大象传媒

Chapter 2.

June 1941 Troop Train.

At 1400 hours on Tuesday, 3rd. June, 1941, our Battalion,
The 12th Worcesters鈥� were 'standing easy' outside the railway station at Llanelli, in South Wales, awaiting the order to entrain. We were dressed in F.S.M.O. and carried our big packs in our right hands. Our kit bags rested on the ground. Our weapons hung by their slings from our shoulders.
The battalion had spent three very pleasant months in South Wales after moving there from Dudley, revelling in the lovely warm spring sunshine as we practised the art of war, with we signallers sweating and swearing as we toiled up hill and down dale trailing miles of cable behind us.
We flag-waggers were somewhat reluctant to leave, because we had been billeted in a large country house - Pembrey House - about midway between Llanelli and Kidwelly, and which overlooked Burry Port and Burry Inlet, where the American airwoman, Miss Amelia Erhart, landed in her seaplane "Friendship", in 1928, after becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. The order to move was given and the battalion shuffled slowly on to the platform a Company at a time and each platoon stood in columns of three opposite the coach allotted to it.
I lined UP with my fellow signallers opposite the coach which had "SIGNALS" scrawled in chalk on one of the windows and" Waited for the order to get aboard. Someone blew a piercing: blast on a. whistle, the carriage doors were flung open and we filed in.
Once inside the coach all orderliness vanished in the concerted rush for certain coveted seats. Our coach was of the dining car type, with tables at either side of a central aisle and a glass- partitioned door halfway along. I was fortunate enough to be at the head of the queue and managed to secure the single seat near this door and Bob Masters literally "bagged" the seat facing me by throwing his kit bag on to it from the door of the coach. Having secured my seat I lost no time in getting out of my equipment. My kit-bag went on to the floor behind my seat, my belt and ammunition pouches followed, then my steel helmet, gas cape and respirator. My haversack went on to the rack above my head, together with my big pack, and my rifle rested with its muzzle on one rack and its butt on the next.
Having made sure my stuff was secure I settled back in my seat and enjoyed the glorious mix-up in the middle of the aisle. Sid Luck was trying to shrug himself free of his belt and pouches but every time he shot out his arm to do so his fist came into contact with someone's face and he had to await a more favourable opportunity to avoid threatened reprisals and to preserve peace in the platoon. Charlie Clayton was on hands and knees trying to stow his kit bag under his seat when Tom Llewellyn stood on his rear end and used it as a stool to reach the rack. Charlie yelled something unintelligible from under the seat, and tried to get up, with the result that Tom was pitched, rifle, equipment and all, headlong into the aisle to add more confusion to the general disorder.
At the height of the commotion the guard blew his whistle, and with a sudden jolt, that caused some of those still standing to sit down suddenly, the train started. That jolt had a more calming effect on the struggling signallers than the bark of the R.S.M could have had. They attained vertical positions with remarkable alacrity, and the manner in which they got out of their equipment and stowed it away without obstructing each other had to be seen to be believed. A final brief scuffle for seats ensued, and then all was peaceful as they settled themselves comfortably to face the journey ahead of us. Only the steady murmur of their conversation and the occasional quiet laugh punctuated the peace of the coach.
But not for long. Without warning a lone, drawn-out wail assailed our ears as Vic. Hatton poured from his soul a most mournful rendering of 'The Lost Chord." It was awful. None of the platoon, with the possible exception of Horace Rhodes, could claim to have a good singing voice, but any one of them at his worst was preferable to Vic. at his best. And Vic. hadn't a best: His voice was flat and toneless, and he had no idea of timing or rhythm. He just opened his mouth and released a string of jarring unmelodious sound and was happy.
He was allowed to carry on for a minute or two, and then personal feelings ousted kindness and friendship. "Vic., go and lose that bloody chord somewhere else," Charlie pleaded. "Yes, and lose yourself with it," Sid advised.
"You aren't the only one who's 'weary and ill at ease','" said Les. Vic. ceased his mournful dirge and glanced slowly around the coach, his eyes blinking owlishly behind his spectacles. No one was allowed to escape his soulful gaze. "What's the matter?" he asked, in his slow, plaintive drawl. "Don't you like my singing?"
"No, Vic, we don't like your singing," Charlie admitted. "Why not? You like good music, don't you?"
"Yes. That's why we don't like your singing."
"Oh," Vic. murmured, thoughtfully, and from then on we were spared the agony of his good intentions.
By this time the train had gathered speed and we were settled comfortably for the journey to our unknown destination. Most of us were conscripts, plucked from our civilian jobs in the massive call-up of June 1940, immediately after the evacuation from Dunkirk, when an entire new army was urgently needed to meet the threat of a German invasion, and many who thought they were safely hidden behind their reserved occupations or spuriously-exaggerated job descriptions suddenly found they weren't.
In our six weeks' basic training at Norton Barracks, near Worcester, we had been drilled, marched, cussed at, yelled at "Heads up, chests out and pull your bellies in. Just look at you. You're like a bunch of pregnant tarts. Wear corsets if you have to, but God help any man I find wearing a brassiere." Good old Dinkie Shaw. We were a trial to him in the early days, when he was trying to lick us into shape, but he was a smashing platoon sergeant and would always help with advice when asked.
Little Sergeant Abbott, who had instructed us in the use of the rifle, had included words of advice in one of his lectures
" And when you go into action, and in this regiment you wi1l go into action" - at which point an unidentified voice in the squad was heard to murmur 'Oh, thank you very much, sergeant - "you will find yourselves up against a ruthless enemy who is out to get you, so if your rifle is rendered useless, or if you should find yourself without a weapon and a German is coming at you, remember the good old traditional British straight left will be bloody useless. So don't lose your life for the sake of a kick in the bollocks."
We had been inoculated, inspected, insulted, inculcated with the spirit of the regiment with a visit to the regimental museum, and generally chased about from Reveille to Lights Out.
We had moaned, groaned, cussed, and generally tolerated with ill grace the fact that it was all happening to us and not to others whom we thought should be in the army but weren't. "Some of these bloody civvies ought to have a go at this lot," was the general complaint when we had suffered army discipline almost a whole week. But we had reason to be thankful, because by the time our six weeks' training was completed and we were considered ready for the next stage of army life we had been transformed from ambling, easy-going civilians into smart, fit, fully-trained soldiers with a growing confidence in ourselves.
Then Corporal Latham had come round with pencil and paper and asked: "Any of you want to volunteer for the Specialist Company? You've got a choice...Carrier Platoon, if you fancy driving a Bren-gun carrier, Motor Transport Section, Signals Platoon, Mortar Platoon, and Tank-Hunting Platoon. But it's only fair to warn you --you haven't much chance with Transport. Nearly everybody wants to drive, so preference will be given to those who were employed as drivers in Civvy Street." He paused to let this piece of information sink in, and then explained the reason for it. "It costs a lot of money to train men to drive and the army can't see any sense in training new ones when it's got men who can already do it."
Despite this warning there were several who chose Motor Transport. I volunteered for Signals. I don't know why, because we had been given no time to think about it, but someone else in the room had said "Signals" and I liked the sound of it. I passed the aptitude test and was posted to "S" Company, leaving most of the pals I had made in "Q" Company and acquiring a set of new ones.
According to one of our Signals instructors, a timeserving soldier, our signal-training course in peacetime could last up to two years; but such is the need to speed everything up in wartime that we had it crammed into us in twelve weeks. Twelve weeks in which we had to master the Morse Code and attain a required speed in both transmitting and receiving; learn to lay and repair telephone lines and how to choose the best route to lay them, operate a switchboard, use a telephone, known 1n army terms as a Telephone, Field, D.MK.V and always referred to as a "Don Five"; become familiar with a similar instrument called a Fullerphone because it was invented by a Colonel Fuller and was supposed to be more secret than the Don Five; and to operate a No.18 radio set and become conversant with the procedure for using it.
The course ended on 11th November 1940, when we were tested on all the things we had been taught. We had to attain a pass standard or 95% in order to classify as regimental signallers and wear the crossed flags on our sleeves. We all passed, some getting 100% in all subjects, and earned the reputation of being the best signal squad ever to come out or the Depot.
The next day, 12th November, we were posted to our new units. Although Norton Barracks was the Regimental Depot of the Worcestershire Regiment, it was classed as an Infantry Training Centre during the war and there was no certainty or being posted to a battalion or the Worcesters when our training ended. One or two went to the 1st. Worcesters, others to other regiments that were below strength, but
most of us went to the 12th Battalion at Dudley.
After three months in Dudley, during which time we had become completely integrated into battalion lire, we had moved to Burry Port near Llanelli, in South Wales. Now, we were on our first overseas posting.
I relaxed in my seat and watched the ever-changing scenery. Drab, grey slag heaps rose menacingly above the mining villages as though threatening to topple over at any moment and crush them out of existence. The villages themselves, though situated in such dreary surroundings, bore the appearance or being neat and well-kept, though their attempts to be so were made by reason of their environment to seem more painful than gallant. They reminded me of my childhood days at Charlton, a mining village in a pleasant verdant valley in the Cleveland Hills, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, which was marred by the presence or large, ugly brown shale heaps, the waste product of Spa Wood, the local ironstone mine. One rambling slagheap in particular reminded me of a certain brown mass that had been slowly washed down the wooded slope on whose summit it stood during an extremely wet and stormy period in the late nineteen-twenties, when I was still at school. In its glacier-like slide down the slope it had covered up what we considered to be the prettiest part or the wood with its ugly, rough, undulating brown waves. I heard again the raucous voice of Big Bill Smith and the contrastingly milder tones of little Harry Binns, clearly audible even in the village almost a mile away as the crow flies, as they spragged the tubs of shale that came up from the pit end sent the contents sliding down the steep upper part of the shale heap like a cascading brown waterfall.
It was in that part of the wood that my school pals and I played Cowboys and Indians and built wigwams of ash saplings interlaced with bracken fronds. Many happy boyhood memories lay buried beneath that landslide and they all came flooding back to me as I looked out at a similar landscape. I saw myself dressed in an old blanket (more holey than godly) and three tatty hen feathers stuck in my hair. In those days my hair was cropped short, "with a bit of a fringe鈥�, and I had to stick the feathers in my fringe. How they ever managed to stay in place is a mystery. I had a homemade bow and some arrows.
The bow was a hazel stick about half an inch thick at one end tapering to a quarter of an inch at the other. The bowstring was made up of several short pieces of string knotted together and the arrows were of various kinds of almost straight sticks and would loop almost ten feet.
The train rumbled over a bridge, and three youngsters bathing in the sluggish brown waters of the river below paused in their aquatic pursuits to give us a cheer. The river reminded, me of a stream that flowed along the bottom of the wood, and especially of a sweeping curve I had helped to dam with rocks and turf and anything else that could be used to make a bathing dump. That stream was the first thing I ever dammed. I have damned many things since.
My thoughts carried me back just as surely as the train carried me forward, until I became aware that someone was talking to me. "Eh?" I asked, blankly
"Penny for 'em," Bob offered, with a grin.
"Tuppence wouldn't buy 鈥榚m, " I replied returning his grin.
"You were talking and laughing to yourself like a bloody idiot." "I know. I often do. But I'll have to try to give it up; I keep getting such damn-silly answers. Anyway, I was thinking.
"What with?"
"That鈥檚 got whiskers on. You should have said 'with what?
"Why?"
"Because that is the correct grammar. 'With' is a preposition, and a preposition is the wrong word to end a sentence with."
鈥淵ou鈥檝e just done it. "
"I know, but I was only trying to explain it to you. "
"Well, I was only trying to ask you something, wasn't I? Anyway, what is this, a troop train or an English class?"
I ignored the question, but threw my tobacco pouch on to the table between us and advised him to shut up and fill up.

To be continued

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