大象传媒

CHILDHOOD
Briefly and only as it might be thought relevant to what follows.
I was born in a South Yorkshire vicarage, my father being a clergyman. Both my grandfathers were also clergymen. For as long as I can remember anything I felt drawn to follow them into the ordained ministry.
My education started at home under a family governess and continued, from the age of nine, in private boarding schools - first in North Yorkshire and then in Oxford.
The communities in which my childhood homes were situated were mainly dependent on coal mining though there were other heavy and light industries contributing to their economic and social make-up.

PRELUDE TO WAR AND WAR SERVICE

1938

The reality of the storm brewing over Europe in the summer of 1938 impinged greatly on my mind when our family holiday in August was abruptly brought to an end overnight; my parents had decided that the situation was such that we should return home at once and so we did. Young as I was (17) I soon became aware that preparations for war were in hand and that people were volunteering for this and that. Though expecting to go back to school as normal I went to the local District Council offices to see if there was anything which I could do in the meantime. To their credit someone there took me in and gave me various tasks, including a morning `managing' the small office telephone exchange - not very well, as I remember.
No doubt I was as relieved as anyone when the news came through that the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was home from meeting Hitler with the message of "peace in our time".

1939

Strangely I have no such clear memories of August 1939, though I must have been closely involved in my mind. 1 read, and carefully preserved for years, some of the broadsheet newspapers of the time, copies of Hansard when the local library took them off display, and various Stationery Office publications. I do clearly remember listening to the radio on the morning of 3rd September 1939 with the Prime Minister's sombre declaration that we were at war. This was soon followed by a request from the school that some of us older boys should go back at once to help prepare air-raid shelters in the school grounds ready for the normal start of term in mid-September.

School life then is remembered as pretty normal except for the blackout regulations. With a Cambridge scholarship examination in December to prepare for, academic work was intense; compulsory and voluntary games continued normally and (for me) enjoyably. Even so, we were at war and important personal decisions soon had to be made.
I do not recall much mental anguish but there must have been some heart searching and maybe taking of advice. By now I was known to be a potential ordinand and as such could have been exempt from military service. I did not have the convictions of a "conscientious objector" and I recall feeling "If I accept exemption, would I be able to minister effectively and with integrity after the war to those who survived armed conflict?" The negative seemed a pretty clear answer to that and, when an opportunity arose to go down to the barracks in Oxford to enlist, it seemed right to do so and I went there with some friends and drew the `King's shilling'. Actually it was four shillings (20p) and I have those coins to this day.
I do not recall wondering at all about possibly serving in the Royal Navy or Royal Air Force. I suppose the Army seemed the obvious choice in view of the "training" I had received in the school's Officers Training Corps.
School life continued and included a time in the early summer of 1940 when I was excused from all academic studies; they were somewhat irrelevant now with a place at Cambridge assured following the award of an Exhibition. A small group of us was deputed to help in making preparations for a school in Eastbourne to be evacuated from their exposed position on the South coast to share our premises. And, for the few remaining weeks of term, there were occasional patrols as part of the Oxford City Local Defence Volunteers (later re-named The Home Guard) - looking out for German parachutists landing in the neighbourhood of the school's playing fields! No captives!!
I cannot now remember just how the message/order came to me to join up "properly" but it must somehow have followed a decision of the powers-that-be to reduce the minimum age for voluntary enlistment from 20 to 19 in the case of those who had Certificate A (the OTC certificate of proficiency); we could do so as potential officers. In the immediate post - Dunkirk situation I had no hesitation in accepting the arrangements offered. So it was that, a few weeks after the end of the school term in July, I started my basic training as an infantryman in Kempston Barracks, Bedford, to be followed in due course by OCTU (Officer Cadet Training Unit) in Pwllheli (North Wales) and then a commission in the Green Howards.

INITIAL TRAINING AND OCTU

Autumn 1940

Some ten years in boarding school prepared me well for the communal life of a barrack room; the lack of privacy was not a great problem for me, though it was for some. The weeks in Bedford passed quickly enough and our platoon sergeant (a regular soldier) did his job well and we respected him. I don't think I learned much that I didn't know from the OTC at school but I suppose the training was more "adult" and, in view of the war situation, more purposeful and focussed.
The `bull' to which we were submitted seemed pettifogging and a bit pointless; some coal really was painted white, allegedly to reduce pilfering, but at least it did sometimes help one to find one's way about in the dark! The tidiness and everything-in-its-place routine of the morning inspection of our hut did pay off later for me when, for weeks on end, I lived from, or operated in, the confines of an armoured car or small truck with one or two other men, even more so when for about a month I "lived" on a motor cycle.
Early Months 1941

The OCTU to which I was posted was in the seaside town of Pwllheli, North Wales and most of us were billeted in sea-front boarding houses. A room to myself, small as it was, was luxury! In the room next to mine was a distinguished Cambridge don who arrived at the same time as I but came straight from 'civvy street'. I don't understand or now remember) how/why this happened in his case; perhaps it was because he was earmarked for staff jobs which in fact he did have. We became firm friends, which continued after the war in Cambridge. The undergraduate-in-waiting was able to pass on the secrets and techniques of `spit and polish' and some of the more arcane procedures of army life, which had been learned during my initial training - e.g. getting the shine on the toecaps of new army-issue boots. We had many a laugh about this role-reversal when he became Master of his college and I was an undergraduate at another after the war.
Training was harder, had a significant academic content but passed in a straightforward and agreeable manner.

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