The Last Chapter

by Robert Lawson

spuds, washing up etc. Another time was during a P.T. session, now I love exercise of any kind except running, I hated it. For P.T. we were going to run up to a horse which was in concrete on top of the hill overlooking the camp. It was a five mile run there and back and I didn’t fancy it, so I got to the back of the queue and as everyone started off I slipped behind one of the huts. After they had gone I went back to my billet and hoped I could slip back into the group when they arrived back. My luck was out, a corporal came in and asked me what I was doing, I told him I wasn’t feeling so good but he didn’t bite. I was put on another charge and another 5 days jankers.

  One of the rules laid down in the forces is that if you are doing jankers, you go to the front of the dinner queue. So during one of my stints on jankers I walked to the front of them all, a voice shouted “Hey where do you think you’re going” when I told him, he told me to get to the back. I ignored him and carried on walking, he came after me and started pushing, and I said “I’ll tell you what we’ll put the gloves on during the next P.T. session. Now this man was a southerner with a big mouth about 5’-10” and roughly 2 stone heavier than me, so I’d taken something on. However the nearer it got to the day for P.T. the less he wanted to fight. The day before the fight he came over and told me he’d never had a fight before and had never wore boxing gloves, I said I had and was looking forward to it. When it came to the time, we gloved up and started to fight, it was a case of him running and me chasing, he didn’t have a clue and after a few punches he didn’t want to know.

  In the hut there was still a lot of friction between the Irishmen, it was hard to keep the peace, because I got on well with both sides. I remember Con Deesey asking a few lads to wake him up for Mass on Sunday morning. They left him in bed and he was later for Mass, the language he came out with was unbelievable considering what he was annoyed over. I remember sitting in the hut at Compton Bassett one day and we all sat bolt upright and wondered what the noise was, it was an almighty rumble that got louder and louder as it got nearer. We all ran outside to see what was going on and an amazing site met our eyes. The sky was black with planes, bombers, fighters and troop carriers, hundreds of them were going over. It was the “D DAY” invasion of France. We didn’t know it then, but it became evident the next day, it’s a sight none of us will ever forget.

  I remember one of my leaves in the RAF, my dad opened the door and as I swung my rifle off my shoulder, the foresight caught him over his eye and cut it. When my mother got up she had a black eye after walking into a lamppost the night before, it was like a war zone.

  We were doing 6 hours a day at morse, (by this time we were up to 20-22 words a minute) and some of them couldn’t stand it and packed the course in. One of the Dublin boys was brilliant on E&M (Wireless theory) but the morse had him crying, he had to leave.

  We had one week to go, when the C.O called us (270) into the dining room and we got the shock news that we were being transferred to Army. The screams were unmerciful some were going to go on Officers courses, some wanted to get into Aircrew.

  ARMY NO. 14983656

  I reported to Huyton Camp and met up with some lads who’d been with me at Compton Bassett, plus a few lads we had mated up with. We were mixed with ex. Navy, ex. Marines, some of them still had their Navy fronts on and an army jacket, it was quite funny. After we were kitted out with uniforms we were shepherded into a hall and told we had to pick a regiment. Naturally we thought with going through a full radio course, The Royal Signals was the regiment for us. We got our eye wiped when the Sergeant said “Infantry only”, we were disappointed but we couldn’t do anything about it. One of them we had mated up with was Bill Wood who came from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, we called him Geordie. I asked about the Kings (Liverpool) Regiment, they didn’t want anybody, Geordie asked about the Northumberland Fusilier’s, nothing doing. Georgie said “What about D.L.I. (Durham Light Infantry), the Sergeant jumped at it and we were all signed up to the D.L.I. We were sent on a short leave and told to report back afterwards.

  When we got back we were shipped down to the Pier Head and on to the Irish Ferry for Northern Ireland. What was to come, we couldn’t imagine, I couldn’t imagine the difference to what we’d been used too. We went to a camp called Augentine camp about a mile from Fivemile town a small village in Co.Monoghan, we were roughly 19 miles from Inerskilling and about the same from Armagh. The camp was infested with rats and the nissen huts were rubbish.

  It was September, and the routine was up at 6am (still dark), after walking past the rats going to the ablutions (toilets), it was on the square for drill, then back to the billet for a while then breakfast in the N.A.A.F.I. After breakfast it was a route march to start with it was about 10 miles, then an assault course to end all assault courses. At the end of 3 months we were doing over 40 miles route march, we were doing 160 paces to a minute after doing 120 paces to the minute in the RAF, everything we done seemed like it was uphill. I was about 19yrs and day by day was getting fitter, the officer in charge of our company wasn’t or didn’t seem to be much older than us. But he’d been in Lovetts Scouts, a special unit which did good work in France during the first years of the war. When we did the assault course, he was always in the lead with me and Geordie right behind him. It started with running into dirty freezing water up to the waist, ducking under a tunnel and then climbing a rope ladder, running along the bank and climbing a tree with a rope across to another tree, a rope was for your feet another one for your hands. When you got across you’d do the same but only one rope to pull yourself along, if you overbalanced you would fall in the water, plenty of them did. Next you climbed a 12ft wall working in threes, then through barbed wire tunnels and then on the double we had to jump the river with rifles over our heads and then onto the 25yd rifle range to fire 5 rounds and back to the billet, shattered.

  The only time you heard about the IRA them days was explosions in phone boxes, not like to-day they are all you hear or read about these days. But while we were in camp the IRA broke into our armoury and stole some guns.

  The Commanding Officer at this camp was a cousin of Lawrence Olivier the actor, he seemed old to us at the time but I suppose he was probably only in his forties. When we went on route marches he insisted on going with us an always stayed the distance. One time, just before we went to bed he ordered us all outside and had us doing night manoeuvres and a lecture about general military moves.

  When we first arrived we took brand new rifles out of the crates, they had to geroed which means if you observe the rule of aiming and you don’t get a bulls eye, the sights needed adjusting. My rifle No.18162 D.P. was spot on without an adjustment. When we got on the range my marks were good, so good the Sergeant could not believe it and asked me could he have a go. He got 4 Bulls and 1 inner which proved the rifle was ok. I ended up getting cross guns for being a marksman, the only one in the company, which I was very proud of, my dad was too. We went through the same routing with machine guns, like the Bren gun, I just missed out, my mate Harry Brown won that. We went through a series of endurance tests which were tough. All these tests were with FSMO (full service marching order) which meant large haversack small haversack, water bottle, tin helmet and rifle. A fast march for 5 miles in a specific time, a run and walk for 5 miles in a specific time, 12 pull ups with FSMO and rifle, to pull yourself up a rope hanging off a tree without using your legs. The fast march was comical, me and a little lad from Birmingham called Jimmy Hill stuck together all the way, and some of the big lad couldn’t do it. One of my mates, Taffy Hixson was 6’-1” he had to do it 3 times because he couldn’t keep to the times.

  We had 2 N.C.Os, one was the Sergeant whose name escapes me, who was alright, strict, but fair, one of those you could talk too. The other was Corporal Humphries who was a different proposition, he used to come in at 6am dressed immaculately with gloves and an officer’s stick under his arm. He had a habit of pulling the bedclothes off any
one who was slow getting out of bed, A Welshman called Jones, who was a nasty piece of work, grabbed him by the wrist and told him to lay off. It was against the army rules to touch anyone’s bedclothes, he knew it, but so did Jones, he wasn’t a popular man with the corporal after that. When we had bayonet practice everyone charged at the dummies, Jones walked. We had to jump across a stretch of water and Jones was first in line, but he refused to go unless the Corporal jumped first. There was an almighty row, but he still refused, even after being threatened by the Corporal. Eventually one of the lads suggested to the Corporal the he jumped first, so much against the grain, he jumped and landed about 12 inches from the bank and was wet through. We tried not to laugh too loud. Another time, he had apparently been a boxer abroad for the army, he suggested we pair off, which left Geordie the odd man out. So he said “You can pair off with me”, he didn’t know Geordie had been an amateur boxer at home and fought at St. James Hall (like our stadium), Geordie boxed his head off and left him with a bloody nose.

  The