Military Junketings
Expect no meetings with the great. My military career did not lie this way. I was often jealous of other officers who told me they had been sent for by this or that General. One in particular said he had been applied for by Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell from the Prime Minister himself at a crucial moment in the Burma war. When “Smith”- which was not his name - reached India from England he was hurried by aeroplane to Delhi where Wavell told him he had brought him out from the United Kingdom to do this and that and the other for him. I was never so sought after.
I did once box with a future chancellor of the Exchequer and was beaten by him, but we were both at the same time 18 years of age, our futures obscure before us. At the end of the third and last round of the contest, Company Sergeant Major White of the Army Physical Training Corps in my corner told me that had I fought like that in the first two rounds I should have won. I was not so young that I expressed the relief that I felt, and I was most sympathetic with the future Chancellor that same evening after his next bout, which was against a gentlemen Cadet who was to be an Army Boxing Champion. He had been painfully dealt with.
I, of course, saw many of the great because the pre-war army was small, but I looked at them from a distance, discreetly as befitted my station.
My martial career started at the Dame School in Bexhill when the head mistress made me the head of the newly formed Wolf Cub pack. “Ackerlar!” we shouted together after the lone wolf in the Jungle Book. It was not until many years later that I found that the correct pronunciation should have been “Erkayler” - the middle syllable sounding like the vegetable. Rudyard Kipling was alive but he never visited our school and was therefore spared the shock of our wild yells. Sadly, I was demoted from head cub after a few weeks, for blatant sarcasm, this being only the first occasion when my promise of greatness failed to be fulfilled.
My brothers and I had good groundings in military affairs, not only because our father was a regular officer of the Royal Engineers who had been taken prisoner in Mesopotamia at Kut-e-Amara and who had spent the rest of the First World war in Turkey, but because the England of that time was full of soldiers. We could hear the artillery over the Channel quite clearly when the wind was right, and the Old Methuselahs – which were the equivalent of the Second World War’s Home Guard – marched to and fro along the streets of Bexhill. My grandfather’s gardener was an old Methuselah and we admired him greatly.
My elder brother and I were warlike. A naturalized German lived two or three doors away. Our friends, their ages still in single figures could detect the messages the man sent like sparks up the chimney of his house. We tried to borrow a gun with which to shoot his chimney off, but with no luck. The grown-ups were sadly, almost disloyally, apathetic.
My elder brother and I played endless war games. Our younger brother, only three when the war ended, could take only a minor part in the hostilities. He did, however, once receive a stirring message from my elder brother reading; “Lord Nigel of Nursery - Have landed in France. Will fight Germans tomorrow.” It occurs to me now, so many years later, that my elder brother was anticipating the plethora of titles that were to be showered on the Generals of that war. Titles were not handed out until the war ended. Then of course, the generals were all barons, rather like the Gascons in Cyrano de Bergerac “ Nous sommes tous barons.” Some achieved Viscountcies and the Commander-in-Chief, Haig, an Earldom. The government was mingier after the Second World War.
One legacy from my childhood is that I still hear the parson’s exhortation at the Communion Service as “Let us pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church billeted here on earth.”
Expect no meetings with the great. My military career did not lie this way. I was often jealous of other officers who told me they had been sent for by this or that General. One in particular said he had been applied for by Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell from the Prime Minister himself at a crucial moment in the Burma war. When “Smith”- which was not his name - reached India from England he was hurried by aeroplane to Delhi where Wavell told him he had brought him out from the United Kingdom to do this and that and the other for him. I was never so sought after.
I did once box with a future chancellor of the Exchequer and was beaten by him, but we were both at the same time 18 years of age, our futures obscure before us. At the end of the third and last round of the contest, Company Sergeant Major White of the Army Physical Training Corps in my corner told me that had I fought like that in the first two rounds I should have won. I was not so young that I expressed the relief that I felt, and I was most sympathetic with the future Chancellor that same evening after his next bout, which was against a gentlemen Cadet who was to be an Army Boxing Champion. He had been painfully dealt with.
I, of course, saw many of the great because the pre-war army was small, but I looked at them from a distance, discreetly as befitted my station.
My martial career started at the Dame School in Bexhill when the head mistress made me the head of the newly formed Wolf Cub pack. “Ackerlar!” we shouted together after the lone wolf in the Jungle Book. It was not until many years later that I found that the correct pronunciation should have been “Erkayler” - the middle syllable sounding like the vegetable. Rudyard Kipling was alive but he never visited our school and was therefore spared the shock of our wild yells. Sadly, I was demoted from head cub after a few weeks, for blatant sarcasm, this being only the first occasion when my promise of greatness failed to be fulfilled.
My brothers and I had good groundings in military affairs, not only because our father was a regular officer of the Royal Engineers who had been taken prisoner in Mesopotamia at Kut-e-Amara and who had spent the rest of the First World war in Turkey, but because the England of that time was full of soldiers. We could hear the artillery over the Channel quite clearly when the wind was right, and the Old Methuselahs – which were the equivalent of the Second World War’s Home Guard – marched to and fro along the streets of Bexhill. My grandfather’s gardener was an old Methuselah and we admired him greatly.
My elder brother and I were warlike. A naturalized German lived two or three doors away. Our friends, their ages still in single figures could detect the messages the man sent like sparks up the chimney of his house. We tried to borrow a gun with which to shoot his chimney off, but with no luck. The grown-ups were sadly, almost disloyally, apathetic.
My elder brother and I played endless war games. Our younger brother, only three when the war ended, could take only a minor part in the hostilities. He did, however, once receive a stirring message from my elder brother reading; “Lord Nigel of Nursery - Have landed in France. Will fight Germans tomorrow.” It occurs to me now, so many years later, that my elder brother was anticipating the plethora of titles that were to be showered on the Generals of that war. Titles were not handed out until the war ended. Then of course, the generals were all barons, rather like the Gascons in Cyrano de Bergerac “ Nous sommes tous barons.” Some achieved Viscountcies and the Commander-in-Chief, Haig, an Earldom. The government was mingier after the Second World War.
One legacy from my childhood is that I still hear the parson’s exhortation at the Communion Service as “Let us pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church billeted here on earth.”
Fascinating and entertaining. Looking forward to more. You asked me to remind you to fix typing errors, so "fix the typing errors". Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteAaron