A soldier’s personal account of World War 2 from 12th December 1939 – 2nd March 1946

Part Five – Freezing

All the time we had been in Cheshire there had been snow, but in the early part of February it began to fall more heavily and continued for days on end until the roads and railways became blocked by drifts of ten to fifteen feet in depth. The situation reached serious proportions and caused the complete dislocation, in many parts of the country, of all the road and rail traffic, holding up food and vital war supplies.

Cheshire was one of the most heavily affected areas and the order went out from the Western Command that all military training was to be temporarily suspended in order that the troops could be used for clearing the drifts. We ourselves were affected because the supply depot from which we drew our rations was at Leek and the road between Leek and Macclesfield was completely blocked by deep drifts. Our task, together with the 6th Loyals, was to clear this road from the Macclesfield end whilst another unit were to set out from Leek in an attempt to meet us half-way.

We were delighted at the prospect of this operation. It would be a welcome change from the square-bashing and stretcher drill and apart from that we would have time off from shining buttons, polishing boots and being ‘properly dressed’. There were no restrictions on dress, we were allowed to wear anything we liked in order to keep warm and on the first morning, armed with shovels, we fell in wearing gaiters and puttees, scarves, gloves, balaclava helmets and everything we could lay our hands on that was warm. I think we laid it on even more thickly than necessary for Staff–Rose’s benefit and the motley crew that stood in front of him on parade that morning must almost have resulted in his having an attack of apoplexy.

During the next two weeks we must have shifted hundreds of tons of snow. From early morning until dusk we dug in drifts miles long and sometimes three times our own height. We uncovered lorries and cars by the dozen, some of them completely buried where they had been abandoned by their drivers when the blizzard had overtaken them and made it impossible for them to continue their journeys. We took our food with us and had tea bought up to us twice a day in insulated containers.

After the first few days every stitch of clothing we possessed was wet through and since there were insufficient facilities in the billet to dry some thirty greatcoats, battledresses, pairs of boots and socks, we had to rely on the method of placing our clothes over the blankets while we slept and allowing the warmth of our bodies to dry them, but it was a slow process with the thick khaki cloth of our uniforms and there was no alternative to putting on cold, damp clothes the next morning.

We came to the conclusion that in spite of our eagerness to dig snowdrifts as a change from squad drill, we might only have succeeded in leaping out of the frying pan into the fire. In any case it was by no means pleasant turning out in the morning and setting off in an icy wind, sitting in the back of an open 15-cwt truck, wearing wet clothes and on one occasion it snowed heavily while we were out and re-blocked the road behind us which we had cleared only two days previously.

We had to abandon our task of clearing the road to Leek in order to dig ourselves out and by the time we had reached the truck waiting to take us back it was growing late and was quite dark by the time we reached the billet. It had not improved matters to have had no really hot food during our snow-digging operations but with no fresh rations arriving it became necessary for us to live on iron rations – bully beef and biscuits – and when we returned once more to the old routine training programme it was not without a feeling of relief.

We had good friends in Macclesfield. During the bitter weather it was almost intolerable on picket duty. The beat outside the gate was no more than ten yards and it was impossible to keep warm during the two hours of gate duty with such a short distance in which to march up and down. One’s feet and hands seemed to freeze into solid blocks of ice and once, when I was on duty, my boots actually did freeze to the pavement when I stood still for a ten-minute rest.

The people who lived in the house on the opposite side of the road were wonderful. On each of the three shifts, from 8 to 10, 10 to 12, and 12 to 2 at night, one of the members of the family crossed the road to give the picket a quart jug full of steaming hot cocoa and a mug and although such a practice was a serious violation of all King’s Rules and Regulations, which seemed to be a religion where Rose was concerned and towards which he was extremely devoted, even he became human enough to turn a blind eye to the jug, hidden hurriedly behind the gate at his approach. But it was the OC himself who finally over-ruled Rose’s refusal to relax standing orders regarding picket duty and allowed us, for the duration of the arctic spell of weather, to stand in the hall-way at night and changed the tour of duty from two hours on and four hour off to one on and two off in order that we should not have to endure the cold for such long periods.

I never knew the names of the people who lived in the house opposite our billet in Park Lane, but I shall always remember them and their kindness and be grateful to them for it.
There were other people who were good to us too. Passers-by who slipped packets of cigarettes and blocks of chocolate into our hands as we stood on duty and those who bore us a thought and bade us a cheerful and friendly ‘goodnight’ as they passed, homeward bound, in the dark. They will never know how I appreciated their gestures but I shall never forget their little kindnesses and the spirit in which they were granted.

With the belated coming of Spring came a new development in the war situation and the ‘phoney’ war became a ‘shooting’ war. The sideshow that had been provided by the fighting between Russia and Finland was brought to an end by Russia’s overwhelming supremacy of arms and manpower but almost immediately following the armistice, Hitler’s storm-troopers marched into Denmark and invaded Norway.

The Finnish flare-up had resulted in the partial mobilisation of the Unit but the end of the struggle in that country brought no stand–down order and within a few days of the invasion of the Scandinavian countries we were once more under orders to make an imminent move. The first seven-day leave to which we had all been looking forward with excited anticipation was cancelled and instead we were rushed off in batches to spend a few days at home.

Shouting a word or phrase, in rapid succession, twenty-five times, on air, isn't funny. Whatever the word or phrase. But if the man insists, try repeating - '£630,000 a year', 630,000 times. Now that IS a joke.

Just got back from Lille, where I spent a couple of days. Although in France (just), it has a strong taste if Belgium about it, which is no bad thing. Reminded me of Antwerp: the cobbled streets, large squares, steep gabled roofs, ancient tottering chimney stacks, brown beers, hand-made chocolates, mussels avec frites and all only one hour twenty minutes from central London on the carbon-friendly train. Pity that an irritating, though sadly not altogether unexpected, forty-minute delay due to problems in the Ashford signal box, marred the outward journey. Thankfully, no such difficulties on the other side of the Channel where they seem to have cracked the art of running a railway.

Like most cities visited for the first time, it wasn’t exactly as imagined. Better still - it was better. Coming from a heavy industrial past, Lille still has the air of a working town, a living city rather than a themed museum, which I much prefer. That said, it does have pockets of culture, the ace up its sleeve being the Palais des Beaux Arts, second only to the Louvre in France.

This museum contains many works plundered (the guide book's word, not mine) by Napoleon during his many military excursions into neighbouring countries. Due maybe to his lack of vertical dimension, the little conqueror compensated by looting really large paintings, many the height of your average semi-detached. Stepping back to admire the brushwork must have been fraught with dangers for the painters concerned, as they must have surely needed some kind of scaffolding to reach the top of the giant canvases.

Today, they would have the added issue of European health and safety legislation to abide by. Bummer! First having to strap on a safety harness over a high-vis jacket, topped off with a hard hat. Not forgetting protective gloves, goggles and face mask: all this before putting brush to canvass. Double bummer! Enough to curb the enthusiasm of your most enthusiastic artist, even one as prolific as Peter Paul (and Mary) Rubens, who was well represented here and right up there in the size contest.

Lille also boasts a dazzling selection of shops, including many high quality fashion stores. The windows, particularly those featuring women’s clothing, were bursting with styles not seen on your average provincial high street here. The colours and designs displayed that particular French expertise for flair and elegance, although with prices to match it wasn’t surprising that these garment weren’t much in evidence on the daytime streets or in the lunchtime cafes and bistros, the majority of the population decked out in the early 21st uniform found in most western cities from LA to Moscow and beyond. Although, to be fair, even the most glamorous females in town probably make do with sensible for the office, or slip into jeans and something warm to do the weekday shop at Carrefour. Maybe you have to be on the town on Friday and Saturday night to see chic in action. And with two days spent solidly pounding the cobbles, not one Starbucks or Costa Coffee spotted.

A little gem discovered, the geological and natural history museum, although the credit for this find has to go to the guidebook. Small, by capital city standards, with its illuminated display cases stuffed, not inappropriately, with stuffed birds and animals, it’s a throwback to a pre-technological age, with hardly an inter-active buttons to press. Thankfully, the study of the world’s living creatures has moved on from the shoot and stuff ‘em days of yesteryear, but it's already too late for these specimens and denying them to visitors to the museum won’t bring them back. If you can forgive the slaughter, it’s a rare chance to view exotic plumage and colours up-close. Norman Bates would feel very much at home here.

Lille? With some great restaurants, cafes, museums, shops, friendly locals who take time to explain a menu or point a visitor in the right direction and when it’s time to leave, home in three hours… well worth a look.

The man in the mac said you've got to go back.

And

the banker never wears a mac
in the pouring rain - very strange.

Tell all of my friends, I don't have too many, just some raincoated lovers puny brothers.

When was the last time you saw anyone with a neatly folded Mac over his or her arm? The chances of seeing anyone carrying a raincoat in a once familiar manner are mighty slim, especially young men sporting neat Brylcreemed hair with a side parting. Gone forever, together with city gents in bowlers and AA men that saluted.

Reminiscences of Macs reminds me of the time that Phil Oakey of the Human League popped in to see my designer colleague back in the 80’s. Waiting for Ken to arrive, Philip and I were discussing various aspects of graphic design. At one point he asked if we (the company) had a Mac. I looked out through the window at the clear blue skies and bright sunshine and for a couple of beats, wondered why he would possibly enquire after an item of waterproof clothing on such a day. Luckily, on the verge of offering him a substitute umbrella, my embarrassment was spared when it dawned on me that he was talking of computers, not coats. Phew! I was able to inform Phil that, no, we had not yet invested in a non-shower proof Macintosh.

A soldier’s personal account of World War 2 from 12th December 1939 – 2nd March 1946

Part Four – Spit and polish

Reveille was at six o’clock and before breakfast at seven we had to have washed, shaved, polished our boots and buttons, folded our blankets, laid out our kit, swept the floors and got the barrack room ready for inspection. Our blankets had to be folded exactly according to regulations and every man in the unit had to have them the same shape and size. Our webbing equipment was placed on top of the blankets in precisely the same manner in each case, so that every man’s layout was identical. The brass work on the packs and straps had to be polished until it reflected like a mirror. Spare boots, laid out soles upwards, were required to be in good repair, highly polished, each one with the correct number of studs and every stud clean and shining – the smallest speck of rust being a punishable offence.

After breakfast, at half-past-seven, we fell in for first parade. We were then subjected to a rigorous inspection, from the backs of our cap badges (which had to be polished as brightly as the front), down to a close scrutiny of our boots to ensure that all the studs were present in the soles and the instep polished.

This inspection, carried out meticulously by Staff-Rose, was merely a preliminary, for we were then inspected for a second time by the OC. The inspection complete, the entire unit, with the exception of the duty men, was marched off to a recreation ground some half-a-mile away for squad drill. Here we spent a solid two hours marching up and down, turning, wheeling, halting, saluting, standing to attention, standing at ease, marching in slow time, quick time, double time, until we felt fit to drop.

For the entire two hours we were goaded on and lashed by Rose’s tongue, bellowing at us to ‘Keep your heads up. Keep your chins in. Swing your arms. Pick up your feet. Keep your chests out. Stomachs in. Keep your dressing. Keep your eyes straight ahead. Halt! Stand at ease! Stand easy! Paraaaaaade shun! Quick march. Right wheel. Left wheel. About turn. Mark time’. It seemed never ending. But at least we were marching back to the billet. Now we had lectures. Lectures on hygiene and sanitation. Lectures on first aid. Lectures on discipline. Lectures on drill. Then outdoors again, into the grounds of Highfield House to erect tents and marquees only to take them down and put them up again. Or gas drill – putting on respirators, taking them off and putting them on again until it took no longer than two-and-half seconds. When we had mastered that we put them on again and kept them on while we went out to run a mile round the streets. Stretcher drill, rifle drill, gas drill, squad drill and lectures in endless succession, day after day, week in and week out.

We began to go out on route marches. For these we wore battle-order – small pack, respirator, gas-cape and steel helmet. We began with short marches of about five miles and over a period of a few weeks working up to twenty miles. Wednesday afternoons, after a few weeks, were set aside for recreational training which almost always took the form of a five-mile cross-country run and I remember one afternoon when we ran across ploughed fields more than ankle deep in snow, frozen so hard that we were in constant danger of breaking or dislocating our ankles.

After we acquired some football boots from some comfort fund or other we were allowed to have a few games of football instead of cross-country running. Every Thursday afternoon we were marched about a mile-and-a-half to the other side of the town to bath at the local Public Baths. All highly spitted and polished up we marched through the town on Sunday mornings too, on a ceremonial church parade, led by the OC under the disciplinary eye of Rose, who never failed to look like a recruiting poster.

The only method whereby it was possible to escape the ceaseless round of training was to be on duty, but to be on duty was many times worse than training. For the first hour of the day, from six to seven, it was just the same as every other day, washing and shaving, tidying, polishing and sweeping. Then, immediately after breakfast the work began with the scrubbing of all plates, mugs, pots and pans, scrubbing the cookhouse floor, the passages and stairs, right through the whole house. Apart from the kitchen, all the scrubbing was done with cold water and we always tried to avoid the task of scrubbing the porch and front hall where the door was always kept open and the frosty air soon made your hands chapped and sore, stiff with cold and pain.

There was the coal to be carried into the cookhouse, the potatoes to be peeled and vegetables to be prepared for dinner. With the arrival of the ration lorry there were sacks and boxes to be carried into the store and we acted as mess orderlies at meal times. In addition to all these fatigues there was also picket duty to be carried out and from eight o’clock in the morning we took our turns at standing at the gate, working in shifts of two hours on and four hours off during the twenty-four hour tour of duty. For this we had to be properly dressed, wearing greatcoats buttoned at the neck, with the collar down, belts and gaiters, with boots, buttons and cap badges polished to the highest possible degree of brilliance.

At night we slept in the mess-room, just inside the front entrance during our four-hour break and it was necessary to carry our blankets and pallaises downstairs for this purpose. Although it is customary in the Army to be given at least twelve hours off duty following a twenty-four-hour picket, this was never granted under the Rose regime and the following morning, red-eyed from lack of sleep and still feeling stiff in the joints from standing in the snow at the gate for half the night, we were once more on parade with a full day of training before us.

But, although life at Highfield House was grim, our off-duty hours brought their compensations. The town of Macclesfield was a pleasant enough place. An industrial town of some 35,000 people, the larger proportion of which were normally employed in the many silk mills (which included such well known names as ‘Courtalds’ and ‘Brocklehurst’) and is also notable for being the headquarters of ‘Hovis’. It is located in pleasant scenic surroundings amongst the foothills of the Penine chain and its people were most friendly and hospitable towards us. There are three cinemas, at the largest of which, the ‘Majestic’, a regular Sunday evening concert was held for the troops stationed in the town. A forces canteen, the Union Jack Club, catered for our needs in the way of snacks and suppers and provided a writing and reading room, a piano, a gramophone, radio and billiard table and we spent many of our off duty hours there. Keith Priestly, Harold Lewington and I were ‘adopted’ by a Mrs Smith, one of the helpers at the Club and spent most Sundays and many evenings at her home.

Upon our arrival at Macclesfield the unit was still below its established strength. We had only one tradesman, Bill Stent the carpenter, compared with the two carpenters and one each bricklayer, painter and tinsmith on our establishment and we had neither transport nor drivers. After a week or two in Cheshire, these began to arrive at intervals as individual postings.

One night I was standing on duty at the gate and out of the darkness there appeared the dim outline of a soldier in full marching order and carrying a rifle. I halted him, demanding to know ‘who went there’ and was informed that he was posted to us as our second carpenter. His accent was familiar and I asked him from which part of Hampshire he came. His home was at Winchester and he had, in fact, been posted from the Hampshire Regiment. His name was Desmond Taylor, known from that day onwards as ‘Dizzy’ and accepted without hesitation as ‘one of the boys’. After Dizzy, in quite rapid succession, there arrived Roy Brown, bricklayer, and Bob Sisson, painter, both posted from the Border Regiment and the first members of the unit who were not Hampshire men (apart from the OC ‘Wimpey’, who was Welsh) and then Bert Stevens, the tinsmith, from the RAMC Depot at Crookham.

It was at about this time that around twenty new recruits arrived for training and to form the nucleus of a new Hygiene Section that was to be formed. By this time the Territorial members of the unit had completed over five months whole-time service and the seven of us who had joined the Army in December had completed two months and were almost fully trained. These new recruits seemed to boost our morale because their presence in our billet enabled us to adopt a superior attitude and refer to them as ‘rookies’, spin them ‘old soldiers’ yarns and generally put on an old sweat act for their benefit.

They brought home to us the fact that we had got past the raw recruit stage, that we were beginning to know the ropes, get over our homesickness and were really settling down in our new environment and we felt much better for it. We still had our training to do and we did it with the new arrivals, but it was they who made the most of the mistakes at squad drill and who, in consequence, attracted most of the attention from Rose and we were thankful indeed for the respite which their coming had given us.

To be continued.

A soldier’s personal account of World War 2 from 12th December 1939 – 2nd March 1946

Part Three – North, to Macclesfield

In due course we were fitted out with our uniforms, equipment and the rest of our kit. The new, stiff army boots by no means improved the condition of our feet and there was very little skin left on our toes and heels at the end of a week. Our squad drill training had been reduced to four hours a day by now and we were receiving two hours of lectures every day – one on first-aid because we were in the RAMC and the other on hygiene and sanitation because we were in a Hygiene Section.

By Christmas we had our first pay parade and discovered the four shillings we received with our calling-up papers were deducted from our first week’s pay. We had, by now, learned to march in step and had mastered one or two elementary drill movements. But, most significant of all, we had learned to salute sufficiently well for Staff-sergeant Rose to decide that we were ready for picket duty and could salute any officer who happened to pass by or through the gate at which we would stand on guard, without bringing disgrace and shame down upon his close-cropped head.

And so I found my name on Part One orders as a member of the picket on duty on Christmas Day. It is doubtful if I shall ever spend a more miserable Christmas than the one I spent in the cold, bare precincts of Hamilton House with a staff-sergeant, a corporal, and four other privates, spending alternately two hours at the gate watching people going to their Christmas parties, and four hours inside the house sitting on a form trying to derive some heat from the broken gas fire.

I did spend the afternoon, evening and night of Boxing Day at home, but had developed such a heavy cold that I was unable to eat the Christmas dinner saved for me, retiring early to bed. The following day we were leaving Southampton for Macclesfield in Cheshire. I was by no means sorry. Life at Hamilton House had been far from pleasant with home barely fifteen minutes walk away. Three hundred miles away the contrast may not appear so great or so dispiriting.

Only our own section, the 25th, were travelling North. The 23rd were to remain at Southampton and were expecting to leave in the near future for France. Captain Beck did not accompany us either. Since we had joined the unit a fortnight earlier, he had been posted elsewhere and replacing him as OC we had Lieutenant Wybourne. ‘Wimpey’, as our new officer came to be known had, on inspecting his new unit, decided that various reforms were necessary, one of them being the issue of straw paliasses to sleep on and we were looking forward to the promise of our first good night’s sleep since we joined the Army once we reached Macclesfield.

We left shortly after breakfast, marching in full marching order and carrying our kitbags on our shoulders to the Central Station. Our compartments on the train were reserved for us and we were more than glad to get aboard out of the cold, remove our kit and sit down. We had not yet grown accustomed to wearing full equipment.

It was dark by the time we arrived at Macclesfield and the snow, which had been falling steadily almost ever since we had crossed London, had reached a depth of some six inches on the station platform when we got off the train. It had been a very tiring journey. We had to manhandle all the unit equipment at Waterloo and again at Euston. We had eaten only two corned-beef sandwiches and drunk one mug of tea since breakfast and although railway compartments are designed to seat eight passengers, they are not intended for each to be carrying a kit bag and complete set of webbing, nor wearing army boots and greatcoats. Consequently accommodation had been extremely cramped and the atmosphere stuffy. Manhandling our unit equipment and stores from the train onto the station platform, plodding about in the snow and working in the blackout, was a difficult task.

We marched, slipping and sliding, up the hill from the station, unable to keep step and not able to see where we were going in the darkness, but not particularly caring so long as it led to food, drink and sleep. We arrived at the local drill hall, in peacetime the headquarters of a Territorial battalion of the Cheshire regiment, but now occupied by the 6th battalion Loyal Lancashires, who had cooks and mess orderlies awaiting our arrival with hot stew and cocoa. The cooks and mess orderlies had neither wings, nor halos, much to our surprise!

Our meal over we fell in and marched off once more and it was only a short distance, trudging through the snow, to the building that was to be our billet. After the long and weary day the new billet proved to be very nearly the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was a derelict silk mill, stripped of all its machinery, leaving just an empty shell of a building some four or five storeys high. The entire mill, with the exception of our large room on the second floor, was occupied by part of the 6th Loyals. The second floor room was reserved for us. I have seen very few places more utterly unfit for human habitation.

The walls were of bare brick which bore slight evidence of having once, in the dim and distant past, been whitewashed. The floor was of wood, uneven and broken. There were no windows. The frames were there, but practically every pane of glass was missing and the icy air swept across the floor in gusts that brought with it snow, still falling steadily outside.

We threw off our equipment, got out our blankets and made our beds on the bare wooden floor, draping our greatcoats over the blankets and using our packs as pillows. We crawled between the blankets still wearing all our clothes except for battledress and boots, wrapping our scarves around our heads as protection against the icy, cutting draught. We were all in a state of semi-exhaustion, miserable and shivering with the cold. Within five minutes the whole unit was fast asleep.

The next morning we discovered that we had to go downstairs into the yard to wash and shave in cold water in a temperature below freezing point and into the bargain, compete with half of the Loyals battalion for the possession of the taps. Somehow we all managed to complete our ablutions in time to fall in and march back to the drill hall for our breakfast, where we found that two tabled had been set aside for us whilst the rest of the hall was occupied by the Loyals. We decided that the vision we had the night before of angels in the cookhouse must have been due to the condition of delerium brought on by our extreme hunger and fatigue, because judged by any standards, the breakfast was shocking and the tea tasted overpoweringly of onions!

The number of complaints that were lodged during the next few days by the Hygiene Section about everything – food, billets, ablution facilities, the noisy hooliganism of the Loyals – must have had the desired effect, because Wimpy, now promoted to Captain, announced that he had succeeded in acquiring a new billet for us and a week after our arrival in Macclesfield, we moved. The new billet was a requisitioned house, standing in about two acres of ground in Park Lane on the outskirts of the town and known as Highfield House. It was here that we would now live, eat, work and train entirely on our own as a self-contained unit.

Highfield House proved to be an infinitely better billet than either the old mill or Hamilton House. With our own cook, Geoff Farmer, working in our own cookhouse, which, together with rations, was supervised by Staff-sergeant Morley, an old regular Army cook, the quality of the food improved tremendously. We were issued with straw
palliases too, which had all the comfort of a feather bed and a spring mattress after sleeping in direct contact with the floor.

The one big snag, so far as the billet was concerned, was that we had to wash and shave in an outhouse where there was no illumination of any sort and since we were required to be shaved before it was light on these cold winter mornings, we soon learned to perform this operation by touch and without the aid of mirrors. We now had, once more, to mount our own picket and this meant doing a twenty-four hour duty every third day now that we no longer had the 23rd Section to share it with us as they had at Hamilton House.

Training now began in real earnest. And Staff-sergeant Rose was in his true element.

To be continued.

Gilbert and Sullivan. Not my cup of tea really. Or so I thought. Then, a
couple of years ago, I was persuaded to go along to the ENO’s production of
The Pirates Of Penzance at the Coliseum; not dragged, kicking and screaming,
but strolling, with measured breaths and no expectations. I left the
theatre, if not converted, then pleasantly surprised. This, due mainly to
the direction, which added a mild dollop of 21st century sauce to the
performances, with certain members of the cast, in particular the Pirate
King, camping it up for England. This may not have pleased the purists, but
for agnostics like myself, gave the piece extra spice.

Yesterday I went back for a second helping, this time, to Jonathan Miller’s
production of The Mikado. Miller’s boldest move is to abandon Japanese
costumes and dress the cast in 30’s inspired, western, black and white
outfits. Western, not as ‘Oklahoma’, but any film starring Fred and Ginger.
He pulls this off with ease, as the Japanese storyline is but a wafer thin
veneer, only there as an excuse for some comical 19th century - completely
non PC by today’s criteria - Japanese names and a plot that relies heavily on
gags about beheadings for the crime of ‘flirting’: which given the
punishments metered out by certain sovereign states and terrorist groups
today, has a dark and current undertone that with some reflection, may well
wipe the grin off the face a little sooner than W.S Gilbert had originally
intended.

At the time of creation, as well as to entertain, Gilbert and Sullivan used
their work to comment on and gently satirise aspects of life and government
in Victorian Britain, albeit in a polite, unrevolutionary way. In this
adaptation, Miller consciously goes for contemporary relevance, with changes
to some lyrics and dialogue, getting laughs where the original 19th century
libretto could well fall flat. But with certain exceptions, the songs remain
the same and after all, it’s the melodies that people come to hear. And I
imagine that those people who flock to the Coliseum in 2008, come, for the
most part, from the same place that they did over a century ago - middle
England: their hearts beating just a little quicker as they gently sway and
tap silently along to the music.

For this is not demanding stuff. No southern melodrama and tragedy on the
same scale as that served up by Puccini; or the precocious brilliance and
demanding intricacy of Mozart: nor the overblown, overlong, Arian folk tales
of Wagner. No. William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan wrote light opera for
the English, not even British, middle classes. The working class had the
music hall and Marie Lloyd with ‘A Little Of What You Fancy’; the middle
class had the Savoy Theatre, D’Oyley Carte and ‘Three Little Maids From
School Are We’; the upper class…? Well, they never were all that bothered
about culture, high, middle, or low, unless it involved huntin’, shootin’,
and fishin’, don’t you know, what?

So, from a time before two World Wars, the loss of Empire, scientific and
social changes on a then unimaginable scale, the emergence of a new world
order, terrorism and death metal, is it possible to get a flash out of
Gilbert and Sullivan today? Yes, if for two-and-a-half hours, not including
the interval, you wish to suspend reality, forget this troubled world and
indulge in a good old-fashioned sway and tap.

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Banksy? Laughing. All the way to the bank. And backsy.

A soldier’s account of World War 2 from 12th December 1939 – 2nd March 1946

Part Two – Training

After we had some tea we were issued with three blankets each and escorted upstairs by a corporal to our barrack rooms. These were two small rooms about fifteen feet square and entirely bare. Blackout boards were up at the windows to prevent the light from the unshaded bulb shining into the street. Apart from the blackout board and the electric light bulb there was absolutely nothing in the room. The walls were distempered, the spotlessly clean fire-grate empty and the well-scrubbed floor boards uncovered. The place was like an icebox and we shivered at the sight of it.

We were shown how to make a bed on the floor with our three blankets and then taken back to the recreation room to spend the rest of the evening until bedtime. The recreation room turned out to be much the same as our barrack room with its bare walls and floor boards, but it did contain a wood trestle table, two forms and a dilapidated gas fire which served to warm anyone who could manage to get within a couple of feet of it.

The billet was occupied by two Hygiene Sections, the 23rd and the 25th, but since they were both local Territorial units and the accommodation at Hamilton House was very limited, most of the men were sleeping at their own homes and by the time we arrived in the recreation room the only other people in the billet besides ourselves were the picket and a fellow on CB. Two of the pickets were sitting by the fire when we entered attempting to toast a piece of cheese by holding it in front of the flames on an enamel plate. They introduced themselves as Private Jack Owens and Private Bruce Allen.

We seated ourselves on the forms and the door opened to admit a scruffy looking individual in denim overall trousers and shirt–sleeves carrying a bucketful of dirty, soapy water in one hand and a dripping scrubbing brush in the other. Spotting us, he grinned broadly and said ‘Well, bugger me – rookies! How are you suckers?’ This was the fellow on CB and he had just completed the task of scrubbing all the staircases and corridors in the building and now had to change into his best uniform and report to the orderly sergeant in full marching order, properly blancoed and with all the brasses perfectly polished before he was allowed to dismiss from his punishment task and go to bed. I recognised him as Brian Keats, the younger brother of Ken Keats with whom I had once worked in a solicitor’s office. I introduced myself and after he had duly presented himself to the orderly sergeant and had been dismissed, he came back for a chat before we went to bed.

I will never forget my first night in the Army. We undressed down to our vests and pants and got into bed, putting our overcoats over the blankets for additional warmth, wrapping our shoes in our jackets to use as pillows. Sleep seemed impossible: a pair of shoes for a pillow and a bare wooden floor for a mattress are not exactly the height of luxury when only the previous night I had slept in my own cosy bed at home. The blankets were rough next to the skin and were completely inadequate in keeping out the bitter, draughty coldness. I tossed and turned, sleeping restlessly for short periods, waking frequently with my head aching, my neck feeling as though it were broken, my hips sore from lying on the hard floor and shivering from the cold.

I heard a tramcar rattle past and realised with dismay that it was morning, feeling more tired than when I had gone to bed. It was still pitch dark when we were roused from our beds by the orderly corporal and it was difficult to imagine that it was not still the middle of the night. Then it seemed we were expected to do everything at once. The seven of us were ushered into a room about the size of the average bathroom where we had to wash and shave in icily cold water whilst being badgered the whole while to fold our blankets and stack them neatly and uniformly in our bed spaces, sweep the floors and get dressed before the first parade at seven o’clock.

We paraded in the drill hall at the back of the building where we discovered that all the other members of the two sections who slept out had congregated. We were fallen in, the roll was called and we were dismissed for breakfast. The dining room was a large, cold room, as bare as the rest of the building, with long, wooden tables and forms. We queued up at a table on one side of the room where two mess orderlies ladled bacon and tinned tomato out onto our plates, handing us a hunk of bread, then filled our enamel mugs from a tea-urn on the mantelpiece. The atmosphere was noisy and boisterous, with fellows shouting to each other from one end of the room to the other, laughing and joking and comparing notes about the previous evenings activities, leaving us newcomers feeling strange, ill-at-ease and under observation, even though nobody appeared to pay the slightest attention to us.

After breakfast had been cleared away and another parade held in the drill hall, my six companions and I were taken once more to the dining hall where we met for the first time our OC, Captain Beck. We learned that we had been posted to the 25th Field Hygiene Section, which he commanded and then were given a lecture by him on the principles of Military Law and what we were and were not expected to do. He went on to give us some indication of what could and would happen to us if we were to do what was not expected of us.

He told us that it was customary in the Army that new recruits were not allowed to leave barracks for fourteen days after enlistment, but in view of the fact that the confines of the billet and drill hall were so limited and that we were all local lads he would permit us to sleep at home like the rest of the unit. Keith Priestly, the one exception was given permission to sleep at his brother’s digs when he informed Captain Beck that his brother lived in Southampton. This was a mercy for which we were all well and truly thankful after our fruitless attempts at deriving a good night’s sleep from our hard, bare barrack room floor.

The OC then left us to the tender mercies of the sergeant-major who had fetched us from Winchester the previous day. He commenced by telling us that he was not a sergeant-major at all but a staff-sergeant and that the correct way to address him from now on was ‘Staff’. He went on to announce that his name was Rose – though he remarked that we would probably learn quite soon that the other members of the unit had other, and much less complimentary names for him, all of which he knew but any of which we would use in his hearing at our peril. By the time he had finished telling us all over again everything Captain Beck had told us and had outlined the training we would receive and the duties we would have to perform as a Hygiene Section, it was dinnertime.

Staff Rose’s threat, or promise, whichever he intended it to be, that we would commence our training in real earnest the next morning, was destined not to be fulfilled for the time being because that afternoon we were inoculated, with tetanus toxoid in the right arm and anti-typhoid serum in the left. It was in Army regulation that following the initial injection of anti-typhoid serum the soldier would be granted forty-eight hours off duty, so that night I slept at home in an infinitely more comfortable bed. But my sleep was, for the second night in succession, troubled and restless – this time as a result of the fever and perspiration promoted by the serum in my bloodstream.

The forty-eight hours off-duty period was far less pleasant than we had hoped it would be. We had looked forward to our two days respite before Rose’s threat, or promise, materialised, but instead we found ourselves faced with two days of utter boredom and disappointment which brought about a definite deterioration of our opinion of our staff sergeant. We were confined all day in our cold, bare barrack rooms with nothing to do but look out of the window and we discovered that in spite of Captain Beck’s decision to permit us to sleep at home, Staff-sergeant Rose had refused to disregard the regulation which required us to spend our first fourteen days of Army life confined to barracks and we had to endure the torture of trying to sleep on the hard wooden floor with both arms sore and aching and swollen from inoculations.

The one bright spot was the cheering news in the papers that the German pocket-battleship Graf Spee had been cornered by a British light cruiser squadron, comprised of the Exeter, Achilles and Ajax in the South Atlantic, and had been driven battered and helpless into the temporary sanctuary offered by Montevideo harbour – later to be scuttled by her captain at the orders of Hitler himself.

On the third morning our training began with four solid hours of squad drill and after dinner two hours more. We must have walked miles during the course of the day in that drill hall, marching back and forth, up and down, stopping, starting, turning, stamping, swinging our arms to shoulder height until they ached, then went numb and seemed to have fallen off and our feet, burning, aching and sore. We had not yet been issued with our uniforms, apart from forage caps and a greatcoat, and six hours of square bashing in light, thin-soled civilian shoes left our toes looking and feeling like raw beef, our heels covered in blisters. But our training went on – Staff-sergeant Rose was relentless and we decided that there was one Rose at least, which did not remain as sweet when called by other names.

To be continued.

It appears that Scudamore’s loony plan to take the Premier League jetting off worldwide has been scuppered. The president of Fifa, Sepp Blatter has battered (sorry, couldn’t resist it) the proposal saying, "This does not take into consideration the fans of the clubs and it gives the impression that they just want to go on tour to make some money. This will never happen, at least as long as I am the president of Fifa."

Michel Platini, head of Uefa has also called the plan “a nonsense idea”.

So, back in your box Scudamore, or better still, on yer bike.

Much is said about the UK’s shift from manufacturing to becoming a world leader in service industries. Ironic then, that when it comes to service – performance of a duty or function - we are truly appalling.

On Monday my Xerox printer developed a fault. Being the evening, the service department was closed. I rang on Tuesday morning to be told that the engineer’s line was busy. I left my number with an assurance that someone would ring back. They didn’t.

Wednesday, I rang again and managed to get through to the appropriate department. They took a note of the fault, but couldn’t say when I could expect a visit. Someone would call later that day to give a date and time. No one called.

Today, a third phone call only got me as far as the switchboard. An engineer would return my call. I’m still waiting. In the meantime, the printer sits uselessly in the corner, the consequence being that I am prevented from carrying out tasks that are vital to my business.

Xerox. If you’re thinking of purchasing one of their products - don’t.

A soldier’s account of World War 2 from 12th December 1939 – 2nd March 1946

Part One – I join the Army

I joined the Army when the war was just a hundred days old, on Tuesday, the 12th December 1939.

Three months before Hitler’s invasion of Poland the British Government passed an Act of Parliament, making compulsory a period of military service for every young man in Great Britain between the ages of 20 and 21. I was then just 20-and-a-half and I registered for service in the Armed Forces with the first batch of military conscripts in British history.

On August 15th I was summoned to appear before a medical board and after being examined by a team of five doctors I left them with the knowledge that I was physically A1 and the belief that I was destined to become a Gunner in the Air Defence of Great Britain branch of the Royal Artillery.

On the 1st December I received the buff envelope, embossed with an official stamp, endorsed with the words “On His Majesty's Service’ and containing the fateful document which informed me that I was required to present myself at the King’s Royal Rifle Corps Depot at Winchester Barracks for service with the Territorial Army in the Royal Army Medical Corps. A railway warrant for the single journey to Winchester and postal order for four shillings, representing two days pay in advance, accompanied the document and I had virtually ceased to be a civilian citizen.

The first hundred days of the war had been an anti-climax. On land there had been nothing more than patrol activity on the Franco-German border and some unproductive artillery duels between French Gunners deep underground in the steel and concrete fortress of the Maginot Line and the German Gunners equally deep underground on the Siegfried Line.

In the air, also some patrol activity with now and then a dog-fight if and when opposing aircraft met in the skies over the front line. The Siegfried Line was photographed from end to end by the reconnaissance squadrons of the RAF, whilst there is little doubt that the Maginot Line was thoroughly photographed by aircraft of the Luftwaffe.

The newspaper men of the United States coined a new phrase and their readers three-thousand miles away across the Atlantic read that this was a ‘phoney war’ in which millions of men waited for the first shot to be fired in real anger, for the first bombs to fall and for the Nazi onslaught on the Maginot Line which would bring to a bloody and abrupt end the military might of Germany and with it, a speedy peace. Only at sea had the war reached the shooting stage. The British Navy had lost the aircraft carrier ‘Courageous’ and the battleship ‘Royal Oak’, with several smaller vessels lost to mines and U-boat attack.

It was a very grey and very cold December day when I walked through the gates of Winchester Barracks. On the parade ground a squad of new recruits turned and wheeled, swinging their arms, their heads up, their chins in and their chests out, all to the raucous lullaby of a drill-sergeant almost out of sight on the far side of the square in the shadow of a distant barrack building. I remember deciding there and then that I wasn’t very favourably impressed with my first sight of Winchester Barracks and hoping that my stay there would be of very short duration indeed.

With the several thousand other new intakes who were arriving, I was shepherded, herded, sorted, separated and finally labelled with the two words “Hygiene Section’ and sent to join five other fellows standing in a forlorn and shivering little group at one corner of the barrack square. A few yards away there were several motor coaches that had brought in some new recruits and we clustered around the radiator of the nearest one, hoping to derive some warmth from it. After some staring about us, shifting from one foot to the other and eyeing each other speculatively up and down, we began a shy and cautious conversation.

The first topic, naturally enough, was the meaning of the words written on the labels which we were all wearing in our button-holes and all of which read “Hygiene Section’. I was in the position of being able to throw some light on this particular subject. Old ‘Pop’ Bathard at the office where I had been employed until four days previously had a son who was called out with the Territorials at the outbreak of war and he was a staff-sergeant in a Hygiene Section, so I was able to inform the others that these particular units dealt with the purification of water supplies in the field and other such duties. Not only did my information help to satisfy the curiosity of my companions but it also helped to break the ice and we began to tell each other our names and from whence we had come.

I was most agreeably surprised to learn that four out of the five were from my hometown of Southampton. They, or rather three of them, introduced themselves as Bill Powell, Ted Toomer and Ernie Lavington. The fourth was Ted Hampton, but he had no need to introduce himself because I had known him since I first started school sixteen years previously. The fifth member of the Hygiene group was Keith Priestly and he came from Bournemouth, although he hastened to tell us that his older brother worked at Woolworth’s in Southampton and that he knew the town quite well.

We were informed by a lance-corporal that we were waiting for one more fellow to complete our little party by the name of Lewington, but he didn’t appear to have arrived yet and we would have to wait until he did. We began to curse this Lewington fellow. It was cold and miserable standing about here.

We were rounded up and escorted to the dining hall for dinner. This, our first meal in the Army, had been prepared by cooks of the newly-formed Womens’ Corps, the Auxilliary Territorial Service and did very little to making us feel at home in the Army. The cabbage seemed to be full of grit and the ‘boiled’ rice we had for sweet gave no indication of having been cooked at all – it seemed that hot water had been poured over the grains and served up to us on enamelled plates, which we looked at and disgustedly pushed away.

My first Army meal confirmed my first impression on entering the barrack gates – that Winchester Depot held no attractions and that the sooner I got away from the place the better I would be pleased. Our visit to the dining hall did have one advantage however. Lewington, our missing member, was located there and sent to join us when we congregated once more around our motor coach radiator, which by this time had little warmth left to offer us.

We became conscious of the presence of an extremely military looking type standing close by at the corner of one of the barrack buildings. He was a solidly built specimen of medium height, standing with his back straight as a ramrod, the highly polished toes of his boots, pointing slightly skywards, making just the regulation 30-degree angle with his heels. His Guardsman-like peaked cap shaded a round, rugged looking face with the ruddy. glowing cheeks of a man who is tough and fit in the extreme. His eyes were a steely blue and a small sandy moustache, clipped with military precision adorned his upper lip. His buttons glistened like burnished gold and the arm under which he held his hide-covered cane was clad in a sleeve that bore the three crowns that at that time we mistook for the badge of sergeant-major rank.

We discussed him and decided unanimously that we would avoid him if it were at all possible. He reminded us too vividly of the stories we had heard of tyrannical sergeant majors from our fathers and uncles ever since our childhood. Barely had we completed our summing up when he marched briskly towards our little group and addressed us. His voice was the gruff, raucous bark that is in keeping with the usual conception of the senior NCO and he informed us that we were to accompany him back to his unit where we had been posted and where, owing to the shortage of depot accommodation, we would receive our training.

Timidly plucking up our courage and overcoming our awe, we asked him where we were going. ‘To Southampton’, he said, ‘it’s about twelve miles down the line’. For the first time that day we felt light hearted and exchanging knowing grins we followed him to the station. ‘Take those bloody labels off’, growled our escort, ‘you look like a load of bloody mail bags’.

On the train I got into conversation with Harold Lewington, whom I had recognised as a boy I had known by sight at Tauntons School. Having this in common with Harold and knowing Ted Hampton, I felt less alone in facing the ordeal of becoming a soldier.

We arrived at Hamilton House, the drill hall next to the Empire in Commercial Road and the picket, standing to attention for the benefit of our escort as we entered, succeeded in casting a curious glance at his seven new comrades-in-arms.

Barely had we crossed the threshold when our sergeant major let out a bellow. ‘CORPORAL BLAKE! ORDERLY CORPORAL!! Get me some tea’ – and then went on to inform Corporal Sid Blake that the weather outside was as cold as a polar bear’s ass.

To be continued.

At the dark end of the street
That's where we always meet
Hiding in shadows where we don't belong
Living in darkness to hide our wrong
You and me, at the dark end of the street
Just you and me

(Chips Moman and Dan Penn)

Following years in which banks have fallen over themselves in an unseemly scramble to award credit cards to just about anybody, thanks to the so-called credit crunch they are now equally eager to do the reverse, cancelling cards for the flimsiest of reasons.

This happened to me when I started up in business. I applied for and got, a company Barclaycard. I used the card strictly for company expenditure and paid off the entire bill each month. I had no choice. That’s how company cards work. After a year of this amicable arrangement, I received a letter to say that the card was being cancelled. No explanation or reason was forthcoming. When I rang Barclaycard to ask why, I was informed that they were under no obligation to tell me.

Reflecting on what I had done to suddenly be denied credit, I could only speculate that it was connected to my recently having switched my business account from Barclays to Lloyds. When challenged, Barclaycard denied that there was any connection, saying that having a Barclays bank account wasn’t a prerequisite to having a credit card bearing the same name. I knew this, but the smell of rat was mighty strong.

When I applied to Lloyds for a company card it was granted with no problems and continued until I wound up the business some years later. So, no lasting harm done except in my attitude to anything Barclays. The numerous requests to apply for one of their cards over the intervening years has gone straight from the doormat into the recycling bin. Very tiny, but sweet revenge.

Faith restored. After last week’s disappointment at the From Russia exhibition, today I was bowled over by the work of painter Peter Doig at Tate Britain. Knowing very little about him, apart from the recent flutter of publicity surrounding this show, I was taken completely by surprise. I’d not seen anything quite like this before. Looking at Doig’s paintings was like viewing a vivid representation of somebody else’s dreams - on a large scale and in glorious colour.

The main strength of this exhibition is the quantity - not to mention the painterly quality - and size of the work on the walls. This enables the willing spectator to be taken over and drawn in to an intimate, tranquil, yet sometimes uneasy world, each picture adding layers to the experience of Doig’s haunting vision. You’ve guessed it. I was impressed. And inspired. Can’t ask for more than that on a Friday in February.

No. Not Monty Python’s, but Richard Scudamore’s Flying Circus: the plan to jet Premier League clubs to far-flung corners of the globe for an ‘international round’, additional to the normal 38-match programme. Points would count towards the final League tally.

‘This is no longer about football, it seems to be all about money’, a senior Uefa source was quoted as saying. Had he just woken from a long, long sleep? Money has been the name of the game since the Premier League was set-up in 1992.

Next step? A closed league, with no promotion or relegation, forever denying supporters of non – Premiership teams the joy and excitement of seeing their clubs get to the top. Impossible? With the likelihood of Fulham playing Sunderland in Cape Town for Premier League points, you better believe it.

The law is 'a ass', but the Archbishop of Canterbury is a bigger one.