Our happy summer went on, while the world ran ruinward. The Germans, advancing at the rate of thirty miles a day, reached the channel at Abbeville. Older people - including Bill Money - shook their heads and said that this was worse than anything they could remember. The exact succession of the days and disasters escapes me now, but of course I remember Dunkirk. Quite a few of our evacuated soldiers were brought back to Oxford. They were to be seen around, and you could tell them by their air of battered exhaustion, even though they had been fed and rested. Among them came a Worcester friend of mine, J. D. Evans, a man a year senior to me, who had joined up at the outbreak of war the previous year. J. D. told me that the Germans had to be seen to be believed. He said he had personally seen what looked like a solid wall of tanks appear over the crest of a slope. ‘And we’d got no effective weapons to oppose them.’ He also said that being dive-bombed by Stukas was most demoralizing. Again, we were not equipped to hit back. It sounded bad. I was, of course, ignorant in these matters and still a mere child - young for my age, I think - yet I shared the feelings and faith of everyone throughout the country. Somehow or other, it would all come right in the end. Later, George Orwell derisively summarized the British attitude: ‘Anyway, England is always right and England always wins, so why worry?’ I won’t say we weren’t worried, but I never met anyone who thought we should sue for peace. Apparently Hitler thought we were going to: the very idea shows his limited comprehension. My mother used to say ‘You mark my words, dear. That Hitler - he’ll come to a bad end.’ It’s easy enough, now, to say ‘Yes, of course,’ but it didn’t seem like that at the time, I can assure you.
The term ended. The University authorities had arranged what they called ‘special examinations’, on the results of which they awarded ‘war-time degrees’; although, as I’ve said, we all doubted how much use they would be later. However, this was no time to be thinking of such things. The storm was up and all was on the hazard. At least I got a distinction in the special examination, for which the College gave me a prize - a handsome copy of the letters of Keats, stamped in gold with the College crest.
Memories are vague. I remember, having come home, driving to Newbury station, about mid-day, to meet a train, though I don’t remember which of the family was on it. I was standing on the platform when I heard behind me two soldiers talking. One said something to which the other replied ‘What, ’ave the French packed it in, then?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Bloody ‘ell, that’s a go, ain’t it?’ My feelings were exactly those expressed by Louis MacNeice in his poem on the debacle: ‘Something twangs and breaks at the end of the street.’ France’s capitulation was a dying fall; it made a small, contemptible, paltry sound. Nevertheless, it left us all with the feeling that now we were in real trouble.
My calling-up papers arrived in the post. The thirteenth of July was my date to report to Aldershot. At the outbreak of war I, like the majority of undergraduates, had been interviewed at Oxford and asked to state my preferences. I had had one firm idea, based on what I knew of the First World War: anything rather than the infantry. If they were giving me a choice I would darned well exercise it.
My first option had been for the Navy. However, the Commissions Board (or whatever they called themselves) at Oxford wouldn’t grant this. They said that I was ‘a potential cadet’ and that the Navy was already over-subscribed with such. My next choice was the Fleet Air Arm, but this also was denied for the same reason. I could feel the infantry lapping about my ankles. In desperation I asked what about the Royal Army Service Corps? (Here I must give my sister due credit: it had been her shrewd suggestion.) Yes, into that I could be mobilized as a potential cadet, at the end of the summer term of 1940. I would receive instructions ‘through the usual channels’ in due course.
As the day drew nearer, my personal world seemed to disintegrate piece by piece, in a mundane and undramatic way, until I was left, in effect, stripped and bare. Our little Worcester set dispersed to the four corners of the British Isles, well knowing that within a matter of weeks we would be setting out again for barracks, aircraft stations and shore training establishments: for Catterick, Portsmouth, Down Ampney, Tidworth and the like. Any possible return to Oxford certainly did not lie in the foreseeable future. Books were taken to Blackwell’s or Thornton’s and sold for whatever they would fetch. Sheets, pillow-cases, towels, dinner services, glasses, pictures - all the things that normally stayed put during the vac. - had to be packed up to go home.
Alasdair’s tea service was Northallerton china; nice, capacious cups and saucers decorated in bold red and deep blue. I’d drunk tea from them many a time. ‘I can’t see any point in carting those all the way back to Newcastle,’ said Alasdair. ‘Take them to Newbury with you; they can stay there till we all get back.’
A last pint in the College buttery, farewells and tips to our scouts, another last pint in The Jolly Farmers and Oxford was left behind indefinitely; except for Jennifer, for there were still three weeks or so to run and she and I were determined to meet a few more times before I disappeared into the khaki belly of the whale.
Arrived back at home, I felt foolish doing nothing all day, even though it was my last chance for a long time. Everyone was doing something. So I went and joined myself unto a citizen of that country, and he sent me into his fields to feed swine. In point of fact, I went to work on Captain Cornwallis’s farm for two or three weeks (and that was the first money I ever earned). Swine were certainly involved, for on my first day one of the regular labourers, a fellow named Tucker, gave me a sacking apron and told me to hold a piglet upside-down by the back legs, gripping its head between my knees while he castrated it with his pocket knife. I set my teeth and fettled myself, but when I actually had the piglet in position, its back against my stomach, squealing blue murder, and Tucker opened the blade of his pocket knife with his front teeth, I said I couldn’t go through with it. (I doubt I could now.) Tucker closed his knife without a word and we started doing something else, but a little later he remarked ‘You’re not the first one to turn that job in, Richard.’
Most of the time, though, it was haymaking. I never learned to use a scythe, which I would have liked, partly because the hay was cut by revolving blades and horsepower, and partly because no one had the time to teach me. I raked the hay into field-long windrows by means of a horse-drawn, automatic rake. The tines bumped behind you, picking up the cut hay and pulling it along. As you came up to the end of each windrow you had to judge the right moment to pull a lever which lifted the tines and released the hay to lie in the row. Bennett, another of the men, let me carry on for a couple of hours and then suggested politely that perhaps I’d like to hand over to him. During the lunch break he asked ‘D’you know what the old mare said to me, Richard?’ I had no idea. ‘She asked if you could go back on the rake s’afternoon.’ There was a general laugh. I learned, that day, that a horse soon weighs up whoever is behind it (or on it, for that matter) and if it’s allowed to, will take advantage of the inexperienced to idle. On my second spell I took care that the mare became brisker.
It was at this time that the L.D.V. (Local Defence Volunteers) were formed, which later became the Home Guard. Every able-bodied man who, for one cause or another, wasn’t in the armed forces joined up, and there was no reason why I shouldn’t. (No one ever thought of women volunteering, although the A.R.P. was full of them.) We certainly were a scratch lot - no uniforms, of course, and no military weapons. All we could really do was keep a night-long watch at points all round the local countryside, in case Hitler’s parachute troops turned up. They were confidently expected (‘Reckon ‘e’s bound t’ave a go somewheres or other’) and anyone who had a shotgun was determined to make good use of it. It was a great time for rumours and for ‘My brother knows a man in Whitehall who was saying -’. Everyone believed for certain sure that in Holland the Germans had dropped parachutists disguised as nuns; so they probably would here. I imagine real nuns must have had quite a difficult time getting about on their
lawful occasions.
I was given the odd and rather superfluous job of riding round our sentry posts on a bicycle in the middle of the night, so that I could be challenged and subsequently confirm that everyone had been where he ought to be. (I had no wireless, of course: no one had.)
It was only a week or two after midsummer and the nights were short. I remember, towards the end of one such night, wheeling my bicycle while I walked with two or three others along a country lane, on our way back to Wash Common and dismissal after the night’s duty. It was still dark - or darkish.
‘Won’t be long now, then, ’Arry,’ said one of my companions to another. ‘There’s th’old lark startin’ up, ’ear ’un?’
It was indeed a skylark on the wing. I had not known before that they sense the dawn and make their first song-flight in the darkness shortly before light comes into the sky. This knowledge was my most valuable - indeed my only - gain from my short service in the L.D.V.
Now there was hardly a piece of my civilian life left. I’d said good-bye to Jennifer; and to the few people in and around Wash Common who might possibly notice I was no longer about, including Jim Spencer, publican of The Bell. Packing’s not much of a problem to someone on his way to join up. Extra socks, ditto underclothes, handkerchiefs, pyjamas and a toothbrush and toothpaste were about the size of it. In those days, in theory at least, a man was supposed to be able to join the Army with nothing but what he stood up in and be completely ‘all found’ by the quartermaster. Issue kit included a safety razor but, oddly, neither pyjamas nor a toothbrush. So a soldier was officially acceptable sleeping in his shirt and pants and never cleaning his teeth. Is he still, I wonder?
The thirteenth of July came. All in the hot, sunny afternoon my mother and father came down Wash Hill to see me off from Newbury station. I was to go by train to Reading and change for Aldershot. The train, when it arrived, was a little diesel more like a large motor-coach. I got in, waved good-bye and, as we departed, sat down. I made up a triolet, though not a very good one.
“With that he lit a cigarette
And sang to keep his spirits up.
He thought “It will get tougher yet.”
(With that he lit a cigarette.)
He said “The footlights flicker up,
The house-lights dim, the stage is set.”
With that he lit a cigarette
And sang to keep his spirits up.’
Although, as my sister was for ever telling me, I was too much addicted to self-dramatization, even I could hardly have over-dramatized, within myself, that summer afternoon departure from Newbury on the diesel train. It was carrying me away not only from my childhood and adolescence, never to return, but from an entire society and way of life, from everything I had experienced and come to know as familiar. The world would never be the same again.
Chapter XIII
Arrived at Aldershot, I got on a ’bus which seemed to be pointing in the right direction and, as we set off, asked the conductor where might be No. 1 R.A.S.C. Training Centre. ‘’Ow the ’ell d’you expect me to know?’ he replied. This was my first experience of the ‘Ask a silly question’ syndrome. I was no longer Dr Adams’s son or a scholar of Worcester. I was a stranger mug who seriously expected civilians to know about military topography. But then, whom could I ask? A policeman, a soldier? What did other people do? I got out my papers to have another look at them. At this moment some kindly passenger said ‘What’s the barracks, son?’ They were called, I now saw, ‘Buller’ (one of the more unsuccessful generals of the Boer War). I was told where to get off the ’bus and which way to go. I arrived, was directed to some building or other to check in and found others doing the same.
For those who have not had the pleasure of going to Aldershot, I had better try to describe it. Of course, this was fifty years ago, but it’s all still there - or most of it. Before the nineteenth century, soldiers used to be accommodated by being billeted, in larger or smaller groups as practicable, in the homes of local civilians or anywhere else that was thought suitable. This was, of course, an untidy and unsatisfactory system in several respects - difficulty of transmitting orders, quarrelling with civilians, lack of discipline, robbery and so on. It was the Duke of Wellington who promoted the idea of barracks, so that soldiers could be concentrated and disciplined in places where military interests and values did not clash with civilian ones. In addition to barracks in most county towns, special concentrations grew up in what were judged to be suitable places, e.g., Aldershot, Bulford and Catterick. Bulford, of course, is on Salisbury Plain, where soldiers can train and manoeuvre without getting in too many people’s way. It is easy to see why Aldershot was favoured. It is an easy journey to and from London and it is largely surrounded by land of no use for farming - heather, silver birch and pines, that sort of country. Some of the outlying barrack blocks are actually among the heather.
The barracks - I only got to know Buller, but no doubt they are all much the same – possess a uniquely bleak and dispiriting quality, something like workhouses or the precincts of old, Victorian hospitals. I would guess that they were built between about 1840 and 1880. You would not be terribly surprised to see Privates Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd come round the corner, with pillbox hats, swagger canes and big moustaches. The barracks are neither town nor country. Civilians have no haunts nor business there, and there are no trees, no flowers or grass, no shops and no pubs. Birds are restricted to sparrows. Between the red-brick barrack blocks, married quarters, guard-rooms, offices and training sheds lie bare, level areas of asphalt and featureless, straight roads. The centre of each barracks is the barrack square, about 40,000 square feet of open hard-standing, where people drill and drill and drill. The square is a sacred place. You cannot walk on it (assuming you wanted to) except in the way of duty. You may not smoke within about a mile of it. (I quote Corporal Edwards.) A barracks is like a naval ship; there is nothing there but what is necessary, utilitarian and practical. This, in my day, meant that there were no baths and no showers. The barrack blocks were all exactly the same, consisting of a large, rectangular room with a floor of polished (and that means polished slippery) boards, about thirty iron beds and lockers and a lavatory and some wash-basins at one end. To live in such an environment day in and day out, seldom going anywhere else, you have to adapt yourself, like an evolving animal, and become conformed to your surroundings.
In the 1914-18 war, as far as I can make out, people were frequently commissioned as officers straight out of civilian life. If you could pass as a gentleman you could pass as an officer. But as the casualties mounted, officers were often promoted from the ranks. R. C. Sheriff’s Journey’s End portrays what was no doubt a typical set-up in many companies. The company commander, Stanhope, is a gentleman and a veteran (though pathetically young). His second-in-command, Osborne, is an ex-schoolmaster, also a gentleman. Lieutenant Hibbert is a somewhat pseudo-gentleman, Lieutenant Trotter is a promoted Other Rank, not a gentleman, and 2nd Lieutenant Raleigh is a boy straight from his public school.
In Hitler’s war the set-up was rather different. At the outset the Daily Mirror and other newspapers declared that all promotions to officer should be by merit from the ranks. Everyone should initially have to join up in the ranks. The Dean of Worcester, Colonel Wilkinson (who had been a Guards officer and an aide to General Plumer in the 1914-18 war), head of the Oxford University Officers Training Corps, maintained openly and stoutly that this was rubbish and a waste of time and money. If someone was obviously officer-material, he should be sent straight to an Officer Cadet Training Unit (O.C.T.U.). Colonel Wilkinson did not really get away with this and it did him little good, for it was much remarked upon that although he held his appointment as head of the Oxford O.T.C. all through the war, he never received any honour in recognition of his services.
However, Oxford, Cambridge and some other universities were enabled, as it were, to meet Colonel Wilkinson half-way. Undergraduates who joined the University O.T.C. had (a
s we have seen) a say in what they should be mobilized into and also had their calling-up date deferred so that they could take special examinations devised more or less ad hoc. What was more, although they were not called up as cadets, they joined the ranks as ‘potential cadets’ and were put into special training squads with others like themselves. It was in such a squad - Brander Squad - that I found myself that mid-July. Who Brander may have been I am not at all sure, but it is of interest, though probably only a coincidence, that a ‘Brander’ is mentioned by Kipling as a commanding officer in one of the Mulvaney-Ortheris stones.
In Evelyn Waugh’s Men at Arms, Guy Crouchback joins the Royal Corps of Halberdiers as a ‘probationary officer’, along with twenty others. Apart from the fact that we were not ‘probationary officers’ but ‘potential cadets’, Brander Squad’s daily life and regime were very similar to Guy Crouchback’s. I suppose there were about thirty of us. We lived in a barrack-room (though a few of us spilled over into unoccupied married quarters) and messed in the communal Other Ranks’ mess-room. Apart from messing, however, we really had little or nothing to do with the other Other Ranks, except for our squad commander, Corporal Edwards, and the various N.C.O. instructors who took us for weapon training, P.T., anti-gas and so on. We lived among ourselves and this made all the difference.
Corporal Edwards was a regular, about twenty-five, I suppose. I think it is greatly to his credit that he was able to act naturally and be his rough self, yet impose his authority on us and command our liking and respect. He pushed us hard in those long summer days, when the asphalt turned sticky and the bonnet of a lorry became too hot to touch. After all, his own standing and promotion depended on whether we were a credit to him. But he was no bully and he never had recourse to any authority but his own. He had a sharp sense of humour, he talked with us off duty and got to know us and he shared with us the life of the barrack-room. He instructed us in how to get a high shine on a pair of army boots, how to iron battle-dress trousers until they had a knife-edge crease up to the top of the thigh, and all the rest of the bullshit. He had an impressive stock of regulars’ catchwords and sayings, one or other of which could be applied to almost any situation. ‘By Jesus, you blokes want to get some service in.’ ‘Get a grip of it!’ ‘Don’t touch ’im, ’e’ll break.’ ‘Well, fall down with it, then!’ ‘Lot of bloomin’ joskins!’ (‘Joskin’ is a regular soldiers’ term for a recruit.) ‘That belt’s bloody milo.’ (No good at all.) ‘Jesus wants you for a sunbeam!’ Initially, we were all a bit shocked by Edwards’s casual taking of the name of Jesus, but the good fellow meant not the least harm by it, and after a few weeks we used to do it to each other, in inverted commas, as it were. ‘By Jesus, Dicky, you’ll never get by with that rifle.’ I started as ‘Dicky’, but one day Edwards said we were all Goons, except me, and I was ‘The Jeep’.2 After this everyone called me ‘Jeep’. I had never had a nickname before and liked it.
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