Authors: Vivienne Dockerty
The new regiment was all under canvas when Eddie’s platoon arrived in the town of Hawick. Nissen huts were in the process of being erected, but with a shortage of tradesmen they were slow in building and bricklayers were in high demand. Eddie saw a notice pinned up outside the commanding officer’s quarters, asking for any skilled artisans to report to him that day. He was assigned to the building of the guardroom, and a row of Nissen huts. For the first time in his life, he found that his expertise as a brickie was at last standing him in good stead.
It was at this time that Eddie got his first good pair of boots, courtesy of the Quarter Master of the regiment. He had rather small feet for his height of 5ft 8ins and in civvy street he could usually find a pair of shoes to fit him, but this was not the case in the army. Army boots brought tears to many a strong man’s eyes, as the blisters caused by marching over many miles in them left an indelible memory.
Eddie was working for the Garrison Engineer during the day and not being used to army ways, he didn’t know what to do with his rifle. He had wrapped it up in a piece of cloth and placed it in his bed. It was found there when the beds were inspected and he was reported to the Company Sergeant Major and put on a charge, despite his protests. This stopped the work on the centre, essential in the eyes of the Quarter Master who was responsible for the furnishing and equipment for the place. He sent a man to hunt for the missing bricklayer, who was found doing guard duty by the main gate.
Eddie found himself freed then from all duty except for building work and as it seemed that he was indispensable, asked the Q.M. for boots that properly fitted so that he could concentrate on his work. He was given free run of the store and chose the finest boots that the army could offer and nothing would part him from them throughout the duration of the War.
An unfortunate accident caused him to be sent to hospital a few weeks later. He and another soldier were carrying a heavy pallet between them when the other man slipped. The full weight of the load fell on Eddie’s foot, causing it to be badly injured and in need of an operation.
The hospital was run on strict disciplinary lines and Eddie, on two occasions, fell foul of the Matron: once after a nurse had failed to make his bed and the Matron demanded to know the culprit and Eddie wouldn’t say.
The second occasion brought consequences, when Eddie, confident that his foot was healing nicely, feet tapping to a catchy tune being played on the radio, waltzed around the ward with a nurse who should have been serving the lunches. He was sent back to camp with a barely healed foot, which got worse as he walked back along the country lanes, as no transport had been provided. The M.O., furious at the way Eddie had been treated, sent him back with a curt note for the Matron and he was operated on again without delay.
Eddie was allowed leave a few weeks later, he was of no use to the army whilst he was limping around unable to carry out any duties. He caught the first train out of the local station and was back in his garden by the next day.
It was Autumn again. The hedges were thick with blackberries that year and Irene made jelly with some of her precious sugar ration after she and Ted, with Gina and Lily picnicked and harvested in the Barnston Dales one day.
Eddie made Gina a swing in the back garden and built another hen house, then invested in some white Leghorn pullets which flew about the run like a cloud of delicate fairies, so he put up extra high wire around the place to keep the little egg providers from escaping.
He was busy that leave, though took to resting his foot as much as he could. He helped the elderly small-holder, Sam, who lived in a small, very old, whitewashed cottage at the top of the lane, travelling by the man’s horse and cart to the U.S. base at Arrowe to pick up some packing cases that the place had no more use for. They took Gina that day and her two little hands were filled with American candy bars by homesick men delighted to treat her, as English sweets were hard to come by.
Sam also asked Eddie to repair his wife’s washing boiler, as she took in washing from the better off ladies of the district. It was an old-fashioned type of copper, which sat on a crumbling brick surround, so Eddie took it out and built her a new surround which held the copper in better.
To make a little extra money, Eddie went to build a vault in Landican Cemetery at the request of a local builder. Skilled tradesmen were at a premium then, either away in the services or on essential war work. It was getting dark before he would finish and, as the funeral was scheduled for the next day, he asked the verger if he would fix up a light for him to continue to work by. The labourer whom Eddie had employed to help him made his feelings plain.
“When it’s dark I’m off,” he had said, his eyes round with the thought of having to be in such a eerie place, with the owls hooting in the dense dark trees that surrounded it and granite angels staring at him.
Eddie had shrugged, it wasn’t the dead who could do you the harm, it was the living. Wasn’t Hitler and his cohorts doing just that every day?
Returning to Scotland from his leave, Eddie was put on guard duty at the Main gate. There was quite a lot of traffic passing by at one point in his shift and he had failed to salute a staff car.
The senior officer riding in the back of the car was quite put out by this lack of respect by a lowly soldier and Eddie was duly reported. He had been quite unaware that a charge had been brought against him and was surprised when he was informed by a superior that he had to attend a Military Court.
His Major, a sympathetic soul, accompanied him and in his position as Eddie’s defending counsel, pointed out that as the accused wasn’t a regular serving soldier, but a ‘call up’ man, he was bound to get it wrong now and again. Eddie was let off with a caution, but after that episode he was always careful to salute anything or anyone who looked as though they warranted one!
He had started making friends amongst the soldiers in his platoon. Mick was one of the older time serving regulars, who advised Eddie to obtain a copy of the handbook, which laid out all of the rules and regulations of the army. He read it from cover to cover and found that he was entitled to a cup of cocoa every night. Armed with this newfound knowledge, obviously something that hadn’t been made aware to the platoon, due perhaps to the cost of serving up the warming drink before lights out, he approached the cook in charge. He was perfectly correct and was entitled also to a wad (an army term for a piece of bread and butter), but woe betide him if he requested it and forgot to turn up for it each night.
One of Mick’s pals in the company was a sergeant, a first class soldier, but liked to go on a bender occasionally. He would lose his stripes for this misdemeanour and be demoted back to rifleman. However, he was such a good soldier that he was soon given his stripes back again. On the other hand, Mick was a connoisseur of good whisky and with there being hundreds of soldiers in the garrison town of Hawick, the publicans had a hard job to keep up with the demands. Mick’s continual complaint was that the Scottish whisky he was served was not as good as the taste of his Irish whiskey, which didn’t go down at all well with the local men and often fights broke out.
The local women, though, did their best to make the soldiers of the garrison welcome by providing a library, a weekly dance and a drop in centre, where those who shunned the taste of alcohol could meet those who had a like mind and drink a warming beverage instead.
Eddie made full use of the library in his spare time and, now that he could read, acquainted himself with the works of many authors, including that of Robbie Burns. He was mindful of Mick’s advice, in the infinite wisdom of a regular soldier, as he sat in the billet reading with his feet up: whilst his mates were whooping it up in the town, he should get all the rest he could now. He also signed on for a course in barbering, as there could be a call for his skill overseas.
Training had started in real earnest when all the men had come back from their various leaves. As it was a rifle regiment the men went out every day to practice on the range. Eddie had difficulty in adjusting to this as he was left handed, but he managed to be at the end of the line, which seemed to assist his aim.
They had been going to the range for a couple of weeks when the Major decided to accompany them to check on their progress. He dropped in beside Eddie and asked to borrow his rifle. He fired a couple of shots across the butts and then asked the soldier in charge to mark them up.
“Two bulls and a magpie, Sir,” the soldier had replied cheekily, and the Major, knowing full well that he had deliberately fired over the target, was very upset at being given a false report and enraged by the men’s apparent laxity. It questioned the sole idea of his checking the accuracy of the platoon’s marksmanship and, crimson with rage, he stopped all further practice for the day. Dismissing the lorries waiting to take the soldiers back to camp he instructed them to march back over many miles to the depot, after lecturing them sternly about the ruthlessness of the enemy and that the only things they would have to rely on in action were their weapons and training should not be taken lightly.
It was a much more dedicated and sober platoon which set out to the range the next day, as every man had taken the Major’s words to heart. This was training for the real thing, not a boy’s day out on a rifle range.
Telegrams were something that people were very apprehensive about in war time, so when Irene saw the boy coming up her path a few weeks after Eddie had gone back from his leave, it was natural that her heart began to beat quickly with fear.
She opened the missive with trembling hands and, after telling the boy that there wouldn’t be a reply, she watched him ride off on his red bicycle and then went indoors. There wasn’t much to go on in the words that Eddie had instructed for the post woman in Hawick to write.
“Meet me in London as soon as possible”, but if that was what her husband wanted, she would move heaven and earth to meet him there.
Lily, of course, was there to look after Gina and watched with trepidation as her daughter packed the small family suitcase with a change of underwear, a smart brown winter weight dress in case Eddie took her somewhere posh for a meal and took her navy and white checked two-piece suit, still in vogue as no one could afford to wear the latest fashions even if there were any, from the wardrobe, hunting as she did for her best pair of black shoes.
“Gina’s been wearing them, look under the bed in our room,” Lily had said, holding on to her granddaughter tightly, as Gina had spotted Irene’s lipstick and wanted to try it on. She had caught the little monkey trying on her black straw hat only the day before, parading in front of the dressing table mirror with her mother’s high heel shoes on.
“I hope I’ll be able to catch a train,” Irene had said, chucking Gina under the chin tenderly when she came back with the shoes, wearing only her full length petticoat and her navy blouse with the matching necktie. “They might be full, with the soldiers being moved around the country like they are. It must be something very important, though, for Eddie to ask me to go to London as quickly as possible. It might be that he’s off to France, Pierre was saying that something was afoot only yesterday.”
“We’ll all be better off when we get France back off the Germans,” Lily said grimly. “And then them Froggies and Yanks can get back to their families, we can get our loved ones back and that Hitler fellow’ll get his just desserts.”
“Oh Mother, I didn’t know you cared,” Irene said gaily, looking forward to her trip to London, a place she had been many times with her Aunt Jenny when she was younger. “I thought you were pleased to have the run of the house while Eddie was away.”
“I’m talking generally, not just Eddie,” Lily said diplomatically, who wasn’t a great fan of the man that her daughter had married, but enjoyed having the company of Irene and the care of Gina. “This war’s going on much longer than anybody thought.”
Irene managed to get a seat on the train from Lime Street quite easily, after paying her ten shillings for her return ticket to Euston at the booth. Although there was a great presence of the forces personnel, a seat was found for the pretty young woman as she hovered in the crowded corridor of the train uncertainly. Of course she had to put up with a bit of banter from the men, most of them having said farewell to their loved ones in Liverpool and needing cheering up, but after a while when she purposely got an Agatha Christie book out of her handbag, she was left alone to read it.
It was late that evening when she scanned the crowds from the spot she had chosen, away from the main thoroughfare at the busy London station. Some were dashing along the platform to catch a train, some rushing out to hail a taxi, others like Irene waited patiently, sitting on their suitcases like she was, their faces grim or sad looking depending on their mood.
She spoke to a young woman who had introduced herself as Doreen, who had propped herself up against the stone wall of the building nearby and found that she too was waiting for her soldier husband to come and collect her.
There was a number of women military police walking around the station. One of these seemed to be watching Irene and her companion very closely. All was revealed when Eddie quickly appeared and, taking Irene by the arm, bundled her outside and began to hurry her along.
“Wait a minute Eddie!” she said, stopping resolutely on the pavement, fleetingly wondering why he had not taken her into his arms and kissed her, which most men would have done if he hadn’t seen his wife for a while.“That girl I was with... she’s been waiting all day for her husband to appear and she’s travelled all the way from up north like I have. Would it be possible for us to take her with us, he might leave her there all night?”
Eddie moaned to himself. Here he was giving himself a last chance to say goodbye to his wife, after sneaking out with a few of his fellow soldiers early that morning, after the battalion had been sent in convoys to a field near Gravesend earlier that week, hoping that it wouldn’t be noticed that they were missing that night, knowing full well that they could be court marshalled for going, but willing to take that chance. It appeared now that other regiments had received their marching orders and that was why there was a large presence of the Military, looking for absent men.