by Paul Daniels
Waking up in my metal bunk, the room was swimming, but I knew immediately where I was. I felt like, and apparently looked like, death. The NCOs hauled me up into a sitting position and I was handed my boots together with a lit candle, a spoon and some polish. Understanding the order was one thing, carrying it out was quite another, as my arms had engorged and looked like balloons. Nothing but nothing matters in the infantry like the shine on those boots.
In the middle of all this: ‘GET UP, DANIELS! YOUR MOTHER’S ’ERE, YOU NAMBY PAMBY LITTLE MUMMY’S BOY!’
My parents had arrived at the camp to collect my civilian clothes. Poor Mam took one look at me and burst into tears. ‘What have they done to you?’ she sobbed.
Dad thought it all hilarious. Thanks, Dad. I remained ill for the next few days, but I was still expected to continue training. Sick leave was definitely not on the agenda.
The grilling and drilling made one day merge into another and for some it was too much to cope with. There was only one way out of National Service – pretend you were mad. Several of the chaps tried this, but no one ever succeeded. When one guy was ordered to ‘Blanco’ his kit, he used it as an opportunity to ‘prove’ his insanity. Blanco was a sticky, paste-like substance used to provide a waterproof covering on the surface of our belts, gaiters and straps of our uniform, which, once applied, dried to a greeny/brown polish. The lad got hold of several tins and Blanco’d not only his kit, but his bed, blankets and his locker in his dormitory. When the officers were greeted with the extraordinary sight of what he had done, the poor lad started jumping up and down on his bed as if he had flipped. Being used to this type of con, it was the officers who flipped and the lad was sent back to the start of his basic training, where he stayed for a very long time.
There seemed no end to what lads would do to try and get out. We had one man who went home for the weekend on leave and shot his trigger finger off, thinking the Army would dismiss him. They merely moved him back a couple of training sessions and taught him to shoot with his middle finger.
Not all of our platoon was from Yorkshire. One of the lads came from the heart of the Black Country in the Midlands and I felt sorry for him because he could not make himself understood. His accent was so thick and we had to spend a long time training him to speak our version of English. He couldn’t read or write either, so I used to read his girlfriend’s letters to him and write letters back to her in his name. Her letters were better than my dad’s book, I can tell you that.
‘Jankers’ was the term for serious punishment that would consist of extra-hard duties that would make you feel you had indeed died and gone to hell. I was hauled in front of the officer in charge on many occasions and given three days and, in one case, seven days ‘Jankers’. My transgression was a dirty rifle barrel.
I had been shown how to clean my rifle with a piece of lightly oiled lint attached to a cord, which was then passed through the barrel. The inside of this was ‘rifled’, containing a groove, which spun the bullet and made it more accurate. Opening the breach, you would put your thumb in it when commanded during an inspection. The officer would come along and look down the barrel at the light reflected up the barrel off your thumb. According to the officer, if your thumb was dirty, your rifle was dirty and it would be three days ‘Jankers’.
I cleaned toilets and scrubbed floors before the sun rose and painted white lines after all my colleagues were in bed. It was possible that you would be ordered to march up and down the parade ground by yourself for several hours at a time in the middle of the night. If the tasks set before you were not dealt with in the most efficient manner, your ‘Jankers’ could be extended to any length of time seen fit.
On one occasion, the Sergeant Major inspected our dormitory toilet block, entered our barrack room during Shining Hour and marched slowly up and down.
‘I HAVE FOUND A FLECK OF BROWN ON A URINAL STAND.’ Actually what it sounded like was ‘HI ‘AVE FOUND HAY FLECK OF BURROWN ON HAY YOURAINAL STAND…’
He went on, savouring his discovery and the impending doom he would unleash on someone. ‘IT IS AT LEAST ONE-EIGHTH OF AN INCH LONG AND A SIXTEENTH OF AN INCH WIDE. WHICH OF YOU PATHETIC CREATURES WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE CLEANED THE TOILETS?’
One of the lads, I think he was called Tut Brett, continued concentrating on polishing his boots as he came out with, ‘I was, Sarge.’ The Sergeant moved in front of the sitting soldier and bent over at the waist to address him. We all kept very quiet.
‘WELL, IT IS PAINFULLY HOBVIOUS THAT YOU HAVE FAILED IN YOUR DUTIES, ‘AVEN’T YOU?’
The reply was either unbelievably stupid or amazingly brave, I’m still not sure. Again, without looking up and continuing to polish: ‘Well now, Sarge,’ spit, polish, ‘the thing is,’ spit, polish, ‘I look at it this way. I’m going to piss in it, not eat out of it.’
They picked him up, dragged him off and we never saw him for another week.
Gym was far removed from anything I had experienced in a school PE lesson. The leather vaulting horse was enormous. Each one of the new recruits had to run forward at speed, jump on the spring-board placing two hands on the top of the horse, and do the splits over the top before landing on the other side, hopefully with hands in the air. The whole episode was carefully choreographed as the officer shouted the commands to keep us equidistant. Unfortunately, the boy behind me over-anticipated his cue and ran forward too early, hitting his head against my back just as I reached the top of the wooden horse. I’m not very lucky with vaulting horses. As I fell forwards with the impact, it twisted my right hand over on itself and, unbeknown to me, dislocated the joints in my fingers. In the Army, however, you just keep going and, despite the agony, I scrambled out of my gym gear into battle-dress in readiness for drill parade.
With the PE trainer’s shouts of ‘You bloody idiots’ following us on to the parade ground, we assembled in a strict line as quickly as possible. Standing at ease, with feet apart and rifles angled forward, we waited for the Sergeant Major’s bellowed orders.
‘ATTENTION!’ was the signal to bring the left foot up and down hard next to your right followed by the rifle coming upright.
‘SLOPE ARMS!’ meant lifting your rifle with your right hand whilst your left arm supports it. My right hand came up, but the rifle fell forward, committing one of the worst crimes known in the Army. I had dropped my rifle.
The officer stared in disbelief at my sin and, as he made his way slowly towards me, I glanced down at my hand. It had swollen up like a balloon and was incapable of holding a toothpick, let alone a rifle. I showed my predicament to the officer who was now staring me straight in the eye. With little sympathy, he ordered me off the parade ground to the medics who drove me straight to the local hospital, several miles away and my hand was put into a splint for several weeks. It wasn’t the pain, the shock, or the lack of compassion that upset me; it was the fear of having my hand damaged to the point where I could no longer perform my magic.
Assigned to lesser details back at camp, I noticed that the pain and discomfort of my hand was not subsiding. I really panicked when they took all the dressings off. Why don’t they tell you your body wrinkles up and gets dirty inside plaster? What a shock that was. After a few hours I went back to my normal shade of light pink and my skin straightened out. The problem was that my knuckles were still swollen and wouldn’t bend. The Army gave me a weekend pass as compensation.
I was back home, but really anxious. Looking at the swelling and bruising, I was pretty sure that I might lose the use of my hand. I was normally good at being able to control any fear that engulfed me, but now I was truly frightened. Willing to try anything to save my hand, I decided to see a local osteopath. Considered a ‘quack’ at the time, this kindly but authoritative man asked me to show him my hand. The knuckles were still all swollen and I couldn’t bend any of them. He seemed to be holding it gently. I woke up on the couch. Apparently he had pulled them all back into position and my brain decided that I shouldn’t be th
ere while he did it.
He must have relocated the bones in my hand back into their rightful sockets. Within 24 hours, I had made a full recovery and was back at the army base able to do everything within a couple of days. Although my right-hand knuckle was to remain bigger than my left for the rest of my days, I was extremely grateful that my fears of never performing again were unfounded.
In the ninth week, we were awoken at 5.00am to prepare for a set of exercises. Marching up the several miles of Richmond Hill, one of the steepest inclines in the country, we marched down the other side and through a river. All day we repeated this route at the height of the Yorkshire winter. That evening, the company slept in the open on the bare, freezing ground, before being woken up for night exercises.
Before allowing the time and space for a moment’s kip, the Army had served up ‘bad’ stew. Surprisingly, the food was not as bad as I had expected, with chips served at most meals and even once at breakfast. The rest was average stodge, apart from on Christmas Day when it was brilliant. How the army cooks managed to switch from school dinners to French cuisine overnight I shall never know.
On exercises it was quite different and I chose not to eat the mess they were serving. I was the only one who did not get the ‘squirts’. Despite the pain and the agony of where we were, the difficulties of diarrhoea provided much humour and relief in the darkness of the countryside. When a flare went off, lighting up the ground below, all that could be seen was a row of bright white arses squatting in the hedge. The thought of camouflaging backsides had not been considered.
The exercise was called off and we were led into a barn where we were lectured on how stupid we had been. What happened that night could well have occurred in warfare, we were told. The men who had suffered from diarrhoea had given away their position, not only by the reflection of the flare on their white arses, but also (can you believe that an officer of the British Army would point this out?) by the rustling of leaves as they cleaned themselves off.
It was difficult for any of us to keep a straight face, as the unbelievable scenario was unfolded before us. Even more astounding was the young squaddie who stood up and announced that he had indeed thought this problem through:
‘Sir! I gave this some consideration, Sir!’
‘Go ahead Jenkins!’
‘Sir! I did not use paper, Sir! I used my regulation handkerchief, Sir!’
As he spoke, from his pocket he pulled out a filthy brown slip of material that at one time had been used to wipe the opposite end of his body, to which he was now referring. The men either side of him fled and the rest of us were left in hysterics.
We were not let off the hook, however, and the following night the exercise was repeated with the task of capturing or defending a set of lamps strategically placed in difficult areas of the North Yorkshire moors. Sitting in the pitch-blackness of a dugout, I couldn’t control a single part of my body. I don’t think that I have ever been so cold since that night. My teeth were hammering together, my rifle was shaking and I couldn’t stop it because I was so cold and wet. It felt like my uniform had been frozen to my body. I was jabbering.
I heard a noise behind me as a sergeant slithered down into my pit and ordered me to go and get the lamp. Instantly I jumped up, crawled over the lip of my hideout and crawled on my belly towards the light. As I approached my goal, I remembered what had been said on the first day about obeying orders without thought. That, I believe, is why the British Army was the best and most powerful in the world. I had gone from being a frozen wreck into a non-shivering, smooth-moving soldier at one command.
A few days later, part of the testing process was running a mile in full kit carrying your rifle. I was the first one over the line. Damn right I was. Was I the fittest? Was I the best trained? Nope, I was just more scared of the Sergeant than anyone else. Damn right I was.
Apart from the obvious asset of National Service for the country, there was a secondary benefit. It turned boys into men. It made us fitter than at any other time in our lives. Any 17-year-olds will argue that they are already men, but they are not. This process takes time to build competence and to gain the knowledge and experience to tackle anything in life.
Those weeks of training turned out to be the most demanding, yet productive, time of all. They laid a grounding that was worth more than any money and gave me a firm foundation to stand on in difficult years to come. I know I sound like an old man when I say today’s youth has lost its focus and value in life and I would like to see National Service back on the agenda because it would change bad attitudes in a radically quick way. The only thing is that I don’t believe we should bring back National Service as it was.
I shared my thoughts at a recent dinner party at which several top politicians were invited. I explained my reasoning and showed how it could be done in a different and possibly more beneficial way. Sadly, teachers have had all their powers of discipline and control removed by a politically correct society. Pupils have no fear of, or respect for, their elders, so they can choose to run wild if they wish and no one can control them. The 12 months of training would be for girls and boys, placing ‘townies’ in country environments and vice versa. They should not be trained to fire a weapon, but instead go through all the drilling and the spit and polish that we went through, alongside learning the art of survival and aspects of advanced first aid. Being shown how to react in any form of emergency situation such as a car accident or a fire, they would learn what the human being is perfectly capable of achieving. After a year learning how to save a life, it would be very difficult to go out and ‘mug’ or knife somebody. Young people would be of great use and value to the society in which they live.
The politicians thought it would be an excellent scheme, but would be a political bombshell. Did this mean they weren’t really in the job for the benefit of society as a whole, I enquired? My question was met with a dry smile and a forced laugh. It took me a long time to realise that politicians are not in the job for the good of the country.
I do not agree with the arguments allowing women in the same regiments as men. I am certainly a fighter for women’s equality, but I do not think that mixed companies are a good thing. Neither do I believe in allowing homosexuals into the Army. It has nothing to do with being anti-women or anti-homosexual, because I’m not. It is simply the vital need for that command to be obeyed without question. If I am in love with the person next to me and we are instructed to go over the top, I might feel compelled to resist if my partner was in danger of getting hurt. Love is a more powerful instinct than any amount of training, but it could get in the way of winning a war.
As a result of military training, I watched as a shoddy group of guys from all walks of life became self-disciplined and controlled. Thickos and geniuses, boffins and brickies, rich and poor were turned into confident people who were fitter than they had ever been in their lives.
As I said, not everybody was from Yorkshire and at a time of little transport, we were able to hear tales about life in Wales, Scotland and Birmingham. We sorry bunch of stragglers had become a much more likely fighting force and as we marched into the local town after our night exercises, we felt like real men.
Something else happened almost without us noticing it. We developed great pride in being Green Howards. Towards the end of the training, we went on a long march. We were tired as hell when we reached the bottom of that damn hill up to the barracks. When the band of the Green Howards struck up to greet us with the Regimental March as we turned the corner, it was amazing. Our shoulders went back, our chests went out and we just about flew up the hill. I am convinced that it was the rousing sound of the military band playing our march that enabled us to conquer the steepness of Richmond Hill that day.
My platoon was going abroad to Hong Kong. I went off to training with one other soldier from our Regiment, Peter Schollick. We stayed on in England to train as army clerks and were sent down to Chichester. It was there that I was shown how to touch-type and
work with Queen’s Regulations in two weeks. The Army had a great system for teaching typing and it was the best and most useful thing that the Army ever taught me.
With the little extra freedom we now had, my mate Peter and I discovered that the local girls had not heard of the Green Howards. We told them that we were trained jungle fighters and that is why we were called ‘green’. We could instantly melt into any tropical forest. Well, of course we could. To our amazement, they believed us. How they imagined this was true of the two pasty-faced Yorkshire youths who had never been abroad in their lives I shall never know, but they did.
Maybe we lost credibility about our ‘toughness’ when I happily agreed to try the local cider. Having been a Northern lad, I was not used to the strength of the West Country’s scrumpy. After only one pint it felt like my head was leaving my shoulders and I relied on the generosity of my friends to carry me home.
We left the course as qualified clerks, were given a week’s leave and told we were going to Hong Kong.
CHAPTER 5
HONG KONG
Although women’s liberation had begun its long journey 50 years previously with Emily Pankhurst, the late Fifties began to give rise to the modern female. Seventeen-year-old Marilyn Bell was the youngest person to swim the Channel and US tennis star Althea Gibson was the first black female to win Wimbledon. As the Barbie doll began mass production, screen goddess Brigitte Bardot shocked America with her sensual role in the Hollywood film And God Created Woman, while Marilyn Monroe’s poster showing her skirt rising up her legs advertising The Seven Year Itch was banned in New York.