Читать книгу Raiding Support Regiment - Dr. G. H. Bennet - Страница 9
ОглавлениеChapter 1
Joining The Raiding Support Regiment
The fateful notice had appeared on the order board. Volunteers were required from Middle East army personnel for special service operations ‘behind enemy lines’, an essential condition being an undertaking to submit to training as parachutists. Recruits were sought from all ranks and from across the whole spectrum of skills and trades, although a preference was stated for those experienced in handling small boats and horses or mules. Heroics didn’t enter into it. Futility, boredom, purposelessness and a simple, understandable desire for change eventually prompted my application, and I was not untypical.
These appeals for volunteers had appeared before but were usually so specific in their requirements as to seriously limit the number of qualifying applicants, whose rare and valuable skills self-snookered their requests behind the ball of a Commanding Officer’s regimental possessiveness. The difference this time was that only obvious rejection by a selection board could baulk the application. So other dissuasive measures at retention were tried. I was offered Sergeant status. But the appeal of action at last – and cloak and dagger, adventurous action at that – appeared to offer greater fulfilment than promotion and I have never regretted my decision. Well, perhaps never is untrue.
Three weeks later, on 13 November 1943, I was back again in Beirut’s transit camp for the momentous interview which would decide my future Army activities. After years of trying to become involved in the action, selection for the avenue most likely to lead to it was positively anticlimactic. It seemed that only hints at lies were necessary to secure my acceptance. What did I know about small boats? Well I had been born and bred in the port of Liverpool hadn’t I? Had I any experience of handling horses or mules? Hadn’t Aintree racecourse been on my very doorstep? And didn’t my mother actually work for its owner, Mrs Topham?
Lord Haw Haw, that traitorous perpetrator of propaganda for Hitler, is reported to have said on the radio that the newlyformed regiment I was about to join, the Raiding Support Regiment (RSR) was made up of alcoholics, criminals and misfits, whom other units in the Middle East were glad to be rid of. As usual there was a modicum of substance in the information Germany had scooped up in espionage’s most fertile territory, the Middle East. Certainly, recruitment was hardly discerning. The Beirut interviews were a classic example of going through the motions. I cannot recall anyone being rejected: perhaps it was thought that parachute training itself would be the ultimate eliminating criterion.
In fact the Beirut interviews were not the casual affairs they had appeared to be… At the time I was quite unaware that recruitment was taking place almost simultaneously for the Long Range Desert Group (in its new, airborne special operations role) and for the Special Boat Squadron. I have no information to support my theory but I feel sure that these two units had the pick of the specialists in their particular talents and aptitudes, leaving the RSR, like the German propaganda broadcasts stated, with what was left of the pickings – the misfits. Adding weight to this presumption was the earlier call for interview of two of my friends: they had both previously been on a signaller’s course and had duly returned qualified as wireless operators. As it turned out, five other members of my regiment were also selected for RSR. So it was that the trundling train, transporting the successful volunteers from Aleppo in Syria to a transit camp at Haifa in Palestine on 25 November 1943, carried more hope and expectancy than remorse or resignation.
A vehicle arrived the next day and took us a few miles north along the coast to an obviously freshly created tented-camp near the German-Jewish seaside village of Nahariya, the first headquarters of the brand new Raiding Support Regiment. It was the first time we had heard the name of the newly formed unit, the novelty of which was – almost literally – sickeningly imposed on six tentative young men in search of unifying stability, by the dismaying chaos and indifference of our reception. We could hardly be expected to make allowances for the uniqueness of the situation. But we should have. What other regiment had been formed without even the nucleus of an existing administration? The ‘suspicious stranger’ syndrome was instantly evident among us in a way that one might expect… only in a transit camp full of alien (to each other) servicemen. Each of us later confessed to a deepening unease during that first day in the RSR. Similarly though, we each found little difficulty in rejecting any notion of backing out, although we knew that we were permitted ‘second thoughts’ at any time up to the successful completion of seven training parachute descents from a plane. Two shillings, a day’s extra pay for a trained parachutist, was the ostensible incentive given for wishing to ‘sweat it out’.
Day two at the camp was even more demoralising than the first. Having learnt that the new Regiment’s establishment comprised five “Batteries” – an Artillery term – I imagined wrongly that as a gunner my niche would be found in either the Anti-Tank Battery or the Mountain Battery of 75mm gun-howitzers.5 Neither Battery wanted me. I found myself allocated to the Anti-Aircraft Battery, whose mightiest weapon was the 0.5 inch Browning machine gun – an infantry weapon which could be utilised for air defence by the provision of a mounting pedestal.6 That ‘could be’ is significant: the pedestals were still being pleaded for (to British Military Headquarters in Cairo) in mid-January 1944, and did not arrive until a few days before ‘C’ Battery left Palestine for an unknown destination on 27 January. But then, what good were mountings without Brownings? They had not arrived until Christmas Day! Such was the start of the RSR. Muddle, uncertainty, recrimination and secrecy. No weapons, no equipment, no premises – not even for trench latrines.
Adjacent acreage was occupied by the newly mustering Special Boat Squadron, formed from volunteers and remnants of the Special Air Service, which, having been formed in the Middle East, had mostly been sent home to start training and recruiting for the bigger things to come across the English Channel. The SBS camp confirmed my notion of its elitist status over the RSR: their communal premises were hutted structures. Cookhouse, mess rooms, canteens, latrines and medical room; all were solid brick constructions.
Training had to be concentrated wholly on the physical aspect of preparing for parachute jumping courses, and to that totally absorbing objective our energies were enthusiastically directed. It was one compelling feature of those first two weeks of December 1943 and the only one, it seemed, that the Regiment was adequately equipped for at that time. Rightly or wrongly, we regarded the hardship as an essential, perhaps deliberate, part of that training. The roughest country was found for a progression of forced marches with loaded packs and small arms over 9, 12 and 15 miles on alternate days, always finishing with a swim in the still Mediterranean from the excellent, sandy beach at Nahariya. Non-marching days were crammed with strengthening and agility exercises. Assessing things after a week, preoccupation with physical fitness obscured almost everything else from my mind. Camp discomfort, equipment scarcity, the random dispersal of even the few friends I had arrived with, and the dearth of any mail or of any amenity (other than the evening portwine imbibing sessions or the uncertain possibility of some ancient movies in Naharyia village itself) assumed insignificance when related to the coveted goal of that eagerly awaited summons to the airfield at Ramat David, for the parachutist qualifying course. The completion of the 25 mile route march in easy style must have convinced me that I was ready, lulling me into a mood of premature self-congratulation and resulting in a shameful over-consumption of port wine that evening. Maudlin self-pity – caused by an accumulation of factors though mainly the certainty of another Christmas away from home, among virtual strangers at that – seemed temporarily to have relaxed the stiff upper lip. It’s the only excuse I can think of. I deservedly suffered next day.
Hurling myself into the training over the following few days conspicuously promoted a cheerier mood, with smug pride exuding from diary entries about success at cross-country runs, swimming and football... Worse was to come. On 16 December the weather changed dramatically and dominated everything. The rain that gives Palestine its greenness, and had given rise to stories of monsoon-like storms which we had begun to consider mythical, started that day and heavily influenced everything from that day on. Training came to a halt, tempers frayed and discipline all but collapsed, as survival in already chaotic conditions became almost a personal matter. The camp was on a sloping hillside. Consequently, the rain, of torrential proportions, flowed through the camp as if the hilltop was an overflowing reservoir. We resited tents until the utter futility of the exercise became disconcertingly apparent. Flowing water spilled over the hastily deepened trenches around our tents, necessitating the digging of a canal through the tent also. Trying to find a dry area for our ground sheet and blankets became impossible. Perpetually wet, and surrounded by ankle-deep mud, we were virtual prisoners in our tents. After four continuous days of such conditions, the cheering news was broken to me that I was on the next course for Ramat David on the morrow, 20 December 1943. I think I could have uncomplainingly tolerated anything that nature was prepared to throw at me in those 24 hours, but escape was blissful.
Parachute Training
Although the weather had changed but little, my arrival at Ramat David, less than 20 miles away, represented a transformation equal to another world. For a start, we were accommodated in hutted billets where soaking wet clothes had a reasonable chance of drying before being worn again. But above all, there existed an undoubted uplifting of morale at the sight and sound of planes; at the presence of huge hangers (where training could cock-a-snook at the elements) and of Royal Air Force expert personnel. There was the excitement of reunion conversation with men from our unit who were already at variously advanced stages of their courses and who, without exception, effused with stories of the jumps they had already executed and thrilled us with their anticipation of those to come. The weather had held up their jumping too. Although they warned that the week or so of physical training ahead of us made Nahariya’s PT seem like maypole dancing, the prospect became hourly more exhilarating. The real truth of its value lay mainly in its difference: it gave added zest to our exertions, particularly when the urgency became more apparent. To condense the normal six weeks parachuting course which prevailed at home to a mere 10-14 days, implicitly to have us operational for the harassment of the enemy in the Balkans as soon as possible, provided the rare incentive of purposefulness to add to unbounded enthusiasm.
A group of 10 men constituted a ‘stick’ in parachuting parlance, and I found myself in Flight Sergeant Kent’s stick – a training group which was to remain together for the whole course. Not unexpectedly, a spirit of competition was fostered, both between and within sticks, which instilled pride at being one of Kent’s Angels rather than a Dixon’s Demon.
Many of the men had arrived at RSR woefully unfit, and there had not been time for Nahariya’s training to remedy much before they met Ramat David’s onslaught. They suffered. For me it was the exercises that hurt – the jumping from various heights and moving trolleys and the imperative forward rolling which had to follow. We rolled the day-long. The ideal descent, we learned, called for a forward-facing landing which required a roll from the left or right side on contact with the earth – to minimise injury from jolt – by the instant wheeling effect of rounding the body through using, in turn, the outside of slightly bent knees, thighs, hips, back and shoulders in as gradual a flow of contact as possible. Hence the accent on collapsed rolling.
The much less physical skills of plane exits and descent control had to be learned too. Flight Sgt. Kent almost apologised for the use of Lockheed Hudsons at Ramat David; hardly the ideal plane to jump from, but seemingly the only aircraft available. The barely five-feet-high door, the width of one man on the side of the fuselage, presented all manner of exit problems, so our training simulated the real thing by repetitive jumping from the door of a grounded Hudson fuselage. Without the realisation of the all-important hazard of the rushing slipstream of air which emanated from the engines, it all seemed so simple.
Descent-control was much easier to rehearse with reasonable realism. Two actions towards landing survival (at worst) or perfection (at best) could be performed by a parachutist once his canopy had opened. He could make a turn and he could correct unreasonable backwards, forwards or sideways ‘swing’ or, to give it its technical term, ‘oscillation’. Turning was effected by reaching above the head with both hands, grasping the binding of the parachute’s rigging lines, pulling down, and at the same time crossing one hand over the other, as on a playground swing, to execute a full about-turn. Practice from a parachute harness suspended from the hangar roof made everyone quickly proficient in this particular skill.
All of this implied that there would be plenty of time available between leaving the Hudson and reaching the ground, but when we learned that most jumps were made from a height of 1000 feet and that the average time for such a descent was a mere 23 seconds, most of us guessed that we would need that long to decide whether we were approaching backwards, forwards or even upside down, let alone whether or not we were swinging! We recited, to boredom, the recommended rhyming mnemonic: “elbows in – shoulders round – feet together – watch the ground”. We visited the parachute packing shed to see the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) girls carrying out that critically important task of correctly folding, stowing, tying and enclosing those vital nylon panels and rigging lines within the canvas pack upon which our lives would depend. The cheerful confidence that radiated from the girls and the stringent packing regulations which, among other surprising things, dictated the immediate halting of packing when the temperature was found to be outside certain specified limits, were very, very reassuring. Those regulations minimised the risk of a build up of static electricity in the nylon. Static was the parachutist’s greatest enemy, being the main cause of the dreaded ‘Roman Candle’ – the instance in which the nylon stuck fast to itself and failed to separate, even in the rush of air, as it streamed behind the doomed wearer like an oversized scarf or the cascading firework it was so aptly named after. There was a Roman Candle fatality whilst we were at Ramat David, and one of our own officers was killed there in that way a few weeks later on 14 January 1944.
Monday 27 December was pencilled in as the date for our stick’s first jump but on 23 December, a gale of terrifying proportions put the kybosh on that day’s programmed jumping by the previous course, adding to the backlog caused by earlier bad weather. With Christmas intervening, I had my doubts about performing any jumps in 1943. Christmas Eve brought fulfilment expectantly nearer, however. Kent’s Angels were suddenly summoned to a warmed-up Wellington bomber on the airfield for our ‘air experience’ – a first flight for each of us. In the modern world’s universal, daily acceptance of jet travel as commonplace, it is difficult to explain the measure of thrill which that first take-off provided for the group of young men in 1943 who, only a month or so earlier, had no chance of ever taking to the air. That dilapidated, pensioned off Wellington, which gave every indication of falling to pieces as it taxied to take-off, was converted into a magic carpet to paradise in the minds of a dozen or so starry eyed innocents, by the confident, almost carefree, approach to the matter by the RAF crew.
We ought to have been frightened. I’m sure we were. There seemed hardly anywhere safely secure upon which to place one’s feet: it seemed to have the scantiest of superstructure, a shortcoming made disconcertingly worse by the huge exit hole in the floor! I thanked God that we were to jump from a side door. I doubt if I could ever have gone out of a floor exit, though thousands of earlier-trained parachutists did. With barely anywhere else to look out of the plane, that seemingly magnetic hole attracted everyone’s reluctant attention. “See that reservoir down there?” Flight Sgt. Kent bawled his question more as an instruction. We submitted “Yes!” in lying unison: we weren’t seeing anything ‘down there’ if we could help it. “When you come up for your jumps in the Hudson, the red light will come on just after we pass it. A few seconds after that the green light comes on and out you buggers go!”
I suppose our air experience lasted no more than 10 minutes. Thrilling as it was, I have never considered it served any useful purpose whatsoever, whereas using a Hudson might have given us some feeling about the approach to the dropping zone (DZ) and particularly about the slipstream. “Down there is Nazareth,” pointed out our instructor more in the tone of a tour guide. The dawning reality of spending Christmas in the land of the Bible had a sudden and emotional impact. There was plenty of beer sunk in Ramat David’s canteen that Christmas Eve. Thoughts of returning to that wretched, meagre camp at Nahariya, the next day, for God-knows-what sort of Christmas dinner, suggested that we should celebrate while we could.
25 December 1943 dawned startlingly beautiful, sunny and warm and remained so all day. Our much-maligned regiment really confounded all advance criticism by arranging to combine Christmas dinner arrangements with the SBS in their coveted mess hall, and in providing an excellent meal with all the trimmings – including booze. In truth, booze dominated the whole day so that the Army’s magnanimous decision to send BBC crooner Judy Shirley to sing to the troops came rather amiss, since her voice could not be heard over lecherous, ribald, unrestrained suggestions until even her personal safety seemed in some doubt before the officers conveyed her to the haven of their Mess. Much steam was let off in a 50-a-side rugby match, where the ball mattered much less than deliberate wallowing in the squelching mud which a week earlier we had been bickering and complaining about. When spectators joined in, or were hauled in, the melee got rather out of hand, with duckings in a swollen stream, provoking counter-duckings until it became a mass drunken brawl-game. The first signs had appeared of the collection of reprobates which was the RSR. In mitigation, I suppose that there had to be a modicum of reckless abandon in each of us or we would not have opted out of safe units.
Boxing Day was a ‘training-free’ day spent in anticipation of the parachute jump which was to come sometime soon. I have often been asked if I found sleep difficult on the night before my first parachute jump. I can honestly answer that I had no trouble whatsoever in sleeping soundly. Coolheaded courage? Not a bit of it. I slept well because I didn’t know I was jumping the next day. At 0430 on 27 December, the hut’s slumbering silence was broken by the premature reveille inflicted by the excited Flight Sergeant, announcing unexpected jump facilities due to a sudden reduction in the wind velocity. No breakfast, no shaving, just “get dressed and into that bloody truck outside.”
At the packing shed we drew our parachutes from the stores, fitted them on our backs, shortened a strap here, extended one there, and slotted their metal end-tabs into the quick release box near our bellybuttons. Each pack was then checked meticulously by Flight Sgt. Kent. We joked nervously about who’d got the Roman Candle one and about how silly we looked in our circular, canvas, rubber-filled, protective hats –which resembled a two-inch deep sponge cake wrapped around one’s head – with canvas sides meeting under the chin where there was a stud fastening. Daylight had appeared before we reached the aircraft, where there was some anxiety about the latest wind speed figures being marginally above the 15 miles per hour recommended maximum for non-operational jumps, but at last we were in the Hudson and receiving our final briefing from ‘Kenty’. We would go in slow-pairs; that is to say there would be five runs over the dropping zone, with No. 1 and No. 2 jumping at the first run. There would be no great emphasis on speedy exits for the first jump, the normal necessity for operational parachutists to land as closely together as possible being, for once only, ignored. When the red light flashed on at the door he would call “action stations, No. 1” and expect No. 1 to take up his trained, half-crouched position at the door with fingers lapped outside the door entrance, with which to eject himself with all his strength from the plane into the body-weight-supporting slipstream, immediately on his green light-prompted command of “Go!”
He would give the same commands for No. 2 whilst the green light was still on, so requiring close backing-up in the plane. He wanted clean exits: half-cock, shambling, testing the water, peeping walk outs would end in disaster, as the slipstream would catch hold of any loosely protruding limb and cause it to spin the body back against the fuselage and possibly, though God forbid, against the plane’s tail, where severe injury would be almost certain and entangling the parachute rigging lines an unthinkable possibility. Once floating under our air-filled canopy, we were to listen to the megaphone-amplified voice of the dropping zone officer, who would supplement our own observations about any corrections we might need to make to our landing.
As Kenty clipped the end of our static lines to the rigid metal rod in the plane, I understood better why military parachutists use the static line chute and not the self-operated ripcord (free fall) chutes. With so much to sweat over, it was sensible to be relieved of the critical operation of pulling a rip-cord. The static line, attached at one end to the rod strongpoint in the plane and at the other to the back panel of the parachute, would expose the chute to the atmosphere automatically, as falling body weight broke the graded series of strings which detached the back panel from the parachute pack. The military objective was perhaps even more important: a uniform length of time between exit and the opening of the chutes means closer contact as a unit on the ground.
The Hudson was airborne and soon cruising at the optimum jumping height of 1000 feet. The jokes had stopped, as much from the inability to think of any at such a time as from the dry mouths which would have found them difficult to relate anyway. I had been allotted the No.4 position in the stick – second to go in the second run. Preoccupied with my own personal crisis, I cannot remember much about the first two disappearing except for Kenty’s near maniacal “Go!” and his undisguised pleasure at their exits, as the Hudson banked for the circuit which would straighten out for my run. Two things had already surprised me. Firstly, the Hudson’s ‘door’ to which I have already referred, was not a door at all – it was an open doorway. The actual door was probably on a metal scrap heap somewhere, abandoned for the rest of the war as useless or simply in the way. The other remarkable thing was that our respected, fearless dispatcher was not wearing a parachute. He had stood in the doorway from take-off, looking like a bored bus conductor awaiting passengers, until standing aside for the first exits, giving us more palpitations for his safety than for our own. Worse than that, after 1 and 2’s departures he sat sideways in the doorway, his back pressing against one side. He then wedged himself with one foot against the other side for leverage as he proceeded with tug-of-war intensity to haul in the discarded static lines and back panels of the first two jumpers, against the possessiveness of the howling slipstream.
I didn’t need to look out for the reservoir. When the Hudson straightened up after its tightly banked circuit around the DZ, even Flight Sgt. Kent’s nod and smile towards No. 3 and myself were superfluous. I had remembered how the plane had cut back its airspeed just prior to the first pair’s exit and I recognised that rather alarming juddering as the pilot strove to achieve minimum airspeed. We sidled towards the door, someone called “good luck” from behind us, whilst Kenty’s last advice was “Go out like the first two and you’ll be fine.” The red light came on. “Action stations No. 3.” He was in position. I shuffled to where he had been standing. Green now!
“GO!” He vanished – and I filled the vacant aperture. “No. 4 GO!” I surged out into space, not consciously aware of carrying out any of my training instructions. For a second I was weightless, reclining horizontally on the intangible couch of the slipstream. Then, without any sensation of falling or of tugging or buffeting, I imagined that I might have been in Heaven itself for all the dramatically contrasting peace and serenity in which I found myself. Perhaps I was in Heaven? Had the Roman Candle been mine? The noise and vibration of the plane was a world away: never a glance towards its remote flight direction: never a thought about such an object’s part in my being where I was. The ease of it all! The tranquillity! Then, the view! Bird’s eye, yes that was it; the magnificent view. How many seconds did he say from a thousand feet – 23? Must be longer! In fact, I don’t think I’m coming down at all. Didn’t Kenty say he would see us all later at the drop zone to see if we agreed with him that it was the second best sensation in life? Well, I know that a walking fish and chip supper with salt and vinegar on – and eaten with the fingers out of a newspaper – takes some beating, but this is quite superb. Kenty was right – nearly as good.
“No. 4!... No. 4!” God, that’s me! Oh, it’s the chap down there with the megaphone. “Good exit No. 4. Keep coming as you are.” Keep coming? How the hell could I help but keep coming? Oh, I see. No need to make a turn, he means, no oscillation. I’d forgotten about that. In fact, I had forgotten everything about the rules in my unbridled happiness. But I will never forget the dramatic change of realisation from dreaming that I might be suspended in space forever to the fact that I really was coming down – and quickly. Indeed, for the last 50 feet I was sure that the earth was coming up to meet me halfway, as the speed of my descent became relative and I braced myself for what was supposed to be equivalent, on average, to jumping from a six foot wall. The reality was more like stepping off the back door, and I rolled more from condescension than necessity – a gesture which earned me the accolade of “an excellent landing” from the ground-control officer and added a boost to my rampant ego.
Pressing and turning the quick-release box freed the webbing straps, which had hitherto attached the chute to me. Holding on to a strap, I raced around the rapidly filling canopy and collapsed it before it became faster than me, in its wind-assisted mobility. As soon as it was crumpled into a reasonable bundle, I deposited it and myself into the waiting truck as instructed. The truck would take the whole stick back to the airfield packing shed for another issue of parachutes for our second jump immediately. It didn’t happen that way because of an unkind windspeed, which was a great pity since the mood I was in would have kept me jumping all day. For all the embellishment, for which I apologise, the fairly terse diary entry for the day takes some beating: “It’s the grandest of all feelings. Don’t remember coming out of the door but managed to make an excellent landing. Thrilled beyond expectations – can only remember laughing all the time, especially when ground controller complimented me”. Which I suppose only goes to show that a bit of praise now and again is good for morale.
Back at the hut, one bed without any kit on it… Oh, God! Not a casualty? He had been RTUd (returned to unit) – the instant fate of a jibber: one who could not bring himself to go out of the door. A collective silence was broken by a relieving snort from his former near neighbour. “Well! I’m glad it was that loud-mouthed bugger!” We endorsed that view. But not without sympathy, and perhaps even admiration at the courage required of such a tormenting decision – after all that arduous training. We marvelled incredulously too, at the extraordinary sensitivity of the Army in ensuring that he was off the premises before we returned: a very deliberate policy which we were to encounter again.
The cynicism which service life bred, however, alternatively suggested that the Army had the jibber’s feelings less in mind than the need to avoid contaminating the rest of us. Take your choice. Whatever one’s feelings in that minor drama, they could not compare with one’s attitude to a mass-jib of 18 volunteers (including three sergeants) who applied for and received their Return to Units from Nahariya before even transferring to the airfield at Ramat David! Something wrong with recruiting, or a persuasive barrack-room lawyer at work?
Free from duty, we went into Haifa for the rest of the day. Strangely enough there is no record of celebration but there are two probable reasons for that. With only one of seven jumps completed, it might have been tempting providence to congratulate ourselves too soon – after all they don’t bring out the champagne on the completion of the first lap of a Grand Prix. I think it likely that the risk of a hangover was not considered an ideal approach to our second jump next morning. There was also the more prosaic explanation – we were skint after our Christmas indulgence. Whatever the reason, the film The Man who Came to Dinner received our attention and it was a first rate show.
Tuesday 28 December dawned windier than the day before and with no hope of parachuting. We were, if you’ll pardon the expression, left in suspense. Wednesday morning was just as grim as the weather forecast, but with the promise of better things in the afternoon. This kept us in camp on standby with fruitful consequences in the afternoon – our second jump. Fast pairs from 1000 feet. I knew much more about this one. More aware of my exit; more certain that I did do things correctly on my first jump from instinctive execution of thoroughly instilled training practices. Arms tight by my sides, legs pressed together and a really forceful thrust away from the Hudson, that astonishing second of recumbrance in the slipstream, then again the uncanny, contrasting, library silence. Where did the noise go? I looked around and could neither see nor hear any trace of the plane. Very strange, but each of us experienced it. There was much more sensibility about coming down this time too. I was soon aware of a backward approach to the DZ, and had executed a complete reverse turn smiling the while in self-congratulation before my megaphone mentor could issue the instruction. I had another uneventful landing. That evening I finished the diary entry with “I’m really happy about this – enjoyed it immensely.”
The rain was belting down the next morning but apparently this, by itself, is no barrier to parachuting, so our early dismay at the likelihood of further postponement rapidly changed to unrestrained glee at the arrival of the trucks. We did two jumps that day – one immediately after the other – slow and fast fives from little under 1000 feet. The first was an appalling effort. Apart from a thunderclap wallop of a landing, on the a backward swing of an oscillation I had failed to correct (having missed the ground by a foot or two on the forward swing), I had already earned black marks for an earlier misdemeanour. Whilst in the plane, after Flight Sgt. Kent’s thorough inspection, I had surreptitiously released the press-stud fastening of my protective headgear to ease the tightness and the sweating. In the excitement of the collective venture of going out in a five-stick, I forgot to refasten it, with the consequence that it disappeared in an instant. I rightly incurred the wrath of the ground controller, who noticed it immediately and made no bones about telling me through the megaphone. The reprimand was continued on the ground and he was not amused by my replying that I was relieved to find that I had lost only my hat – at the time I felt sure it was my head which had been wrenched off! My stupidity, I recognised, could have had serious consequences – particularly with regard to my atrocious landing, with an unprotected head. With another set of parachutes we were in the air again for our fourth jump. Suitably chastised and subdued, I ensured that my behaviour was impeccable this time, but as luck would have it number four was the perfect jump anyway and totally incident free. Soaking wet, I experienced the carefree joy of a victorious Boat Race crew’s cox emerging from his ritual ducking.
Four done, three to come, the last of them to be a night jump. And tomorrow was New Year’s Eve… I didn’t sleep very well – not a noteworthy fact in itself – but I learned only later that statistics show that most jibbers make their momentous decision after their third or fourth jump, once the reality of what they have been doing had impressed itself more forcefully up on their minds and the time for a final decision was at hand. Jibbing had never entered my mind, yet I cannot explain that restless night unless it was excitement at the possibility of having the final jump on my birthday. New Year’s Day had fired my imagination and was driving my mind in rehearsing the composition of my proud letters home.
The morning’s conditions were not very favourable but it was decided to try, with eventual successful consequences. Jumps numbered five and six were completed in quick succession after much puzzling circling of the DZ without explanation from the crew or dispatcher. In the fifth, drifting took me a long, anxious way off target, landing me heavily on unyielding rocks – well outside the huge, more comfortable DZ field. Being in the middle of a ‘fast tens’ stick, it can be imagined that most of us were thus off course. Maybe, when one considered the odd antics of the oft-circling plane, the pilot had something to do with it. Whatever the explanation for my fifth jump’s traumas, number six was uneventful. Speculation about the night jump buzzed around when, on returning to the huts, we were confined to billets. It was a dreadful afternoon of waiting. We asked ourselves, wouldn’t it be extraordinary for anyone to make three descents in a single day? Apparently it would. Most extraordinary. Tenterhooks was putting it mildly. We could be in an elitist minority. We could be celebrating the New Year as it should be celebrated.
It really was a spontaneous cheer which erupted when, just before darkness fell, Flight Sgt. Kent burst in with “OK lads, it’s on!” We were in the truck almost before he had finished the sentence. It was pitch dark when the Hudson took off, after Kenty had explained that this was to be the jump which would most likely resemble the conditions of a night-time drop in enemy occupied territory. A fast stick of ten, keeping as closely together as possible and dropping from a mere 500 feet, demanded an immediate assessment of our descent progress from observation of the solitary flare on the DZ. We were to assemble together as soon as possible after landing by calling the number of our next mate in the stick, then report together to the ground controller. Whether it was from feelings of satisfaction at the imminent completion of the course (which would put another inch on my chest), or perhaps the total obscurity of danger in leaping into the darkness, I knew not – but I ejected myself from the doorway of the Hudson with extra physical vigour and zealous optimism.
It was a strange, lonely experience to be suspended above the earth, knowing that I could neither see a living soul nor be seen. I pondered that, if this had been my first jump, there would have been more justification for believing I was Heaven-bound. Where was the damned flare? It must be behind me… Yes, at the right rear… a turn’s necessary… got to feel for the webbing straps… got one, got two, now... Before I could apply any pressure at all I was down harmlessly. Five hundred feet does not allow for any dithering. Whether I landed forwards, backwards or sideways, I know not. I was safe for the reason that night jumps are invariably safer – because one’s tried and tested landing position is sustained throughout the descent. Daytime’s reaching for the earth tempts supple, bent legs towards vulnerable rigidity.
I collapsed my chute, calling at the same time at not much more than a whisper for No. 8. He acknowledged almost at the same time as I answered No. 6’s call to me. In seconds we were together, chattering exuberant nonsense. We had reported to the ground controller before the absence of 9 and 10 was noticed. The ground controller decided that, as the exercise was over as a secret mission, he could shout, “You there, 9 and 10?” “9 is,” came the immediate reply from the total darkness, “but I can’t find 10.” Our alarm skimmed the icing off the cake. We all called out for 10, begging God for an answer and losing our tempers. The controller took over: “One more call then we search.” No response ensued. “Right, chutes in the truck then come back here.” Flares were lit from the solitary landing beacon and torches were produced for just such a disaster. We lined up at finger touching distance and moved off in the dense darkness, with the controller only occasionally calling and the rest of us observing agreed silence, straining our hearing for a call – however feeble it might be – and each one of us dreading that the discovery of a crumpled body should be made at his unfortunate feet. We searched systematically, and then we searched randomly without success for perhaps half an hour, when the controller decided that the whole camp would have to be mustered to join the search – after he had checked on the possibility (which had not occurred to us) that No. 10 might have jibbed and still be in the plane.
At this juncture, a voice – a seemingly ghostly voice – froze each one of us to the spot. “You lot looking for me? No. 10, like?” He emerged from the blackness with his bundled-up chute grasped to his body. “I thought you might be worried. Got caught up on the plane, you know. Must have been a couple of miles away before the bloody thing shook free. Then I got this lift. I’ve been as quick as I could.” He related his remarkable story endlessly as he walked toward us. We wanted to be mad at him until we realised that his elated animation was no different from ours, but he had more to be grateful for to the Gods. His providential escape only enhanced our celebratory booze-up in the NAAFI canteen. I did not get drunk. I wanted to savour the rare enjoyment of achievement and to glory in my new status.
Weather Disrupts Training
The euphoria generated by having won our ‘wings’ incurred a considerable dent immediately on our return to the camp at Nahariya on New Year’s Day. Very little had changed. Certainly not the weather, and the weather impinged on everything at unprotected Nahariya. It was natural for us to suppose that nobody cared and, although officers suffered equally badly, they were targets for our bottled up, seething discontent, which blamed them for doing nothing to arrange for our reasonable protection from it. Forty years later the regimental war diaries at the National Archives at Kew showed me that our seniors were actually risking accusations of insubordination at the time, with their forthright representations to Middle East HQ at Cairo on our behalf: “Batteries will not be ready... After three weeks of rain, no drying, bathing, hot water facilities… impeding training.” The strongest possible stance was taken on 21 January 1944, however, “It is once more stressed that a camp of this nature and on this site is the worst place imaginable in which to organise and train a new unit for early operational target dates. They cannot give due care and attention to their training when they are wet through, lacking in changes of clothing and boots and have nowhere to go except a cold and draughty canteen hut or a soaking wet tent which may or may not stand up against the daily and nightly storm.” The Acting Commanding Officer sent that one. Similarly, it is also easier now to understand Cairo’s attitude at the time. Obviously, a new, permanent – or even semi-permanent – camp would not be built in the wilds for a unit as ephemeral as ours. We were required to be in Europe as soon as possible, not swanning around in the Middle East – and we were ‘swanning’ weren’t we? To GHQ Cairo, the weather was just bad luck, and was probably considered an exaggeration anyway. One can imagine the comfortable occupants of Cairo’s cosy office premises sneering, “Wish they wouldn’t keep on about their wretched showers up there in Palestine. Aren’t they supposed to be hairy-chested paratroopers, anyway?”
Back at Nahariya, one could detect an air of urgency. Weapons and equipment had begun to roll in, adding to the frustration of having nowhere to muster a group of men together for training purposes, except for the rare, opportunistic occasions when the storms actually abated. Even then, officers had to act rather gingerly: there are limits to the number of times you can expect men to sit or lie on wet ground, to enhance their skills at operating and maintaining unfamiliar weapons, without arousing their fury. Genuine military operations are a different matter.
Explosives Training
Some batteries – or major parts of them – were sent off to other parts of the Middle East to train. The feeling grew that their readiness was less critical than ‘C’ Battery’s – the one I was in. Yet, amazing as it seems to me in retrospect, we learned some more about our main weapon, the 0.5 inch Browning machine gun in which we soon developed a respectful confidence. We had a short course on explosives and demolition, and we suffered demoralising lectures on what our duties were on being captured. The explosives course is worth a mention, if only because it was the one activity for which the weather was actually beneficial – at least from the safety aspect. I cherish the memory of that course’s first practical exercise; the setting of a fused detonator in a handful of plastic explosive, the ignition of the fuse and the withdrawal to a safe distance for the resultant explosion. NCOs from the Royal Engineers were our excellent tutors from whom we learned the first, cardinal rule for all explosive settings – “Never run away from a charge.” The theory is that it should never be set on so short a fuse as to need to do so anyway, but the maxim’s main concern is the avoidance of panic in others who may be unaware of the fuse’s time setting.
Towards practical indoctrination of the discipline of this dictum, 30 or so of us were placed in a straight line, with fingers just touching and thus a double arms’ length apart, and facing a parallel marked line 15 paces away, in open ground. We were each given half a pound of plastic explosive (looking and feeling like fresh, mouldable putty), a detonator (resembling, in size and appearance a standard cotton reel or bobbin), a length of fuse (similar to modern coaxial aerial cable) timed for a 10 second duration and finally a box of special fuse-igniting matches. Our instructions were brief and unambiguous. We were to set the detonator firmly into our lump of explosive, gently push the length of fuse cable into the hole provided in the detonator (like in our cotton reel), then advance with our ‘bombs’ to the marked line, together in line and keeping our distance.
Distance between us was again checked before we each obeyed the instruction to place our bomb on the ground on the line and directly at our feet. “Now take out one of your matches, but do not strike until I give the command for you to do so.” Perfectly clear so far. The Sergeant instructor next reiterated, “I do not want to see anybody running – remember that!”
“You have all seen what a lit fuse looks like, so I don’t want to see any unlit fuses that you ‘thought’ were lit when we retire from the charge.”
“You will now kneel down with your matches ready.”
“When I give the command ‘Strike’ you will strike your match on your matchbox, ignite the fuse, and when you see it lit and ‘fizzing’ you will retire to your ‘start’ position in orderly fashion – no running.”
“You have each got 10 seconds, which is about twice the time needed to walk briskly back to your start mark.”
“All ready, then?”
A quick glance along the line confirmed that we were each hovering over our bombs with matches poised.
“Strike!”
I brushed the match against the abrasive side of the box. Nothing happened. Nerves perhaps? One second… I tried again. No ignition. Two seconds… Must be a duff match, fiddle in the box for another – Hell’s bells, my fingers are shaking… Three seconds, four seconds… Why won’t it ignite? God! The bloke’s fuse on the left is fizzing only five or six feet away from my head – and he’s walked almost halfway back! I struck the match successfully and applied the flame to the end of the fuse wire... Come on for God’s sake, ignite, FIZZ! Five seconds, six… the one on my right is fizzing now. No running, remember. NO RUNNING? That’s a laugh. The stampede back to safety would have put to shame the Charge of the Light Brigade.
It was a disgraceful exhibition of timidity – he said so. Only nine out of 30 had been lit and had exploded. Whether by accident or not, the Royal Engineers had given us a simple lesson in psychology – in human frailty. There had been nothing wrong with the matches or the fuses, as we proved minutes later after we had witnessed the minimal effects of the explosions on the muddy earth and executed the tiresome misfire drill. We had been guilty of panic and of engendering panic. On the third trial of the exercise one hundred per cent success was achieved. From that moment on, explosives and demolition and the sophistication of such things as time-pencil fuses became a subject of fascinating interest to almost all of us, exemplified later in the year by the almost daring contempt for the rules so clearly enunciated by those astute and much underrated men of the Royal Engineers.
Escape and Evasion Training
The high ranking officer, who had been sent from GHQ Middle East to depress us with the conduct expected of us as prisoners of war, paradoxically cheered us with the implications of imminent involvement in hostilities. It was difficult to decide whether to applaud or rebuke High Command for imposing on us so negative a subject, but I suppose in the spirit of boy-scout preparedness it had to be delivered simultaneously with the surprising issue of what was described as an escape kit. The other point in its favour was the confirmation that we were rather special. No other units that we had heard of had received items which indicated the likelihood of action behind enemy lines, which suggested a fair degree of individual independence and implied almost certain co-operation with Partisan organisations.
In logical terms, it was sheer pessimism to envisage a situation calling for any of those objects – a file, a crude compass and a map of the Balkan countries – but their issue redeemed some of GHQ’s otherwise besmirched reputation, in their concerns for our welfare. The four-inch-long file was wholly concealed in a flat, innocent looking strip of rubber, which had been designed to fit snugly in the pleat of the field dressing pocket of our battle-dress trousers in the hope of avoiding detection in the normal frisking. My trouble was that it added further rigidity and bulk to a pocket already bulging with my forbidden diary, to the point where a passing medical officer might one day suspect one of the most frightening examples of unilateral hernia he had ever diagnosed – and without the removal of the patient’s trousers at that. So I found another home for it – the file, I mean, not the diary.
The compass was at once simple, yet quite ingenious: a two-part brass trouser button (on the face of it) which obviated the need for sewing. With the two parts separated by the trouser material, the spike on one part clicked into the recess in the other, effectively locking the button in an almost irremovable position. The recessed half of the button had been magnetised and marked with a tiny luminous spot to indicate north. One simply had to place the magnetised part on the spike of the lower part to see it swivel instantly to indicate the direction of magnetic north. Useful to know in a blind trek for freedom.
The map had been printed on one side of an otherwise innocuous looking, folded field handkerchief. The unmistakeable utility of these items hardly warranted even the few words of explanation which they produced. Perhaps the promise of the future issue of gold sovereigns, as universally accepted tender for emergency purchases in countries where wartime internal fiscal and political chaos had rendered their national currency worthless, posed more questions than the speaker answered. But both speaker and recipients seemed to be reduced to embarrassed speechlessness (at least initially) by another item issued. The conjecture, the jokes and the moral sensitivity which the personal issue of a couple of packets of rubber sheath contraceptives later provoked would make an interesting book in itself. Suffice it to say that none of the escape items issued were to be ‘exposed’ before our arrival on the scene of military operations.
Morphine tablets comprised the final means of ‘escape’. We were instructed in the dosage for relieving extreme pain – and how much it would take to kill. I imagine that this was to beat the Germans to it if they appeared to be intent on carrying out Hitler’s declaration of 18 October 1942: to treat all Commando-type infiltrators in occupied countries as spies and execute them. Fortunately, his instructions were not always carried out.
The exclusivity of our unit gradually became more outwardly noticeable, with the issue of gear which advertised to all in the Haifa area that ours was a somewhat distinctive military role. Our secret existence had obviously been exposed, so what did it matter if the hitherto exclusive beige berets of the Special Air Service suddenly appeared in greater profusion? Although we had become part of a Special Services brigade, the regiment acquired its own rather eye-catching, coloured cap badge emblem depicting a winged torch, and showing the capitals RSR with the biblical legend from St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, ‘Quit you like men’. It is true that the wags and the detractors soon fastened on to the word ‘quit’ in its American usage, rather than ‘acquit’. All this, together with a Commando dagger and our smart, brown, calf-high South African Army boots (instead of the black, standard issue Army clod-hoppers) unfortunately prompted a swaggering braggadocio in some of our more aggressive types. Long before it had a military reputation, the Regiment developed an unenviable one of loutishness through aggression, vandalism, drunkenness and looting, which suggested an undisciplined rabble rather than the crème de la crème esteem which the speciality of our training claimed for us.
