If I Don’t Write It Nobody Else Will

I climbed into a top bunk and, stuffing my head into my rolled-up jacket, which was to be my pillow, I cried silently, tears pouring from me until I ran dry; stifled sobs racked my body in a bout of self-pity and homesickness. I hated change, but this wasn’t just change, it was a monumental leap into the unknown. It never struck me that my misery was the ending of my youth and the beginning of my education, the door opening to manhood.

Lesson one came the following morning. Everyone had left the hut to parade outside, except that is the old sergeant, two smart characters in sports jackets and flannels, possibly thirtyish, and me, fascinated by the three of them whispering together. Then one of them took out his wallet and surreptitiously passed over something that crinkled into the sergeant’s big hand. While it was disappearing into his trouser pocket, he glanced around to check that they were alone, and with a start he spotted me, and barked, ‘Outside, you, or I’ll have you on a fizzer.’ I hurried out, followed by the irate NCO, but the two ‘nudge, nudge, wink, winks’ didn’t leave the hut. Nor did they appear on any other subsequent parade and I learned my first lesson in the academy of life: there’s always a way round everything if you have the wherewithal.

On one of our next parades we were all in uniform, well most of us, some partially fitted, some ill fitted and one or two fit only for the dustbin. We were being instructed in the art of forming fours, dressing, halting, about turning, etc.—not a taxing programme for us lads, but there’s always one…Ours was an obviously well-educated, well-connected youth, six feet four, with a podgy, lumpy body misshapen by three square meals a day since birth in houses where dinner was taken in the evening and not at midday. Apparently there wasn’t a uniform to fit him, so when we all paraded he lined up with us in his civilian suit and his box gas mask held round his shoulders by string; the only bit of uniform was a forage cap, which was obviously too small and looked even more ludicrous when worn perfectly straight on top of his head. He viewed everything with disdain, as if he’d just woken up in a rubbish tip. But this wasn’t all. He was dysfunctional: his legs and arms were strangers to the rest of his body, he couldn’t march, his right arm went out with his right leg, and when the order came ‘By the left, quick march,’ out went his left foot and so did his left arm, so he marched with a sort of lopsided gait. The way he managed to keep his hat on defied all the laws of gravity. The loud bellowing, the cajoling, the demonstrations of the drill sergeant were useless. To put it simply, he was a misfit and no further use to the RAF, and within two days he was demobbed and back in civvy street. Poor lad, I felt sorry for him. On the other hand, I wish I’d thought of that—but then again I was happy where I was, and he undoubtedly enjoyed a much better life in his ancestral home than he did in our Nissen hut.

After a few days of spit-and-polished boots, button burnishing, inoculations and drill, we were ready for our first posting. It was…Blackpool. When I read this information on the noticeboard my heart surged with joy. Sixteen weeks in Blackpool, the whole summer in Blackpool—I could scarcely believe it. Accommodation and food were free, and on top of that we received money to spend, so you can imagine my euphoria as I shouldered my pack and rifle to rough it in the land of my dreams.

On arrival at Blackpool Central station our intake was paraded so as to be informed of the allotment of billets, and once again my cup of happiness was dangerously near the top. We were not to live in barracks, Nissen huts or tents; we were billeted in bed-and-breakfast guesthouses a short walk from the tower and even shorter to the promenade. Perhaps this was a dream and I was still in Padgate with my head buried in the jacket.

As I made my way up the stairs of my guesthouse, carpeted stairs too—what a novelty, I stood at the door of the bedroom, wondering if I should knock. I could scarcely believe my eyes. Perhaps I should have taken my boots off before I entered. There was no tatty, torn linoleum on the floor but instead a thick wall-to-wall carpet, a rug in front of a dressing table—a dressing table no less, twin beds with white pillows, eiderdowns, bedside tables with lamps and a glistening chandelier above. It was more palatial than anything I had ever seen, even in films. I couldn’t wait for bedtime, or maybe I should now say, ‘Roll on lights out’. Apart from Padgate, it was the first time I’d had a bed to myself. Then an awful thought struck me: I had been sent to the wrong address and any minute now an irate air vice marshal in a dressing gown full of medals would walk in and bellow, ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ But it was no mistake.

The man sharing the room was slightly taller than me, with light floppy hair above a boyish, unlined face; even so I reckoned he must have been pushing thirty. He merged effortlessly with the room, moving gracefully as he unpacked an enormous suitcase and placed bottles of various potions on the dressing table, two monogrammed hairbrushes, even a box of powder. On removing the lid he dipped in a powder puff and patted his face, scrutinising every inch of it in the dressing-table mirror as if yesterday he was somebody else. Satisfied, he turned away from the mirror, looking over his shoulder to check that everything at the back was in order, and resumed his unpacking, placing a pair of purple pyjamas on one of the beds and thus claiming his territory. I placed my razor and a comb on my bedside table and the housewarming was over.

The following morning was a rude awakening. My room-mate, whose name I’ve quite forgotten, had already gone, leaving a heady smell of perfume behind him, and I realised that I was going to be late. I ran to the parade area and with a feeling of dread I saw ranks of blue in front of a flight sergeant standing on a low wall and addressing them in a loud commanding voice. I squeezed myself into the rear rank, but not carefully enough. I knew that when the flight sergeant, without any pause in his welcome speech, said, ‘Take that man’s name’ he was referring to me, and that evening in the office of the CO (commanding officer) I was on a charge of being late on parade, for which damnable sin I was awarded four days jankers. In other words, each evening in full equipment, including backpack and tin hat, I was to be found kneeling to scrub the floor of the orderly room. From a distance I must have looked like Quasimodo searching for his contact lens. After four days of scrubbing the same piece of floor, my punishment was over and I learned my second lesson: if you are about to arrive late it is better not to arrive at all. When I spotted the whole mob lined up I should have gone back to bed; they wouldn’t have missed me.

The most important part of our training was learning the Morse code, essential to wireless operators. Our schoolrooms were at the Winter Gardens, a venue I played many times years afterwards in a more peaceful, pleasurable age. Incidentally, the mastering of the Morse code was a doddle for me: I was already proficient and could send and receive in Morse code as fast, and in some cases faster, than some of the instructors. I’d mastered this skill when I was sixteen in order to be a wireless operator in the merchant navy. On reaching a fairly competent standard, I applied to the Marconi School of Wireless in Manchester and I’m sure they would have accepted me but for two monumental obstacles. First, not too difficult, I had to get my father’s permission but the second, the impossible barrier, was in the small print: the course would cost fifty pounds, almost as much as our house was worth, so joining the merchant navy was out of the question, which was probably just as well because the war was imminent and, as I was to learn later, the German U-boat packs were no respecters of young British seamen and my chances of being seventeen would have considerably diminished.

However, here I was in an extraordinary, sunny Blackpool, marching, drilling, doing rifle practice and dozing through the lazy afternoons in the Winter Gardens, fitter than I’d ever been. I even enjoyed guard duties, standing as smartly turned out as the Grenadiers outside Buckingham Palace in tin hat and full blancoed webbing with bayoneted rifle, enduring endless box-Brownie camera snaps and trying not to blink when the shutter went.

The weeks rushed by too quickly for my liking. I was now conversing with my instructors at a speed too fast for ordinary erks. Physically I could have run to the top of the Matterhorn thanks to PT every day on the beach; I was suntanned to a deep walnut, clear eyed and bushy tailed; I even looked forward to guard duty, although we were only guarding Marks and Spencer’s. Marching to the corner, clattering my boots on the pavement as I effected a copybook turn before marching smartly back to my clattering halt, left turn, order arms and a last stamp of standing at ease—awesome; all the holiday makers sitting outside their digs enjoyed watching my every movement and when I stood easy they all relaxed and lifted their newspapers or continued their interrupted conversations, the show over until the next time I got itchy feet.

It was heady stuff. I was a bulwark of the Empire, so enveloped in a world of self hero worship that I didn’t hear the screaming child being dragged along by a harassed mother who stopped and pointed to my bayonet and snarled, ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll tell that man to stick his knife in you.’ The lad wiped his snotty nose on his already overworked sleeve and then, taking a few steps up to me, he kicked me fiercely on the shin, wearing clogs. I was so startled that I let go of my rifle and it crashed to the pavement. The newspapers went down, all the talking stopped as if in a drill movement and all heads swivelled in my direction. I picked up my rifle just as the sergeant marched out to see what the commotion was all about, and again I was on a fizzer and an apple-sized bruise on my leg was no defence.

Apropos of nothing, I learned a very important wrinkle while on guard duty. At night, if you feel tiredness creeping into you, hold your rifle with the butt on the ground so that the point of the bayonet is under your chin. If tiredness seeps insidiously into your brain, your head begins to nod and ouch, you’re wide awake again.

Strangely enough, I never saw my room-mate during the day, so he obviously wasn’t a trainee wireless operator. No matter, we went out for a drink together some evenings to the Queen’s Hotel. We never drank more than a half pint of bitter each, but I couldn’t help noticing that whereas I took hefty swallows from my glass he sipped his daintily; and we never really conversed. His eyes furtively searched the customers as if he was looking for somebody and one evening as we made our way back to the digs he said, ‘We nearly got off tonight.’ I didn’t answer because I hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about, for as far as I could recollect there hadn’t been a woman in the room except the one behind the bar and he always ignored her.

It must be remembered that I had spent all my life up to a few weeks before in Oldham, which was hardly the sophisticated centre of the universe; and in those days homosexuality was a word we had never come across, let alone understood. I was still an innocent abroad and I suspected nothing. My room-mate was a very pleasant, likeable fellow and even if he did use face cream and wear pyjamas it only went to show that he came from a well-to-do background in which his gentle, superior ways were the norm. Conversely he must have thought of me as one of the peasantry, a bumbling village idiot who went to bed without washing, clad in my RAF-issue vest and underpants. For my own part I felt lucky to have found such a delightful room-mate.

On one occasion I received a cake from home. The last one had been a disaster, as the mice had had most of it, although I’d put it in my kit bag to guard against such a catastrophe. This time, however, I stood on my bed and hung the cake in my shirt from the chandelier. This way it would be out of reach of the little terrors. My room-mate was asleep, or I assumed he was. I turned off my bedside lamp and settled down on my back, hands behind my head, awaiting the sandman and wondering if I’d tied the cake bundle securely enough. My lids were getting heavy when suddenly I was wide awake. Inside my bed I sensed rather than felt something crawling towards my thigh. It could only be a mouse…Very gently and slowly, I withdrew my arm from the back of my head, and then crashed it down with all my strength—and my room-mate yelled, ‘Ouch!’ Quickly I put my lamp on and he was abject with apologies. I couldn’t grasp what he’d been up to, sliding his hand into my bed. He must have been dreaming. He kept saying sorry and that he wasn’t like other men: he had been a ballet dancer before he’d been called up, and he missed his friends. I didn’t know what he was babbling on about. When I switched my light off and settled down, he was still talking and the penny still hadn’t dropped about his motives; in fact I was only glad it hadn’t been a mouse. I was no wiser when a few days later he was demobbed. Apparently he had turned up on parade wearing lipstick and mascara. What’s so terrible about that? I’d known him for only a few weeks but I missed him when he’d gone and was glad that I’d not been born into the aristocracy and made to wear make-up.

However, on balance my training in Blackpool was idyllic, but nothing lasts for ever, and we marched and drilled to the band of the Royal Air Force in our passing-out parade on the forecourt of the Metropole Hotel. Filled with exultation, I considered signing on for a full twelve years—it wasn’t such a bad career. After sixteen weeks of high summer in Blackpool, I was bronzed, fit and well out of the chrysalis I’d brought with me to Padgate. I thought the war was a doddle and felt privileged to have been invited to take part. But I didn’t quite know it all: I still had a lot to learn and one of the hard rules of life is that when the birds are singing and the sun is shining and you are in a state of utter content, that’s the danger signal and in the middle of a happy smile, wallop! The sucker punch.

Eagerly scanning the noticeboard every morning for the where-abouts of my posting, I didn’t care where it was. Any operational airfield would suffice. At least I’d be sending and receiving messages that mattered, chatting up members of the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), with aeroplanes taking off one after another for Berlin or the Ruhr, whatever was the target for the night, counting the aircraft as they returned in the lightening sky of early dawn, and with the WAAFs. The mess hall would be mixed—good grief, would I ever get time to sleep? Sadly, like so many of my optimistic fantasies of things to come, it bore little relation to the actuality, but I lived in hope and my heart leapt when I saw my name on the noticeboard the following day. It straightened itself out when I read my posting to a place in Herefordshire called Madley and, underneath, ‘All personnel above report to guard room to collect travel warrants at fourteen hundred hours.’ So at two o’clock I stood before the corporal in the guard room, which in peacetime had been the children’s department in Marks and Spencer’s. As he was making out my movement order, I asked him if Madley was a fighter or a bomber station.

Without looking up he said, ‘If you see a fighter or a bomber at Madley, he’s lost.’ I didn’t get it, and as he handed me my documents he took pity on me. ‘All in good time, laddie. You’re still in training and if I were you I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to put my head on the bloc.’ I didn’t get that either. What it is to be ignorant!

Madley itself may be a delightful little town but the place where the three-ton lorries deposited us in the early darkness preceding the onset of winter, was barren and pockmarked by Nissen huts, corrugated iron and concrete floors—Blackpool had hardly prepared us for this. The first morning at Madley dawned cold and grey. It seemed like only yesterday we were in shirt sleeves, basking in the golden summer of Blackpool. How quickly the seasons change! Greatcoats now unpacked were the order of the day.

We were paraded and after a short address the commanding officer gave us a lot more information, which was mainly carried away on the brisk east wind; then he called four of us out and for some unknown reason I happened to be one of them, and we became class leaders. We were given black armbands with the letters ‘CL’ in white, and we had to wear them on our sleeve. Our duties were not too onerous. We had to line up our allotted section and then march them off to the classes. Afterwards we marched them back again, and when we shouted ‘Halt’ and ‘Dismiss’ our responsibility was at an end. Why we had been chosen to be unpaid, stripeless NCOs I will never know. There were quite a few sergeants and corporals better equipped to do our basic duties, but they were permanent staff and presumably had other duties such as counting the pencils after we’d left at the end of our course and replenishing stocks for the next intake. Secretly, though, I really enjoyed my taste of authority.

We were in Madley for further training. There were fewer drills, less marching, and no guard duty at all, but there was more about the complex inside of a wireless set and naturally a quicker, more competent way of receiving and sending messages in Morse Code, call signs, contacts, wavelengths—in fact everything a wireless operator should know.

I had not expected to be posted somewhere for further training; after all, I thought we’d passed out. At this rate we’d still be under instruction when the war ended. I was beginning to wonder when, and if ever, we would be posted on real active service. The only aircraft we’d seen up to now were Halifaxes, Blenheims, Messerschmitts, Dorniers and Spitfires, but unfortunately they were all hanging from the ceiling of one of the classrooms. When would we be close enough to touch a real one? When would we be posted to an aerodrome? I fervently hoped to fly as a wireless operator air gunner.

At last one grey, blustery morning the noticeboard was full with postings. The marching, saluting and PT were over, and we were about to be distributed into the real war. Eager faces scanned the board and there was an electricity in the wind, almost tangible, as the lads broke off to join mates who had been posted to the same destination. I found myself alone, searching the noticeboard for my name. It wasn’t there. Carefully I went through all the lists, but I was definitely absent. It could only have been a clerical error and I wasn’t unduly worried—after all, I was a much tougher hombre now, an ‘old sweat’. But in fact these false premises didn’t last. The next morning reality dawned when I saw a convoy of three-ton lorries and the whole intake, loaded with packs and kitbags, hopped on board to be transported to the railway station. My Jack the Lad attitude disappeared in a wave of abject panic. By midday the camp was deserted. I’d been abandoned, and was marooned in a ghost collection of empty Nissen huts. There was no babble of voices as the lads left the mess hall to douse their mess tins in a drum of greasy lukewarm water, or the odd burst of laughter; now all was as silent as the inside of a pyramid stranded on a dreary, windswept stretch of a forgotten part of Herefordshire. The officers, NCOs, cooks, etc.—the permanent staff—were still here, and I wandered about in an advanced state of shock, hoping to be noticed, but for all the attention paid to me I might just as well have climbed a tree and joined the rooks. I sat miserably on my bunk in the empty Nissen hut, shivering in my greatcoat with one of my blankets round my shoulders, as the stove was black and cold. I was sinking into the deepest depression I could remember. When I’d descended to the lowest point of despair, an idea hit me, so obvious that it surprised me that I hadn’t thought of it before—I could have saved myself a whole lot of anguish.

Full of old madam, I strode in to the administration offices and demanded to see the CO. The corporal I addressed was startled out of his wits. This was quite out of order: no erk had ever marched in before and demanded to see the Lord God Almighty. Then his whole demeanour changed from bafflement to one of under-standing.

‘Are you 1522813 Sykes?’ he said, looking at a form before him.

I said, ‘Yes,’ and the mystery was solved. He handed me a travel warrant for me to go home for seven days’ leave. Transport had been arranged to take me to the station. When I asked why I hadn’t gone with the others, he told me that they’d all passed out with the rank of AC2 whereas I had been promoted to AC1. Wonderful! My next step up would be leading aircraftsman, and then corporal—my fantasies rattled on, and I was up to the rank of warrant officer, when the corporal rudely interrupted by handing me my travel warrant and instructing me to be at the transport section at fourteen hundred hours.

The mess for the ‘other ranks’ was closed as they’d all left, and as I was the only ‘other rank’ I ate in the sergeants’ mess with the permanent staff. It made a pleasant change to eat Maconochie’s stew off a plate rather than from a tin. I sat next to the sergeant who had been in charge of our intake, and as we munched he told me that he was a regular and had served overseas. He painted such graphic visions of desert, date palms, camel trains, sun and generally what a wonderful life he’d enjoyed in the RAF until Hitler came along. Again my life’s ambition veered sharply in another direction: I would sign on as a regular in the RAF and wallow in the fleshpots of the world. I told him that I was being posted to an airfield in Swaffham, Norfolk, and he looked at me with a puzzled frown on his face.

‘An airfield in Swaffham?’ he repeated, and I showed him my travel warrant.

‘Stay where you are,’ he said. ‘I’ll make some enquiries.’

And he went over to the next table and jabbered earnestly to another sergeant. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there was a lot of head shaking and pointing at me. Then the sergeant stood up, and at the same time carried on with another sergeant. I don’t think my sergeant was making much headway, but when the performance began again, this time between him and one of the cooks, I decided that enough was enough and the train wouldn’t wait, so I legged it to make my own enquiries.

After leaving Madeley with a light heart I went home for seven days’ leave. When I arrived, the house seemed deserted. There was only Dad and Mother—John was now in the navy and Vernon, I believe, had been posted to Ireland; ergo on my seven days’ leave I was the only sibling at home and I spent as little time as possible in residence. I strutted all over Oldham and Royton, buttons brassed, boots as shiny as a Nubian’s bald head; I called in on everybody I knew and quite a few I didn’t; I practically slept in my uniform, applying wet soap to the crease line inside my trousers, which I then carefully placed under my mattress so as to effect a razor-sharp crease for the next day’s exhibition.

The seven days’ heady admiration, as I like to think they were, soon came to an end and I boarded a train for Swaffham. When I arrived at my destination, I was briefed by the transport officer, and I discovered that seventeen other RAF wireless operators had arrived, and as they were all AC2s and I was an AC1, I was put in charge. When I asked the officer about the airfield, he replied that there wasn’t one for miles, and he looked again at my travel vouchers. ‘Yes, you’re in the right place,’ he said, ‘but this is an army base,’ so once again it seemed that my posting to an airfield had been put on hold.

As my duties entailed mainly marching them here and there, there was very little difference from when I was a class leader at Madley, except that this time I had the rank. It was a posting I didn’t understand: surely the army had its own wireless operators? I wasn’t an expert in army procedure, but I felt sure that they must have advanced from the heliograph and semaphore. I can’t remember seeing any of my air force buddies from the course at Madley, and apparently no one recognised me, but as I was one grade above them they were probably under the misapprehension that I was an ‘old sweat’, and after my stint as class leader at Madley I was well versed in marching them from A to B with all the aplomb of a regular flight sergeant.