Soldierboy by Tim Clay

Tim Clay was bored out of his mind. Just to give himself something to do, he decided to try his hand at writing.

Five years on, the former Army Intelligence Corps sergeant major’s first book is about to be published.

Soldierboy, published by York Publishing Services, tells the story of how a Selby teenager whose life was going nowhere decided on a whim to join the Army – and discovered himself as a man.

During his 22 years in the Army, Tim rose through the ranks from private to sergeant major in the elite Intelligence Corps. He served in Germany, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Russia, Albania and Afghanistan. Fluent in German, Ukrainian and Albanian, his job was mainly as an interpreter, although he did his share of eavesdropping, too, including a stint in civvies at GCHQ.

Then there was that two months onboard a submarine.

Tim was there as a Russian-speaking linguist. He can’t, for operational reasons, say where the sub was. “Though you can probably work it out.”

But what was doing his head in were the cramped, claustrophobic conditions. “There was no privacy at all,” he says. “We weren’t part of the regular complement, so we were sleeping on stretchers under the torpedoes. You were working six hours on, six hours off, six hours on, for weeks. You never got enough sleep, you were always tired.”

Being an interpreter with the Army Intelligence Corps probably wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds, he admits. “It wasn’t James Bond.” But while, as a member of the ‘Green Slime’ – the affectionate name regular soldiers have for the intelligence corps – he didn’t see much frontline action, he did take part in a few risky operations.

He was in Afghanistan in 2002 with the SAS and SBS, although again he can’t say much about it. And in the 1990s he took part in a mission to Albania to rescue British citizens.

The country had descended into near anarchy. British marines went in by boat to get stranded British citizens out. Tim was one of only five soldiers in the Army to speak Albanian, so he went along as an interpreter. It was scary, he says, not the tense situation, but the fact he was being expected to use his rusty Albanian.

But he loved his time in the Army. The 44-year-old credits it with turning him into the man he is today.

His family moved to Selby when he was one year old, and he grew up in the town. But he didn’t do well in his A-levels, and as a teenage school-leaver found himself drifting and aimless.

“I didn’t have a clue or a direction in life,” he says.

He worked for a while on a building site in Germany, then returned to Selby. One day in 1985 he was walking through York and saw the Army careers office.

It changed his life. The one thing he was good at, he says, was languages – his only A-level was in German. He signed on as a private in the Army Intelligence Corps, did his basic training at Ashford in Kent, then spent two years learning languages.

He loved the life. “I enjoyed the crack, the camaraderie. There were times you were in horrible places doing horrible things, but it didn’t matter because of your mates.” The Army life gave him a confidence and discipline he’d never had.

“It made me punctual, smart, fit, not lazy – all the things you want to be in life but could never do on your own.”

It was also great fun, he says – and that is what shines through in his book: the sense of humour.

Soldierboy covers only Tim’s first year in the Army – so there could be 20 more books to come, he jokes. But that first year included the shock of basic training. So there is plenty of rich comic potential.

The first page finds the teenage recruit being subjected to ‘Piggy Press-ups’ by an irate corporal. His crime had been to laugh when the soldier next to him broke wind during inspection.

Soon he found himself lying with his ankles on the bed, doing press-ups on the floor, while 20 laughing soldiers watched.

“Each time I push upwards I make a squealing noise and then a snort on the way back down,” Tim writes ruefully. “Hence the name – piggy press-up. Childish? Yes. Funny to watch? Extremely.”

After more than 20 years in the army, Tim was hoping for promotion from the ranks to be an officer.

Then a family tragedy four years ago left him with little choice but to leave.

His wife of 18 years, Andrea, was killed in a car during a family day out in the Yorkshire Dales, leaving Tim to care for three children Abigail, then 12, Joseph, 11, and Philippa, eight.

The Army would have transferred him to a “boring” job where he wouldn’t have had to move around so much. But it would have meant uprooting the children from their schools and friends in Selby, which he didn’t want.

So he left and set up his own restaurant in Selby – Number 8 in Park Street.

Last year, he married for the second time. And on April 28, that book he began writing to stop himself going stir-crazy on a sub five years ago finally makes it into print.

• Soldierboy by Tim Clay is published on April 28 by York Publishing Services, priced £7.99 plus £1.95 p&p. To order a copy, visit www.ypd-books.co.uk or phone 01904 431213.