office window sills in full uniform and pack as several poor buggers were seen doing the night before, or being kept back and placed in a new squad going over all the training again. We had two of them in our ranks, one for getting into trouble on a weekend pass and spending fourteen days in the Guardhouse for his pains and a second, who through no fault of his own, spent ten days in hospital..

That was odd. Interviews were usually listed on Company Orders and took place in rooms in the lecture block. No one we knew of, when the matter was discussed later, had experienced an interview in the Company Office of all places. Actually we had all been seen by the Commanding Officer, Major Stephenson, on arrival but that was en masse, and that was outside the Company Office. I was to enter the hallowed portals themselves rather than just visiting the Post Room tacked on the end.

Also, that last weekend of training, those who wanted could have a forty-eight hour leave pass - Friday sixteen hundred hours to Sunday twenty-three hundred hours. I decided against. Letters from home were still not very friendly. I wrote home diligently, mainly to my mother, every week and she replied. Little news from Dad. About half the squad went off and we had another visit from Bigelow on the Friday afternoon just before being dismissed for the weekend.

A relieved set of travellers scurried off leaving ten of us who were ordered to line up properly and promptly. We were then informed there were tasks for us on Sunday morning. Four would be detailed to clean up the Company Office and six the Lecture Block. And..., if he, personally, found a speck of dirt or a smear on a window, then he, personally, would see that we would be repeating those parts of the course which would make soldiers of us!

Saturday it pissed with rain so the ten of us spent most of the time in the barrack room bulling up ready for the big parade on Wednesday. Taffy and I tossed up to see who would do what on Sunday and I won so chose the Company Office with Royston, Yorkie and Dwayne as my cleaning staff. Ferdy had gone home to make peace with his father and to see his aged grandmother. Jason had also taken the opportunity to go home to Luton but was rather wary of meeting up with old acquaintances.

Saturday night we celebrated somewhat at the NAAFI and two of the lads had a bit too much to drink and were threatened with immediate castration if they sicked up on the floor. The threat was meaningless as both were too far gone to comprehend, even when we put them to bed and pulled their trousers and pants off to cries of “Off with them!” and their shrivelled dicks and balls were revealed. Royston nudged me later and whispered, “They little whiteboys ain't got no good black dick, uh, like you?”

The Adjutant's office on the other hand was a real shambles. Two desks pushed together covered with brown files, green files and the occasional red one. There were two over-flowing ashtrays and two telephones plus a set of golf clubs, most not in the bag leaning against a cupboard bursting with more files. Hanging on the back of the door were a rugger jersey, shorts, jock strap (well-worn) and two pairs of mud-encrusted football boots dangling by their laces.

I gathered up the dirty football togs and sent Dwayne off with a fifty-pence piece to the launderette next to the NAAFI with instructions to tell the oik in charge who they belonged too and he would be back in two hours to collect them, washed, dried, pressed and folded. I said I would clean up the Adjutant's office, Dwayne would do the CO's and the other two the Chief Clerk's and the two smaller offices until Dwayne could help as well. However, before they started I checked what they had to do and, of course, inadvertently, not on purpose, cross my heart and hope to die, had a quick shufti at the Chief Clerk's desk diary. There it was. Monday: 12.30 hrs Major Bullivant, A (MoD), Lt. Campbell, R (B.W): CO lunch. 13.45 CO Transport GHQ 14.00. SLC Boon, E CO's office free. 15.00 Tea for three. So, who was I to be interviewed by and why?

Cleaning went well. Even the Adjutant's office looked tidier. I didn't attempt to put the files, mainly training orders and nothing so secret Saddam Hussain or the Argies would give a million pounds for, in any sort of order. They were dusted and returned, as far as I could tell, to their original positions. But ashtrays were emptied, surfaces dusted and windows washed and by twelve hundred hours the suite of offices looked clean, if not, other than the CO's, too tidy. Dwayne went off and on return the clean rugger togs and now un-muddy boots were placed strategically on a chair with all golf clubs back in the bag.

That afternoon Taffy and I went for a long walk, evading the Guardhouse, and discussed how we felt about our training, our roommates, our futures, whatever. He was down for a Signals posting and was curious about me not knowing yet my fate. I said I would be quite happy as a squaddie but he averred I would need more than that to keep me occupied and motivated. We discussed all our room mates - real mates now, friends in the main, but, although he remarked on the close friendship that had developed between Dwayne and Ferdy especially and how pally I seemed to be with Royston, I did not enlighten him over what Royston and I had witnessed, or done, on the long bivouac. But, just for old times sake, Taffy and I ended up in the same old National Service hut and tossed each other off as we had done just those few weeks before.

Luckily all returned safely from leave that night. Two with news. One lad, who we didn't know until then was married, announced to general congratulations that his wife was pregnant. A second lad announced his girlfriend was also pregnant and he was fucking certain it wasn't his! Load moans and lots of advice to ditch the cow!

Monday morning came and so did Bigelow. Our Squad NCO was urgently required to take over a map-reading course so dear Sergeant Arsehole Bungalow was let loose on us. By 1200 hours, when we were finally dismissed, he had reduced most of us to quivering wrecks. I was singled out for several loads of invective, possibly because I had this mysterious interview to come, but everyone suffered in some way. At least half the squad had to double round the parade ground for some perceived misdemeanour and he particularly picked on the two lads who were going to be cooks - almost saying they were a couple of effeminate poofs but disguising this again by his recourse to `pregnant fairies' - the `poofs' was a general comment about all of us when we didn't quite come up to slope arms with the accuracy he required. He gave both Royston and Jason a hard time, squinting up and down at them and at one time telling the lot of us we about as useful as two big tarts from Brixton. As Royston came from around that area I thought that was a bit near the mark. Thankfully I wouldn't have to endure him for the rest of the afternoon.

I rushed off parade, managed to get a quick lunch, showered and put on my best uniform and presented myself at the steps of the Company Office at 13.55 hours prompt. Bigelow was waiting. He eyed me up and down as if I were an increasingly large pile of half-warm shit. He saw nothing to criticise and at precisely fourteen hundred hours I was marched up the steps and escorted into the CO's Office to the chant of “Lef' Righ' Lef' Righ'...Halt!” I saluted the seated figure smartly and stood stiffly to attention as the seated officer dismissed Bungho with thanks. The door was closed behind me, a chair placed and the seated figure spoke.

The second figure appeared from behind me and sat in the chair beside, as I could see now, a Major with red tabs, aha, Staff! The second figure, in almost scruffy combats, had a single pip on his shoulder bands. Then my heart almost stopped. He gave me the most winning smile, I felt the same sort of `zing' I had when I saw Andrew Forbes and he was naked! The `zing' this time was even more so. I daren't look at him, I knew I would sprout a hardon, I fixed my gaze on the Major.

“I expect you want to know the nature of this interview,” he began in a very friendly way. “I ought to tell you we have already spoken with your Headmaster and Roddy had a trip to Oxford to talk to two of your friends.” He looked at the papers in the folder in front of him. “Jeffrey Pringle, reading Maths and Jacob Manners, reading History. Good friends, eh?”

I'd had a letter from Jake on Friday detailing some theory he had about the Spartan Army. As this was a running joke between us, as he had informed me prior to my departure that the Spartans trained up their Army in pairs from boyhood where they were encouraged to be whole-hearted fuck-buddies as they believed that they would fight even harder in battle, I had laughed to myself. No, there was no hint of any fireside chat or otherwise.

“Good,” he said and sucked his teeth. “I suppose you would like to know why we are here? It will be confidential and we will ask you to keep whatever is said secret. In fact, before we start I will ask you to sign the Official Secrets' Act document, which you would do in any case on any posting. Roddy, please pass this over.”

Roddy, the Second-Lieutenant stood, picked up a piece of paper and a pen from in front of the Major and came round, stood next to me placing the document and pen in front of me. He was standing so close I imagined I could feel the heat of his body. My body heat increased and I felt a definite twitch down below. I read through the document, picked up the pen and signed and dated it.

Everything thawed from that moment. I was obviously someone after their own heart. I soon learned they were looking for individuals who would join a specialised team who undertook undercover work of a highly secret and often sensitive nature. I had been spotted and their checks on me had been positive for their requirements. I would undergo lengthy training, mainly in the company of Roddy who was already under training and would be my superior in rank but equal in the field. Bloody hell, if only I had decoded the hidden message implied by Jake's last letter! Clever Jake had twigged the purpose of his chat with Roddy and had given me ample clues but I was misled by his original thesis that I'd better find a good fuck-buddy soon to fight for and had thought this was just more of the same!

At three precisely, I looked pointedly at the clock. I murmured that tea should be arriving. They both laughed when a rap on the door sounded and a sprog Private on orderly duty marched in bearing a tray of tea and biscuits. He did a double-take when he spied another sprog, albeit with a single stripe, deep in conversation with two officers.

That settled it, the Major took out his pipe and he and Roddy then told me a few of the things I would be doing and I was instructed to tell inquirers I'd been selected to join a new computer section and would be going for training almost immediately. At half past three - I mean fifteen thirty hours - I was warmly shaken by the hand and addressed as young Edward by the Major and given a more than warm handshake and a knowing look by Roddy. Roddy then said I would hear of my posting by Wednesday next. I stood, replaced my beret, saluted smartly, turned and marched out. I knew my life was about to undergo an enormous change.

When I got back to the barrack room it was empty. I sat on the edge of my bed and reviewed what I had been told. I knew there was danger and excitement and a hell of a lot of specialised learning ahead. Was I ready for it and did I have the ability and, more importantly, the stickability, to cope with it. Then there was Roddy. I knew I wanted him and that decided it. Come what may I knew in my heart of hearts I was made for him and he for me. All I had to do now was prove it!

When the squad finally got back they were completely knackered. Bungalow had taken over completely and had made it quite clear that unless they improved to his standard by sixteen hundred hours tomorrow he would, himself, personally, with intent, see that every member of the squad after the passing-out parade would be doing the most heartbreaking, backbreaking, mind-breaking, bollock-breaking fatigue duties until they were posted out of his sight. The squad was nothing more than a set of wishy-washy, namby-pamby, big-girly, poxed-up self-abusers whose only purpose in life was to make their own lives and the lives of their senior NCOs as miserable and unpleasant as possible and he wasn't going to be fucking-well miserable on their account.

He had reduced at least three of the squad to shambling, almost tearful, wrecks by his constant harrying and vituperative language. Again, he'd just about accused the two cooks-to-be to be addicted to sodomy and other pastimes and had also got at Royston and Jason in subtle ways for being black and probable possessors of larger than natural personal attributes. One phrase used which was dissected for possible slurs was “Some of you shower ain't natural...”.

Bungalow was not in a good mood next morning and kept twisting the knife every time there was some minor error. At one time he had half the squad, including me and Taffy, doubling round the square. I got three earfuls including one starting off with a denunciation of not being present on parade the previous afternoon. I kept my mouth shut as he knew full well where I was as he had marched me in. I think he thought I was in the shit and that's why I was being hauled up to the Company Office. Luckily for all he had other duties that afternoon and our own Squad NCO returned and we had a final rehearsal for the great day tomorrow.

The next day was an anti-climax. The barrack room and our serried ranks were first inspected by the CO. No problems. On the parade ground we marched past the Colonel in charge of the Depot after he had inspected us and spoken to quite a few. No problems. At last we were dismissed and found Bigelow waiting for us at the barrack room.

The grumbling over lunch was stupendous. Bungho was cursed roundly, soundly but we were there, waiting, when a Corporal with a clipboard turned up. It wasn't too bad. Royston and I were assigned to the Sick Bay where we had to swab a couple of floors with mops and stack some shelves. We were told we could report back in the morning which we did.

However, when I went to the Company Office at 16.15 to collect Company Orders I was also handed a sheet with my posting order for Monday next and a travel warrant made out to London, all stations, from the local station near the Depot. I noted it was all very vague. I had to report to a barracks in London and be on the local station at 10.00 to catch the 10.30 train. I was to report to the Transport Office at 09.30 hours.

“Hey, what do you fucking think?” he yelled, “Bastard Bungho's in the fucking Sick Bay. Story is he was found by the old huts this morning, fucking pissed out of his mind. Fuckers said he was wearing a gold fucking jockstrap and had a fucking banana stuck up his arse!” He waited for the effect. A stunned effect. Then he added, “And the fucking banana still had the fucking Fyffe's label on it!”

Next morning I paraded at the Transport Office with pack, issued duffle bag and the best wishes of the barrack room. I was going to miss my mates but I was also rather glad I was going first. I'd said heartfelt cheerios the night before especially to Ferdy, Dwayne, Yorkie and Jason and particularly to Taffy and Royston. In fact, Royston and I shared a brotherly hug. There was little point in saying `keep in touch' as we were all destined for different careers and would be scattered all over the place, probably all over the world wherever the British Army served. So, it was `Best of luck' from all to all.

I arrived at the station in good time and had dumped my pack and bag by a bench and was idly looking in the window of the paper kiosk when I recognised, in the reflection, someone on the platform opposite. It was Roddy and he was in civvies. He was dressed like a student, complete with large sports bag. I hoped he hadn't noticed I'd spotted him so I went over to the bench and sat down. After a couple of minutes someone came and sat next to me and a sports bag was plonked down by my feet. He was sitting pretty close to me as I stared idly across the platform.

“...You fucking are.. From this morning and now shut the fuck up and listen carefully. Go to those bogs at the end of the platform. There's an out of order sign but just go in. Third cubicle, bag like this. Change your clothes for what's inside. Stick all your clobber in your other bags but get anything personal out you need then leave them in there. The porter over there will collect them. And flush that travel warrant down the bog, I've got your proper ticket here. Now, back here in five minutes.”

I stood, hefted my bags without looking at him and went over to the bog. Sure enough, a sports bag was there with a complete change of clothing. I was to become another typical student. I was four minutes and thirty seconds including stripping completely and donning a complete outfit from jockstrap outwards and also having a much-needed piss.

Which way? Either way I was rather confused. We strolled slowly up the platform and over the bridge. The train was almost empty and we were quite a distance from other passengers but we didn't talk. As we went further into the countryside the train more or less emptied completely. It was only then he filled me in with a few facts. I had been promoted acting-Sergeant, paid, with effect from that morning. We were going to a specialised training place which to the outside world purported to be an up-market private sports centre, hence the outfits. And he said, very meaningfully I thought, that Jake had sent his best wishes.

I was not prepared for what happened over the next few months. If I thought Bigelow was a hard taskmaster and flogged his recruits to exhaustion and quivering masses of humanity then I, and the other eleven on this intake, were stretched to limits we didn't know we possessed. These limits were both mental and physical but we knew it was all with purpose and reason and we thrived on it. I was mentally and physically stimulated from day one.

There were six pairs. We never appeared in uniform. In fact I never saw mine again for almost two years. Although I knew Roddy was an officer we were all called by our first names or nicknames and no ranks. It was ages before I twigged that a crop-haired broken-nosed young bruiser, with tattoos in most peculiar places, was a Captain and the younger son of a Lord. His paired companion was a flaxen-haired youthful lad, same age as me, who looked as if he belonged on the playing-fields of Eton but was, in reality, the son of poor immigrant parents from Hungary living in the East End of London. So, we were a mixed bunch. I learned very quickly we were selected to be the basis for an undercover task-force ready to ferret out terrorists, undesirables, etc.

But that first day on arriving at ............. (no names, no pack-drill, as Major Bullivant had said!) we were welcomed by staff - in civvies - as if it were a four-star hotel. Roddy had already been in residence for two months but his first assigned confederate had chickened-out and had left after a month and I was found as a replacement. When Roddy told me that I knew he was desperate to succeed and I knew that we would!

Having a ball came on our third night of sharing the room. That Wednesday night was the turning point for both of us. We'd had a rigorous day. The morning run, breakfast, two hours in lectures, an hour in the gym, lunch, a battery of tests for an hour then an hour of very fast six-a-side football. Tea followed with another lecture, dinner at seven and the evening free. Free? We had to prepare a digest of the main points of the two morning lectures and answer a question on each.

We turned in about half-past ten. Weary, but I did feel exhilarated, I was enjoying being stretched and also being pampered at the same time. I needed a shower so stripped and went into the little bathroom and had a leisurely shower. While luxuriating under the warm torrent I realised I hadn't had a wank since Sunday night, that last night in the barrack-room. I contemplated having one under the shower because I was already getting the makings of a hardon. But no, I thought I would try an experiment.

I dropped the towel and everything then happened. In moments we were in each other's arms on his bed licking and kissing each other, feeling each other's muscular bodies squirming and writhing with a passion and ecstasy I'd never even felt with Jake. I literally ripped off his atrocious boxers and we were immediately head to toe, slavering over each other's shafts. I shot my load in his gasping mouth in record time and, as I gave his slim, nicely proportioned dick a barrage of mighty sucks, he unleashed a copious amount of his own cream into my waiting throat. We hadn't finished. We lay side by side, mouths together, our tongues fucking and exchanging the coatings of spunk. His hand gripped my still erect cock and a second stream soon squirted, this time all over his torso. I recovered my breath for a few minutes and did the same for him. We then lay for ages on our backs, an arm round each other's shoulders, idly tracing patterns on each other in the splodges of our silvery juices.

Over that time we've worked together, played together, been unavoidably separated, saved each other's lives at least twice, survived a bombing, and so on. But every time we needed each other that spark was there, a kindled lambent flame of love and absolute devotion. More or less successfully hidden from others we survived until the time came to make momentous decisions about the future.

I suppose I'd better cue you in on a few highlights, or even lowlights, over those intervening years. We didn't leave the Mansion, as it was known, for the first three months. Our tutors and instructors ranged from erudite academic types to real, gnarled trainers in all sorts of arcane arts. One much loved old Sergeant, who had spent years in his now amalgamated Scottish regiment, made a point of singling out Roddy, as he was patently Scottish, and me for special treatment - not always too pleasant - and had a fund of odd aphorisms and twisted proverbs which popped out much to the amusement of all. Once I had failed to do some particular part of an obstacle course to his satisfaction, I was made to repeat it until I mastered it. He stood by me and commented in his rich Scottish accent, “If at first you don't succeed, pull your foreskin o'er your heid!”

I learned to drive - not just the usual young man's fancy cars or more sedate family saloons but also real high-performance monsters which, which, with armour-plating were said to weigh nearly three tons. I and Roddy, with two others were soon singled out for specialised computer training so when the others had their own grooves to follow we spent hours learning things no computer magazine would ever tell you.

Every six weeks or so Roddy had to break cover, as it were, and show his nose to his regiment. The first morning he had to go off he dressed in full Highland regimental dress, Black Watch kilt, big hairy sporran and all. As he turned to face me I laughed and he found himself on his back, by the application of a particular martial arts routine we had practised many times, with his kilt up and me checking that he wasn't wearing anything underneath. I was called a fucking Sassenach bastard so I gave his balls a friendly tweak and said that every time he wanked off during the next five days, and he wasn't to do it more than three times a day, he had to remember he'd left me behind.

We had that sort of relationship even then where we could say anything and everything to each other. As we lay in each other's arms each evening after some form of love-making we told each other our life stories. My relationship with Jake was discussed at length and he laughed when he heard of my little infatuation with Andrew Forbes. I heard about his life at Kinloch and his loving relationship with a lad called Miles through most of his school life. This lad, on leaving school, had emigrated to Canada and after studying there worked for some organisation which seemed very secret. He also confessed to having had a few other illicit liaisons while at school but all had to be kept very circumspect. Like Jake and me he said he wasn't in love with Miles. But, and this was the important point, that interview meeting in the CO's room, was the catalyst for both of us. I told him about my 'zing' and partial hardon. He admitted he couldn't keep his eyes off me all the time we were in the room. He said he had a clear image of me that night as he spilled his seed, and for many nights after that.

At the end of three months we had a week's leave. I'd written home to Mum and Dad, to my sister Pam and to both Jake and Jeffrey as regularly as possible. We had been asked, nay instructed would be a better word, not to reveal anything about where we were or our training. We were on trust. I had an address for a military base a few miles away but mail came in very promptly. I arranged to go home for a weekend and then went to stay with my sister who was starting a PhD in Clinical Psychology. Mum and Dad were pleased to see me. Dad was unwell and, in fact, died suddenly from a heart attack a few months later. My appearance, looking fit, healthy, but in civvies as I was not attached to any specific regiment, cheered them up. My apparent misdemeanours with a now absent Jake were never alluded to but I did feel a bit on edge. My cover story was, as usual, that I was on specialised computer training.

After further training Roddy and I were assigned to our first task. This was to track some information concerning possible bomb making in North London. For this I was enrolled on a Business Studies course at a local college and over Christmas had to make myself look like a typical second-rate student to go with my carefully rehearsed cover story. I was found digs with a nice old lady and appeared on her doorstep in my new role. She wasn't fazed at my appearance - she'd had others looking just like me before. Roddy's parting shot was that I looked just like Shaggy in Scooby Doo. As he was working as a waiter in an Italian restaurant - no, not one belonging to Ferdy's relations - as his cover, I retorted that a greasy spoon was about the only thing he would be licking for the near future.

Suffice to say I was soon integrated with a little group of students who drank in a local pub in the evenings. I imbibed little, pleading student poverty, but keep eyes and ears open. One of the girls in the group was obviously sounding me out and relayed things which I knew, and my handlers knew, were incorrect. Gradually as I was accepted more and more I was able to identify two gents who drank regularly in the same bar in a larger group as the most likely suspects. After relaying names and addresses through Roddy, on visits to enjoy large plates of pasta, the two gents and the girl on the course disappeared and, when I left the course at the end of the term - saying I was going to transfer to another college - I heard that successful raids had been made and the miscreants were somewhere safe. I had a special commendation for that. Roddy got a liking for Italian food and his second pip as well.

Further training ended up with both of us being sent to a somewhat prestigious Northern university to take computer science degrees. That was the ostensible reason. The powers-that-be at the Ministry of Defence had discovered their network was vulnerable. In fact, there was a high probability it had been hacked into. There was also suspicion that the hackers were connected with the computer department of said university. It took us eighteen months of intensive learning and investigating before two research students disappeared and were never heard of again. The network was not compromised again - mainly because we were able to advise on the closure of back-doors, use of passwords, etc, etc., which was not helped by the highly publicised loss of laptops in taxis and pubs by rather forgetful MoD personnel.

Our relationship continued wonderfully during this time. After one term in a Hall of Residence a flat was found for us. Our handler was a stunning blond, Mary, who came up to see us regularly. Being seen in the company of a stunning blond, albeit one who could stun with a jab of two fingers, meant our relationship was never questioned. By now our relationship was an open secret with Colonel, as he became, Bullivant and his small team. At the end of the degree course Roddy was promoted to Captain and I had a crown to add to my invisible stripes.

Roddy, of course, had to keep up appearing at his regimental headquarters and also at home at Linnhe Castle in Scotland. I had no such ties but had to keep a low profile wherever I went. Not easy when you are six foot two and built with it. I kept in shape by regular work outs at the university gym. More than once I was propositioned by very nice-looking, buffed-up lads. No, I didn't waver, Roddy was mine and I was his. We spent many hours exploring each other and trying to give each other the most pleasure our bodies could muster. I was so glad we cared for each other so much as we never relapsed into some sort of stereotypical, stylised love-making. Each act was a pure act of love. We use to joke about having a headache, or, it being that time of the month, if there was something which was weighing us down. If either felt too jaded or tired or frustrated with problems we worked all out of our systems by the way we cared for each other. There was a synchrony between us which was uncanny. Roddy said it was because we both had Scottish antecedents - my Grannie came from the Highlands to work and married Grandad - and so had second sight. I don't know about that but we never had a real spat - a few cross words at times, but never any quarrel that lasted more than an hour or so.

My first encounter with Roddy's family came one Hogmanay, the New Year of 1996/1997, just before we finished the computer science degree course. I was to be his driver and he was to make a two day visit only as he was required for a meeting in London. That was the story. I had to be in uniform and appeared as a Corporal with false flashes and all. I even had to wear a kilt, or to be more exact, the kilt. Naturally, being only a driver, I was accommodated at Linnhe castle in the servants' wing. Now largely deserted, because servants were no longer in plentiful and cheap supply, but comfortable. I had royal treatment below stairs and found out much more about 'Master Roddy' as he was known to the adoring staff which I used to my advantage on several occasions when we returned.. I met his elder brother, who Roddy was bunking in with, Walter the Banker. He was an older version of Roddy and accepted me quite naturally as a soldier with a job to do. His younger brother, Paul, was now a fully-fledged member of Kinloch school having graduated from the preparatory department. We got on well and I had to give him several rides in the jeep which was our transport. He also asked me all sorts of awkward question about what I did other than drive the jeep. I told him I was the official haggis hunter for the regiment and had to enter each kill on a computer and he gave me a very peculiar look.

On the way back Roddy told me he'd passed on the family heirloom, the boy's size jockstrap. He said he wondered if young Paul had discovered the joys yet as he thought he was quite well-grown for nearly fourteen. I said no doubt as I had noticed the growth of hair on his legs when he was sitting in his kilt next to me in the front of the jeep.

With the end of the course in 1997 and getting our degrees new duties came. However Mum and Pam came up and saw me arrayed in cap and gown at the degree ceremony . Roddy demurred from receiving his as his photo might be seen by someone and he kept very much in the background. Pam and Mum knew I shared a flat but I explained, untruthfully, that my flat-mate had gone home having finished and was looking for a job. I said the MoD had promised me a posting to do with computers but it was hush-hush. They didn't see me in uniform and managed not to blurt out anything when I introduced them to a couple of my class-mates and to two of my more favourite tutors as none of them knew what I really was.

The next four years went like wildfire. I was sent to Germany on one assignment and who did I meet but Ferdy and Dwayne, resplendent in maroon berets and Sergeant's stripes having taken a parachute course. They were now instructors at the depot I was visiting. They were pleased to see me and twitted me that I was still one rank above them as Staff-Sergeant. I also heard what had happened to Bungho. They and Royston, now a Sergeant at a depot in England, had found that Bungho always spent Saturday nights in the Sergeants' Mess getting pissed as a newt. They had spiked a half-bottle of vodka with two crushed-up Valium tablets purloined by Jason, who was in on the scheme but kept in the background, from his mum's supply. They'd followed Bungho as he wove his way back to his billet and solicitously offered him the bottle which he drank from greedily. They steered him to the back of one of the old huts where he soon fell into a stupor. His trousers and pants were swiftly removed and the gold lame jockstrap - a relic of Royston's stripping and posing career - was substituted. The final act, the insertion of the banana up his arse, was Dwayne's touch of brilliance. I remembered how Dwayne liked his food and always came back from the NAAFI with extra supplies! When he recovered in Sick Bay Bungho couldn't recollect what had happened to him. His story of having a quiet drink in the Mess was not believed and he had an almost immediate posting out. Dwayne said he was now Quartermaster at a Depot near Aldershot and, true, he did have the smallest dick on the Depot! We had several drinks to that taming of that 'phobe!!

Of course, I couldn't tell them why I was really there - my cover was setting up a new word processing and database system. In reality I spent a lot of time in a prison cell, with an MoD interpreter, interviewing a rather recalcitrant young German and finding out his more than odious affiliations and his hacking secrets. I'd spent some time exploring his computer and had uncovered a whole range of well-hidden nastinesses but there was much more in his spiteful little head. I had made my displeasure known after a couple of fairly fruitless interviews with the arrogant young man. My quiet complaints were taken on board by his keepers and the last two sessions were much more profitable. He spilled many beans and whether he survived I do not know. He was rather grey and sweating heavily when I sat the other side of the table on the final occasion as he was brought in by two ferocious looking Military Policemen. But, he named names and spelled out some very interesting codes with alacrity on that occasion. I got a very high commendation for that episode and a further promotion, to Company Sergeant Major.

During those years we had two spells in Ireland where once our cover was nearly blown and we were nearly blown up. A couple of times we averted a dangerous situation at the last moment. Not just there, but elsewhere, as one time we were ambushed and only Roddy's driving skills saved our bacon. I don't think our love making had ever been so intense as it was after that particular occasion!

So, the time had come to make decisions. In December 2000 Roddy had gone off to Edinburgh as his now nineteen-year-old Officer Cadet younger brother was acting as sponsor for two of his friends who were making their commitment to each other. We had discussed many times how we might make our relationship known. Not in the Army. As far as his new regiment, another Highland one, was concerned, Roddy was celibate and spent his time in London if he wasn't in Edinburgh. Truth was we were together all the time he wasn't reporting in. I was a hidden cipher as far as the army was concerned, well-paid, but under cover; he was the open part of the team. I was spending much of my time investigating all sorts of ways in which networks could be and were compromised. Don't ask me where, but I was here and there. But, the job was telling on me. I was never rested. I had to be alert all the time. I rarely had leave. When I did, and Roddy was away playing his role with his family in Scotland, I now tended to stay with Jeffrey and his wife at the curate's house or with a sublimely happy pair at Oxford, Jake and Andrew. They'd become an item as soon as Andrew went there to read Mathematics. Jake was a Junior Fellow by then and now they are both Fellows of their respective colleges and live together in Iffley in connubial bliss. Both are very lucky. I never envied either, I had Roddy.

So, it's now the end of 2001 and the crunch has come, so had the air-mail letter this morning. It was strange. It was from Roddy's friend, Miles Turner, from Canada. Would I be interested in setting up a very secure computer network and be responsible for running it, at what I took to be a vastly inflated salary, for the world-wide organisation he represented? He noted that Roddy had recommended me and that Roddy would be based in Canada anyway.