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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Reg Reid, and has been added to the site with the author's permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The Lighter Side of War

By
Don Alexander

CHAPTER 6: 133 Coy RA5C South Littleton, Evesham, Gloucestershire, February - April 1941

About three hundred men were billeted in tents, each holding ten men in this lovely fruit growing area of Old England. Though they were in a transport unit, they were issued with 303 rifles and there was a degree of bull in that these same rifles had to be immaculate, stood up round the tent pole at night with the barrels gleaming inside, using the pull-through, and covered.

There was some interest in the twenty-two-year-old newcomer, in that there was a suggestion that he was a troublemaker, having been transferred from High Wycombe `under a cloud'. Things certainly seemed to happen around the black-haired cheeky chuff from Sheffield.
Major Beswick, conducting the morning parade a few days after Reg's arrival, peered down each rifle barrel in turn, looking for a hint of dirt. As he looked down the last one, a fine looking glossy earwig crawled out of the barrel and on to his cheek. Whose rifle was it?.. Need you ask?

Rumours were rife about movement orders, and after a week or so Reg and the lads in his tent and in several other tents, got confirmation that they were being drafted to Burma in days rather than weeks. Consternation, anxiety. Getting `jabbed up' was bad enough - one lad fainted, another slipped out of the queue and avoided the ordeal. Reg wouldn't have minded if he was called Allen or Beckett, he'd have been near the front of the queue with nice new needles. When the medics reached `R' for Reid in the alphabet, the needles were rather blunted!

That night disturbing images flitted through the brain - weeks at sea, danger of U-boats, drowning. Working under lorries in the jungles of South East Asia. The words of Kipling where brown-skinned girls urged British soldiers to `Come ye back to Mandalay', came second to thoughts of fever and ferocious Japanese. Earwigs were bad enough, but nothing compared with poisonous snakes and insects.

Next day, after bad dreams of stormy seas and steaming jungle, he awoke hot, ill and sweating. The MO took one look at him and said, "Scarlet fever," and sent him to the Women's Isolation Hospital in Worcester! Reg had landed on his feet again - or rather on his back, on a table, precisely, with nowt on, surrounded by the matron and four nurses with barely perceptible smiles on their faces.

"Scarlet fever be buggered," said the matron. "It's measles."
Reg was in the solitary male ward of the Women's Isolation Hospital, sharing it with an officer and a young lad.
When he got a bit better and went for a bath, nurses stood near the window watching him. It was both embarrassing and flattering. Oh, those far off days before the advent of sexual harassment and hovering lawyers, when attention like that was most soldiers' dreams.

Late one night two of the nurses came in the ward to chat with him and the officer. The little lad was asleep. They heard the heavy steps of the matron approaching, and quickly shot under the beds. Shades of the later 'Carry On' films! `She who must be obeyed,' then chatted with the two men for about an hour in a friendly fashion. As she left she called out, "Right girls, you can come out now. You've learnt your lesson!"

One of the nurses was from a wealthy family. She got her daddy to leave two pushbikes between a wall and some bushes for Reg and the officer to cycle to Worcester. The men weren't allowed out of the hospital grounds, but they made a few rides down to the attractive city where they met the nurse and a friend of hers, who then took them to a restaurant. Kind-and-rich daddy paid. When he was fully recovered, Reg returned to his unit and found that he and the ten lads in his tent, plus men in surrounding tents, had escaped the Burma draft!

Thanks to him and his infectious disease, their tents were quarantined. Little wonder that they gave him three resounding cheers on his return. A Jewish lad, a bookmaker in Civvy Street, out of gratitude gave him a fiver - a big white banknote, and a huge amount of money in those days.

A large batch of men had gone on the draft forming part of a new company. The remainder of 133 Coy then moved from South Littleton to join new recruits plus some `old hands' at Broxmore House, Whiteparish, Salisbury in Wiltshire.

Pr-BR

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