by Victor Gregg
Within a couple of weeks the same delivery van that had brought in the motor in the first place turned up with the new chassis and naturally I get the job of cleaning it up. Lo and behold, this so-called spare chassis had got a registration number on it. So Charlie took it off and replaced it with the number from the old chassis. The new plate was cut up and thrown away. When the car was finally rolled out of the arches the delighted client remarked, ‘better than new’.
It was a trail of Frazer Nash spare parts that had suddenly surfaced on the Warren Street and Great Portland Street markets that led the law to Eddie’s front door.
There was no way that Eddie or anyone else in the scam was going to drop names. He was never going to tell anyone where the chassis had ended up. To keep the law from further prodding, Eddie and Charlie must have agreed to do a bit of time, knowing full well that they would eventually be rewarded by the criminal syndicates that ran these stolen car rackets. It was the name of the game. Everyone understood the rules.
41
Granddad Reflects
It was the weekend that I had parted company with Eddie, a Saturday afternoon, and it was unusually warm and sunny for the time of the year. Out in the backyard at Kenton Street I was giving my grandfather a hand clearing the mountains of junk that had accumulated in the shed that ran along the length of the backyard. My grandmother called it the back garden on account of the small flower patch that she managed to keep alive and in bloom. To everyone else it was ‘the yard’, the place where we kept the dustbins and other rubbish, an area crisscrossed with clothes lines.
‘Your dad built this shed for us when he was courting your mother.’ Grandfather told me this as if it was a vital part of my education. ‘What do you know about him, Granddad, and why do you think he left our mum?’ Grandfather didn’t answer this question right away but carried on cutting up the lengths of lead water piping that he was hoping he could get me to trundle round to the local scrapyard.
‘He was a decent enough chap. He thought the world of your mum. He was a damn good plumber into the bargain, he could turn ’is ’and to anything, reminded me and your gran of our Jack, two of a kind they were. You know that Jack was your mum’s brother, got gassed in sixteen, came ’ome and got sent out again. He was killed at Passchendaele. Your dad went right through the war, must ’ave been underage when he enlisted but ’e was a tall chap, plenty of meat on ’im, that’s ’ow ’e got in, collected a piece of shrapnel in ’is leg, came ’ome. Because of ’is leg they shoved him in the Royal Engineers, that’s how he learnt about the plumbing, when ’e joined he was in the Royal Fusiliers, a machine-gun mob. He met your mum when he was in the infirmary at Richmond and your mum was in the Church Army helping out at the hospitals.’ ‘If you thought he wasn’t so bad why do you think he upped and went?’ By now Grandfather was sitting in an old wicker chair that he kept in the shed. He answered the question slowly and with some thought. ‘Who can tell, Victor? I know your grandmother will never forgive him. For me, I’ve seen what war does to men, seen it meself, I ’ave. My opinion is that ’e’s a goner – dead and gorn. We traced his name to a ship that was going to Australia, an immigrant boat, that’s as far as we got. Remember this, Victor, never condemn anyone till you know the facts. Your mum and dad were married at St Pancras Church. None of his family turned up for the wedding. That alone must ’ave caused ’im some pain.’ This little talk with my grandfather reminded me of the time my dad had taken me to a football match and told me always to love my mum.
42
Soldier Boy
A month later, driven by curiosity, I cycled down to Eddie’s house and his wife told me the sorry tale. The pair of them, Eddie and Charlie, went down for six months each for handling stolen goods. She thought Charlie had been lucky to get off so lightly seeing as he had previous form. Why was it that I always ended up with the villains? I knew you never earned a real wage working in a factory. I’d tried it. I didn’t have the mentality that would allow me to punch a card every morning and do the same boring job, day in and day out. But that was all very well; I was nearly eighteen and had to earn some money.
That night I was in the café discussing this tale of woe with Rozzie. ‘Yeah, the clowns went and got themselves nicked,’ I said.
Rozzie gave his mates the eye and let out a sort of croaking laugh. ‘Didn’t you ’ear about us, then? Course you wouldn’t, you ain’t been around for weeks. The old man got nabbed and we only got away wiv it by the skin of our teeth.’ ‘’E’s not inside, is ’e?’ I asked. ‘No, the beak said ’e was too old, fined ’im two ’undred quid. ’E says ’e’s skint now but I don’t believe ’im, not my old man, ’e’s bound to ’ave some stashed away under the bed.’
‘What you doing now, then?’ ‘Same as you, Vic, casting me peepers around, no joy in being skint.’
The following day Roscoe’s brother turned up with four tickets for the Ring at Blackfriars. Roscoe’s pride and joy, Harry Mizler, was in one bout and, to top it all off, Tommy Hyams of King’s Cross was on the same bill. ‘F–– the world, let’s go and see a good bundle.’ Harry Mizler won on a knockout. Tommy, who was considered to be on the way out, lost on points, and a good time was had by all.
Another week went by and still no job. I hadn’t seen Roscoe since our night at the Ring. The next day was 15 October, my eighteenth birthday.
I climbed out of bed early the next morning, saw Emmy off to school and then set off to see what I could find. It wasn’t a good day for walking the streets but I made it down to Drury Lane and eventually to Horse Guards Parade, where the redcoats on their horses were doing their daily stint. I was in a dream world drifting along, not connected to anything, when, suddenly, I got tapped on the shoulder. ‘You all right, son?’ says this giant of a man standing behind me. ‘Yeah, I’m OK.’ ‘Care for a cup of tea and a bun, all on the ’ouse?’ I must have nodded or something. ‘Follow me then, let’s see what we can grab hold of.’ Then this figure, resplendent in his highly pressed uniform with his rows of medals glittering in the morning light, led me across Whitehall and into Great Scotland Yard, under a darkened archway up the stairs. The doors shut with a whoosh, a strange sound that seemed to warn me that nothing would be the same again.
Twenty minutes later I emerged from the gothic mausoleum of a place with a railway warrant to Winchester. The rain was pelting down, a real miserable day. There was a poster on the wall opposite. It showed a soldier boy, lounging in the sunshine on some foreign shore, eyeing up the dusky maidens in their grass skirts. ‘Join the Army and see the World’ it said.
OK, I thought, might not be too bad. Give it a go, Vic.
43
Basic Training
The gas lamp out in the street was still flickering away when, after a sleepless night, I rose and gave myself a good rinse down. The water was freezing but that’s what I wanted; today I would be leaving my family and they were quite unaware of the fact. Half of me wanted to stay but the other half wanted to go off into the unknown. I got up at the same time as Mother. I knew my mum enjoyed these occasions when I got up early and put the tea on. Sometimes on a Sunday I would bring her a cup before she got up. At times like that I felt that she wanted to give me a big kiss, but I was too old for that sort of thing; but on this particular morning I would have liked my mum to have given me that one last kiss. ‘You going to look for a new job today, Victor?’ ‘Something like that, Mum, got to do something.’ My mum finally put on her hat and coat and off she went on the walk to Bridle Lane and the sweatshop. Little Emmy was tarting herself up, getting ready for another day at school, although she wasn’t so little any more and was fast learning the art of turning the local boys’ heads. I become aware that I’m going to miss all of this.
I could hear my gran downstairs singing some song. I sat down at the table and I wrote out a short note to Mum, telling her not to worry about me and that I would write as soon as I got settled in. I could only manage about six lines and a dozen kisses. I
folded up the notepaper and stuck it under the carriage clock which had pride of place on the mantelpiece. The clock had been a wedding present from one of her friends and my mum treasured it. She would see the note directly she entered the door. I remember writing that she was not to start crying as I was not leaving, just working away for a time.
I took the 68 bus to Waterloo and, armed with my free travel warrant, boarded the train that was going to take me to the unknown place called Winchester. Aboard the train, I had more second thoughts as I realised that with every clack, clack of the wheels I was getting further away from those I loved and respected. As the train sped through the suburbs of London I looked at the backs of the houses with their little gardens. In some of them I could see spades and wheelbarrows neatly stacked. Why didn’t we have a nice house and garden instead of the rat hole I’d been born in? These thoughts filled my mind as the train carried me further and further away from King’s Cross.
I remembered the time at the Shaftesbury when the head told me that big boys didn’t cry. I pulled myself together and squared my shoulders as I arrived at Winchester. A sergeant was waiting for new arrivals and he tried to call me to order. I felt like sticking my tongue out at him and giving him a bit of lip. Luckily I didn’t attempt to assert my independence. Instead I formed up with the other six lads who had been on the train. The sergeant led us the short distance to the Rifle Brigade barracks which was perched on top of one of the hills that surround the city.
We were marched through the barrack gates, great iron things, and called to a halt outside the guardroom. Any ideas we had about a return to yesterday vanished as the soldier on guard shut the gates. There was a clang and a screech as the huge bolt was slid into place. We realised that this was it. The guardroom was spotless; anything made of metal glistened; the few pictures on the whitewashed walls were hung with mathematical precision. The wooden table was scrubbed to a surgical whiteness, and of course there were the soldiers themselves. Their trousers and jackets had creases that looked as if they could cut through steel. These men seemed to have been ironed and polished along with every other object in the room. Nothing was out of place. ‘Wipe the dirt off them filthy shoes before any of you lot enter ’ere,’ shouted a corporal.
After we had given our names and details the sergeant took us round to the stores where we were issued with our kit, which we had to sign for. Then we were led to a huge room which we were told would be our home for the next six months. ‘All of yer git down to the showers and scrub off all that filthy muck you’ve accumulated in Civvy Street. You can throw those rags you’re wearing into the bin, you won’t need them any more. Boots and shoes as well, sling the lot. I want to see you all in the canteen at sixteen hundred hours sharp, scrubbed and looking sharp in all that expensive kit you’ve just been issued with. And in case you don’t understand, all that shiny brass and scrubbed table and chairs is done by blokes who think they can take the mickey. You’ve got an hour, get to it.’
With much muttering about what we were going to do to this bloke if any of us met him in a dark alley, we made our way to the bathhouse and the freezing cold showers.
After the shower we discovered the shirt and vests didn’t fit and the jackets were miles too narrow and the boots miles too big. On the stroke of four we all trooped down to the canteen, a real sorry looking lot. When he saw us the sergeant looked as if he was going to throw a fit but after a couple of seconds he saw the funny side of the situation. ‘OK, lads, get this meal down yer guts and we’ll be off to the stores again. Thirty minutes sharp.’ He left us with half a dozen other blokes who had arrived the day before. We began to sort each other out, exchange names and other information about ourselves. We were a room full of strangers but didn’t realise we were creating bonds that would tie us together for as long as life itself.
The sergeant turned up exactly thirty minutes later and in no time we were all dressed up in His Majesty’s official finery with everything fitting like a glove. One item made me realise that I was in a different world – the boots. They weighed a ton and made the thin shoes I had arrived in, and which were now in the dustbin, seem like paper. The amazing thing was the speed with which I got used to them. Those boots were my initiation into the world of spit and polish.
Later, in the canteen the sergeant gave us a pep talk. ‘Right you lot, listen to what I am going to say, and remember: in this regiment we only have room for men who can handle things in the proper manner. You get told once and once only. At six in the morning the bugler will be blasting yer eardrums out. That’s when you crawl out of your stink pits. At six thirty you’re down on the parade ground in your gym kit. And if you are late, God help you. Right, supper in the canteen at nineteen hundred hours. Dismiss.’
The next morning we were on the parade ground in the pouring rain, jumping up and down doing something called ‘running on the spot’, which seemed a waste of time to me. If you’re going to run then you may as well run somewhere. By the time we were back in the barrack room some of the lads were beginning to think of ways to make a hasty exit from the predicament they had landed themselves in. Not me. I was beginning to enjoy myself. This was a challenge and I was ready to flex my muscles.
It took another two weeks before enough recruits arrived to make up the twenty-five men required for a training squad and another week of lectures before we held our first formal parade on the garrison square. We paraded complete with rifles (less firing pins), and by now we knew all too well that being a British soldier wasn’t going to be a cakewalk.
There was one thing that linked my new world to my old. On the streets round King’s Cross and Soho I had learnt to stand my ground and I would have to do the same thing on the parade ground in Winchester. The new intake wasn’t short of lads who wanted to prove that they were top dog, and if you gave in to any of them you had had it. It took a fortnight to sort everything out. At the end of that time I knew who my mates were and would stand by them come what may
The Rifle Brigade was largely made up of Londoners. Your loyalties depended on which side of the River Thames you came from. Their were the ‘northerners’ and the ‘southerners’, each doing their best to outdo the other. This was encouraged by our masters. They reckoned the competition was good for us. If things got nasty the NCOs arranged for the two sides to meet in the gym and battle it out in the ring.
I didn’t find it difficult to adapt to this new life; it was just a natural extension of the way I had always lived. The lads who found it difficult were the ones who had led a more sheltered life. There was one chap in the squad who had been forced to enlist by his father, a man who had once been a senior officer in the regiment. The boy had been to public school and had to start from the bottom. Luckily for him he was soon spotted by the colonel and whisked off to the safety of another establishment.
There was a sergeant who came from the battalion base at Tidworth to give us lectures, one of which emphasised the importance of looking on your section, platoon, company or indeed the whole battalion as one gang in which you all looked after each other, even if you hated the guts of the man standing next to you. ‘That’s the way this regiment fights its battles, that’s why we have less losses than the brass button mobs.’ (‘Brass button mobs’ was how we referred to the Guards regiments.)
Of the six of us who arrived on that train, four of us formed a strong friendship: Frankie Batt, Tommy Vine, Reggie Cole and me.
Tommy Vine got his early on at a place named Solum, on the very edge of the Libyan border. Frankie Batt was laid to rest at Alamein. Reggie made it to the end, all the way from the Western Desert, up through Italy and into France, almost into Germany itself, before the war ended. He breathed his last six years later of a dodgy heart condition.
I am the last survivor of that little group who offered themselves for service on 18 October 1937.
44
The End of the Beginning
After the first month of training we were given railway vouchers an
d a week’s leave. Surprisingly, only about half the lads took the opportunity to go home. I spent quite a few nights wondering what sort of reception I would get. It had been nearly five weeks since I’d left. I had only written two letters home to my mum. She had answered them both, telling me not to worry. ‘You never can tell, Victor, might be for the best, and you had to find your feet sometime.’
When I finally got home I made my way down the narrow stairs that led to our gran’s kitchen. I noticed how dark and cramped it all was. ‘Well, for the life of me, you have grown in such a short time, must be the food,’ said my gran after she had given me a hug and a kiss. For the first time I noticed that my gran’s hair was a silvery-grey. When Mum came home from work she was all smiles with the odd tear sliding down her cheeks. Then gran said, ‘I want you to take us all to church on Sunday, and with you wearing that nice new uniform we are all going to be very proud of you, Victor.’ Mum went to great pains to assure me that she had more than enough to get by on and that the hundred pounds in the post office account had increased to a hundred and twenty. Brother John was still slaving away at the grocer’s shop, and sister Emmy was going to try for grammar.
I was shocked to discover that my mate Roscoe was doing a spell in Wandsworth. I never found out what he had been done for, and I never found out what happened about the baby his girl was expecting. When I went round to his house his mum and dad were all over me. They were very upset about Roscoe’s bit of trouble and said how much better it would have been if Roscoe had joined up with me. I agreed and said you can’t have too many good mates when you’re among strangers. I couldn’t think of any of the squad who would want to mix it with me and Roscoe standing shoulder to shoulder.