Читать книгу If I Don’t Write It Nobody Else Will - Eric Sykes - Страница 7

On or about my eighteenth birthday I left home to join the Royal Air Force, taking with me a carrier bag containing shaving kit, soap and a handkerchief, which for the few early years of my life had been pinned to the front of my jersey but had been hardly used when my sleeve was available. In addition I had a bag of Mint Imperials for the journey and half a crown for emergencies. I walked the five or six hundred yards from home until I reached the Methodist Chapel; then I stopped and looked back to 36 Leslie Street, just one of a row of ordinary houses, overlooked on the right by Ward Street Central School, with Ward Street on the left, all surrounding two acres of wasteland fondly known as the Mucky Broos, and at the far end of Ward Street, Featherstall Road. I swallowed a lump of nostalgia in my throat. It wasn’t exactly the New Jerusalem, but it had been my own secure little world for seventeen years.

At Oldham Central station I am the only occupant of the windswept platform. A porter emerges from a door, a half-eaten sandwich in his hand. He takes out a huge pocket watch and looks down the line. Then he sees me and obviously comes to the conclusion that helping me on to the train with my carrier bag wouldn’t warrant a tip and he disappears inside again to finish off his breakfast. Turning, I examine the Nestlé’s chocolate machine but as I feel for some coppers a strident bell announces that a train is due, and at that moment, chugging asthmatically, it comes round a bend and squeals to a halt in the station. No one alights and I am the only passenger to get on. The guard’s piercing whistle brings my head out of the window in time to see him wave his green flag before adroitly nipping back into his compartment, and with a hoot of indifference the train leaves Oldham, bearing me to the beginning of a new life in the Royal Air Force, cue music, go lights, stand by curtain. Every now and again I indulge myself in a spot of melodramatics, and believe me, there isn’t a dry eye in the house—all, of course, in my imagination, which explains my sometimes vacuous expression.

Padgate was my destination, a collection point for new recruits. Naturally I didn’t know anybody, and I was too shy to rectify this. Others more convivial hung about in groups, enjoying the start of a new adventure, all in civvies, the only piece of uniformity being cardboard boxes containing our civilian gas masks slung around the shoulder by a length of string. I remember standing open-mouthed, listening to a group whom I took to be Poles or Czechs. They were neither. I was about a couple of thousand miles wide of the target: they were all from Glasgow. Looking around at the motley collection of would-be heroes my heart sank. I knew that the war wasn’t going well, but if they were enlisting the likes of us the situation was worse than I thought. By lights out I hadn’t said a word to anybody. In fact the last time I’d spoken had been back at home when I said, ‘Well, I’ll be off then.’

I climbed into a top bunk and, stuffing my head into my rolled-up jacket, which was to be my pillow, I cried silently, tears pouring from me until I ran dry; stifled sobs racked my body in a bout of self-pity and homesickness. I hated change, but this wasn’t just change, it was a monumental leap into the unknown. It never struck me that my misery was the ending of my youth and the beginning of my education, the door opening to manhood.

Lesson one came the following morning. Everyone had left the hut to parade outside, except that is the old sergeant, two smart characters in sports jackets and flannels, possibly thirtyish, and me, fascinated by the three of them whispering together. Then one of them took out his wallet and surreptitiously passed over something that crinkled into the sergeant’s big hand. While it was disappearing into his trouser pocket, he glanced around to check that they were alone, and with a start he spotted me, and barked, ‘Outside, you, or I’ll have you on a fizzer.’ I hurried out, followed by the irate NCO, but the two ‘nudge, nudge, wink, winks’ didn’t leave the hut. Nor did they appear on any other subsequent parade and I learned my first lesson in the academy of life: there’s always a way round everything if you have the wherewithal.

On one of our next parades we were all in uniform, well most of us, some partially fitted, some ill fitted and one or two fit only for the dustbin. We were being instructed in the art of forming fours, dressing, halting, about turning, etc.—not a taxing programme for us lads, but there’s always one…Ours was an obviously well-educated, well-connected youth, six feet four, with a podgy, lumpy body misshapen by three square meals a day since birth in houses where dinner was taken in the evening and not at midday. Apparently there wasn’t a uniform to fit him, so when we all paraded he lined up with us in his civilian suit and his box gas mask held round his shoulders by string; the only bit of uniform was a forage cap, which was obviously too small and looked even more ludicrous when worn perfectly straight on top of his head. He viewed everything with disdain, as if he’d just woken up in a rubbish tip. But this wasn’t all. He was dysfunctional: his legs and arms were strangers to the rest of his body, he couldn’t march, his right arm went out with his right leg, and when the order came ‘By the left, quick march,’ out went his left foot and so did his left arm, so he marched with a sort of lopsided gait. The way he managed to keep his hat on defied all the laws of gravity. The loud bellowing, the cajoling, the demonstrations of the drill sergeant were useless. To put it simply, he was a misfit and no further use to the RAF, and within two days he was demobbed and back in civvy street. Poor lad, I felt sorry for him. On the other hand, I wish I’d thought of that—but then again I was happy where I was, and he undoubtedly enjoyed a much better life in his ancestral home than he did in our Nissen hut.

After a few days of spit-and-polished boots, button burnishing, inoculations and drill, we were ready for our first posting. It was…Blackpool. When I read this information on the noticeboard my heart surged with joy. Sixteen weeks in Blackpool, the whole summer in Blackpool—I could scarcely believe it. Accommodation and food were free, and on top of that we received money to spend, so you can imagine my euphoria as I shouldered my pack and rifle to rough it in the land of my dreams.

On arrival at Blackpool Central station our intake was paraded so as to be informed of the allotment of billets, and once again my cup of happiness was dangerously near the top. We were not to live in barracks, Nissen huts or tents; we were billeted in bed-and-breakfast guesthouses a short walk from the tower and even shorter to the promenade. Perhaps this was a dream and I was still in Padgate with my head buried in the jacket.

As I made my way up the stairs of my guesthouse, carpeted stairs too—what a novelty, I stood at the door of the bedroom, wondering if I should knock. I could scarcely believe my eyes. Perhaps I should have taken my boots off before I entered. There was no tatty, torn linoleum on the floor but instead a thick wall-to-wall carpet, a rug in front of a dressing table—a dressing table no less, twin beds with white pillows, eiderdowns, bedside tables with lamps and a glistening chandelier above. It was more palatial than anything I had ever seen, even in films. I couldn’t wait for bedtime, or maybe I should now say, ‘Roll on lights out’. Apart from Padgate, it was the first time I’d had a bed to myself. Then an awful thought struck me: I had been sent to the wrong address and any minute now an irate air vice marshal in a dressing gown full of medals would walk in and bellow, ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ But it was no mistake.

The man sharing the room was slightly taller than me, with light floppy hair above a boyish, unlined face; even so I reckoned he must have been pushing thirty. He merged effortlessly with the room, moving gracefully as he unpacked an enormous suitcase and placed bottles of various potions on the dressing table, two monogrammed hairbrushes, even a box of powder. On removing the lid he dipped in a powder puff and patted his face, scrutinising every inch of it in the dressing-table mirror as if yesterday he was somebody else. Satisfied, he turned away from the mirror, looking over his shoulder to check that everything at the back was in order, and resumed his unpacking, placing a pair of purple pyjamas on one of the beds and thus claiming his territory. I placed my razor and a comb on my bedside table and the housewarming was over.

The following morning was a rude awakening. My room-mate, whose name I’ve quite forgotten, had already gone, leaving a heady smell of perfume behind him, and I realised that I was going to be late. I ran to the parade area and with a feeling of dread I saw ranks of blue in front of a flight sergeant standing on a low wall and addressing them in a loud commanding voice. I squeezed myself into the rear rank, but not carefully enough. I knew that when the flight sergeant, without any pause in his welcome speech, said, ‘Take that man’s name’ he was referring to me, and that evening in the office of the CO (commanding officer) I was on a charge of being late on parade, for which damnable sin I was awarded four days jankers. In other words, each evening in full equipment, including backpack and tin hat, I was to be found kneeling to scrub the floor of the orderly room. From a distance I must have looked like Quasimodo searching for his contact lens. After four days of scrubbing the same piece of floor, my punishment was over and I learned my second lesson: if you are about to arrive late it is better not to arrive at all. When I spotted the whole mob lined up I should have gone back to bed; they wouldn’t have missed me.

The most important part of our training was learning the Morse code, essential to wireless operators. Our schoolrooms were at the Winter Gardens, a venue I played many times years afterwards in a more peaceful, pleasurable age. Incidentally, the mastering of the Morse code was a doddle for me: I was already proficient and could send and receive in Morse code as fast, and in some cases faster, than some of the instructors. I’d mastered this skill when I was sixteen in order to be a wireless operator in the merchant navy. On reaching a fairly competent standard, I applied to the Marconi School of Wireless in Manchester and I’m sure they would have accepted me but for two monumental obstacles. First, not too difficult, I had to get my father’s permission but the second, the impossible barrier, was in the small print: the course would cost fifty pounds, almost as much as our house was worth, so joining the merchant navy was out of the question, which was probably just as well because the war was imminent and, as I was to learn later, the German U-boat packs were no respecters of young British seamen and my chances of being seventeen would have considerably diminished.

However, here I was in an extraordinary, sunny Blackpool, marching, drilling, doing rifle practice and dozing through the lazy afternoons in the Winter Gardens, fitter than I’d ever been. I even enjoyed guard duties, standing as smartly turned out as the Grenadiers outside Buckingham Palace in tin hat and full blancoed webbing with bayoneted rifle, enduring endless box-Brownie camera snaps and trying not to blink when the shutter went.

The weeks rushed by too quickly for my liking. I was now conversing with my instructors at a speed too fast for ordinary erks. Physically I could have run to the top of the Matterhorn thanks to PT every day on the beach; I was suntanned to a deep walnut, clear eyed and bushy tailed; I even looked forward to guard duty, although we were only guarding Marks and Spencer’s. Marching to the corner, clattering my boots on the pavement as I effected a copybook turn before marching smartly back to my clattering halt, left turn, order arms and a last stamp of standing at ease—awesome; all the holiday makers sitting outside their digs enjoyed watching my every movement and when I stood easy they all relaxed and lifted their newspapers or continued their interrupted conversations, the show over until the next time I got itchy feet.

It was heady stuff. I was a bulwark of the Empire, so enveloped in a world of self hero worship that I didn’t hear the screaming child being dragged along by a harassed mother who stopped and pointed to my bayonet and snarled, ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll tell that man to stick his knife in you.’ The lad wiped his snotty nose on his already overworked sleeve and then, taking a few steps up to me, he kicked me fiercely on the shin, wearing clogs. I was so startled that I let go of my rifle and it crashed to the pavement. The newspapers went down, all the talking stopped as if in a drill movement and all heads swivelled in my direction. I picked up my rifle just as the sergeant marched out to see what the commotion was all about, and again I was on a fizzer and an apple-sized bruise on my leg was no defence.

Apropos of nothing, I learned a very important wrinkle while on guard duty. At night, if you feel tiredness creeping into you, hold your rifle with the butt on the ground so that the point of the bayonet is under your chin. If tiredness seeps insidiously into your brain, your head begins to nod and ouch, you’re wide awake again.

Strangely enough, I never saw my room-mate during the day, so he obviously wasn’t a trainee wireless operator. No matter, we went out for a drink together some evenings to the Queen’s Hotel. We never drank more than a half pint of bitter each, but I couldn’t help noticing that whereas I took hefty swallows from my glass he sipped his daintily; and we never really conversed. His eyes furtively searched the customers as if he was looking for somebody and one evening as we made our way back to the digs he said, ‘We nearly got off tonight.’ I didn’t answer because I hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about, for as far as I could recollect there hadn’t been a woman in the room except the one behind the bar and he always ignored her.

It must be remembered that I had spent all my life up to a few weeks before in Oldham, which was hardly the sophisticated centre of the universe; and in those days homosexuality was a word we had never come across, let alone understood. I was still an innocent abroad and I suspected nothing. My room-mate was a very pleasant, likeable fellow and even if he did use face cream and wear pyjamas it only went to show that he came from a well-to-do background in which his gentle, superior ways were the norm. Conversely he must have thought of me as one of the peasantry, a bumbling village idiot who went to bed without washing, clad in my RAF-issue vest and underpants. For my own part I felt lucky to have found such a delightful room-mate.

On one occasion I received a cake from home. The last one had been a disaster, as the mice had had most of it, although I’d put it in my kit bag to guard against such a catastrophe. This time, however, I stood on my bed and hung the cake in my shirt from the chandelier. This way it would be out of reach of the little terrors. My room-mate was asleep, or I assumed he was. I turned off my bedside lamp and settled down on my back, hands behind my head, awaiting the sandman and wondering if I’d tied the cake bundle securely enough. My lids were getting heavy when suddenly I was wide awake. Inside my bed I sensed rather than felt something crawling towards my thigh. It could only be a mouse…Very gently and slowly, I withdrew my arm from the back of my head, and then crashed it down with all my strength—and my room-mate yelled, ‘Ouch!’ Quickly I put my lamp on and he was abject with apologies. I couldn’t grasp what he’d been up to, sliding his hand into my bed. He must have been dreaming. He kept saying sorry and that he wasn’t like other men: he had been a ballet dancer before he’d been called up, and he missed his friends. I didn’t know what he was babbling on about. When I switched my light off and settled down, he was still talking and the penny still hadn’t dropped about his motives; in fact I was only glad it hadn’t been a mouse. I was no wiser when a few days later he was demobbed. Apparently he had turned up on parade wearing lipstick and mascara. What’s so terrible about that? I’d known him for only a few weeks but I missed him when he’d gone and was glad that I’d not been born into the aristocracy and made to wear make-up.

However, on balance my training in Blackpool was idyllic, but nothing lasts for ever, and we marched and drilled to the band of the Royal Air Force in our passing-out parade on the forecourt of the Metropole Hotel. Filled with exultation, I considered signing on for a full twelve years—it wasn’t such a bad career. After sixteen weeks of high summer in Blackpool, I was bronzed, fit and well out of the chrysalis I’d brought with me to Padgate. I thought the war was a doddle and felt privileged to have been invited to take part. But I didn’t quite know it all: I still had a lot to learn and one of the hard rules of life is that when the birds are singing and the sun is shining and you are in a state of utter content, that’s the danger signal and in the middle of a happy smile, wallop! The sucker punch.

Eagerly scanning the noticeboard every morning for the where-abouts of my posting, I didn’t care where it was. Any operational airfield would suffice. At least I’d be sending and receiving messages that mattered, chatting up members of the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), with aeroplanes taking off one after another for Berlin or the Ruhr, whatever was the target for the night, counting the aircraft as they returned in the lightening sky of early dawn, and with the WAAFs. The mess hall would be mixed—good grief, would I ever get time to sleep? Sadly, like so many of my optimistic fantasies of things to come, it bore little relation to the actuality, but I lived in hope and my heart leapt when I saw my name on the noticeboard the following day. It straightened itself out when I read my posting to a place in Herefordshire called Madley and, underneath, ‘All personnel above report to guard room to collect travel warrants at fourteen hundred hours.’ So at two o’clock I stood before the corporal in the guard room, which in peacetime had been the children’s department in Marks and Spencer’s. As he was making out my movement order, I asked him if Madley was a fighter or a bomber station.

Without looking up he said, ‘If you see a fighter or a bomber at Madley, he’s lost.’ I didn’t get it, and as he handed me my documents he took pity on me. ‘All in good time, laddie. You’re still in training and if I were you I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to put my head on the bloc.’ I didn’t get that either. What it is to be ignorant!

Madley itself may be a delightful little town but the place where the three-ton lorries deposited us in the early darkness preceding the onset of winter, was barren and pockmarked by Nissen huts, corrugated iron and concrete floors—Blackpool had hardly prepared us for this. The first morning at Madley dawned cold and grey. It seemed like only yesterday we were in shirt sleeves, basking in the golden summer of Blackpool. How quickly the seasons change! Greatcoats now unpacked were the order of the day.

We were paraded and after a short address the commanding officer gave us a lot more information, which was mainly carried away on the brisk east wind; then he called four of us out and for some unknown reason I happened to be one of them, and we became class leaders. We were given black armbands with the letters ‘CL’ in white, and we had to wear them on our sleeve. Our duties were not too onerous. We had to line up our allotted section and then march them off to the classes. Afterwards we marched them back again, and when we shouted ‘Halt’ and ‘Dismiss’ our responsibility was at an end. Why we had been chosen to be unpaid, stripeless NCOs I will never know. There were quite a few sergeants and corporals better equipped to do our basic duties, but they were permanent staff and presumably had other duties such as counting the pencils after we’d left at the end of our course and replenishing stocks for the next intake. Secretly, though, I really enjoyed my taste of authority.

We were in Madley for further training. There were fewer drills, less marching, and no guard duty at all, but there was more about the complex inside of a wireless set and naturally a quicker, more competent way of receiving and sending messages in Morse Code, call signs, contacts, wavelengths—in fact everything a wireless operator should know.

I had not expected to be posted somewhere for further training; after all, I thought we’d passed out. At this rate we’d still be under instruction when the war ended. I was beginning to wonder when, and if ever, we would be posted on real active service. The only aircraft we’d seen up to now were Halifaxes, Blenheims, Messerschmitts, Dorniers and Spitfires, but unfortunately they were all hanging from the ceiling of one of the classrooms. When would we be close enough to touch a real one? When would we be posted to an aerodrome? I fervently hoped to fly as a wireless operator air gunner.

At last one grey, blustery morning the noticeboard was full with postings. The marching, saluting and PT were over, and we were about to be distributed into the real war. Eager faces scanned the board and there was an electricity in the wind, almost tangible, as the lads broke off to join mates who had been posted to the same destination. I found myself alone, searching the noticeboard for my name. It wasn’t there. Carefully I went through all the lists, but I was definitely absent. It could only have been a clerical error and I wasn’t unduly worried—after all, I was a much tougher hombre now, an ‘old sweat’. But in fact these false premises didn’t last. The next morning reality dawned when I saw a convoy of three-ton lorries and the whole intake, loaded with packs and kitbags, hopped on board to be transported to the railway station. My Jack the Lad attitude disappeared in a wave of abject panic. By midday the camp was deserted. I’d been abandoned, and was marooned in a ghost collection of empty Nissen huts. There was no babble of voices as the lads left the mess hall to douse their mess tins in a drum of greasy lukewarm water, or the odd burst of laughter; now all was as silent as the inside of a pyramid stranded on a dreary, windswept stretch of a forgotten part of Herefordshire. The officers, NCOs, cooks, etc.—the permanent staff—were still here, and I wandered about in an advanced state of shock, hoping to be noticed, but for all the attention paid to me I might just as well have climbed a tree and joined the rooks. I sat miserably on my bunk in the empty Nissen hut, shivering in my greatcoat with one of my blankets round my shoulders, as the stove was black and cold. I was sinking into the deepest depression I could remember. When I’d descended to the lowest point of despair, an idea hit me, so obvious that it surprised me that I hadn’t thought of it before—I could have saved myself a whole lot of anguish.

Full of old madam, I strode in to the administration offices and demanded to see the CO. The corporal I addressed was startled out of his wits. This was quite out of order: no erk had ever marched in before and demanded to see the Lord God Almighty. Then his whole demeanour changed from bafflement to one of under-standing.

‘Are you 1522813 Sykes?’ he said, looking at a form before him.

I said, ‘Yes,’ and the mystery was solved. He handed me a travel warrant for me to go home for seven days’ leave. Transport had been arranged to take me to the station. When I asked why I hadn’t gone with the others, he told me that they’d all passed out with the rank of AC2 whereas I had been promoted to AC1. Wonderful! My next step up would be leading aircraftsman, and then corporal—my fantasies rattled on, and I was up to the rank of warrant officer, when the corporal rudely interrupted by handing me my travel warrant and instructing me to be at the transport section at fourteen hundred hours.

The mess for the ‘other ranks’ was closed as they’d all left, and as I was the only ‘other rank’ I ate in the sergeants’ mess with the permanent staff. It made a pleasant change to eat Maconochie’s stew off a plate rather than from a tin. I sat next to the sergeant who had been in charge of our intake, and as we munched he told me that he was a regular and had served overseas. He painted such graphic visions of desert, date palms, camel trains, sun and generally what a wonderful life he’d enjoyed in the RAF until Hitler came along. Again my life’s ambition veered sharply in another direction: I would sign on as a regular in the RAF and wallow in the fleshpots of the world. I told him that I was being posted to an airfield in Swaffham, Norfolk, and he looked at me with a puzzled frown on his face.

‘An airfield in Swaffham?’ he repeated, and I showed him my travel warrant.

‘Stay where you are,’ he said. ‘I’ll make some enquiries.’

And he went over to the next table and jabbered earnestly to another sergeant. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there was a lot of head shaking and pointing at me. Then the sergeant stood up, and at the same time carried on with another sergeant. I don’t think my sergeant was making much headway, but when the performance began again, this time between him and one of the cooks, I decided that enough was enough and the train wouldn’t wait, so I legged it to make my own enquiries.

After leaving Madeley with a light heart I went home for seven days’ leave. When I arrived, the house seemed deserted. There was only Dad and Mother—John was now in the navy and Vernon, I believe, had been posted to Ireland; ergo on my seven days’ leave I was the only sibling at home and I spent as little time as possible in residence. I strutted all over Oldham and Royton, buttons brassed, boots as shiny as a Nubian’s bald head; I called in on everybody I knew and quite a few I didn’t; I practically slept in my uniform, applying wet soap to the crease line inside my trousers, which I then carefully placed under my mattress so as to effect a razor-sharp crease for the next day’s exhibition.

The seven days’ heady admiration, as I like to think they were, soon came to an end and I boarded a train for Swaffham. When I arrived at my destination, I was briefed by the transport officer, and I discovered that seventeen other RAF wireless operators had arrived, and as they were all AC2s and I was an AC1, I was put in charge. When I asked the officer about the airfield, he replied that there wasn’t one for miles, and he looked again at my travel vouchers. ‘Yes, you’re in the right place,’ he said, ‘but this is an army base,’ so once again it seemed that my posting to an airfield had been put on hold.

As my duties entailed mainly marching them here and there, there was very little difference from when I was a class leader at Madley, except that this time I had the rank. It was a posting I didn’t understand: surely the army had its own wireless operators? I wasn’t an expert in army procedure, but I felt sure that they must have advanced from the heliograph and semaphore. I can’t remember seeing any of my air force buddies from the course at Madley, and apparently no one recognised me, but as I was one grade above them they were probably under the misapprehension that I was an ‘old sweat’, and after my stint as class leader at Madley I was well versed in marching them from A to B with all the aplomb of a regular flight sergeant.

On our first day I was ordered to march our contingent to the parade ground to await the regimental sergeant major’s inspection. We stood in line in desultory fashion until I saw him approach. He wasn’t marching; he was walking casually as if he was leaving the senior NCOs’ mess, but I was taking no chances. I brought the lads up to attention and to my surprise they did it. The sergeant major instructed them to ‘stand easy’ and then he made his way along the line, asking the odd question and, judging by his smile, receiving some very odd answers. Finally he came to me.

After looking me up and down, he asked, ‘What’s the difference between an AC1 and an AC2?’

I was flummoxed. He might just as well have asked me what was Vera Lynn’s address. So I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, ‘Sixpence a day, sir,’ which I thought quite reasonable under the circumstances.

‘Is that the way you look upon your war effort?’ he asked.

‘The only way, sir,’ I replied.

He looked at me for a time and then almost to himself he muttered, ‘It’s going to be a long war.’

Well into the evening I wrestled with my answer. What was the difference between an AC1 and an AC2?

Each day I marched my seventeen-man contingent to a small place allocated as a classroom for us. Then at mealtimes I marched them to the mess hall. Afterwards I marched them back to our classroom. On the whole they marched pretty well in step, except for one youth, about six feet four. This tall pile of loose bones, with black-rimmed glasses, didn’t actually march; he ambled, and that made me feel slightly uneasy. He was always reading some book or other on the march, and when I stared pointedly at him he’d raise his eyes from the book and give me a dazzling smile. What could I do? I had no real authority and in any case he was thoughtful enough always to march in the rear on his own so that the rest of the squad couldn’t see him. That infectious smile hasn’t changed to this day and we have remained friends. His name is Denis Norden.

Why we were attached to the Second Army was a mystery to all of us and I suspect also to the War Office. I assumed that the First Army were the desert rats in the North African campaign. Apart from these two armies there was the Fourteenth Army, known as the Chindits, fighting a hazardous war in the dark, steaming jungles of Burma, but that leaves eleven armies unaccounted for, and even if you include the Salvation Army there are still ten others in action. As far as the Second Army was concerned, we were being assembled for an assault on the coast of Europe known as the Second Front, and if we were being prepared for the Second Front, what was the First? Questions, questions, questions. What I found most difficult to digest, was how would our attachment of eighteen RAF wireless operators increase our chances of winning the war? But what did we know? We were a very small cog in a massive, unwieldy contraption called ‘Hostilities’.

We were with the Second Army but not of it. They held their parades and we were not included; their every move was governed by King’s rules and regulations, ours by whatever sprung to mind. The RAF pay structure was different from theirs: had I not been an honest idiot I could have put myself down for ten pounds a week—or perhaps not, but I doubt if the army CO was getting that sort of money.

Our schoolroom possessed a blackboard all along one wall. Again questions arose: why were we in a schoolroom and what was there to learn? We were all under the impression that we were fully trained. Another stumbling block was where we were to sit. There were three rows of desks, but they were for infants. It would be impossible for Denis Norden even to contemplate sitting there—we would never get him out. In the event he perched on the desk top, and most of the others followed his example. When they were all finally settled, fags lit up, one of them polishing his boots, and Denis of course engrossed in the pages of his latest book, the others eyed me with a kind of expectancy and I looked back at them, hoping for suggestions. It was then that I noticed a stick of white chalk in the gully beneath the blackboard and, without further thought, as if someone was pulling the strings, I sketched the innards of a wireless set, roughly remembered from a textbook we had had during our course at Madley. The diagram remained clear in my mind but what it represented I had not the faintest idea. It didn’t really matter: it was all a subterfuge. If we were visited by the army CO or his adjutant, it would appear that I was instructing the class in the intricacies of a wireless set—please God they were as ignorant as I was. I explained the plot to the class. One of them would be a lookout to warn of any approaching brass hats and the rest could do as they pleased. It was unanimously accepted and immediately someone started shuffling a pack of cards, and even Denis lowered his book; but there was one exception—there’s always one…In this case it was a little genius called Shackmaster. He was only about five feet four but intellectually he couldn’t have been much behind Einstein. If, for instance, you were talking about the Suez Canal and you happened to mention it was almost forty miles long there would be a snort and Shackmaster would quietly exclaim, ‘Exactly one hundred miles long. It was built by Lessops,’ and before you knew he would be vouchsafing the height of the Sphinx. This we tolerated, but on subsequent days we were to be well in his debt.

Each day we marched from the mess hall to the schoolroom in order to relax and enjoy ourselves. My scheme for a holiday home was cruising along when a sudden cry from the lookout warned us that the CO and his adjutant were approaching. There was a flurry of frenzied activity and when the two officers entered the room the class was facing the blackboard in rapt attention. On seeing them I sprang to attention but the CO ordered me to carry on and I did. Tapping the blackboard with my knuckle, I said, ‘Shackmaster, should this be a triode or a double diode triode?’ Shackmaster was magnificent. He rattled off such verbal babble of technical mumbo-jumbo that Marconi must have wondered where he’d gone wrong, but when Shackmaster started on about electrical impulses bouncing off the stratosphere and megahertz, holding up my hand I stopped him, as, baffled and bewildered, the two officers had left. The cards were being dealt again, Denis opened his book at the marker and I rubbed the board clean and invited Shackmaster to chalk a different diagram on the board in case the two officers came back. Oh yes, you’ve got to be several jumps ahead to be a skiver!

I was still punch drunk at Shackmaster’s grasp of the mysteries of a wireless set. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, streets ahead of anyone I’d ever met, but he was not perfect. Oh no, he was unable to see the funny side of anything, even when he looked in the mirror. Comedy to him was a frivolous waste of energy which left him open to ridicule. For instance, somebody might say, ‘I saw a Blenheim yesterday with one of its four engines blazing.’ You didn’t have to address this to Shack, only make sure he heard it, and as usual his snort would be bang on cue and he would reply, ‘It couldn’t have been a Blenheim. A Blenheim only has two engines.’ This would be greeted by cries of derision and send Shackmaster scrabbling in his pack for his book to prove his point; the trap was set and poor Shack was sniffing the cheese. Somebody else would pipe up, ‘I saw it too. Shack’s right—it wasn’t a Blenheim, it was a single-engined Halifax.’ By now Shackmaster would be almost apoplectic with rage. How could we describe a Halifax bomber as single-engined? On reflection I take no pride in how we baited the poor lad, but I think I learned a very important lesson in life. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are academically, top-class master of this and that: all these achievements must be sprinkled with humour or else your superior knowledge is worthless. I didn’t tease Shack after that; you don’t take a blind man to visit the Tate Gallery.

The schoolroom was situated on the edge of a largish forest and as the days were getting warmer I applied and got permission to carry on our refresher course outdoors. The next day we carried a large table deep into the wood, followed by benches to sit on around it and presumably to discuss wireless problems. The four people not at the table were the lookouts and we all carried on from where we left off in the schoolroom, except most of us were stripped to the waist in order to get ourselves a healthy tan.

But too much of a good thing is more than enough or, to put it another way, we were all getting a bit cheesed off with our daily shirk. Lying out in a sun-dappled wood, writing home, reading, playing poker and throwing darts at a board tacked on to a tree may be all very well for an elderly coachload on a mystery tour, but as far as we were concerned there was a war on and again, why were we here? It was painfully obvious that the army had no idea why we had been tacked on to their ration strength; they’d obviously had no instructions from above and frankly I’m sure we were becoming a source of embarrassment. We were billeted with the soldiers, and in the evenings we had drinks with them in the local, but as far as the war was concerned we were strangers.

It was then that an idea came to me. It was daring and risky, but at least it would be positive. I went to see the army commanding officer. I was shown into his office immediately and straightaway I came to the point by asking him what exactly we were supposed to be doing attached to the Second Army. He threw up his hands and said, ‘I’m as much in the dark as you are,’ which came as no surprise, so I fired my first salvo by suggesting that we should be sent on leave.

He pondered this for a minute or two and I took the opportunity to leap in with a reason for requesting leave. I told him that we hadn’t been on leave for over six months. He was visibly taken aback by this and I wondered if I’d gone too far, because prior to our posting to Swaffham a few weeks ago I’d enjoyed seven days at home and I presumed that so had the rest of my lads. But I was worrying for nothing. The CO brightened and agreed that we should have leave; in fact I think he was glad to see the back of us for a week. The only stipulation he made was that we couldn’t all be absent together and we would have to go two at a time.

Game, set and match. Five minutes later I was breaking the good news to the lads, asserting that as I’d gone out on a limb for this leave I would be one of the first pairing, and the other lucky erk would be drawn out of a hat. Folding up the names, I put them into my glengarry, and with all the mob following I took it into the next hut and asked one of the squaddies to pick out a name. Holding the cap at arm’s length above my head, the army lad reached up and fumbled around and came out with a bit of paper, which I handed over to the nearest of our mob. Unfolding it, he read, ‘Hoppy Holden’. Immediately there were cries of ‘Fix’, ‘Stitch-up’ and ‘It’s a fiddle’, etc., because it was no secret that Hoppy and I were close mates. Then one of the lads blurted out, ‘All the pieces of paper have the name Hoppy Holden written on them,’ but when I upturned the cap on the bed they could see that this was not the case—it was perfectly legitimate. However, there was a trick in it. Inside our forage caps was a ridge and having had a few words with the army wallah, backed up with a packet of fags, I’d made sure that all the other names were on one side of the ridge and Hoppy’s name was on the other, et voilà!

When I walked into our house they wanted to know if I’d deserted as it was only a few weeks ago that I was on seven days’ leave, and to be quite honest the days dragged by. I was keen to get back to the rough and tumble of Swaffham. Sadly, when I returned all future leave was cancelled. There was a flap on and we were all issued with travel warrants for a place called Gatton Park just outside Reigate. Into my third year in the air force and although there were plenty of aircraft whizzing about the sky I had yet to see a plane on the ground, and I’d never even seen a WAAF.

From the bustling, busy little market town of Swaffham to the quiet gentility of Gatton Park—what a difference, what a contrast! As the lorry deposited me inside the gates, I was deeply moved by the rolling splendour. Perhaps I was dead and this was the first staging post to heaven. Acres of grassland surrounding a wood, stately trees from the saplings of Elizabethan days—I was enraptured. There wasn’t a tree in sight in the part of Oldham near Featherstall Road. Had there been one we would have been up and down it like a squirrel with its tail on fire. The centrepiece of Gatton Park was an elegant Georgian mansion and, just a few strides away, a private chapel, the whole bordered by shiny manicured lawns, and I couldn’t get over how green the grass was, a totally upper-class strain of the greyish blades sprouting from cracks in the Mucky Broos like the tufts of hair in an old man’s ear. For the moment a wave of nostalgia swept through me, but it was only a moment. I just stood by my kitbag, pack still on my back, lost in wonder as I took in a section of bright sparkling water almost hidden by the house.

The home of the Colman’s mustard family, Gatton Park, was their fiefdom. This I learned later from one of the estate workers who lived in a row of much humbler dwellings a discreet distance from the big house. This local, who turned out to be one of the gardeners, added. ‘Isn’t it amazing that all this splendour was built by the little bit of mustard you leave on the edge of your plate?’ This I didn’t understand. I’d never left a bit of mustard on the edge of my plate—in fact mustard and I had yet to be introduced.

With a sigh of content I accepted the fact that once again I’d fallen on my feet. Granted it wasn’t the operational flying station I had been eagerly expecting, but then again there were more things in life besides the war. I was shaken out of my reverie when a voice yelled ‘That man there.’ I whirled round to see a sergeant beckoning to me. He was with a group of new intakes, milling around, kitbags at their feet, packs still not offloaded. To me they were all strangers and to each other, the only thing we had in common being the badge sewn on to the sleeve of our uniform of a fist clutching bolts of lightning denoting that we were all wireless operators.

After a meal, which would be better described as iron rations, suggesting that the cooks were new as well and didn’t yet know where everything was, the sergeant led us down to a row of tents by the side of one of the roads. Eight of us were allotted to each one. It was only when we crouched in a huddle underneath the ridge pole that we realised that eight of us in the tent was going to be a tight squeeze; three of us would have been one too many. Perhaps if we left our kitbags outside?

It sounded like a good idea until one miserable git said, ‘What if it rains?’

We looked at each other in dismay—there’s always one in a group.

Then someone else piped up with, ‘What if one of us is taken short in the night? Unless he’s by the tent flap he won’t be able to get out.’

Somebody else suggested getting a bucket, but he was overruled when somebody else said, ‘There isn’t room for a bucket.’

In the event it wasn’t as catastrophic as we’d made out. Half the tent would be on watch while the other half slept. Had they told us this at the outset it would have saved a lot of aggro.

The Colman family were not now in residence, as the whole area of Gatton Park had been commandeered by the RAF for the duration of the war. Already there were several air force bods established on the estate—mainly administration, cooks, general duty men. Naturally officers had commandeered the beautiful home of the Colmans and, of course, the officers’ mess, leaving the other ranks to occupy the cottages. Trust the base wallahs to get their feet under the table while the lads at the sharp end presumably had to make do with tents. We were under no illusions: when we were sent off to join the action they would remain at Gatton Park until they were evicted by the cessation of hostilities.

After a few days we were organised into watches, as we would be in wireless contact with satellite stations twenty-four hours a day. More menacing still, the transmissions would be made from the backs of Bedford trucks equipped as well, if not better, than a static wireless office. Another week passed and still we didn’t have a CO, but our luck couldn’t last for ever; nor did it.

I was on duty watch. I wasn’t actually at my set—in fact I wasn’t even in the truck. Stripped to the waist, I was sitting on the steps, face upturned to the warm sun. I wasn’t entirely out of touch with my satellite stations: inside, the volume on my set was full up. Headphones hanging within earshot, I dozed gently, when suddenly a shadow fell over me.

Sleepily, I lifted my hand to shade my eyes when a harsh voice said, ‘Where’s your shirt?’

‘It’s in the van,’ I replied, settling down again.

The voice, now affronted, spoke again, ‘Well, put it on at once, and say “sir” when you address an officer.’ My heart sank: it was the end of the holiday.

The following morning we were paraded to hear him make his commanding officer speech. He was only a flight lieutenant, a middle-aged man who had a perpetual look of surprise on his face. He wore an officer’s peaked cap but he’d taken the stiffener out of it so that he would look like Jack the Lad, but he addressed us all as if he was expecting a raspberry at the end of each sentence. From now on there would be discipline; any misdemeanour, no matter how minor, would be punished; he was going to lick us into shape, etc. Most of it was delivered at me and I knew from that moment that he was going to be a problem, the enemy within.

Throughout my life I have followed courses of action on the spur of the moment when two minutes of rational thought might have dragged me back from the abyss. This was the case when one Sunday morning in Gatton Park we were marched down to the chapel to attend the service. We halted opposite the arched door-way, and we were straggling forward, dragging off our headgear before we entered, when for some unknown reason I put my cap back on my head, broke ranks and stood at ease until the others were all inside and I was alone. I was motivated by a barrack-room lawyer memory that taking part in a church service was not obligatory, and if on religious grounds you objected to entering a church you would be excused. Why on earth did these idiotic ideas catapult me into situations beyond my control? But the die was cast.

One of the real sergeants sauntered over to me when all the rest were inside sorting out their hymnbooks. ‘What’s up with you?’ he said in a world-weary voice as if I wasn’t the only one that morning to come out with some crackpot notion.

‘I’m not going into church, sergeant,’ I replied with the assurance that I had a good case.

‘Aren’t you C. of E.?’ he snapped at me.

Good grief, that was a critical flaw in my stance. Why had I requested Church of England to be stamped on my identity disc? There were lots of other religions I could have claimed: Muslim, Trappist monk, Buddhist. My brain raced as if I was an inept politician trying desperately not to answer a simple question, but before I could blurt out an adequate response he’d marched towards the door and entered the chapel, whipping off his glengarry just in time.

I realised I’d won the exchange. All I had to do now was to stand at ease and enjoy the warm summer breeze. I was looking the other way, so I didn’t notice the approach of the senior officer until he spoke.

‘What’s the problem, lad?’ he said in a quiet, fatherly voice.

I sprang to attention and spluttered the first thing that came to mind. ‘I don’t believe in it, sir, not with the war and people being killed.’ Actually I’m sure these words bear not the slightest relation to what I actually said—it poured out in fluent gabble.

He looked at me uncertainly, and then reasonably he said, ‘Why not give it one more try?’ and as he said it he gently propelled me into the chapel.

It was embarrassing to say the least. All heads were turned towards the entrance as we came in. Then the senior officer, his arm still round my shoulder in case I made a break for it, led me to a place next to him on the front pew—‘Officers only’.

As we sat, the padre came over to where I was sitting, and, laying his hands on the ledge in front of me, he began a lecture on why it was imperative that everyone should be Christian. After a few minutes he took his eyes from me and to the chapel in general he said, ‘Let us pray for all our wayward lambs.’ There was a shuffling as the congregation knelt and I did the same, blushing like an eastern sunset as my thoughts sped off at a right angle, as I noticed that, being in the officer’s pew, I had a hassock to kneel on and I am sure the erks were on bare boards, ha, ha.

Perhaps that lunatic action of mine was responsible—but I shall never know. If my memory serves me right, I can’t recall any more church services at Gatton Park.

One night I was on the midnight-to-eight watch, waiting for the welcome sound of the lorry bringing our relief from the camp. After the formalities of handing over were complete, we’d board the lorry, which would then take us back to camp for breakfast and, best of all, a few hours of blissful oblivion in our blankets. The night watch had been particularly draining, but the sun was strong and the birds were twittering ‘Good mornings’. What a pity to waste such a glorious summer asleep! On impulse I waved the lads off—there’d be plenty of time to sleep when we’re dead—and I started the long walk downhill to the town. Reigate was still unexplored, as far as I was concerned, but at least I knew where the WVS was (the Women’s Voluntary Service), a canteen run by bright-eyed, tweedy women with perpetual smiles who dished out tea and buns, rock cakes, sweets, and cigarettes to anyone in uniform who happened to drop by. These surrogate mothers giving up their free time for their highly valued war effort were a different world from the exhausted, shawled women of the Lancashire cotton towns. I banished the thought. They probably had a WVS in Oldham too, but somehow I doubted it.

Contentedly I munched on a bun—it was a good idea of mine —and sipped my tea. It tasted much better drunk from pottery. Also it was a well-known fact that the tea we drank at the camp was liberally dosed with bromide in order to dampen our appreciation of the opposite sex. The things we believed…Sighing with content, I continued to munch. Who needs sleep? I was feeling warm and comfortable and in a strange way the incessant babble of conversation was receding, as if someone was turning down the volume. The next thing I knew was that I was jerked out of a state of well-being by a crashing snore, and it was only when I noticed other servicemen staring at me that I realised that the snore had been mine, ruefully answering my cocky assertion, ‘Who needs sleep?’

I couldn’t stay in the WVS any longer. I put down my half-eaten bun and hurried into the fresh air. It was invigorating and once again I was wide awake and Reigate was my oyster. I took in my surroundings. Reigate itself was a flurry of activity during the day, with masses of servicemen—RAF, army, Poles, ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service), a veritable league of nations. The British drove sedate old three-ton Bedfords, which pulled up at traffic lights with an apologetic wince of brakes; and now there were Chevrolets pulling up at the lights, doing at least forty miles an hour, stopping dead when they pressed the foot pedal with a triumphant chooooo of the airbrakes, shattering all the gentility of this lovely old town—the Canadian Army had arrived, careering everywhere, giving the impression that there was no speed limit in Toronto and beyond. But the envy of all the young bloods were the Canadian despatch riders. Even these weren’t just men on motorbikes: they rode Harley Davidsons, the nearest thing to a horse on wheels.

The realisation hit me that I was still only twenty yards or so from the WVS and I’d been standing on one spot for the last twenty minutes, gawping like a hayseed from the mountain country. Then a motor horn peeped and a Bedford pulled up by the kerb. I hadn’t even seen it arrive and had no idea why he was tooting. Could I have been asleep on my feet? He called out ‘Eric.’ Oh, blessed chariot! I dozed through the third gear of Reigate Hill and when we arrived back at camp I took off my boots, and that’s all I could manage before sleep overtook me.

All the wireless operators were relieved of duties, two at a time, in order to take driving lessons. The cars were ordinary family saloons and the instructors all civilians, and for the next few weeks we shuddered and stuttered, veering erratically and at times bumping on to the pavement. Fortunately we were taught the rudiments of driving on the quieter roads surrounding Reigate. It was hairy, but I was quite pleased with myself, considering I’d only sat in the front of a vehicle once before. I was only ten at the time and that was when the lunatic who drove the bread van offered me a lift. He was obviously a racing fanatic, because he had me clutching on to my seat as he made his way up Oldham Road, crouching over the wheel, his foot flat on the accelerator, double declutching, making louder engine noises with his mouth than the motor itself; then, with spittle swinging from his lips, he stamped on the brake so suddenly that I slid down under the dashboard. ‘Don’t go away,’ he said as he plunged through the shop door with an armful of loaves, but I’d had enough and when he emerged I’d gone. I almost perspire now at the thought of that crazy half mile. On reflection we couldn’t have been doing more than thirty miles an hour, but that was unsafe for a bread van.

Anyway, when we were considered proficient enough as drivers to be tested, we were trucked off to Croydon—busier than Reigate—to be examined by a senior civilian instructor. I passed my test, but I think only just, because as I stepped out of the car he said, ‘As a driver you’d make a good commando.’ I never discovered whether this was praise or sarcasm.

A very interesting interlude, but that was only the first course; the main dish was driving a three-ton Bedford. We were chucked in at the deep end, at the wheel, in convoy and, if that wasn’t hazardous enough, at night. It wasn’t too bad once I could change gears without having to fiddle for the lever. The tricky part was keeping a distance of thirty yards between me and the tail light of the lorry in front. A lapse of concentration could be at the least embarrassing. The hooded headlights didn’t make matters easier; a half-inch strip of illumination doesn’t give a driver confidence. When I learned the reason for this crash course (unfortunate choice of words), that if, when we were in action, anything happened to the driver we would be able to take over, enabling the war to continue, this led to much conjecture at our camp at Gatton Park. We were now sure in our minds that we were a new innovation in the RAF, the first of its kind: an MSU or mobile signals unit. At least we knew now that we’d be mobile, but where would we be going?