My years in Dickies had prepared me better than most for the army life. I was accustomed to hearing twenty different rhythms of breathing in a long, moonlit room. One night I heard one of the youths sobbing under his sheets. 'Don't worry,' I advised with the voice of experience. 'It's only for eighteen months.' At that he cried even louder.
Dollops of bromide were put in our tea, it was said to reduce our sexual urges, and there was plenty of shinning up ropes, running across fields while shouting, lying in ambush among red ants, marching and counter-marching and charging into a room full of tear gas (for what purpose I never discovered). There were lectures on the cleaning of rifles with a pull-through, oil bottle and a magic piece of material called four-by-two. And, of course, there was bayonet practice.
Nothing about military days has ever had so much note from writers as bayonet practice. To anyone of any sensibility it was the most revulsive and haunting part of training. Firing bullets at distant targets was a remote pretence, even though the holes they gouged out of the earth were ominously wide, but to thrust a bayonet was something more personal and proximate.
'Them channels, down the side of the weapon,' mentioned the action-man sergeant with anticipatory enjoyment. 'What are they for? Anyone?'
The squad regarded him dumbly, no one liking to mention it. The bayonets gleamed in the Devizes sun. 'Blood!' he would bark at us, running his finger pleasurably down the groove. 'For the blood of your enemy, the one what you have just slaughtered. Now, let's see how you can use them.'
A line of sand-stuffed sacks, already hanging like executed men, were the targets of this barbaric rite. It has become a familiar scene in books, plays and films, and for me, as for many, it never loses its personal horror. In Carl Foreman's film of The Virgin Soldiers two twee privates (one played by the ballet dancer Wayne Sleep, then unknown, as were others in the cast who subsequently became famous) are required to charge at the sacks. As they do they emit the traditional howl: 'Stick it in – twist it – pull it out.' One of them faints.
It was very near the truth. In the unlikely event of the Royal Army Pay Corps having to charge 'over the top', steel pointing towards enemy torsos, then I'm afraid there were more than a few, myself included, who would have been unable to bring themselves to make the final deadly thrust and would have doubtless known the consequences.
What was extraordinary, however, considering that most of the recruits had been conscripted very much against their will, was the way we began to think and act like regimental robots. There was a barrack room competition with points awarded for the cleanest coal bucket, the neatest beds and for the smartest man on nightly guard duty. He would be 'stick-man', be dismissed from the duty and return to his comrades in triumph with another ten brownie points on the total. The eventual prize was an extra day's leave.
Such was the enthusiasm to get the man detailed for guard as shining as possible, that almost surrealistic rituals were observed. To send him unblemished to the parade was everything. Everyone in the barrack room would take a hand with the preparations. No virgin ever went to a marriage bed more enhanced. His uniform was ironed until the creases cut, his buttons and buckles were burnished as gold, lead weights inserted into his trousers ensured that they hung symmetrically over his balanced gaiters. Spit, blacking and other mystic and unmentionable combinations, steeped in army lore, went into the lustre of his boots. His hair was cut, his nose was blown, the interior barrel of his rifle reflected the probing human eye. At the end he was arrayed in his panoply and carried, yes carried, on a litter to the guard parade, so that no speck of dust would dull him.
The litter carriers, having deposited this khaki peacock, would then repair to the barrack room, for it was considered bad luck to remain watching the guard parade while the chosen soldier was drilled and inspected by the orderly officer. If he returned to the room, having been dismissed from the guard, there followed scenes of rejoicing. Often he did not return, for competition was keen, and we would wait with gradually descending spirits. Once our champion, having failed, returned during his four hours off-duty, and burst into remorseful tears. Admittedly it was the youth I had heard crying in the night, an emotional individual with the unfortunate surname Bandy, but it was an emotive moment. We had sent him out spick and shining and he had failed the officer's survey.
'I farted,' he wailed. 'I couldn't help it. I just farted.'
Weekend leave came after a month in camp during which our social activities were confined to drinking cider at the NAAFI and having Sunday breakfast in the Church Army canteen. Our first freedom was greatly anticipated and on the Friday night there was a queue to use the barrack room ironing board. I had to admit to myself, as I stared into the full length mirror provided at the gate guardhouse (to make sure you looked smart as you left camp), that the vision presented was somewhat less than the conquering hero. My uniform remained as stiff as sandpaper except at the knees and elbows. I wore the insignia of the Aldershot District on my arm, crossed searchlights which looked reasonably martial, but the words Royal Army Pay Corps bowed across each shoulder in blue and yellow did nothing but diminish the warrior image. Some of the old hands wore shoulder flashes which merely said 'RAPC. Enquiring girls in pubs and dance halls could then be told that it was the Royal Army Parachute Corps ('Tomorrow could be my last day') and quite a lot of them believed it.
If the aspect of a non-combatant was something I wished to avoid then my beret betrayed me even more than the shoulder flashes. It was of the old-fashioned khaki variety, unyielding and ridiculous, squatting on my head like a squashed brown cardboard box. I had tried sleeping on it, stamping on it, soaking it overnight, throwing it against the barrack room wall, but it retained its stiff grotesque shape, and my embarrassment. Few men have ever looked less soldier like than the narrow youth topped with the ill-shaped hat who boarded the train for London on that August day. A kindly lady enquired whether the bristly khaki was very hot to wear and her husband grunted: 'He's too skinny to sweat, ain't you son.' My cap badge was a sturdy lion surmounted by a crown, below it a scroll with the words Fide et Fiducia. Faith and Confidence. Sitting in the corner seat looking at 'Royal Army Pay Corps' reflected in the window I had very little of either.
My leave was spent in the only home I knew – Dickies. Old boys strolled back regularly now that Vernon Paul had taken over as Superintendent. They went back, sometimes having only left the previous week, and sauntered about the terrible old pile with a proprietorial air and hands in pockets, something that the Gaffer had never allowed even on the most shivering of mornings when we were lined up in the open in our vests waiting for our turn in the wash-house.
Many of my generation were now doing national service and they strutted about more than most, telling the little kids how tough the home was in their day and relating unlikely adventures of their careers in the army or air force. One boy, Tom Chaffey, had joined the Royal Marines for twenty-five years, and he had a splendid and well-deserved dark blue dress uniform.
'Nightshirt', my old dormitory mate Frank Knights, was on leave in his uniform of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. He blanched when he saw my shoulder flashes. 'The Pay Corps,' he said caustically. 'The Pay Corps!' He regarded my sparse khaki figure as perhaps an officer of the Household Cavalry might have done. 'I should do something about that,' he advised. 'And quick.'
'What can I do?' I demanded miserably.
'Why don't you desert?' he suggested.
Back in the barracks it was explained to us that wicked women could send us blind, eventually that is, and that we ought to have pride in our regiment. After all Napoleon had said that an army marched on its stomach, and he might easily have added that it went into battle on its pay packet. Soldiers who were not paid, were soldiers who did not care to fight. It was also necessary for the man going into action to know that his wife and family were receiving their proper allowances. I felt better about it after that.
That summer of 1949 was only four years
after the war had ended, and yet they were talking about the start of another one.
'Wait till the balloon goes up!' our action-man sergeant used to exclaim happily, banging his small tight boots on the square. 'The Ruskies will have you lot for breakfast!'
I felt vaguely cheated. After all we had been told and all we had expected, there was every sign that we were going to have to fight again. Only yesterday, it seemed, we were collecting money to buy weapons for Russia. And this time I would be old enough. Nevertheless military training was at least open-air activity and it was a fine summer. Charging across corn stubble, burning realistically as if some scorched earth policy was being pursued, made me feel quite warlike although my enthusiasm would have doubtless waned perceptibly if a Stalin tank had appeared on the next hill.
With the second part of the basic training course came four weeks of technical instruction in army accounts. My heart plunged into my boots and stayed there. We sat in hot huts, with the September sun pouring down on the countryside outside the windows, and endured the most boring month of my life. Not only did I not understand the work, I had no urge to understand it. I wrote a private letter to the War Office, explaining what was happening to the ace reporter of the Woodford Times – what potential they were overlooking. Someone wrote back and, in a sentence, said it was hard luck.
The month ended with the Passing-Out Parade, the climax of the whole ten weeks' training. We had further drilling rehearsals in the evenings, after putting the damned ledgers away for the day, and our action-man sergeant, eyes and chest bulging, voice squeaky with emotion, promised every punishment in hell if we did not win the award for the best platoon on the day. And we really wanted to win; for ourselves and for our sergeant. But, on the night before the big parade, tragedy struck. Something terrible happened to Farrell.
Farrell was a tall, thickly spectacled youth with a galaxy of pimples. At that time there was a radio comedy team called Forsyth, Seaman and Farrell, and our Farrell, staring tall and blindly from the ranks, was known to the drill instructor, the good-natured blue-chinned Cockney, as: 'Forsyth, Seaman and Fucking Farrell' when there was reason to bawl in his direction, which was often.
Farrell, however, had a gift. He possessed a loud whisper. We had been taught to drill by numbers, each movement accompanied by the timing of one-one-two-three, and sometimes even four. At first, in our early days, we had all bellowed these numbers as we raised our knees and stamped our feet, wheeled, whirled, presented arms, thrust out legs and marched. In the more advanced stages, however, only one timekeeper was designated and this was Farrell. From his height his loud whisper would hiss across the heads of the squad, unheard by anyone at the distance of a saluting base, and we would perform the movements accordingly. He was the mainspring of the platoon. Then, on the night before the Passing-Out Parade, Farrell, possibly through sheer fright, lost his voice. He came into the barrack room mouthing things that no one could hear. At first we thought he was joking and told him sternly not to make fun about things like that. Then we realised he was not. He was rushed to the latrines and made to gargle with everything anyone could think of from cough mixture to whisky. Someone tried to scrub his tonsils with a toothbrush while the rest of us held him down. He was theatrically sick but his voice stayed resolutely absent.
Even before this disaster our barrack room had not been thick with confidence over the outcome of the Passing-Out Parade. We were lagging in the points table and now our opportunity for glory and an extra twenty-four hours' leave seemed doomed. No one else wanted the job of whispering. It was not a difficult task but one fundamental error could throw the whole squad into disarray and disgrace. The onus was placed on the nervous shoulders of Private Bandy.
'Me! I can't do it!' he moaned. 'I'll muck it up, honest I will!' It appeared he was declining into one of his sobbing fits. Brusquely he was told that there was no backing out. If persuasion were needed then his bed could be hauled with him in it to the rafters of the hut. It had been done before and he had tumbled out onto the hard floor below. With a defeated sob he nodded agreement.
Everything went wrong the next day. The inspecting senior officer arrived from Aldershot and the barrier at the gate became stuck and could not be raised to admit his staff car, so everyone was on edge from the start. Action-man stomped onto the square, muttering little orders as we marched. Other platoons went through their drill, heads cocked, arms straight, boots hitting the parade ground like mallets. We watched with lowering spirits.
When our turn came we stiffened our resolve, and managed to march correctly into position. The initial drill movements were negotiated safely. No one dropped their rifle and Bandy's whispered timing was audible if not convincing. Then, as we began the marching and counter-marching, his nerve cracked. Hesitation entered the hisses. Some we failed to hear at all, although he afterwards swore he uttered them. Action-man detected at once that all was not going well. The responses to his bark and his stamping feet became a matter of conjecture. Then, with a wild alteration of whispering in the middle of an about turn and a quick wheel left, the ranks faltered, fell out of time and step and finally panicked. Comrades collided with each other, half the platoon continued in one direction and the other stamped off at a tangent. Eyes swivelled. Men in the separating vanguards began to perform a curious knock-kneed side-stepping movement, not seen in the drill manual, in an attempt to join up again. When action-man finally and emotionally barked us to a halt we were spread like a posse over half the parade ground. Somebody started laughing on the sidelines. Action-man's eyes dilated. 'I'll kill 'em, bloody kill 'em,' we heard him incanting. The inspecting officer slapped his cane on his thigh impatiently and soon strode off to lunch. We clattered crushed to the barrack room.
Sitting on our beds, waiting for him, we said nothing. We could not even look at each other. Private Bandy was shaking so much his bedside locker was rattling. Action-man stamped in, his countenance like a bright, tight plum.
'I'm disgraced! Finished! Fucking finished!' he bawled as we sprang to our feet. He bounced in front of us. 'You 'orrible fucking shower, all of you.' He made for Bandy. 'As for you, son! I'm going to fucking well kill you.'
Private Bandy burst into tears.
The following week, gladly, we dispersed throughout the country to the various units to which we had been posted. There was a barracks concert the night before departure. I had to stand at the side of the stage with a blackboard upon which were written the Regimental Sergeant-Major's jokes. His eyes would swivel towards me and I would point to the key-word for the next joke in the list. During the course of doing this I managed to wipe half his repertoire off the board with my sleeve and he was none too pleased. I was quite glad to get away from the place in the end.
In the early morning after the concert, immediately before we left, I had to take some props to action-man's married quarters. I stood in his army sitting room and through a door I could see his wife humped in their bed. He came out, much smaller in pyjamas, and smiled a sickly smile as he took the props from me. 'You're a good lad, you are,' he whispered. Then he attempted to embrace me.
I got out of the quarters as quickly as I knew how, running back towards the barracks. His voice followed me, the old familiar bawl. 'That's right, Thomas! At the double, lad! At the double!'
During the following weeks something happened that became the root of a family tragedy, its bleak and unhappy echoes occurring over the years. It came out of the past and has continued into the future.
My posting had taken me to the Regimental Pay Office at Whitchurch in Hampshire where, to my relief, I was directed to the orderly room where my shorthand and typing were of use and life was very congenial when compared to the pen-scraping boredom of the accounts sections.
The army took on an unhurried almost domestic pace, a weekly routine of work and sports, pay parade, the ironing of uniforms in preparation for weekend leave. Virtually the only drill was the short march and salute at the pay table on Thursdays. The
n, thrilled, I saw that 22157741 Private THOMAS L. was on a draft which was scheduled to sail for Singapore in December. The orderly room sergeant told me that I did not have to go if I did not feel inclined; after all a Communist terrorist war had broken out in Malaya. It might even be dangerous. I could easily be removed from the list if I wished to spend the rest of my eighteen months service in the cosy confines of the office. I begged him not to do it. Singapore! The mystic Orient! Wicked women!
Two weeks before I was due to sail, I received a letter from Chris, my uncle in Wales, a sort of anchor man for my dispersed and generally disinterested family, telling me that my elder brother Harold – Hally of whom I had not heard since he had, years before, sent me the tin of sweets – was dangerously ill in Birmingham.
Since I was about to be posted overseas I was granted compassionate leave and a rail warrant to Birmingham. There I was met by a sister-in-law I did not know existed. She was a gaunt girl, inarticulate and full of worry. My brother was in hospital she said nervously, and was in danger of dying. When I asked what the illness was she answered miserably: 'He's gone mad.'
In My Wildest Dreams Page 21