ANOTHER BIRTHDAY TAB DONE!

Ten mile tab with mates so young, and remembering those struggling with their health and mind today…until my 70th!

Probably the fastest 10 miler (although with only 30lb in my pack due to age and old injury) since my late 40s.

A cold frosty start, then the sun warmed the air a bit, perfect for today’s tab. As soon as I’m out of my gates, it’s a mile or so walk to break the body into what’s coming. After that, a nice jogging pace with a wee bit of walking here and there on the hills. A good undulating route through quiet leafy streets, great for feeling the energy of my old mates who died so young.

As many of you know I’m not religious, so my God isn’t any better then your God. But I certainly believe that as we’re all full of electricity, our energy doesn’t just die with us. Nor does it remain where an individual died or where they were buried or cremated. So, if I’m thinking and talking or tabbing with my mates, including over here in New York, I feel them…they were with me for the whole 10 miler.

A bit of winging on the way around… not from me but from them. But then when they were alive they would be winging as we’d tab together, ha ha.

Thinking of those who are still with us, but are they? Too many lads going early after their time in the military, and too many left alone to hurt alone. We all need help now and again, no matter who we are. As I’ve said and written many many times now…we are ALL breakable just like clay, it seems to be the luck of the draw.

This tab is my way of dealing. Dealing with what a full military and special forces life left me with. Early days of the anti terrorist team, leading up to the first anti terrorist team operation, the Iranian Embassy, practicing each and every day for 6 months mainly in a small single story brick building as our first “killing house” back in the mid 1970s.

Aye, but just who was it killing? No extractor fans to suck out the lead after firing thousands of rounds together in a short space of time in made up small rooms. So much so that the lead just hung like a cloud in the still air of the building. We’d open the front and rear door, and a wee window in the passage way to try to clear what we could…that was it.

When the tea urn showed up for a break and a brew, we’d be spitting up black phlegm from the lead that hung in the air. This went on for a few years until we were given a new camp built in phases on the imprint of the old WW2 one, Bradbury Lines would become Stirling Lines…a whole new era.

This is just one of several of the “tough stuff” that we all had to get on with. I don’t regret a moment of it however, even today as I get on with traumatic brain injury from the above and too many explosions caused by making up our own early days’ explosive entry frame charges, starting off with that great demolitions formula of P=Plenty! For me and many others P= knocked out, like a haymaker from Mike Tyson.

So I know that a good few mates died after their military service through the early rigours of just trying to make it work, no matter the basic kit, we would always make it work.

Then post Iranian Embassy of May 1980, the MOD gave us a bigger budget for the research and development of exact specialist kit, from clothing to explosives and weapons and bullets etc.

An insight which I’ve touched on before…and I’ll keep touching on it when I keep hearing of great mates dying early, or struggling through life, when given what they all went through, they deserve better.

They deserve better from the Regiment Association, they deserve better from the MOD, they deserve better from the government…and they deserve better from doctors who really need to go through every inch of a patient’s history in all it’s detail, even if it means bringing in others from the same era.

My tabbing as always is for those very mates.

But today on my birthday, my tab was for one mate in particular who struggles back home…my heart hurts for you, because I know the time you spent on looking after others, and leading from the front, especially in combat…feed off of MY energy, and get better soon. x