After my Wolf Cub disappointment, I had no martial experience until I joined the Officers’ Training Corps at Wellington College. This military circus was commanded in 1923, when I first had the honour to wind on my puttees, by one of the masters, but soon a retired regular Lieutenant-Colonel assumed command. I realize now that the badges we wore in the OTC must have been the badges of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, or was that too logical? We were a ramshackle crew, a sartorial disgrace to any fine regiment, and so perhaps we borrowed some other plumage.
In summer time, the OTC had a Field Day with the OTCs of the other public schools. Marlborough was one, Bradfield another. In the Michaelmas term, our Field Days took place near Aldershot on Laffan's Plain and we had a meal at one of the Aldershot Barracks. The Haversack lunch, which always included a pork pie and an apple, was usually eaten long before the battle began. The march back to a railway station behind the Corps Bugle Band, which knew only one tune, and the extraordinary instructions pasted up in the Aldershot latrines of those days on the control of venereal disease are all I can remember of these Field days, with the exception that one field day called out our C.O. mounting the charger he was allotted for. “Hold my horse, Sergeant Major,” he called, “while I spur him.”
This C.O (whose best compass to be said, floated in oil) tried hard to pass all of us cadets through Certificate A. Its possession meant a few extra marks in the army exam. I never achieved it. Working for it entailed listening to lectures on such dull subjects as map reading, tent pitching and so on and I could never force myself to go. A surprised officer, probably a subaltern from nearby Aldershot (Although I suspected him of holding at least a general’s rank) refused to pass me in Map reading when I took the exam for my certificate because I assured him that Salisbury, say was one million and more miles east of some suspected point of origin.
I took the exam again but, not having come to any lectures, the C.O. sent me back to my company without trial. The third attempt was a success in the practical. I drilled my squad mercilessly and read a map with precision. I failed however in the written exam, left school and did not try again.
The OTCs of those days used to spend a week in camp at the end of July when the summer term at school finished. There were three camps available in the South, Aldershot, and two camps at Tidworth. Every boy in our OTC had to go to camp once in his time at school. It may have been possible to go twice or even three times but I never heard of anyone doing so. The food was bad, the sleeping in a Bell Tent, a circular affair with a central pole with enough room for a dozen heads on the periphery but none for the feet at the pole, almost impossible. The camp I went to was Tidworth Park, a flat enough site for the tents and a ridge, quite high, behind it. I was sitting on the grass at the top of the ridge one evening, avoiding the penetrating and not particularly pleasant smell of serge uniform, brasso, and boot polish, when I noticed a flame at the top of a marquee. It was the camp officers mess. By the time I reached the bottom of the hill, running all the way, the marquee was no more. The memory of this helped me twenty years later when President of a Board of Officers, to decide what Fire appliances were needed for a permanent camp near Bangalore in the South of India. None for use but a few buckets of sand for one tour.
Some may have found the OTCs useful institutions. I cannot think they were as good as they should have been. There was a lack of interest shown by the officers to the cannon fodder, the cadets. No one explained the plan of battle on a field day, none even told us if we were defending a position or attacking one. Was Marlborough with us or against us? Was Bradfield in support of Radley or were they both on their own? We rank and file trudged bored up dusty tracks, our five blank rounds ready to put into the magazine of the very dirty Lee Enfield .303 rifle we each carried. When at length we were ordered to fire five rounds rapid – why rapid? And at whom? – we did so, perhaps popping a boiled sweet into the barrel on top of the blank cartridge. The south Eastern and Chatham railway trains which took us to and from these quasi-military pastimes suffered. Seat cushions made good targets for a bayonet. Lavatory paper made fine festoons outside the carriage windows. Alone among the aged, I can understand the cause of modern vandalism. It is boredom. I too was once modern.
Promotion in the OTC was more by seniority than by merit. One of my friends was promoted to Lance-Corporal before the summer camp we both attended, but his rank was surrendered at the beginning of the next term. Her was not old enough. We permanent privates scoffed as we watched him unpick the stitches which held his stripe on. In the regular army, he rose to full colonel, but the reduction in rank thirty years earlier will have left a scar.
My next excursion into army life was to last for 28 years. Before it began I had a long rest from rigid applied discipline. I was allowed to leave school early to go to learn French at Lausanne. I had been in the Army Sixth for long enough. A further year would have been tedious. My parents gave me the best present any parent could give, freedom from petty discipline. Was not to have it again for many years.
Whether this release from school was a boon to someone embarking on a military career is questionable. I found a record of the marks allotted to each candidate who took the army exam in my year and I found I had only scraped through at the interview. To leave school early implied unmentionable crimes and lax thinking.
The Board of distinguished gentlemen who assessed us candidates seemed infinitely old. I have no idea how they were chosen, by what calculation of merit or distinction. Perhaps the same system is still pursued. I preferred the Selection Board in force after the second world war, whereby the Officers on the Board watched the candidates performing almost impossible tasks and the candidates themselves proved their ability or dug their own graves. Obviously, I nearly dug my grave at the interview.
In summer time, the OTC had a Field Day with the OTCs of the other public schools. Marlborough was one, Bradfield another. In the Michaelmas term, our Field Days took place near Aldershot on Laffan's Plain and we had a meal at one of the Aldershot Barracks. The Haversack lunch, which always included a pork pie and an apple, was usually eaten long before the battle began. The march back to a railway station behind the Corps Bugle Band, which knew only one tune, and the extraordinary instructions pasted up in the Aldershot latrines of those days on the control of venereal disease are all I can remember of these Field days, with the exception that one field day called out our C.O. mounting the charger he was allotted for. “Hold my horse, Sergeant Major,” he called, “while I spur him.”
This C.O (whose best compass to be said, floated in oil) tried hard to pass all of us cadets through Certificate A. Its possession meant a few extra marks in the army exam. I never achieved it. Working for it entailed listening to lectures on such dull subjects as map reading, tent pitching and so on and I could never force myself to go. A surprised officer, probably a subaltern from nearby Aldershot (Although I suspected him of holding at least a general’s rank) refused to pass me in Map reading when I took the exam for my certificate because I assured him that Salisbury, say was one million and more miles east of some suspected point of origin.
I took the exam again but, not having come to any lectures, the C.O. sent me back to my company without trial. The third attempt was a success in the practical. I drilled my squad mercilessly and read a map with precision. I failed however in the written exam, left school and did not try again.
The OTCs of those days used to spend a week in camp at the end of July when the summer term at school finished. There were three camps available in the South, Aldershot, and two camps at Tidworth. Every boy in our OTC had to go to camp once in his time at school. It may have been possible to go twice or even three times but I never heard of anyone doing so. The food was bad, the sleeping in a Bell Tent, a circular affair with a central pole with enough room for a dozen heads on the periphery but none for the feet at the pole, almost impossible. The camp I went to was Tidworth Park, a flat enough site for the tents and a ridge, quite high, behind it. I was sitting on the grass at the top of the ridge one evening, avoiding the penetrating and not particularly pleasant smell of serge uniform, brasso, and boot polish, when I noticed a flame at the top of a marquee. It was the camp officers mess. By the time I reached the bottom of the hill, running all the way, the marquee was no more. The memory of this helped me twenty years later when President of a Board of Officers, to decide what Fire appliances were needed for a permanent camp near Bangalore in the South of India. None for use but a few buckets of sand for one tour.
Some may have found the OTCs useful institutions. I cannot think they were as good as they should have been. There was a lack of interest shown by the officers to the cannon fodder, the cadets. No one explained the plan of battle on a field day, none even told us if we were defending a position or attacking one. Was Marlborough with us or against us? Was Bradfield in support of Radley or were they both on their own? We rank and file trudged bored up dusty tracks, our five blank rounds ready to put into the magazine of the very dirty Lee Enfield .303 rifle we each carried. When at length we were ordered to fire five rounds rapid – why rapid? And at whom? – we did so, perhaps popping a boiled sweet into the barrel on top of the blank cartridge. The south Eastern and Chatham railway trains which took us to and from these quasi-military pastimes suffered. Seat cushions made good targets for a bayonet. Lavatory paper made fine festoons outside the carriage windows. Alone among the aged, I can understand the cause of modern vandalism. It is boredom. I too was once modern.
Promotion in the OTC was more by seniority than by merit. One of my friends was promoted to Lance-Corporal before the summer camp we both attended, but his rank was surrendered at the beginning of the next term. Her was not old enough. We permanent privates scoffed as we watched him unpick the stitches which held his stripe on. In the regular army, he rose to full colonel, but the reduction in rank thirty years earlier will have left a scar.
My next excursion into army life was to last for 28 years. Before it began I had a long rest from rigid applied discipline. I was allowed to leave school early to go to learn French at Lausanne. I had been in the Army Sixth for long enough. A further year would have been tedious. My parents gave me the best present any parent could give, freedom from petty discipline. Was not to have it again for many years.
Whether this release from school was a boon to someone embarking on a military career is questionable. I found a record of the marks allotted to each candidate who took the army exam in my year and I found I had only scraped through at the interview. To leave school early implied unmentionable crimes and lax thinking.
The Board of distinguished gentlemen who assessed us candidates seemed infinitely old. I have no idea how they were chosen, by what calculation of merit or distinction. Perhaps the same system is still pursued. I preferred the Selection Board in force after the second world war, whereby the Officers on the Board watched the candidates performing almost impossible tasks and the candidates themselves proved their ability or dug their own graves. Obviously, I nearly dug my grave at the interview.
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