MY NATIONAL SERVICE
WITH THE KINGS LIVERPOOL REGIMENT 1948-1950
Following basic training at Hadrian’s Camp, HQ, the Lancastrian Brigade, Carlisle, I was
posted, on 25 October 1948, with other Kingsmen to the barracks of the 1 st Battalion the
Kings Liverpool Regiment in Maghull, Liverpool. The camp was actually no more than a
collection of old decrepit Nissen huts probably the ones which held American and Polish
troops during World War II. Its only advantage so far as we were concerned was that it
was close enough to the railway station for many of us to skip away at weekends without
passes, by dodging the Regimental Police and travelling into central Liverpool and then
home across the weekends.
The Nissen huts were very cold as heating came from a solitary coal-burning stove in the
centre of each Nissen hut from which heat escaped at a rapid rate. Coal was in very short
supply so consequently many of the stoves were fuelled by wood from rickety chairs and
tables which were broken up by cold soldiers with little regard for the barrack room
‘furniture’. We eventually all paid for that unofficial fuel through barrack room damages
taken out of our meagre pay which for National Servicemen was twenty one shillings a
week out of twenty eight because seven shillings was compulsorily deducted from and
paid to our mothers by the War Office.
I vividly recall arriving back to my billet and bed one Sunday afternoon, after an illicit
weekend at home only to find that my bedside locker had been broken open. Nothing was
missing and nothing was missing from the lockers of all the other soldiers in the hut whose
boxes had also been broken open. Military police had opened them up during our
absence.
We were all then questioned by the SIB, Special Investigation Branch. By being away from
camp without weekend passes we were all liable to be put on 'fizzers', charges, for being
absent without leave so we were filled with trepidation as we were grilled by the Military
Police about where we had been when away from our billets. It turned out that over the
weekend several of the Kingsmen had broken into the Limetree Café in Lime Street,
Liverpool and stolen some hundreds or possibly thousands of cigarettes. Eventually about
three regular soldiers were arrested and led away to be charged, gaoled and
dishonourably discharged. I remember that one of them when being led away told us that
after discharge he would join the IRA as they would welcome ex British soldiers into their
ranks!
After having been posted from Carlisle and the training camp, to those neglected Nissen
huts in Maghull in mid-August I spent a couple of very boring months before becoming
one of about 50 soldiers of the battalion's Advance Party embarking from Harwich to Hook
of Holland on 5 November 1948 en route to Mons Barracks in Iserlohn, Germany
I cannot remember how we travelled from Maghull to London but it was probably by train
nor do I remember where we stopped in London other than vividly remembering being
taken down deep lift shafts to an underground bunker which was fitted out with
dormitories, kitchens and ablutions. A reference on the internet sitehttp://www.nickcooper.org.uk/subterra/lu/tuaw.htm may apply...
"The tunnel shelters, completed in 1942, are all similar. Each lies directly beneath its
Underground station... Each shelter consisted of two parallel, 1,200-foot tunnels, divided
into an upper and lower floor, and furnished with iron bunks. There were extensions at
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right angles for first-aid posts, wardens' rooms, ventilation equipment and lavatories which posed a particular problem, since the shelters were below the level of the sewage
system:
Nevertheless that extensive underground shelter acted as our transit camp on our way the
next day to Harwich and onto a troop ship which crossed the Channel overnight to arrive in
Hoek van Holland the next morning, 6 November 1948. From the Hook we travelled by
train across the Netherlands and passing along beautifully kept, clean railway tracks. I
was impressed by the cleanliness of the permanent way across Holland and by the sight of
house after house where the overnight bedding had been hung out over windowsills to air.
Once in Germany, the cleanliness of the railways deteriorated because, after all, the
Germans had had little time and opportunity to keep them in good order during the
continual bombing raids mounted by the Allies who had re-arranged the stations into piles
of rubble! On either side of the track, house after house showed the marks of war with the
scars of bullets and shrapnel all over the walls of those of the buildings which were still
standing amid the ruins of shattered towns and villages along the permanent way. We
disembarked somewhere in Germany and were taken in 3-ton trucks to Mons Barracks in
Iserlohn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iserlohn
I was thrilled to be there because the buildings of this superbly built barracks were far
better than any British army depot I had encountered so far in my brief career as a soldier,
up to that time-and ever since!
This photograph, taken from the Internet, shows senior NCO’s of the Leicesters, in Mons
Barracks some years after we were billeted there. In our time, Headquarter Company’s
administration offices were in the block shown here, on the ground floor along with the
Guardroom.
So far as we soldiers were concerned our billeting rooms, bashas in Army slang (British
military slang from Arabic for a shelter or sleeping area), were really ‘cushy’ ( from Hindi)
with central heating and capacious upright and bedside lockers. Despite their strength
soldier thieves could still break into the uprights and selectively steal. My own locker had
been broken open on one occasion and my wallet taken. By then, knowing something of
the habits of the thieves, I immediately went to the ablutions and retrieved my wallet from a
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lavatory pan! What little money I had had gone but fortunately some photographs and
documents were still inside and recovered -wet.
In those barracks blocks we could use the shower rooms at any time of the day and be
sure that there was always a plentiful supply of hot water. The shower rooms were
covered on floors, walls and ceilings with large white ceramic tiles so that water from the
powered shower heads could be directed anywhere and you could be sure the water
flowed rapidly away down the central drain. Showerheads were fitted above our heads and
at waist height all along the walls of these rooms which could accommodate about twelve
of us at a time. Some lads used to stand under the showers in their ‘drawers cellular, pairs
one’ and their vests and socks and wash them at the same time as their bodies whilst
being very economical with the soap! Unfortunately some squaddies were never known to
enter the shower rooms of their own accord so on one occasion we forcibly persuaded one
of our fellow squaddies to join us there. He shaved regularly, yes, so that he could just
about get by on morning parades but otherwise simply avoided the ablutions altogether.
He used to go to bed in those shared barrack rooms simply by opening the top button of
his battledress blouse and flopping onto the bed ‘biscuits’, the mattresses. We got fed up
when he really began to stink.
We carried him, one soldier to each of his limbs, into a shower room, took his clothes off,
so that for once he was naked like us (Maybe he was shy!). We then turned all the shower
heads on and scrubbed him all over with hand held floor scrubbers and industrial soap.
Unsurprisingly he yelped with pain as we scrubbed. Afterwards we noted with satisfaction
that his skin glowed bright red for several hours! Thereafter he regularly showered of his
own accord without persuasion.
Those showers and the accommodation were quite wonderful really and rumour had it that
these barracks had been those of an elite battalion of SS but as the Internet site shows
they had once housed a German Artillery Group squadron. Here and there the builders
had erected huge stone eagles and various copies of the body beautiful Greek athletes
such as disc throwers to remind the soldiers that they were the Master Race.
http://www.baor-locations.org/iserlohn.aspx.html
MONS BARRACKS, ISERLOHN
Extract from: http://www.baor-locations.org/MonsBks.aspx.html
Mons Barracks
Built
1934/35
Type - Artillery/Armour.
Original name - Artilleriekaserne Schulstrasse to 1937
Renamed - Winkelman Kaserne from 1937
History - Renamed Winkelman Kaserne after German Artillery Sergeant of WW1.
Used by Tank Regiments until end of WW2
Home to:
HQ 1st Corps District Signal Regiment 1945-1947 (1)
2nd Infantry Division Engineers May 47- Jul 48 forming
23rd Field Engineer Regiment RE Jul 1948-Oct 1948 (2)
1st Bn. King's Oct 1948-1951
3
Originally built by the Nazi's prior to WWII, Winkelman Kaserne had been created as a flak
kaserne to accommodate those troops whose task it was to defend the Ruhr Valley from
the Allied Bomber raids. On 16 April 1945, Iserlohn capitulated to the Americans to prevent
its destruction. On becoming part of the British Sector the barracks were renamed Mons
Barracks, after Mons, the site of the first battle fought by the British Army in World War I.
This photograph of Epsom Barracks, not our barracks but also located in Iserlohn, shows
the kind of building we lived in between 1948 and 1950. The place shown here started out
as Seydlitz Kaserne - purpose built for by the Germans before WWII and in their hands
until the Allies arrived in spring 1945.
I never kept a diary of my army service. In fact throughout my life I have never ever kept a
diary. Consequently the time scale of my memoirs is approximate at best. The first few
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months before Christmas 1948 were a mixture of barrack room boredom with occasional
interesting patches. I always found training interesting and enjoyable probably as a result
of my years as a Boy Scout, Patrol Leader and Troop Leader when my regular and
probably favourite reading was ‘Scouting for Boys’. I always liked to be out camping and
being outdoors as that was far more interesting and challenging for me as a boy than
anything indoors.
This picture also shows the quality of the kinds of barracks we lived in but these
were re-named Aldershot Barracks and in our day they housed the 1st. Battalion
Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) 1947-1949 with whom the Kings were
always fighting when in town!
In barracks, at least one block was assigned to each company in the battalion, A, Able, B,
Baker, C, Charlie, D Delta and then HQ and Support. I think I was first a housed in B
Company upstairs in one of the large dormitories with beds arranged down each of the two
long sides. Each bed has a bedside locker and a tall wardrobe. During regular room
inspections an NCO would stand in the doorway and shout, “Stand by your beds!” A
company officer would then walk in company of the NCO, usually a sergeant, along the
length of the room on both sides occasionally stopping at two or three beds picking up and
examining mess tins, mugs, folded shirts underwear, webbing and so on. Some smaller
items of clothes had to be folded up using copies of Army Book Part Two, pay books as
measuring sticks. And yes the inspecting officer did run his hand along the windowsills and
tops of the doors to see if there was any offending dust there. Brasses, cap badges, belt
buckles, webbing buckles and such had to be polished without any contaminating traces of
dried Brasso or Blanco which had to be evenly covering the webbing. Rifles would have to
be spotless inside and out and boots very shiny. Trousers had to have creases you could
cut your hands on and so too had battledress blouses.
The most prestigious and smart battledresses were the Canadian style, a softer cloth of
gentle greenish khaki. I happened to have one I am glad to say. As for my second pair of
battledress trousers, when I was given a pair of those originally, the seat was far too big so
I set to work on it using my ‘housewife’, sewing kit, and made an alteration. It was never
quite right and thereafter had a habit of splitting open when vaulting over obstacles on the
assault course and showing my ‘drawers cellular, pairs one’. I would have been better
having a Scottish kilt!
When it came to doing guard duties, 24 hour stag duties, a Corporal or Sergeant with a
Lance Corporal, and five or seven men, I forget quite how many, would parade in best BD
in front of an Orderly Officer who would then decide which soldier was the smartest. The
selected soldier would then be excused guard and do day duties as a Stick Orderly, a kind
of messenger whose duties ended at about tea time and he would be allowed to book out
of camp in the evening. Best boots, belts, rifles and other kit would then be at a premium
and could be rented from fellow soldiers for small sums or for cigarettes. Careful selection
of a range of best kit would ensure a night off for anyone having a date with a local
‘fraulein’ or indeed ‘frau’ as there were many widows in post war Germany. Lasting
friendships with Tommy would help keep those poverty-stricken widows in food for the
week and the possibility of marriage.
When it came to skill with the ‘housewife’ (not Tommy’s best friend- that was the rifle), few
soldiers ever quite got the hang of mending socks by cross stitching so that they simply
5
sewed the edges together making a kind of seam. Those seams played havoc on heels
during route marches when the constant rubbing peeled the skin off many a marching foot.
Food was served in various mess halls, the general one, then also in the Sergeants’ Mess
and the Officers’ Messes. The latter two in Mons employed German waiters and
waitresses as part of the government’s attempt to give employment within a very needy
semi- starved population. One of our Sergeants married a waitress who was allowed to
precede him to Blighty when he was given home married leave; but once there she
disappeared and he never saw her again so far as I know. Naturally the soldier was
somewhat shattered by that experience!
The food was unremarkable to say the least except in the Sergeants’ mess because, they
having Company Quartermaster Sergeants on strength, ordered food for the officers so
they were able to get the pick of the food for their fellow senior NCO’s. To some extent the
commissioned ranks were considered to be surplus to requirements. Non Commissioned
Officers ran the battalions!
Like home, where rationing was still in place, the most popular food included sausage,
fried eggs, bacon and chips. Stew, or in the Kings, Scouse was runner up and was always
referred to as, the ‘Isle of Man Boat’, a seasick joke! Squaddies kept their knives, forks,
spoons (Always appearing on the Company Orders sheet as KFS) and mugs in their
lockers. Lazy ones who may not have washed them after their last meal would, on leaving
the barrack blocks, simply swished their ‘fighting irons’ around in fire buckets which hung
along the corridors!
There were times when the cooks would, when short, serve up interesting items such as
fried cabbage for breakfast. I rather like fried left over cabbage so I for one didn’t mind that
eating that culinary morning delight.
Yes, men on ‘jankers’, that is on punishment for minor offences, did work in the cookhouse
peeling spuds, chopping carrots and so on. They had bonuses in that like the cooks they
had the pick of the day’s food. In later months when I had to do Battalion Orderly Sergeant
duties I particularly liked asking the drummer (Never call them buglers) to play the cook
house orderlies bugle call because it was a rather lively tune and much more musical than
the old “ Come to the Cookhouse Door Boys” call.
Bugle calls were used to identify regiments, battalions, companies and actions. Soldiers
used to sing words to the regimental bugle ID call, “We are the Eighth, the Eighth of Foot,
the Pride of the Line!" A popular and well liked call meant that mail had arrived, “A letter
from Lousy Lizzie, a letter from Lousy Lou, a letter from Lousy Lizzie, letter just for you!!"
The words for a particular Company call were "Ta, ra, ra- Costa Benn!" The latter being
the name of a battalion Quartermaster Captain, whose family background, was I think,
Goan. Of course The Last Post, an emotional moving call, was also well known and is
universally held in great reverence throughout the UK population to this day. Words to the
fire alarm bugle call went something like, “Here’s a fire, there’s a fire, fire everywhere…"
The Fall In words were, “Fall in A! Fall in B! Fall in all the company!"
The very unpopular Reveille was sung to a ditty, “Charlie, Charlie, get out of bed, Charlie
Charlie…." Another, called the Rouse, had the words, " Get out of bed! Get out of bed! Get
out of bed you lazy bastards! Get out of bed! Get out of bed you lazy sods!"
You
can
hear
a
wide
selection
on:
http://www.farmersboys.com/music/Bugle_Calls/Infantry/36.mp3
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When it came to recognisable tunes, there was of course, the march of the Kings Liverpool
Regiment, "Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen! The words to that one were very well
known to thousands of men as they expressed certain regret,
“What did I join the Terriers for? Why did I join the Army? What did I join the infantry for? I
must have been bloody well barmy!"
At regular times, in post-war occupied Germany, during the early years of occupation, the
whole battalion had to parade through the streets of Iserlohn to show the flag. I think it was
all part of the de-Nazification process of the Allied occupation troops. The parades were
probably meant to be humiliating for the German population as was the Army instruction
that soldiers walking through the streets must make sure that Germans would step off the
pavements to let them pass!
During those marches, Sergeant Major Q. could be heard advising, "Bags of swank lads!
Bags of swank!" The Scouse soldiers would then march with a Liverpool swagger in their
step! However all was not always well. I remember the Regimental Sergeant Major giving
the order; “Change arms!" and few knew what was meant. The soldiers were familiar with
the order, "Change step!" but nobody had then told them about Change Arms, where they
should have moved their rifles smartly from one shoulder to the other to relieve the strain.
The men taken unawares by that unfamiliar order began to swop rifles one with another so
that they began to look quite ridiculous. There could well have been a few sniggers among
the German bystanders! The Company Sergeant Majors called out along the line, " You
silly bastards! Stupid ****s!"
The men were very quickly sorted out with instructions such as, “Put the bloody rifles back
where they were!" Much fun was gained in that one! During those marches many a lewd,
obscene soldiers’ song was sung to keep the rhythm. The subjects included King Farouk
of Egypt and his first wife, Queen Farida; the adventures of various Arab bints (girls); Lady
Astor and others. I am pleased to say that I have forgotten most of the lyrics! A popular
ditty was a very clever play on words in which ‘strong language’ phrases turn out to be
respectable beginnings of sentences. For example, one such featured the words, “For
curiosity" rendered in short, "F’ cu! F’ cu! F’ cu!" A respectable version of which featured in
one of the Ronny Barker TV sketches
The rooms were neat, with double glazed windows, warmed in winter by a form of central
heating. The lockers were made of laminated wood; strips of wood glued together covered
with thin veneers. The Germans, suffering sea blockades, were ingenious in making ersatz
(substitute) furniture and fittings. Back in Britain during the war, most furniture, bore the
utility mark * but so far as I remember it was never made up as was much German
furniture of recycled wood. That came later. I currently use wartime RAF wooden filing
cabinet, dating from 1942, which is exceedingly well made of ply and half inch grained
natural panels. The sliding mechanisms are superb. In their own way the German wartime
fixtures and fittings were as good as ours and sometimes better.
 The Utility Furniture Committee was set up in 1942, in order to assure that the scarce
available resources were used in a sensible way. New furniture was rationed and was
restricted to newly-weds and people who had been bombed out. The scheme ceased
in 1952. From http://www.flickr.com/photos/dooogewalah/3107598837/
During the weekday, and that usually included Saturdays, the soldiers were kept occupied
on training exercises. Quite often the day began with Physical Training, "Get fell in outside
7
for PT!" PT kit consisted of singlet's and navy blue shorts and ‘pumps’ (Low quality training
shoes.) I always thought that there was nothing more pathetic than lines of reluctant
squaddies lined up outside in their ‘utility’ kit and shivering before being run along to the
gym by Charles Atlas like army PT staff. The soldiers efforts in the gym was definitely
pathetic for the most part especially from the ones who had been on the booze the night
before and had reached down under their ‘cots’ at the sound of Reveille to swig from
illicitly held beer, "The hair of the dog that bit you”. The sight of those men reminded me of
what the Duke of Wellington said before the Battle of Waterloo, "I don't know what effect
these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me." And he meant what a
rag, tag and bobtail lot they looked, as indeed they were!
I can recall with amusement the compulsory whole battalion runs that the Battalion
Commanding Officer, worried about the low level of fitness prevalent among all ranks, sent
us on at regular intervals. On those runs everyone except the on-duty guard and an
orderly officer had to get out and run a fixed course along streets and through part of the
Stadtwald, the nearby beautiful pine forest. If there was anything more pathetic than a
section of soldiers standing ready for PT it is a bevy of desk bound officers waiting around
in their PT kit!
Some of the soldiers, I could probably name them now, would slide matches and ciggies
into the waistbands of their shorts ready to sneak between trees and ‘light up’ during the
run. " Ye’ve gorra ‘av a ciggie on the way!" The PTI s (Physical Training Instructors)
followed at intervals- on bikes and took the names of the laggards, officers and men, and
made them do the course again the next day. Nobody got away with and dodging the
column. God knows what the Germans thought of these specimens of Superman.
I actually liked the physical tasks, PT, running, assault course, shooting, marching… so I
enjoyed it all and missed those activities after return to Civvy Street. Probably the fastest
on those runs was a young ex Sandhurst officer, who like me, ran in the cross country
team and indeed performed in the boxing team. A few years later when I ran X Country at
College, one of our regular competitions was against a team from Sandhurst and they
were very good.
It must have been very difficult for battalion commanders to maintain good levels of fitness
and high levels of training when, despite, the efforts to provide active recreation for the
men, the favourite pastime across weekends was ‘blanket-pressing’ or ‘horizontal
breathing’, that is lying on beds reading comics or cheap adventure or risqué novels. Much
thumbed copies of Lady Chatterley were doing the rounds. Too many men just smoked
endless chains of cigarettes. Many of my National Service colleagues kept calendars on
which they crossed off each day of service. On request they could recite exactly how much
longer they had to do before demobilisation," One year, three months and twenty one days
to go." Of course the Regulars had just fitted themselves in as comfortably as possible.
Some were pre-occupied with where the next drink was coming from, ciggies, or
temporary loans from some band members (Battalion illicit moneylenders!) and where they
could get next ‘their legs over’ with some frau in town’.
Fortunately for the British Army there was still a large contingent of men, regulars and
national servicemen alike, who actually performed their duties well and carried the
reluctant ones along with them. One such man in the battalion was a corporal who had
been a prisoner working on the notorious Burma Railway. He had survived only to get
home to find his wife had had a child by some man or other while he was away. Filled with
rage and traumatised as a prisoner, he killed her. He then served a short gaol sentence,
8
mitigated by the fact that he had suffered terribly as a POW. On release he had signed up
for the Kings and for him the army became his life which he then lived dutifully. Another
such was a Lance Corporal who had been through part of the War in Europe. He had been
awarded the Military Medal for rescuing soldiers from a burning ambulance. He had also
distinguished himself by waiting patiently behind cover watching for a German sniper
ensconced in a church belfry to carelessly move into sight. Our MM winner then shot him
and enabled the company to move on.
This man, ‘Tommo’, serving with us, lost his life outside our barracks when travelling with
others in a Bren Gun carrier along the approach road. Ironically it was his capacity for
quick re-actions which precipitated his death. When travelling towards the gate the driver
of the carrier was suddenly faced with a German boy on a bicycle riding quickly towards
them, head on. To avoid the child the driver, swerved up a steep embankment but the
carrier, open at the top, flopped over with Tommo and other soldiers inside. As the carrier
overturned Tommo leapt out but the sides of the carrier fell on him and killed him. His
companions were rescued from the overturned vehicle as it had fallen on them like a box
with them inside and relatively unharmed. Tommo was much missed as he was a
fundamentally decent man and a good soldier.
Recreational activities on site were limited but the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force
Institution) was a life- saver, and no doubt still is on many a camp. In Mons barracks, the
NAAFI sold a range of goods: stationery for those letters home; sweets chocolates, tea
and ‘wads’ (any edible cake called after the wads used to clean rifle barrels); sausage rolls
and so on. (I am reminded of an apocryphal telegram from a soldier to his mother. “Deer
Mum. No mun. Send sum. Your sun." and her reply, “Deer sun. Money gone. Soldier on."
Soldiers could wander over and just sit and talk or play darts. Beer was sold there, in the
NAAFI, in the evenings. National Servicemen, the more respectable ones, astutely
avoided the place on pay nights, Thursdays, because some of the regulars, the ‘piss
artists’ would get aggressively drunk and start knocking hell out of each other or punch
through glass door panels. Some, stupid with drink, would punch wooden door panels and
wonder why they broke their knuckles. Many a fight would break out there- presenting the
NCO’s and men trying to keep the peace on NAAFI piquet with some nightmare situations.
During those first few weeks between 5 November and Christmas I found that life as a
member of the Advance Party was busy and interesting as we did a lot of carrying and
fetching helping to make Mons Barracks ready for the arrival of the rest of this 1 st.
Battalion. Numbers were by made up with men posted in from other, now disbanded,
battalions.
Although the official motto of the Kings was Nec Aspera Terrent (Difficulties be Damned),
our unofficial one turned out to be, “Cheer up! You’ll be dead tomorrow!"
This quotation from Wikipedia summarises the time before the battalion’s arrival in
Germany. "In April 1948, the 2nd King's deployed to the British Mandate of Palestine
for two weeks. The battalion carried out internal security duties in the prelude to
Israel’s establishment for two weeks before its return to Cyprus. When the army
reduced its strength, the 2nd King's chose to be absorbed by the 1st rather than
have its lineage terminated. On 6 September 1948, the two battalions amalgamated
in a ceremonial parade attended by honorary Colonel of the Regiment, Major9
General Dudley-Ward. The battalion was posted to West Germany shortly
afterwards…
When there we were allowed to book out of camp on any evening we were free from guard
or piquet duties and during the day at weekends; but never overnight. All soldiers in
barracks were obliged to look at company notice boards to see if they were listed for
duties. The ones whose reading was poor tried to hide their illiteracy by standing at the
back of a cluster scanning the board and saying, “Ay, Tommy! Am I down for stag or fire
duty? I can’t see the board from here!"
I later read somewhere or other, possibly in Hoggart’s book, ‘The Uses of Literacy’, that
these mid 1940’s recruits were among the most illiterate in a long time because their
schooling during the early years of the war had been interrupted when the government
closed all schools as an air raid precaution. Some children were officially away from school
for close on a year. I remember our junior school was closed for months while we, those
who bothered to turn up, had classes in domestic private houses in the neighbourhood.
The slower witted soldiers were said to be, “Dim as a Toc H Lamp!” a saying that resulted
from W.W.1 when Toc H was founded to promote religion in the forces. “Jesus wants me
for sunbeam” was the first line of a popular children’s’ hymn.
When booking out during those weeks, the procedure involved marching smartly into the
guard room at the main gate, coming to a halt at the Guard Commander’s desk and
presenting an Army Book Part Two as identification. The Guard Commander would then
book you out at the time given reminding the soldier that he was due back at 22.30 hours.
We were also obliged to show that we had in our possession that which we had christened
an Army Book Part Three-a contraceptive, known colloquially as a French Letter. Those of
us who came from respectable homes at our tender age of eighteen would never have
dreamt of carrying, let alone using that piece of army equipment, but obliged we were. If
not in possession there was no way we would have been allowed out!
Venereal disease was rampant throughout occupied Germany in all zones and all towns.
Every now and then we were marched into rooms in which the army film units would show
us explicit films of the results of all forms of venereal infections intended to put the wind up
us. They did, at least, they did with the more responsible soldiers, the irresponsible's, took
little heed as they took little head of anything else. They were the ones who would always
need compulsion at all times.
In later months once the medical centre had set up a prophylactic room, when booking out
soldiers were not required to show an Army Book Part Three. Instead, any soldier who
knew he was going to do something naughty when out, would be required to present
himself at the medical centre and go through a procedure – prophylactic- which was
supposed to reduce risk of infection. The orderlies would record the visit so that if that
soldier did become infected he would not be subject to the penalties incurred for acquiring
what the army classified as ‘a self-inflicted wound’ on par with say deliberately shooting
oneself in the foot to avoid combat. The penalties were loss of pay for about 6 months and
a few months in Bielefeld Detention Centre, not exactly a holiday camp!
Soldiers who had been infected with both syphilis, the pox, and gonorrhoe was said to
have gained paradoxically, a ‘nap hand’, as card players would know, a winning hand. It
was in fact the polar opposite to a winner and treatment, before penicillin, was brutal
involving spinal injections of mercury for example.
10
Careful soldiers stayed away from possible sources. Often military police would stop a
soldier walking with a woman in the street and look through albums they carried to see if
any photograph of known carriers of the diseases happened to be the woman companion!
In town, the safest place to spend a day was in the services recreational centre within
which soldiers of the Kings, the Royal Fusiliers, the 10th Hussars and the R.A.M.C could
relax, play board games, eat in the NAAFI watch films in a state of the art cinema or watch
live acts put on by the Combined Services Entertainment Unit.
I add to my comments about STD’s and the soldiers of B.A.O.R. by mentioning and old
soldier, a man in his forties (!), a private and a valuable ‘barrack room lawyer’, a nickname
for a man who had made it his business to study Army Regulations. He would for example,
complain through the proper channels to the Commanding Officer about NCO s who might
be bullying or effing and blinding to the men. He had a wife back home whom he loved and
cared about and he used to express his anger over irresponsible, selfish, fellow soldiers
who acquired VD when serving and then had then likely as not passed it on to their wives
back in Blighty.
http://www.baor-locations.org/iserlohnvarious.aspx.html
Iserlohn Various
Some time between 1934 and 1936 the "Infanterie Kaserne am Seilersee” was erected
and occupied by the III. Batallion Infanterie Regiment 60. In 1937 this regiment was moved
to Lüdenscheid. The Krad-Schützen Regiment (motorcycled infantry) moved to the
Kaserne am Seilersee. On order of the OKH the Kaserne am Seilersee was renamed to
Argonner Kaserne on 17 May 1938. There are only few notes about the times between
1938 and 1945, but the following troops were stationed in Iserlohn:
Infanterie Regiment 60 (s. a.)
Artillerie Regiment 60
Artillerie Regiment 16
Flak Regiment 24
Kavallerie Schützen Regiment 4
Schützen Ersatz Batallion 4
6. Panzerbrigade
Schützen Ersatz Regiment 57
Sanitäts Ersatz Abteilung 6
Flak Schwadron Ersatz Abteilung 29
The town of Iserlohn was handed to American Troops on 16 April 1945. Its capitulation can
be attributed to the American threat of destroying the town in order to lessen Allied
casualties. On 13 June 1945 the Americans opened the first meeting of the Iserlohner
Bürgerausschuß (Citizens Council). First mayor after WWII in Iserlohn was chosen by the
Military Government on 20 July 1945, his name being Werner Jacobi.
After the Allied Zones were established, the Americans departed and British troops arrived
at Iserlohn. A British brigade plus HQ was moved to Iserlohn and the camps at the
Seilersee since then became the British Military Hospital of the British Rhine-Army. It took
some time until the British troops allowed the printing of newspapers, so the first papers
after WWII were printed in Iserlohn on 3 March 1946 (Westfälische Rundschau) and 26
April 1946 (Westfalenpost). Some other papers started in 1947 and 1948
11
This picture taken from the Internet site mentioned above shows a street in town during
the year I completed by short army service. Travel on the trams was free for all service
personnel. The front cab towed a second cab. When stationary at stops and the conductor
stepped off the cab mischievous soldiers would occasionally tease them by shouting
'Fertig' (Ready or Drive on) when the conductor was between cars!
Although the picture below is said to be a YMCA in the 1950’s I cannot be sure it
was when we were there.
12
I have the feeling, no more than that, that the picture below shows the YMCA where we
did piquet duties back in 1949. Children used to gather outside the building and beg for
cigarettes with cries of, “Cigaretten, soldat!” Two cigarettes, the actual not the official
currency, marks, would on the Black Market keep the family in food for the day. These
were the days when Britain, impoverished by the war and the resultant sale of many of its
overseas assets together with its huge debts to the United States for waging a war,
prohibited the use of our currency abroad. We soldiers were paid in BAFVs (British Armed
Forces Vouchers) not in sterling.
13
The Vouchers were issued in denominators of: sixpence, shilling, two shilling, half a crown,
five shillings, ten shillings one pounds and probably five and ten pounds as notes. Plastic
pennies and threepences were also used. The only coins in general use were three penny
bits.
I remember at one time when talking with a young officer a Second Lieutenant, whose
family ran a Liverpool company, hear him complain about a shortage of spending money
because the severe restrictions on Britons sending sterling out of the country prevented
his mother sending him money. “Deer Mum. No mun. Send sum. Your son!” Had its
commissioned- ranks equivalent!
I suggested that since three penny piece coins were used among our BAFVs perhaps his
mother could send him a parcel full of ‘joeys’, three penny coins. He followed up my idea
with enthusiasm and thereafter received regular parcels containing extra spending money.
Most of the pay for these young officers was swallowed up by mess bills so they could
never match the spending power of National service NCO’s.
Another young National Serviceman, a friend of mine, contentedly served for most of his
time in Mons as a private in C Company spending all of his off duty time swotting for his
HSC ( Higher School Certificate) in order to gain entry to the Liverpool School of
Architecture. He was not in the least interested in the Army but his father was, or had
been, a colonel, so dad insisted that son would be commissioned. He went off for a short
induction course returning with one pip on his shoulder only to get early release in
September 1949 to enter university. He never ever had any spending money!
Spending money was very scarce. Pay was only twenty-one shillings, net, a week. Seven
shillings a week was deducted by the army at source and sent to the mothers of NS
soldiers. The remainder of National Servicemen’s pay was spent in camp, in the NAAFI,
14
on extra food, sweets, cigarettes, writing paper, envelopes, Brasso, Blanco and the
occasional ‘bevvy’.
All ranks were allowed one hundred and ten cigarettes per week at ten pence for twenty.
No more could be bought at the NAAFI. The whole ration cost a little less than five
shillings. Non-smokers made considerable bonuses by selling their rations at inflated
prices to heavy smokers who soon ran out of their allocations and spent much of the week
‘dyin’ for a ciggy’. On Wednesdays, the day before pay parade, desperate smokers would
take ‘drags’ from shared butt ends, often holding the tip of a cigarette on a pin and passing
it around! Soldiers in detention were allowed about two cigarettes a day only. Cigarettes
were the prime means of exchange throughout the occupied territories along with coffee,
soap, sweets and chocolate. Expensive 35mm Zeiss cameras could be bought on the
Black Market for about 100 cigarettes or say a pound of coffee. Compromising a halfstarved woman’s virtue cost less than that!
The widespread Black Market caused the CCG, Control Commission Germany, very
severe economic headaches because even some of their own civil servants themselves
were actively and subversively working the system. I remember, on at least one occasion,
when in charge of the guard on prisoners in the detention ward of the British Military
Hospital, several of the patients held there were Control Commission Black Marketeers.
Money is a great source of corruption during any time in history so it was among the
officially virtuous. The great film noir, ‘The Third Man’, tells one of the stories of the
devastating effects of Black Market scams. Although set in Vienna and involving a
murderous trade in black market penicillin, the film sets could have been shot almost
anywhere in any German city at the time amid the bleak bombed ruins. The film resonates
with the atmosphere of post-war severely austere Austria and Germany, set in dark
bombed-out buildings filled with an air of hopelessness.
The armed services always recorded the admitted religious affiliations of its personnel on
soldiers’ records and on the ID tags, horribly known still as dog tags! When no religion was
admitted, the soldier would be classified as C of E. I supposed that many of the men in the
Kings were officially Catholic but few attended mass because they were afraid of being
mocked, jeered, ‘skitted at’ as several of us in our barrack room were during those few
months before Christmas 1948.
A duty NCO would walk along the corridors shouting that the church transport was waiting
outside. One of two of us would then walk to the door but, as we did so, other squaddies
would line up alongside us and sing the Sally Army ditty, ‘Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam’
and add their own Kings line, " And a bloody good sunbeam I’ll be!" Quite funny really.
Alternatively they might hum ‘Abide with Me’ which they would all know anyway as it was
played by the band at posh Retreat ceremonies at weekends. We would just grin and run
out to board the trucks. I think we had Mass somewhere in town so besides fulfilling our
duties we had lifts into town on early Sunday mornings. After mass, I could then take one
of my favourite walks through the most beautiful pine forest within which Iserlohn is set.
There were times when it looked as if, we three, sleeping in on Sunday mornings, would
be late up and miss the mass truck. Then, amazingly, those non- church going ‘muckers’
of ours would wake us up, saying,
“You’d better get up or you’ll miss the fifteen hundredweight. Then we’ll have no luck all
week!" What went on in their little heads, one wonders?
15
That first Christmas in B.A.O.R., Captain M.D. Reynolds, a church going Catholic himself,
arranged for us ‘Roman Candles’ to attend a midnight mass, sitting in with the local
congregation in town. There was then a large contingent of soldiers from all the regiments
and units from all the Iserlohn barracks and from the military hospital. Trumpeters from the
bands were present and we, in a squaddies choir, sang some of those famous carols in
German, ‘Heilige nacht. Stille nacht’ and ‘Herbei, O ihr Glaubigen’, Adeste Fideles; much
to the delight of the local impoverished congregation, who among other problems had to
out up with an occupation force in their town. It was a Christmas such as the Germans
knew how to make- and there was snow on the ground outside and a crib within. We, the
Catholic soldiers, were delighted when soldiers on either side of the altar, turned out in
their best BD, with sharp creases everywhere they should be, presented their rifles in a
Royal Salutation at the Elevation of the Host. A duet of trumpeters played the Royal
Salute, the fanfare for a monarch, during the presentation of arms!
16
Several of us looked upon walks through the Iserlohn Forest as far better alternatives to
getting ‘pissed’ in town or just ‘blanket pressing’ back in barracks. Our attitude was, how
could we pass up opportunities to explore places abroad at the expense of H.M. Army?
Compulsory whole battalion runs would include some of the shorter forest paths: those few
of us in the cross-country team did all our training practice there. A few years later I
became a member of a college cross-country team and many years later I ran regularly
through pine forests in Wales so that was all very nostalgic!
A recent photograph, taken from the Internet, within that forest.
On the edge of town and within the woodland lay an underground cave system called the
Dechenhöhle, one of the most beautiful ‘drop stone’
(Containing stalagmites and stalactites) caves Germany.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechen_Cave
Two railway workers who dropped a hammer into a rocky crevice discovered this cave in
1868. When searching for it, they discovered an entrance to an extensive cave system.
There was an occasion when we soldiers took part in a guided tour of this spectacular
cave. The tour guide delivered his description in German and an interpreter was hard at
work translating into English. We had the rather mixed blessing of being treated to a
17
creatively vulgar translation by a squaddie who laced his ‘translation’ with various four
letter expletives the most frequently used word in Army vocabulary! In the Army, the F
word took the place of adjectives, adverbs and verbs especially among people with very
limited vocabularies.
In all the barracks in Iserlohn, many German civilian drivers were employed to drive
service trucks; fifteen hundredweights and 3 tonners. Army drivers taught them the names
of the various components, steering wheels, gear sticks, windshields and so on but they
carefully added the F word to everything. Consequently when referring to these
components, the Germans called them, “The ‘effin wheel” or “the ‘effin windshield” or the
“effin fuel gauge”. Of course we all fell about laughing because the instructors had
deliberately taught them used the expletives as adjectives just to get those very laughs.
There, in those, wonderful caves, on a Sunday afternoon, our unofficial translator
produced his share of laughs during the tour and of course the poor German guide
wondered why we were laughing so much as we went along the beautiful walkways
between those fascinating stalagmites and stalactites.
The forest was also the home of The Danzturm, a landmark, situated on top of a hill
overlooking the old town. It features on a logo of the local Iserlohner brewery.
So far as I was concerned, I would rather spend a year or so in this lovely interesting town
than back home in Liverpool. I had no time for those soldiers who moped around camp
during off duty hours crossing off the days on their calendars to their demobilisation.
During 1949, more than once, we passed the famous Möhne Dam of Guy Gibson and the
Dambusters fame. It held back the water of the reservoir, an artificial lake located in North
Rhine Westphalia lying about 35 miles away from Iserlohn. British bombers during
Operation Chastise destroyed the dam on the night of 16–17 May 1943. The famous
bouncing bomb was used to breech the dam wall releasing millions of tons of water which
killed at least 1579 people among whom were 1026 foreign forced labourers held in camps
down river. I remember that on one of the days we were passing the reservoir we waved
back to someone who appeared to be waving to us up to his waist in water. Later we
heard that in fact he was actually drowning and was calling for help but we didn’t realise it!
18
Some eight years later I was prompted to recall that incident after reading a poem by
Stevie Smith called Not Waving but Drowning published in 1957.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6hne_Reservoir
On another occasion we were taken to what remained of the former Belsen Concentration
Camp which lay about a four-hour drive north of Iserlohn. The camp was liberated by
British troops back on April 15, 1945 three years before our visit. Between 1941 and 1945,
some 20,000 Russian POW’s and 50,000 others died there. At least 35,000 of them died
of typhus in the first few months of 1945, shortly before and after the liberation despite the
efforts of British medical teams who were themselves at risk. Dozens of the Nazi staff of
Bergen-Belsen were found guilty of murder and crimes against humanity so most of them
were hanged. Today there is a memorial to Margot and Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne
Frank) at the Bergen-Belsen site. There were no gas chambers there but I remember
seeing crematoria ovens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen-Belsen_concentration_camp
Among other short trips away from barracks was one made in early 1949 when I was one
of a working party who were transported ‘somewhere in Germany’ to a large Army bakery
to collect hundreds of loaves. After helping to load the trucks, I was in desperate need to
visit the lavatory so I went off to find one after asking my companions to hold up the
vehicles and wait for me. They didn’t-and by the time I returned all vehicles had gone on
their merry way! I was stranded miles and therefore AWOL, ‘Absent without leave.’ There
was no way the bakery staff would take me back in one of their vehicles so I went out to
the main road to thumb a lift.
I stood at the edge of the road holding up a couple of cigarettes; Capstan Full Strength, I
think. It wasn’t long before a Volkswagen screeched to a halt and I climbed in the front
passenger seat as we set off in the approximate direction of Iserlohn. After many miles on
the autobahn, over which not a single bridge had been left standing by Allied bombing, I
noticed a British Army Intelligence depot so I asked to be let out there and parted company
with the driver who gained three good ‘cigs’.
After explaining my predicament at the guardroom, I was allowed into the depot and went
in search of a map room. There my curiosity was entertained by some ‘I Corps’ personnel
who showed me how to look through stereo aerial photographs where ground detail
showed up in 3D configurations. I was also given a map showing Iserlohn and my way
‘home’! In those days of wartime austerity (Service up to and including 1949 was counted
as war service.) All maps of Germany in use in BAOR had been printed on the blank
reverse sides of German maps of Britain! My map showed German towns and country on
one side and somewhere in Kent on the other!
I left and once more was out on the roadside thumbing a lift using the same technique.
Holding up a packet of cigarettes worked wonders so that before long I was on my way-to
Wuppertal and its suspended monorail which carried its passengers over the river, along
its length through town.
19
There in Wuppertal I arrived at the Barracks of the 1St. Battalion Manchester Regiment
where the Guard Commander phoned through to the Kings to tell them that I had arrived at
their door.
I waited for an hour or two in the guardroom and while there I was greeted by one of the
squaddy prisoners, in detention for some battalion wrong doing. ! He happened to have
grown up in the next street to where I lived. In fact he lived only a door or two away from a
house where as a ten-year-old I secretly watched sappers dig out an unexploded bomb
from a garden. S… and several others had been allowed out of their cells by some tolerant
Regimental Police and they were sitting in the guard room while off duty comrades passed
through booking out of barracks on what was for them, pay day.
He, Private S., sitting with other prisoners called out to the soldiers booking out, “ Ay wack!
Gizza ciggy!” The booking-out soldiers in fact threw whole packets of cigarettes to the
detainees so that by the end of the evening they each had more fags than their normal
NAAFI ration! I was astonished at the kindness the Manchester Regimental Police were
showing to these men.
I was given a bed for the night and the next day one of the drivers took me to Iserlohn in a
PU ( Pick up truck) so my ‘Absent without leave’ changed to ‘Present and embarrassed’.
Life throughout the year 1949 with the 1st. Battalion the Kings Liverpool Regiment
presented Kingsmen with routine and increasing duties as more personnel joined and the
fighting strength was built up by the addition of a mortar section, an anti-tank section;
pioneers, armaments, motor pool and finally an education wing.
I would have like to have undergone extra training with the mortars and with the anti-tank
sections on top of some basic acquaintance with them. I did train regularly with PIAT s,
rifles, Bren, Sten and Stirling guns and in grenade throwing. In fact when I became an
NCO, early that year, I took part in training soldiers to lob live grenades and that was a
‘hairy’ experience because they were sometimes so nervous they would drop them!
20
The drill was: an instructor and ‘pupil’ stood face to face in a ‘pit’, actually a small
sandbagged enclosure about waist high. The instructor then mimicked the throw as the
pupil went through the actions-grenade in right hand lever inwards on the palm and arm
extended fully on the right. The thrower then brought that hand up across chest while the
left forefinger or little finger was placed through pin of grenade held across the chest. The
thrower then had to pull out the retaining and extend the left arm out in front to see that the
pin is there in the finger. The grenade was then bowled over-arm and exploded on the
ground a throwing distance away. In combat, grenades were timed for 4 seconds whereas
practice grenades were timed for 6 seconds.
The instructor would keep a very sharp eye on the thrower who might clumsily drop a live
grenade within the sandbagged enclosure so that while there might be Venetian blinds in
the married quarters, it would be curtains for the two in the throwing pit! I remember one
very nervous squaddy dropping his from a trembling hand and I very quickly picking it up
and throwing it out with a sigh of relief lost in the crack of the explosion.
Then there was fun with the PIAT s Projector, Infantry, Anti Tank), those hand-held antitank weapons designed in 1942 and used from 1943 onwards going out of service in 1950
or thereabouts.
A PIAT really was a difficult piece of DIY- style weaponry. First of all, it was heavy, about
33 pounds, and it was bulky somewhat like a piece of drainage downspout. Firing the
weapon involved standing up, presumably in full view of the enemy, setting the PIAT down
on its butt, placing two feet on the shoulder padding and turning the weapon to unlock the
body and pulling up a large spring inside the tube. The firing pin was locked then so and
so on including placing the finned ‘bomb’ inside. In fact short men found it impossible to
set the spring mechanism powerful firing spring, also known as a Spigot, because they
could not pull the spring up far enough. The unfortunate soldier then had to lie prone
behind the weapon, feet turned outwards like a fish tail because when the recoil of that
heavy spring had to travel through the body. When fired the Spigot would detonate the
propellant charge in the munition “throwing” it towards the target.
Much bruising ensued and there were times when the spring simply plopped the bomb out
a few yards away so it was just as well we never used live ammunition with this awkward
weapon. The bruising and the antics we went through to load and fire were sources of
merriment and much ‘effin and blindin’.
Astonishingly at least four Victoria Crosses were won during WWII by soldiers using
PIATs. At Arnhem Major Robert Henry Cain won a Victoria Cross after he had used a
PIAT in battle to disable a German tank and drive off several others! Private Ernest Alvia
'Smokey' Smith of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada used the weapon effectively in Italy
knocking out a Panther tank from about ten metres. Fusilier Francis Arthur Jefferson VC,
Lancs Fusiliers used a PIAT at Monte Cassino.Ganju Lama, a Gurkha soldier was
awarded a VC for his actions with a PIAT in Burma where he knocked out two tanks. We
would have given those men a medal just for loading a PIAT when under fire let alone
using the effectively!
So far as I remember we did rifle and Bren gun practice on the Firing Range quite
frequently as befits the role of infantrymen.
21
The firing range was some miles away so we had to be taken by trucks in convoy and
spend the whole day there. One of the great drawbacks of a day on the range was that we
were issued with some awful tasteless sandwiches, ‘sarnies’ or ‘banjos’ as they were
always called. According to an Australian source, "The reason for calling them 'Banjos' is
that when you eat them, the egg yolk or bread crumbs get on the front of your clothing
(usually in the chest area). The normal reaction is to extend the arm out that is holding the
bread and with the free hand flick the yolk and crumbs off of your chest and clothing. This
makes it look like you are playing a Banjo."
We should be so lucky as to get egg banjos. We routinely collected three sandwiches each
all made with thin sliced bread of indifferent taste: one filled with thin cheese spread (hors
d’oeuvre); meat paste (dinner) and jam (dessert). I hated them so I always gave mine
away to one of the gannets, soldiers, ‘gannets’, who would eat anything in large
quantities. I waited until one of the WRVS (Womens Royal Voluntary Service) vans turned
up with some decent sausage rolls and other wads. (Any edible matter like buns or cakes.
The name was transferred from the cotton pieces used on rifle pull-throughs to clean the
barrels). Prices were very reasonable. They had to be for national servicemen on twenty
one shillings a week out of which they had to but Blanco, boot polish and Brasso before
any luxury spending on cigs and supplementary decent food in the N.A.A.F.I (Weekly
ration was 110 cigarettes at 10p for twenty.)
I really liked time on the shooting range and proudly displayed the crossed rifles
Marksman Badge on my left battledress sleeve along with the LMG within laurels badge of
Marksman Light Machine Gun- the Bren. It was during one of the sessions on the firing
range using Brens that after following the instructor’s advice to squeeze the trigger in short
bursts so that only two rounds went off at a time that the Range Officer jumping with
excitement shouted, “A possible on number three! A possible! Who’s on number three!” I
was but I was not sure what a Possible was. I thought I had shot well. And indeed I had,
because a possible turned out to be placing all twenty rounds in the bull from about 400
yards or so. I can’t remember the distance. Although technically the Bren magazine held
30 rounds, filling it with 28 prevented jamming.
Shooting came naturally to me no doubt as it did to my uncle John, who after serving on
the Western Front right through WW I completed his service as a Warrant Officer
Instructor of Musketry in that most prestigious range, Bisley. My father had also been a
Marksman during his service with the Lancashire Fusiliers during WWI.
Bayonet practice could be an occasion for comical episodes as soldiers tried their best to
scream convincingly in a manner supposed to scare the enemy. Assault courses were
places where bayonets had to be avoided at all costs especially when they were on the
ends of rifles of incompetent squaddies coming to grief falling off fences and not sure
where their discarded rifles ended up! That said, I used to wonder how those ‘pig stickers’,
No4 MK2, spike bayonets, mass produced from rods of steel with no blood channels along
their six inch or so length would perform in battle.
Soldiers had to wear them in their scabbards on their ammo belts when on duties such as
fire piquet and guard duties. During the times of the Berlin airlift when one or two trains a
day were allowed into Berlin by the Russians, soldiers on train guard were not allowed to
22
carry firearms wearing only bayonets and scabbards so that during any potential conflicts
with boarding Russians no firefight could ensue! No ‘incidents’ with political overtones.
Getting to firing ranges and indeed going to places further afield on manoeuvres involved
soldiers being transported in trucks in convoy. Large numbers of trucks behind the lines
were formed into echelons but I don’t think anyone in the Kings ever quite pinned down the
meaning of that word.
En route, on the road in convoy, trucks were supposed to travel at given distances behind
each other to avoid inadvertent collisions when one or other stopped suddenly. When our
trucks were travelling in convoy some of the drivers were Kingsmen and other were
German civilians on wages. Rear end collisions were more common than they should have
been simply due to human error when drivers tried to make sure they didn’t fall too far
behind and lose the route. Don R s, Despatch Riders would drive up and down along the
sides of the trucks like Welsh sheep dogs rounding up the herd. One of my National
Service friends became a Don R and loved it, driving through the lovely German
countryside on a motorbike was far more interesting than ‘square bashing’ or running
about on field exercises.
On one occasion as I sat in the cab alongside a German driver, in convoy, the inevitable
happened. Ahead of me I saw one truck after another rear end each other in a domino
effect and I saw NCO’s and officers jumping out before the impacts of the vehicles they
were sitting in. I was one of them! I too leapt out as our truck hit the one in front. We who
had been able to jump went to the rear of our trucks to pull aside the canvas covers to
check up on the men. The men sat, side by side, along the side benches facing each other
looking inwards. When the trucks hit the one in front, various small injuries occurred as
one soldier or another hit each other or the struts. Some of my charges holding rifles
between their legs had lost teeth or broken their lips as their mouths came into contact
with rifle muzzles. Out came one of two bandage packs from trouser side pockets before
the convoy started up again and later the men were attended by RAMC in the field.
Our battalion commanding officer at that time had a habit of leading the convoy in a jeep or
similar vehicle driven by his personal soldier driver. He used to stand upright like Rommel
in the desert so many a soldier made merry comments about him. Sections of roads in the
mountainous regions on sharp bends had sometimes acquired huge signs bearing the
army insignia, Military Police, skull and crossbones, and reading; “Slow down or you will
be dead round the next corner.” On one unfortunate occasion, the CO and his driver must
have taken no real notices of such a sign because he was thrown out of the vehicle when
it came off the road. Those of us further back in convoy never saw the incident nor knew
what happened until the next day and the farewell to the CO some days later as his coffin
was carried onto a plane somewhere or other. It seemed appropriate to recall the words
we sang in those days to one of the regimental bugle calls,
“The colonel of the regiment’s a grand old man!”
Early in the year, I had gained a ‘dog’s leg’, the single stripe of a Lance Corporal and was
assigned to work with two Royal Army Education Corps sergeants in the newly created
Education Wing. During that time my soldier companions in the “basher”: barrack room,
delighted in calling me Educated Evans, the principal character in a film of that name, a
1936 British comedy film starring Max Miller. Set in the world of horse racing, the film was
based on a 1924, Edgar Wallace novel of the same name. Although there were several
23
National Servicemen with grammar school backgrounds in the battalion most of them kept
quiet about it as they realised it wasn’t to their advantage to be known to have brains,
sharper than some of the regular officers. We were still in the time when working class
grammar school pupils were called ‘college puddins’ and were set upon by neighbourhood
children as they went to school. (My wife, when a girl aged eleven travelled in uniform to
grammar school, had to learn to swing a deadly satchel at those who made fun of her on
the way.)
One of my regular friends was a man who wore an Australian shoulder flash. He had a
good intellect and when growing up in his home country he read British history and fell for
the idea that there was, "A Field Marshal's Baton in Every Knapsack". That may have been
true in the armies of Napoleon, “Tout soldat français porte dans sa giberne le bâton de
maréchal de France”- It wasn’t true in the Kings. No promotion never came his way so a
short while after I had finished my service, his father bought him out and he successfully
sat competitive Civil Service entrance examinations in Liverpool and became a Customs
and Excise officer where his considerable intelligence was appreciated.
When N…. had to enter the boxing ring during inter-company boxing, probably during the
melee, when five or six soldiers were put in the ring at the same time and told to ‘mix it’,
N… stood with his arms at his sides. An officer supervising the bouts stopped the melee
and told him to,
“Have a go, man! Don’t just stand there!” Nevertheless N… did just stand there.
There was an occasion when N… and I were walking into town when to my surprise N/..
produced a leather cosh, filled with lead with a wrist strap. He told me he had bought it in
Cairo for self-protection. Aware of N’s… reluctance to, “Have a go!” I advised him to get rid
of it because said I, if he were attacked and produced it without doubt his attackers would
deprive him of it and beat the hell out of him with it instead.
In the run up to that boxing event, I was set to fight in a three three-minute contest against
a corporal in either Charlie or Dog Company, within which the CSM had collected as many
boxers and athletes as he could. I was then in HQ Company. C and D Company NCO s
took great delight in telling me how I was going to beaten up by Corporal V. HQ
personnel, of course, were never going to concede that one so they laid out bets for me to
win and likewise, C and D, laid bets on their contender. Few thought that an Educated
Evans could make it with his fists although there was already an educated Lieutenant in
the boxing team.
Fortunately for me, my experiences growing up in a tough area of Liverpool stood me in
good stead and I came out the winner. HQ collected their winnings and I joined the boxing
team and that was like money in the bank because the battalion boxers were never
challenged by the ‘hard knocks’ who preferred beating up the quiet soldiers; certainly not
boxers.
To a certain extent the Army is like the Roman Catholic Church, hierarchy matters. In the
Army the officers were thought of as a class apart, as indeed they were. The expression
‘Officer and Gentlemen’ did not necessarily mean that an officer was a gentleman but it
echoes the time when Gentlemen, men of means held commissions because they brought
their own money with them. Landed gentry would be expected to set up and pay for their
own regiments, buying their soldiers’ uniforms and perhaps leading them into battle. Within
a hierarchical Church the ordained are the officers and the laity are the troops, the
footnotes in canon law! I speak with some irony when I say that both the Army and the
24
Church finds out what you are good at and then make sure you do not do it! Now and then
aberrations occur and personnel are actually placed in positions where their talents are put
to good use.
When, on recruitment, I completed batteries of Intelligence and Aptitude tests, the army
psychologist recommended that I serve in the Intelligence Corps. However someone in the
recruitment structure decided that since the infantry was short of bodies that is where I
should go as did my boyhood friend, Gerry, who started his service on the same day as
me. He was posted with the Kings Own and served in former Italian Somaliland as a
private although he too had been recommended for the I Corps.
If you have not seen the wonderful TV series, ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’, written by that
master of television arts, Dennis Potter, I recommend you look for it-probably on You
Tube. Wikipedia says this of it: ‘The main story is set in a British Military Intelligence Office
in Whitehall during 1956, where a small group of foreign affairs analysts find their quiet
existence disrupted by the Suez Crisis. Mick Hopper (Ewan McGregor) is completing his
national service as an interpreter of Russian documents. Bored with his job, Hopper
spends his days creating fantasy daydreams that involve his work colleagues breaking into
contemporary hit songs.’
My point is that those private soldiers were very bright national servicemen who had been
sent on intensive courses in Russian and although engaged in high value War Office work
they remained private soldiers on their 28 shillings a week.
This was a time when the War Office, testing thousands of NS recruits, was astonished at
the fact that so many of the working class boys had Intelligence Quotients in the very
superior decile; in fact in the top 5% on the normal curve of distribution. It took the WO
quite some time to use those intelligent recruits to advantage, if they ever did! In fact
statistically within the great number of working class people, there lay many more superior
IQ’s than within the ‘ruling classes’.
National Service, post-conflict, began in 1947, so the War Office and battalion
commanders were not sure how to pay national service NCO s when the rate had been set
at 28 shillings per soldier per week. In fact commanding officers were slow to promote
national servicemen so that when some of us NS men in the Kings were promoted e.g.
Lance Corporal clerks in HQ Company, the CO recommended that the boyish looking
ones grow moustaches. My face, bearing a few boyhood and obvious scars e.g. tent peg
through cheek, could get by without a moustache. In fact, on one occasion when I was
being interviewed by an officer, he remarked, “You’re only eighteen! You have worn
badly!”
When I became a full corporal it was decided to pay me the same rate as the regulars so
my pay doubled immediately to 56 shillings a week then rose to about three pounds ten
shillings when Acting Sergeant. My mother was delighted when later in the year I got home
leave and gave her about £30 which I had saved up.
It could have been early in that year that some good souls, possibly well intentioned
WRVS members, who organised a dance evening in some well-appointed hall in the
respectable town of Iserlohn. Tables and chairs were set out around the dance area and
others were set out along its balcony part of an upper mezzanine floor. The rooms were
smart and deserved more respect than they got later in the evening.
25
Somehow from somewhere, young women appeared to partner the soldiers gathered from
all the garrisons in town. In our time, trouble always lay when different regiments occupied
the same or indeed neighbouring ground wherever that happened to be! Inevitably fights
broke out. For example if a Kingsman took a fancy to a fraulein and a few minutes later a
Fusilier was seen ‘chatting her up’ then the latter would be challenged and told to sod off.
If the fusilier did not want to sod off and stood his ground then he would be thumped and
the Kingsman in his turn would be thumped. The fight would then become public property
and not a private fight. That was a well-known law of physics at the time! It was Newton’s
Third Law: When a first body exerts a force F1 on a second body, the second body
simultaneously exerts a force F2 = −F1 on the first body. This means that F1 and F2 are
equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.
All Kingsmen were ‘honour’ bound to join the fight when the cry went up, “Wade in the
Eighth!” Lord knows where and when that originated, possibly some battle in ‘days of yore
‘when the Regiment was invited to sort out an enemy at the end of a bayonet.
During the first few hours, the young women were able to enjoy the dance and a drink or
two given them by attentive as yet sober Tommies. Soldiers and frauleins sat around the
tables chatting drinking and dancing. Then the inevitable happened. The above mentioned
law of physics came into play. The fight spread, the young women fled through the doors
and out into the safety of the streets while soldiers took part in indoor battle practice. I
watched with horror as one or two of our lot up in the gallery smacked fusiliers and threw
them over the balconies. These lads must have watched many a cowboy film shown on
children’s’ matinees during the 1930’s and 1940’s because that tactic never appeared in
the battle tactics.
The Military Police were called and they entered the fray but, for them, that was a big
mistake. Never popular with fellow soldiers, Kingsmen and Fusiliers alike, left off fighting
each other and became allies in sorting out the common enemy, the Redcaps! Before long
all six military policemen lay inert upon the dance floor. Town patrol, mostly regimental
police from both regiments, then turned up and gradually order was restored as some of
the soldiers were loaded into jeeps in handcuffs and slammed away in a variety of
regimental guard room cells. In the Korean War, Private Speakman of the Black Watch,
when out of grenades, drove off the enemy by throwing empty beer bottles at them. He
might well have done his training with the Kings!
That kind of fight was a serious conflict which arose from a trivial incident, just as likely an
accidental spilling of someone’s beer. On those occasions I felt particularly sorry for the
quiet men, the ones who could not defend themselves, the respectably brought up lads,
who tried to behave well but were often dragged into trouble by others. Their lives would
be made miserable. Schools have the same kinds of problems. I, and others like me could
be counted among the men brought up by parents within strict moral codes but there was
no way any loud mouth bully was going to tell me what I should do.
Becoming an NCO with the ability to put soldiers on charge for misbehaviour was definitely
an advantage in dealing with trouble. NCO s who treated men fairly were respected and
appreciated even when placing men on charge but the bullying ones were hated. One
example of that had to do with a staff sergeant who was posted to us. Some of the soldiers
recognised him as having been a Provost NCO in a detention centre in Colchester,
26
England. He seemed never to leave barracks and then on the day he did leave he never
returned. It was rumoured that one or more of his former suffering detainees had ‘got him’.
The process of charging a soldier needs a little explanation. Soldiers of all ranks who
offended against any of the Army Regulations could be put on charge, army slang ‘a fizzer’
(Fizzer, the noise made by a fuse fitted to an explosive charge). During 1948 and 1949,
service was classified as Active Service consequently charge sheets began with Army
Form Number 252 WOAS ( While On Active Service) The penalties for offences WOAS
were higher than when on home bases.
For more information see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jankers
We had a mock one which went, “On the eighth of the eighth, forty eight, I perceived
Private Tate, standing by the gate. I asked Private Tate why he was late and standing
there by the gate. To which he replied, ‘Get knotted!’ Sir! So with the minimum of force, of
course, and the maximum of speed, indeed, I escorted him to the regimental guardroomSir!”
The punishments for various offences are given in some detail on the Wikipedia site but I
do remember that in our battalion on the spot penalties meted out when in training could
include a very severe one, running around the parade ground at the double with rifle at the
high port, that is held overhead. It was eventually banned as it did result, somewhere or
other, in some men dropping dead while doing it.
This promotion brought me a great blessing-for the first time in my life a room of my own at
the end of the building next to a long shared barrack room. What was even more blessed
is that my bed linen, clean white sheets, was changed for me every week by a maid, an
elderly frau actually.
I was then attached to the newly selected Education Wing run by two R.A.E.C. sergeants
who were in the process of requisitioning, that is ordering new fixtures and fittings, for
lecture rooms and library. We had a wonderful time reading through catalogues and
selecting a range of books, pens, pencils and gramophone records. We had to meet a
wide range of tastes for officers and men and in the course of time for officers’ wives. The
latter liked Gilbert and Sullivan and romantic novels but nothing really very serious! The
serious stuff was for we three; the Beethovens, Dvoraks, Bizets in music for us to listen to
over there in the Wing on Sunday mornings, on our own. We ordered the old classic
novels of our boyhood times: Black Beauty, Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and then for
officers and men alike Edgar Wallace, Dornford Yates along with works by contemporary
novelists Agatha Christie, McCoy, Eric Ambler, Mickey Spillane and so on. During the year
the library grew apace and we employed a German librarian, an older married woman, a
bossy frau of the old school. I remember her telling me that her husband had taken refuge
in Switzerland because he was on the Allies wanted list. Did I think that Winston Churchill
would allow him to return to Germany if he, the husband revealed secret files and
documents to the Allies? I referred her to the Commanding Officer but heard no more
about it.
Dog-eared copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover passed among all ranks at the time because
the book prohibited in Britain could be bought on the continent and of course it was.
Squaddies also had a range of pornographic pictures usually bought in Cairo or Port Said,
“Dirty book, Johnny! Velly interesting!”
27
Copies of the Hank Janson pulp fiction were passed among officers and men at what our
Navy friends would call ‘a rate of knots’ with titles like: Torment for Trixy, Hotsy, You’ll Be
Chilled, Broads Don’t Scare Easily.
Wikipedia correctly describes them: “His books were violent "pseudo-American" thrillers
sold in paperback editions featuring erotic cover art, and it is estimated that some five
million copies were sold by 1954.”
Wikipedia continues, “ On the cover a vivid blonde, blouse ripped, skirt hitched up to her
thighs, struggling sweetly against chains, ropes and a gag—and in the top right hand
corner, set in a small circle, like a medallion, the silhouette presumably of Hank himself,
trench coat open, trilby tilted back, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth."
Almost anything was a cultural improvement on them but try replacing them with ‘Thomas
the Tank Engine’ or ‘Noddy in Toy Land’.
We ran a ‘fun’ club among the Kings NCOs was called The Holy Dido Club. Each NCO,
other than the Company Sergeant Majors, had to have a metal uniform button of a
different regiment which we called a Holy Dido. We could challenge any other NCO at any
time with the word, “Dido!” The challenged then had to produce and show the button within
seconds. Obviously the best place to challenge was in the shower when the button would
likely as not have been left in the battledress on a peg and unreachable within the allotted
timespan. After failing to show the Dido, the accused NCO would have to appear at a
‘court martial’. Almost always a sentence would be pronounced and it would have to be
something which caused some mild humiliation enough to give all the other NCOs a laugh.
If my memory serves me well, I had to mount a ladder just before Reveille, tap on the
window of the Regimental Sergeant Major’s room and set about cleaning that window. Of
course, the RSM, outside of the Commanding Officer was, the force majeur, an act of God,
some would say God Himself, in the battalion. The window was opened and I was
subjected to a tirade from the holy man himself much to the amusement of those NCO’s
who had come along to witness the event!
Demarcation lines among the hierarchical structures of the Armed Forces can be very rigid
so when I first was asked to start giving classes to NCO’s preparing them for their Third,
Second and First Class Education Certificates, the Company Sergeant Majors were very
uncomfortable indeed having a Lance Corporal train them in improving their writing,
reading and arithmetical skills. They were a little more amenable when I was promoted full
corporal and acting sergeant but it became obvious to me that as ‘punishment’ when
possible they arranged for me to have a greater than usual number of 24 hour duties as
guard commander and battalion orderly sergeant at weekends! Getting me during the
week was a particular triumph for them when classes could not be covered and the RAEC
staff had to take two each at the same time. I did more than my share of hospital detention
ward guard, NAAFI, town patrols and so on! The RAEC sergeants were excused all such
duties so I was probably indirectly assigned theirs as there was a shortage of NCO s at the
time. Actually I didn’t mind the duties as they were more interesting than not.
Mischief among the top office holders of the Other Ranks was one thing but mischief
among the least of our brethren was another. We, the RAEC men and I, had to teach our
boy soldiers, about six of them aged around sixteen. Their attainment levels were on
28
average better than the older soldiers because of course they had arrived among us
straight from school. But they brought school mischief with them. The scholarly RAEC
sergeants, one with a First from Cambridge and the other from Bristol University possibly,
and although six years older than the boys, found lads difficult to deal with because of the
vast chasm of knowledge that lay between them. I grew up among boys like this and I was
only two years older than they were, I could have been a Sixth Former, but nevertheless
they practised ingenious mischief on us all.
One particular morning I entered the classroom and they were not present so I went off to
find them. They could not be found anywhere in the building yet according to their NCO
supervisors the boys had been marched up to the door of the Wing. I went back to the
room to find it still empty of boy soldiers. I did however hear a giggle or two so I looked out
of the window and there they were two floors up standing on ledges outside and hanging
on with their juvenile hands to the brickwork! I nodded them in as they congratulated
themselves on a job well done. Indeed it was; they had shown an inventive courage which
I thought would do them well in the future.
Among the offerings we made at the Education Wing was the all-battalion compulsory
attendance at ABCA lectures. The Army Bureau of Current Affairs had been set up during
World War II to educate and to raise morale amongst British servicemen. It probably raised
the political awareness of the men to such an extent that they voted overwhelmingly for a
Labour government at the end of hostilities. Is it any wonder Churchill, one of the very
politicians the servicemen had no intention of allowing back in office, opposed the
introduction of the ABCA?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Bureau_of_Current_Affairs
I was thrilled to be able to talk about nationalisation and the introduction of the wonderful
new National Health Service, started on 5 July 1948, just 17 days before I began my
National Service. My lifetime interest in social justice began then when delivering those
lectures to fellow soldiers. They were heady days when we as citizen soldiers realised
what we now owned: railways, the General Post Office incl. post offices and Royal Mail,
coal, gas, electricity, water, British Airways, canals and waterways. Most Britons had very
little money, lived in sub-standard housing on meagre food rations but had a large
measure of dignity as citizen owners. I was keen to let my fellow soldiers know that and to
discuss our duties and privileges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Army_Educational_Corps
This was a time when the War Office insisted upon NCO s gaining a suitable level of
certification to match their ranks. We three in the Education Wings had most soldiers
attend lessons during our time there. If I remember correctly the 1 st. Class Certificate was
thought to be the equivalent of School Certificate but certainly not at matriculation level. I
recall one Major exclaiming, “ By God, Hynes! You’re better qualified than I am! We should
get you into WOSB!” (War Office Selection Board for commissioning officers) I was on my
way out of the army by then but really I should have done better to have signed up but my
mother insisted that she did not want a dead son, thank you very much. (By then we were
testing new clothing for the Korean War although the battalion didn’t go there until two
years later.)
Work in the Education Wing was really interesting and challenging but unlike the RAEC
sergeants I had to perform my duties as an infantryman.
29
My two colleagues, the RAEC men, were not really interested in the army but fortunately
the army had used them to their mutual advantage. I remember Sergeant Arthur Terry very
well but I regret to say not the other one who I think also bore a surname that looked like a
first name, Sergeant Jack. During his first leave, Arthur went off to Spain to immerse
himself in Catalonia, and after demobilisation he went on eventually to become a great
Catalan scholar.
The story went that during basic training, he a reluctant soldier, was told by an instructor to
swing over the river on rope in an imaginary jungle. Not keen on Tarzan-like antics, he
asked instructor if the river was full of crocodiles. When told, No, he simply waded across!
He became great Catalan scholar but died in 2004. His sudden death was headline news
in Barcelona.
His
obituary
can
still
be
read
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/feb/19/guardianobituaries.obituaries
on
And there are other tributes to him on the Internet.
The parade ground was a sacred place which in practice belonged to the Regimental
Sergeant Major. It was there where skills in marching were honed and kept ready. There
were times when NCO s could watch commissioned officers, not the best at marching and
rifle drill, being put ‘through their paces’ by the RSM himself, no less, pacing stick in hand.
‘Tara’, as the Lancashire lads would call him, as in ‘taressem’, in sheer desperation at the
low level of marching skills among the officers, would devote hour upon hour to drilling
them for participation in ceremonial parades. A case in point could be when CSM and
NCO s were preparing the whole battalion for taking part in the rare Trooping of the
Colour. Officers had to learn to take up positions on the Big Day without, in Army
language, making complete balls up of it.
During those training sessions on holy ground, we NCO s walking around the edges of the
square, supposedly going about our business, could stop and watch with great
amusement as an apoplectic RSM shouted at them in sheer frustration. He relieved his
nerves by shouting various words of encouragement at the officers, such as,
“You bloody idiot, sir!” or, “What the hell are you trying to do Mr. Smith, sir? Left foot first,
bloody left!” and “You’ll be the death of me yet, sir!” NCO s expert in such matters took
great pleasure in watching this display without laughing out loud.
On the Big Day itself those commissioned officers had to be ready to march in full view of
spectators and act convincingly on various commands such as that given to the drummers
(Buglers) by the CO; “ Sound the officers’ call!” That particular order, itself, caused ripples
of merriment among the hundreds of soldiers as all along the assembled lines of OR’s,
squaddies would make raspberry noises, their versions of the officers’ call. (Like as not,
the Goons probably learnt their famous raspberries during their times in the services.)
Company Sergeant Majors could hear those rasps coming from behind them but they just
had to put up with them hoping they could not be heard by VIP spectators watching the
ceremony. Unofficial noises on parade were of course grievously sinful, especially on holy
ground almost as bad as not having shaved closely or having a dirty rifle or boots you
could no see your face in. Or fainting on parade!
30
There were those times in late evenings when several of us NCO s after a pint or two
ventured onto the sacred place in semi-darkness to laugh at ourselves wobblingly while
performing mock up guard mounting, giving each other spoof orders such as, “ Guard
commander, make toast!” instead of
“Guard commander, take post!” The RSM would probably have died on the spot if he had
seen us. Officers were one hazard but his, his, NCO s deliberately ‘taking the mickey’, was
another!
As a recruit and when a private soldier inevitably I had to do guard duties of various kinds
including 24 hour stags which were very boring if you were confined to a sentry box from
which every now and then you could emerge to march up and down a few yards along you
assigned ‘beat’.
‘Prowler’ guard was much less boring because your duty was to patrol inside the camp
perimeter checking on doors and fences. Each sentry had to do two hours on patrol and
four hours back in the guardroom during which time he could sleep. Twenty two hundred
hours until 23.59 hours was a popular stint because it meant off being able to sleep
between 00.01 hours and 04.00 hrs. and so on. (Those strange times of 23.59 and 00.01
were times entered on say charge sheets because there was no official way of writing
midnight; 00.00 hrs. did not exist! Private Jones booking in late at exactly midnight would
be reported on a charge sheet as having returned at 23.59 hours.)
After going through changing the guard drill, taking over from the retiring bleary eyed,
retiring guard, Guard Commanders would usually get their seconds-in-command, Lance
Corporals, to march the sentries to their allotted posts. All the guards would place live
rounds into the magazines of their Lee Enfield, bolt action, magazine-fed, repeater rifles,
soldiers’ best friends, put safety catches on and fix bayonets. The sentries would have to
have ‘one up the spout’ ready for instant firing if need be and probably 4 in the magazine.
If I remember correctly we seldom put ten in the magazine on guard duty. All the soldiers
would have had a regular practice on the firing ranges but nevertheless carelessness or
sheer panic could result in non-combat accidents when using live rounds. Sentries were
always nervous when on such guards because it had been borne in upon them that the
safety of the whole camp depended upon them and their measure of alertness. One might
say that the lives of the whole battalion lay in the hands of the guard commander and his
sentries.
We heard about one Hussar on duty in another barracks across town who was on main
gate guard duty who had a nerve wracking time when a truck drove straight past him after
being challenged. In sheer panic, not really knowing what he should do he drew his
revolver (Carried by Hussars in place of rifles) and shot at the back of the vehicle killing
one of the occupants. It was really very stupid of his fellow soldiers to take the guard for
granted and go waltzing through without stopping. The national service lad on the gate did
what he believed he should do, no more or less.
31
I have made mention of practice with rifles but said nothing about soldiers’ first lessons in
using the rifle so her I have quoted a wonderfully accurate commentary on becoming
acquainted with the rifle as described by the British poet Henry Reed.
NAMING OF PARTS
To-day
we
have
naming
of
parts.
Yesterday,
We
had
daily
cleaning.
And
to-morrow
morning,
We
shall
have
what
to
do
after
firing.
But
to-day,
To-day
we
have
naming
of
parts.
Japonica
Glistens
like
coral
in
all
of
the
neighbouring
gardens,
And
to-day
we
have
naming
of
parts.
This
is
the
lower
sling
swivel.
And
this
Is
the
upper
sling
swivel,
whose
use
you
will
see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which
in
your
case
you
have
not
got.
The
branches
Hold
in
the
gardens
their
silent,
eloquent
gestures,
Which
in
our
case
we
have
not
got.
This
is
the
safety-catch,
which
is
always
released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See
anyone
using
his
finger.
You
can
do
it
quite
easy
If
you
have
any
strength
in
your
thumb.
The
blossoms
Are
fragile
and
motionless,
never
letting
anyone
see
Any
of
them
using
their
finger.
And
this
you
can
see
is
the
bolt.
The
purpose
of
this
Is
to
open
the
breech,
as
you
see.
We
can
slide
it
Rapidly
backwards
and
forwards:
we
call
this
Easing
the
spring.
And
rapidly
backwards
and
forwards
The
early
bees
are
assaulting
and
fumbling
the
flowers:
They
call
it
easing
the
Spring.
They
call
it
easing
the
Spring:
it
is
perfectly
easy
If
you
have
any
strength
in
your
thumb:
like
the
bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For
to-day
we
have
naming
of
parts.
The poem continues with « Part II. "Judging Distances" | Part IV. "Unarmed Combat" »
At least one sentry would be posted at the main entrance with orders to challenge all who
wanted to enter. During daylight matters were fairly straightforward but they could be
difficult at night when for example drunken soldiers would want to sneak in undetected,
with pleas to the sentry, “ Ah, go on mate, let me get in without going through the
guardroom! ‘ere, av a ciggy!” The offender, escorted in by the duty sentry, would do his
best not to wobble when supposedly standing to attention to hear that he would be on
charge and appearing on commanding officer’s orders later that day.
32
Doing so would be one big mistake for any sentry who knew that the soldier’s booking out
time had already been logged by the guard commander and the soldier would be on
charge the next day anyway for not booking back in at the correct time.
In the early hours of the morning, sentries would peep through the guardroom window to
be reassured that the guard commander was still there and to look at the time. One
morning at about two a.m , I was quite amused to see a pale face peering in just as I was
reading a chapter in ‘The Devil Rides Out ‘ by Dennis Wheatley. The vision appearing at
the window added piquancy although crowned by a steel helmet and not the protruding
horns of a goat!
As mentioned previously, Guard Commander duties included booking soldiers in and out
of barracks and trying to make sure no unauthorised persons entered the barracks and
making sure prisoners did not escape from the cells. Sentries on ‘prowler’ duty, walking
within the perimeter fence might well come upon comrades sneaking back into camp in the
small hours of the morning through a hole in a fence. Seldom would they arrest and detain
them for fear of being done over by the offender after he had completed his punishment.
Consequently there were few such incidents but from time to time the pioneer section
would repair the holes in the wire fences cut by men sneaking in and out without going
through the guardroom.
Some soldiers returning late and somewhat the worse for wear would become ‘stroppy’ in
the guardroom blustering and ‘effin and blindin’. The only course open for the guard
commander would be to make them empty their pockets, take the laces out of their boots
and get a sentry to tuck them away in a cell for the night. The laces were taken out to
reduce the possibility of suicide. The next morning the offender would appear before a
senior officer on ‘Commanding Officer’s Orders’. Sentences would be meted out in
accordance with the hand signals made by the RSM standing behind the accused but in
full view of the examining officer. The RSM would hold up either seven fingers or ten
followed by four indicating the number of days to be spent on jankers. There were times
when a sentencing officer suffering a heavy hangover and a black eye acquired in the
Mess might well have been awarded jankers too had he instead been a private soldier!
I have a very clear memory, aside from the fine detail, of hearing a sentry on the main gate
shout, “Turn out the guard! Guard turn out!” I ran outside, rifle in hand, with two armed
guards with fixed bayonets, to join the sentry on the gate. One of our own officers, a Major
confronted the sentry who was not sure what to do hence his frantic shout for help. It
quickly became clear that Major YY was ‘pissed as a newt’ and making a nuisance of
himself by ‘taking the mickey’ out of the poor sentry. The sentry had challenged the officer
as he had emerged unexpectedly out of the dark with the required, “Halt! Who goes there!
Password?” Major YY did not seem to know the day’s password and he began to tease the
sentry giving him a bad time.
I gave the appropriate order of, “Fall in two men!” The two guards took up positions on
either side of the officer and escorted him into the regimental guardroom. “Empty your
pockets, sir!” said I, “Give us your laces1” A sentry took the laces form the major’s shoes
and I placed him in an empty cell. The soldiers grinned with delight. I then phoned through
to the Orderly Officer of the day and told him about the incident and he replied, “I am just
going to bed. Keep YY in the cell for the night and let him out in the morning. It will do him
good.” So that is where the major stayed for the night after going soundly asleep.
33
That was actually an amusing incident which resulted in teaching an officious officer with
nothing better to do late at night but put the wind up a sentry. Whereas, an NCO colleague
of mine, experienced a very, very awkward incident when he was doing his stint as guard
commander in the regimental guardroom. One of the cells held Private XYZ, a brawny
Lancashire lad who had spent about four years in the Army trying to complete 18 months
National Service. He never caught on to the fact that although he hated being in the army,
he was not going to be thrown out just by disobeying orders on a regular basis. Most of his
time had therefore been spent in the cells and that was never counted as time served. He
might have tried other tricks such as the one we had seen of drawing ducks on the parade
ground and throwing bread to at it feigning mental imbalance. That and various versions of
it!
There he was then in his cell but at a time when he had decided to get out. He folded up
his metal bed and used it to batter the cell door open. Whether he did so or not we are not
sure, but the guard commander had leapt on XYZ’s back using a pick handle, thought of
as a non-lethal weapon, to quell the prisoner. The NCO was however thrown off and
booted and fled as did all the rest of the guard, one of whom managed to take his loaded
rifle outside with him.
Once outside, that sentry pointed his rifle at the guardroom door within which stood Private
XYZ. The sentry, a Lance Corporal shouted, “If tha cums out here, I’ll let thee have it!”
Private XYZ went inside and returned with a rifle abandoned by a guard in a hurry, and
replied, “And if tha cums in here, I’ll let thee have it and the rest of you. There are 200
rounds in here, which indeed there were! The situation became a stand-off as in a
Hollywood Western.
The guard commander sent for the Orderly Officer, a subaltern of tender years and tender
personality. He called to Private XYZ, “Oh, come on my good man! Put the rifle down
there’s a good chap and come out here.”
XYZ replied, “I’ll tell thee what. Take off tha jacket and come in here and we’ll fight. If tha
wins I’ll go back in and if I win I get out!”
This strange dialogue continued for a time until the guard commander brought a posse of
regimental police to the scene- with a guard dog. A German Shepherd. On the odd
occasion when one of these dogs got loose and went roaming about the barracks grounds
the feet of retreating soldiers never touched the ground on their way indoors out of harm’s
way. The dog handler sent the dog into the guardroom, but, soon, its yelps could be heard
from within and it came out in a hurry squealing as it went. The prisoner had hit it with a
chair.
They too were real hard lads and they somehow negotiated a deal with XYZ so that he
spent a few weeks more in his cell with his own key to his own personal cosy cell! During
the day he worked as a cook house orderly, a job he liked, letting himself in and out of his
cell at appropriate times. The cooks loved his presence because he was a good worker
and no squaddies dared complain about the food when XYZ could hear them.
Here follows a useful description of ‘jankers’ taken from Wikipedia
CB" which means "Confined to Barracks"
34
….whilst on jankers, the soldier or airmen was subjected to several punishment
parades and inspections each day in different forms of dress, starting with working
clothes fatigues half an hour after reveille, where he paraded outside the
guardhouse for inspection by the Orderly Officer. After inspection, the offender is
sent to perform a variety of tasks, not always, but often, menial, followed by before
breakfast. After lunch, the man has to report again to the guardroom for inspection,
and is then assigned some kind of unpleasant work, known as "fatigues", until
shortly before he must attend the afternoon’s muster parade. After tea, he parades
again at the guardhouse, this time in battledress and in battle order, where he is
rigorously inspected. Any criticism of his turnout or equipment can result in another
'charge' or 'fizzer.' The final parade of the day was at 22.00 hours, and in Full Service
Marching Order. FSMO, as it is referred to, is best battledress, best boots, sharply
and cleanly turned out, and with every piece of equipment provided by the Army,
including large back pack, small front pack, two front ammunition pouches, and the
straps and belts called 'webbing' consisting of a belt, gaiters, pack straps, and
packs, blanco'ed or boot polished, the brasses highly burnished, and smartly
maintaining a soldierly attitude at all times. After inspection, the soldier could then
return to barracks, prepare his kit for tomorrow's parades, and then get to bed for
some rest.
Regimental guard duties became routine but on some Sundays, most NCO s would have
taken part in a ceremonial changing of the guard, ‘Beating Retreat’, led by the guard
commander, sometimes me, six men and behind them the whole regimental band, about
40 of them. The ceremony of Beating Retreat originated hundreds of years ago when
beating or sounding retreat called a halt to the day’s fighting, soldiers returned to camp
and mounted guard for the night. We would be mounting guard at about six in the evening
with massed band and ‘massed spectators in attendance.
If I remember correctly the orderly officer would call out, “ Guard commander take post!”
and from then on it was left to the sergeant of the guard to give orders. The next duty of
the orderly officer was to perform a token inspection of the soldiers, possibly in the
company of some guest. VIP s, wives and families would watch it all from the edges of the
parade ground as the guard marched to their duties to whatever ‘tunes of glory’ the band
played. In our case one of those tunes would always be the regimental march, ‘Here’s to
the maiden of bashful fifteen’ and almost certainly ‘Colonel Bogey’.
As the flag was slowly lowered, the band would play ‘Abide with Me’ and silver trumpets
would play ‘The Last Post’, after which we would march briskly to the guardroom feeling
relieved that we had given the right orders at the right time and could now ‘relax’ in the
guard room away from critical eyes. My memory of the exact order of the ceremony is
somewhat faded but that is about it. It really was and still is quite a moving ceremony as
we remember the dead and wounded.
Yet another, not very popular 24 hour guard duty, would take place in the British Military
Hospital, Iserlohn.
Some six years after we did our duties there, 1956, it was a place where children of
Canadian troops were born.
For
more
pictures
and
locations.org/ArgonneBks.aspx.html
information
see:
http://www.baor-
35
It was not popular because one soldier at a time was locked in a narrow corridor next to
the guardroom. On the other side of the corridor was a ward with another locked door.
There were small windows in each door. The sentry would patrol carrying a pick handle
and wearing ‘pumps’, PT shoes with soft soles in order not to disturb the patients on the
other side.
The reason for the guard was that the patients held there were high-risk prisoners who
were ill. Among them would be defecting Russian soldiers, civilians from the Russian
zone, Control Commission people who had been caught fraudulently making money on the
Black Market. (Harry Lime types!)
On at least one occasion one of my sentries was Private XYZ, the hard lad! I got on well
enough with him because I was prepared to listen as he told me that he loved animals but
hated most people. He had to do his stints in the corridor but what he used to like was
posting the sentries there saving me the task. The other squaddies were terrified of him so
would do his bidding with great alacrity.
Most times those guard duties passed without incident but we heard about an unfortunate
experience of one of our NCO s on duty there when one of patients had begun breaking
the windows in the ward and had to be restrained. The NCO was reluctant to start belting
the man with a pick handle but with help, the guard commander was able to sit on the
offender after the guards had floored him. The poor NCO had to sit on him most of the
night until nursing staff coming on duty could take over using sedatives.
I too had a difficult situation on my hands when patrolling the rooms of the
WRVS./Combined Services Entertainment Unit/NAAFI/bar type amenity rooms in
downtown Iserlohn.
36
http://www.baor-locations.org/iserlohnvarious.aspx.html
It might have been this building but for the life of me I can’t remember.
Each regiment had to take turns in supervising the interior rooms as a piquet, NCO and
two men, each in best battle dress, boots and gaiters and wearing ammo belts with
bayonet and scabbard to show we were on duty.
One of the house rules to be strictly enforced by the piquet was to ensure that the bar
ceased serving drinks at nine thirty, 21.30 hrs., in the evenings. One evening, at nine
thirty, I told the German bar staff to stop serving despite the fact that there was a queue of
soldiers from all units waiting to place their orders. Soldiers standing at the bar at the head
of the line leaned across to grab the Germans telling them on no uncertain manner that
they wanted their ‘effin drinks. This was very awkward for me and for the bar staff, but I
was having none of it- the bar had to close. I repeated my order to the bar staff and sent
them into the back room out of harm’s way. Some nameless soldier, a fusilier, a Cockney,
37
complained and threatened me in a loud voice and his mates backed him up. However a
fellow Kingsman, although also feeling deprived of his drink, grabbed the fusilier and
advised him, “You don’t ‘effin well talk to our NCO’s like that, la!” As the saying goes,
blows were exchanged, and the fight became general. I advised my two piquet soldiers,
mere boys, about nine months younger than I, to stay out of the way, because this affair
was bigger than the three of us!
As the scrap continued and grew, a passing C of E, padre, a captain stood in the doorway
tut- tutting and shaking his head at this display of robust Christianity. Someone had by
then rung through to the Military Police who having learned previous lessons like the
British horizontal heavyweights were not going to arrive in a hurry. They had learned how
to arrive later in time to pick up the pieces and take names.
I had a problem on my hands, how do I clear the bar as I was supposed to do? So I went
about spreading the good word, “Lads, throw these fusiliers out. Wade in the Eighth!”
Passing Kingsmen who were coming out of the cinema, as was the chaplain, joined in the
clearing up process. Within a few minutes, or more, the scrap continued-outside- so my
honour was saved, the bar had been cleared. The redcaps appeared and loaded up a few
trucks with a selection of bruised and battered soldiers.
There must be many a story about guardrooms and guards and the Kings Regiment.
Headquarter Company personnel, housed in a block nearest to the guardroom, were often
slow to get out of their beds at Reveille. The drummer (bugler) would first play Reveille
outside that block and then march on in turn to blow outside the other company blocks.
Consequently, HQ Kingsmen stayed in bed a few minutes longer thinking they could get
away with it. They did it so often that one morning I asked the drummer at six a.m. (06.00)
to climb the stairs of HQ block with me and stand in the middle of the upper barrack room,
dormitory. He stood to attention and I ordered him to blow Reveille. He did. I must admit it
sounded like the Trump of Doom and appropriately the ‘dead’ sat bolt upright in their ‘pits’.
(Slang for bed cots) The Archangel Gabriel could not have done a better job than the
drummer that morning. The artist Stanley Spencer could have used those men as models
for his picture Resurrection: Cookham. See http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/spencerthe-resurrection-cookham-n04239
Thereafter HQ personnel did their very best to avoid such an awakening in the future.
I will mention one other little episode which comes to mind. One day when I was walking
up to the main gate opposite the proverbial guardroom, a sentry, a Kingsman, confronted
me with his rifle lowered and the bayonet pointed menacingly toward me. He moved
forward saying, “ F….ing NCO s!” I had the distinct impression that he ‘had drink taken’
and was in a bad mood!
I had to think very quickly about how to get out of that one. Instead of looking apologetic
and cowed, with a fixed bayonet pointed towards me, I shouted at him, “Your top tunic
button is open, soldier! Do it up-now or I’ll have you on a charge!” He did exactly as I told
him while I held his rifle! I sent him back to his post. Thank God thought I for army
conditioning. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going!
My memory of what happened next is not clear. Likely as not I did no more because of
course if the man had been drinking on duty, not only he but also the guard commander, a
38
fellow NCO, would have been in very real trouble. Dealing with a drunken off duty officer
was one thing but dealing with an on-duty sentry who had been drinking was another
matter altogether.
When it came to battalion day duties, I actually liked spells as Battalion Orderly Sergeant.
On such duties, the Orderly Sergeant would wear a red sash so that he could be seen
wherever he happened to be on camp. Incidentally, commissioned officers, walking about
camp were obliged to carry walking sticks. The idea was so that they could be easily
distinguished many paces away and passing soldiers would be ready to salute following
the old army adage, ‘If moves, salute it and if it doesn’t move, whitewash it!”
The startling white stripes on NCO s sleeves were obvious from a long way away but the
sleeve markings for Company Sergeant Majors and Regimental Sergeant Majors were
virtually invisible from a distance but like as not they could be carrying pacing sticks. I
remember with some amusement a young soldier failing to notice the RSM s sleeve
badge, the lion and the unicorn.
The RSM pointed at his sleeve, “Look at that sonny. Where have you seen that before?”
The nervous soldier quickly answered, “On a cocoa tin, sir!”
And indeed he had, ‘By Appointment to His Majesty the King’.
The Battalion Orderly Sergeant would attend an early morning meeting with the
Commanding Officer or the Adjutant and receive orders for the day for passing on to
Company Sergeant Majors. One auspicious day, when the battalion was expecting to be
ordered out on field exercises, I made a note of the CO s order,
‘Steel helmets will be garnished!’ I conveyed the order among others to the company
sergeant majors all of whom immediately took fright. After having returned to my own HQ
Company, the CSM, as puzzled by the word ‘garnished’ as the others. “Come on Hynes,
you’re with the Education Wing. What the hell does he mean by garnished?” I had visions
of the officers having problems with that too because they might have had visions of a
culinary delight, garnished with onions and herbs.
“He means the helmets should have their camouflage nets filled with leaves and twigs.”
“Why the bloody hell didn’t he say so! Effin garnished!”
By then the CSM s phone and all the other company phones had been brought into action
as panicky SCM s were asking each other what the CO meant. CSM Q was able to show
off by telling them we had solved the problem. HQ Company does it again!
Although soldiers complained bitterly when on field exercises or manoeuvres, I think that
they actually preferred them to hanging about in barracks. I certainly liked them. During
those field exercises though opportunities for getting regular meals at the right time were
few and far between so no doubt they would be during combat. My father told me that
when they took trenches from the Germans during WW I he and his comrades would look
through the knapsacks of dead Gerries to see if they could find any German sausages.
39
Dead Frenchmen might yield wine in their water bottles but dead Britons might have boring
bully beef only!
During some of those field exercises we had one hot meal a day, or I should say, a night
because at about two in the morning a truck would arrive out of the night with vacuum
dixies filled with food. Cooks and orderlies stood near the dixies (Large pots used by
campers or soldiers to hold cooked food) with ladles at the ready. All the OR s then stood
in line or lines with mess tins and mugs in hands ready to receive the stew and the rice
pudding. As it was CSM Q, was always ready for a laugh so he called out, “Catholics to
the left, left footers, and Protestants to the right!” Bleary eyed soldiers not realising that he
was taking the mick, did exactly that. We, the Catholics, then pretended we were getting
bigger portions- the CSM was a Catholic.
The Kingsmen, hungry and dozy, shuffled forward along the line with large mess tins held
out to receive a ladleful of stew, thrown accurately by the orderlies from about six inches.
The next mess tin, the smaller one, was then held out to receive a ladleful of rice pudding.
The mug was the filled with tea at the last disposal point in the line-up. Cries of anguish
arose every now and then as the doziest soldiers failed to hold out the small mess tins in
time to receive the rice pudding. Instead the dessert went straight in to ‘garnish’ the stew
leaving the small mess tin empty and forlorn! Yuk! Nevertheless, the stew/rice had to be
consumed anyway as they would have to put up with it. The battalion ‘gannets’ were fine
as they would consume anything whatsoever.
Although, rifles were said to be the infantryman’s best friend, his true friend was a ‘brew’,
tea. In the morning near the end of a twenty four-hour guard, when the regimental police
came on duty, one of them would fetch a welcome dixie of tea along for the guard. More
than once we have drunk our way through the contents only to discover an abandoned
dish cloth at the bottom of the dixie. It could well have been a rat because in our innocence
we had already enjoyed the brew.
The battalion took part in several field exercises; all of them during summer or autumn
weather, so sleeping on the ground on groundsheet capes wasn’t too bad. I remember a
time when our trucks covered in camouflaged netting had stayed overnight on the edge of
a woodland. We were taking part in a Red Army versus Blue Army type exercises,
involving British, American, French and Belgian troops; some in Red the others in Blue, I
can’t remember which. Once again I was doing duty as Guard Commander and had to
post sentries around the ‘echelon’ (!).
During the early hours of the morning when sentries had to be changed I had to find the
designated soldiers sleeping in the backs of one or other of the trucks. The surest way I
had of finding trucks in the dark filled with sleeping soldiers was by sniffing for smelly feet!
I had no intention of joining with smelly comrades in trucks so I bedded down at the edge
of the woodland on a groundsheet cape after digging out a hollow within which fitted my
hip. (Scouting for Boys advice!) As daylight came I was awakened by the sound of tank
tracks approaching so I rose to my feet and moved into the woodland. It was just as well
because one of the approaching monsters drove over the place in which I had been dozing
minutes back. There was an odd burning sensation in one tiny part of my shoulder and
after taking off my battledress blouse I noticed a small ‘burn’ hole and I could feel a burn
40
in my skin which I then washed. I don’t know to this day why that happened; all I can think
of is that it may have been a tiny piece of phosphorus from a spent shell.
Manoeuvres can be as deadly as combat at times because of carelessness. We heard that
in fact a tent within which six military policemen were sleeping during those exercises was
actually run over by a tank, probably a Centurion and all were killed. Vision is very limited
with tanks that is why there were times when infantrymen during WWII could actually run
up to them and stick magnetic or sticky bombs on their sides.
Thinking of tanks and combined exercises recalls my seeing a line of tanks coming
towards us on a German country lane as we moved over out of the way. In a nearby field
we saw a German farmer waving his arms at them in beckoning motions. He kept up the
waving and leaping about and making signs to suggest the tanks should move towards
him. The tanks turned into his field full of cabbages and he showed his delight by nodding
and pointing to other nearby fields. The tanks obligingly drove up and down through his
crops squashing all beneath them. When stopped the farmer rushed over to them and
gave the hussars some of his schnapps and wine. He was absolutely delighted because
as a farmer he would be able to claim cash compensation for a ruined crop bringing him
more income than the eventual sale would have done. Soldiers can be useful.
That said, I also remember when a couple of platoons were driven into a field full of
potatoes where under direction from our Quartermaster Captain we were directed to dig
out potatoes with trenching tools. This we did and filled up several trucks and trailers until
some wise soul pointed out that a Lysander aircraft, ideal for observation duties, was
circling about overhead. It dawned on us that in fact it was probably the General who used
to fly over watching the progress of the mock battle! Much scuffling took place as
regimental identification badges on the vehicles were covered up by tunics and capes and
the QM Captain led the retreat taking his tons of extra stores with him and us.
Soldiers and food and supplies were an important combination but throughout history no
general ever seemed to have got it right. Again when out in the field and once again acting
as Battalion Orderly Sergeant and after having the drummer summon the dining room
orderlies on the bugle and shortly afterwards getting him to play, Come to the Cookhouse
Door. The men arrived at the cookhouse, a large marquee wherein cooks and orderlies
stood ready with the food containers and ladles. I stood by to make sure the men lined up
in an orderly fashion. They did but when they stood looking at the meagre portions and
they were really meagre, miniscule in fact: totally inadequate rations for men running about
on blasted heaths with rifles, mortars and anti-tank guns. The men reached out for the
throats of the cooks shaking them and demanding more. I sympathised with them but I
could not let the matter get out of hand but get out of hand it did. Dozens of squaddies
banged on their mess tins and shouted, “More! More!” sprinkling their requests with
suitable epithets and threats about taking cooks apart at the seams. Eventually the
Quartermaster Captain arrived and within a short while more food appeared and all
quietened down. I learned later that one or more of the catering staff, a Quartermaster
Sergeant probably, had been selling rations to German black marketeers. Such is life!
Further incidents come to mind when thinking about soldiers and food. One again on
manoeuvres I was leading a patrol through ‘No Man’s Land’, rough heathland, we may
have had breakfast but we seemed to be ever hungry. We came across a German farm
surrounded by a wall. One of the Scousers called out. “Eh lads, there's some effin
chickens over there. Can we catch a couple?"
41
I answered, “Well I can’t give you permission to do that but I’ll go off for a smoke!” I sat
down in the bracken or in a small wood nearby. I actually crept back to watch a couple of
squaddies chase the chickens in the farmyard. That was like a scene from a Laurel and
Hardy film because of course it is difficult to catch running chickens at the best of times, let
alone when it is supposed to be done without too much noise.
Eventually, one of the patrol called out, “Got yer, yer b'stud!"
He climbed over the wall holding it out triumphantly as it squawked before it dawned on
him that he didn't know what to do with it! I told him to screw its neck, which he then did.
Fortunately I called upon my Boy Scout experience and advice given in my favourite
boyhood book, Scouting for Boys. I gutted it then packed it around with mud from a nearby
stream. We then lit a fire and placed the bird among the hot coals. When the clay had
hardened and glowed I retrieved the avian offering, not a burnt one, broke open the
hardened clay and we dined like kings or medieval peasants, one or the other.
On one or two occasions a sergeant major bagged either a wild boar a deer and
fortunately we knew enough to blood them and hang them up on branches until the cooks
came along and dealt with them.
On the same exploratory patrol that we had a chicken dinner, and bored silly except for a
minute or two when a Vampire jet came out of nowhere and ‘buzzed’ us. We were glad it
was not real combat and were not being rocketed!
A little way ahead of us, we saw smoke rising from a fire just inside a woodland. We
decided to investigate so took a circuitous route around the woodland in order to enter it
from the rear and to approach the fire and the men moving about it without being seen. As
we moved closer to the fire and the sound of voices we played cowboys and Indians by
getting closer using as much cover as possible. The men were American soldiers who sat
around a fire smoking cigarettes and talking to each other.
Like a naughty schoolboy I told the other members of the patrol to take a few blank rounds
out of their ammo pouches. The rounds were the cartridge cases without bullets but having
crimped edges and filled with cordite. Whether or not these Americans were supposed to
be on our side or the enemy we knew not, but we were going to have some fun. We each
threw a handful of rounds onto the fire and were well on our way out of our hiding places
before we heard them exploding in the heat, crack, crack, pause crack, crack. The
expletives and the ‘Jesus Christ! What was that?” heard as we got away added an
unforeseen dimension to the day. We actually enjoyed it.
Little bouts of mischief happened. For example, I remember going out now and then with a
regular service NCO from the Armoury section. He was absolutely fascinated by explosive
demolition charges and would take every opportunity to get out into the countryside around
the camp to try out his explosives on wooden towers. We thought them to be military
lookouts perched on wooden stilts but thinking back on it they were probably used by
hunters out bird shooting. Iserlohn like so many German towns had a regular
Schützenfest, a marksman’s festival so I suppose they would hunt in the nearby forest.
Quite without any authority, just for sheer devilment, my friend would place a charge on
one or more legs, set the fuses and bring the tower toppling down. Unfortunately for him,
42
he got it wrong on one occasion too may and blew his fingers off. He was of course court
marshalled and dismissed without pension, poor lad. Had there been a war on that kind of
expertise might instead have been rewarded.
Carelessness is inevitable and often fatal. There were times when we would take part in
moving through practice grounds with rifles ready to fire live rounds at cardboard figures of
enemy soldiers which would spring up in front. They had to be shot at immediately. Care
was taken to ensure that no person in the section was ever in front of those who were
shooting.
As one section of soldiers finished their short session they came out of the range and were
told to clear rifles. That meant pulling back the bolt to clear out any round still left in the
breech, pointing the muzzles at the ground and squeezing the trigger. One soldier,
carelessly pointed his rifle in our direction at waist height and just as he squeezed the
trigger SCM Q was calling out, “Who’s that bloody man! Muzzle down lad!” But as he was
saying it the rifle went off and he received a round straight through his middle. As he fell,
he said, “Remind me to put that idiot on a charge!” Or words to that effect. Q was taken to
the RAMC immediately where it was found that the round had damaged internal organs
and lodged in his spine. He died that day.
In accordance with regular procedure, the careless soldier had been immediately placed
for his own protection because when that kind of thing happened the offender often shot
himself in distress and of course the circumstances had to be closely investigated. I never
knew what happened to him afterwards. CSM Q was actually much liked and a good
soldier. When going on some parades he used to swop rifles with me saying something
like. “Your rifle is smarter than mine so you will have to do put up with mine, lad!”
Back on manoeuvres again, we became aware of the fact that HQ of the ‘Enemy’ had
been set up in a barracks somewhere on the training ground, possible Sennelager. It was
suggested that we could actually capture the place by adopting a cunning ruse. A German
fire engine was requisitioned and we, a couple of officers and NCO s armed with Stens
and Stirlings were driven to the camp and as we approached the main gate, rang the bell
very rapidly and drove straight through the open gates before the sentries realised what
was going on. They did not dare stop a fire engine coming through at speed. After rapidly
dismounting, we entered the HQ and called out, “Game over! You are our prisoners!”
It was a short-lived victory because the umpires declared it to be out of order. Of course, it
was because Blue versus Red would never have had a chance to practise for the next
couple of days.
Thinking of umpires, I recall and incident when we were theoretically engaging the enemy
ahead of us. Our mortar platoon under the command of Lt. WV was busily going through
the motions of sending bombs into enemy lines. While that was going on an angry umpire,
a major with white arm band, drove up to Lt. WV and addressed him with, “ Do you realise
that if this had been a real battle, you would have wiped out a large number of your own
Charlie Company! What the hell are you doing?” The major examined the mortar platoons
map co-ordinates and discovered that the lieutenant’s compass was way off beam
because it had been placed on the steel of a carrier! If it had been a real battle, there
would have been some very real casualties among our own.
43
Carelessness can cost lives as can making wrong decisions when provoked. When on
field exercises we three from the Education Wing were sometimes designated as the
Intelligence Section with certain information gathering duties so often at the elbows of the
CO or Adjutant. One day as we were watching the progress of the ‘battle’, the Adjutant
possibly, when looking at several figures on a not too distance hilltop, exclaimed, “They’re
bloody Russians watching our manoeuvres. The cheeky bastards!” Others scanned the
figures through binoculars and also concluded that the aforesaid were indeed Russian
officers. Consequently a few of us were driven off in a trio of jeeps leaping out near the
spectators. Somehow we managed to ‘invite’ the three or four of them into a jeep. The
detail escapes me but it may have been Sgt. Terry’s knowledge of Russian which helped
convey the ‘request’ and request it had to be because those men were in uniform and they
were ‘allies’ although they had never been formally invited to attend. As it happened the
Russians had an overnight stay as guests in the officer’s mess and were sent on their
merry way the next day.
During our manoeuvres we were called upon to try out new kit and new equipment. This
was a time when we ‘combat’ tested new style steel helmets (CSM s used to get upset
when soldiers called them tin hats) and new battle dress that was about to be issued for
possible use in the approaching war in Korea. I hated the helmets because the front rims
tended to be pushed over eyes when we had to drop to the ground in firing positions and
the back packs shoved the helmet up at the back and down at the front. The hooded
parkas were probably useful but I never wore one long enough to know. When it came to
body covering in rain the old gas capes were a nuisance in that the water ran down the
cape and soaked trouser legs.
On night exercises I remember a time when we were all alerted to watch the front as
‘enemy’ soldiers approached. We were told that a new experimental device would be
used. As we were looking to the front the whole area ahead turned very bright in the new
artificial moonlight. The enemy approached out of it. At the time we were quite impressed
by this new gadget but I have since discovered that the use of searchlights on ground
troops dates back to World War One. As Wikipedia put it, ‘The term "artificial moonlight"
has been coined to distinguish searchlight illumination from normal moonlight, which is
referred to as "movement light" in night operations.’ The scattering of light in the
atmosphere from powerful searchlight beams was supposed to allow troops to see the
approaching enemy soldiers. It had limited usefulness. See
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt07/artificial-moonlight.html
There were few opportunities for recreation during long combined field exercises but I
recall being with a group of mixed rank soldiers in a meadow lying between low hills on a
bright sunny day. Someone had produced a cricket bat and ball so we set about an
informal game.
While we were enjoying the game we noticed the ‘sound of bees’, so we thought, flying
about overhead. Then it dawned on us that they were actually bullets so we ran for cover
as the buzzing of small missiles continued with occasional impacts of nearby tree trunks.
On scanning the nearby hills, we could see nothing and nobody who could have been
taking pot shots. Since nobody had actually been hit we thought of various possibilities:
perhaps a detachment of troops on the same manoeuvres as we were having a laugh by
deliberately firing overhead or some disaffected former German soldiers actually trying to
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hit us. We never found out. There were always rumours of post-war German resistance
groups called Werwolves or Werewolves but there was little evidence of any directed
resistance.
Much greater dangers than the Werewolves were women like Lippspringe
Annie who plied her trade in and near Paderborn in Westphalia. We must have been
carrying out exercises near the town of Bad Lippspringe in the Teutoburg Forest. That is if
indeed the woman was near home doing her camp following and if indeed that really was
her name.
Once again I was on duty as a Battalion Orderly Sergeant when we were on field
exercises. It may well have been on one of those exercises I have mentioned already: I
remember no dates.
I came across a line of soldiers waiting in line at the edge of the woodland. Some were still
in FSMO, Field Service Marching Order, and certainly with backpacks, webbing and ammo
pouches, carrying rifles. I asked a couple of young squaddies at the rear what they were
waiting for. They answered, “Lippspringe Annie is in there taking customers.”
Filled with dread about what those young ones, all a few months younger than I, were
letting themselves in for, I went along the line asking one or two of them, “What would your
mother think if she knew you were lined up for this? Why don’t you stay on the safe side
and get back to your tents!” They had all had many a warning about avoiding sexually
transmitted diseases on film in full Technicolor, filled with the horrors of infection. I
reminded them. The sensible ones left although they had to put up with the jibes of the
older ones who stubbornly stayed in line, no doubt with a few marks at hand or a few
cigarettes. Not surprisingly, a few weeks or months later the ones who had been guests of
Lippspringe Annie went down with what was known as a ‘nap hand’, gonorrhoea and
syphilis together. They lost pay and spent a few months inside a detention centre.
Soldiers are like most other people-only more so. They can be not only self-serving, and
careless but they can be essentially pragmatic and fatalist. The unofficial motto of the
regiment, ‘Cheer up! You’ll be dead tomorrow’ reflected that. I remember when we were
undertaking some training in survival during a nuclear attack and after having seen films
showing the effects of nuclear attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, a small group of us
were laughing about how impossibly naïve the air raid precautions were in the face of such
obvious destructiveness. For a laugh, we held an informal competition about what
precautions we could take during a five-minute warning. Various strategies were
suggested such as cover your head with a brown paper bag so that you don’t see what is
coming: recite as much of the Lord’s Prayer as you had time for and so on. The winner
ganing free beer for the night came up with, “Stand at ease. Put your head between your
legs and kiss your arse goodbye!” That advice was both pragmatic and fatalistic.
Field exercises were certainly interesting occasions. For example, on one occasion when
Belgian troops formed part of the ‘enemy’ we, a couple of platoons, advancing towards
their lines, came across a few dozen of them. It was a fine summer’s day so some two
dozen or so of them had taken time off to go swimming in a beautifully clear river. The only
swimming we seemed to be able to do was when we, who could swim, were required to
cross a river with rifles and packs.
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The Belgian soldiers were splashing about enjoying themselves when we managed to
round them up beckoning them out of the water. They had left their uniforms and rifles on
the banks of the river and so when they emerged they made their way over to get them.
However, we, the Kingsmen, always ready for a laugh told them they could not pick them
up and get dressed. Instead they were marched naked as babes for several miles to a
‘prisoner compound’. Here and there our soldiers would smack their bare backsides with
switches of light twigs pulled off trees on the way. The incident lightened the Kings’ day but
was somewhat humiliating for the poor Belgians.
There were also times when taking part in exercises to accept invitations from American
soldiers, allies during exercises, to watch movies with them in their very sophisticated
battle accommodation, good tents. I regret to say that the more ‘worldly’, soldiers from
both nations, would when drinking together get one or other drunk and then ‘roll them’ for
their wallets.
One morning we bedded down, possibly in tents or upon the ground and prepared
breakfasts from our compo packs. Several of the Kingsmen with me remarked about how
wonderful the breakfasts were among the ‘Yanks’ a few yards away. There had never
been any rationing among the Americans of course. One or two of the Kingsmen wanted
to go across and cadge but I would not allow them saying that I would rather go hungry
than beg from anyone so they had better put up with it.
At the end of one of those allied field exercises the CO addressed the whole battalion,
praising us for having gained a high score for performance in the field but telling us that it
was offset by the fact that the battalion had also scored too highly on anti-social behaviour.
For example I asked one squaddie where he had acquired some ill-gotten gains and he
very appropriately replied, “ I liberated it!”
I have mentioned an occasion when we were taken to see what remained of Belsen
concentration camp and there came a time when we had to round up all people in Iserlohn
town and force them to watch films of that camp and most of the others. As part of the
Allied policy of denazification, over successive days, soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets
in successive platoons brought people, old and young out of their homes to the CSEU
cinema to watch very explicit films showing the horrors of the gas chambers and
incinerators. Denazification comprised deliberate strategies to rid all aspects of German
and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any traces and
positive characteristics of National Socialist ideology.
We were told as we manned the exits never to allow anyone to leave no matter how
sickened, pale or ill they became while watching. The sights were as horrific for us as well
as the German civilians and we had to watch them several times over with successive
batches of civilians.
The last memorable experience for me took place across the night of Boxing Day, 1949,
that would have been Monday, 26 December that year. The evening meal for all ranks
consisted of a kind of Smörgåsbord meal buffet-style with various dishes of foods set out
on tables.
While helping myself I was approached by the Regimental Sergeant Major,
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“Hynes, you are probably the only sober NCO in barracks at present so I have a job for
you. You will have to take a few men with you in a PU with a German driver and get
yourselves out to Aachen and pick up Privates A & B (Names given) who, absent without
leave, have been arrested by the border police and you will have to bring them back here.
Collect two pairs of handcuffs from the RP s (Regimental Police), wear battledress, boots,
belts and gaiters.”
Every now and then, solitary soldiers, or pairs, would desert. Some would make their way
home where often they would eventually be picked up by military police. A few months
previously a couple of our soldiers had made off with together with their company
typewriter and with rifles after breaking into the armoury. How on earth they could have
carried the typewriter and rifles with them I don’t know. We later heard that they had
actually managed to reach France where they signed up in the Foreign Legion which
apparently paid bonuses for men who arrived with weapons! Out of the frying pan into the
fire, I would think! We heard later on the old soldiers’ grapevine that they had been killed at
the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 when the French suffered an overwhelming defeat in
Indo China.
The two deserters whom we had to pick up were being held in custody in Aachen, aka Aixla-Chappelle, so our journey there by truck was to be entirely in the hands of our German
driver. The escort climbed into the back of the 15 cwt. truck, probably a Bedford, with a
canvas cover over steel struts covering the carrying area with wooden slatted seats along
the sides. The weather was cold without snow but we managed to get a few blankets and
we filled up the back with plenty of sandwiches and meat pies before setting off dressed in
great coats and wearing gloves. I sat in the front cab with the driver and with the
handcuffs. At about 22.00 we set off for our destination, Aachen, a famous spa, is the
westernmost city of Germany, on the borders of Belgium and the Netherlands. Our
escapees had done well to get that far dressed in civvies. The city had been very heavily
damaged during the war, but then so were most of the townships we passed through
during our journey. The soldiers in the rear could see nothing of course because I had
laced up the canvas cover at the rear to keep out as much draught as possible. During the
journey the soldiers dozed and helped themselves to the plentiful food there with them in
the truck.
According to Google Earth the present road route from Iserlohn to Aachen is 166 kms. and
theoretically could be done in 1 hour 47 minutes. We took a lot longer than that having to
pass along old roads and through ghost towns and villages which had been heavily
bombed three of four years previously. I think we must have been travelling through
moonlight because even now I can picture one ruined street after another ruined street
within which only chimney stacks projected into the night skies. We probably passed
through the northern part of Cologne and after about three hours we arrived at a German
police depot where I signed for the ‘live bodies of Privates A and B’ or words to that effect.
The word live was important because of course that is the condition they were expected to
arrive in when we eventually returned with them to Mons barracks, Iserlohn. Those two
looked so pathetic after their travels as escapees and they were so obviously relieved to
be with the known and not the unknown that I could not bring myself to put handcuffs on
them as they were to travel back in an uncomfortable truck. Besides, anyway, the escort
would have given them a good thumping if they had attempted to take off from us.
Incidentally in BAOR German police continued their employment and were as feared
during the occupation as they ever were previously. I remember being in a jeep travelling
through an unfamiliar town when we stopped, dismounted and took out a map to confirm
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our route. A German boy aged about ten, stood and watched us for a while before
shouting out, “Gestapo!” and taking to his heels!
Our driver then told me that he had to siphon fuel from a petrol tank on one side of the
vehicle to a tank on the other side. As I knew nothing about motor vehicles I had to take
his word for it. I had him drive us to the Central Railway station in Aachen outside of which
we parked. I invited all persons into the railway café, escorts, driver and prisoners to have
a coffee, a much-prized commodity in post war Germany. Although we used BAFV, British
Armed Forces Vouchers, I had enough German marks to buy the hot drinks. We had
plenty of food in the truck but no hot drinks.
When in the café I told my escorts to sit with their backs to the wall as did I. That way
thought I we could not be attacked from behind our backs and I did have two ‘live’
prisoners, escorts and driver to deliver safely back to barracks. As we sat there I was
conscious of the fact that we three or four escorts were wearing battledresses, boots,
gaiters, belts and bayonets whereas the other three were in civilian dress.
A short distance away a group of about four young German men sat and as they sat I was
conscious of the fact they were sizing us up. If this had been down town Liverpool the
looks would have elicited response such as “Who are you lookin at, lad?” To say the least
they did not look at all friendly and in fact one of them kept trying to stand up while looking
in our direction while his companions kept pushing him down. I heard enough in my basic
German to recognise expressions such as, “ Englischer schwein!” Who wouldn’t after
seeing all those war movies?
I told my fellow Kingsmen about my suspicions advising them that if the Germans made a
threatening attacking move in our direction when I stood up with a chair in my hands they
should do likewise and use them to effect on the attackers. The squaddies always ready
for a ‘barney’ were keen to take the initiative and sort them out right there and then, a kind
of Wade in the Eighth, situation. I restrained them knowing that first of all we were never
supposed to beat up Germans and that I had a responsibility to get everyone back safely.
An all in fight would prejudice my chances of doing that. We left but then we had to wait
around having a smoke, a few yards away, while the driver siphoned fuel from a reserve
tank to an operational one for our journey back ‘home’.
When ready, the escort and prisoners climbed in and I did up the canvas cover at the
back. We set off but within about a quarter of a mile probably at the corner of a street now
called Vereinstrasse, a man in a long leather coat, exactly like the one worn by the
Gestapo man in ‘Allo! Allo!’ stepped in front of our slowly moving vehicle waving us down.
The driver started to brake as any careful driver would. Out of the corner of my eye I
spotted a group just around the corner where he was standing armed with something or
other sticks or weapons and moving in towards our braking truck. I kicked the driver in his
ankle and shouted, “Fahren! Fahren schnell! Links! Links! Schauen sie nach links!”
He got the message, and put his foot down hard on the accelerator and with relief I
watched the man in front of us leap rapidly out of the way.
I have often wondered since what our fate could have been if we had stopped then. The
men in the back would not have known why we had stopped and would not have been
ready. Armed only with pig sticker bayonets designed for pushing onto rifle muzzles and
not for hand held combat. We really should have been issued with side arms of Stens on
such a mission. More than likely the drunken Germans thought the two in civvies were
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Germans in custody with us and were about to do a rescue job after setting themselves up
while the siphoning was going on. We arrived back in Mons Barracks at dawn after
allowing the driver to stop outside his own home in the town.
Drivers were often German civilians on pay but there were times when we used DP s,
displaced persons, sometimes from Yugoslavia. The Allies had to cope with some seven
million displaced persons after the cessation of hostilities. Many of these DP s wearing
British battledresses dyed navy blue were ‘employed’ for various guard duties as for
example manning red and white striped tip up checkpoint gates.
I have a vague memory of being in an army truck travelling hell for leather along some
road when the driver saw a checkpoint gate ahead. Neither he nor the CSM wanted to
stop so they approached the gates at about 15 miles an hour as the DP guard was tipping
down the counterweight lifting up the horizontal pole. Unfortunately as the truck went
through the gate was not quite high enough so the top of the truck hit it swing the weighted
end on its swivel. It struck the sentry box but not the DP sentry I am glad to say, knocking
it over along with all the little comforts the man had on his narrow shelves. Out flew his
clock, his drinking mug, his other little knick-knacks. I am afraid that the squaddies acted
as squaddies they just cheered and laughed callously about it as the truck sped away
faster than ever in case it was reported.
I remember talking for an hour or two with a DP dressed in his navy blue BD. We decided
to converse in French because my German was basic, not even up to the level of the local
Plattdeutsch dialect quickly learnt by those soldiers who ‘had their feet under the table’ in
some German frau’s house. I thought he to be one of those right-wing Serbs who willingly
collaborated with the Nazis; he was Royalist anyway and dared not be repatriated home
where he would probably have been shot by Tito’s government. He was one of many who
so feared going home to face prosecution for treason or war crimes that they preferred
scratching a living in chaotic post-war Germany. I remember also looking at an
Identification card held by a Polish displaced person upon which had been stamped
Untermensch, sub-human! I get somewhat angry and bewildered when I have recently
witnessed Polish skinheads making Nazi salutes. The German Nazis would have thought
of them as Slavic laughing stocks.
Not only people but vehicles have their moments too. There was a time when I was one of
several NCO s representing one of the battalions stationed in Iserlohn as members of the
regular Town Patrols. We drove around looking out for soldiers who were misbehaving
themselves usually late in the evening when they had ‘been on the piss’. Home brewed
schnapps was particularly inebriating. On seeing say a soldier sitting morosely on the
roadside, with a smashed shop window behind him as evidence of his recent head butting
practice, he would be picked up an NCO to each leg, and each arm. He would then be
thrown in the back of the truck and conveyed to the comfort of his own regimental guard
room and left in the tender care of the regimental police.
Home brewed schnapps was deadly, really and truly, deadly. Soldiers were supposed to
stay away from it but of course they didn’t. The local illicit distillations of schnapps made
from fermented potato peelings or mash was popular among the hard drinking soldiery
who can be found in all armies throughout all ages; think of the Norse berserkers. That
kind of schnapps, Brennevin, in Iceland is known as Black Death! There were times when
German police would telephone through to the guardroom saying they had a soldier who
was blind. I thought they meant blind drunk but in fact it actually meant, blind as in loss of
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sight. Such was the effect at times of poisonous home brews. And indeed Death visited
some.
While still thinking about vehicles and town patrols: when being driven around on town
patrol, on one occasion, in an open top vehicle, three of four of us along with the driver,
criss- crossed and drove along the tramlines. During our progress the lines began to look
quite strange as indeed they were. We found ourselves driving along railway lines and we
actually pulled into the railway station, on the lines, with a platform, alongside the truck on
our left. We fell about laughing while travellers waiting for a train there could hardly believe
the eyes. The mad British were right in front of them in a road vehicle laughing. The people
on the platform very sensibly jumped up and down in nervous expectation of a train hitting
us head on any minute. The driver started up again and somewhere as soon as possible
he bounced the vehicle off the tracks and back off track. Being on track could have cost us
our lives!
For most of the time, life on base was routine, training exercises, rifle practice, guard
duties, boxing training occasional bouts of recreation and for me with my RAEC colleagues
regular attempts to improve the writin', readin’ and ‘rithmetic’ skills of our fellow soldiers.
My time as a ‘cherry picker’, a soldier ‘just in the season’ drew to an end.
I did have a girlfriend whilst there. She lived some miles away in one of those heavily
industrialised towns in the Ruhr much bombed by allied aircraft. God knows how she ever
came to get interested in a soldier in what amounted to an innocent teenage romance.
After having been schooled by the virtuous Christian Brothers who used to lay on retreats
for us delivered by Redemptorist Fathers who could conjure up the smell of hell’s fire and
brimstone when mentioning the terrible sins of the flesh, it could not have been otherwise.
We of our generation are still fooled by the modern use of the term girl friend both in its
denotation and connotation. For us it means an adolescent friend who is a girl, female, just
as boy friend means an adolescent friend who is a boy, male. In connotation one has a
picture of adolescents courting with an intention of getting married. The meaning has so
changed that it is now possible for sixty-year-old women to have boy friends of seventy
living together as man and wife! The expressions for living together with all the intimate
privileges thereto was denoted by the Lancastrian lads of the Kings as: ‘living under the
brush’, ‘ living over the brush’, ‘living tally’ or ‘shacking up’.
In the not- too- distant past a man and a woman who could not afford to pay for a marriage
licence might jump over a brush together or pass under a brush together and exchange
marital promises. Then living tally or ‘living in sin’ meant the same thing suggesting a
measure of culpability. Such marriages were often enduring and faithful. As for ‘shacking
up’ meaning to sleep together or live in sexual intimacy without being married; there was a
suggestion of impermanency.
I suggest that their vocabulary was much more to the point when describing cohabitees,
male and female. Even more to the point would be the simple terms his judy or his bint.
One knew exactly what was meant. Partner is a weasel word especially when some
married men trying to be politically correct use the word in respect of their wives! The
Scots have the lovely word Bidie-in.
Many a soldier serving in BAOR married German girls, women, to be specific, and lived
happily ever after but I had no intention of marrying and made no promises and took no
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‘liberties’ that would have been very unjust. My friend, S…, told me of having seen the
Fuhrer close up and ‘what beautiful blue eyes he had’. I was not impressed although she
did teach me to sing, ‘Muß i' denn, muß i' denn, Zum Städtele hinaus….’ some eight years
before
Elvis
Presley
popularised
it.
When it came to Kingsmen and women, behaviour reflected the social norms and morality
of the times. Some men had no scruples whatsoever and were totally predatory, others
remained faithful to their wives and girlfriends back home, yet others received shattering
‘Dear John, I have met another..’ letters and sometimes, like one of our Boxing Day
escapees who was trying to get home to mend a broken romance.
We encountered few, if any, women soldiers, ATS, except back in Blighty where they often
worked in the cookhouses. We were very interested on occasion to watch a line of them
pass through a checkpoint to board our troop ship. When one of their officers called out,
“Now girls, when you pass through the barrier show your little pink forms!” we all cheered
and encouraged them to do just that, show their little pink forms. They never did though.
Time expired arrived for me in March 1950. I was advised to stay on and get assured
promotion and/or attend a War Office Selection Board for re-entry on a commission but as
I mentioned previously, mother told me she dreaded having a dead son. It was then a case
of ‘Dear son, Service done, Now have fun. Your Mum’.
Three months before twentieth birthday I was back home and working as trainee insurance
inspector and bored stiff. I should have stayed in army. And as a ZT Reservist I half hoped
to be recalled at any time for active service. Such reservists who had served between 3
September 1939 and 31 December 1948 were always available for recall but it didn’t
happen.
I collected my Release Leave certificate on which the C.O. wrote:
An excellent NCO who has been employed as an educational instructor, well educated,
smart and extremely hard working. Although young, he has a strong personality & is a
good disciplinarian. A likeable personality & can be thoroughly recommended. Iserlohn
B.A.O.R. 24, 20 March 50 Signed by R.S. Binney, Lt. Colonel, Commanding 1 st Battalion
The Kings Regiment.
My wife thought I should omit the reference for the sake of personal modesty but at my
age what does that matter. It, and I, both are part of the history of the Kings so there it is.
I left Aldershot on 24 March 1950.
A short postscript.
Few people will know that the great hero of the Irish Rising of 1916 had served for seven
years, considerably longer than I did, with the Kings Liverpool Regiment. Like so many
impoverished boys before and after him, he enlisted at age 14 giving the wrong age and a
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false name, Reid, as did his brother John ahead of him. Connolly had actually served in
Ireland for much of his seven years during a very turbulent time there. Just a few years
short of his time expired, in late 1888 or 89, he deserted after hearing that the regiment
was about to be sent to India. His soldiering skills must have been useful to him as
Commandant of the Dublin Brigade during the Rising.
An article of mine about Connolly’s Catholic formation and his socialism appeared under
the title of ‘Rendering unto God but not to Caesar’ in the March 2010 issue of the
magazine, The Tablet.
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