大象传媒

We had received our 'stinky pooh' strap and rubber gas masks about two weeks before the first sirens sounded. Hideous looking objects whether your face was in it or not - it came complete with a stout cardboard box and carrying string. It was compulsory to lug it about at all times, and following school tuition we were expected to remain completely familiar with it: our lives might depend on it, and caught walking without having the 'pest' strung from your neck or shoulder would bring smart rebuke.

With the threat of a gas attack very dominant even before war began I think it's true to say that initially we did have a certain affection for it, for even children can understand that WAR was a nasty business: and on cinema screens we'd all seen war ravaged men, blinded by gas, staggering in long lines from the Great War trenches. Yes - it deserved my respect; for awhile, anyway, for the 'phoney' months meant carting it around here and there and everywhere for a WAR that wasn't. A box pet with neither bark nor tail. But we live and learn as they say and, mask removed, the silent mate could blindly accommodate your belly scrumpings and goody nickings.

On leaving school in 1941 my boxed pest soon collected out of sight dust for no way was I going birding or plane spotting at Redhill encumbered with anything so useless.

Service personnel had a larger 'pack' device, and regardless of personal feelings, got stuck with it morning noon and night. Women soldiers however soon found niches within for fancy war paint, tum powder and spare pence for phoney poppy perfume. But woe betide the blue sailor without a mask or the pongo (soldier) caught soft shoe shuffling with a floozie without his. In the Forces law was law. And by the time I joined the army in 1945, having completly forgotten the 'box' by then, found my kit issue included the 'pack' mask for me to hate. And I did, for not only was it a bally awful companion, but while route marching hundreds of miles it was always slung in the chest position.

Of course we didn't only carry the thing, there was a practice wearing of it to master; the marching, then the running with it on. Now that I found really hard, for the mask couldn't supply sufficient air for my constant gaspings; and to rip it off before passing out would invite a 'charge' and evenings spud bashing (luckily I wasn't spotted!). Worse was to come though, for we had to test both the mask and our health in the gas chamber hut!!
This we knew would prove a tortuous experience of magnitude and the coming hour of the dreaded day was counted by the minutes.
With the masked squad walking round the 'gas' hut the specialist Sergeant then ignited a shallow tin of 'stuff' in the room's centre. With the 'stuff' ingredients giving off gas smoke we then removed masks for the practice inhalation. Instantly our lungs rebelled to the ghastly stink and the coughing and smarting tears began. Tear gas was right, and as the rivers began to flow, we had then to double round the room twice. Half blinded, and coughing our lungs as if to un-seat them from our bursting chests, we staggered those two circuits in such painful distress that it beggars belief. Then just when death was about to claim me the door was flung open and we tumbled out into the fresh life-giving air like demented maniacs.
With eyes burning and barely able to see, it took all of ten or fifteen minutes to recover from our agony of coughing, snorting, snotting and retching, and while some lay on the grass reaching their gasping hearts up, others propped themselves against hut or tree till their shaking bodies settled into such equilibrium that they could again resort to the soldiers regular language.
What the decent Germans hadn't resorted to, our master did for them.
I can honestly say that that distressing exercise was nearly the worst minutes of my life. Up until then it truly was, but at a later date I had to endure the business all over again! By now it was peacetime - but army training isn't necessarily influenced by any current war; you merely train for war.

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