Life Without Armour (14 page)

For all our marching and counter-marching as Aircraftsmen Second Class Recruits we were paid three shillings a day, one of which was allotted to my mother, who every two weeks took her allowance book to the post office, received fourteen shillings, then crossed the road to the Co-op and came out with almost more groceries than she could carry. The fortnightly pay parade left me with sufficient for tobacco, an occasional foray to the NAAFI, shoe polish, toothpaste and stamps. A pound or two was even put by for my first leave.

We were forbidden to go out during basic training, but Jack Mercer and I found a way through the back fence and went ten miles by tram to his home place of Atherton, where his mother welcomed us with a tin of sweet pears for tea. Few moaned about the food at camp, because the diet was good, and we were easy to satisfy after six years of rationing.

Mixing with people of all families and backgrounds was an interesting diversion. Docherty and a couple of cronies, hard men from Glasgow, kept together in mess and billet, distrusting everyone else for a while due to being in a strange element which they could not control and so felt threatened by. Perhaps because of my name they showed some interest in me, but I preferred arguing the Labour point of view with Ashley Bell, the solicitor's son from Northumberland. As well as sharp lads who had grown up in London there was a tall, good-looking songster from Ireland, and he entertained us with militant or melancholy ditties out of an endless store of songs and verses. Because he could barely read and write we coached him with letters home, and helped to fasten on his complicated webbing equipment.

As the weeks went by one sensed the 120 of our flight becoming more and more cohesive as a unit on the drill ground. The idea was to make us as smart as the Guards and, eventually, marching twenty abreast, the line was so meticulously straight that whoever shouted the orders saw only one man go by at the point of the line passing, as if we were rehearsing for a military tattoo.

My immersion into the land of the all-fed and all-found was agreeable, no decisions to make as long as one did as one was told, which was never onerous or unreasonable. On the other hand, volunteer status was important to me, knowing that I had accepted the life of my own free will, and that call-up could have been avoided on taking Bert Firman's offer of a reserved occupation by training to be a mechanic.

The final parade and march past in July was celebrated with a group photograph, and then a fortnight's leave. In Nottingham most of my friends were also absent in the services, but my girlfriend and I, when not in the cinema, or holding hands in a pub over our beer, fucked the two weeks away with passion and abandon. She didn't seem to enjoy being seen on the street with a smart airman as much as I had hoped, but my mother had either given my civilian clothes to the ragman, or put what fitted on to Brian. My bicycle had also gone, as had most of my books, but having cast myself loose in the big ship of the air force, possessions meant little beyond what could be stuffed into a kitbag.

At the beginning of August, candidates for wireless school were posted to Compton Bassett in Wiltshire to begin twenty-eight weeks' training. Parades were few and, in order that the maximum time be given to learning, there was little or no bullshit, although billet floors had to be kept polished and kit displayed in regulation style at the bed-end.

School started at half past seven, and went on, with a meal break, until six. In a more relaxed pre-war era the length of the course would have been eighteen months, and instruction more thorough, but the times and the human material had changed. My Morse was already up to standard, while others could take at least some words per minute, so that with the initial barrier broken it was only a matter of practice to qualify.

Classes in wireless telegraphy procedure, and the technical aspects of radio, were later followed by the practical side of managing individual radio stations, our receivers and transmitters in Morse contact with each other. Touch-typing was also taught, and we were soon rattling out the loosening up exercise for morning fingers: ‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party', a skill also used for operating teleprinters, as well as taking Morse more neatly than by handwriting.

The place resembled an adult technical college, many of the teachers being civilians or retired RAF signals types, one of the latter entertaining us with an account of plodding around the mountains of the Indian North West Frontier in the '20s with a wireless installation on the back of a mule. To encourage us he sent the complete seduction scene from
Forever Amber
in Morse, adding at the end something not put in by the author: ‘He had shot his bolt!' – then nervously telling us to rub that bit out in case an inspecting officer came in. Another tall, ruddy-faced old man had been a telegraphist for ten years at a place on the southern tip of New Zealand, which experience had left a glint of icy humour in his bright blue eyes.

Two trainee wireless operators of about twenty had seen war service as Marconi officers in the Merchant Navy from the age of sixteen, and came on the course with a row of medal ribbons longer than those on the tunics of most old sweats. Another young man, little older than myself, had spent the latter part of the war in the Far East as second officer on merchant ships, and he also had his decorations. I went on weekend pass with him, to a village near Weston-super-Mare, calling on his etiolated parents, who had been prisoners of the Japanese in China.

The wing-commander in charge of the camp ran the place fairly benignly, but would occasionally inveigh against us via the tannoy speakers in every hut, threatening to stop our ‘
privilegees
', whatever
they
were, if we didn't refrain from rowdy behaviour between classes. We imagined he just liked sitting in his office before a microphone and emphasizing his position as governor of the institution, but when someone defecated into one of the baths he assumed that a person in our hut was to blame. We were asked to reveal who it was, but only the culprit himself knew the answer to that, and none of us had much hope of him owning up, simply because we were totally unable to understand why he had done it, which made it certain that he could not have been in our group. Someone from County Durham wondered if a stray St Bernard called Dropper hadn't been wandering around but, never able to say who had been responsible, we were confined to camp for a fortnight.

Other things seemed equally petty. Walking by the parade ground, a sergeant shouted from fifty yards away: ‘Take that pipe out of your mouth, airman!' which I hadn't realized was against the rules. I came back to the billet one evening to see that the half-dozen books usually on a shelf behind my bed had been strewn across the floor by an inspecting officer on his rounds, signifying that only official kit was to be exposed, and all personal material stowed out of sight in your kitbag. I wasn't a smart bullshit airman after all, though such incidents were only part of the game while being trained.

Halfway through the course we were given fourteen days' leave, and in our first bout of lovemaking I tried to introduce my girlfriend to something apart from the usual ‘missionary' position. She told me angrily that such a trick could only have been picked up from another woman, an unwarrantable assumption, because hard work had been taking up all my time. Whether she was tired of waiting, or wanted to be free of the affair anyway and used this attempt at a bit of fancy fucking as an excuse, was hard to say, but it struck me as so remarkably easy to break up a long association that it didn't much bother me when it happened. What else did you think about when taking Morse? The procedure was as automatic as working at a lathe.

A favourite excursion from the radio school was to shin up 500 feet to Oldbury Castle, by the White Horse that had been carved out of the chalk downs. The westerly view from a spot nearby revealed the beautiful green declivity of Ranscombe Bottom and, not having lived for such an uninterrupted length of time in the countryside, I would sit on the turf thoughtlessly gazing, finding a kind of peace not known to be necessary until then.

As if to console myself for the loss of my girlfriend, though not alas in the same way, I got to know charming, dark-haired Jean Simons. She took me home to meet her father, who clearly did not approve of such a friendship, but the platonic association made me happy for a while.

Progress on the course was carefully measured, and at the halfway point a few who failed the tests were sent to learn another trade. A Nigerian in the class must have been a telegraphist in his native country, for he took the fastest Morse of all. One afternoon the instructor started the sending machine at the normal speed of eighteen, putting up the rate little by little. By twenty-eight words a minute most had stopped taking it, but the ex-Merchant Navy operators, the Nigerian and myself stayed in the race. Morse was easy enough to read at such speeds but difficult to write legibly, and at thirty-six words a minute the field was left to the Nigerian, who continued a few moments longer. Two days later he fell into a kind of fit and had to be taken off the course, but he must have been the greatest Morse-artist of all time.

In the post-war austerity period a typewriter could be sold for today's equivalent of two or three hundred pounds, if you could get one. Thirty vanished from our classroom one dark night, which meant that an airman on the camp must have organized the theft. No one knew who had done it, and the machines were quickly replaced. We spoke few words of condemnation against the thieves, though gave no praise either. One's sense of justice was defined only in so far as knowing that sooner or later those responsible would be caught, since every bag of loot carried a built-in risk deep inside.

On being asked whether or not we would be willing to serve overseas my name immediately went on the list. The only person to sign on with more alacrity than most was the airman in our class who had organized the Great Typewriter Robbery. Unluckily for him, he was plucked from the troopship just before it set off down the Solent, and hauled away to do a couple of years in gaol.

At Christmas we went on leave, our journey delayed by a go-slow on the railways. The train was so crowded that some of us lay half frozen on mail sacks for the five hours it took to reach London. Hundreds got off at Paddington, cursing the engine crew who, it was thought, had made them late for their connections, some airmen hovering by the cab as if intending to lynch them, which sentiment seemed reasonable. I didn't reach Nottingham till midnight, and walked home through the silent town with my kit.

In the New Year ice and snow cut off the camp from all supplies. Fuel was scarce and we were cold. When the NAAFI ran out of stock we cut a way through the wire fence to reduce the distance to a small pub in the village, where we sat by the fire and drank pints of rough, intoxicating cider.

Rations became more meagre, and at one time we went into the mess for little more than a dab of reconstituted potato and a slice of bread, which spartan victuals continued for some time. Nevertheless, instruction was carried on and, though grumbling occasionally, we stayed healthy, except for one man who coughed up a pint of blood one morning, and was removed to the sick quarters, never to be seen again. The wing-commander received a decoration for having kept the school going.

My final assessment on passing the course, on 28 February 1946, was fifty-seven per cent, somewhat low but it did not surprise me, never having been fully at ease with the theory of wireless. The pristine cloth badge sewn on to the arm of my tunic, of a clenched fist emitting six vivid sparks, signified that the wearer was no longer an ordinary inconspicuous erk, but a man with a trade, my first and last certificate of competence. Another shilling a day brought twenty a week into my pocket alone, so that we were now rich, someone quipped, beyond the dreams of average.

The usual embarkation leave often days passed without note, as did my nineteenth birthday. From then on it was a matter of waiting for a troopship to take us to no one knew where, first being shunted with kitbag and all accoutrements by train to the transit camp of Burtonwood in Lancashire. Nothing better to do but roam the lanes, and the streets of St Helens, we talked and walked with whatever girls would, for a little blameless amusement, talk and walk with us. Frank Pardy and I found a girl called Cynthia who, with a friend, kept us company for a few days – difficult to say why her name floated back after so long.

We were without duties or purpose for six weeks, the longest period for me since being at school. Spiritual or inner life was non-existent, no thoughts in those days of God, or philosophizing as to the reason for being on earth, or where one would go to after death (if one went anywhere at all, and if Hell had been signified it would not have mattered), certainly not the anguish to ask: ‘Why am I where I am?' Questions were a luxury, and even less likely to come if nothing could be foreseen, except perhaps mundane speculations as to where on the oblate spheroid we would be going, at which my map of the world was frequently unfolded to make guesses.

We passed the time talking, joking, aimlessly rambling, drinking and sing-songing in the canteen, and sleeping. We got up at six-thirty so as to be in the mess hall with the first rush for breakfast, in case quantity diminished and quality deteriorated. My language was a mixture of economical English, air force slang, and fancy phrases from Nottingham dialect, to be used as verbal trade beads in exchange for whatever rarities my friends could dredge up from their regional speech.

The Americans had been at Burtonwood for much of the war, and an easy-going air lingered after them. Soft spring-like breezes wafted over the camp and surrounding fields, an atmosphere in which to recuperate from hard work on the course, and our privations of the winter. A ‘full house' of inoculations was given against smallpox, typhoid, para-typhoid and many other strange diseases. A sort of convalescence was suggested by the constant ache and irritation in our arms, and the whiff of ether, which did little to check our ebullience at the prospect of leaving the country for the first time.