大象传媒

I walked into Exeter in my filthy clothes and with others in a similar situation were given a hero's welcome with all food and drink free, but the great luxury of the day was lying in steaming hot water in a large bath in the public bath house.
The army was beginning to sort itself out and within a short time I found myself back at my Brigade HQ, still under the command of my old brigadier and located in an old manor house in the Gloucestershire village of Badgeworth, between Gloucester and Cheltenham. The Brigade had taken over the anti-defences of quite a large area and I found myself back on a motor cycle riding over the beautiful Cotswolds countryside taking dispatches to our units which were located as far away as Bristol and Bath. It was a job that suited me perfectly although cold in the winter. I was working alone and could vary my routes provided the despatches were delivered on time.
Life at Badgeworth was, up to this time, really quite pleasant. The unit was small and the surroundings agreeable. The old manor house had very pleasant gardens which were maintained by two old gardeners who had worked all their lives on the estate. The staff of the brigade was the same as in France, the senior non commissioned officer was a staff sergeant who was also the chief clerk and who, after a short time at Badgeworth, was promoted and transferred away.
Our replacement head clerk, another staff sergeant, had not been in the army long. He been an official in the finance department of a large city council and this experience qualified him for the job and he had been given the rank to go with it. A rank that had clearly gone to his head. He was a bully in an environment in which a bully could thrive. Although discipline was lax in the unit, because people generally just got on with their job, everybody was still aware that to disobey the command of a senior rank to you was a military offence subject to the severest punishment. Taking advantage of this our bully was making the lives of people miserable in a number of ways that were quite illegal, but nobody had the courage to challenge him.
The day came when the sergeant and I crossed swords. He gave me an order which for technical reasons I simply could not obey. He was a fool, he had not thought through the consequences of my obeying his order and he therefore put me on a charge. I was aware that the staff captain, who normally dealt with disciplinary matters, would, as he had done in the past to others for the sake of discipline, support the sergeant's authority and then rebuke him after I had taken the rap. Taking my courage in my hands, when I was marched in front of the Captain I elected to take the soldier's privilege of being tried by my commanding officer, who was the Brigadier. It was unheard of for a Brigadier to try a gunner but according to military discipline code my request could not be refused.
Later that morning I was told to report to the Brigadier without escort, an unusual state of affairs for a man on a serious charge, The Brigadier listened to my story, which also included an account of the staff sergeant's behaviour since he had joined the unit. I was told to get on with my duties while he considered the matter. Some hours later, in the company of military police, our sergeant was driven away in a car and I was back in front of the Brigadier who congratulated me on my action and cleared me entirely from my charge.
This incident proved to be a great lesson for me and one that I applied with considerable effect on a number of occasions in later life whenever I came across instances of injustice perpetrated against some of the less able of my fellow men or when I was personally faced with unreasonable situations created by faceless bureaucrats. The lesson I had learnt was that, if you have a genuine problem that cannot or will not be resolved by the lower echelons of an organisation then, no matter what obstructions are placed in your way, go to the top. My experience is that the problems will then be resolved quite quickly
Gloucester was no distance from South Wales where my girl friend, Minnie, had returned to take up war work in an ammunition factory. She lived with her family in the small town of Maesteg in the Rhondda valley, a close knit, coal mining community which I visited as often as I could. Minnie's father, like his father before him, was a coal miner as had been his son who was killed in the pit. The family lived in a typical miner's cottage, a small two bedroomed terraced house, built on the top of a levelled down slag heap. The down-stairs accommodation consisted of a living room come kitchen and a small scullery where the normal ablutions took place. Water was obtained from a tap outside the back door and the lavatory was at the end of the garden.
The kitchen was the hub of the household, frequently serving as the bathroom, the bath being of the galvanised type that normally hung on the back wall alongside the tap. Cooking was done on a coal-fired range on where there were always large vessels of water gently simmering away.
My visits to Maesteg were my only experience of living in the middle of a community where the majority of its members followed one trade, in this case coal mining, and it came as a surprise when I awoke on my first day to the sound of hob-nailed boots on the pavement accompanied by cheerful voices. This chorus rapidly grew in volume as most of the male occupants of the street joined in the flow and rapped on the doors and windows of any houses not showing a light. I was listening to the miners of the day shift making their way to work and rousing their still sleeping mates to be sure that they got to the pit on time.
When the miners returned home that night they were covered in coal dust and grime. The women had placed tubs of hot water outside their front doors and I watched as the men of the shift knelt down in the street to rid themselves of the grime of their work. a sight that I have never forgotten.
It was during one of my visits to Minnie's home that I had a sudden attack of asthma and found myself a patient in hospital in Cardiff where a military medical board certified me as unfit for any further combat duties but fit enough to be returned to my unit. This meant that I could not to participate in the battles of Western Desert or the D-Day landings
The Battle of Britain was now in full swing and more than once, while carrying out my despatch riding duties, I witnessed dog fights above my head or in the night listened to the droning of the bombers above or, watched, fascinated, as like moths the planes were caught in the glare of a searchlight. By this time the Royal Air Force was having success and shooting down more and more of the enemy. The score of gains and losses had taken over from the cricket scores and were a feature of the 大象传媒 news bulletins and were listened to avidly, particularly by our Brigadier who would regularly come down to our mess to listen to the score and the one o'clock news.
Gloucester itself was the location of a large anti-aircraft factory and was obviously a prime target for enemy bombers. For this reason the town was surrounded by some of the brigade's heavy guns, a troop of four being located on the top of the famous escarpment of Birdlip Hill, from where there is a commanding view of great distance. It was from this gunsite, our guns blazing around me, that I watched the glow of the fires and the flashes of bombs coming from Coventry on the night of its devastating attack.
We were now into 1941 and as my Brigade was starting to prepare for overseas service, from which I was now debarred, I was posted as a despatch rider to a new battery, a former territorial regiment which had originated in Scotland and was now stationed for training at Leeds. It was another one of those strange situations in which I found myself involved. About 99.95% of the regiment, including its officers, were Scots and were practically all from the same town, many of them being old mates, and they had worked in the same factories and mines. The whole battery was billeted in empty houses in the Roundhay district of Leeds but they took their meals in the administrative buildings and enclosed stands of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club where they also assembled for parades. There was, in days gone by, a famous music hall song "We are Fred Karno's Army", if there was such an army this must have been it!
The Battery, which did not yet have any guns, was really in a shambles and was under disciplinary training, including its officers. The training was carried out by an Artillery Staff Captain who really did put the regiment, particularly its officers, through the hoop. It was during this time that I learned to detest porridge with salt, I was told it was to make Scots grow strong, and to sing Scottish songs like a native but it was the only battery of artillery that I served in that had never fired a gun! .
The Battery had been provided with a number of vehicles for training purposes and also had, for reasons which only a military mind could explain, been issued with both arctic and tropical kit, whether this was to confuse the Scots or the enemy I never found out. A great deal of the battery's time was spent driving and riding in the vehicles in convoy around the Yorkshire countryside. My job, as one of the motorcycle outriders, was to marshal these convoys and to make sure they all went the same way!

entered by Petersfield Library

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.