I repeated his observation.
He continued, ‘I am here to tell you that unless it improves I will kick you so hard up the arse that when you return to earth your uniform will be out of date. Do you understand?’
I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. I thought I would be in trouble.
Instead, he said, ‘I am glad you like my little joke and that you have a sense of humour. You will need it.’
It was at Mons we encountered the spine and strength of the British Army. These were not National Servicemen, crazed with authority, tipsy with power. These were the professional soldiers who, even though they didn’t want us in their army, treated training us as a task to be carried out to the best of their ability. They were the men who you relied on. These were the soldiers who, while calling you ‘sir’, left no doubt who it was running the show. I understood and admired them. What is more they were recognisably creatures from the planet I had known, unlike one or two of my fellow officer cadets and certainly a couple of the officers I encountered at Mons.
I was in a billet with a languid young man who was a son of a member of the aristocracy. He drove a large red sports car and often arrived at the camp gates on Monday mornings accompanied by his ‘chauffeur’, a blonde with long hair who looked like Veronica Lake in
The Blue Dahlia
. His insouciance was awesome. One morning he arrived late on parade and, upon approaching the regimental sergeant major, a man who positively quivered with authority, smiled, and said, ‘Terribly sorry, sergeant major, delayed by tourists outside the Palace.’
My training officer was a captain in a posh regiment. He had a slight Scottish accent delivered in an affected drawl. He didn’t like me. He thought I was an imposter and a useless soldier, an opinion confirmed when he asked me to lead my platoon across a ploughed field to attack a copse allegedly hiding a German gun emplacement.
I studied the map, considered the options and decided on a full frontal assault in true up and at ’em style, like Gary Cooper in
Sergeant York
. I hadn’t calculated that heavy overnight rain had turned the field into treacle and that by the time we had got halfway to our target the majority of my platoon were too knackered to carry on and those of us who slogged it out were being bombarded with thunder flashes and blank rounds. I made it to the cover of trees and fell down in utter exhaustion.
I was lying there thinking of
All Quiet on the Western Front
and that final scene when they are all dying and Lew Ayres reaches out for the butterfly, when I heard and felt an explosion near my crutch. Then another. I opened my eyes to see my favourite officer standing over me lighting thunder flashes and dropping them between my legs, shouting, ‘You are dead, sir, quite dead.’
‘I know, sir,’ I replied, and lay there thinking what a silly bloody game this was. I was also certain I was about to be kicked out, given the dreaded RTU, returned to unit. In fact, they called me in, said I was a borderline case and gave me a second chance. I was to be held back for another term.
My second spell with the training officer was easier for both of us. He came to accept me as a sign the army was going to pot, as I continued to lead my men with the kind of gung-ho bravado displayed by Errol Flynn when he single-handedly defeated the Japanese Army in
Objective Burma
.
My major problem was getting leave. The totting-up system of offences meant that I was more often than not confined to barracks at the weekends. I wasn’t an unruly soldier, merely an untidy one. I decided to concentrate on getting at least one weekend in London. I succeeded to the point where I had only to survive a visit to the adjutant’s office to answer some minor offence, and I was up the West End.
I was marched in, double time, by an NCO who halted me side on to the adjutant’s desk. All I had to do was a smart right turn, bringing up my left knee and driving my foot down to attention facing the adjutant. He was a cavalry officer with beautifully tailored breeches and a soft barathea jacket. He had sandy hair and a moustache and was the very picture of a man born to lead. The sergeant major gave me the right turn, whereupon my left knee caught the underside of the adjutant’s desk and sent a bottle of ink spiralling into the air. It seemed to hang there for a while before tipping its contents over the officer’s trousers. All I remember is the sergeant leaning in and whispering into my ear, ‘Bang goes your fucking weekend.’ And so it proved. I think, in the end, they gave me a commission to get rid of me.
I went back to Devizes to await my posting. The first time I was duty officer I went on a tour of the camp, which included a visit to the barber’s shop. The man who had given me the scalping was just finishing for the day. I inspected his premises and found a hair or two. I charged him with having a dirty barber’s shop and had him doubling round the square for a long time. He didn’t recognise me. He simply thought I was another toffee-nosed public-school shit.
I looked for the corporal but couldn’t find him. I’m still looking.
When my posting came through I found I had to report to a Pay Office at Ashton-under-Lyne in Lancashire. I didn’t mind that. What did bother me was the thought that I was going to be in charge of working out pay for soldiers and I still couldn’t add up. After months of bobbing and weaving I was finally going to get found out. I decided to write again to the War Office, a letter about round pegs and square holes, asking if they were serious about making the best use of journalists by placing them in PR – in which case, I was their man!
9
A CRICKETING GUINEA PIG
I know I’m not supposed to admire Lancastrians, but I do. One way or another I have spent a good part of my working life in the county and have grown to admire a vigorous tribe of people. They have a dry wit I find appealing, best summed up in the story of Ken Taylor, a fine Yorkshire cricketer, making his debut in a Roses game at Old Trafford in the fifties. In those days there was a gate at the foot of the pavilion stairs manned by an attendant. As Taylor walked out in front of thirty thousand hostiles, the attendant opened the gate and as Taylor passed through said, ‘Good luck, young man, but think on, don’t be long.’ With this advice echoing in his mind, Ken was bowled first ball. As he returned, the attendant opened the gate for him and said, ‘Thank you, lad.’
All of which explains why I enjoyed Ashton-under-Lyne. It was my first venture into what my father regarded as enemy territory. When I went home on leave he questioned me closely about the natives and warned me to be on my guard. He thought the people who lived on the wrong side of the Pennines were a tricky lot.
I wasn’t there very long. I received a letter from the War Office saying I should report to the Army PR Department in Whitehall. I was given a desk in a large high-ceilinged room, opposite Captain Johnny Verschoyle. He had silver hair and I think he wore a monocle. If he didn’t, he ought to have. He was retired from his regiment and – if it wasn’t the Bengal Lancers, it should have been. The archetypal old-school British cavalry officer, he was also a kind and funny man.
I was allowed to wear civvies, which was good news except for the fact that the only clothes I possessed were a pair of grey trousers and a black blazer with the badge of Barnsley Cricket Club on the top pocket. My colleagues all wore smart suits, and Captain Verschoyle was immaculate in waistcoat and regimental tie.
‘Which regiment is that, dear boy?’ he asked, indicating my blazer badge.
‘Barnsley Cricket Club,’ I replied.
He lifted an eyebrow. ‘We’ve not had one of those at the War Office for a long time,’ he said. I took the kindly hint and bought a second-hand suit.
The captain’s attitude to his job was, generally speaking, that enquiries from journalists interfered with his daily battle with the
Daily Telegraph
crossword. After sitting opposite him for about a week, I noticed I took many more calls than the good captain. I would receive twenty or more calls to his two or three. I decided to monitor his system and discovered that when he took a call he would say to the caller, ‘Just hang on for a moment, old chap, my other phone is ringing.’ Then he would put the receiver in his drawer and close it before returning to the crossword. After about thirty minutes he would replace the receiver. In that time, all his calls had been transferred elsewhere – mainly to me!
I lived at Auntie Florrie’s cold-water flat in King’s Cross, sleeping on a camp bed in a frozen room. My lodgings could not have been in greater contrast to my place of work. I slept in the slum dwelling where my aunt and her family, like millions of others, lived in the most primitive of circumstances. I watched my auntie washing up in a slimy stone sink on the landing. I watched her daughter, Hetty, a petite attractive girl, who worked at the Kardomah Café, painting her legs with gravy browning to make it look like she was wearing nylons, which she couldn’t afford. She added the seam with eyebrow pencil.
I witnessed all this and then went to work in one of the temples of privilege and power, among sleek men in surroundings so polished you could see your face in the table tops. It didn’t last long. After a month or two they sent me to Southern Command in Salisbury to work under a splendid Northumbrian, Don Leslie. It was to be the happiest time of my army life.
I fell in love with Salisbury as soon as I saw it. The narrow ancient streets, the white cottages, the low-beamed pubs, the cathedral and its close were a part of England I had never seen before except on picture postcards. I was directed to a beautiful Georgian mansion between Salisbury and Wilton. It was a mess for senior officers and I was the first National Service officer to be billeted there. The next in rank to me was a major.
It was an experiment and I was the guinea pig. I don’t know what they were trying to prove. I was never told the nature of the experiment, but I felt like a specimen in a bottle. It was all exceedingly ordered and civilised. I had a batman and my own room. The senior officers treated me with great kindness and understanding but there was a gap between us that even good manners and the best of intentions could not straddle.
Mess dinners were an ordeal. As junior officer present I had to propose the loyal toast and it brought me out in a flop sweat every time. Later, reading in my room, I would hear the clatter of horseplay as my fellow officers indulged in the various rumbustious conclusions to dining-in nights. I didn’t mind being excluded. My great fear was that they might come for me.
Weekends they all cleared off home and I was left the sole occupant of the mess. I played cricket for the South Wilts Club whose members included some fine players and one or two formidable drinkers. After one Saturday game, when the pubs closed, I invited a few of my team-mates back for a drink. The mess had an honour system whereby you poured from an open and well-stocked bar and left a chitty informing the mess steward what you had drunk.
I awoke next morning still in the bar, which gave every indication of having been pillaged. The consequence was a bar bill I didn’t have a chance of paying during my term of service, never mind straightaway. The officer in charge of the bar called me in and asked for an explanation. I told him what had happened. He said he ought to be more angry than he was, but he understood my discomfort at the situation I had been put in and thought it best if he wrote off the bill and we parted company.
‘The experiment didn’t quite work, did it?’ he said.
They had found me digs in a pub on the Shaftesbury Road. He hoped I’d be happier there. I was.
Don Leslie was a rubicund man of relentless energy and great good humour. He had my father’s capacity to see the possibility of delight in whatever he did. He was a gifted leader of men because he wanted everyone to share his joy in the job he was doing. The media loved him. I’m not sure the army shared their enthusiasm. He was too much of a maverick for comfort, yet they could not argue with the advantageous relationship he created with the press. As for me, I had a green Austin saloon from the car pool, a driver, a room in a pub with a large soft bed, and an inspirational boss.
All that was missing was Jane Russell, or Joan Leslie, or Vera Hruba Ralston, or Veronica Lake, or anyone who would have me.
I did find one girl who cuddled me on the riverbank, and as we kissed and canoodled and I was imagining Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in
From Here to Eternity
, we were interrupted by the light from a torch. Behind the beam, a voice said something like, ‘I am PC Dixon, and what are you doing?’ which I thought was a pretty stupid question. He shifted the beam from my eyes to inspect my partner, and as he did so I could see that what he had in his other hand was not his truncheon. I chased him without much enthusiasm. I wanted to get back as soon as possible to the beach and Deborah in her swimming costume. When I did return, she had gone and I didn’t see her again.
Given my social life was just about non-existent, I concentrated on the South Wilts cricket team. We played some decent fixtures but the cricket was very different from playing for Barnsley in the Yorkshire League. I was made aware of the difference when we went to Frome and I batted out time to create a boring draw when we looked like losing. When I returned to the pavilion I was severely bollocked by our skipper who pointed out that my rescue act had cost them at least an hour’s drinking time.
They were carefree days. The summer was long and warm; we played in lovely country villages, which seemed, more often than not, to have a Compton or a Wallop in the title. I was playing well, scoring enough runs still to imagine I might one day play professional cricket. I was fit, never in better shape.
One Sunday, playing against a team skippered by Jim Bailey, a former Hampshire player, I scored a century. Jim asked me if I fancied a run-out with the club and ground side at Southampton. I turned up to play with the young pros and, because of my amateur status, had a dressing room all to myself. After sitting in solitary splendour I made my way to the wicket and was bowled first ball by another Hampshire spinner, and a very good one, called C.J. Knott.