Growing into War

by Michael Gill

  That afternoon we said goodbye to our own clothes. Crudely wrapped up in the brown paper and string we had been instructed to bring with us, and left at the subsidiary post office in the camp central block. Our facetious leading aircraftman told us that there was nothing more he could load onto us and that the rest of the day was our own, except that there were one or two odd jobs that some of us would have to volunteer for. He then called us out in turn and told us what those jobs were. They were mostly cleaning out the kitchens, weeding the entrance drive, polishing the silverware in the Officers’ Mess. Eventually everyone had been allocated a task except for me and one other. The leading aircraftman sauntered over to us.

  ‘You might think that I’ve saved the best for the last and in some ways I have. It seems to me just listening to the way you talk that you’re a fastidious couple. I’m sure your mothers always insisted you left the bathroom just as you found it.’

  What was he talking about? At this point I and the other man had not exchanged a dozen words. Nor were we physically alike. I was six feet one inch and he five feet four inches. He had dark, aquiline features and straight dark hair. My hair was lighter and tended to wave. Yet it was true that we had noticed each other during the morning. His voice was surprisingly much deeper than mine, but we both spoke with what might be described as a public school accent. The leading aircraftman was right in putting us together; our powers of cooperation were about to be severely tested.

  Beyond the orderly rows of the bell tents was a single long tent. This was the WC: a long pole perched above a series of large metal buckets about three feet deep and three feet across. They had not been emptied since the tents had been put into service the day before. Like everything else at Cardington, they were exuding signs of over-wear. Our task was to dig a pit in the next field, carry the buckets across from the other field, empty the contents into the pit and eventually cover it over with the original earth.

  The task was not made easier by the return of the sunshine and an August heat wave. It took three hours for us to dig a pit in this high-summer-baked ground. In fact, our progress was so slow that three more amateur labourers were put to work with us. While we toiled and sweated, blistering hands and aching shoulders, the object of our attention two fields away became more and more apparent. At a distance the stench was appalling. Close to it made you feel sick and suffocated.

  Full to the top and slopping over, the buckets were not easy to carry. I had not realised how much of human excrement is liquid. Our persecutor had gone to the trouble of getting us working overalls; a very necessary protection for our brand-new uniforms. The path across the fields between the WC and the pit we had dug was quickly dubbed Shit Street. People came out to watch us at work, but they did not stay long. The smell defeated all expectations of participating in a gloat.

  Resting frequently on our slobbery journey along Shit Street gave us plenty of time to get to know each other. It was not advisable to go into a long conversation. Movement at least gave the illusion that you were creating a breeze. Nor could you afford to take deep breaths. So talk was a sort of rapid mutter between the teeth. Like:

  HE. Which do you read; Spectors or Staggers and Natters?

  ME. Oh, S. and N.

  HE. Me too and how.

  This meant that of the two weekly journals, the Spectator and the New Statesman and Nation, we both favoured the left-wing New Statesman.

  He had been to a well-known school in the City. His name was Wyndham Davidson.

  HE. Come from Canterbury, eh? Had a grandfather who was Archbishop there [Randall Davidson].

  By the time we had filled in the pit, and covered it over and struggled out of our sticky stained overalls, we had agreed to try and stay together at our next posting in Skegness.

  III

  The following morning we were up at 5 a.m. This was no hardship after another shin-breaking night in the tent. Others probably had it worse than me. The unfortunate barber told me mine was the pongiest hair he had ever slept next to. However, the journey to our next billet was a reminder that I was not really as fit as my height and youth suggested.

  The distance from Cardington to Skegness was probably only some sixty to seventy miles, but it was across England from west to east, a journey never as easy as travelling north to south. As I remember, we had to make a couple of changes which involved lengthy waits in rural stations. So that, while we left tainted Cardington without regrets at six in the morning, it was some twelve hours later that we were installed by the North Sea in Skegness.

  For all that time we had been literally strapped into our gear. Let me see if I can make clear what this entailed. From the skin outwards: woollen underwear, heavy woollen socks, blue linen shirt, separate collar and tie, blue serge uniform with brass buttons, fore and aft cap, heavy black boots; webbing belt and complete harness, to which was attached: small pack containing personal gear, metal billycan, knife, fork and spoon, iron rations, water bottle; large pack containing all spare clothing, blankets, etc., heavy overcoat neatly folded and strapped onto the top of the large pack, anti-gas cape also neatly folded and strapped onto the bottom of the large pack. The kit bag, which was as heavy as a large suitcase, was meant to contain all private possessions as well as such additional blankets and towels as might from time to time be issued.

  It was the kit bag which was really my undoing. Other trains were converging on Skegness, bringing recruits from Scotland and the north of England. They had to be infiltrated into the long columns unloading like ourselves from the Midlands and the south. Each stop meant lifting down the heavy kit bag from its precarious position balanced across one shoulder and standing it upright between you and your immediate neighbour. Each start meant lifting it up again onto your aching collarbone. Often we moved only two or three steps before having to repeat the whole action.

  Lifting the kit bag up began to take a tremendous effort of the will. My breathing came in short gasps. My marching lost its rhythm and I wavered from side to side. Just forcing myself on occupied my every blurred attention. I could see nothing, experience nothing, except the need to totter on. I began to collide with the marchers on either side of me. Much, I am sure, to their alarm.

  ‘Hey, laddie, give me that kit bag for a bit,’ said a kindly voice. Without its weight I was able to concentrate on getting command of my breathing. I saw the man carrying my kit bag was a corporal (in fact, by great good luck he was the NCO in direct charge of our contingent).

  Skegness, like some other seaside holiday towns of pre-war days, had been largely taken over by the RAF. The narrow side streets that ran straight down onto the sand dunes and had once been awash with crowing and caterwauling children now echoed to the equally infantile bellowed commands of drill sergeants and the obedient responses of their victims: ‘One pause Two’ or the even more complex ‘One pause Two pause Three pause Four’.

  These side streets were housed with a variety of modest-sized, but stylistically ambitious residences. They appealed to holiday-makers who might really have preferred to go to a Swiss chalet or a turreted French palais or even a Tudor manor. Their owners would hardly have recognised them now. Entirely stripped of all furniture, carpets and every item that gave character, each room had two to four uniform metal beds of the sort with which I was to grow very familiar over the next few years.

  When we eventually arrived at the house which was to be our home for the next six weeks, Corporal Barker quickly allocated us our beds. When Wyndham and I asked to be put together he said sharply that there could be no preferential treatment for individuals. However, it so happened that we were the last to be allocated, and so came together in the top floor, where there were only two beds and a splendid view of the sea through dormer windows.

  How quickly the corner where you slept became home. Most young men reinforced the territorial claim by pinning up a photograph of their dream companion, Betty Grable or Phyllis Dixey the fan dancer or – if they wanted to show how classy their taste w
as – Vivien Leigh. A few would put up a picture of a favourite dog or even – very daring – a family photograph with Mum and Dad and younger Sis. That was daring, because in these first days of communal living, few had the self-confidence to reveal so much about themselves to those strangers around them.

  Wyndham and I quickly decided to be different. We came across an old Christmas edition of the Illustrated London News that a previous occupier had left behind as rubbish. It included a number of colour reproductions of great works of art from the National Gallery that were now hidden for safety in a Welsh slate mine. So, instead of Gable’s emphatic legs, our waking vision slid along the sinuous curves of the Rokeby Venus; not a real mum and baby brother, but Giotto’s Madonna and Child watched over our uneasy dreams.

  While we were hammering in the last tack on a wintry Dutch scene of skating on the Zuider Zee, Corporal Barker came in, no doubt attracted by the knocking. ‘I say lads no nails allowed,’ he began, then let his eyes wander up the backside of Venus. ‘So this is what you call art,’ he said in puzzled tones. He peered at a crowded Dutch fair where a middleaged man was urinating against the town hall. ‘Mind you, I can’t say I wouldn’t prefer to watch a good game with Arsenal myself. But I suppose this is what we’re fighting for.’

  IV

  When I recall those six weeks at Skegness it seems one long parade, the crash of boots stamping up and down again, the shouted commands and our bellowed responses. One pause Two . . . By the front . . . qui-i-c-k march . . . At the double, now . . . Ab-o-o-o-u-t turn . . . About turn, about turn, about turn. Oh my blistered feet. Every movement had to be stamped into the concrete with an energy and precision that seemed likely to crack open a passage to Australia.

  Each morning began with three hours’ foot drill and if we weren’t coming up to scratch another couple of hours were thrown in in the afternoon. There was something mesmerically satisfying in spending so much time achieving such a pointless perfection. The Air Force would say it was not pointless, but gave us a solid core of discipline which would be needed when we came under fire. But would it? We were not going to march across Europe to arrest Hitler in Berlin.

  Some of the other things we did seemed equally daft. We learned how to take apart a Bren gun, how to clean it and put it together again. But we weren’t issued with Bren guns. We were also ordered to run through a hut in which a tear-gas bomb had just been thrown. It was not lethal, but equally the Germans were not likely to use it against us.

  There were thirty-two of us in 28 Squad under Corporal Barker. We were a mixed crowd. There were two or three lads from the slums of Liverpool and Manchester whose dialect was so thick I never fully understood them when they talked together. They had the rapid understanding and cocky confidence that came from maturing in gangland. At the other extreme was Deaken, a Norfolk farm-labourer’s son, who had never been more than a dozen miles from his home village, addressed everyone as ‘thee’, and knelt by his bed to say his prayers every night before lights out. Gidney, at twenty-nine, was the oldest member of our squad and much the cleverest. He was an electrician from Staffordshire. He had taken the trouble to read up RAF law, and was always quoting King’s Regulations to the authorities in order to protect our interests.

  Tall and gangling with protruding eyes, a sharp nose and diminutive chin, there was something rather comical about Gidney’s earnestness, though we all benefited from it. Our indebtedness was recognised in his nickname, ‘the colonel’. It was a tribute both to his authority and his undershot jaw and bulging eye. Only a few of us achieved the doubtful distinction of a general epithet. Our single coloured recruit, a tailor from the East End named Da Silva, answered cheerfully to ‘Blackout’. A very pretty young man, who had been a shop assistant in Eastbourne, was ‘Blondie’. Most of these epithets were first expressed by a cockney, Maconachie, who was too individual a character himself to pin down in a couple of words. I enjoyed his company and that of a southern Irish volunteer, John O’Connor. He intended to be a film star. Another, and thoroughly detestable, cockney was ‘Chummy’. That derived from his habit of continually attempting to borrow everything from boot blacking to money – forays that invariably began with him sidling up to his victim and saying in wheedling tones: ‘Oh, chummy, I wonder if I could have a loan of . . .’. Unabashed by the nickname, he continued to importune us in the same terms all the six weeks we were together.

  I rapidly became ‘the Professor’ or ‘Prof’, though I think I was, by a month, the youngest in the squad. My years of enforced idleness had led me to read a great deal, and I had information available on most subjects. Knowledge I was only too ready to impart. Wyndham was better read, but a great deal more sophisticated in revealing it. Like all these epithets, mine was double-edged. It suggested learning, but also pedantry, and an inability to cope with the practical side: a reputation well deserved.

  I was not, as I had gloomily expected, the most inept and unhealthy member of the squad. This unhappy distinction fell on a young man called Robbins. Incapable of walking in step or of swinging his arms synchronously, with thick pebble glasses and a vacant, heavy face, he could only just have reached the requisite intelligence level for call-up. Continually preoccupied with his own opaque thoughts, never apparently knowing what was going on, or joining in the jokes and badinage that flowed between us, or acknowledging any of us as individuals, he was brilliantly christened ‘the Lodger’.

  ‘Can’t you see ’im if we got a direct hit from a Jerry raider. He’d walk into the flaming billet and say, “What’s frying up?”’

  Even Robbins was tolerated, turned in the right direction, helped into the appropriate clothes and shouted into line. He got sworn at more than anyone else; he was also helped more. There were never any fights in our billet. We were too tired to quarrel.

  It came as a surprise that, after my years of illness, I was able to cope not much worse than the average. Yet, however hard we tried, Wyndham and I seemed prone to disaster. Perhaps it was being tucked away so snugly in that little room at the top of the house that made senior NCOs on tours of inspection sniff for blood. There was nothing in regulations that said you should not have flowers in your billet. Wyndham had bought a cheap vase in Woolworth’s and placed it, regularly filled with sweet peas or violets, on an up-ended orange box between our beds. We had made a shelf in the box on which we put our library: two or three volumes of poetry, Lawrence short stories, Point Counter Point, and the latest editions of the Listener and New Statesman. I can see now it was not a tactful mixture.

  In my fourth letter home I wrote: ‘Our Flight Sergeant is a beast. He used to be a schoolmaster in private life and he has a very acid temper. On the other hand, our Squad Corporal, Barker, could not be nicer. He is a Yorkshireman, rough on the surface, but kind-hearted underneath.’

  The truth was that, despite blistered feet and other aches, I was enjoying myself. Sharing a room with someone my own age was an exotic thrill. In many ways our tastes were complementary, but different. Wyndham introduced me to D.H. Lawrence. The Woman Who Rode Away swept me into a disturbing new dimension of experience.

  I was reading it one evening when Wyndham came in looking rather pleased.

  ‘I’ve just seen Auerbach. He’s asked us out for a meal tomorrow night.’

  ‘Auerbach has?’

  ‘Yes, it’s to celebrate. He’s got his commission.’

  ‘Gosh, what a compliment.’

  Tall and portly, with curly grey hair, Auerbach seemed nearly as old as my father and twice as imposing. I suppose he was at the beginning of his forties. Like my father, he was in banking, but as the editor of a trade journal. Not in our billet, he often chatted to us during breaks in drill. He had a rumbling laugh, a witty tongue and an air of gracious condescension.

  ‘Will you be going into Intelligence?’ I asked him, once we were settled at the small café table.

  ‘Catering, actually.’

  ‘Well placed to look after No. 1,’ nodded our fourth co
mpanion, another ageing recruit who had been introduced as Bill Varley.

  ‘I suppose so. Apparently there are no immediate vacancies in anything else.’

  ‘Mind you, it won’t be a doddle. Not everyone knows about writing, but we all have an opinion about what goes into our stomachs.’

  The easy way he talked to the formidable Auerbach surprised me. He was not very impressive in appearance. Though perfectly clean with Brylcreemed dark hair, his lined face looked as though iron filings had been stitched into the seams. I wondered what he had done before joining the Air Force.

  ‘That’d take some telling. I was a cook once in Calgary. Last couple of years I’ve been driving a crane.’

  ‘Where do you do that?’

  ‘All over. Wherever it’s needed.’

  ‘Our young friend is from Canterbury, Bill.’ Auerbach bent forward. ‘

  Yeah? I was down there a couple of months ago, clearing the wreckage. Bloody shame about those old houses round the cathedral.’ ‘

  Yes.’ I began to like him better. ‘Is that what you’ll do in the Air Force?’

  ‘No. I’ve had enough of shovelling rubble. Bomb disposal is what I’m aiming for.’

  ‘You mean, you’ll be defusing bombs?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve seen so many that don’t go off. Bloody menace they are.’

  ‘That’s a hot job.’

  ‘Not really, if you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Won’t your family mind?’

  ‘Bill’s on his own,’ said Auerbach.

  ‘I am now. The old woman bought it in the Blitz.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, we weren’t married. We’d have parted sometime.’

  ‘Don’t you believe in marriage?’

  ‘It’s for the birds, isn’t it? Look, sonny, nothing is for keeps in this life.’

  He got up and strolled out, leaving me confused. I believed in romantic love and a marriage that would last a lifetime.