CHAPTER 3: INFANTRY PRIVATE 1940
On a hot summer day in July 1940 I presented myself to Warley Barracks, the main training centre of the Essex Regiment. Following my instructions from the War Office, I caught a train to Brentwood, about twenty miles outside London, and walked up a long dusty hill. I felt a mixture of elation and trepidation. Elation because the country was embroiled in a desperate war and at last I was doing something about it. Trepidation because, while I knew little of Army life, it would surely be very different from anything I had encountered in my hitherto sheltered existence at school and Cambridge. Too right, as my later Australian friends would have put it. Too bloody right.
The Army seemed to be expecting me. Not surprisingly, as 425,000 men had joined the services between April and June. By July more than half of British men between twenty and twenty-five were in uniform. Between July and September another 460,000 joined the ranks. The age of compulsory call-up had been raised to thirty-four. Nearly all the new recruits were conscripts, but I was one of a steady trickle of volunteers.
Once inside the grim barracks, I was shepherded into a vast storeroom, relieved of my civvies, and issued with my uniform. Apart from an upgrading when I eventually became an officer, this uniform was to define my external appearance for the next five and a half years. I lived in it, worked in it, fought in it, often slept in it, and wore it on leave. I wore it with pride, if not with distinction. It was always a sure passport for hitch-hiking.
The uniform consisted of coarse khaki battledress, heavy greatcoat with brass buttons, khaki shirts, gaiters, socks, boots, webbing (the means of attaching packs, ammunition, water bottle, etc.), and a gas-mask and plastic gas-cape. Headgear was a round steel helmet, known as a tin hat, and a fore and aft soft hat bearing the regimental badge. Underwear was vests cellular and drawers cellular, and for the winter, vests woollen and drawers long woollen. I found it all very itchy and uncomfortable and far too hot on a warm sunny day. When winter came, I took a strong dislike to the drawers long woollen, and sent them to my Father who was duly grateful.
The brass buttons and the cap badge had to be polished, and the webbing and gaiters had to be buffed up with something out of a tube. All this, however, was as nothing compared with the attention that had to be lavished on the boots. We probably spent more time polishing our boots than on any other single activity. Polishing, rubbing, spitting, polishing again, boning with the handle of a toothbrush until you could see your face reflected in the toecap.
I was issued with a Lee Enfield .303 rifle (and later, after due instruction, with five bullets). I was told it was my best friend. I was commanded to memorise its number, which I did so well that I have only recently forgotten it. My best friend was to be kept clean, bright, and slightly oiled. For this purpose I was given a piece of string called a pull through, and a rectangle of flannelette, known by its dimensions as a four by two. The rifle was inspected daily (as we were) to ensure that it came up to scratch.
As the summer advanced, Winston Churchill rallied the nation with his stirring speeches. We would fight on the beaches and on the hills. We would never surrender. In practice, the new recruits to the Essex Regiment were engaged in polishing their boots and in hours of drill - ‘square-bashing’ - on the parade ground. This seemed about as relevant to Britain's struggle for survival as the mathematical tripos had seemed.
Square-bashing probably had some value in our military training, difficult as it was at the time to discern it. It taught us to respond promptly to orders, to move smartly, and to take pride in working as a team. It helped us to forget that we were ever civilians. And to remember which was our left and which was our right. There are few things more embarrassing than to find that you are facing 180 degrees away from the rest of your squad. Within a month we were despising the parade ground efforts of the next intake — ‘a proper shower' they were.
We did violent exercises in the gym. We were taught how to handle our rifles, adopting the ‘prone position’, and how to shoot — eventually with live ammunition on the rifle ranges down at Purfleet on the Thames. I proved to be a reasonably good shot, though I would never have qualified as a sniper. We learned how to dismantle, reassemble, and fire a Bren gun, our only automatic weapon. (Its name derived from Brno in Czechoslovakia where it was first developed, and Enfield where it was manufactured.) We engaged in bayonet practice, fixing the bayonet to the rifle, and charging a stuffed sack that simulated our German enemy - ‘In, out, withdraw’. We were told that the ‘out’ was the hardest work: you might have to put your foot on the body that you had just speared. The purpose of the ‘withdraw’ motion was to prepare to bayonet the next enemy soldier.
We went on long route marches, twelve or fifteen miles, through the gently undulating Essex countryside. We wore Field Service Marching Order (FSMO), carrying our rifles, and equipment weighing fifty-six pounds. Our packs in no way resembled the comfortable figure-hugging rucksacks of today. They were stiff rectangular objects apparently designed to be as uncomfortable as possible. We marched for fifty minutes in the hour, and rested for ten. When we rested, we raised the feet above the level of the head, so that the blood would drain away from the legs. New Army boots were not very flexible and not necessarily the same shape as your feet. Like many of my comrades, I suffered from painful blisters until my boots and my feet got used to each other.
We learned fieldcraft, including the ability to identify the three types of tree known to the Army — fir, poplar; and bushy-top (which covered everything else). To direct fire on to an enemy target, you would point to the nearest house, bushy-top tree, or whatever, and say ‘reference bushy-top tree, two o’clock, eight degrees’. For the direction, you visualised a clock laid out on the landscape with its centre at your reference point. The distance along the hand of the clock was measured in degrees: holding your clenched fist at arms length, your knuckles subtend respectively three, two, and three degrees. Your extended hand measures twelve degrees from first to fourth finger, nineteen from thumb to little finger —if I remember rightly. If you had exceptionally large or small hands, or exceptionally short or long arms, your platoon would shoot at the wrong target.
The men who trained us were warrant officers (sergeant majors) and NCO's (non commissioned officers). We addressed warrant officers as Sir, and NCO's by rank — Sergeant (pronounced Sar’nt), or Corporal. Commissioned Officers were there to be saluted, to be inspected by, and to preside at weekly pay parade. This was a very formal affair, the officer sitting at a table protected by an armed soldier, and the sergeant major calling our names:
‘Private Liverman!’
‘Sir!’
On which I would march smartly to the prescribed distance from the table, click to attention, salute, and receive my eleven shillings (two shillings a day less a voluntary allotment of three shillings to my parents).
I became a smart and alert saluter - ‘Up, two, three, down!’. On our rare visits to Brentwood, usually to go to the cinema, any officer would be identified at a fair distance. I would then throw back my shoulders as if on parade and deliver so rigorous a regulation salute that the officer would be obliged to stop talking to his girl friend or whatever he was doing and return my salute with equal fervour. I had no malice towards him; it was a conditioned reflex that would have done credit to Pavlov's dogs.
Only once did I have a formal encounter with an officer. It was on an issue of conscience. We were asked our religion so that we could be compelled to attend the appropriate church parade. Also so that our denomination could be inscribed on the plastic identity discs that we wore round our necks in order to facilitate the appropriate burial ceremony.
‘Private Liverman! Religion?’
‘Agnostic, Sar’nt’
‘Put him down as C of E, Corporal!’
I objected, to the point of being summoned to the company captain, who agreed that I could be an agnostic if I insisted. This meant that I was excused church parade, and would be expected to scrub out the latrines while the rest of the company were at their reluctant devotions. Fair enough, I thought. After all, it was not all that long since you could get burned at the stake simply for being the wrong sort of Christian.
I never found out what ceremony, if any, was performed at the burial of an agnostic killed on active service. Or what was erected over his grave in place of a cross.
The warrant officers and senior NCO's at the training depot had been selected for their ferocity. All regular soldiers, many with long service in unpleasant climates, they exuded a perpetual ill temper. To be fair to them, we must have sorely tried their limited patience. To their eyes, a squad of newly arrived ‘rookies’ on the parade ground could not have been a pretty sight. Even after we had ceased to be a complete shambles, the company sergeant major could pick out the slightest error in our turnout or drill from a distance of a hundred yards. He would let loose a stream of invective directed at the unfortunate offender.
However, our particular scourge, in charge of our platoon, was Sergeant Sawle. He had served most of his time in India, where perhaps he had developed a permanent interior discomfort that reinforced his natural bitterness and bad temper. None of us escaped his bile. When reproving me for some minor offence, he would thrust his contorted face within inches of mine, and shout and scream a torrent of abuse. He had a talent for hyperbole: if you had a speck of dust on your battle dress you were ‘smothered in shit’. By comparison, Corporal Bilton, and Lance-Corporal Goodall who was in charge of our barrack room — both cheerful cockneys — were angels of mercy, though their language was just as colourful. The Lance-Corporal shared our Nissen hut, and in the evenings he would regale an envious audience with lurid tales of his sexual exploits.
The language of the NCO's — and of some of my fellow recruits — came as a surprise to me, and to others from more sheltered backgrounds, though it would cause no shock to television viewers of today. The adjective ‘fucking’ would be indiscriminately applied to every person or object, sometimes turning up three or four times in a single sentence. The word could also be used in quite unexpected contexts. Once during manoeuvres, Corporal Bilton memorably invited us to visualise a machine gun ‘fuck in the middle of a field’.
Conversely, those of us who had enjoyed a longer formal education would sometimes use a vocabulary that surprised and amused our fellows. Paul Whitehouse was another Cambridge student, of rather academic appearance and manner. When taking his turn in demonstrating how to operate a Bren gun, he was at a loss for the appropriate term to describe what you did with the magazine cover (you pushed it smartly forward). From his prone position he searched despairingly for what he would probably call the mot juste, before coming out with:
‘You next... SMITE the magazine cover...’
It was the only time I ever saw Sergeant Sawle moved to laughter:
‘Smite, eh? Smite! That’s good. That’s rich. Smite, eh?’
LIFE IN BARRACKS
We were a platoon of thirty or so who trained together, and lived together in our Nissen hut. I don’t know who Nissen was — he sounds Scandinavian — but he invented a good cheap hut (note added for web version: Peter Norman Nissen DSO (1871–1930), was a Canadian-American mining engineer, who developed the prefabricated shelter called the Nissen hut in 1916.). Tens of thousands must have been built to house the military. Even the postwar generation must have seen them enjoying an honourable peacetime retirement in use for storage or for growing mushrooms. They had a raised timber floor and a semi circular roof of corrugated iron. When used to house soldiers, they were fitted with windows, and at either end there was a cylindrical iron stove with a chimney pipe through the roof. We slept in low beds in two rows, each with a limited living space and a locker for our few possessions. The location of your bed became important in colder weather: if you were too far from the stove you had a cold night, and if you were too near you were much too hot.
The beds were simply low wooden trestle boards. On the boards we had a mattress made up of three square sections known as biscuits. We had three blankets — sheets were unheard of in those days before the Army went soft. It was very comfortable once you got used to the coarseness of the blankets. At 6.30 reveille you piled up your biscuits, folded the blankets in the approved manner, and made a bee-line for the ‘ablutions’. There were never enough wash-basins, so it paid to be among the first comers if you were to enjoy your shave without too much competition. Your chin was among those aspects of your person that were rigorously inspected at early morning parade: if you had not had a good shave you would be invited to ‘stand closer to the razor’. There were never any plugs for the basins — if any made their appearance they were promptly pocketed by the first arrivals at the ablutions. As a result, eight hundred plugs were needed for the barracks, instead of the twenty that would have sufficed on the basis of one per wash basin. Seasoned travellers in Asia, who always carry a universal plug, will be familiar with the phenomenon.
The interior of the Nissen hut, like everything else, was inspected daily. A special occasion, celebrated less frequently, was the ceremony of the kit inspection. Every item of kit was folded and laid out with geometrical exactitude. Anything that could be polished, including the soles of our boots and the lid of our boot polish, was brought to a gleaming perfection. Every item had to be accounted for. When it came to drawers cellular, for example, you displayed one pair among your exhibits on the bed: to the inspecting officer you explained in staccato tones ‘One on, one at the wash, Sir’. Legend had it that the best trained regular soldiers always laid out their kit on the bed the night before, and slept on the floor. I can believe it. An obsessive tidiness was often to be found in a certain type of regular soldier. Later in my military career, I remember helping into bed a comrade who had returned to barracks dead drunk. We took off his clothes and left them in a heap. By 6.30 reveille, when he awoke from a deep sleep, he had somehow managed to fold them into the tidiest of piles, with the exception of his trousers which he had put beneath his mattress to ensure they were neatly pressed.
I was intrigued to learn, rather more than fifty years later, that the kit inspection continues to be observed by the Army, like some antique tribal tradition. My friend Keira, moving from Girton to Sandhurst, was regularly subjected to the same ritual, with the refinement that her knickers had to be ironed into a four inch square.
My platoon was a mixed lot, some volunteers, some conscripts. Most of us were in our twenties — a few, like myself, even younger but we had a few really old men in their mid thirties. One was Charles Rosenheim, a gentle solicitor, always known as Rise-and-Shine, which was our daily morning injunction from Lance-Corporal Goodall. Charles was not a natural athlete, and was so bandy-legged that he could not adopt the prone position of a rifleman with any comfort, and was given a special dispensation to adopt his own personal variant. Four and a half years later, as an officer in the South Wales Borderers, he was killed in the Reichwald Forest near the German/Dutch frontier in one of the last big infantry battles of the war.
Another older recruit was Frank White, who suffered terribly from acne. Even worse was his utter failure to jump over the vaulting horse in the gym. He was unable to generate the upward lift required to clear this obstacle — I usually managed to clear it myself, though by a narrow margin and with no great elegance. No-one was allowed to chicken out. Urged on enthusiastically by instructors and fellow recruits, Frank would hurl himself at the horse with ever increasing violence and desperation until at last he struggled over and dropped, battered and exhausted, on the far side. Amazingly, he never broke any bones, but he was covered with cuts and bruises. He would have made an admirable leader of cavalry at the charge of the Light Brigade.
Each day, after the early morning roll call and inspection, followed by a substantial breakfast, we would embark on the day's routine. How we longed for the first morning break — tea and a wad (some kind of bun) — after two or three hours of hard and boring physical activity! And for our dinner at the end of the morning! The food was good, filling and nutritious. Meat stew and plum duff were stand-bys. Bread, marge, and jam scooped out of huge tins, were in liberal supply. We sat eight to a table, and one of us collected the ration for the table. If you scoffed your food fast enough, you could be sure of a second helping: this has permanently impaired my table manners. Many of us grumbled about the food as a matter of principle, though some of us were being better fed than ever before in our young lives. However, no-one ever said anything to the Orderly Officer when he came round the tables with his ‘Any complaints’?’ Mind you, he was accompanied by the Orderly Sergeant who would probably have had your balls for breakfast — I'm sorry for the lapse into military idiom — if you had dared to open your mouth for any purpose other than stuffing food into it.
There were no further meals after tea at five, except for a late snack of bread, marge, and cocoa at the cookhouse. The cocoa, served without milk or sugar, was revolting. Not many of us turned up for this feast. Instead, we bought our own supper in the more congenial atmosphere of the Salvation Army hut or the NAAFI. At either of these establishments you could have a generous portion of sausages and chips for eightpence, with an egg thrown in for an extra tuppence. After that, we toppled into bed and slept the sleep of the physically exhausted.
The atmosphere of those training days in the summer of 1940 is meticulously captured in Henry Reed's two famous wartime poems. He echoes accurately the vocabulary and manner of speech peculiar to Army instructors, as well as the feelings ofthe new recruits. The phrase that he immortalised -‘which in your case you have not got’ - was in frequent use, since most ofthe Army’s equipment had been left behind on the beaches of Dunkirk. Among the material which in our case we had not got was ammunition for the platoon s anti-tank rifle: it probably would have made little impression on a German tank even if it had had ammunition. There was also some swivel for attachment to a rifle that we had not got. In its absence we were unable to carry out a manoeuvre known as piling arms which was a convenient method of standing up the rifles during a halt on the march. So we couldn’t pile arms, though we could shoulder arms, slope arms, order arms, and — on special ceremonial occasions — present arms with a loud slap on the magazine. Rifles in those days had magazines that held five rounds which you fired singly, reloading on each occasion. The automatic rifle was a later invention.
We were regularly detailed for ‘fatigues’, either as a punishment or because someone had to do them anyway. Sometimes the whole platoon was put on fatigues as a penalty for some collective failing, such as an untidy showing on the parade ground. A fatigue could take the form of scrubbing floors, sweeping the parade square, or any other menial task such as helping to prepare the battalion’s meals by peeling the potatoes. The number of potatoes consumed by a battalion at one sitting is beyond belief. If you were so unwise as to demur at some fatigue on the grounds that you had no experience of the task in question, you were told ‘Now’s your chance to learn!’.
Often you would be picked on for some unpleasant duty, or you would be subjected to a torrent of abuse from an N.C.O. for no better reason than that he took a dislike to your face or was simply in a bad mood — probably having himself been picked on by a superior. It wasn’t fair. This gave us a useful lifelong conviction that life wasn’t fair and was never likely to be.