A Blind Man's War

by David Fiddimore

  I obviously had a few more fences to jump before I left.

  Eve said, ‘Hello, Charlie,’ and didn’t look embarrassed. Neither did Dieter. So I suppose that was all right then.

  He asked me, ‘Do you want to drive, Dad?’

  ‘You drove her here, you might as well drive back.’ Yeah; his bloody face lit up. I scrambled in behind them, and wondered where I’d hide if the local traffic cops stopped us. He whistled as he drove. Eve leaned back to me, and brought me up to date on the Bosham scandals: if things carried on at this rate the News of the World would appoint a special correspondent for our little port. Maybe there was something in the water.

  Dieter’s driving abilities? You guessed it: better than mine already. He was a bloody natural. I’d have to watch the little bugger. And not so much of the little, either: when we tumbled out of the car alongside our prefab I realized for the first time that he was already taller than me. Ten minutes later Carly sat me down at the kitchen table and produced a cardboard box containing six roughly shaped pieces of solid balsa wood, a tube of glue, a piece of sandpaper and a plan drawing of a Lysander aircraft. We’d called them Lizzies in my day, and some of the guys I knew had flown them out of Tempsford. What with helping Carly with his new hobby of modelling aircraft, and Dieter’s driving lessons, I could see that I’d have my work cut out for the next few days. Carly was eleven going on twelve. He worked on shaping the oddly angled wing leading edges while I concentrated on the fuselage. We soon had balsa dust all over the kitchen table, and smiles on our faces. He asked me, ‘Are you still in the RAF, Dad?’ They both called me Dad now; Carly had copied Dieter.

  ‘No. Too many people to boss me about.’

  ‘Would you mind if I was? When I was old enough, I mean?’

  ‘No, son. I’d probably be very proud. Why don’t you come back to my company with me as soon as I get another few days off, and have a closer look at our aircraft?’

  ‘I’d like that.’ So would I, I realized. Times change. You get older. It looked as if both my boys were being drawn to proper men’s jobs: I could live with that.

  After the boys had turned in I wandered across to the bar to give James a hand. Eve was propping up the customer side. Before I asked she told me, ‘I’m not a cradle snatcher, Charlie. Give me some credit.’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m worried.’ She smiled and raised her glass to me.

  ‘Where are you going this time?’

  ‘Cyprus, they tell me. How did you guess?’

  ‘You’re down here for a week, and making a fuss of the boys. That usually means you’re going away.’

  ‘For the last time.’

  ‘Famous last words.’

  ‘Trust me.’

  ‘Why?’

  I didn’t have an answer for that one.

  When I looked at the bundle that Doris had pushed in my pocket I was ashamed I’d turned her in. I gave five hundred to Maggs for safekeeping. She was safer than the Bank of England. Safer than the Bank of Scotland as well. But it was one of the things I still liked about Britain: nothing would ever go wrong with the banks.

  I phoned the Foreign Office and told my new boss, ‘OK. I settled my affairs as best I could. The police didn’t arrest me, and I’m ready to go when you are.’

  ‘Good. I’ll cut the arrangements for you. Give me your telephone number . . . And for Christ’s sake remember to take a warm coat – it can be bloody chilly up there at this time of year, old boy.’

  ‘In Cyprus?’

  ‘In Loughborough, old boy, Loughborough. Recovery training – you won’t have seen the kit you’re working with before. New stuff, I understand.’

  ‘Better range?’

  ‘How the hell would I know, old son? I’m just the office boy.’ He could have fooled me. In fact, come to think about it, he did.

  Where the hell is Loughborough? It happens every bleeding time, I thought. Three years earlier the RAF had signed me up for Egypt, but as soon as I’d broken out my tropical kit they sent me to Dungeness for training instead. Dungeness is one of life’s great disappointments: even Egypt was a relief after that. I decided to spend a few days in London before I took off.

  Loughborough is in Leicestershire, a county that has nothing going for it except the death of Richard III at Bosworth Field. Even that is debatable – the historians can never seem to make up their minds whether that was a good or a bad thing. It was never a problem for me; he was a king, wasn’t he? The country’s had far too many of those, and none of them much good. The weary, skinny man behind the St Pancras ticket office counter shrugged when I told him I wanted to go to a village named Woodhouse, near Loughborough.

  ‘Where’s the nearest railway station?’

  He consulted a gigantic and ancient book, took off his specs and told me, ‘Loughborough itself is not much further than the nearest station – Barrow upon Soar – and to get there you’ll have to go to Loughborough and change trains anyway.’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go to either. Loughborough’s a terrible place – I was there in the war.’

  I bought a ticket for Loughborough, and made a note of the cost in my diary. I was a civvy this time, and had been told to note my expenses and keep the bills. If I was lucky I would be able to claim them back.

  I stood on the platform, and waited for the 10.10 to Loughborough. The platform was empty of people, and empty of trains. It was empty of everything except me. Even the pigeons had deserted it. A cold wind blew in under the glass.

  Half an hour later the man from the ticket office walked up to me, and asked, ‘What you doing still here then?’

  ‘Waiting for a train. You sold me the ticket.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The guards are on strike – didn’t you know? No trains until tomorrow.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that?’

  ‘You never asked.’

  I nearly clouted him. ‘Can I travel on the same ticket tomorrow?’

  ‘Providing the train’s not full, but I expect it will be.’

  ‘You’re a helpful bastard, you know that?’

  ‘And using language like that on the railways is an offence, so hop it, Shorty, before I call a copper.’

  I had a kitbag with my tropicals and a large suitcase of winter weights for bloody Loughborough. There was no porter in sight, and no barrow. My nemesis stalked slightly behind me all the way back to the station steps, not offering a hand. As I dragged myself towards a taxi he observed cheerfully, ‘Did you hear we just invaded Egypt this morning? Won’t take long to teach the ruddy Gyppoes a lesson!’ In your dreams! I thought.

  I’d been there, and I guessed he hadn’t. It wasn’t the Egyptian military we had to worry about, but the rest of the world – when the canal closed, and the oil began to dry up, that’s when the pressure would come on. You’d have thought we could have at least waited until the Hungarian revolution had petered out. I wondered what effect it would all have on my Cyprus jaunt: maybe they wouldn’t want me after all.

  I went down to Loughborough the next day. The train had few passengers. Its heating didn’t work, and there was no buffet. It was like being on an empty troopship. I pulled on an extra pullover, and wore my old flying jacket over that for the entire journey, and the train arrived at Loughborough twenty minutes late.

  I’d intended to get a cab from the station, but there was a three-tonner in the station yard leaning against a grizzled signals sergeant. He wore one of those old sleeveless leather tank jackets over his battledress, and looked as if he’d seen as much service as it had. His beret was perched on a hedge of greying hair, and he was smoking a fag.

  I asked him, ‘You’re not going to Garats Hay, by any chance, Sarge? I have to report there today, and wouldn’t mind a lift.’ Yesterday actually; but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. He grinned.

  ‘You look a bit long in the tooth for the call-up,
mate. What happened – couldn’t you keep away?’

  ‘No, I’m still a civvy – I used to be in the RAF, and apparently you want some civvy radio operators to go on holiday to Cyprus. That’s me.’

  ‘Lucky you. What they paying you, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Thirty quid a week, all found. What does a National Serviceman get these days?’

  ‘Three bob a day, seven if he signs on. They’ll love you when they find out.’

  ‘Then they’d better not. What about that lift?’

  ‘Sling your bags in the back, and then hop up in front with me. I’m picking up a draft of seven lads off the York train. Another ten minutes.’

  Oddly enough, it felt comforting to be back among the guys in uniform, and their green-painted lorries. I knew where I was with them. Do your job, stay out of trouble and you were OK. Welcome back, Charlie.

  Woodhouse is a small village built in the middle of a large army camp. It tries to ignore the army camp, but rarely succeeds. No. 10 Wireless Training Squadron of the Royal Signals ran the set-up in my time. Quite an impressive bunch, even if it always hurts to say anything nice about the Brown Jobs. The rail strike had been on for three days: so there were Services returns and boys from the call-up arriving up to three days late, knocking on the guardhouse door, expecting a bollocking and to be up on a charge. What they were given instead was a mug of tea for their effort – while their papers were sorted – and a ticket for the messes.

  ‘What’s the point with punishing a kid because the bleedin’ railway let him down?’ a corporal signaller explained to me. ‘How much classroom attention would we get from a lad who’s doing eight days’ CB?’

  ‘If the army’s come over all live and let live, Corp,’ I told him, ‘then I’ve died and gone to heaven.’

  ‘Not heaven, exactly, Mr Bassett, just a technical training school. Men come here to learn how best to use our latest radio equipment, not how to salute and stamp their feet all the time. We leave that sort of thing to Catterick.’ He sounded like an educated man to me, and he smiled a lot. I wondered if the RAF had grown up too. No, probably not.

  It was the sergeant who eventually appeared on the other side of the counter to sign me in. He referred to the camp as both Garats Hay, and Beaumanor, which confused me at first: the two names seemed to be interchangeable. It was a hutted camp: hutted accommodation and training on one side of the road through the village, with an old manor house, Beaumanor, where the colonel and all the nabobs lived on the other. The admin section and officers’ mess lived over there as well.

  ‘As a civilian trainee, sir, you’ll be allocated accommodation in one of the huts, but you’re entitled to use the officers’ mess. I’ll see you’re issued a mess number, and get someone to take you up.’ I noticed that; I’m sure you did too. Out in the land of the free I’d been mate; now I was a civilian trainee, and sir. I wasn’t sure I liked that. I leaned across the counter to him.

  ‘In the RAF I was a sergeant, Sergeant. I’d be more at home if you could wangle me into the sergeants’ mess instead.’

  He paused.

  ‘I’m sure that your papers said you had been a pilot officer, sir.’ He sounded doubtful.

  ‘I was, for a short while, but it was a bad mistake. Nobody asked me.’

  He sighed. Life is full of difficult decisions, isn’t it? ‘OK. But don’t tell anyone.’ That was the second time we had said something like that: the armed forces were becoming curiously secretive.

  I was given a dirty-green boiler suit, like the four other civvies I shared a big hut with, and we were expected to walk from training session to session. As far as I can recall I never saw anyone doubling anywhere the whole time I was there. On the first morning our course leader – a smart young corporal – read us the list of courses we would complete in our time with the Signals. We were all down for W/T Test and Selection, and W/T (Special Communications), and something extra. Each of the something extras was different – to make us feel like individuals, I supposed. Mine was firefighting. Fucking fire-fighting! Someone somewhere had blundered. I knew exactly what the NCOs and troopers of the Light Brigade felt like when they looked down the valley towards those bloody Russian guns. I also knew well enough not to argue. I asked the corp, ‘How do they teach us firefighting?’

  ‘Not my subject, Charlie’ – it was a nice informal sort of course and we were quickly on first-name terms – ‘but I understand that they fill an old airframe up with aviation spirit and set it on fire. You have to put it out on your own. If you succeed, you’ve passed. If you die you haven’t.’

  ‘I did parachute training a few years ago – same principle.’

  ‘It’s always good when our students already know the ropes.’

  He tested my Morse receiving and sending. I wasn’t as fast as I used to be, but even so could outperform everyone in the classroom except a talkative little Welsh geezer from the call-up: in Civvy Street he’d been a fully qualified radio officer on a merchant ship. I reckoned he’d have a stripe up before the end of his training. The RX 108 radios they sat us at came as a bit of a shock – larger than the sets I was used to, and with a better range if you had the right aerial array. Providing it was doing so with a signal, I could have heard a fly fart in Shanghai with that kit.

  After a week it was obvious that they weren’t interested in my sending speed – I was going to be a listener again. In ’47 I’d listened to the Reds and the Poles before they demobbed me. In ’53 it was the Wogs and the Israelis. Who was I to be eavesdropping on this year? I remembered what CB had said, and just wondered if it was the Yanks.

  I learned the Yorkshire Two-Kick Game in the sergeants’ mess at Garats Hay – there was nothing much there to do except congregate in the bar, and it could get a bit boisterous. There was a liberty bus to and from Loughborough every night, but if you’ve ever been to Loughborough you’ll know why we declined the offer.

  On the night I learned the Two-Kick Game someone spotted a ten-bob note which had been dropped on the floor of the bar. A burly sergeant and a small Yorkshire civvy went for it at the same moment, and each managed to get half a foot on it. Stalemate. The civvy just about came up the Brown Job’s shoulder. A discreet circle gathered around them.

  I offered five bob on the civvy – not because I thought he’d win, but because he looked clever. He produced a tanner from his pocket and spun it in the air. He didn’t withdraw his foot. Everyone’s eyes were taken by the small silver disc, spinning and catching the light.

  He told the sergeant, ‘We settle this sort of thing with the Two-Kick Game where I come from, Sergeant.’

  ‘What would that be, Tiny?’ The sergeant. He grinned around.

  ‘One of us stands still, while the other takes two kicks at him. Then we swap round. It goes on until one of us gives up.’

  ‘How do we choose who goes first?’

  ‘Toss for it – I’ll toss, and you call.’ The tanner was lofted skywards again.

  ‘Heads.’

  The small fellow caught it – ‘Tails. Me first.’ He opened his hand to show us fair was fair. I enjoyed the first signs of uncertainty in the sergeant’s eyes, but he squared his shoulders and said, ‘OK. Your shot.’

  The small man immediately kicked him hard on the knee, and the soldier fell; we all stepped out of the way, and let him go. It was like a great tree coming down. He took the second kick in the balls. He rolled onto his side groaning, and holding himself. He had staying power and courage though; he dragged himself first to his knees, and then to his feet. The room was roaring him on. When he managed to get upright his eyes were red with rage, and the smile on his face was not a thing of beauty.

  ‘My turn,’ he snarled, and pulled his boot back for strike one.

  ‘No,’ the Tyke told him. ‘I give up. The ten bob’s yours – you keep it.’ He turned away, and broke the silence that enveloped the room by telling another civvy alongside him, ‘That’ll be a quid, Artie.’ Then he looked
across the ring at me, and said, ‘I bet Artie a quid I’d get one of these dumb buggers to stand there and let me kick him in the goolies.’ His tanner piece was weighted, of course.

  After that we civvies sat together at a separate table: it was the only way we felt safe. I didn’t know it, but our bold kicker’s course was finished. He left later that night; away on the last train. When he wasn’t kicking folk in the balls he seemed like a mild-mannered little guy. But you never can tell.

  His pal Artie told me, ‘’E only came out six months ago. These Brown Jobs think they know it all, but they never learn.’

  ‘Came out?’

  ‘Fra’ Armley Gaol – Leeds Prison. He was in for bashing a copper, an’ breaking his jaw.’

  I had another week to do; at least it broke the monotony.

  Before the week was up the Yanks were telling the Brits and the French to fuck off out of Egypt again, and not to come back. I’d met Nasser once – by accident, mind you – and I think he was canny enough to have provoked us into it, knowing the Yanks would ride to his rescue, and that we wouldn’t have the stomach to deny them. There would be no second chance. It was just too much of a coincidence, wasn’t it?

  Suez in 1956 was the shortest-lived, least-effective, successful invasion the British Army has ever carried out. The Americans and the UN had taken a tough line with Russia over what it was doing in Hungary; so they could hardly turn a blind eye to us doing exactly the same in Egypt. Within five days of our successful invasion of Suez they were threatening to sell up all of the UK loan stock they had acquired (which would have bankrupted us), and in the shadow of Big Ben people were shouting for the Prime Minister’s head. If Eden had waited until after the Hungarian affair was over before we went in we would probably have got away with it. I wonder why he didn’t. Anyway, the poor old sod was gone by January – ill health, they said – but he was visited by the American ambassador just before the announcement was made, so you can draw your own conclusions.

  The army, meanwhile – that November – didn’t give me much time to think about it: they did exactly what the corporal had told me they would do with me. They set fire to an old airframe and made me put it out. It had once been a Sikorsky helicopter belonging to the Army Air Corps. It stood alongside another, with about ten yards separating them, but when you’re splashing it about, a few gallons of aviation spirit go a long way.