My War 1938 to 1948 Part 6 of 8

LIFE IN THE INFANTRY

I was now in the Green Howards, and leaving home for my first posting as an officer. I was to report to the regimental headquarters at Richmond, but when I got there they did not really want to know about me. Apparently I should have gone to a camp a few hundred yards around the hill-side: (interestingly enough this was the camp I had been in some years before when I had visited Richmond with the Home Guard). However, that was then and this was now, so I reported to the Company Headquarters, and was then escorted round to my sleeping quarters, and introduced to the dining room (mess) and lounge (I forget the actual name they used for this), and told to make myself at home, and then to come back to the mess to partake of the next meal to be served. An orderly came in to see if I would like a drink, and then left me to wait until somebody else should arrive.

Gradually more and more officers of all ranks up to that of Major came in, hung up their belts as we had been instructed was the correct thing to do, introduced themselves, and we all settled down to be sociable until dinner was served. After dinner some officers went off to their engagements: some to play billiards, some to play cards, some just to drink and chat. By this time I had met two or three men of roughly my age and rank, so that by the time I decided to call it a day and to go to bed, I had the bare bones of a social life sorted out.

The next morning I put on my battle dress, went to the mess for my breakfast, and then walked down the lines to the Company Office. There I met the Company Commander and various other junior officers, and the office staff, and was briefed by the CC on what was happening, and what stage of training the Company had reached. For that day I was to stay in the company office and just watch what went on. This continued for several days, with a gradually increasing participation in the life of the company. I really began to feel that I belonged when I was the only officer available, and I was left to take ‘company orders’ on my own. This meant that I had to assume the Company Commander’s chair in the office when members of the company were marched in under arrest for sundry minor transgressions of the rules. I had to listen to the evidence, question him on his version of events, and then decide on his guilt or innocence. .Since most of them were patently guilty there was no great difficulty there, but then I had to decide on an appropriate sentence and pronounce it. Still, I suppose I must have acquitted myself reasonably well since I heard no more about it apart from a brief enquiry as to how I had got on.

Then the intake reached the end of its six week’s training, and was moved on to other training camps for the next stage of turning into soldiers. We were left behind to await the next intake. When they arrived, about a week later, it was interesting for me to see raw recruits arriving from ‘civvy street’, to hear the comments of the staff (and particularly some of the officers, who were not impressed with them}, and to wonder how we should get on with them. But there, a couple of years ago I was more or less in their stage of training, and so far as I was concerned I had survived quite well , so there seemed no reason why they should not do likewise

And so it was. Gradually the new arrivals acquired names, and developed characteristics, and became individuals. Some of them were quite useless (from a military point of view), and some were so poor that they were sent home within a week of their arrival. Of those who remained we began to sort them out to decide on their ultimate fates. Some would go to specialist corps such as the Royal Engineers or the Royal Signals, others would go to the less demanding corps where they would dig trenches, while others would be trained as infantrymen - all of great value in a modern army.

In the meantime I was wondering about my ultimate fate. Other junior officers were arriving regularly, as their OCTU’s trained them, but they all moved on to various infantry units all over the world, leaving me to wonder why this should be, when I felt that I was as efficient as most of them. Then, at last, the secret was divulged. I had a couple of medals (nothing of any note, just a Defence Medal and a European Star), both of which were pretty widely worn by anybody who had been in the army for a few years. However, they did single me out for a special duty: I was to bear the Regimental Colours of the Green Howards in the Victory Parade through London. So that was all right then. Before long we began practising marching with the colours, which with Richmond's winds was not always as easy as you might think..

Several days before the date of the parade a small party of troops were sent off with the colours to London, where I was billeted in a bell tent in Kensington Gardens. From there we were marched and counter-marched in the streets nearby, with
the inevitable Guards drill-pigs doing their best to ensure that we would not let them down on the great day. In the evening we were free to enjoy ourselves as we wished: there was no mess, so far as I remember, and I do not remember any meals being served , though they must have been, but fortunately the wartime rules still applied, where no restaurant was allowed to charge more than five shillings for a meal.

The day before the parade Mum and Dad came up to London, so we met and had dinner together, and then walked along Pall Mall and round some other of the main squares and thoroughfares, seeing the sights, trying to decide where they should stand in order to get the best view, and wondering at the crowds who had already bagged their positions and were camping out on the pavements to reserve them for the following day. Some positions were already so full that there seemed little hope for any late comers. At last we decided to call it a day — we would all need all our strength for what promised to be an exhausting experience, so Mum and Dad went to their hotel, and I made my way back to Kensington gardens and my tent, where some of my tent mates were already in their camp beds and fast asleep.
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The following morning we were called early, took our turn at the ablution area, ate our breakfasts, made sure we were properly dressed, and waited for the call to go to the assembly area to take our part in the parade. I cannot remember how long this took, but there were two (I think) assembly points, ours in Hyde Park, and another somewhere in the East End of London. I have an idea that the East End contingent consisted mostly, if not entirely, of motorised and mechanised units, while ours was almost, if not entirely, composed of marching units. The two parades met, I do not know where, and formed one unified parade through central London, for a distance of, I think, about seven miles, before diverging to return to their original starting points. Of this march I recall little. I do remember marching through cheering, waving crowds in Oxford Street, and being obliged to stop and wait in a back street somewhere, when we had to wait until another column had joined the parade ahead of us. As we waited we saw the column ahead of us, which was halted beneath a large office block, being deluged with gifts thrown down by the spectators. I remember seeing my parents in the middle of a cheering, waving crowd of spectators on Constitution Hill, which struck me as one of the most unlikely occurrences I could think of. They saw me, too! I also remember the Saluting Base on the Mall, with the King in the centre taking the salute, and Mr.Churchill with members of the Government, other prominent politicians, and members of the Royal Family, surrounding him.

I was in a smaller column composed entirely of officers from infantry line regiments, each one carrying the colours of his regiment, and each one marching as smartly as he could. Once we were back at our tent lines we were fallen out, handed in our colours, and were then free to do what we pleased. I was feeling rather tired, so I decided to lie down on my camp bed and have a short rest. The next thing I knew was that I had just awakened, that the time was about eight o’clock, and that I had arranged to meet some friends at a particular tube station in Westminster when we would watch the firework display on the river.

By the time I had arrived at that tube station our time for meeting was long gone, the firework display had started, the crowds were worse than I had ever seen or imagined, and so I set out on my own to find a good point which would give me a really satisfactory view of everything that was happening. It took me a good half hour or more to work my way slowly into the centre of Westminster Bridge, in the middle of the road, where I could not move, except by pushing hard, in any direction. So there I stayed until the firework display was over and I could think what I should do next.

The congestion was such that I simply could not make any appreciable headway in any direction. I knew which underground station I wanted to be at, so I aimed for that point, and began to move, very, very slowly, in that direction. I remember that well before I reached the end of the bridge I came up against a circle of soldiers providing shelter for spectators who had been unable to go any further, mostly through sheer exhaustion. Anybody who had ‘passed out’ and needed help of this sort was picked up by their neighbours in the crush and passed overhead to the perimeter of the refuge where they were given such remedies as the soldiers had, and laid down in the road or on the pavement to wait until the crowds cleared sufficiently for rescuers to get them out and ambulances to take them to hospital.

It took me two or three hours just to get off the bridge, and then I had the problem of getting down into the station, finding the platform, and getting on to a train for Hyde Park. Once a train came in the station there were so many people trying to get on to it, or off it, that it became grossly over-loaded. I did get on to one in the end, but it was so tightly packed that for much of my journey my feet quite literally did not touch the floor. I was just held upright by the press of bodies around me. I realised that I was going to have a problem getting off at my destination, so I started to move towards the exits some three stations before mine. I was still carried one or two stations too far! I was very late back to camp that night.

I do not remember what happened the next day, but the day after that I packed my bag and took the train to Reading, where Mum and Dad already were, to stay with my Aunt Connie and her family for a few days. After that I returned to Richmond, and after a time went on embarkation leave again, and then to Lincoln to pick up a draft for Egypt. I got a nice surprise when

I arrived there — the draft consisted of myself alone. Great! So off I set to catch the train down to Dover, and after a night in the transit camp there I caught the ferry to Calais, where I was quickly transferred to a train which took me, almost without a stop, as far as Marseilles, where I was put on board a troop ship for Alexandria. Almost the first person I saw when I boarded her was Gerry Moffet, who had joined up with me in Carlisle, and whom I had kept bumping into at intervals ever since.

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