大象传媒

On my 18th birthday 1941 I volunteered for the Army and actually took the King's Shilling- I should have kept it!!!
I reported to Invicta Lines at Maidstone in March 1942 as a young soldier in the Queen's Royal Regt., living in a Nissan hut with 30 other young soldiers. It was an experience, they all seemed to come from Bethnal Green and Stepney and for the first time in my life I found out just how the other world lived. By sheer co-incidence, the chap in the next bed was six months older and had been ill with pneumonia, his name was Jack Whiteley. We kept together, I met his parents and he met mine on their visits to Maidstone always at the Star Hotel. We were both made L/cpls and sent to WOSB (War Office Selection Board) at Wrotham for three day selection climbing up and down and up again the escarpment, we were very young so we could cope, we then went to Pre-Octu. I think mainly to check whether we could use a knife and fork. When we returned in 1943, all the others were sent to join a regiment somewhere, don't know where, but Jack and I went to the Royal Military College, Mons Barracks Aldershot OCTU, (Sandhurst had been handed over to the armoured corps and the infantry kicked out). Tibby Brittain (Colstream Guards) was the RSM. We were in a guards company, and most of the others were very up-market, the chap in the next bed was Prince Jean of Luxembourg, (we called him Lux). Jack was very smart and I was the usual untidy one, the odd time when I travelled through London I knew that I could get a free drink and meal at the Whiteley Hats showroom in Maddox Street near Liberty鈥檚 which I took advantage of as did others who Jack knew. During my Training at OCTU during 1953 I was hit in the eye by a small stone thrown up by a Thunder Flash, that put me in hospital for a couple of days, as this had caused a blood clot-30 years later I had a operation for a cataract and proved it was a war time injury (I still have the original medical certificate, that is why I was given a 20% war disability pension. We spent six months at OCTU and I was commissioned into the Black Watch and Jack to the Green Howards( We didn't write but I heard that he had been wounded a couple of times, and that he was in Anzio with the Green Howards, the info must have come from his parents, but more of that later. I was posted to the 10th Black Watch in Barrow in Furness: I was a platoon commander, age 19. I was given 30 men, including a sergeant and was supposed to train them. I don't think that I was very good at it.
I had been told that the men would either work for you or with you, and I tried the "with you" bit. I should have tried the big stick approach. We were sent overseas on December 10th 1943 and embarked at Liverpool, complete with all information that we were going to the tropics. I was in a single first class cabin with five other officers, needless to say it was bit of a squash. But I was very glad of it as all the Jocks were on a mess deck with hammocks.

I was very lucky in that I did not suffer from seasickness, but about 90% of the men and the other five officers were laid low with sea-sickness. We were still on board at Christmas 43 when being the only officer still on his feet, I was serving the men with their special dinner, and I was all OK. The mess decks were a terrible mess with all the vomit, and of course I had to help with the clearing up. After cruising the Atlantic somewhere near the Azores We eventually landed at Oran on Boxing Day, and entrained in cattle trucks (each for 12 horses or 32 men), thence to a transit camp in Phillipville arriving December 29/30th.rather worn out marching through the sand to this transit camp when a piper struck up and the effect was truly magical. We all had a spring to our step again. We arrived just in time to celebrate Hogmanay when a fight started between the Celtic and Rangers supporters because somebody sang 鈥淕alway Bay". It was my first experience of the religious divisions in Glasgow.

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