大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Roger Marsh of the 鈥楢ction Desk 鈥� Sheffield鈥� 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 10a: Dunipace House, Bonnybridge, nr. Falkirk, Scotland.
March - September 1942

A convoy of Army vehicles over 100 strong is quite an impressive sight, but as he left Broxmore House Butch thought he saw tears as well as pride on the faces of the young wife and the elderly couple standing by one of the gatehouses waving them off. They had got up specially to watch the dawn departure.

The Manxman bike was no longer standing near them. Butch was being driven by co-driver Corporal Mulchinok and the Manxman was in the back of their lorry!

Corporal Mulchinok had fitted well into `A' platoon under Lieutenant Errington. In the final few weeks at Broxmore he had wanted to have an excuse to be off work, and get a 48-hour pass to allow him to spend some time with his wife at Newark. Butch had got him the excuse by disconnecting the speedometer, and was putting on the daily orders: `Corporal Mulchinok's lorry off the road'. The corporal was repaying the favour by transporting Butch's bike, securely strapped in the back of the lorry, now with its speedometer `repaired', humming along the Great North Road.

The people of Bonnybridge were the most generous Butch had ever met - even surpassing the Glaswegians at Maryhill. The hundred plus vehicles had barely rolled into a field when people emerged from surrounding houses with piles of sandwiches and mugs of tea. Tents were pitched but the site was cramped so lieutenant Errington `volunteered' to take `A' platoon, with its lorries and his pick-up, to nearby Dunipace House to join up with HQ platoon staff.

They'd done it again - nicely billeted in another big house, requisitioned by the Army.
They settled down into the working routine - fetching and carrying across the lowlands of Scotland from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth. Class 2 mechanic 17/6d (87 陆p) per week; Reid continued his working routine, ensuring lorries were roadworthy.

`A' platoon worked quite hard and played very hard. They were determined to enjoy life to the full and did daft things that spirited young men, and not-so young men, get up to now and again.

At Dunipace House the kitchens were in the basement and the men's dining rooms plus officers' mess, which was in a hall with a stage and bar, were on the ground floor. HQ working area and officers' living quarters were on the second floor and the lads and NCOs of `A' platoon were billeted in the attic.

Another bonus of Dunipace House was that the kitchens were supervised by an expert cook - a Scottish sergeant. `Rice' Cheesborough was left to work in the field kitchen at the camp housing the `B', `C' and workshops platoons' personnel and their vehicles.

The sergeant cook had a good sense of humour and got on well with `A' platoon - even after the disappearance of over seventy hot scones he had just made and put temporarily on a tray on a table by the back door of the house. `A' platoon was on various duties despatching and collecting goods, and as thirty or so lads filtered through this back door, each took a couple of scones - thinking two wouldn't be missed.

Butch was last to appear; he was detailed to check over Lt. Errington's pick-up and Major Dodds' Humber that morning, and he went through the back door barely pausing to scoop up the remaining four scones off the tray - two per hand.

As Brotherstone, munching a scone, drove his 3 tonner out of Dunipace, he roared out laughing at the sight of Butch, mouth full of scone, as he walked over to Errington's pick-up.

"Snap!" he shouted. "We've all pinched 'em. That tray was full ten minutes ago!鈥�

Driver Wheeler does them out of dinner
There was a pneumatic tube intercom system as well as a service lift between the basement kitchens and the ground floor dining rooms. Driver Wheeler, the daft Geordie, had a game with the equally daft sergeant cook.

Wheeler would blow down the tube for attention and the cook would pick up the blower and call out: "Yes Sir".

Wheeler: "Number one torpedo - fire!" The cook slammed an iron oven door shut.

Cook: "Fired sir."

Wheeler: "Number two torpedo -fire!!"

Another oven door was slammed to twice down below.

Cook: "Number two fired sir."

One day Wheeler, holding a mug of tea, called down the tube and an orderly officer picked it up in the kitchen. "Yes?" Wheeler took a gulp of tea and blew it down the tube thinking it was the cook answering. The tea splattered onto the officer's face, he yelled "You're on a charge, that man!" and ran upstairs to collar the culprit.

"Christ, I've torpedoed the orderly officer", Wheeler shouted as he ran out of the dining room, followed in close order by the rest of the lads there. They shot out of the back door hiding behind the rows of lorries, cursing Wheeler, because their food remained untouched on the tables and they daren't go back.

And as Brotherstone pointed out - it was good and proper edible food. If the cook had been `Rice' Cheesborough it wouldn't have been such a loss.
Roy `Brothers' then went to get a deep apple pie, sent to him by his wife Lucy's mother. He asked Butch to get his army knife and divide it into three for the two of them and Jack Powell.

Butch loved his army knife with its blade, tin opener, marlin spike, shackle with rope attached to his belt, bexite covering and Government arrow, Sheffield mark and 1940 stamped on the blade, but he loved the pie even more, cut it into three, one piece bigger than the others and he ate this very quickly.

"You're an idiot Brothers, if it were my pie I'd have said nowt and scoffed it all on the quiet."

The small service lift from the basement kitchens to the first floor dining rooms was used of course to send meals up and bring dirty dishes down. It was worked by pulling ropes.
One day shortly after the tube episode, Wheeler squeezed himself into this lift and told the lads to let him down in it to surprise the cook.

The lift stuck half way down between floors for an hour - one of the lads had tied a knot in the rope!

Revenge perhaps for his missed meal? We shall never know.

Falkirk - Butch and Cheesborough can't compete with the dancing Welshmen

The river Carron runs between Dunipace and Bonnybridge, then north of Falkirk into the Firth of Forth. It was, and probably still is, an iron working area and Carron Ironworks was famous in the 1800s, like the Walker's of Rotherham, for iron cannons. A broadside of cannon fire was known as a carronade (it has been said that the battle of Waterloo and the battle of Trafalgar were won in the iron foundries of Rotherham, whose cannon could fire at twice the rate of the French and Spanish bronze cannon. Eat your heart out Eton playing fields!).
This publicity for the iron industry is not part of the story - merely for your edification, though it does lead us to the town or city of Falkirk, where they made cast iron post boxes ...and where there was an ice rink.

Driver-mechs Brotherstone and Powell were the Welsh Wizards of the rink and drew admiration from the local girls. Butch was quite good too. Though he'd never ice skated before, he'd been a good roller skater as a teenager in the 1930s and this stood him in good stead on the ice.

Cheesborough of `Rice' fame was no longer `A' platoon's cook, but remained friends and went with them to the Ice Rink. He'd never skated before, but thought it looked easy, launched his right foot on the ice, but his left didn't follow and he ended up on his backside, with left leg up in the air and right leg folded under him. His three friends cracked out laughing and it was left to a tiny Scots lass, about seven years old, to skate up to him and ask if he needed any help!

The two Welshmen were good at dancing too - waltz, quick-step and even the tango, and being Churchmen or, more likely, chapelmen, this gave them an entree to socials where girls vied to get a dance with them. Butch and Cheesborough went too, just tagging along. They weren't church or chapel goers and couldn't dance. Girls would be interested in them, then drift away when they didn't get asked to dance.

Butch consoled himself that it was better not to get too involved with other girls, since he was still engaged, if tenuously, to `Girly' Ruth Hawes. They had even written a letter or two to each other professing the hope of seeing each other, if Butch got based near High Wycombe.
The Scots girls were so attractive though - Cheesborough said he could fall in love with their accents alone, and so they decided to have a few dancing lessons.

In fact they had just one. The tall and svelte forty year old instructress clasped Cheesborough to her, thigh to thigh, he got an immediate erection and stuck his backside out to stop it touching her; she pulled him to her ignoring it, and he failed utterly to do the correct steps. He wasn't amused at Butch and the other learners sitting watching with big grins on their faces.

Those two sweet dancing, sweet talking Celts, `Brothers' and Jack Powell, got friendly with a girl at the ice rink whose parents owned a grocery wholesale business. She invited all four lads to her parents' house in Falkirk for a nice meal. `Rice' Cheesborough offered to help in the kitchen which led Butch to encourage him: "Thee gerrin t'kitchen an' tha might learn summat" (Yorkshire dialect: "You get in the kitchen and you might learn something.").

Pr-BR

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