Royal Corps of Signals
Dud's
Army
Chapter
6
4
Training regiment
I took no more than two furloughs at home due to the lengthy train trip. But when I did I’d ask the conductor to let me off at Bathford Halt, a hundred yards from our house and three miles out of Bath. Sure enough the train would stop at this insignificant strip of platform and for definite I’d be the only one alighting. Suddenly deposited thus in the Somerset countryside, my uniform, hitherto a virtual passport to my journey, now felt very odd and out-of-sorts with the familiar woods and fields around me. Nor did it go with the green and wandering river and the Brunel arch over which my train had shortly departed and under which lay the road to our nice old Bath Stone house. In short order I’d be in the breakfast room - mum did bed-and-breakfast, down to my bracers and eating a slice of custard tart, winking at my little sister staring around the door. Then I’d be upstairs taking that uniform off - it was essentially a battledress, and putting it aside. I would not wear it to visit work like some blokes did, or around the town. I would not touch it again until it was time to go where it was normal to wear it.
Returning to camp I’d catch the Catterick train from Bristol. It was a troop train, stopping everywhere and not arriving at Catterick until after midnight. But at least there was no call to change trains, even at Darlington. The first time I travelled this way I travelled with Dennis Higgins, a pint-sized Bristolian dynamo and part of our 4 TR Signals group. His drawled observations were delivered with a lisped Somerset accent and coloured by a wry sense of humour. Dennis was an upbeat bloke and good company. He was an excellent soccer player, too.
As soon as we boarded the train he was all business, insisting we look for the right carriage, one with good blinds, he said. That found he slid the door shut and somehow arranged the door-window’s leather strap to prevent its opening, a flimsy arrangement to my eye. Anyone outside in the corridor attempting to enter could get nothing better than finger-tip purchase on the pocket door’s in-set handle. Locked in, we had the carriage to ourselves as long as we could keep the door shut. That would be my job, Dennis declared, as I had the legs for it.
With the blinds pulled down and all lights off no-one could see us. Dennis laid himself out on the one side and I on the other, neither of us able to span the entire seat length with our outstretched bodies although I was closer than my companion in that fitting. It was a mean way of securing such space for the exclusive use of just the two of us but that was the way Dennis and I rode the rails all the way to Catterick. I seem to remember we joked a lot along the way but it was not a ride without incident of a graver nature, like getting attacked and risking the possibility of getting one’s lights punched out.
Eventually it grew dark. We steamed unsteadily north, in and out of mighty stations and overlapping the platform ends of the lesser ones. Stop and start, start and stop. At Birmingham and Manchester the jammed door and blinkered windows were like red rags to the bullish Midlanders and serious assaults on our refuge would be mounted. Indignant remarks like “The bastards got it locked!!” and “ There’s only two of the f….ers! “ would filter in along with great oaths of promised violence as finger nails and occasionally the precious toes of polished boots were sacrificed at the stoppered entry. It became my job at such moments to brace my shoulders against the seat-back and ram my boots against the door frame, one at the window rim and the other against the bronze lock casing. Extended thus I was like a footballer frozen horizontally in a mid-scissors, backwards kick. For the door to open they would have to break my legs and spine, and I was so afeard of thereafter getting beaten to a pulp by a mob of outraged signallers I made out like I was Horatius Cocles on the bridge before Rome - I would not go down before the Thracian invaders. I suspect that at these moments I displayed something akin to courage, possibly bravery; it was hard to tell I was so bloody scared.
Eventually the muffled call for those jamming the corridor to move on would be yelled by others wanting to pass, crude directions as to where-to-go were variously exchanged and far-off doors slammed shut. There came a distant shout or two and at the ramrod-postured station master’s nod a guard’s whistle would scream its flourishing warning. Through enormous clouds of suet-pudding steam the engine huffed and skidded its way forward, easing us from the station and resuming our progress northward once more. Our train attaining a respectable cruising speed, the reassurance of substantial forward motion worked like a sedative on the restless mass of Royal Signals soldiers aboard at this late hour, settling us down to sleep with that characteristic railway clatter beating away on the butted tracks below. We were safe from attack for a while.
I loved trains. My Welsh grandfather had been an engine driver and My English grandfather a station master. On a journey such as the run from Bristol in the south-west to Catterick in the north-east, passing through so many stations and clattering over the miles of line and points I had cause to occasionally daydream about my grandfathers. I never knew them well so my dreams had full license.
As I withdrew from defending our entry against those without, that is to say, as I left the door’s jamming to the leather belt and thankfully stretched out for another nap, from the depths of his enveloping greatcoat Dennis would whisper across the aisle:
"Oo needs first class, eh Dud?"
Twice we made that journey together, with Dennis muttering droll encouragements from beneath his great coat and me on the stretch.
4 T.R. was a relief from 1 T.R. It was like moving away from home and striking out on one’s own. But at the outset, packed up and ready to go, standing in the road in full kit waiting for the lorry, along came word there was no lorry. So with worldly possessions tucked into the canvas kit bag perched aloft we marched the couple of miles to 4 T.R. It was warm work for us techies, more used to the classroom than to route marches. Along the way I tried a couple of verses of 'The Noble Duke of York' but it didn’t catch on; too many Scots in the party.
We climbed from the valley to the crest of a rounded hill, then continued on through the Catterick maze until finding at long last a barrack hut much like the one we had quit in 1 TR. Army huts, one might be led to suppose, were made to a single design in their millions - cheaply, possibly manufactured for less than ten shillings each, like the Sten gun. But this one differed in its internal design, being engagingly more open, with the beds ranged down each side and the lockers hugging the walls, hospital style. It was spotlessly clean. We regarded the highly polished floor with a professional eye.
There were only eight of us. To have achieved this degree of separation from the uncommon herd along with the knowledge we were a pilot group and that someone believed in us generated in us a feeling of victory, or at least a sense of being ahead at half-time. Collectively the mood was definitely upbeat. The only sour note for me was that our buddy, John Brown from Glasgow, had flunked one of the prerequisites and was left behind in 1 T.R.
We were to become Radio Relay Technicians - the alternative to the "Heavy" and "Light" tech. programmes that 1 TR offered. We had to transfer to 4 TR because that was where the training equipment was set up. That evening we happily picked off the pale blue insignias of 1 TR and sewed on the brown of our new regiment. Jack took the end bed - we had no worries from the "I want three volunteers: you, you and you," routine as there were to be no fatigues, no guard duties and no fire-drill shenanigans. We were prized students, we decided, with reputations riding on our success. Captain Macintyre was to be in charge along with a sergeant instructor. We were delivered a pep talk by the captain, expressing the importance of our enterprise and the corresponding need for diligence at our studies. One is wise to be wary of inspirational messages but Captain Macintyre seemed to be the real McCoy, so to speak. Keen or not I still wanted to succeed. The misery of my two horrific years at Whitchurch Grammar School still rankled within me.
One brilliant social set-up was visiting the 4 TR NAAFI canteen each morning on our half-hour break. As Fats Waller might describe it, the joint would be jumping. They had a state-of-the-art juke box and sold the Daily Telegraph, good for news, reviews and a daily crossword puzzle. The juke box played Elvis Presley at top volume, especially “Teddy Bear,” significantly different from English pop music which I despised. There were always girls in uniform there too, giggling all down one side of the big room, just like at the Ascension Church Hall on Saturday night where at seventeen years of age Terry and I had reluctantly learned to dance The Dashing White Sergeant. But this joint was jumping every day of the week. This NAAFI was brilliant.
We would burst en-masse into that seething, music-boxed eatery. Being warm from the wit of the march - we never went anywhere silently any more, and revved up from one’s almost neurotic anticipation of the time-compressed sliver of sensuous delights the visit always provided, we were primed for the party. This canteen really was a CLUB. I’d buy a mug of tea and a bun or a scone, - something with currants in it, nonchalantly check out the girls - never had the nerve to speak to any of them, check out yesterday's crossword, jig to the beat of America and otherwise try to behave as coolly normal as possible.
In all probability we were as identifiable a group as were the squad of Ghurkas presently stationed at Catterick. We were the Techies on a pilot project, a shade un-soldierly, unmistakeably fresh-faced new boys, once-a-week shavers, not men yet, apprentice boffins, England‘s last hope. Oh we fancied ourselves, I can tell you, and it was either in the classroom or at this Club Naafi where we dared consider ourselves special, as a group. It was good to be on a team again. 4 T.R offered the most excitement yet. What had been torn away and trampled on at Basic Training showed signs of growing back.
In the easy classroom atmosphere I flourished. I absorbed the material, I understood the theory. I started to get the hang of the business of learning. I was buoyant, I was blithe. I was finding ways to succeed and I made friends. Weekends I played football with Dennis or went hitchhiking with Jack or took my pseudo-civilian self to the Darlington dancehall where I could meet up with John Brown again. Toward each week’s end our sergeant instructor would toss questions at the class in rapid-fire order and could never shoot me down. Finally, after one tricky session of question-and-answer he announced in front of everyone that I was his choice for the next intake’s instructor. I was shattered. I was horrified. I figured I’d been conned into being keen and I was furious with myself. I felt betrayed.
The prospect of staying at Catterick, stripes, status and pay-rise notwithstanding, for the remainder of my army service compared to the chance of an overseas posting - rumour had it that Cyprus was in the cards, was not what I had in mind. Further, the prospect of becoming an instructor scared me; my estimate of qualification certainly did not match the sergeant‘s. And I wanted overseas. I had wanted it since before I’d been called up. It had become an obsession. I was blinkered to the prospect of it. It was a romantic fixation but the urgency of it was intense, fuelled no doubt by the stories of Jimmy Quinton and my reading of too many Jeffery Farnol novels collected by my mother.
I took no counsel. I formed a plan. As a counter-measure I prosecuted a passive resistance movement against the British Army. It had worked for Ghandi. In class I now answered all questions incorrectly. I failed written tests. As quickly as I had bloomed I withered. Overnight I became a dunce. I went from keen to thick; thicker than thick. I was reacting like a spoiled and wilful child and didn‘t care. Captain Macintyre hauled me in:
"Cox, you've to stop f...ing about. If you don't want to be an instructor you don't have to be."
"Don't want to be an instructor, Sir."
"Right, that's settled. So no more f...ing about."
"No Sir. Thank you Sir."
There are moments we all look back on, wondering moodily if one had done the right thing. This was and has remained such a moment. But it was the common sense of Captain Macintyre that saved the day. He was a man of thirty-odd years and I admired him without reservation. He kept his word and I kept mine, as after that I buckled down anew. But fate has an odd way of playing an unexpected card. Every man jack of us flunked the course. They gave us a four-day pass, most likely the time needed for the captain and his staff, or us, to figure out the next move. Jack and I took a train to Liverpool and a night steamer to Douglas. The crossing was rough so we slept on deck for the sake of the fresh air. We were to pay a visit to Jack’s married sister living on the Isle of Mann. There was time enough for Jack and me to each go home but the ides were all wrong, what with the flunk-out and all.
Jack’s family, traditionally Scottish, was religious, more so than my family. His sister and her husband were devout. Jack worried I would disgrace him before his family so he made a point of telling me I must not, under any circumstances, swear while at his sister‘s house. I told him he was not to bloody worry. He winced and refused to be drawn in to any joking. He was serious, he said. It was a fact that I could swear like a trooper even if I was a Signalman. This came about from working on the shop floor of a factory from the age of fifteen years three months. In the factory everyone swore - even a couple of religious nuts I had known there let rip occasionally. After a few years of it one forgot about it, although outside of the workplace one abstained; one got so used to the Jekyll and Hyde practice of it that that became second nature, too.
At dinner with his sister and brother-in-law, Jack and I, after a long grace, gratefully started in on our first home-cooked meal sitting up to table in a real house since the Lord knows when. His sister asked Jack how he liked the army. Jack, no doubt brooding on the flunked course and wondering maybe if he should mention it to his sister, replied that he liked the army fine but that there really was “too much damn bullshit.“
The atmosphere at table became so instantly electrostatically charged that God-particles were released to fizz about like fireflies. Jack’s heart must have jumped an inch but, fair play, he stayed calm and continued eating, eyes on his plate. I could not look at him but in coming to his rescue I did remark that by way of an example Jack and I had cut the grass of the 1 TR guard house front lawn, on our knees, during what should have been our four-hour break, each with a pair of scissors, and not that sharp, either. Sister and brother-in-law dutifully, and gratefully, expressed their amazement at this typically English preoccupation with gardening. As Jack was solicitously served an additional potato and more gravy the moment passed.
.