Eventually, I received my orders to report to the Depot of the East Surrey Regiment at Richmond Barracks, Kingston-upon-Thames on 4th November, for basic military training before moving on to Beaconsfield and the R.A.E.C. Depot Corps. And so my days with the Gas Company in Gowerton came to an end.
I was still seeing Margaret James, usually on a Sunday after chapel, and we were now recognised in the village as what is now called “an item”. Of course, I had told her all about my enlistment, and then that I had received my reporting instructions. About a week or two later, I received a letter from her, saying that as I was going off to be a soldier, she had enlisted in the Women’s Royal Army Corps, and had left that morning to their Depot in Guildford, Surrey, to start her basic training. I rushed off down to her home, and found her parents distraught, because she had only told them the night before, as she was going up to bed, that she had to be up very early next morning because she had joined the Army. She had gone through the whole process of enlisting without telling them, or me, a word about it.
I duly reported to Richmond Barracks, and as part of our Basic Training, we, of course, had to learn to fire rifles, Sten guns and Bren guns, and part of this training took place in Richmond Park, just up the road from the barracks. It was Winter, and we often were up there with our rifles, flinging ourselves flat in the snow, and, ironically, picking targets in the WRAC camp (where Margaret had been transferred for her initial training), and firing on them, (with empty rifles, I hasten to add.) Margaret continued her initial kitting out, and basic training, ie., marching, saluting and generally behaving in a military way, etc., and was then posted to Guildford to start her training proper, just after I arrived in Kingston. We corresponded and, once or twice, after I had “passed off the square” and was allowed out of barracks in what little spare time we had, usually only at weekends, we arranged to meet in London and spend the day together.
I remember on one occasion, we were walking up Whitehall from the Houses of Parliament to Trafalgar Square, which meant we had to walk past the Cenotaph. As we approached, we discussed whether, as we were both in uniform, we were expected to salute the cenotaph. On the basis of “better safe than sorry”, as we came along side, I gave the order, “Salute”, and we both did a smart “Eyes Right” and saluted, and walked on wondering if anyone was thinking “Look at those two idiots”. Still it seemed the right thing to do.
Being in barracks in Kingston was the first time I had been away from home and the family for any length of time, if you didn’t count the weeks of camping in Parkmill and so on. It seemed strange to be in a barrack room with 31 other chaps, and the only furniture was beds and lockers, and wooden tables down the centre of the room. In the bed opposite me was a short chap called Eric Addison, from Brighouse, Yorkshire, and my first recollection of him was seeing him sitting on his bed, bulling his boots and singing in the most tuneless way imaginable. He couldn’t sing two notes without going out of tune. And he was heading for the Royal Army Education Corps, like me. We nick-named him “Pud”, because he was from Yorkshire! Another chap was from Plymouth, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, who knelt by his bed every night to say his prayers, which caused no comment from anyone in the Platoon! He was a nice enough chap, but every time he spoke to me, he did so in the most excruciatingly bad imitation Welsh accent I had ever heard. I put up with it for weeks until it caused me such annoyance one day that I lost my temper for the first time since I had been a small child and had had that sort of behaviour beaten out of me. I had him bent over somebody’s bed, and it was only because our mates in the room pulled me off, that I didn’t do his face all sorts of damage. I apologised, and we continued to be friends, but he never put on a Welsh accent after that.
Also with us was another Welshman called Haydn, I think from Maesteg, who like me was also heading for the Royal Army Education Corps, and who had already done his National Service in the RAEC, and after demob, decided he wanted to sign on and make it a career. There was also a fellow from Lincolnshire, also headed for RAEC, and we all became friends. We were among those still in barracks at weekends when the East Surrey Regt. boys, who were all fairly local, were off home to their families. Fortunately, my mother had taught me from an early age to sew and darn, to knit and do embroidery, as well as cooking, washing and ironing and cleaning, so I was well able to look after myself in barracks. Our time was taken up with learning to march, right turn, left turn, about turn, salute, etc., and, what seemed to be more important than any of that, to clean and polish our boots, press our uniforms, lay our beds out in regimental style, and keep the barrack room spotlessly clean and shining. We learned to fire our rifles and Bren guns on the 25 yard range in the barracks, and later, when they thought we were safe enough, on the big Ash Ranges, near Aldershot. There we did our turn in the Butts, marking and signalling to the people firing where their shots were falling on the target, and firing rounds of .303 bullets instead of the little .22s we had fired on the barracks range, and began to feel that we were now ‘real soldiers’.
One incident which remains in my mind happened on a visit to the Ash Ranges. It was winter and we were all in our Great Coats, over which we had our ammunition pouches. The only use I ever had for those ammunition pouches was to put my ‘gloves, woollen’ in them while I was actually firing my rifle. We never ever put ammunition in them, and the only other thing I put in them was the cardboard, which kept them square for inspections on top of my locker. On the lorry taking us back to Kingston on one occasion, I suddenly realised I did not have my gloves, and it was bitterly cold. I told the chap next to me, who was in my Platoon but whom I did not know very well, that I had lost my gloves and he just shrugged. We all got back to barracks, boiled out our rifles, and cleaned them to pass the next inspection, and then went off for dinner. When I got back to the barrack room, there, sitting on my neatly folded blankets and pillow, was a brand new pair of khaki woollen gloves. Later in the NAAFI, I bought a packet of cigarettes, cheaper than anywhere else, and put them on the pillow of the chap who had sat next to me on the truck. No words were said about it, but honour was satisfied. I still don’t know where he got the gloves, and did not want to know, nor why someone, who, I learned, already had a criminal record, felt it necessary that someone in his Platoon should not get into trouble for losing his gloves.
We had a Welsh sergeant, from Pontypridd, who was finishing his time as an instructor at the Depot. Whenever he came into the barrack, especially on sports day on Wednesday afternoons, he would speak to me. He always seemed to know when I had a parcel from home, and would just appear, and chat until I offered him one of Mam’s welsh cakes, which he always enjoyed. He had never lost his accent or his love for welsh cakes. When Pud collected the hockey gear, because he was a devotee of the sport, the sergeant, also a keen hockey man, would have a mock game with him. On one occasion, the sergeant was driving the ball to Pud at the other end of the barrack room, defending the cleaning utensils, and slammed one ball so hard that he hit the bucket and practically bent it double. Of course, the cost came out of our barrack damages. We also had the platoon corporal who lived in a cubicle at the end of the barrack room. He, too, was a decent chap and treated us well.
At weekends we were allowed out of barracks into the town, but first had to present ourselves at the Guard Room by the gate, where we had to stand to attention in the centre of the floor to be inspected by the Guard Sergeant or Corporal, and if he found a blemish, like a dirty cap badge, or webbing not blancoed up to standard, etc., we were returned to the barrack room to put matters right, and only when he was satisfied that we were properly turned out and a credit to the Army, would we be allowed out through the huge doors.
One Saturday, the Corporal of ‘C’ platoon upstairs, Cpl. Hunt, was on guard duty. Most of us in ‘B’ platoon were turned back, and while we were sitting in the barrack room ‘bulling up’ whatever had not satisfied the corporal, our sergeant wandered in and queried why we were not out in town. When we told him the Cpl. Hunt had turned us all back and only a few of the local boys had got out, the sergeant went to the foot of the stairs and bellowed for the corporal, who of course was in the guardroom, so he stormed off there. The next day, our Sergeant was on guard duty and we suspected that he had volunteered to be so that day. Not one man of Cpl. Hunt’s platoon was allowed out of barracks all day!
Discipline was strict, and one had to be careful not to offend or make mistakes, and so incur punishments. On one occasion we were taken up to Richmond Park for rifle practice. It had been snowing in the night, and there was about six inches of snow on the grass where we were to practice throwing ourselves to the ground into a firing position and pick a site in the WRAC camp, squeeze the trigger and shout “bang”. Inevitably, everyone got snow up the muzzle of the rifle. On return to camp, our first duty was to clean and ‘boil out’ the rifles by pouring boiling water down the barrel, which had to be done, especially if they had actually been fired. This was just normal practice. Then all the rifles had to be inspected by the NCO in charge, and one day one lad was found to have a speck of dirt in his barrel. He was charged with having a dirty rifle and sentenced to five days C.B. (Confined to Barracks). On Saturday mornings, we had to “stand by our beds” with all our kit on display and the room spotlessly clean, every bit of equipment in its proper place, ready for inspection by the Commanding Officer. Usually he only went to one barrack room and then leave, and then we were all dismissed and for the weekend.
On one occasion the CO chose our barrack room. When he came to my bed, and glanced over the locker, the bed and all the kit laid out, he spotted my Welsh Bible on my locker, and asked about it. Having established that I was Welsh, he chatted for a while, and then moved on. I was the only one he spoke to in the room of 32 men, and it seemed strange to me that the man in charge of the whole Regimental Depot chose to speak to me!
Royal Army Education Corps
Eventually, our six weeks Basic Training came to an end and we were given seven days leave, before transferring to the Royal Army Education Corps Depot in Beaconsfield where we were to learn to be teachers.
There were two camps in a huge park alongside the main road from London to the West, now called the M40. One was for Officers in training and National Servicemen, and one for Regular Other Ranks. Here, the atmosphere was quite different from that in Kingston. We were in small rooms for three or four men, and all our time was spent in the classrooms learning the rudiments of teaching. My platoon officer was a Captain Fairclough, a tall, ginger headed man, who behaved more like a teacher, or lecturer, than an army officer. Discipline was much more relaxed and it was a very pleasant change from the rigours of an Infantry Depot. Being right on the main road was useful, because the bus from London to Swansea stopped right outside the park gates. It was very convenient but had advantages and disadvantages. The train fare from Paddington to Swansea in those days (1952-3) was £8 return and the journey took five hours. The bus fare from Beaconsfield to Swansea was only £5 return, but the journey was eight hours. I tried both, and the time and cost of getting from Beaconsfield to Paddington made them both £8 and 8 hours more or less.
We still had to do Guard Duties, and as we were a smaller unit than Kingston, guard duties came around more frequently. That was, generally speaking, a miserable experience. Armed with a pickaxe handle, (we were not issued with rifles in the RAEC!) one stood at ease, alone, outside the guardroom at the camp gates, in a vast expanse of parkland, for two hours, and then spent four hours trying sleep in the guardroom, before going out to do another two-hour stint outside. One could break the monotony outside by marching twenty paces in one direction and then back, if only to keep warm. No one ever came into, or out of camp during the night, but we still had to guard the place, armed with our pickaxe handle. We paraded for guard duty at 6.00.pm., and came off guard at 6.00.am next morning. This gave us time to shower and change, and get on parade for the days lessons. Oddly, I never felt tired after coming off guard duty, or throughout the day, but was glad to get to bed the next night. I was invariably washed out the following day after a good night’s sleep.
Sports days we had a wide choice of sports in which we could participate. Eric Addison, “Pud”, tried to persuade me to join his hockey tea I got changed into P.T. kit and with others, who in the main took this activity much more seriously, we set out to run around the vast park. Within a short time the group was split up as some raced on ahead, some took it easy and some, like me, got left behind. This left me alone to run or walk at my own speed wherever I fancied in this vast area and take an interest in the plants and wild life of the area, which was much more stimulating. The Coronation of the new Queen Elizabeth II was in the process of preparation, and throughout the land towns and villages were arranging events to celebrate this historic event. Beaconsfield town was arranging all sorts of things, and had asked if the RAEC Depot could put on one or two concerts. It was decided by someone that we would form a male voice choir and put on a concert in the town. It was also decided that we would form a drama group to perform in the town. Other activities were suggested but I cannot remember what they all were. We had to decide which group we were going to join. Captain Fairclough asked me about my experience of singing, especially in choirs, and he decided that, as I was Welsh, I should be the conductor. Most of my friends decided to support my choir, and we got quite a large group together, who had to be sorted out into 1st and 2nd tenors, baritones and basses, and set about selecting the music. We were to meet on Wednesday evenings, because Wednesday was sports day. Capt. Fairclough, in the meantime, had decided to take charge of the Drama group, and most of my mates, including myself, had experience of acting, in school plays or youth clubs, etc., so we all volunteered for that as well.
Unfortunately, Capt. Fairclough had chosen Wednesday night for his practices and we could not therefore attend both. I was duly told to report to his office, where he asked me to change my practice night, but all the boys were set on Wednesday, and did not want to change. After a long argument, he told me I was no longer in charge of the choir, and he found someone else, a Yorkshireman, I believe, who was far more experienced at conducting that I was. I had never done it before.
Periodically, our progress on the course was reviewed and some had already been advised to choose another career path in the Army. I had apparently been doing well on the course up until this choir business, but at my next review, Capt. Fairclough told me that I was not cut out to be a teacher. I had to appear before the Commanding Officer, and was asked to which other Regiment or Corps did I want to transfer. I had a choice of the Welch Regiment, which was Infantry and my father’s father’s regiment, or the Royal Army Service Corps, which was my mother’s father’s corps. After discussing it with the C.O., it was decided that as I had done shorthand, typing, etc., already, I should transfer to the R.A.S.C., and arrangements were made for me to transfer to Aldershot, and meanwhile to occupy myself with general duties around the camp instead of attending lectures.
I had been unexpectedly called in to the C.O. previously, when I was told that the police wanted to interview me in connection with an incident in Richmond Park, Kingston-upon-Thames. I had been issued with a travel warrant and told to report to the W.R.A.C. camp at a certain time. Mystified, but guessing that this was something to do with Margaret, whom I had not seen or heard from for some time, I duly reported to the guardroom of the camp, and was escorted by two young WRAC girls to their Commanding Officer’s room. Walking across the camp, they asked me why I was there, and was it anything to do with the attack on Margaret, and was I a friend of hers. When I said I was her friend, they looked at each other and clammed up, but not before I had learned that several girls had been attacked while walking back to camp late in the evenings, and Margaret had been similarly attacked and her face slashed on each side with a knife, and a man’s voice had been heard shouting: “Got you, at last, you bitch”, or words to that effect, and no one else was attacked after that!
I was duly interviewed by the CO, and then by the police, but I could get no more information about the incident from any of them, nor could I give them any information on the matter. Eventually, I was permitted to see Margaret in a private room, but I could learn nothing more from her, either, except that after her attack, no one else had been attacked. Try as I might, I could not persuade her to tell me anything more, and I had to report back to the police and her CO what her response to seeing me was, and I was told to return to Beaconsfield.
I never learned the truth about this incident, and Margaret was shortly afterwards discharged from the Army. We kept in touch for a short while, but she seemed to want to distance herself from me, and finally I wrote to her to say it would be better if we did not try to continue our relationship. Some months later, I learned that she had married her uncle and was now living with him in Gowerton, ironically in a house in the same row where my parents had lived before moving up to Mount Pleasant, and where Marion, my sister, had been born.
Royal Army Service Corps
In due course, I was issued with a travel warrant and sent on leave before reporting to a R.A.S.C. reception barracks in Aldershot, where I remained for two weeks before transferring to Willems Barracks to start training all over again amongst new recruits and National Servicemen.
My Unit in the RASC, Aldershot, I am the tall one in the centre row, 4th from the left
The day before we transferred to this barracks, I was on muster parade in the morning and inspected as usual, and it was found that I had lost a stud from one of my boots, and was promptly put on a charge. The next morning I was shipped off on the back of a truck with a load of others to my new barracks, so I never discovered what happened about my charge.
I was now in either Salamanca or Talavera barracks right in the centre of Aldershot. (I cannot remember which!) They were old cavalry barracks, huge blocks where the ground floor, now offices and the cookhouse and dining room, used to be stables for the horses, and above on the 1st and 2nd floors were the sleeping quarters for the men, now us. I had had misgivings about going to Aldershot, “The Home of the British Army,” where the “bull” and discipline was reputed to be the worst of all the military establishments. It also was home to The Glasshouse, which was the Army’s prison, and was said to be worse than the 19th century prisons for harshness of treatment.
What I found was that everything was much more relaxed than even Beaconsfield was, and certainly nowhere as severe as in Kingston-upon-Thames. In Kingston, as I have said, we had to be inspected from head to foot, front and back by the orderly sergeant in the guardroom before we were allowed out into the wide world when off duty. Here, one simply went to a small window in the wall of the guardroom, roughly on a level with one’s head, gave one’s name and number and one walked out. One could have been naked as long as one had one’s beret on, and no one would have known. Most of the others of the Intake were new, straight-from-home National Service recruits, whereas I already had been in the Army about 4 months and regarded myself as fully trained militarily, so I was at an advantage, and all the sprogs were asking me for advice and what to expect, etc. So, I set about learning to be a clerk. This meant learning shorthand, typing and Army office procedures. As I already typed at 30 words a minute, and did Gregg’s shorthand at about 90 words a minute, this was going to be cushy.
It was here that I learned the secret of looking smart in uniform, that is, to pay the regimental tailor to take in all the bulging bits of the battledress blouse, so that it fitted the chest and the pleats were straight, and not looking like a badly filled pillow. I also learned how to cut hair, and bought a couple of pairs of scissors, and whereas the Regimental Barber charged 3d for an “Army Style” haircut, ie., just about everything off except the skin, and 6d for a “decent” haircut. I charged 4d for quite a respectable cut, which satisfied the army and the squaddies, and made me a little fortune cutting hair in the barrack room in the evenings.
I also spent a lot of time in the NAAFI Club in the centre of Aldershot, not far from the barracks. I was sitting there, one Saturday night, in the Reading/Writing Room, writing a letter home, when someone thumped me on the back and said: “Hiya, Taff! What are you doing here?” It was the chap from Lincolnshire, whose name I have now forgotten, despite the fact that I went with him on a 72 hour pass to his home, and he similarly came with me to Gowerton. He had also been put off the RAEC training course and been transferred to the Royal Engineers, whose Depot was in Farnborough, just up the road. We went off on a pub-crawl talking over old, and not so old, times, and eventually set out back to barracks. We walked and talked until I suggested that it was time I left and made my way back to my barracks. He said we were now nearer his barracks in Farnborough than mine, and I had better stay the night there. We got into his camp, consisting mainly of wooden huts, through a hole in the back fence, and I slept in a bed vacated by someone away for the weekend. Next morning he had to teach me how to carry this other chap’s knife fork and spoon and mug, and how to march through the camp to the cookhouse, to have breakfast, before I made my way back to Aldershot and my own barrack room. All I remember of the night before is trying to unbolt a large metal cockerel from a bracket above the door of a Courage pub somewhere in Aldershot. We didn’t succeed, and left it leaning at a ridiculous angle. And I never saw him again!
One day, on Orders, posted on the Company notice board, we were informed that there was to be a Church Parade on the following Sunday. We paraded on the square, and all the Roman Catholics had to fall out and fall in again on another part of the square. Then the Anglicans were separated off, and then it was assumed that the rest of us were Baptists. Someone piped up that he was a Methodist, and someone else said he was Plymouth Brethren, and I said I was Welsh Independent. The NCOs had a short discussion with the officer on parade, and we Nonconformists were all marched off to the local Baptist Chapel.
There I met a Mr. And Mrs. George Brown, who lived at 46 Lower Farnham Road, Aldershot, with their little son. They introduced themselves to me, and invited me home for Sunday Dinner, and off I went. I visited them regularly for the rest of my stay in Aldershot, and went off at weekends for runs in the country with them on George’s motorbike and sidecar. We had a lot of fun and we kept in touch for long after I left Aldershot. I invited them to my wedding some years later, and they came and gave us as a wedding present a full set of red rimmed plates and dishes which we still use. I learned much later that they had either relatives or friends in Greenfields Avenue in Bridgend, but we never met up and eventually lost contact. Most of the men were, of course, National Servicemen, on £1.1s 6d a week (£1.7½ p), whereas I as a Regular Soldier was getting £2. 3s.6d a week (£2.17½ p), plus my haircutting profits, I should have been OK, but it was usually the regulars who were borrowing off the NS men by the end of the week, not the other way around.
I had a good time in Aldershot. I already knew most of what they were trying to teach me. I had done all the military training that I needed there, and I already was a good typist and shorthand writer, so life was easy. I had passed the basic typing course to qualify to be an Army Clerk, and had volunteered to take the shorthand course, and was coming towards the end of that. The class was now taking dictation at about 25-30 words a minute. And then it happened!
Cpl. Jones, a cocky short little fellow from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, (and as obnoxious off the square, or out of the classroom, he was on duty,) had dictated a long piece for us to take down, and was now wandering around the desks waiting for us to finish typing it up. He passed my desk and looked down and saw my notebook, covered in squiggles that meant nothing to him – and I was typing it back.
“What the hell is that?” he bellowed.
“Shorthand, Corporal.”
“That’s not what I have been teaching you.”
“No, Corporal. It’s Gregs. I could already do Gregs before I joined the Army and it seemed silly to confuse myself with learning another shorthand.”
“How fast do you take dictation?”
“About 90 words a minute, Corporal.”
“Right. Out here.”
I had to go to the front of the class and there take dictation like a machine gun from him, and then told to “sit there and transcribe that, you bastard.” So I did, and got it all right, and he said he would report this to the Commanding Officer. The next day, I had to appear before the Company Commander, and explain myself, with the result, I was taken off the course, and on ‘jankers’ until the course officially ended. Jankers, the army word for fatigues, involved doing any jobs that needed doing, mainly sweeping the roads and pavements, cleaning windows and toilets, taking messages, etc., but if one simply picked up a sweeping brush and walked boldly through the camp, no one questioned it, and several of us did this as soon as we came off morning parade, and marched smartly to the back end of the barracks and out into the countryside, and sit there chatting and smoking until about 11 o’clock, when we would walk smartly back into camp and into the NAAFI for NAAFI Break, a well established Army tradition, repeated morning and afternoon. After half an hour or so, we would pick up our brushes and walk smartly back out of camp until lunch time. After lunch we repeated this before going back to the barrack room to spruce up in time to go to the evening meal. This went on for about two weeks, and then I had to appear before the C.O. again to discuss my posting. We had all been asked to fill in a form, stating where we would prefer to serve, and I had chosen Africa, (partly because of my addiction to Tarzan novels,) or the Far East, because I thought I might as well travel as far as possible at the Army’s expense while I had the chance.
The Company Commander looked at my form and asked me why I had chosen these places, and I made up something that sounded plausible at the time. I didn’t want to go to East Africa, because they were in the middle of the Mau Mau troubles. He then told me that he had received a letter from the War Office to the effect that as my father was very ill, an application had been received from my mother, supported by a QC, the doctor and the Vicar, requesting that I be kept in this country. I knew my father was ill. He had been for a number of years, suffering, we understood, from Arthritis and Rheumatism. He had damaged his ankle when he tried to break a large piece of coal on the step of the pot he was working on in the Fairwood some years earlier, about 1950. The normal procedure if the lump of coal was too large to go into the fire of the pot, was to throw it onto the edge of the step. This he had done, but it did not smash, and instead knocked his ankle, and he had been brought home in great pain, and the doctor had ‘signed him off work.’ It never really healed and the pain spread to his knees, his elbows, his hands and his back, and he had had all sorts of different treatments, including a fortnight in Droitwich, to soak in the healing mud there.
To be suddenly told that his illness was considered serious enough to keep me in UK ‘in case’, came as a shock. Consequently, I was posted to the War Office in London, instead of the glamorous places about which I had been dreaming, and was given leave to go home for 14 days to see my father.
My father was still in pain, especially in the feet and hands, but also in his elbows and knees, although he had gone back to work, but not in the Fairwood Tinplate works. He found a job doing lighter work in the Bryngwyn Steelworks in Kingsbridge, but even that was really too much for him and he was still struggling and still in pain. He eventually got a job in “The Three M’s”, and American firm which made cellotape and all sorts of things, and in one department making fur for fur coats. Dad’s job was to brush some solution into skins, to soften the hair and prepare it for being cut and made into fur gloves, fox fur coats, and such like. Whether the fur was actually from a fox or not was always a mystery. Some said it was rabbit or even cat fur, which was chemically treated to look like furs acceptable to the ladies who were going to wear them. We shall never know now.
The War Office
I had my home leave, and in due course reported to the War Office to take up my duties. The four of us who were posted at the same time reported to Main Building in Whitehall, and were allocated to various Branches, or departments and told our duties and functions. Two of us, Dick Cleverly from Pontnewynydd in Monmouthshire and I were detailed to go to the Stanmore Building, and given an address in Kilburn where we were to live, at least until we found somewhere more convenient. No.4 Brondesbury Villas was only a couple of streets from the Underground station on the Bakerloo Line, now called the Jubilee Line. It turned out to be a terraced house, in the heart of the Irish quarter. It was quite a large house with a little garden about six feet wide in front of it, surrounded by a large privet hedge, so large in fact that the space between the hedge and the house was only about two feet. We were made welcome, and settled in, and the next morning had to go off to report to our new offices.
After a few weeks, I realised that the road from Kilburn to Edgware and Stanmore was more or less flat, looking at it from the tube train, and the journey was not all that long, about 10 miles I reckoned, so I thought that if I brought my bicycle back from my next weekend leave, I could cycle to and from work, and save a lot in train fares. So the next time I went home, I took my faithful old Raleigh bike, the one I had ridden to the Rhondda and to North Wales on, and put it in the Guard’s Van of the train, and then rode it from Paddington to Kilburn. I chained it to the bottom of the ancient hedge in front of the house, where the gap between the hedge and the house was so narrow that there was just enough room for it, and where it could not be seen from the road. The next morning, at breakfast, I was met by a furious landlady, because, in the front of her house, there was a huge gap in her hedge, and my bike had disappeared. The stock of the hedge, about three inches thick, had been sawn neatly through. I never saw my beloved bicycle again, and still had to pay to get to and from work. Richard, or Dick as he preferred to be called, was a great fellow, the epitome of the country lad. Throughout his service he only wore his uniform including his Army Boots, but without his gaiters. His view was that he had to work for them, so they ought to supply his clothes, and save him wearing out his own clothes. He had a strange lumbering walk, and could trip over anything. I was convinced he was capable of tripping over the white line in the middle of the road.
In the office we were allowed to wear civilian clothes, because it was a civilian establishment. We had to wear uniform, however, on Wednesday afternoon for pay parade, when we had to parade, answer to our names, slap our pay book on the table in front of the Officer, salute, and pick up our week’s money, salute again, smart About Turn, and march away. I kept my uniform in the stationery cupboard, a small room full of shelves and cupboards, and every Wednesday I would make my way there after lunch in the staff canteen, change into uniform and make my way with RSM Bob Cole to pay parade, and when that was over, I returned to the stationery cupboard, and changed back into civvies again. To get to work we had a short walk and then a 20 minute train ride and we were at Stanmore, and had only another short walk to the Ministry site, where the offices of the Air Ministry, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, known as “Agg, Fish and Fodder”, and the War Office were situated.
I had to report to a Sergeant Major Coles, the Chief Clerk of AG2, the Branch responsible for looking after the Infantry Regiments. Dick had to report to D.A.L.S. the Department of Army Legal Services. It was ironic that of the four of us posted to the War Office on this occasion, it turned out that Dick, who was slow moving, slow thinking and had never really mastered shorthand, although he had passed his tests, was the only one of us who was called upon to use his shorthand. My predecessor in AG2 was a National Serviceman, and a corporal, and he left after two days after my arrival to be demobbed, and I was then on my own. I was to be secretary to the Assistant Adjutant General, AG2, who had the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and who always used a pencil to write his letters and reports and documents, which the chief clerk brought out to me, where I deciphered his writing and typed it up, on an already ancient Imperial typewriter.
From time to time, I had to do a night duty at an office in Lansdowne House, in Berkeley Square. All one had to do was listen for the telephone in case an army unit anywhere in the world rang up regarding a soldier who had requested compassionate Home Leave because of illness or death in his family. I would have to take all the particulars and notify the Duty Officer who slept in the next room. I would then telephone the nearest Police Station to the soldier’s home and ask them to investigate the circumstances and report back. When I had all the details I had to notify the officer, who decided whether the soldier should be sent home or not, and if so, whether it should be when it was convenient, or by the next available ship, or next available plane, or be flown home immediately. I then had to be telephoned his decision to his unit, wherever that was. There was a bed in the room, so one could sleep next to the telephone. I did that duty several times, but only twice had to respond to such a call. It was not too bad a duty, except that one had to wear uniform for it, but I believe we did get extra pay for doing each one.
Several times, I had to take packages or letters to other War Office buildings, travelling by tube or bus, but occasionally, one had to take Top Secret, or Most Secret documents, in which case a car was ordered to take one direct to other building. On one occasion, I had to take such a letter to Main Building in Whitehall, and when I got into the car, I naturally and without thinking, got into the front seat with the driver. As we drove along, he commented on this fact, and when I expressed surprise, he said most people seemed to think it was beneath their dignity to sit with the driver and always sat in the back seat! Dick was in a Typing Pool, in the Army Legal Services Branch, at the beck and call of Army lawyers, who gave advice to officers on all forms of Military Law, and conducted cases at Courts Martial all over the world. When they needed something typed, they simply sent to the pool and whoever was available went in to take dictation and do the necessary typing. Dick was the only one of us who never conquered the art of writing shorthand. How he coped I never discovered. I lost touch with the other two boys posted at the same time as us, as they were in other War Office buildings, but I learned that neither of them was called upon to take dictation. Poor old Dick! But, he survived and completed his two years of National Service without too much trouble.
Dick and I decided that we wanted to live nearer to the office and after some enquiries, found a place in Edgware. It was a nice semi-detached house, owned by a widow whose children had grown up and flown the nest and she had two bedrooms to let. Dick decided to take the smaller room, and so I took the larger one next to it, where there was a wardrobe, table, two chairs and, more importantly, a gas ring, and a kettle. Dick’s room had simply the bed, wardrobe and a chair, so we shared the facilities of my room and used it as our lounge. We were quite happy there, despite the constant complaints from our landlady that Dick’s big Army boots were scratching the brass draught excluder outside the front door. I tried to argue with her that Dick was aware of the damage army boots could do and was always careful to lift his feet stepping over anything like that, so it could not be him, but she loved to have something to complain about. I did not tell her that Dick was one of those clumsy chaps, who could trip over a shadow. We had a fairly basic breakfast in my room every morning before walking to the office, and then had a good meal in the Ministry canteen at lunchtime, and usually heated something out of a tin in the evening, or went to a café. Cooking with only a gas ring was limited, but we lived quite well.
As we both worked alternate Saturday mornings which never coincided, whoever was working on the Saturday was responsible for buying the food for the weekend. Often in the good weather, we would have a loaf of bread, some butter and cheese or something, and take off to walk in the country, eat our food either in, or near a pub, and sometimes, but not often, eat in a café. A number of times we walked from Edgware up the A1 to St. Albans, because it was a nice walk and we could eat our food in the garden of ‘Ye Olde Fighting Cocks’, another of the pubs said to be the oldest pub in England, and then walk back again. While in the War Office, we military personnel used to received notice of tickets available very cheaply for concerts in the Royal Albert Hall and other theatres, so when a notice came in of an orchestral concert conducted by Sir Malcolm Sergeant in the RAH, I applied. I think the tickets were something like 3 shillings each, (15p in present money). The seat was way up on the top floor, but at the back of the theatre where the Royal Box is, so I was looking down at the centre of the stage. I had bought a programme and when the next item was a Saxophone Concerto, I read up the notes, which explained that Mr. Sax was lucky that he ever grew up to invent the Saxophone, and listed all the accidents that had happened to him in childhood, including being washed down a river through a drainpipe, and swallowing on one occasion a packet of pins. I burst out laughing and looked up, to see Sir Malcolm who had his arms raised to start this item, slowly turn and stare up in my direction. He lowered his arms, shrugged, and turned back to the orchestra and started again. I felt such a fool, but that was Sir Malcolm Sergeant after all! I remember being in London on one occasion, and there was a real “pea-soup” fog. So thick was the fog that as I walked along the wall of a building, I could not see the traffic on the road next to me. Once I could hear, but only vaguely see the lights from a London Bus going very slowly past me. Fortunately, since the Clean Air Bill was passed, these Peasoupers no longer happen.
There was also a very active Civil Service Sports and Social Club on the Ministry site, which ran a drama group. I joined, but Dick was not interested. I went to occasional dances there also, where I met a young girl, Audrey Brown, with whom I became friendly. Her parents were divorced and she lived with her mother in Stanmore. Her father was, I believe, chief compositor at the Daily Mirror. He had re-married and was living in Westbourne Park in London. Having met Audrey’s mother, I could understand why they divorced, and why Audrey was so confused in her feelings for both her parents. She had a younger brother whom her father had established in a Masonic Boarding School in Bushey, so she saw very little of him.
I met her father and his wife, and they invited me to escort Audrey to a large Masonic Dinner and Dance in London. For this I had to wear, for the first time, a dinner suit, which her father hired for me, and for which I had to be measured. I had never known such a fuss to be dressed properly. It took ages to find a pair of trousers which reached down to exactly half an inch above the heel, but I was eventually all kitted out and off we went to the function. It was held in a big hotel in the centre of London, and a large number of people were present. We, of course, were on Audrey’s father’s table with all his friends. It was soon taken over, however, by one of his friends who produced a packet of 200 cigarettes, which he put on the table for everyone to dip into. I had never seen a packet of 200 cigarettes in use like this before. I thought they only came in packets of 5, 10 or twenty. However, it was soon empty, and the chap simply went off to the cloakroom to get another packet of 200 from his coat. I was flabbergasted! The same chap kept producing huge rolls of £5 and £10 notes and buying bottles of whisky and wine for the table. I was told that he was a millionaire, which was a rare being in those days, especially in my circles, so I was somewhat overawed, especially as he seemed such an ordinary fellow. Such was my introduction to ‘High Society’. Audrey and I continued to see each other, and she even became involved with the Wolf Cub Pack of the Boy Scout Troop to which I had attached myself. At the bottom of the garden of my digs in Cambden Avenue was a fence, beyond which was a small patch of land with a Scout Hut on it, so one evening when I saw all the lads there, I went down, climbed over the fence and went in to offer my services, and was promptly told off by ‘Skip’, the Scoutmaster, for climbing the fence because he had drummed into the boys that they should not do this. However, he welcomed my help, and very soon arranged for me to receive my Assistant Scoutmaster Warrant, and a hat badge with a red plume as my badge of office.
As Skip was getting on a bit and lived some distance away, he tended to leave me to run the troop in my own way. My way, from my experience with the Troop in Gowerton, involved a lot of outdoor activities, wide games, hikes, tracking, camping, and so on, but I found that I only had to take these boys about a mile away from their homes and they were in strange, foreign country. Bushey Heath was ‘abroad’ as far as they were concerned. I was amazed to find that they hardly knew any other boys from only a few streets away. Audrey decided she wanted to be involved and started helping with the Wolf Cub Pack, and eventually was appointed an assistant to Akela, the woman who ran the Cubs, and who gave her the name Bagheera, the traditional name for the assistant leader. The Cubs were based on the wolf pack of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’, so the names of leaders were all taken from there. Audrey’s father seemed determined that she and I were made for each other, and even came down to Gowerton to meet my parents. He also spotted a cottage for sale on the road from Gowerton up to Three Crosses and announced that he would buy it and give it to us as a wedding present.
However, Audrey’s behaviour became more and more bizarre as she became more disturbed about the friction between her parents. Her mother was a bitter, manipulative woman who resented anyone whom she saw as invading her territory. She worked hard at trying to destroy Audrey’s relationship with her father, and certainly resented her friendship with me. Audrey, meanwhile, seemed convinced that she and I would marry, and I would “take her away from all this”. When I left the Army and started at University, the whole Audrey situation was too distracting and disruptive of my studies, and I had to break off our relationship. My sister, Marion, however, had meanwhile become very friendly with Audrey’s step-mother, and they remained close friends for many years. I also became involved with the Drama Group of the Civil Service Sports and Social Club, and even had a part in one of their plays. I cannot remember now what the play was, but I do remember that in one scene, for some reason, I had to throw a wad of five pound notes into the air. This was in the days of the old white £5 notes, which just happened to be the same size as a sheet of quarto typing paper. This was long before we went metric, when the main size of typing paper was Foolscap, the equivalent, but a little larger than the present day A4 paper. Half a foolscap sheet was the quarto size, and half of that was called Octavo, usually written “8vo”.
Having realized that the old fivers were the same size as quarto, of which I had endless supplies, I set to in the quiet moments of the day, when I had no typing or anything to do. I put a sheet over a fiver I had in my pay, and carefully traced it in black ink, and soon had a pile of forged fivers on my desk. They would not have passed muster in a shop, but on stage, being thrown into the air and fluttering down, they looked very realistic. And I became a bit of a celebrity in the Drama Group.
Life generally in the War Office was also fascinating. In AG2, there was the Assistant Adjutant General, who held the rank of Colonel in an Infantry Regiment, and a major from the Royal Artillery, in charge of the office and the military clerical staff, which consisted of the Chief Clerk and the typist, me. The Chief Clerk was Warrant Officer First Class Robert “Bob” Coles, of the RASC, coming to the end of his 25-year service. There were four Staff Captains, who were responsible for the Infantry Regiments, including those from other parts of the Empire. There were also a number of Retired Officers who were in charge of various sections of the Branch. All the rest of the staff were Civil Service clerks. After a month or two to settle down, I was approached by the major, who told me he had decided it was time I had a stripe on my sleeve, and he had promoted me to Lance Corporal. That meant that my pay went up, not a lot, but significantly. I knew that my predecessor had been demobbed as a full Corporal, and sure enough, a month or so later, I was given the second stripe and became Corporal Davies. I was thereafter always called Corporal, except in private.
There were ‘characters’ in every department, but the one who sticks in my mind was old Mr. Durdle, who was in his seventies and was the Post Clerk. He opened all the mail and passed it to the appropriate recipients, and collected all outgoing letters, which he filed in a number of sets of flaps, one for each army unit, headquarters and War Office Department. He spent the afternoon putting letters into envelopes and sticking the address labels on them ready for collection. All the regular destinations had their own pre-printed sticky labels. That was all Mr. Durdle did, but he seemed to be busy all day long, and was a stickler for seeing that everything was done properly and honourably. When he went on leave, I had to do it all in addition to my own work, but it was a fairly easy life, really. The Colonel in post when I arrived never called me in for dictation, and preferred to write everything in pencil. When he went off to inspect battalions either in the UK or abroad, he would be away for about two months, and posted his hand-written reports back to me every night, so by the time he returned, all his reports were typed up, checked by Bob Cole, and ready for him to read, sign and do with them whatever it was he did with them. I also had to type letters for Bob himself as the Chief Clerk. The second Colonel who came in my time never posted his reports, but kept them all until he returned to the office after a tour of inspection and then expected me to type them all up as quickly as possible. So I would then be frantically busy, after six or eight weeks of kicking my heels. The third Colonel was only there a short time before I was demobbed, and did not go on tour while I was there. My successor would have to cope with his foibles.
The War Office, of course, was not a military establishment. It was a Government Department, and therefore a part of the Civil Service. It seemed to me while I was there that there were more battles between the civilian and military staffs than in all the theatres of war. We were both trained in different cultures, so they could not understand the mentality and methods of the military staff, and we simply got frustrated and infuriated by their apparent inefficiency and ‘laisez faire’ attitude. However, despite this everything ran smoothly and everything was done on time and satisfactorily.
One clerk was a little Scottish lady, known as Mrs. Mac, whose main function was to look after files and make the tea. Every morning she went off to the stationery cupboard and collected a huge brown teapot. Then another woman came around all the Branches selling tea. Mrs. Mac would buy about half the number of cups required for AG2, but an approximate amount would be poured into her teapot, and was usually enough for the whole Branch. She then pushed it around the Branch on a trolley designed for carrying files, and served everyone with the necessary and famous civil service cuppa. She probably made a nice little sum over the years, but I do not remember having to pay for my tea. This took about an hour in the morning, and the whole process was repeated in the afternoon. About a week before I left, I took her teapot and hid it. She went barmy and worked herself up into such a state. I eventually had to produce it by hanging it from a light fitting in the general office above her desk while she was away accusing her counterpart in another Branch of stealing it.
In those days I smoked a pipe, and when I ran out of tobacco on one occasion, I went to buy more in Edgware in the lunchtime. I wanted a change from my usual tobacco, but did not know which other to get, but a tin with light blue wavy lines on it caught me eye, so I bought that one. I took it back to the office and went to fill my pipe, and noticed that the tobacco was much finer than my usual brand. I tried to light it, could not breath it in. My throat simply resisted taking the smoke in. I mentioned this to Bob Coles, whose desk was next to mine, and he told me that Old Charlie, another ancient clerk in the general office, would buy it because it was his favourite tobacco. When I presented it to him, he got excited, pulled out a packet of cigarette papers, rolled himself a cigarette and puffed away like a tank engine. I could not even light it in my pipe. I was advised later that it was shag!
The Staff Captains were another source of constant amusement. One Staff Captain was promoted in his Regiment to Major, but remained in AG2 for his tour of duty. He then approached the major and suggested that now he was a major himself, he should not be sharing an office with three captains, and he should now have a different room. There was no other room available so he moved in with the Branch major, which left the other three captains smouldering a bit. Then one of them approached me, sometime in about February, and asked me to type a letter for them on East African Command headed paper, which they had got from another officer serving out there. The letter they drafted purported to come from East Africa Command requesting replacement officers, and as Major Farmer dealt with that area the letter was addressed from him. I typed the letter and gave it to the Staff Captains, one of whom signed it and returned it to me to put in Major Farmer’s In Tray. In due course, he went through the process of getting files and looking for officers due to go to abroad or who needed to go to trouble spots for experience, and he eventually came up with about six names, and wrote a letter to East Africa Command with the information, and asking for comments.
The letter came out for posting in the normal way, and I had to intercept it and give it to the captains. After an appropriate delay, an answer was given me to type saying that these officers were not acceptable and asking for more names. This procedure was repeated several times over a period of time, until the captains decided it was time to wind it up. I had to type a letter from “Africa” saying that they would accept the following officers, and then a list of names, one of which was Major Farmer’s, and this arrived on his desk on the morning of 1st April. This was, of course, when the Mau Mau troubles were at their height, and the major went ballistic. He spent the morning looking for more names to send out, and files were flying around like bees round a honey pot. At 12.00.noon, the three captains with rolled umbrella held upright like swords, marched in single file into the major’s office, presented arms, and called “April Fool”. It took months to prepare and complete, but seeing the major’s panic that day was worth it all.
It was sad, really, because Captain S.C.F.Farmer was serving in the Gloucestershire Regiment, and on returning from Vietnam his ship had been sunk and he had lost everything except his life. A large number of troops from the regiment were taken prisoners by the Viet Cong, and treated extremely cruelly. The Vietnamese were far more cruel than most of the Japanese, I have been told. One, who is now a friend of mine in Bridgend had signed on for three years, as I did, and after completing his basic training, went to Vietnam with the Gloucestershire Regiment, (the Glosters). He was taken prisoner in a huge battle and was treated very badly for the next two and a half years. He has never forgiven the Vietnamese for what they did to him. Before I left the War Office, I had noticed that the windows of the captains’ room were covered in bird droppings, so I made notices which I stuck on the windows saying “This stained glass window was erected in memory of Captains This, That and the Other”, using their names. They, fortunately, found it amusing.
Dick and I stayed in Cambden Avenue for quite a time, but one Saturday morning, Dick arrived in from the office at lunch time with the food for lunch. It was summer, and a sweltering hot day. All the windows were wide open and very little wind. He produced the lunch. He had bought a pair of herrings! I looked askance.
“How on earth are we going to cook those?” I asked.
“Easy,” he said. “We’ll use our mess tins and cook them on the gas ring.”
“But we will have to gut them and clean them,” I argued.
“I can do that”, he said, and disappeared into the bathroom.
A short while later he was out, with the fish all cleaned, and boned, and ready to cook. Our Landlady was out, so we lit the gas ring, melted some butter in it, and I left Dick to cook them while I cut some bread. The smell was gorgeous.
Then there was a shout from the stairs as the landlady came storming up. She had arrived back from shopping and been talking to a neighbour on the front gate, had smelt the cooking herrings, and she went into orbit. The house was stinking of cooking fish, I must admit. She gave us both notice to find other accommodation by yesterday if not sooner. Dick found lodgings with a Mrs. Richards, from Pontypridd, who lived on the main road from Edgware up to the offices. She was an ex-nurse, and she now ran a nursery, both daily and residential. Dick moved out, but I was still searching. The landlady told me then, in great confidence that I did not have to leave, now that she had got rid of Dick. I said she had told us both to leave and so I would. This did not please her.
I found digs on the North Circular Road, with a Jewish family. The room was very small, just room enough for my bed, small table, chair and wardrobe, and very dark, and very expensive. It was £4. a week.!! I did not stay long. I found a cheaper room then with a family out at Harrow. Why they let the room out I never understood. It was their son’s bedroom and he was away in boarding school. Both his mother and father were working, the latter was someone quite high up in Kodak’s, and wrote quite a number of the little red books about photography which Kodak used to publish.
Two events stick in my mind about my stay there. One morning at breakfast, they mentioned that they had heard me coming in late the night before. They did not exactly complain, but it sounded like a mild reprimand. Some little time later, I was out until quite late one night, and so was extra quiet trying to open the front door. The house was in darkness, and I assumed they had gone to bed. My key would not go into the lock and made scraping noises on the door. I eventually opened it, and tripped over the step going in, and the door banged as I tried to close it. I took off my shoes to climb the stairs, and half way up I dropped one, and had to go back down for it, and in the process, dropped the other one. I got to my room and tried to shut the door and that, too, banged. I undressed, and knocked the table over, getting into bed. I lie there waiting to hear if they had been disturbed, and expecting a row the next morning at breakfast. I was just dozing off, when the front door banged open and they both came in having had a good night out and obviously enjoying themselves.
My landlord’s hobby was building and sailing radio-controlled boats and had built a trawler in the garage. He asked me one Saturday morning if I would like to accompany him to The Round Pond on Hampstead Heath (?) to sail his boat. This was when radio controlled models were in their infancy, and when I saw the amount of equipment it involved, apart from the boat which was about 3 feet (1 metre) in length, I realised why he had invited me to join him. He had batteries, accumulators, a radio transmitter, etc., with miles of wires. We loaded all this lot into his boot and the back seat of the rather large car, and we set off. We were some time unloading it all and connecting everything up before putting his precious boat into the water. Then he started its engine, and took up the radio controls, and off went the boat, sedately and slowly away from the bank. He turned it this way and that, and changed speed, and performed all sorts of clever manoeuvres, until suddenly, the boat started going round in tight circles, and refused to respond to his controls. “Come on,” he yelled, “Bring the kit”. And scooping up some of the equipment, and leaving the rest to me, he set off running around the edge of the pool until finally, he was close enough to the boat to make contact and regain control. This happened several times because his transmitter was not powerful enough and the boat kept going out of reach of the radio signals.
Eventually, he decided he had had his morning’s enjoyment, and we packed everything back into the car and set off for home. He thanked me for my help, and gave me some of the little red Kodak books that he had written. Sadly, they are now all lost. Dick, being a National Serviceman finished his time in the army before I did, and when he left, I took his place in Mrs. Richards’ nursery, as it was much closer to the office than my present address and even Cambden Avenue had been. She welcomed me as another Welshman with relatives in the Rhondda. I had been there some time, and one morning had a very bad cold and cough. I set off to walk up to the office, and part of the way up the slight hill, I coughed and I thought I had broken my back. The pain was terrible, and I clung on to a lamppost to prevent myself from falling. The pain eased and I continued up the hill, walking like a wooden soldier to avoid further pain in my back. I finally got to the office, and sat at my desk, but while typing I coughed again, and again had this violent pain. Bob Coles, the chief clerk, ordered me to report to the First Aid room. There I was told that they could only deal with cuts and scratches, and I ought to telephone the Medical Officer at Mill Hill Barracks, Depot of the Middlesex Regiment, and arrange to report sick. This I did, and spoke to the MO, who was a Welshman from Pembrokeshire. He told me to go home and go to bed as I probably had a heavy cold, or influenza. So off I went home. Mrs. Richards, being a nurse, told me to go straight to bed and she would bring me a hot drink.
That night, I started to perspire, and when Mrs. Richards came in to my room the next morning, there was steam rising from my bare arms, literally. She became anxious and said I had some sort of infection, and with a nursery full of small children and babies, she could not keep me there. She telephoned the MO at Mill Hill Barracks and was told he was on duty in Millbank Hospital in London, and I should be taken there. So, I got dressed in my other uniform, and wrapped in my greatcoat, I was bundled into her car and rushed off to Millbank. My MO came and examined me in the corridor and said he could not keep me there because I was infectious, but would arrange transport to take me to another military hospital in Woolwich, and left me sitting in the draughty corridor until the army ambulance came to take me off. When I arrived there, I was examined again, and told to go along with the Medical Orderly to collect my bedding, plates and mug, knife, fork and spoon and my blue hospital uniform, white shirt and red tie, and take myself off to bed. The orderly took me to the ward, and stood by while I made my own bed, and climbed in! My treatment consisted of inhaling fumes to clear my chest, which worked within a few days, and I was then able to walk about and even go out into town by the end of the week, in my blues, white shirt and red tie, hoping I would be thought to be a wounded soldier sent home from some terrible battlefield. No such luck! Within a week, I was back in Mrs. Richards’ house in Edgware and back in work.
One morning, while in Woolwich Hospital, the orderly, probably a National Serviceman, brought me my inhaler. This particular morning, the spout that I had to put in my mouth in order to breathe in the fumes, was broken. I pointed it out to the orderly that I was not putting a jagged piece of glass in my mouth, but he would not change it. Unfortunately, in hospital, there were only “patients” and “staff”, and the two stripes on my great coat hanging behind my bed, carried no weight. Rank meant nothing. But I refused to use the inhaler, and when the doctor came round, he asked if I had used it, and I told him I had not, and why. He called the orderly in and gave him a right wigging, and made him go and prepare a new one for me, and make sure it was hot. We did not see the little orderly in our ward again after that. There was another patient a few beds away from mine, who looked as though he had on a borrowed uniform. Only the top button of his blouse and the bottom button of his trousers were done up and between them was a wide expanse of white shirt. Only just before I was discharged did I learn that he had been on a milk diet for weeks, and this was his own uniform, but he had put on so much weight.
While in the Army, I took advantage of the Army Education System, and applied for a correspondence course in Psychology, because I thought it would be useful for me at university. It turned out to be a course in Industrial Psychology from Ruskin College, Oxford, but I did it. It involved reading the paper they sent me, then answering the questions, for which the answers were in the paper, and sending it back. I completed the course, cannot now remember what it was all about but I passed and had a certificate to say so. I recently came across the papers, my answers to questions with my marks and comments from the tutor, while sorting out old papers, and didn’t understand a word of it! Also while in the Army I had developed an interest in the supernatural and in particular in ghosts and hauntings. I read numerous books on the subject and had several strange experiences, which seemed at the time inexplicable.
One summer evening after having been out with Audrey, I was walking back from Stanmore to Edgware, which involved going down a slight hill, over a bridge, and up a slight hill into Cambrose Avenue. In the balmy air, it was quite warm until I was nearing the bottom of the slope, when I suddenly felt a chill, and shivered. On the way up the other side, I suddenly felt warm again, and I immediately associated this cold atmosphere with a haunting. I made quite extensive enquiries about the area, and although no-one had heard about any haunting in the vicinity, I did learn that there had been a cottage near the spot, which was demolished in strange circumstances. I was still enquiring about this cottage, when it occurred to me, that on a warm evening as I approached the little river at the bottom of the hill I would walk into the cold air of the water and then back into the warm air. So no haunting! On another occasion, when on leave for 14 days, and all my old mates either away in the forces or at university, I went out for a walk. I wandered into the Cornfield, up the tips and to the top of the street, and then crossed to a very old path which started at the join of Upper and Lower Shanghai, through an iron “Kissing Gate”. This path went up beyond the back gardens of the houses, and turned left along the field to the site of an ‘ancient chapel’. There it turned right and made its way over a hill and eventually dropped down into the Bushwell and joined the Dunvant Road by the ruins of the old Bushwell Colliery. As I had set out some time after 10.00.pm., by the time I reached the highest point of the hill it was midnight. This hill was rounded like a well-formed breast, and as I reached the very top, at midnight, I saw in the moonlight, that there was a circular patch of flat stones right on the summit. Because of my interest in the occult, hauntings and witchcraft, I immediately thought of a magic circle. Situated as it was in the middle of fields, on top of such a high symmetrical hill, I naturally thought of covens and ceremonies or something being held here. I carefully walked around the stones, rather than walking across them, and set off down the other side of the hill in the moonlight.
After a few paces, I heard a noise behind me, a strange sound which produced in my mind a picture of a small, hunchbacked creature moving towards me dragging one leg. I went cold and spun around, only to find nothing there, and I went even colder. I started to make my way down again, and again heard the same noise, which was very frightening. I spun around and again there was nothing to be seen. I continued to walk on, waiting for the noise to repeat itself, and when it did, I continued walking but slowly turned around, but there was still nothing there. I stood and waited to see if the sound would be repeated, and suddenly – two little rabbits came tearing around the hill chasing each other, making the incredible sound that had conjured up such horrendous imaginings. This, and the experience at the brook in Stanmore, made me lose interest in the supernatural for th time being.
My path, however, took me down the hill and eventually I arrived at the Bushwell, passing the ruins of the old colliery and on to the Dunvant Road. This had been the site of a US Army camp during the war, and as kids we used to haunt the area hoping for a hand out of chewing gum from the soldiers in response to our cries of “Got any gum, Chum?” whenever we saw one.
The path continues across the road and down under a railway line (which sadly no longer exists) to Gorwydd Road, just by the boundary of Gowerton and Waunarlwydd, but I turned left and walked back along Cecil Road to the village and made my way home to bed in the early hours. Then demobilisation was approaching.
Demobilisation
As I had joined the Colours on 6th November, 1952, I assumed I would be out on 5th November, 1955. As the university term started early in October, I spoke to the Major about it and he told me I could apply for early release, and he was sure my application would be looked at sympathetically, which implied that he would put a word in for me.
I applied in plenty of time, and had a reply pretty quickly, saying that as I had ‘signed on’ in October 1952 and was entitled to 28 days demobilisation leave, I would, in fact, leave the War Office early in September, some weeks before term started. And so it was. I even had time to spend two weeks with the Swansea Probation Service to see what it was really all about before the term started.
I had been in correspondence with the Social Science Department of the University throughout my Army career, and had also visited several times while on leave, and my place was assured on the course. In fact there were only nine students on the 1955 course.
