CHAPTER 2 WHY I JOINED THE ARMY
Before starting on the story of my Army career, I should explain why I volunteered to be a soldier. Sometimes, in recent years, I have been asked ‘When were you called up?'the idea of actually volunteering to fight in a war may sound strange to contemporary ears. Rather old-fashioned, is it not? Reminiscent of young men in scarlet uniform going out to fight in South Africa; or of their successors, a generation later, rushing to immolate themselves in the fields of Flanders in a patriotic fervour:
‘Now, God be thanked
Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth,
and wakened us from sleeping...'
No, it was not like that at all. I see that it might seem strange that a peaceable person like myself should have volunteered to spend his youth training to kill his fellow men, and then putting those lessons into practice. I was born in 1920, two years after the Great War. In my schooldays, I read about that war. The sentimental heroism of Rupert Brooke's poems was soon eclipsed by the sombre poems of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfrid Owen and by such novels as Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. These in no way concealed the horrors of war. The dominant mood of the early 1930's was one of pacifism. The Oxford Union carried the notorious motion that ‘This House would not fight for King and Country’. The Peace Pledge Union, with mass membership attracted by the eloquent sincerity of the Reverend Dick Sheppard, obtained a vast number of signatures to a pledge against fighting in another war.
By 1935, at the age of fourteen, I would probably have described myself as a pacifist. At school I did not join the Cadet Corps, or whatever it was then called. (We were given three options: military, scouting; or PT — physical training, involving a lot of boring exercises. I joined the PT squad.) I read much pacifist literature. I was impressed by the arguments of Aldous Huxley and Bertrand Russell, by Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, and by the anti-war views of ex-soldiers like A.A.Milne who had been decorated for gallantry in the Great War.
All this began to change with the rise of the dictators in Germany and Italy. Mussolini made war on the defenceless Abyssinians, and Hitler threatened Europe's peace. My Father had a good knowledge of German, largely self-taught. He would sit, glued to the wireless set, listening to Hitler’s rallies at Nuremberg and elsewhere. I didn't understand many of the words, but the purport was unmistakeable. First there would be the set piece introduction as the crowd waited for the Fuhrer, tens of thousands of voices chanting Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil. Then Hitler would start his two hour speech, beginning with a recital of the wrongs done to Germany — a long catalogue recited in a calm, boring voice, then gradually rising to a frenzy as he accused the Jews of manipulating the country's ruin. Triumphantly he promised to lead the Fatherland back to its former glory and to a Reich that would last a thousand years. ‘Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer’ roared the crowd.
No-one listening to these performances could have been in the slightest doubt that the world was faced with a dangerous madman. Here was a monster who would lead his country into wars of aggression and into cruelty of every sort. The idea that reason or passive resistance could stand in the way of this tyrant was ludicrous. Pacifism made no further progress in my thoughts.
My last three years at school were passed under the threatening shadow of war. Mussolini's African aggression was followed by the Spanish Civil War. Franco's military revolt against the elected Republican Government was supported by German and Italian arms and bombers. Britain and France followed a policy of non-intervention which in effect gave free rein to the Fascists. If I had been a couple of years older, I might — I hope I would — have volunteered to fight in the republican cause.
MUNICH
I was due to go up to Cambridge in October 1938. In September Chamberlain did his nefarious deal to deliver the Czechs to Hitler. He came back from Munich waving his piece of paper with ‘Herr Hitler's signature' that was to guarantee ‘Peace in our time.’ From the British nation rose a great sigh of relief, so the history books tell us, and contemporary records confirm. Not long after, when the implications of the Munich agreement sunk in, relief was succeeded by disillusion. This was underlined when Hitler disregarded the pact and marched into Prague the following April. Tn our family, at least, we regarded Munich as a national disgrace from the moment of Chamberlain's triumphant return. We felt certain that it could do no more than postpone war, probably for not very long.
The threat of war had been real enough. In September 1938, trenches were dug in the London parks as a protection against bombing. We dug holes in our gardens and erected Anderson shelters (named after the Home Secretary of the day) in which we would shelter when the bombs rained down. The bust of W.G. Grace was removed for safekeeping from the Long Room at Lord's, and the start of University term was postponed. (Curiously, a year later when war was actually declared, term was not postponed.)
Gas masks were issued to everyone. I volunteered to help to hand them out from a nearby depot. They came in three sizes (like Marks and Spencers underwear) — large, medium, and small. My task was to assess the right size for each applicant who queued up at the depot, and to issue the appropriate mask in the khaki shoulder bag that was to become so familiar an accessory.
After the Munich pact, all this activity subsided, term started at Cambridge, and I began my University life under an ever darkening war cloud. Hitler sent his troops into Austria which he claimed was part of Germany anyway. Jewish and other refugees found their way to England. In the Christmas vacation I worked at a refugee camp at Dovercourt on the east coast, where Austrian children, sent over by their parents for safety, were accommodated in bitter weather in a holiday camp with no heating. I remember that hot water bottles were issued, and that mine froze one night. One girl walked to her suicide in the icy sea.
Britain's determination to resist further aggression by Hitler still seemed to rest on shaky foundations. Could we trust Chamberlain, and Halifax the Foreign Secretary, to stand up to the dictators? Could we even trust the opposition? Lingering pacifism in the Labour Party contributed to their opposition to conscription in the spring of 1939. I resigned from the Party on this issue.
I hope that this background explains why I volunteered as soon as war was declared. All my friends from school and university did the same, with the sole exception of Alan Russell who courageously kept to his principles as a conscientious objector.