How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On (12 page)

A. Jones, Huntingdon

I was a lance corporal in the Royal Engineers. After lengthy overseas service, I arrived back with my base in Yorkshire. The CO there informed me that, for the next few months,
before my discharge, I was to be transferred to another unit. I was then told to report to the station sergeant for further instructions.

‘Pay attention and listen carefully!’ instructed the NCO as he precisely outlined my journey to Victoria Station, Manchester, and then on to my new unit a few miles away. The
sergeant droned on and emphasized how important it was to follow his detailed information.

‘Understand everything?’ he finally demanded. And, although I was somewhat in a whirl, I managed to meekly agree. As I stood to attention before being dismissed, I was throbbing with
emotion and would dearly have loved to embrace my new-found hero – this superb, sublime sergeant.

After all, my new unit was only round the corner from my own home!

Thomas W. Makin, Blackley, Manchester

Before going on my course, I went on three days’ leave. My wife examined my uniform and didn’t like the way my eagles were sewn on my greatcoat. So she unpicked the
stitching and re-sewed them. After my leave I reported to RAF Uxbridge and, the following Friday, was the CO’s parade and inspection. Most of the other blokes were picked up for their
haircuts but, just as I was congratulating myself, the parade officer’s voice bellowed in my earhole: ‘Who lowered your eagles?’

I froze on the spot but managed to reply: ‘My wife, sir. Are they wrong?’

‘They’re wrong all right! They’re the bloody wrong way round!’

A. Jones, Huntingdon

At Warminster in 1941, there was a Sergeant Thatcher who would keep his squad drilling on the parade ground as he stood in the sergeants’ mess having a pint and bawling
his orders through the open window.

One day, though, out on Salisbury Plain, we were undergoing driving training in a personnel carrier. When you were driving downhill, you had reverse steering. In other words, when you pulled the
right stick you turned left. We had an instructor who chewed tobacco. We were sailing merrily along, downhill, doing a fair speed. The instructor shouted that there was a steep drop ahead and we
had to turn quickly. Too late! We shot off into space, then landed with an almighty bump! The instructor swallowed his baccy, went blue in the face and began to choke. We saved him, although he
didn’t seem too pleased.

Roy Barker, Thornton-Cleveleys

A few months after infantry training at Brancepeth Castle, we joined our Durham Light Infantry battalions and departed for Scotland, where we took part in a large-scale
exercise. Sometimes in these types of operations, live ammunition was used and the powers that be had to allow for errors and accidents taking place. Officers acting as umpires, wearing white
armbands and dashing all over the place, would come up and say: ‘You’ve been wounded. He’s been killed. They’ve been taken prisoner by the enemy.’

If you were ‘wounded’ you would have a label tied on you with details of the wounds. If you were a so-called ‘morphine case’, or had a wound that forbade any drinking,
then sometimes you would lie there for days, depending on how long the exercise was supposed to take. The idea was to be as realistic as possible. During the exercise, we had to make a five-mile
march followed by an attack. At the end of the attack an umpire told us that our ration truck had been captured and, as the make-believe should be as real as possible, we should wait fourteen hours
for our food. When the umpire finally arrived with our rations, we were told that our platoon would soon be reported ‘missing or wiped out’. Well, none of us wanted to be
‘missing’, so we duly walked away in various directions to the nearest town or village. We were supposed to return to camp within a reasonable time of the end of the exercise. Some of
the lads certainly made the most of being ‘missing’, visiting cinemas and so on. A few were taken into motherly homes. A very small number simply disappeared for good.

W. D. Donkin, Sunderland

About halfway through the war, I was on loan to another unit as a driver with a Morris truck and Bofors gun in a town, somewhere in the south-west of England. During the middle
of one bitterly cold January night we were in convoy. I had a crew of eight in the back of my truck and by my side was the sergeant in charge. He had replaced an officer who had been taken ill. The
exercise was called Spartan, which was a good name as there was about a foot of snow on the ground. Although it was against regulations, we had all removed our boots, but were travelling in
silence, as per our orders. We stopped while the other officers checked our location when all of a sudden, the sergeant yelled, looked down at his feet and in his cockney voice cried out:
‘Bloody hell, rigor mortis has set in!’

Leslie C. Skinner, Polegate, Sussex

I served from start to finish of the war. A cockney sergeant had a squad drilling and he had one awkward recruit that he could make nothing of.

The sergeant decided to get some background information and asked about the recruit’s family.

‘My father was a baron,’ said the recruit.

The sergeant replied: ‘That’s what your mother should have been!’

Mr S. E. Smith, Essex

At Stob’s Camp, near Hawick in Scotland, in 1942, we often went out on night manoeuvres. Imagine the clatter as we roared through Hawick. A local copper complained that
they made him wear rubber soles, yet allowed us to awaken the dead. The units ran a ‘passion wagon’ [transport to a local dance] to town from the camp. One night an errant trooper was
late for the returning truck. He chased after it down the street. All his mates were leaning over the tailboard laughing at him. With their weight, the tailboard broke and they all fell out. The
athletic trooper leapt over them and into the truck. He rode, they walked, so he had the last laugh.

Roy Barker, Thornton-Cleveleys