大象传媒

ICE SKATING ON PARADE

My first posting after joining up was to the 30th Primary Training Wing at Bovington which was the HQ of the Royal Tank Regiment and Royal Armoured Corps. There the primary object was to make new entrants to the Army look and act like soldiers. I found the training fairly easy because I had been in the School OTC, the Home Guard and the Army Cadet Force; nevertheless, it was a considerable culture shock to find myself sharing a barrack room with eighty or ninety other soldiers in pretty primitive living conditions and sleeping on a straw-filled mattress. There was no privacy at all and the background, attitude and even the language of most of the others were very different from mine. I had a compensating advantage in that I already had quite a lot of experience in drill, weapons and military discipline and they did not.

Life in this unit was pretty boring really, brightened only by one or two incidents, such as when we were doing drill one day and the command to 鈥渁bout turn鈥� came when I was marching over a cast-iron manhole cover. As I swung round, stamping my feet in the required fashion, my metal-studded Army boots disappeared from under me and I fell flat on my back. His heart brimming with sympathy for this stricken soldier, the Corporal shouted 鈥淕et back on yer feet 鈥� oo do you think you are - Sonja Henie?鈥�. For young readers, Sonya was the star of the first-ever ice skating film, released not long before. That nickname stayed with me for weeks!

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