Chapter 1 - The Raw Recruit

CHAPTER 1 - THE RAW RECRUIT

It was one cold December morning, about
8 O'clock, when I put on my Home-Guard greatcoat but, alas bereft of its titles and stripes; still, there remained a clean patch on the arm where they had been.
The buttons were cleaned, and the brass shone as never before, but, fated to the bitter end, one dropped off, a minor catastrophe I felt. To report minus a button was a most serious crime, when I was anxious to show the Army that the Home Guard knew more than the art of beer swilling.

As I travelled up to Retford on the train, I thought a lot of the past as well as the future.
I remembered how I had joined the School Officers Junior Training Corps in 1940 and then the Home Guard in 1942, and had become a full sergeant just one month after my seventeenth birthday.
Yes, I was beginning to embark on the main step towards becoming an infantry officer, the goal of my life for the past few years.

At Retford my trend of thought was interrupted when a kindly corporal herded a dozen or so nervous, anxious and very civilian boys onto a three ton truck. We were soon speeding along the icey roads to this place Ranby Barracks, whatever it might be. Nobody spoke much until the truck skidded which did no damage save to break the tension of its apprehensive inmates.

Once at the barracks, we found them rather as we might have expected, cold and bare. Our first meal was also rather like our inborn ideas; those who succeded in eating it had stomach-ache.
During the first few days we were issued with rifles, steel-helmets, battle-dress, and all the other regalia of war. Then started the life of 'blanco' and rifle inspections.

We had aptitude tests to find out our capabilities if any. Test of all descriptions, from assembling 'cycle pumps to arithmetical progressions and English essays. Most of the tests I managed, but some completely flawed me. They were rounded off by my first Army interview. I expressed a desire for a commission and was told that if I worked hard I might rise to these giddy heights but that there were many pitfalls in front of me.
It was interesting to note the way that this crowd of thirty, of all different types, brought suddenly so close together, reacted. For the first day it was all 'please' and 'thank you', but as soon as the lights went out, we began to get to know each other. Within a few days, we felt we had been together for years not hours.
Training soon started in ernest. I began to learn afresh what I had been teaching for the last eighteen months in the Home Guard. Drill, to clean and handle a rifle, fieldcraft, and all the many other things a soldier learns.

We had a French boy amongst our number. He was of English parents but had been caught in the occupation of France and interned. Then, when liberated, he returned to England and joined up. The sergeant could not speak French, so I was employed as instructor for this one man, teaching, I will admit, more by signs than language.

The sergeant soon made me general 'stooge', and employed me to march the platoon about. I felt my feet touch the bottom rung.

The days soon became very monotonous. The big rush in the freezing mornings to be ready for parade and that cold, rotten, inadequate breakfast. A hard days training, either standing still freezing, or being run off our feet. Then in the evening, standing in the NAAFI 'Q' ,or fatigues.

The platoon corporal used to make wooden toys, so, another evening job was sand-papering them for him.
My Father had a friend in Retford. One evening I walked the three miles to see him and his wife. What a change to drink out of tea cups with saucers, sit round an open coal fire and listen
to the sound of an intelligent voice. Yes, it was almost as good as being at home.

Christmas found us as soldiers of three weeks standing. For Xmas breakfast we had grapefruit, which, to my great delight, proved unpopular. Dinner was a magnificent spread, but even there, the animal instincts came to the fore, no sooner had we sat down than the fruit and nuts had entirely disappeared
from the table.

The officers, true to custom, served the food which I am sure embarrassed them as much as it did us. We ate until nobody could eat anymore. Turkey and Xmas pudding were trodden
under-foot. How many English families could have had either let alone both? How many starved to death in Europe that day? How many days previously had we ourselves felt hungry?
That afternoon I went for a seven mile walk and wondered what they would be doing at home. At tea_ there was only half the usual number, the remainder lay writhing in agony on their beds.
On Boxing Day we were at it as usual, on parade before it was light. I always loathed getting up in the morning and sweeping, making beds, cleaning rifles and polishing brasses all before it was light, let alone warm enough to exist in comfort.

By this time I was troubled with a cough and my voice had gone. My lungs were full of dust from the constant sweeping of our concrete floor.

The food as well was beginning to do me harm.
So, at last I was forced to report sick to get a dose of castor oil, but also got a days light duty and some foul tasting medicine to act as extra deterrent.
Special work was found for me on this day of light duty. One never believes the old soldier's yarn about scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush. What I do know, is two of us whitewashed our barrack room ceiling with a shaving brush.

I felt it very galling to be only thirty miles from home and unable to get there. I tried to get a 36 hour pass but eventually had to content myself with a day one. At 7.30 one Sunday, without breakfast and before it was light, I walked out of the camp onto the nearby main road in the hope of getting a lift. Although busses ran in the afternoon, they were not at that time running on Sunday mornings.
I walked seventeen miles without break and was just deciding to give up my project and wait for a bus back to camp, when a diesel lorry stopped and gave me a lift. I was too tired to
shout and my voice too weak to be heard above the roar of the engine, so we rode in silence to within three miles of my home.

It was agony to get out of that truck. I was so stiff I could hardly walk, but managed to flop down in a chair at home. Just in time for Mother's nourishing, tasty, home-cooked lunch. I remember to this day, chops and chips.
The six hours I had at home seemed like five minutes, but I felt much happier as I travelled back on the bus. My pockets were bulging with sandwiches, apples and chocolate. The sandwiches
I ate as Monday and Tuesdays tea, the chocolate and apples I spun out 'till Wednesday. Mothers are wonderful.

The barrack room was a lovely cosy place at might.
We had a big stove. Heaped with coke, it would give a great red glow by about seven o'clock in the evening. We used to be able to bring back a slice of bread from breakfast or tea, from the cookhouse, sometimes along with a pat of butter. Toasted at night, this was a lovely treat.
Coming from a grammar school, I had always expected to be bullied. Nothing of this; never a suggestion.

Totally different.

Two of my barrack room friends came at different times and told me they couldn't write. Would I write a letter home for them?

No privacy. We just sat on a bunk, the two of us together in the barrack room.

The start was always the same. 'Just a line to let you know'. Then a pause, a complete stop. It was necessary to suggest to them exactly what to say. 'Shall we tell them what the sergeant said this morning about the drill?' Then we'd chat, and I would write something down in their words. It wasn't dictation.

Often wondered if the Mothers had to get someone else to read the letters.

In the last week of training we had a night exercise in which the trainees took command. I was selected as the commander for our platoon. In the afternoon went on a recce with the other
two 'commanders' and an officer. We got everything planned out perfectly.
A very different matter when it came to the night. Men were dashing about everywhere, except onto the objectives. I finished up there on my own, both sides firing blank cartridges madly in my direction.

The time was drawing near for our passing out parade. We had been rehearsing for it throughout the past three weeks. Passing out parades were regarded here in the same light as in every other branch of the Army - the most important item in the course.

I would not have covered primary training without mentioning the sergeant. No, he was not the ignorant swearing type like our rather typical corporal. The sergeant was a gentleman and must I feel have refused a commission for which I respected him all the more. It was in him as much as anyone I found a friend with whom I could on odd privileged occasions have a chat and forget the army. As to my fellow sufferers, I much regret to say that I got exceedingly tired of most of them, They had no real interest in life or any real ambition, but an outlook that was crude to a degree.
After passing out parade, we got our postings.
Mine was to '29 GSC, N.Frith Barraoks, Aldershot'.
What on earth was this? Various ideas were passed onto me and another fellow who was going there as well. It was for training as clerks; it was for secret service work in the Intelligence Corps, and a hundred and one other ideas all of which seemed possible. But somehow, the secret service seemed a good starter. A subject always shrouded in mystery.

On our last morning, we had reveille at four, breakfast at five and then taken down to the station, a ten 'minute run, at 7.30 to catch a train leaving at 8.40.
Waiting there on the station, I wondered what my new camp would be like, what future would there be in it? But nature is a strong creature and led to a WVS canteen for a second breakfast. I was soon busily packing my way into a slice of hot-buttered toast. This was my first WVS canteen. What a change from the NAAFI. The ladies were friendly and quiet, anxious to help and serve in a most motherly fashion. Not like the NAAFI of exuberant girls
Trying to persuade some of the soldiers for a night out at the pictures.

Eventually the train rolled in. We parked ourselves in carriages amongst civilians and well away from those 'gentle voices' that used to request us to do little things in the camp. Even this only set the mind at ease for a short time. Why was the lion sending me to the innermost sanctuary of his den? Why was I going to Aldershot?

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