Officers and Men Ch. 01

"Family stuff," he said, "just a flying visit."

The waitress came past with a coffee pot and refilled our cups, curtseying to the hunky Cavalry Captain that was flexing his eyebrows in a manner that would have made Roger Moore proud.

"I was wondering if we could do something this weekend." I said.

"Yeah sure, what you got in mind?"

"Thought we could take one of those boat trips along the Rhine, an overnighter," I winked at him, I'd bought a really hot looking lacy nightdress that fitted me like a babydoll because it was regular length and wanted a special occasion to wear it, never having anything like that before in my life!

"Yeah why not," he said coolly.

"Or I could stay over at your place." I said guessing that he didn't really fancy a Rhine cruise.

"Errrrrrrr... no." he said, "Actually I'm getting rid of it, damned expensive and what with the planned closure of JHQ, thought I'd get shot of it now and move back into the mess." His Father was a politician and at that stage opposition front bench, and money was never really an object with him; at least that was what he'd said when he was throwing his credit card across hotel reception desks two weeks before.

I felt the chill of his response roll across the table. No more private rooms meant no more sex.

"I'll... I can go halves on the rent with you." I said.

"Only one bedroom Lin," he said with a grimace.

"That wasn't a problem last time I stayed."

"Times change Lin." he said, rolling his eyebrow again.

"I get the feeling I'm being dumped here Roger."

"Not dumped dear," he said without his previous closeness, but with the flinty eyed grimace of a war hero saying goodbye before he hit the beaches the next morning, "More a parting of the ways."

"Oh," I said, my face flushing with the embarrassed realisation that what I thought we had, he didn't, "so..."

"Please don't try and over analyse this Lin;" he took a deep sigh, "we've had a great time, but it's over and we have to get back to our real lives."

"So that wasn't real, that was just sex then."

He smiled; thank fuck the lanky dumb bitch had finally got it.

"It was more than sex Lin," he beamed the biggest falsest smile he could manage, "don't cheapen yourself." It hadn't seemed cheap until he said that of course, "We had a real attraction there for a while."

"Yeah," I said, "right up to the point that you realised I might want something more than sex."

He stopped smiling,

"This is trouble with bloody women," he said, "Want-want-want, a couple of shags and you're picking out curtain material." He shook his head in disappointment.

My mouth bobbed open, what had happened to the real attraction that we'd had?

"Look, I've got to go; I'll see you around sometime yeah?" he stood and taking his beret and his newspaper from the table walked off heroically, checking his reflection and his eyebrow position in the mirror as he went.

"Roger?" I called after him.

"Aah Young Major," said a voice and I turned to see The Assistant Brigade Commander, the man that I reported to. "You go careful with Turnball there." He nodded to the broad shoulders of Ranger Roger the Light Dragoon leaving the dining room; I was waiting for him to say 'what a guy'.

"Careful sir?" I said.

The ABC stepped closer and whispered conspiratorially,

"He's due to get married in a couple of weeks, don't want to rock the boat do we?" He smiled a false smile all teeth; I noticed the tiny piece of green lettuce from his eggs benedict stuck to his left incisor.

"Married?"

"Yes, his fiancée has been planning it back in the UK for months now. He went home this weekend to sign off the final plans. They've managed to get Salisbury Cathedral, quite a day I understand, but then with his family and hers I'm surprised they haven't got Westminster Abbey." He smiled and shook his head.

"Married?"

"Yes dear!" said the ABC with a admonishing tone, "please don't try and spoil things just because you've developed a crush on him."

"Crush?" I was still astounded and my training with half a dozen languages failed me completely.

"Look, there's already a rumour floating around the Armoured Brigade that he took some floozy off for a 'driving holiday' after his stag weekend..." He stopped talking as his bottom jaw flapped for a moment. "Oh, err..." he said in a sudden realisation. He had probably signed off my summer holiday leave request not three weeks ago.

He walked away in embarrassment.

My cheeks flushed and I managed to get back to my room before I shed the few tears that I would cry for that lying bastard. Fucking men...

It got worse.

Suddenly it seemed that not only my Brigade but the entire British Army of the Rhine wanted to know how my holiday had been, all asked with a hint of innocence only wrecked by their cheeky expectant smiles, I was sure I heard the word 'strumpet' whispered around. Roger had an even prouder smile on his handsome, slimy, cuntish face.

It all came to a head one weekday evening when one of Roger's colleagues from his own regiment asked me out on a date but I demurred; he was quite pissed and started to complain that 'all four Squadrons knew I was up for a shag' and Roger had told them all about me and the number of times we'd got up to it, and that the only thing I hadn't done was anal. I thought about that, he did ask to do that a couple of times during our second week.

"Fuck you!" I slapped his face, in part anger by mostly shame.

"Oh, don't kid yourself Strumpet Major!" - I had read Thomas Hardy at school and hated it, so much more so now - "He sent us a daily report of what you had gotten up to," he chuckled and fished out his mobile phone with a triumphant, inebriated giggle, "Look," he grinned superciliously, as if he had just scaled Everest, rather than open his email account.

I snatched it from his hand and scanned down his email account; there they were - I scan read the first few titles, opened the third and felt sick. He leaned back with folded arms with some kind of pride in his nasty triumph and he chuckled. I had to turn away from that look.

13 emails, one for each night of our lovely romantic holiday. Only what I had thought were wonderful starry and moonlit nights of passion, love and romance had been broken down into crude, lewd and dirty paragraphs listing what we had done each night, and even getting down to the 'ins and outs' (to coin an apposite phrase) of each act, and how weird it was shagging a female giant 'that was all fucking legs', even using block capitals to announce that I had gone down on him without him having to do it to me.

Moving around to enjoy his triumph more, the pissed Dragoon could see what my face now looked like with a mix of shocked disbelief, hurt and anger and was now extremely desirous of getting his phone back perhaps sensing the shit storm of monumental proportions that he'd precipitated. He shut up about what had gone on and looked rather pale himself. He snatched his phone back from my tear wet fingers. He slipped it back into his jacket pocket, and turned to leave.

"Well... err... Lieutenant Major, really must be on my way..."

I could see all of my evidence of Roger's wrongdoing walking out of the bar and into oblivion with all of the other emails as this idiot told the other recipients that the jig was up and to bin everything before the powers that be descended upon those involved, with investigations, inspections, injunctions and power to seize anything with a microchip bigger than a digital watch before the eventual and highly embarrassing military court.

So I changed my persona and sidled up to him, I was a strumpet after all.

"Oh I don't blame you," I said, looking down on the 5 feet six Cavalry Officer.

"Oh... well..." he said taking a relaxing breath.

"No it's that nasty Roger; how are you with revenge?" I simpered.

"Well, it's not the done thing to shaft a fellow officer," he said nervously.

"Unless she's in the Intelligence Corps," I said, "seems I can get shafted though doesn't it." I stroked a hand along his jacket collar trying to remember all of the things I'd seen women trying to get around men do in the movies.

"Well..." he realised the shit he was in, "well just some harmless fun Darling, what?"

"Harmless, yeees," I said thinking of what a terrible fine chap everyone thought Ranger Roger was now, while I was just 'Strumpet Major' the 'floozy' he decided to sow his last fortnight of wild oats with. "Two more Gin and tonics here!" I called to the barman. I pulled the idiot back to the bar, pushed his arse onto a stool, sat on his lap and got my prospective beau to down both of the G&T's; in the half an hour I had to put up with his appalling behaviour not to say breath in the meantime.

Just as he was getting to the wobbly stage, when no one was looking I took him out into the foyer and pulled him into the gents' toilets, and took his phone from his pocket.

"What's the password Baby?" I said in silly voice.

"Can't tell you that," he giggled, "Top secret!"

"Awww I won't tell!" I put my arms around his neck.

He took his phone and after three attempts finally opened it. I took it from him and giggled back at him, just in time it seemed. The fresh air from the open doors of the foyer was making him really drowsy so I pushed him back into one of the cubicles on his backside to sleep it off.

I took his phone and ran to the intelligence cell and sat down at a PC, ignored by the two operators in the room, after all that's kind of what we did.

Keeping the pissed idiots phone open - didn't know his password after all - I spent the next hour harmlessly and untraceably bluetoothing Roger's emails including the circulation list of more than two dozen of his Regiment and the Armoured Brigade's finest (including two women) from the pissed idiot's phone onto mine and then into a couple of Hotmail accounts I had, making sure I had copies of all the emails Roger had sent about our various sexual activities that we 'had gotten up to' that would match up quite nicely to my diary and the pictures I'd taken. Despite my tear-filled eyes I made good time, even heading back to the mess bathrooms and slipping the mobile, wiped for finger prints, back into the gently snoring Cavalryman's jacket pocket.

What made it worse was that it clear from the emails and copious responses that it was part of a bet. Several of his colleagues on the Brigade staff and one from his regiment had tried to date me it seemed, and I had gained a bit of a reputation just because I didn't go out with anyone.

I wasn't saving myself, didn't feel superior in any way, I just didn't fancy any of them in that way. After two years I had become a bit of challenge it seemed.

For every night Roger slept with me, the 'too clever for her own good', 'undateable', 'tough nut', 'Giraffe girl', 'The I-Corps Ice Giant' that no one could reach and 'was so far up her own arse she couldn't see daylight', his brother officers - and two sisters - would put a bottle of his favourite Glayva whiskey behind the bar for him; two bottles for a blow job, four for anal and if there was a picture of me naked, a case. He only got the one picture and that was just of my shoulders and a hint of boobs and a partial nipple.

His Best Man, a disappointed Cavalryman I had turned down who obviously had a problem that I was a foot taller than him, gleefully recalled to the whole email group how my photo had been put up on the 60 inch Plasma TV in their Mess so all of the Officers could decide if the case of Glayva had been earned. It wasn't, he wrote how they had spent a good forty five minutes with me on screen discussing whether some cleavage and half of a boob and a nipple counted against the original outcome.

What a jolly old ruse, what fun, what a good spirited giggle... what a bunch of cunts. Not just for doing it, but for doing it and thinking they would get away with it.

I saved them all into a zip file and emailed them to Ranger Roger, from my work account to his marked confidential; just so he knew that I knew.

"Thanks Roger, you're a heartless bastard and I truly hope that this shit comes home to roost one day.

To put your nasty, hateful, puerile, tiny little mind at rest, your secret is safe with me though. The only thing that stops me sending this little bundle to the Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch, The Brigade Commander, the GOC 1st British Corps and the Commander Land Forces is the fact it would be the end of my career as well as yours and I wouldn't give you the satisfaction.

I do suggest that you tell your fiancée/lady wife a bit soon though; and that's not a threat it's just advice.

After all she could easily find out from one of your 'so called friends' and fellow officers after they've had a few drinks. Trust me, there's at least one that was so keen to be where you had been and couldn't wait to tell me all about your little game and gave me their fucking phone to prove it - still, just a pig-shit thick, troglodyte grunt like you after all.

Fuck you Roger, I can't think what I ever did to you to make you do something so horrible to me; I guess that you really don't care either way. BTW, you weren't as good as I said you were and your cock is rather small - either that or you just weren't getting it up, I would suggest you see someone about it before your wedding night."

I let him have that libido reducing information just as a sideswipe and I hoped it would affect his confidence in bed.

I saved the emails in a dozen places, none to do with the Army of course.

The following day, the pissed Cavalry officer with the big mouth that had shared more information with me than he initially meant to, found me at lunch in the HQ Mess, some distance from his own.

"Look..." he said very hungover and very remorseful, "We all thought that you were in on it," he said, "Honestly, we all thought that you and Roger... what you had going on was... mutual... both of you were... Like..."

I turned on him snarling a Sergeant Major Bacon snarl.

"Good try, but I read the emails dickhead," I growled, "All of them!"

His mouth flapped as he searched his memory for my name to apologise, and he mouthed several syllables managing to stop himself from calling me 'Strumpet'

"You don't even know my name do you? DO YOU!" The rest of the mess looked around to see what was going on. They all looked away again; I wasn't sure how many of them were in on the big joke on the big girl.

"Sorry," he said, actually looking contrite and in the broad light of day rather embarrassed.

"What for, you didn't screw me halfway across Europe and blog it to all of your mates for a bet." I wiped a tear from my eye.

"It... just all got rather out of hand." He said.

"Yeah didn't it fucking just," I looked across at him with contempt, "what the fuck did I do to you boys? I didn't know that I'd even met a Cavalryman before Roger, none of you had ever even met me before, but now you're all part of some elaborate charade to bring the Ice Giant down to size? Why?" I snarled again, "Tell me why!?!"

He fingered the leather band on his black tanker's beret, and shrugged his shoulders. He smiled a pitiful smile,

"I cannot answer that question Mam," he said echoing one of the five responses that a British soldier could give under interrogation. "But please," he said, "Please accept my apologies for any upset that my actions might have caused you, at the very least."

I was starting to feel a little sorry for him, but then I remembered what his words and actions had been to me last night when his arse wasn't on the line and the booze was allowing him to say what he actually thought.

"Fuck you," I said, and promptly poured my mug of coffee down the front of his spotless uniform, "I'll see you and all of your colleagues in Fucking Colchester or at the Job Centre." Colchester was the Military Corrective Training Centre, the British Army's prison and they never sent officers there to my knowledge but I still wanted him and his mates to think it was an option, especially the two fucking women that were part of it.

It turned out that it was all down to Roger and his best man who was another spoilt, rich pretty boy that was offended by my lack of recognition of what an attractive man he was and how neither of them stood a chance with me; this precocious pair with far too much sway over their mess and the junior officers therein. Ranger Roger was, apparently, stalking the barracks of 1st British Corps HQ to find the officer that had told on him at a time he really should have been driving home and preparing for his wedding. The reason was this new career and marriage spoiling information had reached the ears of some other very senior officers and the chatter stopped as soon as it had started.

Roger was posted back to the UK at speed, losing his rather cushy little number and the accompanying married quarter for two years at the heart of the British Army of the Rhine, getting posted instead into limbo and to the arsehole of the British Army, Tidworth as second in command of a unit that ran and maintained armoured fighting vehicles of all kinds for training on the nearby Salisbury Plain, while his best man was put in control of some very fine army stores... in the Falkland Islands.

This was the early two thousands and this type of behaviour was strictly outlawed. But as I'd said to Ranger Roger I didn't want to flush my career down the toilet with his.

His BAOR job, along with his family connections, would have seen him promoted through to a course at Staff College, a guaranteed Colonelcy and Regimental commander in his regiment, Brigade Commander, Staff position, the whole shit, probably even a seat in The House of Lords if he stayed the course.

Sadly, because he was an obnoxious, over-confident, bullying cunt and sent emails that even a tipsy teenager would have thought twice about, he'd well and truly pissed in the Regimental Porridge pot, breaking five generations of family Tradition in that regiment dating from Borneo, then back through World War Two and One, and the Empire as far back as the Sudan and the relief of Mafeking.

His father had served in the Special Air Service, but I was to learn from a colleague some months later that Roger was extremely cross when despite his other qualifications the elite Regiment of the British Army didn't want him; it seemed the selection officer thought he was 'a obnoxious prat more likely to be killed by his own men than the enemy.'

Germany was a delight and I really did enjoyed my tours there, and the social and regimental life was the highlight of my career - up until that point. I often wondered how he was going to explain Tidworth, a squadron of unemployable and miserable, greasy mechanics and tankmen under his command and 48 aging challenger tanks and warrior armoured personnel carriers to his new wife that had been promised the Rhineland and the military highlife. That was revenge enough and had cost me two gin and tonics, some light groping and an email.

The Assistant Brigade Commander let me know through a junior female officer on the staff that while he was disgusted with Captain Turnball and whoever his cohorts might have been, he was keen to point out that 'it took two to tango' and there was no reason that JHQ needed to blast its rather nasty going's on across the tabloid press.

I reminded her that I had told Roger from the start that I would stay quiet, but added that all the time everyone else shut up about the matter I was happy to do the same; after all I wasn't proud of any of it, and didn't want my career fucked over like his had been. So long as I never saw or heard the term 'Strumpet Major' used on the same continent as me he could be assured of my silence.