- Contributed by听
- stagsheadjock
- Location of story:听
- London and Bovington
- Background to story:听
- Army
- Article ID:听
- A4469998
- Contributed on:听
- 16 July 2005
JOINING UP
My call up papers arrived in the summer of 1942 when I was just eighteen; I was about to take a professional exam and was given the standard exemption of six months. I took the exam a few weeks later and, rather than hang about for the remaining four months, I went to the recruiting office in Old Scotland Yard and volunteered for the Army.
This was not done solely out of a patriotic desire to get into the war although I and most of the young men of my acquaintance did have a strong feeling that we had a duty to fight for our country against Hitler. If you waited to be called up, you were posted wherever they wanted 鈥 Navy, Army, Air Force or even the mines or armaments factories; if you were a volunteer you usually went wherever you wanted to serve, within reason, and were regarded a s having joined the regular forces. I was very keen to get into tanks because I was keen on driving and was as big a nut about motor vehicles as I am now, so I was delighted to be accepted for the Royal Armoured Corps.
Let鈥檚 get the heroics into perspective; we did not know then about Belsen or Auschwitz, but we did know that the people in the occupied countries were being very badly treated, that the men were being shipped off to enforced labour camps and the people were being kept very short of food . It was obvious that we would be next; our country was under siege and the threat of invasion was hanging over us all the time and we knew what would happen to us if we failed to defend ourselves. We knew that we had to fight whether we liked it or not and while we didn鈥檛 feel particularly brave about fighting, the dangers we faced if we lost the war were probably greater.
I was posted to the 38th Primary Training Wing at Bovington, Dorset 鈥 the home of the Royal Tank Regiment and the Royal Armoured Corps, where the main task was to make us look and act like soldiers and 鈥渇it to be seen in the King鈥檚 uniform鈥. Tanks came later.
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