(no subject)

[squeeful.livejournal.com]

Okay, I started off writing this as a response to a comment/posst from several months ago that I've been thinking about since then and as I'm on a strange, insomnia-induced sleep schedule, I just spent the past three (four?) hours or more with a lot of history books and British army recruitment and service articles. I had to work my way backwards to make sure things lined up correctly, but hopefully I gave a somewhat coherent telling and summary at the end. So enjoy. :-)



Yeah yeah, I know, wandering back into an old discussion, but I've always wondered, really, how much of a city boy he is. Or more specifically, familiar with London. If you take the comparing of years at the Hatstand and add some more research, there isn't a lot of time available for him to be stalking around London or any city. He'd a military record from 1971-1976. Now, the SAS requires at least 39 months left of service after completing the 6 month selection course. So that's 45 months or three years and nine months devoted to the SAS. Joining the SAS IS a secondment, troopers remain members of their original units, so it's not a shuttling sideways, he had to have gone through the whole process. No bending the rules for Bodie. You pretty much have to assume that the 1976 end of military record is at the very beginning of the year because in order for Doyle's comment of 2 years and three months to jive with the dates, the end of his army career has to overlap with CI5. Training maybe? Working backwards, that's 1975, 1974, 1973, and the tail end of 1972 in SAS service. First 12 months probationary. So, finished selection end of September 1972, began around early April that year. Six months stomping around in rural Wales and SE Asian jungles.

That gives him at most a little over a year to join the army and/or Paratroopers and rise to the rank of sergeant. Zippy career there, neh? Not going to do that trekking around London. After joining the British army he would have been in training in Catterick, North Yorkshire as part of the 2nd Infantry Training Battalion, Parachute Regiment Training Company. Training for that would have taken 28 weeks. 26 weeks standard course plus two weeks Pre-Parachute Selection (PPS) course. That's a nice, even 7 months.

So, that really gives him less than a year between regular army and the SAS. If he joined in 1971, spent seven months in training and joined the Parachute Regiment we can assume that's when he was in Northern Ireland because the Paras were big there during "The Troubles". Which would have been the place for the meteoric rise through the ranks he made in about 5-8 months. That means he would have been right there for Bloody Sunday on January 30th, 1972. Ouch. Sounds like the time to put in for SAS selection. From elite unit to eliter unit.

We've a quote that he returned to England TO join the army so unless there's a flub in prepositions it sounds like a quick jump from Africa to the armed services. Before that was Biafra which was a short-lived (May 30, 1967 to January 15, 1970) secessionist state from southern Nigeria. That leaves us the year of 1970 -- until he joins the British army in 1971 -- which we can speculate is the "dubious activities in Jordan". (Which, in another spectacular jump, is several thousand miles from Nigeria in the western bend of Africa.) Open fighting broke out in June 1970 and a ceasefire was arranged September 22 that same year. Sporadic fighting continued until July 1971, but if we want Bodie to have time to join the army, finish training, tour Northern Ireland, and rise to the rank of sergeant so that he can join and complete his term with the SAS and hook up with Doyle, he has to have left before then. A brief, tumultuous time in the Middle East for our man Bodie. He would have run-in with the PLO there, on whatever side.

Here it's fuzzier. For the previous years to make sense, we have to briefly revisit Biafra which we remember lasted from May 30, 1967 to January 15, 1970. This overlaps with Bodie's unknown amount of previous time in Angola as their war of independence lasted from 1961-1975. This also overlaps with the Congo Crisis. In order for him to fight, it has to have been the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then Republic of the Congo, formerly Belgian Congo. So he's there sometime during the Congo Crisis (1960-1965). And somewhere before any of those he spent three years in the Merchant Navy before hopping off in Dakar, Senegal. Which is thousands of miles from the Congo. How does he get around?

Congo, Congo. There were a lot of foreign mercenaries running around during those wars and, in fact, they were the core of the forces when the province of Katanga declared independence. Their mercs were recruited in Belgium (funny, because Belgium was the imperial country they were declaring independence from) so either Bodie joined them along the way or he fought in a later insurgence in 1964. The UN tried several times to, mm, expel all mercenary forces. It didn't work. No, wait, he ran guns during the Congo stuff. Interesting. The whole series of events and confrontations is really much more complex and convoluted, but I don't have the time, space, or brain power right now to go into them.

Angola. Officially the Angolan War of Independence lasted from 1961 to 1974, but after the initial uprising in 1961, some train derailing in 1967, and infighting during the end of the decade, it was relatively quiet until the 70s. By which time Bodie's gone. Don't know how much he could have mercenaried there.

Okay, it's late so I'm probably repeating things several times, but he goes through the Merchant Navy, hops off in Dakar, is a bouncer, runs around in Congo from 1 to 4 years depending on which end he began, plays with trains and Communists (did I mention Che Guevara was there?) for some time in Angola, turns to solid mercenarying in Biafra for a little over two years, skips over to Jordan and does stuff only he probably knows for a year, leaves the Middle East and joins the army and we're back to where I started at the beginning of this long, rambling wind through history.

Other than an unknown amount of time in some club likely in Dakar, I'm not seeing much opportunity for Bodie to go running around in major cities. It wouldn't surprise me if the first he spent an amount of -- or any! -- time in London was when he joined CI5. He's got Doyle for that. Bodie brings in the world knowledge of all that travel and the force of a very(!) elite army background while Ray brings the intimate, detailed knowing of London, police procedure, and an established network of informants. I'd offer to wallop the next person to say that the urban jungle is any less a nest of nastiness, cruelty, misery, and human suffering than the literal one, but that's a whole other post...


Or what you get when the insomniatic nerd with an obsessive need to know and research gets a hold of too much information.

Comments

[smirra.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that interesting overview!
There's a thought in there I was pondering about for some time. I also thought that he must have been in the Paras when the "Bloody Sunday" happened. Probably stuff for fiction especially as there is some big hearing of witnesses with talking to anyone who was there on both sides going on, that's due with their results this year as far as I know.

[squeeful.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I can get a little fixated on Needing to Know things sometimes.

I hadn't given his possible involvement in Bloody Sunday much thought until I started lining up dates and information about the Paratroopers Regiment. It is still very possible that he wasn't there at the time, but it is likely and it makes for a good inciting incident. :-D

[smirra.livejournal.com]

I stumbled over a documentary about that hearing where a huge number of witnesses were to give testimony about it. It had a few interesting aspects/stories about it, about military commands given, (and not being enforced) by example.
Later when I had a look at Bodie being part of the Paratroopers Regiment I thought about his age and that he could have been there.

[smirra.livejournal.com]

Need to know, eh? Thanks again. It's a good way to cope with a sleepless night.

[squeeful.livejournal.com]

I read through encyclopedias like this more than I like to admit; I just don't usually write down what I find for other people to read. Mostly it's rather random. I'm going to try for Doyle next but that's going to take more work and I have other things that need to be done in the next weeks.

But for now there's what I have on the Met/CID below and that angelfish are relatively intelligent fishies, ambush predators, and form monogamous pairs.

[snailbones.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating stuff - I've never really thought about it much, and it's great to see it all laid out so clearly. Cheers! ::raises glass::

[sensine.livejournal.com]

Wow! this is very thorough! You've really done a great job here!
I'm working with franciskerst (who alerted me to your entry :) on a story that involves lots of background, and we have struggled to put it together and make sense of it for ourselves. - But we are nowhere near your detailed overview. This is really helpful.
(And I can't help wondering - did the producers of the series research so thoroughly Bodie's background? But then again, I don't know much about background and discussions on Profs lists)

sensine

[squeeful.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I, erm, tend to do stuff like this occasionally. More than I like to admit.

I have no idea what the list discussions say, I only took "Joined the merchant navy, jumped ship three years later at Dakar...a bouncer in an African club, gun-running for both sides during the Congo War, mercenary soldier in Angola and Biafra, some dubious activities in Jordan...returned to England to join the army, became a sergeant with the Paras, seconded to the SAS, then CI5" and a couple encyclopedias and went from there.

Possibly, but at the time of the show's and the characters' creations, the events would have been much more recent and in the public mind. We can't get, so much, Bodie's actual background as the sequence of events and extrapolate based on the timing of each. His later years before joining CI5 are easier to figure out because they have set times to them. Like, the SAS is very specific and so is the Parachute Regiment and the Biafra conflict.

...and bugger, I just realized he can't have trained at Catterick because ITC Catterick didn't open until 1995. Crap, I'll have to go over that again when I have more time and sleep.

Doyle, for all it feels like we know more about him, is a lot harder in some ways. Or at least it takes more combing through transcripts and hypothesizing through his behavior patterns. But for now I can tell you that the latest he could have joined the police was 1969 because he transfered into Metropolitan Police Service CID (Criminal Investigation Department) in 1971 and in order to apply you have to have spent at least two years as a uniformed officer. I'm going to stop there for now before I spend another night reading and if I do I WILL make silly mistakes. But, damn, at that point he would have been involved in major crimes investigation! Rape, murder, serious assault, fraud, etc. I'm looking for where the Drugs Squad falls. Oh, and CID is a plain clothes branch. No more charming uniform. *sigh*

No, really, REALLY going to bed now.

PS: why does nobody pick up on and run with Doyle's honor of being police boxing champion?

[sensine.livejournal.com]

And again: thank you :)
I'll be sure to bookmark your overview, and the ideas about Doyle, too.
PS: why does nobody pick up on and run with Doyle's honor of being police boxing champion? For some reason that's so improbable in my mind! I know he is supposed to be among the best at whatever he does, but I can't imagine him as an aggressive pugilist. He is too - something ;)
I didn't even remember this - I only remember him being a champion shot and a karate guy, not that he fights much when I think about it...or is this only in my mind? I must re-watch some of the episodes again *g*

[squeeful.livejournal.com]

Probably the same way no one can remember him practicing kendo either. I mean, can you see him running around in one of those funny uniforms (http://www.kendo-fik.org/english-page/phot-jif/54th-All-Japan-Kendo-Champ2006-2.jpg)? ;-) Though I can see maybe why he took it up, kendo is "a way to discipline the human character through the application of the principles of the Katana (sword)."

Amateur boxing is set up slightly differently than professional. It's much more of a sport counting clean blows for points, not damage to the opponent so pure physical power doesn't give you quite the edge it does in knockout professionals. I can see him doing well in that. Get in, get out, and not get hit.

Huh, there's a real theme going on here with his preferred physical activities. Mather railed on him for being violent, but at their core, all of them require a self-discipline. Kendo and karate in particular not just of body, but of mind and the karate philosophy espouses humility and not being easily drawn into a fight.

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

...and bugger, I just realized he can't have trained at Catterick because ITC Catterick didn't open until 1995. Crap, I'll have to go over that again when I have more time and sleep.

Just wandering back through entries - I think the most likely candidate is Aldershot. There was definitely a strong Paras presence there in the 70's. I had some references for that too, I think, but can't find them right now.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Popping back via kiwisue's link at this 2012 discussion about Bodie's background (http://ci5hq.livejournal.com/196644.html), and this struck me:

Other than an unknown amount of time in some club likely in Dakar, I'm not seeing much opportunity for Bodie to go running around in major cities.
There are many hints that if Bodie didn't grow up actually in Liverpool (a very major city in the UK!) then he would have grown up near enough that he was probably very familiar with it. You can be fairly familiar with something you've grown up in for 14 years. Liverpool isn't London, but then I'm not sure how familiar with London we expect Bodie to be? Although by the beginning of the series he's presumably been in London for 2 years already (going by Alexandra's Background to the Lads (http://hatstand.slashcity.net/charinfo/background.html), as in 1977 Doyle says that he and Bodie have been partnered for over 2 years, and again you can get very familiar with somewhere in two years, particularly if you're out and about in it all the time!

Now, the SAS requires at least 39 months left of service after completing the 6 month selection course. So that's 45 months or three years and nine months devoted to the SAS. Joining the SAS IS a secondment, troopers remain members of their original units, so it's not a shuttling sideways, he had to have gone through the whole process. No bending the rules for Bodie.
I don't know - I would imagine that if anyone could bend the rules for Bodie, it'd be Cowley when he was gathering together agents for CI5. Presuming the SAS requirements were the same in the 1970s as you've quoted above, I don't see why Cowley, who has so many Ministers in his pocket in one way or another, couldn't preempt them... So that part of your calculation could probably be a little more elastic...

[squeeful.livejournal.com]

Probably for much the same reason everyone likes to have Cowley throw around in fic: SAS secondment isn't just a major honor, it's a huge investment of time and resources of the armed forces in the individual soldier. It's freakishly expensive to train one of those guys and while Cowley has ways, I don't see him as having enough clout to bypass the mandatory time minimum put there largely for that reason. Even Cowley has to bend to rules and does so. Besides, well, it's really uncouth to bypass those rules to poach a single soldier for your startup department that another branch has put massive amounts of resources in before he has paid it back through the minimum service requirement. It would net you far far more enemies and ill-will than it's worth to just wait until said soldier is finished, especially as it is only an overlap of a few months. So unless Cowley is a complete dickhead with no loyalty or honor towards his past service with the armed forces, I seriously doubt he went over the heads of an entire branch to recruit Bodie a few months early.

And yeah, he has that experience and that was an oversight of mine, but the post started as a reply comment to another so it's missing some context. It was also written at four am while being unable to sleep due to a new amphetamine prescription; I'm impressed I had half-coherent sentences let alone trying to get every possible detail down.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

It's freakishly expensive to train one of those guys and while Cowley has ways, I don't see him as having enough clout to bypass the mandatory time minimum put there largely for that reason.
Just as expensive to train a CI5 agent though, so really the investment is just being moved from one part of the government to another - and the SAS is a government force, and subject to overall government arrangements.

It's freakishly expensive to train one of those guys and while Cowley has ways, I don't see him as having enough clout to bypass the mandatory time minimum put there largely for that reason.
We see him having huge clout in other areas - why not that one? It's alluded to, if not actually stated, that he was head of MI5/6 and that he set up the rules himself - I don't have any problem with the idea that he worked closely with heads of the military and that they navigated the rules as they needed to. We're shown in many cases that he's very much part of a network of favours and so on - within government.

Besides, well, it's really uncouth to bypass those rules
It's pretty uncouth to shoot a man in the back just because he's deemed to be dangerous and of limited utility to government security - and yet he did so with Manton...

It would net you far far more enemies and ill-will than it's worth
I disagree - in the eps we see a network of government agencies working together for the most part. Cowley wouldn't have needed to "poach" Bodie, with all those negative connotations - he would simply have exchanged that favour for another one, all unwritten of course, and things would have happened. It's not a case of "being a dickhead with no loyalty or honour", it's just that things often work in other ways.

And lol - there's no such thing as the perfect post or perfect thought ever, there's far too much of the world to try and take into consideration for that, sleep or no sleep... *g*

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

I love track back *g*

I don't see it as a simple process, I suspect there would have been trading in favours owed, but Cowley's conversation with Major Nairn in Kickback gives rise to opportunities for speculation.

I do think that men of Cowley's era had just a little more sensibility concerning "the Greater Good" than "my Department's budget" that maybe we get nowadays?