There was a long pause. Then the sniper slowly stood up, not holding his rifle. Cautiously, Sergeant Duffissey and the other men also got to their feet. For a while they looked straight at the sniper and he looked back. Then he waved, they waved back and they all started laughing. Then, with a final wave, they all went on their way.
I loved this story. It reminded me of the football match on Christmas Day in the First World War when the British and German troops climbed out of their opposing trenches and got together to swap cigarettes and pieces of cake before forming two teams to have a game of soccer. I’m not sure what happened to the German soldiers afterwards but the British troops had to be replaced – they had simply lost the will to kill. Now that’s what I call a touching story.
I enjoyed working with the fireworks. The CO had personally selected them and continued to take a huge interest in the whole project. Every day he asked me for a progress report. When the fireworks arrived he took me down to a warehouse in the docks where they were being loaded onto lorries by a group of fusiliers. He had one of the crates opened, reached inside and reverently lifted out a five-foot rocket with an 18-inch head. Holding it up in triumph, he beamed, ‘Magnificent.’
In view of the obviously high expectations, I planned the display with the utmost care. The battalion carpenter built racks to hold the large rockets and made other frames and stands for the rest of the weird and wonderful assortment and a 30-foot bamboo tower to hold the burning portraits of Her Majesty. I had arranged for all the rockets on the racks to be set off in small groups, and the plan was that Sergeant Duffissey would light them and I would rush around lighting the bigger fireworks in between each group.
The big day arrived and everything was ready. The frames, stands and tower were all in place and the audience was waiting expectantly. The battalion fire engine was standing by as a precaution – fortuitously, as it happens. It was all systems go, except that my sergeant had disappeared. I suspected he was in the mess, drinking his favourite Red Stripe beer, and sent an urgent message there. I was starting to panic, as he was the only person who knew the routines.
With less than five minutes to go, I saw him stumbling towards me.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Shorry, shurr,’ he mumbled.
‘Can you remember what to do?’
‘Yeshsir…’
There was less than a minute to go.
‘Right. Well, go and stand by the rockets and wait for my signal.’
When I saw that he was standing in the right place and had lit his fuse, I raised my arm and dropped it. This was the prearranged signal for him to light the first batch of rockets on the rack.
He did successfully light the first rocket, but then as he moved to the second one he staggered, knocking the already lit rocket down onto the rack. Its long tail of fire and sparks streamed down the whole length of the rack, setting off all the rockets in one go.
I was horrified. The only thing I could think of was trying to preserve the sequence. I ran around setting off all the big spectacular fireworks as quickly as I could. What was to have been a ten-minute display was over in two minutes. And the rocket rack was on fire.
I was standing forlornly in my scorched shirt watching the fire engine extinguish the remaining flames on the rocket rack when to my horror I saw Colonel Johnson striding towards me. As if I had not had enough rockets for one day, here was another one.
He marched straight up to me. ‘Well done, Mr Roache. Much better than I expected. Keep it up.’ I was stunned.
There was only one thing to do – for the remaining three nights the firework display was only two minutes long. But spectacular.
Eventually I acquired about half a platoon and fairly normal soldiering resumed. I say ‘fairly normal’ because my company commander, Major Tolhurst, commonly known as Guy, also ran the battalion cricket team and had heard that I had played cricket for my school. He believed that cricket was more important than soldiering, and as most Jamaicans believed that cricket was more important than anything, he was in the right country.
So it was that I found myself playing cricket three or four days a week, like it or not. Every plantation in Jamaica had a cricket field. They were not quite up to Lord’s standard – they could be sloping and bumpy, and one even had a tree in the middle – but the matches were always played with great enthusiasm.
To be honest, sometimes it was not apparent when the match had ended and the party had begun. Drinks would be brought onto the pitch at regular intervals, usually laced with rum, and the inevitable steel band would start playing in the early evening whatever the state of the game. The party would then continue late into the night.
If we weren’t on the cricket field, we’d spend our evenings at the officers’ club, where rum was tuppence a tot, so to wake up in the morning without a hangover was a very rare event. I really used to think that if we ever had to go to war, I might be safer on the other side.
As a junior officer I found my army pay would barely cover the drinks bill in the mess and I began to be worried about having to play polo, as it was fairly costly, with all the equipment and the upkeep of the horses. In the end I was quite relieved to discover that I would not be able to play after all, because of being left-handed. Apparently it would cause difficulties with the horse and lead to an infringement of the offside rule. I was amused to find my earlier ‘problem’ now working to my advantage.
By now Selwyn and I had become great friends and were spending a lot of time in each other’s company. He also had half a platoon to command and in his spare time was writing poetry. He was very bright and hoping to go to university. In comparison I was just drifting along from day to day.
My time in Jamaica was for the most part enjoyable, in spite of the hangovers. The most alarming moment was when I woke up once in the middle of the night and saw something dark, about the size of a tennis ball, slowly crawling up the mosquito net just above my face. Tarantulas were quite common and I started to panic. Very slowly, I reached out of the net and switched on the light. It was the mess kitten.
The two major incidents the battalion was involved with at the time were providing the security for the Big Three conference in Bermuda and going to Georgetown, British Guyana, to put down a rebellion.
The ‘Big Three’ in Bermuda were Churchill, Eisenhower and the French premier Joseph Laniel, and the talks were held at the Mid Ocean Golf Club. Our duties weren’t that arduous and we found the Bermudan people very friendly. Selwyn and I were invited out to dinner most evenings. Our hosts were invariably fascinated by everything British and would jump up to drink a toast at the mere mention of anything to do with royalty or the homeland. We once drank a toast to hunt balls.
We also had the opportunity to get to know the 18-year-old twin daughters of a rich diamond dealer quite well, only Selwyn took it all too far and told them he was the Right Honourable Selwyn and I was Lord Roache of Nottingham. We had to avoid them after that in case we were found out.
Almost as soon as we got back to Jamaica we heard that the governor of British Guyana had called us in because he thought the policies of the prime minister, Cheddi Jagan, were undermining his authority and might provoke an uprising. In preparation we did two battalion exercises. These were a complete shambles, or rather the first one was. The second one was called off because it was raining.
The whole battalion, getting on for 1,000 men, went to British Guyana to support the governor, but all we did was march through the centre of Georgetown and hope that we looked impressive enough to prevent a possible rebellion. It seemed to be successful. The only shot fired was by a major who accidentally shot his lieutenant in the leg as he was unloading his revolver. Fortunately it was just a flesh wound.
We were only in British Guyana for a couple of months. We played some cricket there and I went on a crocodile shoot down the Esequibo river, along with a sergeant and two fusiliers. Two Guyanese guides paddled us along in a small wooden ca
noe. For the most part the jungle came right down to the water’s edge and at one point I saw an anaconda sliding down into the river. It seemed to go on forever and it was a little disconcerting to think of it somewhere under our flimsy wooden boat, knowing that it could swallow a man whole.
After around two hours we passed a mudbank on which a couple of alligators were basking. As we approached, one scuttled off into the water. I raised my rifle and fired at the other one. It rolled over and lay still. We pulled the boat up onto the bank and went over to have a look at it. It was about six feet long; not that big for an alligator, but I had got one. We laid it flat at the bottom of the canoe and decided we might as well have lunch now that we had stopped.
We wandered off to a nearby clearing and ate our packed lunches. When we came back to the canoe, ready to set off again, something was thrashing around in the bottom of it. The alligator was alive.
Fortunately the canoe was narrow and the alligator was confined under the seats, but although that meant it couldn’t get out, it also meant we couldn’t get in. We couldn’t shoot it either, as a bullet-hole in the boat would have left us stranded.
After some thought we decided to make a noose to clamp the alligator’s jaws shut so that we could hold its head over the side and shoot it. This took some doing, but eventually we managed it. I never liked killing but back then I did not have a true understanding of the sanctity of life.
After a year, the tour of duty in the West Indies was over and the battalion returned to the UK to take up temporary residence in an old army camp in Chiseldon. I came home a few weeks earlier to attend a three-inch mortar course and then to be part of the advance party to Chiseldon.
I had travelled home on a banana boat on which there were four cabin passengers and a number of Jamaicans travelling below deck in much more crowded conditions. It took 14 days and there was only one film, Paleface with Bob Hope. By the time we landed, I could have done a word-perfect recital of it.
On board the boat there was a wonderful moment that I shall never forget. On the evening of Christmas Day we all went below deck and joined the other passengers to sing carols. Imagine ‘Away in a Manger’ and ‘Silent Night’ being sung in a Caribbean rhythm along with the colourful appearance of those other passengers and you will understand why I found myself sobbing with joy. It was a beautiful moment. It brought back happy memories of childhood Christmases. We always had a huge tree and the presents would be piled up around it. I remember getting a little fort with soldiers one year, and a bike another. On Christmas Day we would always go up to the cottage hospital at Ilkeston, where we would each receive a present from Father Christmas. It was years before I realized he was my father!
While I was on leave, Kath’s mother asked me to go with her to a Spiritualist meeting. She attended them regularly. I wasn’t very enthusiastic, but I went out of politeness – after all, if your girlfriend’s mother asks, you go, don’t you? I sat at the back trying to be unobtrusive, but the medium, a gentle man in a navy suit, singled me out and said that he had someone for me who was wearing a long white coat and had something round his neck. This was a perfect description of a doctor with a stethoscope and I knew that if there was anyone who wanted to contact me it would be my grandfather.
‘He’s saying that you’re on the bottom rung of a ladder,’ the medium went on, ‘and that if you hang on to it you’ll get to the top. There are two maiden aunts looking after you. Three problems will affect your life. Two will be solved for you. The other you must solve yourself.’
Although a little embarrassed at being picked out, I was impressed. Two maiden aunts, Mickey and Mabel, my father’s sisters, had died when I was quite young and I later discovered that they had been Spiritualists. I did not, I hasten to add, ever discuss this with my father, given his total lack of interest in such matters.
I eventually realized that the three problems were my fear of death, fear of infinity and a complete inability to accept most of the standard religious teachings. Years later, as I began to find some answers, the first two problems fell away. I am still working on the third, but more of that later.
I now realize that this meeting was an opportunity for me to start enquiring more deeply into things. It was something of a wake-up call. But at the time I totally ignored it.
Spiritualism does have a tremendous amount to offer, though it suffers from a poor image. Spiritualist churches are often perceived as places where people go just to get messages from the dead and are therefore seen as rather morbid. But there is so much more to it than that. These messages are proof of life in other realms, and receiving them should be the gateway to finding out more about these realms and about ourselves. This is precisely what I did not do, of course.
The beings from whom these messages come are not actually dead. In fact, the opposite is true – in many ways they are far more alive than we who are living in heavy material bodies on the Earth plane. Over the years some of them have passed on a great deal of information about life in the spiritual realms. These are much brighter and freer than our own. Death can be likened to walking out of a smoke-filled room into the fresh air. So Spiritualists can give an understanding of life after death and offer help to the grieving based on knowledge, not on superstition. They also teach many great truths and perform spiritual healing.
It is a shame that orthodox Christianity has branded Spiritualism as harmful and unhealthy. It is totally wrong to condemn it. In fact there was once a greater spirit of enquiry in the Church than there is today. In the ’30s the Anglican Church set up a small commission of bishops to investigate whether or not Spiritualism should be accepted and encouraged. The majority of the commission found in favour of it, but no action was taken and their findings were suppressed. The Church is much the poorer for this action.
I myself was probably the poorer for not taking up the opportunity that was offered to me. I made up for lost time later on. But then I just pushed it all to the back of my mind. Life was moving on.
CHAPTER 6
Arabia
‘Nothing happens without some purpose behind it.
Experience should be made our own.’
Lao Tzu
I still had my fears of death and infinity. Sometimes I would get into such a state of fear that I would be close to passing out and would have to dash off to be somewhere on my own. I would think about how vulnerable we were, how terrifying infinity was. These were the nights when I pictured that spaceship passing endlessly through galaxy after galaxy. The fear during these panic attacks was dreadful and there was no one I could talk to about it. I really thought that there was something seriously wrong with me. Absolutely no one, not even my parents, had any idea of what I was going through. Nowadays everyone knows about panic attacks and breathing into a brown paper bag to stop them, but at the time I thought that I was alone in my condition. I thought it was something to be ashamed of, to keep secret, and that I would never be able to have a close relationship with anyone in case they found out. Looking back, I can now see those two fears as great gifts: they led me to search for the answers I now have – and present in this book – that we are very limited here in this material and finite world whereas Spirit is infinite and open. I have grown to love infinity because if we didn’t have it, God wouldn’t be infinite, love wouldn’t be infinite, life wouldn’t be infinite, we wouldn’t be infinite and everything would just end.
Fortunately the panic attacks were not frequent and I was always able to fulfil my duties. In fact they never happened if I was occupied. I soldiered on.
I reported to the Small Arms School for the three-inch mortar course and that turned out to be a life-changing experience.
Each mortar team was made up of three men. The mortar round itself was propelled by an explosive charge which ignited when the bomb reached the bottom of the barrel. On one occasion ours didn’t go off. The procedure when this happened was to raise the barrel slightly and shake it, because usually the bomb had just got stuck.
However, one of our team got carried away and pulled the mortar upright and shook it violently. The bomb went straight up into the air. And we were using live explosives.
I was standing quite near the mouth of the mortar at the time and the detonation blasted both of my eardrums, deafening me. Meantime the bomb was up in the air, we had no idea where it was going to come down and we only had about half a minute before it did. The sergeant in charge told us to get down. There was no point in running.
We all hit the deck and waited for what seemed like forever. Fortunately the bomb landed well away from us.
After that I was almost totally deaf for about three weeks and have had a hearing problem ever since.
A much more pleasant experience was when the Queen visited us at Chiseldon to present the new colours to the regiment. I had the honour of carrying the old colours on the parade and afterwards we had lunch with Her Majesty. We had all met her only a few weeks before, when she had called at Kingston on her Commonwealth tour, and she commented that she could remember some of us, which especially pleased me because I remember on that first meeting having found her sexually very attractive. She would certainly have remembered the regimental goat, as I recall her laughing delightedly while offering it cigarettes to eat. This was the goat’s party piece.
After a few weeks it was announced that the battalion would be moving to Dortmund in Germany. This didn’t appeal to me at all. It would mean serious soldiering – combined exercises with the other NATO forces – and we would have to know what we were doing – something that we hadn’t been used to for over a year.
To make matters worse, by the time we arrived in Germany it was winter, with grey skies most days. For a sun-lover like me it was not the best of places. So when I heard of a War Office request for volunteers to join the Trucial Oman Scouts, I could hardly wait.
Soul on the Street Page 7