The Day Gone By (42 page)

The next occasion was a bit more provocative. One of the members of ‘G' section was a rummy sort of cove by the name of Driver Hopkins. He had been deliberately wished upon us by headquarters (having arrived from God knew where) because they reckoned that he could do least harm in a bunch like ‘G' section, as opposed to some of the Glasgow/Liverpool/Bolton sections. All I knew about Hopkins was that he had some sort of bad reputation as an agitator. There was a file about him up at headquarters which I wasn't allowed to see, and even Billy Moisson wouldn't talk about it. To this day I have no idea exactly why Hopkins was regarded as potentially explosive.

I soon found out for myself, however, that his general demeanour on parade was unexceptionable. He was as good as anyone else at carrying out the chores of the dismal day. His manner was perfectly reasonable: indeed, propitiatory, for he usually spoke to me or the N.C.O.s with a little smile on his face. He gave no trouble, and I soon perceived that he exercised no influence whatever on ‘G' section, disruptive or otherwise. Even Sergeant Tuckey couldn't positively diagnose him as ‘bolshie'.

Yet he was known to harbour bolshie ideas. That was evidently part of the mysterious label which had been pinned on him. He was some sort of left-winger who was opposed to ‘the system'. In what way, I wondered. I very much doubted that Hopkins, from what I had now seen of him, could either appeal to or defeat in argument honest young bourgeois like Driver Dooley, Driver Hutcheson or Driver Portway. I decided that it would be a good idea to let him have his head in public. It would call his bluff: it would tend to defuse the mystery about him.

By now my discussion group was attracting a certain amount of attention in the mess. No one ever called me to account officially - neither the C.O. (a rather ineffective man with little influence or power of leadership) nor my company commander, Captain Roope. But Theo Overman, the senior subaltern, shook his head. He disapproved of Other Ranks being encouraged to read the
New Statesman.
He also thought - which was true - that I was an inexperienced and rather flighty young officer, prone to unorthodox and flyaway ideas. I always got on perfectly well in the mess, however, and no senior officer was prepared actually to forbid the ‘G' section discussion group in principle. (They couldn't, really, if you come to think about it.) The distrust was more of what the group might actually be being encouraged to talk about and of how I might be running it. Billy Moisson, out of sheer personal anxiety for his beloved ‘G' section, attended one or two meetings, and so did Captain Roope.

The Hopkins meeting turned out a damp squib. The subject was how far the U.K. would be justified in taking invasive action to foil a German invasion of Eire. Hopkins, speaking first, unwisely adopted the line that Eire was capable of defeating a German invasion on its own. He could not be taken seriously. I was disappointed: I had been rather hoping he would at least put up a show.

In the middle of all this contretemps, the powers at G.H.Q. (London) set up the organization called A.B.C.A. - Army Bureau of Current Affairs. The soldiers were now to be
encouraged
to learn about, think and talk about the war and its politics. Social affairs, too, they were to be stimulated to discuss, under the guidance of their officers. Weekly brochures were to be issued to platoon commanders, containing information about the Nazis, the Far East, American society, plans for after the war and so on. These would be used as bases for discussion. The whole thing was to be co-ordinated at commanding officer level. What it came down to was that my ideas were fully and entirely vindicated. I had enough sense, however, to refrain from saying so.

About this time I also floated and gained recognition for what came to be called the ‘Stranger Prince' idea. Quite often during these stagnant months, an odd hour or two per week would be spent in teaching groups of our R.A.S.C. men — sometimes a section, sometimes a company - something a bit out of the ordinary; the 36 Mills grenade, it might be; the Thompson submachine gun, or some specialized knowledge that some officer or N.C.O. happened to possess. (We had a corporal who had been invalided out of a Commando unit, and an officer who had worked for Mercedes-Benz in Germany before the war.) My idea, such as it was, was based on my observation that usually the men would listen with more respect, interest and attention to a stranger than to their own officer. As a matter of fact, Frank Espley and I had been using this ploy between ourselves for a while before it caught on. It worked quite well within the unit, but it worked best of all if you could co-opt a real ‘stranger' - an officer from another unit. ‘Now we're very lucky to have here with us this morning Dr Morton, who's come specially from' (Belfast or Omagh or whatever) ‘to talk to us about tropical diseases, of which he's had first-hand experience.' Then next week one of our people would go and talk to Morton's lot, about the Liverpool docks or something.

Late in the spring of 1941, ‘G' section had a welcome bit of luck to break the monotony of camp life. You have to understand that we were all fretting - pining - for real work. We wanted our lorries and ourselves to be used in earnest, not merely maintained and 'ighly polished day after day. In the sort of conditions we were, the true distinction was not between work and play, but between meaningful activity and boring inactivity. Any Lakeland sheepdog feels the same: they obviously like being put to use and are eager for work. What ‘G' section got was the so-called Seskinore detachment.

Early in 1941, it was determined by the High Command that a fresh division should be moved into Ulster, its various units to be stationed throughout the Counties Omagh and Fermanagh. The quartermastering part of this was, of course, a big job and its details were to be arranged and controlled by a captain quartermaster from his own H.Q. in the barracks at Omagh. Naturally, he needed a fleet of lorries, and so informed C.R.A.S.C. at Lisburn. What he got sent to him was ‘G' section. As far as I remember, we got about two hours' notice to get packed up and ready to drive the seventy or eighty miles from Langford Lodge to Omagh. It was, of course, a matter for jubilation to be selected to go. I wonder, now, that our O.C. didn't send Frank Espley. He would have been out and away the best subaltern, but perhaps my section had slightly the better N.C.O.s and blokes.

Seskinore is a village about six or seven miles south-south-east of Omagh, in the County Tyrone. Here there was a small R.A.S.C. supply unit (not motorized), commanded by one Captain Slater, to whom I duly reported ‘G' section that evening. Details fail me in memory, but I do recall that the way things eventually turned out was that I messed at Seskinore, while ‘G' section were billeted in a bunk-bedded parish hall in Omagh. They thought the whole setup was a riot; the best thing that had happened for months. So did I.

Three-spired Omagh was a pretty place at that time; a remote little county town almost at the end of the world, with King Billy prominent in every home (you can take a white horse anywhere) and the pubs, full of porter. The natives were more than friendly, the soda bread was excellent and ‘G' section were declared to be great fellas, surely.

The quartermaster was a nice old regular called Captain Milner. I liked him, and he and Sergeant Tuckey took to each other at once. Every morning, with notebooks at the ready, Sergeant Tuckey and I would report to Captain Milner, to learn what he wanted done. The deliveries consisted of chairs, tables, bunk-beds, cupboards, lockers, mattresses, mats and all the rest of it, to be loaded at X and driven to Y the same day. For labour we had a detachment of the Pioneer Corps; and it was in this area that I had a little squabble with my section. ‘G' section drivers didn't reckon to join in loading and unloading: they reckoned to sit and smoke in the cab while the Pioneers (mostly foreign refugees) got on with it. I disputed this and finally, faced with muttering by the N.C.O.s, rolled up my sleeves and did some fair spells of loading myself. I can guess what happened when my back was turned, but as long as it wasn't, the drivers helped to load.

This was the first time in my life that I had had to organize anything on my own, and it wasn't altogether as easy as it may sound. The miscellaneous loads had to be worked out and the necessary number of trips and lorries. All you could go by was empiricism: there were no loading tables, and anyway the items were very various. Some of them were fragile, too. The destinations were all over the place; anywhere at all in the Counties Tyrone and Fermanagh: Ballygawley and Newtownstewart; Fintona, Castle-derg and Lisnaskea; Dromore, Strabane and Aughnacloy; Augher and Clogher and Fivemiletown. There weren't enough N.C.O.s to escort each individual run, which might involve anything from six or seven lorries down to a single one. Private soldiers (drivers) weren't supposed to be able to read maps and so couldn't be held responsible if they got them wrong. Sergeant Tuckey and I would work out the most economical route by which a corporal on a motor-bike could conduct four, five or six lorries to different destinations, dropping one off here and two off there. Then the drivers and pioneers had to be fed, by arrangement. We had to do our best to calculate the duration of the various jobs, so that Driver Limbrick or Driver Seabourne could be reckoned to be able to get back from job A with enough time left in the day to get reloaded and do job B. Inevitably, there was a fair amount of what von Clausewitz calls ‘friction'; the many little hitches that interfere with the smooth working of the machine. Driver Petherick arrives at his destination to find he is seriously expected to reverse his lorry up three hundred yards of impossibly muddy boreen. He doesn't fancy a dose of wheelspin: he refuses. The pioneers refuse, not unreasonably, to hump the load. Something has to be sorted out. Driver Harris has blown a gasket near some God-forsaken place called Drumquin. Captain Milner isn't quite right about the relative proximity of X to Y, and must be tactfully told, with, if possible, a constructive suggestion about what's best to be done. Driver Portway has hit a dog/pig/donkey/goat, and the owner, be Jasus, is declaring it has him fair destroyed and where's the lieutenant at all?

As the days went by, the light lasted longer and the weather improved, Sergeant Tuckey and I found that we carried in our heads cognitive maps of Tyrone and Fermanagh, including the better pubs. Captain Milner was pleased with the work and said so. I had become reasonably proficient on a motor-bike, and would sometimes take a convoy myself or else ride round to half a dozen destinations to make sure my drivers were not being messed about by some twit of a stranger N.C.O. I began to feel that I really knew ‘G' section and was capable of using them to the best advantage as a technical tool. As for ‘G' section, they hoped it would never end. They were a good lot: I was still too inexperienced to realize what a good lot they were. Throughout the Seskinore detachment, not one man was put on a charge and only one man collected a minor punishment.

Driver Mallett it was, of all people: biddable, reliable, polite, intelligent, pleasant-spoken, impeded from a stripe only by a certain diffidence in his ways and manner. One morning, on parade, as I and Sergeant Tuckey were walking up the back of the front rank, Tuckey remarked, on his own initiative, ‘You want 'aircut, Mallett.' ‘Sergeant.' That day, however, turned out an unusually busy one, with several of our lorries out late, and Mallett didn't get back from Coalisland until after supper-time. The following morning found him in the same crinite condition. ‘'Aircut, Mallett,' said Tuckey. ‘'Shan't tell y'again.'

But once more the exigencies of the service kept poor Mallett out until a late hour. This time it was a broken-down motor-cycle to be taken back for repair to headquarters workshops at Langford Lodge. (We had a workshops fitter with us on the detachment, a good fellow named Kliskey, but of course there were limits to what he could effect on his own.) In Mallett's position, I'd have got a mate to get to work with nail-scissors and a safety razor, but anyway he didn't. Next morning on parade I saw what hadn't happened, but decided to leave it to the sergeant, as he'd shot first. I moved on up the rank as Tuckey, in a low, confidential voice, began ‘Now you listen to me, Lady Godiva -'

But all Mallett got was cleaning the N.C.O.s' motor-bikes. One evening, when I had left my little Austin staff-car parked outside the billets while I held an N.C.O.s' meeting, I came out to find that Turner and Beach - two big, strong men - for a joke had lifted it, fore and aft, onto the pavement. I took this as a signal compliment. My relations with the section were now such that I was considered fair game for a harmless practical joke.

It was during this spring that something much less funny for me took place. I had been writing to Jennifer regularly and at great length, while the weeks extended into months. I wish I had those letters now, for there would be a lot of forgotten stuff in them: like the time of heavy snow when we shovelled the railway line clear at Crumlin; and the hot summer day when I swam from Langford Lodge out to Ram's Island, in Lough Neagh, about a mile, with Frank accompanying me in a dinghy. Jennifer, however, had seldom or never replied to these letters. I wasn't really surprised or troubled in mind, for one thing because I knew she was only about three-quarters literate and for another because I knew her to be lazy and inconsequent. I had no reason to suppose she wasn't glad to get my letters or that she didn't enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. I was already looking forward to my first spell of leave.

The letter which at length came from Jennifer wasn't very long - probably shorter than this synthesis of it. It told how, a few weeks after Frank and I had left for Ulster, she had met an R.A.F. Pilot Officer trainee - a flying cadet, in fact. He had found her no less charming than I had. She had fallen entirely and all-absorbingly in love with him. They had become lovers and were to get married. She had just heard that he had been killed in training: she didn't say how. She couldn't bring herself to write more. She was very sorry. Her mother would write and tell me more.