Chapter 16: Back to Base

After an early breakfast on braai leftovers the next morning, we were treated to a new piece of kit. Finger Roberts woke us up as usual and when we gathered outside the barracks, he had a pile of back-packs stacked in front of him.

"Good morning all." Finger Roberts greeted us. "We are going to move back to the main base in combat order. Please get dressed in your chain-mail and load all the rest of your kit into these back-packs. Report march-ready in 30 minutes and I will do a final inspection."

I collected one of the back-packs and tried it on. It was, like all the other kit we had received so far, a brilliant piece of equipment. It was lightweight and obviously strong. The shoulder straps fitted comfortably and the waist strap supported the weight of the pack perfectly just above the hips. I was a little concerned that the pack would constrict my movement, especially when I was running, but a little experimentation showed that while there was a slight reduction my arm's freedom of movement, it was a lot less than I thought it would be. There was also a very efficient quick-release system for dumping the pack in the case of an ambush.

I returned to the barracks room and started packing the kit from the storage chest into the back-pack. Finger Roberts was there already, and he showed us what and how to pack. The bedding rolled up and attached nicely to the bottom of the pack, and the rest of the items that we had received packed away to leave the pack still half empty. That felt about right to me as I knew from prior experience that the bulk of what I would need to carry would be food and water. That was true even taking into account the possibility of living partially off the land.

We were all outside and waiting before the thirty minutes was up.

"March Ready Finger Leader" I reported formally to Finger Roberts. He had appointed me as an acting Finger Leader. The affectionate term for the position was 'knuckle', which generated much hilarity and good-natured teasing from the others. Knuckle-Head was about the mildest of the variations on the term that was used.

"Carry on 'knuckle'" Finger Roberts now ordered me.

"Formation - Arrow-head, Direction - South-East along the pathway, Speed - best speed, Separation - 50 meters. Move out.' I gave the order to move according to the formal standardised pattern. It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In every army there is an Army Way and the the wrong way. At first it seems confusing and a waste of time, but once you become used to it, it becomes second nature and knowing the format of the various commands it makes it a lot easier to ensure that messages aren't garbled.

We set out towards the base camp that we had left just over three weeks before and within a few hundred meters we had moved into the mental 'zone' and were moving smoothly as a tightly integrated team. We had already learnt the folly of moving on the pathways for tactical reasons as they provided the perfect opportunity for ambush or booby-traps, but in this instance Finger Roberts insisted on it. He had told us that in fact most of the other fingers would be running back in single file, in the same way that we had left the base before, but he felt, and I agreed wholeheartedly, that it was important to start thinking and acting as if we were already operational. Tactical movement reinforced the correct mindset.

The trip over the five klicks back to the training based took us a lot less time than the outward journey had done. I felt as if we had barely gotten warmed up and we were arriving. Finger Roberts called for a change of formation to a line-ahead and we slowed down to a brisk walk as we came out of the bush and onto the large parade ground. We were not the first finger to arrive; it looked as if there were six or seven fingers there ahead of us. We followed Finger Roberts over to where the other fingers were waiting and he dismissed us with the injunction to remain together and in the area. Finger Roberts then went off to report to Fist Leader Ryon.

While we were standing and waiting, I realised that there had been a huge change in all of us. Looking around at the others, both in our finger and in the other fingers, I could see that there was not a single fat person. Everyone looked reasonably young, and exceptionally fit. I did notice that there were still lots of faces that carried beards and it make me proud of the fact that our entire finger had faces as smooth as babies' bums. After my initial body-hair accident, I had decided that it was easier, not to mention more hygienic, to keep myself essentially hairless, and most of the others had followed my example. Desrae had to be different of course. She had gotten rid of all her hair, except what was on her head. She had encouraged the growth there so that her hair now fell to midway down her back. Some of the members of other fingers looked something like the 'Wild man of Borneo' with big busy beards and long tangled hair. I noticed that those with the facial hair seemed to be less 'aware' than those without, so it reinforced the idea for me that a clean-shaven face was a pretty good indicator of mental control.