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My Country Needed Me: Part Three
Talking of hair, there were hair-cuts. These were not a form of hygiene but a form of discipline and punishment. Whenever you committed a misdemeanour, however small, it was "get your hair cut". A favourite trick of D.I.'s (drill instructors) was to stand behind you and whisper in your ear "am I hurting you? I should be, I'm standing on your hair, Get it cut."
There was one lad in my billet who seemed to have forgotten that washing is sometimes necessary. After a while we noticed his strange custom, and it was changed by a few lads who washed him; in a bath; in cold water, with a broom. He soon changed his routine.
The assault course was another delight they had for us. It was a series of obstacles designed to strike terror into the hearts of raw recruits, and it worked. It was exhausting as well as frightening. We had to carry rifles and wear tin hats. The first obstacle was the favourite (of instructors) two tree trunks over a pool of water. The safest way to cross these logs was to run, if you walked you fell in. Then came a large ramp, about ten feet high, with a sudden drop on the other side. This is where the tin hats came off. Few lads finished the course
wearing the same hat that they had started with. Other delights were; tunnels to crawl through, steel ladders placed horizontally about ten feet above a large pit.(I came to grief on that one), a rope ladder attached to a large wooden structure like a goal post. One lad, six feet tall and fat as a pipe cleaner, while climbing the rope ladder, froze halfway up, and could go neither up nor down. His hands had to be prised off the rope before he could be helped to terra firma(much less terra when you are on the firma). But near the end of our six weeks square bashing we ran round the assault course twice in one lesson, just for fun. It had lost it's terror, and we were
much fitter by then.
Rifle drill was something new for all of us. Did you know that a Lee Enfield 303 Rifle weighs only ten pounds (real
pounds, none of this metric stuff)? There was always one clever dick who could lift it up by the muzzle(that's the end where the bullets come out). To me it felt more like ten stone. Another experience was to fire the wretched things, not the ones we drilled with, they were old and not safe to fire.
Off we went to the butts, a wooden two tiered structure you had to lie down on to fire. Picture the scene;-ten lads on the bottom tier, ten on top, all wriggling about trying to get comfortable to fire this young cannon.
The dust fell down on me and my rifle, and instead of a smooth action it became very gritty. And, count carefully along and make sure of your target. I was number five, and when we had blasted away our ten rounds we all went up to the targets and examined them. Imagine my horror when I realised that mine had not one hole in it. Number six was delighted, his had twenty holes in it, what a score!!!
The Parade Ground seemed to be sacred, and woe betide any one who walked upon it outside of parades. Ceremonial Guards were a necessity, for which honour we had to compete.
Eventually came our "Pass out " parade, when we showed off our new found skills to some high ranking Officer. Of course, until that day we were the worst Flight that any instructor had had to bear with (telling us that was supposed to inspire, or frighten, us to do better, and it probably did both).
Then we had to decide what our future in the Service would be, what trade would we learn. A list appeared showing which trades were trained and where. Lots of lads chose a trade that was trained near their home, but as nothing was trained any where near mine, I asked to be a Wireless/Teleprinter Operator, or in RAF terminology a Wop/Tele Op. When asked why I had chosen that trade I said that I MIGHT sign on, but only AFTER I had done my two years National Service (and I hadn't even kissed the Blarney Stone then !! )
Do you remember lads that first leave? How we showed off our new uniforms? What handsome dashing figures we cut. Didn't we? During that leave they sent me another of those nice letters, asking if I would mind going to Compton Bassett (I wondered where that was) to become a Wop/Tp/ op.
So began that long journey to Wiltshire (that was down south somewhere, wasn't it? ). Train from Newcastle to Bristol, only 8 hours. Then to Chippenham and Calne. The last train had carriages with wooden seats length wise, like a tram-car, and candle brackets on the walls. It stopped at what looked like a wooden bus-shelter called Black Dog Halt, and waited for a man who had walked across the fields to meet the train, at about half past five. What service. Come back British rail, all is forgiven.
Then by taxi (actually they called it a three ton lorry) to the camp at Compton Bassett, my home for the next nine months. That was on a Wednesday, and by Saturday I was on guard duty. They gave us a bicycle built for a man nine feet tall, and told us to guard the camp, which we had not seen in daylight.
My training lasted through a bitter winter, it was so cold we burned anything we could lay hands on, in one of those cast iron stoves. Late one night my pal Ken fed this stove so enthusiastically that he tipped it over, and it rested on the concrete surround (white-washed of course). The chimney, not having the stove to support it, fell down at the foot of my bed. I did not waken, (my wife is never surprised at that.)
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five