CHAPTER 5: I JOIN THE ARTILLERY
One day an important Brigadier came down to Warley Barracks to interview candidates for a commission. I was on the list for interview. Presumably my records from the University Recruiting Board had followed me around. Nothing I had done as a Private in the Essex Regiment would have qualified me for promotion to Acting Lance-Corporal, let alone Second Lieutenant.
Dressed as smartly as I could, I was inspected by the Company Sergeant-Major before parading for the Brigadier. He radiated strong disapproval of the imminent and undeserved promotion of any of his recent recruits. It had probably taken him twenty years to achieve his present rank. To his evident satisfaction he found that one of my gaiters was unbuckled. ‘Leader of men!’ he growled, with withering scorn.
Securely buckled up, I stood to attention before the Brigadier. He was perusing my records:
‘I see you have a degree in mathematics’, he said.
‘Yes Sir’
‘What are you doing in the infantry? You ought to be in the artillery.’
‘Yes, Sir’
‘I'll see that you get transferred.’
‘Yes, Sir’
I had learned that you never argue, never explain.
Within a few days my posting came through to the 3rd Reserve Medium Regiment at Watford, where I would be trained as a gunner. My brief and inglorious career as an infantry private in the Essex Regiment was over. It couldn’t have lasted more than three months but it seemed like an eternity. The next time I was to encounter the Essex Regiment was to be in the fields of Normandy under enemy fire
Notice in London Gazette: JG Liverman commissioned as 2nd lieutenant, 23 August 1941
WATFORD
Watford is a fairly undistinguished town on the northwestern outskirts of London. It was just far enough out to escape the worst of the Blitz, which was now in full swing. I reported to the Regimental Headquarters which was in the Territorial Drill Hall, acquired a smart artillery cap badge (a gun with the motto UBIQUE), and was allocated to my billet. This was in an empty unfurnished house, requisitioned by the Army, near the railway station. In each room about a dozen of us slept on the floor, and we competed every morning for the limited ‘ablutions’.
Later I was moved to a house where the landlady, anxious to maximise the allowance she got from the Army, allocated a double bed to myself and a gunner called Frame with black greasy hair. We spent an uneasy night, each lying as near as possible to the edge of the bed in an effort to avoid physical contact. We complained to the billeting sergeant, who confirmed that putting gunners into double beds was against Army Regulations. He gave the landlady what he described as a right bollocking, and ensured that Frame and I were duly separated.
Next morning, Sunday, I was enjoying a luxurious lie-in as the sole occupant of the double bed, when I was alarmed by the din of a brass band immediately outside. A stentorian voice ordered me to prepare to meet my God. At first I thought that this was retribution for my night with Frame, which the Old Testament deity might have mistaken for an act of abomination. On second thoughts, I looked out of the window, and recognized the band of the Salvation Army. Ah,well, I sighed, much could be forgiven that organization for the sake of their excellent canteens at every military station.
At some point during my Watford period, my parents took lodgings in the town, to avoid the worst of the Blitz — we had only a few dozen bombs in Watford. They saved their lives by this move, as I shall relate. Meanwhile, I could visit them when I had a free evening. Other lodgers at the house included two brothers who were Czech refugees. They taught me to play quite a good attacking game of chess.
DIGRESSION ON ARTILLERY
There were several distinct kinds of artillery. Coastal and anti-aircraft artillery are self explanatory. Then there were heavy, medium, and field artillery in descending order of magnitude, and the specialist mountain artillery units that were formed to deal with rebellious tribes on the north west frontier. Heavy artillery were really monstrous big guns used for long distance bombardment and to support barrages in set-piece battles, field artillery regiments were mobile units incorporated in brigades or divisions, and medium — as you might guess — were somewhere in between. My war, unlike that of 1914/18, was to be largely a war of movement, in which the field gun came into its own. The technique and training for these three types of artillery were basically the same. A new development was the formation of anti-tank units, with entirely different techniques, and different guns firing high velocity shells. My later career as a gunner officer was to be with field artillery, apart from an unexpected experience as an anti-tank gunner.
The standard field gun coming into use in the British Army was the 25-pounder, replacing the 18-pounder of the first world war. There were not very many of them at that time, certainly not enough to supply second line or training regiments. We trained on medium guns left over from the last war, sixty- pounder guns and six inch howitzers. Guns are long and thin, howitzers are short and fat and are able to lob shells over siege walls. The distinction became blurred: medium regiments were eventually equipped with 4.5 and 5.5 inch ‘gun-hows’. The field regiments continued with their 25 pounders, later to be mounted on tanks for improved protection and mobility. Anti-tank artillery were first equipped with two-pounders (known as pea-shooters), then six-pounders, finally seventeen-pounders.
Why some guns should be described by the weight of their shells, and others by their diameter, is a mystery. To add further confusion, continental artillery was described by its diameter in millimeters, like the famous French seventy-five in the first war, and the infamous German eighty-eight, the most effective all purpose gunnery weapon in the second. So I cannot tell you the diameter of a 25-pounder, though later experience in Normandy showed that it was exactly the same as that of Camembert cheeses, which could be conveniently stored in empty shell cases.
Guns lived in troops of four. A troop commander was a Captain (except for anti-tank troops commanded by a subaltern). In action he wasn’t to be found with the guns (which were under the charge of a subaltern) but up front in an OP (Observation Post) with the leading tanks or infantry. Two troops formed a battery of eight guns. The battery, commanded by a major, was the nation state of the artillery, the unit to which you felt you belonged. Three batteries, twenty-four guns, formed a regiment, commanded by a colonel.
MORE ABOUT WATFORD
Our ancient guns and howitzers were kept in the gun park, a concrete area in the middle of Cassiobury Park, a pleasant open space of grass and trees on the outskirts of the town. We were marching there one dull day when a light aircraft dived through the cloud layer above us. It was easily recognized as a Heinkel reconnaissance plane, the equivalent of our Lysander which flew so slowly that it went backwards in a strong head wind. The Heinkel dropped a string of hundred-pound bombs along the path to the gun park, and went on its leisurely way up through the clouds. A line of craters appeared parallel to our line of march. Everyone was surprised but no-one was hurt.
Our practical training took the form of gun drill. This was broadly the same for medium and field artillery. You did not just point your gun at the enemy and fire (unless you were in an anti-tank unit). At least, you hoped that you didn’t. If you ever found yourself firing directly at a visible enemy, it was a fair assumption that you were losing the war or that someone had made a serious mistake. (It happened to my regiment only once, in Normandy, in the fateful battle of Villers-Bocage). What you normally did was to point the gun in the direction ordered by the GPO (the Gun Position Officer, nothing to do with the Post Office), set the range and angle of sight that he ordered, and fire — usually at the same time as the other three guns of the troop.
Gun drill started with manhandling your gun into position, about forty yards from the neighbouring gun. This was heavy work, particularly with the long 60-pounder: the tubby old six-inch how was a bit easier to trundle. About a hundred yards to the rear the GPO would set up his director — a simplified theodolite — take a sight to each gun, and call out an individual angle to each. The number one of the gun crew would then rotate the gun, with fine tuning from the number three, until the same angle was read off on the gun sights. If all went well, by the end of this manoeuvre, the four guns should be exactly parallel and pointing in the same direction. The quicker the troop could complete this operation, the more effective would be the artillery fire from the troop. Training was therefore directed to speed, so that getting your gun into action became second nature. We took turns at playing the role of each member of the gun crew. The number one, in real war a sergeant, was in charge of the gun. The number two slammed the breech shut and pulled the trigger on the order ‘Fire’. Three was the skilled operator of the crew, sitting at the gun sights and setting the range and angles. Four, five, and six were the honest toilers who heaved the ammunition around. Needless to say, it was dummy ammunition in Cassiobury Park.
Night drill was more of a challenge, the particular hazard being the prospect of tripping over some projecting part of the gun and colliding with a heavy metallic object. The GPO would set up a dim lamp at the director for us to set the sights on, or would indicate an illuminated object — if such existed — far enough away for the same angle to produce a very close parallelism. Later chapters will relate how I used the planet Venus for this purpose on one ill-fated evening in Cairo, and how I used Vesuvius when my troop was in action after the Salerno landing.
Cassiobury Park was also the scene for our motor bike training. In those days, Britain was a leading manufacturer of motor-cycles (no Japanese imports). The Army was equipped with the Norton, a neat job. A young sergeant showed us how to start the engine and how to steer. Either he forgot to tell us how to stop, or we set off with premature enthusiasm, letting out the clutch before the lesson was completed. Soon, a dozen young soldiers were careering about the Park, to the terror of the local inhabitants. We might have continued until our petrol ran out after nightfall, had we not used our initiative. Some simply fell off. Others, including myself, halted our headlong progress by steering as slowly as we could into clumps of bushes.
We had theoretical lectures too. We learned about ballistics, and the difference between observed fire (directed by the OP) and predicted fire (calculated from map readings). For predicted fire, we learned about the ‘met’ data which corrected predicted fire according to the meteorological readings. We were told how all the guns of a regiment, or even of a whole army, could be linked up to fire a murderous barrage to cover the opening infantry attack in a set-piece battle. We were initiated into the mysteries of flash-spotting and sound-ranging, techniques for our specialist artillery units to locate the guns of the enemy, or — unfortunately — vice versa. One of our instructors was BSM (battery sergeant-major) Bradford, a gentle scholarly man, who caused me to revise the traditional image of a sergeant-major.
One of the more tedious routines was guard duty, which came round every three or four nights. There were several strategic points to be protected against saboteurs or German parachutists. On the list were regimental headquarters, ammunition dumps, and the gun park. We wondered what the enemy would have made of our ancient artillery unless they were students of military history. On a 24-hour guard duty, a shift was ‘two hours on and four hours off.’ It still is.
The worst watch was from two to four in the morning. It was very boring, and often very cold, to be standing there with your loaded rifle, or marching to and fro. It was difficult to keep awake, despite the regular pyrotechnics of the London sky, and the occasional crash of a nearer bomb. You could actually fall asleep standing up, though you usually felt yourself going just before your rifle clattered to the ground. Falling asleep while on guard was, of course, a serious military crime. You challenged anyone who approached you, and frightened the life out of any civilians who were taking nocturnal walks. In the guard room you had to remain fully dressed at all times, including keeping your boots on, ready to ‘turn out’ at some unpredictable hour whenever the Orderly Officer of the night should make his rounds.
‘Halt! Who goes there?’
‘Orderly Officer. Turn out the guard!'
The guard turns out and lines up on the left of the sergeant in charge, who reports;
‘All present and correct, Sir! No prisoners.'
The tally of prisoners (usually nil) included any enemy who fell into our hands, and any soldiers confined to barracks for military offences and put in the guardroom for safe keeping. If there were any such, the Orderly Officer had to inspect him, and presumably ask him if he had any complaints. If the Orderly Officer made his rounds fairly early in the night, an air of relaxation might pervade the guardroom, sometimes even extending to the removal of boots. The degree of informality depended on the sergeant of the guard, who might get into serious trouble if we were caught unprepared, for example on the rare occasions when an insomniac Major might take into his head to inspect the guard later in the night. We were more concerned about being caught off guard by our own officers than by the more remote threat of German parachutists.
We were provided with tea and basic rations in the guardroom. I remember the kindness of an elderly Scotsman who lived near the ammunition dump and always brought round a plateful of buttered toast.
I enjoyed more time off duty than in my initial training period at Brentwood. Watford was well equipped with municipal facilities. There was a first-class public library and concert hall, both built in the 1930’s. There were also comfortable modern public baths, known for some reason as slipper baths, where we could wallow in hot water for just threepence, including soap and towel. We could go into pubs when we could afford it.
There were canteens in the town where the troops could spend a relaxed evening. Friendly women from the voluntary services would serve us with tea, or arrange concerts with gramophone records. An attractive woman called Barbara seemed to know a lot about music. She invited me round to her house to listen to her gramophone records. She had a good collection of the classics. There were two small sons who were usually in bed when I called. They never woke up at inconvenient times; perhaps she gave them aspirins. Barbara's husband was abroad somewhere. I did not enquire too closely, considering it her business rather than mine.
Barbara interpreted her task of entertaining the troops in a generous spirit, and I was grateful for the initiation. She liked a musical accompaniment. If one was to achieve any continuity, a good deal of agility was required in the days of the 78 record (average playing time 6 minutes) and the wind-up gramophone. The romantic music of the time was Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto (the theme music for the film Brief Encounter) which I got to know intimately. The relationship continued until I was posted away from Watford. Little time was lost before the duty of listening to Rachmaninov was taken over by a good-looking young officer. Barbara and I remained friends until my posting abroad eighteen months later.
SHOEBURYNESS
Some time that winter I was posted to the 22nd Medium Regiment at Shoeburyness. The 3rd Reserve at Watford was mainly a training regiment, and the 22nd was officially a serving regiment of the line. In practice, there was little difference, and we continued to be trained in our gun drill and other artillery duties. The posting did not improve the quality of life. Watford had been an agreeable town to serve in, civilian billets were comfortable, and I was making encouraging progress with my musical education. Shoeburyness was a gloomy Victorian military depot. The blocks of barrack buildings had an institutional air that was less friendly than the Nissen huts of Warley. Even the climate, on the Thames estuary and near the east coast, was worse. And it was a cold, dank winter.
I made a good friend there in Bob Skelton, a curly-haired Scottish schoolmaster. He had a most endearing way, after two hours drill on a bitter morning, of informing the world at large that he was ‘burrrsting for a piss’. At other times, he would recite Milton at length, rolling his r's in a highly dramatic manner: ‘Him the Almighty hurrrled headlong into the abyss’. Later in Paradise Lost, the word ‘adamantine’ came into it. I thought it was a word of singular beauty.
I was an early riser, and accepted the unofficial role of rousing the barrack room at 6.15 every morning, a quarter of an hour before reveille. This enabled my squad to reach the ‘ablutions’ before the general rush. I was usually popular with my comrades, but not on the morning when I mistook the hour hand on my watch for the minute hand, and vice versa, and called everyone at 3.30 a.m.
While Shoeburyness had nothing to offer, we were a short bus ride from the resort of Southend. The attractions of that resort were somewhat blunted by precautions to withstand the expected German invasion. The sea front was blocked off with barbed wire and with concrete anti-tank obstacles. Most of the town was simply closed down. But there were a few compensations — an excellent public library, and the Cadena tea-rooms.
One day we were marched off to the mudbanks of the Thames estuary where test firing was carried out by the artillery. Non-explosive shells could be recovered from the mudflats, measurements taken, and the guns calibrated. The guns were manned and fired by men who had been doing this throughout their career. Their expressions were wooden, and we were told that most of them had become stone deaf.
Another aspect of our training was learning how to manhandle the guns. At high speed we would wheel them around, hook them up to the ammunition wagon and the trucks that hauled them, and leap into the trucks ready to advance (or retreat). The vehicles stood high off the ground. Although there was a step, you had quite a long stretch unless you had long legs (which in my case I had not got). Considerable strain was put on our braces and on the trouser buttons to which the braces were attached. The buttons were made of brass, and at moments ofstress were liable to cut through the thread that attached them to the trouser waist. The remedy was to replace them with bone buttons, which we bought at our own expense, and sewed on in our own time.
At last, some time in February, my posting came through. I was to report to 122 OCTU at Larkhill. I was about to become an Officer-Cadet. I left Shoeburyness without regret: it was an awful dump. However, looking back on my service in the ranks at Brentwood, Watford, and Shoeburyness, I see it as a rewarding experience that I treasure in distant recollection. I had a strong inclination to remain in the ranks and enjoy the easy comradeship of my fellow soldiers. Against this, I had encountered many officers in the course of my training who were so incompetent that I could hardly fail to do better. I don’t think I believed that my commissioning would ensure victory in the war, but I was damn sure it would help.