biography>Chapter 5
Chapter Five 1946
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Sapper Collis,H.J.
My eighteenth birthday was
on the 11th June 1946. I can't remember it but I do remember the 13th
June. It was the day my calling up papers arrived telling me to present
myself at Bury St.Edmunds station to begin my army career. By the 20th
June I was in the Army.
I was destined for the Royal Engineers but first I had to do six weeks
of Basic Training in the General Service Corps. Six weeks of standing
to attention, marching, ironing, polishing, cleaning and shooting and
cleaning a rifle, wearing gas mask, bayonetting, marching, eating, some
sleeping, marching, more marching, ...until the passing out parade in
the Abbey Gardens which we celebrated by performing sixty drill movements
in three minutes to the accompanyment of the band of the Beds & Herts
Regiment. I lost at least a stone in the six weeks.
After a week's leave I headed for Guillemont Barracks at Cove, near Farnborough
in Hampshire. I had become a Sapper and started three months corps training
in the Royal Engineers. We still marched and drilled but mostly we learned
how to build Bailey, pontoon and improvised bridges, how to blow things
up, map reading, booby trapping, mine laying and detecting, boatmanship,
and camouflage.
We also spent a while firing guns. After all that's what soldiers are
expected to do. Being effectively blind in my right eye I fired the rifle
left handed, and quite well. Unfortunately the Bren gun has its sights
offset so that it has to be fired right handed. So I aimed carefully at
the black dot and fired off five rounds rapid. Sadly the black dot was
not the target but my cataract and the number over the neighbouring target
disappeared.
The sergeant was dumbfounded and I was put on a charge. I explained my
difficulty and after some argument I was sent to an Army opthalmologist
in Aldershot. He was fascinated and asked if my mother was diebetic. The
result of all this was that I was regraded as A3 and had to have a daily
urine test for diabetes.
Twelve weeks is not a long time in which to forge long term friendships
but one name I remember is Tom Adamson . Well I think his name was Tom!
He lived at Molesey in Surrey, only a few miles from Farnborough and he
invited me to stay one weekend with his family. We spent most of the time
rowing on a tributary of the Thames. Near the end of the course I was
recommended for officer training and was sent to a W.O.S.B. (War Office
Selection Board) at Lingfield , Surrey. The selection took three days
and alternated interviews with group tests usually involving crossing
a ten foot gap with a six foot plank. It was based in a Georgian mansion
and we were treated for the duration of the selection as officers. We
were addressed as "Mr......" and meals were served at a polished
mahogany table by white jacketed soldiers. One interview was with a psychiatrist
who had a recently published book about the Burma Campaign on his desk.
His first question, indeed almost his only question, was, "What was
the major factor in our victory in Burma?" I replied that I thought
it was superior air supply. This was apparently the wrong answer . He
was adamant that superior medical expertise won the war. The final interview
was with the C.O. who was a colonel in the Coldstream Guards. "Was
your father in the army?"- "Yes, Sir, Grenadier Guards."-
"Oh, What rank?" - "Guardsman Sir". His face fell.
I am sure that is not why I failed.
I won second prize - an instructors course, which the army, of course,
called a Cadre Course. So towards the end of November I packed my kit
and headed home for a week's leave. My father took charge of my rifle
and with an enthusiasm for polishing only seen in the Household Regiments,
transformed the woodwork into a glass like surface. He also showed me
how to carefully loosen the screws so that drill movements had an extra
snap. With these advantages I headed for Ripon .
The Cadre Course was a repeat of the Corps Training plus lessons in lecturing.
It was also tougher. Where normally Bailey bridge sections were carried
by six men, we Lance Corporals were allowed only four per panel. The officers
had to carry them at the double! The weather didn't help. That was the
worst winter for years and deep snow covered the country. Our uniforms
had to be pressed daily so the section of sixteen shared the cost of a
communal iron. Naturally we had to spend a day on the firing range which
unfortunately was on the top of Ilkley Moor. Visibility was about twenty
yards and the targets were far beyond that. The course required each of
us to fire ten rounds so 160 rounds were fired in the general direction
of the targets. The only casualties were a frozen water tank and one sheep.
We all passed.
The camp was not far from Fountains Abbey and we used to walk across the
fields to the calm presence of the Cistercian ruins. The snow and the
absence of tourists added to its charm. Another favourite pastime was
sliding on the ice in the town square in Ripon where soldiers and students
from the Teacher Training College spent many a noisy evening. Every evening
the Curfew was sounded on a horn by the watchman in medieval uniform.
No one rushed home.
After a couple of weeks my medical records caught up with me. I was ordered
to continue with my daily tests until one morning I was told to report
to the M.O. It seems that the urine sample had a trace of albumen which
might indicate kidney problems! So I was sent off to York Military Hospital
for further tests. I was put in a bed in a large ward and had daily blood
tests. I wasthe fittest I have ever been and spent most of every day in
bed! To break the monotony we were "encouraged" to polish the
floor but apart from that and meals we were left alone. I had been issued
with the hospital blue uniform and so two of us used to slip out of the
back door and get into the local cinema free of charge.
After four days or so the doctors decided there was nothing wrong with
me and I went back to Ripon. It was almost Christmas and almost everyone
had gone on leave. I had missed a day so the Orderly Corporal gave me
an extra week and I got a train home.
The train was crowded with troops heading home for Christmas and it was
running very late. I met an RAF lad from Ilford on the train and when
we got to Liverpool Street at 1.30 am the last train to Chelmsford had
gone. His mother picked him up in her car and they suggested I stay with
them until the first train from Ilford. We were greeted at their door
by the biggest Great Dane I have ever seen and after a few hours sleep
on their settee I continued home for Christmas. Three weeks at home and
then back to Ripon.
We often had to break the ice on the river to move the pontoon bridge
sections and in January the coal shortage made it impossible for food
to be cooked and we were issued with ration books and sent home for ten
days. The course ended with a very short passing out parade and I finished
third of fortyeight on the course with a top grade of A for knowledge
(ABC) and X for teaching (XYZ). I was posted to No1 Training Regt.R.E.
at Great Malvern as a Lance Corporal Instructor.
I arrived at Great Malvern to find the camp in the grip of a severe winter
frost. The water pipes were frozen and shaving in melted snow was not
a pleasant daily exercise. The camp was formerly a military hospital and
our barrack rooms were the old wards. The huts were built from prefabricated
blocks with concrete frame and beams. The recruits were in the ward and
the N.C.O.s ech had one of the small examination rooms off the corridor.
Chelmsford St.John's Hospital always seems familiar to me.
Each course lasted twelve weeks and the new sappers were introduced to
the joys of building Bailey bridges , improvised bridges etc. I always
taught the map reading course as Sgt.MacAlpine couldn't unfold a map properly
, never mind read it. He had a limited vocabulary which included: left,
right, halt, quick, march, dressinggggg. And of course a few adjectives,
especially his favourite one ' f***ing' .
Periodically we had a cross country run which invariably followed the
same route up the Malvern Hills , along the top and back down to the camp.
The job of the lance-corporals was to shout at the laggards. Of course
this meant running with them , arriving back in camp last and getting
a cold dinner.
Training eighteen year olds to handle heavy equipment and explosives was
fraught with danger. On one occasion I was assisting a cockney sergeant
to instruct a dozen sappers in the arts of explosives. The drill was simple.
They were given a guncotton primer , about the size of a cotton reel,
a detonator , a foot of fuse, a pair of crimping pliers and a match and
striker. They had to
1. fit the fuse into the detonator.
2. crimp the detonator to stop it falling off the fuse. This was the danger
point as crimping the wrong end usually cost you a few fingers.
3. insert detonator and fuse into the primer.
4. light the fuse.
5. place the lot on the ground.
6. turn and WALK away.
All went well until the segeant and I were concentrating on the crimping
when I noticed one of the recruits had got ahead of the rest and was clutching
a smoking fuse firmly attached to detonator and primer. I shouted,"throw
it away" but he just dropped it at his feet. I had no idea how long
it had been lit and if it exploded near his foot he would never play football
again! I swooped down, swept the primer up ant threw it as far as I could.
It exploded in mid air about fifteen feet away. "What the hell was
that !" said the sergeant. He was so suprised he forgot the usual
f adjective. I explained and after a few minutes of speechless shock he
told me to say nothing to anyone. He would have been responsible if there
had been an injury. I was almost deaf for a day.
One regular exercise was constructing a shearlegs or tripod from three
tellegraph poles roped together at the top. It was used for lifting heavy
weights such as unexploded bombs. The usual method was to lash it together
on the ground and by brute force spred the legs and raise it up. One corporal
was teaching this with a section of recruits and they wer raising the
legs but two of the legs got too close together and the whole structure
fell over and killed the corporal instantly. I had been boxing with him
in P.E. the day before and was very glad I hadn't hit him hard. I was
a bit shaken for several days.
About the middle of the course we had watermanship. This involved several
days trips to Upton on Severn to teach pontoon bridging. We had to build
sections of Bailey bridge on pontoons and ferry them up river to the bridge
site. They were propelled by four Austin Seven engines each driving a
propellor, one on each corner, and all independantly steered. If the sergeant
wasn't looking they sometimes were seen pirouetting up the Severn. The
climax of the week was the cutter race where two twelve man cutters were
rowed at top speed up the river for about three hundred yards. Exhausting
but great fun. Especially if your team won.
The Royal Engineers was a lot like the Scouts but with guns and bigger
ropes and branches. It taught one to improvise and to be adaptable. An
order from the C.O. that every N.C.O. had to have a name label on his
door was seen by some as a chore, but a bit of artistic ability could
be made to pay. I designed my door label with gothic lettering in orange
and blue and soon had lots of orders from my fellow N.C.O.s for designer
labels at sixpence each (half a day's pay). A request from a Captain to
do an elevation drawing of a Bailey pontoon bridge built across the Rhine
excused me from normal duties for almost two weeks. The drawing was done
the first day and the rest of the time was spent in the sun on the Malvern
Hills. " Had to go into town for more ink Sir!"
I had a couple of months as Orderly Corporal but it soon became obvious
to the adjutant that I was not good at administrative organisation and
I was soon back on training duties.
The Malvern Hills are a beautiful place on a sunny day and we seemed to
get lots of those. Malvern Water was free drunk straight from St.Anne's
Well and the views from the Worcester Beacon, the highest point of the
nine mile ridge, covered several counties and deep into Wales. The Edwardian
town, changed little since Elgar's day, way fascinating, and if you were
friendly with the cinema usherettes you could slip into the best seats
for cheap seat prices. Or if you knew her really well, free of charge.
The C.O. was a cricket fan and when in 1948 the Australians came to open
their tour by playing three days against Worcestershire he arranged for
each of the three Squadrons to spend a day at the match. My Squadron went
the first day. The Aussies batted first and Hassett and Brown opened the
batting. About mid day Brown was out and Bradman came in. He and Hassett
batted the rest of the day and Bradman scored a century. The only really
intersting event was when a jet fighter flew over the town. Bradman held
up his hand to stop the bowler and watched the plane until it disappeared.
It was the first jet he had ever seen!
I had several friends among my fellow N.C.O.s but I can only remember
the names of two of them. Bill Ramsey was older than most of us . I think
he must have been deferred from call up to finish a degree. He was a stolid
chap who seemed much older than he was. In the summer of 1947 he won a
fairly large prize on the football pools and decided to take up photography.
He bought a second hand Voightlander 35mm camera and stated experimenting
with various lighting conditions. He enlisted my support as a sort of
caddie. I kept notes of all his photo shots with aperture, film speed,
exposure, lighting conditions etc. I have a remarkable shot he took of
me using only the light of the tuning dial of an Ekco radio. It was the
beginning of my interest in photography.
Bill was not an elegant mover but he wanted desperately to learn ballroom
dancing. He decided to take lessons in Malvern but was reluctant to go
alone so he offered to pay for me and another pal of ours, Ken Gilham,
to take the lessons with him.
The recording of "American Patrol" by Glen Miller will always
bring back memories of those lessons and the embarrassment of having to
hold the female instructor so tightly against me that the sheet of newspaper
she placed between us couldn't fall. However I certainly learned to dance
and was actually quite good at it. Bill wasn't.
Ken was a good dancer, but he was good at everything. He had been a trainee
architect before call up and was a good draughtsman. We went sketching
together a lot and I learned much from him. He had a long list of objectives
such as dancing, skating, horse riding, tennis, swimming, which he wanted
to acheive , and he was working his way down the list. He was also very
good with girls (and handsome), which I was not.
We regularly went to local dances and he met a pretty girl called Audrey
Rowe who was a vivacious auburn haired eighteen year old who worked at
Warwick House, the big deparment store in Malvern. I and Audrey's friend
Daphne made up a foursome.
Daphne was as shy as I was but she was a good dancer so we got on quite
well. She was not a great conversationalist and our relationship was quite
chaste. Audrey, on the other hand, was very popular and when ever Ken
went home on leave he always asked me to take Audrey out to keep the wolves
away. As I really fancied Audrey this was no chore although since he had
trusted me I felt obliged not to betray that trust.
Audrey seemed to regard me as a sort of brother . We danced brilliantly
together and when I took her home she let me take her right to her house.
She had not allowed Ken to take her right home and I soon realised why.
Her father was working at the secret radar establishment in Great Malvern
and they had been moved from Southend and housed temporarily in a converted
Nissan hut. She thought too much of Ken to let him see her "downmarket"
home. I, conversly, was invited in for a cup of tea and even asked to
help dry her hair after she had washed it. It was the most sensual experience
of my life so far and her father was not amused. Eventually she asked
me to tell Ken about her house and later Audrey and Ken were engaged .
She didn't know that her was already engaged to a girl at his home in
Byfleet in Surrey. I wonder if he married either of them.
New Years Eve of 1947/48 is a vivid memory. Warwick House Staff Social
Club organised a trip to Stratford on Avon to see the Shakespeare Company
production of Alice in Wonderland. Ken, Audrey, Daphne and I went on the
coach and, after a very good meal at a restaurant arranged by the club,
saw a magnificent production that ended just at midnight. This was a time
when sweets were still strictly rationed but Daphne's father kept a village
shop in Welland, just south of Malvern, and Daphne had brought two large
bars of Dairy Milk. It crowned a perfect day!!
Food rationing was a fact of life which only affected us outside camp.
Ken's father was trying to start a small shop in Byfleet and would dearly
like to sell sweets. he knew that once rationing ended it would be a big
market. Soldiers had a generous sweet ration so Ken would buy our coupons
from us, get the chocolate from the NAAFI canteen and take them home when
he went on leave. His father then sold them in the shop and collected
civilian sweet coupons to order new stock. An expensive way into the business.
The NAAFI (Navy , Army and Air Force Institute) was the social centre
of army life. It was a combination of shop, bar, tea bar and table tennis
and it was staffed by females. I can only remember one of them. She was
the first woman I ever heard described as a "suicide blond"
(dyed by her own hand). Her hair was a dazzling yellow and the plumpness
of her face was accentuated by flame red lipstick that was not constrained
by the shape of her lips. That sounds grotesque but she was a happy soul
and seemed to keep the soldiery at bay. The morning Naafi break was usually
five minutes shorter than the queue and taught me how to eat and drink
too quickly.
Small villages were the best places to eat out of camp. Some of the farmhouses
did afternoon teas with boiled fresh eggs and homemade bread outside rationing,
using produce from the farm. Several of these farms were within a couple
of miles of the barracks and made summer evening walks very pleasant.
Eggs are still my favourite food.
In 1948 we had a new section officer and I found myself saluting Lt.Tom
Adamson. It was a potentially difficult situation but we maintained the
Officer-NCO relationship , although I never had a problem getting a leave
pass! I think that as a new and raw officer he was glad to have a corporal
he would not to take advantage of his inexperience.
In the late summer of 1948 I was due to be demobilised from the army and
in preparation for a return to civilian life we were offered a choice
of courses. I elected to go on a one month course in surveying at a camp
just north of Marlborough in Wiltshire. A fellow lance- corporal , Eddie
Wallen, was was going on a course also in Wiltshire and he suggested that
we should travel together and spend the weekend with a cousin of his in
Stroud in Gloucestershire. We got there on Friday afternoon and stayed
at a local inn near his cousins house. She was a pleasant middle aged
spinster teacher with a beautiful cotswald cottage in the town. She had
a polished mahogany Solitaire board with the set of marbles and she showed
me a system for succesfully playing the game. Of course I can't remember
it now. On Saturday Eddie introduced me to his girlfriend Ruth in Stroud
and we all went for a long walk through the wooded hills surrounding Stroud.
Eddie didnt pay much attention to Ruth and she tried to provoke him by
clinging to me. It was soon obvious to me that he was trying to offload
Ruth and later, back at the inn he admitted that he wanted to end his
relationship with her. He suggested that I took her out the next day as
he had to leave and report for his course. Discretion being the better
part of valour I spent Sunday visiting a nearby picture postcard village
of Painswick. Alone.
Monday morning I left for Swindon where an army truck picked up the twenty
or so of us for our last army posting. The camp was quite pleasant and
the course wasn't too demanding. The first day we were told that we MUST
salute officers at all times. This didnt last long after about thirty
demobees spaced themselves at ten yard intervals and marched along the
main camp road between the officers' quarters and the officers' mess just
as the officers finished their lunch. This meant that each officer had
to return thirty salutes, one after the other. They got the message.
I didn't learn much on the course that I didn't already know but it would
prove to be a useful qualification when I got back to the Rivers Board.
When the course ended I had a few days back in Malvern to hand in rifle,
blankets, clasp knife and mess tins before heading for London and the
Demobilisation Centre at Olympia. There we handed in our uniform and collected
our demob suits and final pay and discharge certificate.