If I Don’t Write It Nobody Else Will

On our first day I was ordered to march our contingent to the parade ground to await the regimental sergeant major’s inspection. We stood in line in desultory fashion until I saw him approach. He wasn’t marching; he was walking casually as if he was leaving the senior NCOs’ mess, but I was taking no chances. I brought the lads up to attention and to my surprise they did it. The sergeant major instructed them to ‘stand easy’ and then he made his way along the line, asking the odd question and, judging by his smile, receiving some very odd answers. Finally he came to me.

After looking me up and down, he asked, ‘What’s the difference between an AC1 and an AC2?’

I was flummoxed. He might just as well have asked me what was Vera Lynn’s address. So I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, ‘Sixpence a day, sir,’ which I thought quite reasonable under the circumstances.

‘Is that the way you look upon your war effort?’ he asked.

‘The only way, sir,’ I replied.

He looked at me for a time and then almost to himself he muttered, ‘It’s going to be a long war.’

Well into the evening I wrestled with my answer. What was the difference between an AC1 and an AC2?

Each day I marched my seventeen-man contingent to a small place allocated as a classroom for us. Then at mealtimes I marched them to the mess hall. Afterwards I marched them back to our classroom. On the whole they marched pretty well in step, except for one youth, about six feet four. This tall pile of loose bones, with black-rimmed glasses, didn’t actually march; he ambled, and that made me feel slightly uneasy. He was always reading some book or other on the march, and when I stared pointedly at him he’d raise his eyes from the book and give me a dazzling smile. What could I do? I had no real authority and in any case he was thoughtful enough always to march in the rear on his own so that the rest of the squad couldn’t see him. That infectious smile hasn’t changed to this day and we have remained friends. His name is Denis Norden.

Why we were attached to the Second Army was a mystery to all of us and I suspect also to the War Office. I assumed that the First Army were the desert rats in the North African campaign. Apart from these two armies there was the Fourteenth Army, known as the Chindits, fighting a hazardous war in the dark, steaming jungles of Burma, but that leaves eleven armies unaccounted for, and even if you include the Salvation Army there are still ten others in action. As far as the Second Army was concerned, we were being assembled for an assault on the coast of Europe known as the Second Front, and if we were being prepared for the Second Front, what was the First? Questions, questions, questions. What I found most difficult to digest, was how would our attachment of eighteen RAF wireless operators increase our chances of winning the war? But what did we know? We were a very small cog in a massive, unwieldy contraption called ‘Hostilities’.

We were with the Second Army but not of it. They held their parades and we were not included; their every move was governed by King’s rules and regulations, ours by whatever sprung to mind. The RAF pay structure was different from theirs: had I not been an honest idiot I could have put myself down for ten pounds a week—or perhaps not, but I doubt if the army CO was getting that sort of money.

Our schoolroom possessed a blackboard all along one wall. Again questions arose: why were we in a schoolroom and what was there to learn? We were all under the impression that we were fully trained. Another stumbling block was where we were to sit. There were three rows of desks, but they were for infants. It would be impossible for Denis Norden even to contemplate sitting there—we would never get him out. In the event he perched on the desk top, and most of the others followed his example. When they were all finally settled, fags lit up, one of them polishing his boots, and Denis of course engrossed in the pages of his latest book, the others eyed me with a kind of expectancy and I looked back at them, hoping for suggestions. It was then that I noticed a stick of white chalk in the gully beneath the blackboard and, without further thought, as if someone was pulling the strings, I sketched the innards of a wireless set, roughly remembered from a textbook we had had during our course at Madley. The diagram remained clear in my mind but what it represented I had not the faintest idea. It didn’t really matter: it was all a subterfuge. If we were visited by the army CO or his adjutant, it would appear that I was instructing the class in the intricacies of a wireless set—please God they were as ignorant as I was. I explained the plot to the class. One of them would be a lookout to warn of any approaching brass hats and the rest could do as they pleased. It was unanimously accepted and immediately someone started shuffling a pack of cards, and even Denis lowered his book; but there was one exception—there’s always one…In this case it was a little genius called Shackmaster. He was only about five feet four but intellectually he couldn’t have been much behind Einstein. If, for instance, you were talking about the Suez Canal and you happened to mention it was almost forty miles long there would be a snort and Shackmaster would quietly exclaim, ‘Exactly one hundred miles long. It was built by Lessops,’ and before you knew he would be vouchsafing the height of the Sphinx. This we tolerated, but on subsequent days we were to be well in his debt.

Each day we marched from the mess hall to the schoolroom in order to relax and enjoy ourselves. My scheme for a holiday home was cruising along when a sudden cry from the lookout warned us that the CO and his adjutant were approaching. There was a flurry of frenzied activity and when the two officers entered the room the class was facing the blackboard in rapt attention. On seeing them I sprang to attention but the CO ordered me to carry on and I did. Tapping the blackboard with my knuckle, I said, ‘Shackmaster, should this be a triode or a double diode triode?’ Shackmaster was magnificent. He rattled off such verbal babble of technical mumbo-jumbo that Marconi must have wondered where he’d gone wrong, but when Shackmaster started on about electrical impulses bouncing off the stratosphere and megahertz, holding up my hand I stopped him, as, baffled and bewildered, the two officers had left. The cards were being dealt again, Denis opened his book at the marker and I rubbed the board clean and invited Shackmaster to chalk a different diagram on the board in case the two officers came back. Oh yes, you’ve got to be several jumps ahead to be a skiver!

I was still punch drunk at Shackmaster’s grasp of the mysteries of a wireless set. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, streets ahead of anyone I’d ever met, but he was not perfect. Oh no, he was unable to see the funny side of anything, even when he looked in the mirror. Comedy to him was a frivolous waste of energy which left him open to ridicule. For instance, somebody might say, ‘I saw a Blenheim yesterday with one of its four engines blazing.’ You didn’t have to address this to Shack, only make sure he heard it, and as usual his snort would be bang on cue and he would reply, ‘It couldn’t have been a Blenheim. A Blenheim only has two engines.’ This would be greeted by cries of derision and send Shackmaster scrabbling in his pack for his book to prove his point; the trap was set and poor Shack was sniffing the cheese. Somebody else would pipe up, ‘I saw it too. Shack’s right—it wasn’t a Blenheim, it was a single-engined Halifax.’ By now Shackmaster would be almost apoplectic with rage. How could we describe a Halifax bomber as single-engined? On reflection I take no pride in how we baited the poor lad, but I think I learned a very important lesson in life. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are academically, top-class master of this and that: all these achievements must be sprinkled with humour or else your superior knowledge is worthless. I didn’t tease Shack after that; you don’t take a blind man to visit the Tate Gallery.

The schoolroom was situated on the edge of a largish forest and as the days were getting warmer I applied and got permission to carry on our refresher course outdoors. The next day we carried a large table deep into the wood, followed by benches to sit on around it and presumably to discuss wireless problems. The four people not at the table were the lookouts and we all carried on from where we left off in the schoolroom, except most of us were stripped to the waist in order to get ourselves a healthy tan.

But too much of a good thing is more than enough or, to put it another way, we were all getting a bit cheesed off with our daily shirk. Lying out in a sun-dappled wood, writing home, reading, playing poker and throwing darts at a board tacked on to a tree may be all very well for an elderly coachload on a mystery tour, but as far as we were concerned there was a war on and again, why were we here? It was painfully obvious that the army had no idea why we had been tacked on to their ration strength; they’d obviously had no instructions from above and frankly I’m sure we were becoming a source of embarrassment. We were billeted with the soldiers, and in the evenings we had drinks with them in the local, but as far as the war was concerned we were strangers.

It was then that an idea came to me. It was daring and risky, but at least it would be positive. I went to see the army commanding officer. I was shown into his office immediately and straightaway I came to the point by asking him what exactly we were supposed to be doing attached to the Second Army. He threw up his hands and said, ‘I’m as much in the dark as you are,’ which came as no surprise, so I fired my first salvo by suggesting that we should be sent on leave.

He pondered this for a minute or two and I took the opportunity to leap in with a reason for requesting leave. I told him that we hadn’t been on leave for over six months. He was visibly taken aback by this and I wondered if I’d gone too far, because prior to our posting to Swaffham a few weeks ago I’d enjoyed seven days at home and I presumed that so had the rest of my lads. But I was worrying for nothing. The CO brightened and agreed that we should have leave; in fact I think he was glad to see the back of us for a week. The only stipulation he made was that we couldn’t all be absent together and we would have to go two at a time.

Game, set and match. Five minutes later I was breaking the good news to the lads, asserting that as I’d gone out on a limb for this leave I would be one of the first pairing, and the other lucky erk would be drawn out of a hat. Folding up the names, I put them into my glengarry, and with all the mob following I took it into the next hut and asked one of the squaddies to pick out a name. Holding the cap at arm’s length above my head, the army lad reached up and fumbled around and came out with a bit of paper, which I handed over to the nearest of our mob. Unfolding it, he read, ‘Hoppy Holden’. Immediately there were cries of ‘Fix’, ‘Stitch-up’ and ‘It’s a fiddle’, etc., because it was no secret that Hoppy and I were close mates. Then one of the lads blurted out, ‘All the pieces of paper have the name Hoppy Holden written on them,’ but when I upturned the cap on the bed they could see that this was not the case—it was perfectly legitimate. However, there was a trick in it. Inside our forage caps was a ridge and having had a few words with the army wallah, backed up with a packet of fags, I’d made sure that all the other names were on one side of the ridge and Hoppy’s name was on the other, et voilà!

When I walked into our house they wanted to know if I’d deserted as it was only a few weeks ago that I was on seven days’ leave, and to be quite honest the days dragged by. I was keen to get back to the rough and tumble of Swaffham. Sadly, when I returned all future leave was cancelled. There was a flap on and we were all issued with travel warrants for a place called Gatton Park just outside Reigate. Into my third year in the air force and although there were plenty of aircraft whizzing about the sky I had yet to see a plane on the ground, and I’d never even seen a WAAF.

From the bustling, busy little market town of Swaffham to the quiet gentility of Gatton Park—what a difference, what a contrast! As the lorry deposited me inside the gates, I was deeply moved by the rolling splendour. Perhaps I was dead and this was the first staging post to heaven. Acres of grassland surrounding a wood, stately trees from the saplings of Elizabethan days—I was enraptured. There wasn’t a tree in sight in the part of Oldham near Featherstall Road. Had there been one we would have been up and down it like a squirrel with its tail on fire. The centrepiece of Gatton Park was an elegant Georgian mansion and, just a few strides away, a private chapel, the whole bordered by shiny manicured lawns, and I couldn’t get over how green the grass was, a totally upper-class strain of the greyish blades sprouting from cracks in the Mucky Broos like the tufts of hair in an old man’s ear. For the moment a wave of nostalgia swept through me, but it was only a moment. I just stood by my kitbag, pack still on my back, lost in wonder as I took in a section of bright sparkling water almost hidden by the house.

The home of the Colman’s mustard family, Gatton Park, was their fiefdom. This I learned later from one of the estate workers who lived in a row of much humbler dwellings a discreet distance from the big house. This local, who turned out to be one of the gardeners, added. ‘Isn’t it amazing that all this splendour was built by the little bit of mustard you leave on the edge of your plate?’ This I didn’t understand. I’d never left a bit of mustard on the edge of my plate—in fact mustard and I had yet to be introduced.

With a sigh of content I accepted the fact that once again I’d fallen on my feet. Granted it wasn’t the operational flying station I had been eagerly expecting, but then again there were more things in life besides the war. I was shaken out of my reverie when a voice yelled ‘That man there.’ I whirled round to see a sergeant beckoning to me. He was with a group of new intakes, milling around, kitbags at their feet, packs still not offloaded. To me they were all strangers and to each other, the only thing we had in common being the badge sewn on to the sleeve of our uniform of a fist clutching bolts of lightning denoting that we were all wireless operators.

After a meal, which would be better described as iron rations, suggesting that the cooks were new as well and didn’t yet know where everything was, the sergeant led us down to a row of tents by the side of one of the roads. Eight of us were allotted to each one. It was only when we crouched in a huddle underneath the ridge pole that we realised that eight of us in the tent was going to be a tight squeeze; three of us would have been one too many. Perhaps if we left our kitbags outside?

It sounded like a good idea until one miserable git said, ‘What if it rains?’

We looked at each other in dismay—there’s always one in a group.

Then someone else piped up with, ‘What if one of us is taken short in the night? Unless he’s by the tent flap he won’t be able to get out.’

Somebody else suggested getting a bucket, but he was overruled when somebody else said, ‘There isn’t room for a bucket.’

In the event it wasn’t as catastrophic as we’d made out. Half the tent would be on watch while the other half slept. Had they told us this at the outset it would have saved a lot of aggro.

The Colman family were not now in residence, as the whole area of Gatton Park had been commandeered by the RAF for the duration of the war. Already there were several air force bods established on the estate—mainly administration, cooks, general duty men. Naturally officers had commandeered the beautiful home of the Colmans and, of course, the officers’ mess, leaving the other ranks to occupy the cottages. Trust the base wallahs to get their feet under the table while the lads at the sharp end presumably had to make do with tents. We were under no illusions: when we were sent off to join the action they would remain at Gatton Park until they were evicted by the cessation of hostilities.

After a few days we were organised into watches, as we would be in wireless contact with satellite stations twenty-four hours a day. More menacing still, the transmissions would be made from the backs of Bedford trucks equipped as well, if not better, than a static wireless office. Another week passed and still we didn’t have a CO, but our luck couldn’t last for ever; nor did it.

I was on duty watch. I wasn’t actually at my set—in fact I wasn’t even in the truck. Stripped to the waist, I was sitting on the steps, face upturned to the warm sun. I wasn’t entirely out of touch with my satellite stations: inside, the volume on my set was full up. Headphones hanging within earshot, I dozed gently, when suddenly a shadow fell over me.

Sleepily, I lifted my hand to shade my eyes when a harsh voice said, ‘Where’s your shirt?’

‘It’s in the van,’ I replied, settling down again.

The voice, now affronted, spoke again, ‘Well, put it on at once, and say “sir” when you address an officer.’ My heart sank: it was the end of the holiday.

The following morning we were paraded to hear him make his commanding officer speech. He was only a flight lieutenant, a middle-aged man who had a perpetual look of surprise on his face. He wore an officer’s peaked cap but he’d taken the stiffener out of it so that he would look like Jack the Lad, but he addressed us all as if he was expecting a raspberry at the end of each sentence. From now on there would be discipline; any misdemeanour, no matter how minor, would be punished; he was going to lick us into shape, etc. Most of it was delivered at me and I knew from that moment that he was going to be a problem, the enemy within.

Throughout my life I have followed courses of action on the spur of the moment when two minutes of rational thought might have dragged me back from the abyss. This was the case when one Sunday morning in Gatton Park we were marched down to the chapel to attend the service. We halted opposite the arched door-way, and we were straggling forward, dragging off our headgear before we entered, when for some unknown reason I put my cap back on my head, broke ranks and stood at ease until the others were all inside and I was alone. I was motivated by a barrack-room lawyer memory that taking part in a church service was not obligatory, and if on religious grounds you objected to entering a church you would be excused. Why on earth did these idiotic ideas catapult me into situations beyond my control? But the die was cast.

One of the real sergeants sauntered over to me when all the rest were inside sorting out their hymnbooks. ‘What’s up with you?’ he said in a world-weary voice as if I wasn’t the only one that morning to come out with some crackpot notion.

‘I’m not going into church, sergeant,’ I replied with the assurance that I had a good case.

‘Aren’t you C. of E.?’ he snapped at me.

Good grief, that was a critical flaw in my stance. Why had I requested Church of England to be stamped on my identity disc? There were lots of other religions I could have claimed: Muslim, Trappist monk, Buddhist. My brain raced as if I was an inept politician trying desperately not to answer a simple question, but before I could blurt out an adequate response he’d marched towards the door and entered the chapel, whipping off his glengarry just in time.

I realised I’d won the exchange. All I had to do now was to stand at ease and enjoy the warm summer breeze. I was looking the other way, so I didn’t notice the approach of the senior officer until he spoke.

‘What’s the problem, lad?’ he said in a quiet, fatherly voice.

I sprang to attention and spluttered the first thing that came to mind. ‘I don’t believe in it, sir, not with the war and people being killed.’ Actually I’m sure these words bear not the slightest relation to what I actually said—it poured out in fluent gabble.

He looked at me uncertainly, and then reasonably he said, ‘Why not give it one more try?’ and as he said it he gently propelled me into the chapel.

It was embarrassing to say the least. All heads were turned towards the entrance as we came in. Then the senior officer, his arm still round my shoulder in case I made a break for it, led me to a place next to him on the front pew—‘Officers only’.

As we sat, the padre came over to where I was sitting, and, laying his hands on the ledge in front of me, he began a lecture on why it was imperative that everyone should be Christian. After a few minutes he took his eyes from me and to the chapel in general he said, ‘Let us pray for all our wayward lambs.’ There was a shuffling as the congregation knelt and I did the same, blushing like an eastern sunset as my thoughts sped off at a right angle, as I noticed that, being in the officer’s pew, I had a hassock to kneel on and I am sure the erks were on bare boards, ha, ha.

Perhaps that lunatic action of mine was responsible—but I shall never know. If my memory serves me right, I can’t recall any more church services at Gatton Park.

One night I was on the midnight-to-eight watch, waiting for the welcome sound of the lorry bringing our relief from the camp. After the formalities of handing over were complete, we’d board the lorry, which would then take us back to camp for breakfast and, best of all, a few hours of blissful oblivion in our blankets. The night watch had been particularly draining, but the sun was strong and the birds were twittering ‘Good mornings’. What a pity to waste such a glorious summer asleep! On impulse I waved the lads off—there’d be plenty of time to sleep when we’re dead—and I started the long walk downhill to the town. Reigate was still unexplored, as far as I was concerned, but at least I knew where the WVS was (the Women’s Voluntary Service), a canteen run by bright-eyed, tweedy women with perpetual smiles who dished out tea and buns, rock cakes, sweets, and cigarettes to anyone in uniform who happened to drop by. These surrogate mothers giving up their free time for their highly valued war effort were a different world from the exhausted, shawled women of the Lancashire cotton towns. I banished the thought. They probably had a WVS in Oldham too, but somehow I doubted it.

Contentedly I munched on a bun—it was a good idea of mine —and sipped my tea. It tasted much better drunk from pottery. Also it was a well-known fact that the tea we drank at the camp was liberally dosed with bromide in order to dampen our appreciation of the opposite sex. The things we believed…Sighing with content, I continued to munch. Who needs sleep? I was feeling warm and comfortable and in a strange way the incessant babble of conversation was receding, as if someone was turning down the volume. The next thing I knew was that I was jerked out of a state of well-being by a crashing snore, and it was only when I noticed other servicemen staring at me that I realised that the snore had been mine, ruefully answering my cocky assertion, ‘Who needs sleep?’

I couldn’t stay in the WVS any longer. I put down my half-eaten bun and hurried into the fresh air. It was invigorating and once again I was wide awake and Reigate was my oyster. I took in my surroundings. Reigate itself was a flurry of activity during the day, with masses of servicemen—RAF, army, Poles, ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service), a veritable league of nations. The British drove sedate old three-ton Bedfords, which pulled up at traffic lights with an apologetic wince of brakes; and now there were Chevrolets pulling up at the lights, doing at least forty miles an hour, stopping dead when they pressed the foot pedal with a triumphant chooooo of the airbrakes, shattering all the gentility of this lovely old town—the Canadian Army had arrived, careering everywhere, giving the impression that there was no speed limit in Toronto and beyond. But the envy of all the young bloods were the Canadian despatch riders. Even these weren’t just men on motorbikes: they rode Harley Davidsons, the nearest thing to a horse on wheels.

The realisation hit me that I was still only twenty yards or so from the WVS and I’d been standing on one spot for the last twenty minutes, gawping like a hayseed from the mountain country. Then a motor horn peeped and a Bedford pulled up by the kerb. I hadn’t even seen it arrive and had no idea why he was tooting. Could I have been asleep on my feet? He called out ‘Eric.’ Oh, blessed chariot! I dozed through the third gear of Reigate Hill and when we arrived back at camp I took off my boots, and that’s all I could manage before sleep overtook me.