In the summer of 1950 I went on holiday to Corsica and Italy and arrived home to find that my Bar final course at Gibson & Weldons had already started. I set off for London and found lodgings in Notting Hill. Then I fell on my feet. John Morrison’s father, Shakes Morrison, who became Speaker of the House of Commons before being elevated to the peerage as Viscount Dunrossil, offered me the use of his flat in the Inner Temple. My fellow lodgers in Notting Hill could hardly believe their eyes when I showed them my new ‘digs’.
Rationing was, however, still very severe and one person living alone had to use a great deal of ingenuity to avoid going hungry. The weekly meat ration from a butcher in Fetter Lane provided one good meal. I used to enjoy fried onions – just fried onions – for one or two other meals.
I took the Bar finals examination in December 1950 and it could not have been very testing because I passed with little difficulty. But when, wanting to get my national service over as quickly as possible, I tried to get called up for the army, I found no one in any great hurry to have me. Eventually, after a frustrating wait, I was ordered to attend an interview at Preston in the course of which I was asked which part of the army I wanted to join. I found it very difficult to answer given my rudimentary grasp of matters military, but I did not fancy walking, so murmured something about the Armoured Corps. ‘The Royal Armoured Corps, please’ said the officer rather testily and a few weeks later I received a rail warrant and orders to report to the 67th Training Regiment, RAC, Hadrian’s Camp, Carlisle.
In time I came to enjoy the army but the first few weeks brought no merriment. All day long we were marched up and down the barracks square and bawled at by terrifying sergeants. I longed for the occasional smoke break spent propped up against the nearest building. One day we were taken to the gym where the instructor paired us off according to size and told us to get boxing. I took a swing at my opponent, who promptly turned his back on me and trotted off round the edge of the ring. For the next two minutes I was hot in pursuit, flailing at his fleeing figure. Eventually we were deemed trained, after which those of who were considered potential officers were sent to a hut of our own to await a summons to WOSB (War Office Selection Board) at Barton Stacey.
While queuing up to get my paybook on my first day in the army I had got into conversation with a fellow recruit called Geoffrey Wheeler who asked me what regiment I was going to join. He, it appeared, had already applied for the XII Royal Lancers and I, having no knowledge of that, or for that matter any other regiment, thought I might as well apply for the 12th as well. The upshot was that a few weeks later the two of us were in a 15 cwt truck heading for Barnard Castle where the regiment was stationed. I thought we were going for an interview but instead we were invited to lunch in the officers’ mess during which we were asked a few questions and our table manners observed. We were then told that if commissioned we would be welcome as members of the regiment.
I then continued my life of ease in the potential officers’ hut. No one took any notice of us and we kept ourselves to ourselves lest anyone should come along and give us anything strenuous to do. One Sunday I decided to go to the pictures in Carlisle – Mammy starring Al Jolson. Some hours later I walked back to the camp and when passing the Orderly Room was put under close arrest. I, along with five other potential officers had, unbeknown to ourselves, been detailed for guard duty. The next day we appeared before the squadron leader and were given seven days CB.
There then followed one of the more unpleasant weeks in my life. CB, I discovered, involved a lot more than being ‘confined to barracks’. It involved parading in full kit every hour or two with the threat of further days CB for any lapses such as dirty webbing, imperfectly shined boots or the like. Terrified that I would spend the rest of my days on ‘jankers’ I worked unceasingly on my outfit and eventually, to my intense embarrassment, was paraded before everyone else serving punishment as a model ‘jankers’ man.
Our first parade was at 5 a.m. after which we had to carry out various fatigues. One morning I was given the best job of all, cleaning the Adjutant’s office; and while doing so I took advantage of one of the perks of the job, access to the Adjutant’s in-tray. There I read a memorandum commenting on the fact that some potential officers had been awarded CB and that never again should young soldiers who had undergone punishment be allowed to go forward to WOSB.
When still waiting for WOSB, I went to the same squadron leader who had awarded me CB and asked for compassionate leave to go to London to be called to the Bar. In retrospect I can see it was pretty cheeky and so thought the squadron leader. I do not think he believed a word I was saying. But eventually he said I could go on the understanding that if I did not return with the clearest possible evidence that I had indeed been called to the Bar, the most appalling consequences would follow.
A few days later I took the train to London and I went to see the under-treasurer of Gray’s Inn, Mr O. Terry, who looked at me as if I had crawled out from under a stone and said that he had never heard a more ridiculous proposition than that I should be called to the Bar the following night. For a start I had to be sponsored by two Masters of the Bench and there was not a chance of my getting two benchers to do so in the few hours remaining before the ceremony was to take place.
I had visions of months, if not years, in the guardroom at Carlisle, polishing my boots and webbing until I was old and bald, and, in despair, I rang my father. He said that he did not know what to advise, but Mr Justice Ormerod might be able to help. Ben Ormerod was an old boy of Blackburn Grammar School and had been a county court judge in the Blackburn and Burnley area before promotion to the High Court. He was the local boy made good and my last hope. I looked up Ormerod in the telephone book and set out in my battle dress and beret to see the great man. On the doorstep I explained who I was and what I wanted, and the judge said that he could not sponsor me because he was not a bencher of Gray’s Inn, but his friend, Hubert Wallington, was a Gray’s Inn man and he would give him a ring. Mr Justice Wallington invited me to call round at his home and within the hour I had one of the signatures I needed and an introduction to Master Salt who, before the night was out, had provided me with the other one. My visit must have greatly impressed Mr Justice Wallington because two years later, when I started practising in Manchester and he was one of the High Court judges who regularly came there on Assize, he kept inviting me to lunch at the judges’ lodgings. This was a rare mark of favour which greatly impressed other beginners at the Bar and it later turned out that the old boy had, right at the outset, misheard my name and had been proceeding on the assumption that I was the eldest son of his dear sister Emily.
The next morning I returned to Gray’s Inn in triumph, but my troubles were not over. Mr O. Terry tried to erect various new obstacles to my being called, such as the absence of a dinner jacket, but nothing was going to stop me now. I had got my signatures and called I was going to be; and called I was. Then, as now, students and barristers sat down for dinner in messes of four and at the appropriate time each member of the mess had to toast the three other members by name. For years I kept the piece of paper on which I had written the names of the members of my mess. Each name except mine was completely unpronounceable. My three companions all came from West Africa where I suppose they returned in due course to be Prime Minister or shot for treason – or both.
In those days the call ceremony was not very impressive. The hall and chapel at Gray’s Inn had both been destroyed in the Blitz and I had eaten my dinners to qualify for call in a bare lecture room with trestle tables. In that same room I was now called as an ‘Utter Barrister’. The next morning I wrung out of Terry a certificate evidencing what had happened and back in Carlisle presented it to a very surprised squadron leader.
Shortly after this episode I attended WOSB. I was required to climb a few ropes, negotiate an obstacle course and be interviewed about my hobbies and ambitions. I was then told that I had passed and would be going to Mons Officer Cadet School at Aldershot with a view to being commissioned in the cavalry.
At Mons, RSM Brittain was responsible for licking us in to shape. He not only had the loudest voice in the British Army, he also had an eagle eye. Once, when we were rehearsing for the passing out parade of the squad immediately senior to ours, he spotted something seriously amiss in the mass of soldiery before him. ‘You,’ he bellowed, ‘third man from the left in the second rank – your rifle’s cocked – pull the trigger.’ The man in question was a scruffy individual called Simon Plunkett. He was a Walter Mitty type character who had spread the rumour that he had flown in the RAF and that he was the brother of Shaun Plunkett, a much admired model. Simon pondered for a moment but another bellow from Brittain convinced him there was no way out. He pulled the trigger. There was a loud bang. The Sergeant closest to Plunkett was temporarily deafened and at first could not hear Brittain bawling that Plunkett be put under close arrest, but eventually a posse of other NCOs descended on him and he was marched away to the Guard Room.
This incident, and another round about that time, convinced me that whatever I was I was not a member of the upper classes. For some weeks the weather had been cold and we were being drilled each morning in full battle dress. Then quite suddenly the weather improved and on the barrack square the Drill Sergeant’s first command was ‘shirt sleeve order’. We set about taking off our battle dress tops and rolling up our shirt sleeves and the operation proceeded calmly until the drill sergeant’s eyes lighted on Viscount Lumley. ‘Dirty elbows, Mr Lumley, Sir.’ Viscount Lumley later became the Earl of Scarborough and performed with great dignity numerous high offices, but never with bare arms.
Eventually the time drew near when, if all went well, I would pass out from Mons and become a commissioned officer, but I had no great confidence in my abilities and whenever anyone was RTU’d (returned to unit) I thought ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. It was in this frame of mind that I conveyed to my parents an invitation to attend the passing out parade but accompanied it with a warning that my own chances of passing out were not great. It was, therefore, with some embarrassment that I told them on their arrival at Aldershot that, not only was I to pass out, I was to be awarded the Stick as best cadet.
The night before the parade RSM Brittain drilled me personally, teaching me how I was to walk up the steps in slow time and take the Stick from the Field Marshal. He was not enthusiastic about my performance, at one point crying out in desperation ‘your bottom waggles, sir.’ But the next day all went reasonably well until after the parade was over when I was told that I had to introduce my parents to the Field Marshal.
There was one immediate problem. I was not sure how I should handle my rifle in this more informal setting; in particular I had not the faintest idea whether I should or should not present arms. So with great presence of mind I hid my rifle under a bush growing conveniently close to the top of the steps where the Field Marshal was still standing. I then joined my parents and took them up to the Field Marshal. He was very friendly and said to my father: ‘I do hope your son will consider making the army his career.’ ‘Not on your life,’ said my father, ‘he has cost me a fortune studying for the Bar and to the Bar he is going.’
The next stop was Bovington in Dorset, the headquarters of the Royal Armoured Corps, and after that came the excitement of getting measured for my uniform in London. The ‘warm weather’ mess dress was a very fetching white jacket and shirt with scarlet cummerbund, overalls with a double yellow stripe down the side and black boots with spurs. There was also a flat hat and a side hat of scarlet with gold piping.
Embarkation leave ended with my parents taking me by taxi to Liverpool where the following day I was to board the Empress of Australia, bound for Singapore. But then came a most terrible humiliation. The ship cast off, slewed across the dock and hit the other side, seriously damaging a propeller. Two thousand soldiers who had just embarked had then to disembark and be dispatched to various camps in the north-west while the damage was repaired. I went to Saighton Camp near Chester. A fortnight of route marches followed, by which time it was plain that it was still going to be weeks before the propeller was ready. So we were sent home with our tails between our legs.
I got my trunk as far as Manchester, crossed from London Road to Victoria Station with it, put it in the luggage van on the train to Burnley and settled down in the compartment next door. I arrived at Burnley to find the trunk had gone. Apparently someone had concluded that Burnley via Bury and Ramsbottom was not the quickest route to Singapore, the destination for which the trunk was labelled. It took a few weeks to sort out that little problem, by which time the ship was ready to sail; so to Liverpool I returned.
I was responsible for a troop deck which was home for 130 men. There were long tables across the floor at which they were to eat and hooks in the ceiling from which they were to hang their hammocks. In the best of conditions it would have taken the men a while to get used to sleeping in hammocks, but a day out from Liverpool we ran into a storm and by the time we got to the Bay of Biscay there was not a man capable of carrying out any duties, and conditions on the troop deck were squalid beyond belief. But at last the ship rounded Cape St Vincent, and soon we were in good order and in a holiday mood.
The ship was to have refuelled at Port Said but at the end of 1951 Britain was coping with the first Suez crisis and it was decided to stop at Algiers instead. I remember how beautiful were the gardens facing the quay and how immaculate and prosperous-looking was the centre of the city. (I returned in 1968 as an MP to find it had changed out of all recognition – dirty, drab and squalid.) Orders went out that no one was to enter the Casbah in the interests of their own safety. Two hours later the place was full of soldiers. I know. I saw it for myself.
The Suez Canal was not a pretty sight, the banks being lined by masturbating Egyptians – a very exhausting form of political protest which I have never seen repeated. An enterprising subaltern dressed up as an Arabian potentate entered the ship’s dining room. He was announced gravely as the Ding of Dong, and proceeded to the Captain’s table. There the Captain politely gave up his chair to him and stood blushing like a bride while The Ding (otherwise 2nd Lt Piers Dennis) ate his turkey.
Next stop was Aden where we had another day’s shore leave. I took a fancy to a dinner service, bought it and arranged for it to be sent to my parents as a present. It was not a good move and led to my father complaining bitterly that he had to pay a large sum as demurrage because of the consignment languishing for some weeks on Liverpool Docks. When I arrived home a year and a half later I found the dinner service unused, at the back of a bedroom cupboard, and a few years after that it was given back to me as a wedding present.
On Christmas Day 1951 we arrived at Colombo and I met my first snake charmer sitting on his haunches outside the Galle Face Hotel. On New Year’s Day 1952 we sailed into Singapore harbour through a veil of rain but, before docking, ran in to a bit of trouble. OC Troops had ordered all baggage to be brought up on deck and put on the port side, but this led to the ship leaning over in that direction and being unable to get alongside in an orderly fashion. An exasperated captain then countermanded the order and after half the baggage had been moved to starboard we tied up and went ashore. A few hours later, after being issued with a side-arm, I was on a train bound for Ipoh in Penang.
We were in Malaya to take part in a fight against a communist insurgency which had begun not long after Britain, the colonial power, had arrived back on the Malayan peninsular at the end of the War. A plan had been laid for Malaya to be retaken by ground forces in 1945, but the collapse of Japan after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atom bombs meant that the British did not re-enter Malaya as conquerors but as representatives of a recently defeated colonial power. Many Chinese (the Chinese forming a large minority of the population) had fought the Japanese throughout the War from their jungle hide-outs and soon there was a communist-led movement, the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) determined to seize power from the British by force. By 1950 there were about 40,000 British and Commonwealth troops in the country, and we had come to join them. The British Army had enough on its hands with war in Korea so there was a fair chance of anyone being called up in 1951 seeing some action. I felt extremely lucky: I had already seen parts of the world which I had never in my wildest dreams thought I would be able to visit. No one then thought that world travel would soon be commonplace, and I felt truly privileged to be visiting countries which I thought few others would ever have a chance of seeing.
The time came for the train to leave Singapore and we set off into the darkness with armed guards on the platform at the end of each carriage, peering into the surrounding jungle and longing for a burst of fire as the prelude to a pitched battle and the winning of much glory. But on this occasion, as on so many others, the opportunity for glory never came: and at two in the morning we arrived at Ipoh. Transport was there to take us to the 12th Royal Lancers RHQ. There I was taken to a room in a straw-roofed hut and as I arrived a young subaltern sat up in one of the two beds and said: ‘I am David Duckworth and you’re the fellow who stuck a compass in my sister’s bottom at Sunnybank School, Burnley!’ I had forgotten the incident but at the time it had led to fearsome punishment, and it ought to have stuck in my mind as the point of the compass had stuck in Rachel’s posterior. She was a nice girl and at the time I felt she should have taken my attentions as a compliment.
I did not stay in Ipoh long – but long enough to learn something of the eccentricities of the Commanding Officer, Lt Col Horsburgh-Porter. On mess nights, subalterns were required to perform feats of bravery like jumping off the first floor terrace and grasping the trunk of a nearby tree to slow their descent to the ground. In calmer moments we were set the almost impossible task of dislodging lizards from the ceiling of the mess with the end of a long brush and catching them in free fall. The regiment had arrived in Singapore in August 1951 and consisted of twenty-five officers and 470 other ranks, 35 per cent of whom were National Servicemen conscripted for two years. It was deployed in three principal locations – Ipoh, Taiping and Raub, with a detached troop at Kuantan and another up in the Cameron Highlands.
After a week or two I set off to join ‘B’ Squadron at Raub and there served happily under the squadron leader, John Clark Kennedy. The officers were housed in the government Rest House, and a fellow subaltern was John Lang, later Dean of Lichfield. Then I went to Kuantan for a few weeks. It was off Kuantan that the Prince of Wales and the Repulse had been sunk on 10 December 1941 and it was on the padang at Kuantan that in February 1952 we paraded for the funeral of King George VI. The Sultan’s palace was at Pekan and we were summoned there one night to hear his complaint that his polo ponies had been blown up by a landmine on the road to Ipoh.
Back in Raub one of my jobs was taking consignments of gold from the local mine to Kuala Lumpur. The officer in command travelled in a Daimler armoured car with a driver and gunner and we were accompanied by an armoured personnel carrier with a driver and about half a dozen men. Once, on arriving in KL, we drove into the car park adjoining the NAAFI and, with a breezy ‘carry on sergeant’, I nipped across the road to the railway station to have a drink. When I returned I found the whole troop under arrest. They had abandoned the vehicles without a guard and had themselves gone for a drink. I felt entirely responsible and on returning to HQ made this absolutely plain to the commanding officer. Not for the first time, I found that the army mind did not work quite as mine. I was told in no uncertain terms that the day for my martyrdom had not arrived and that in the colonel’s view I was in no way to blame for what had occurred. If a sergeant was told to carry on, that meant that or, rather, it meant the opposite of that. He had not to carry on. He had to stop carrying on and do his duty even if that meant denying himself a drink, etc., etc.
‘B’ Squadron then returned to Ipoh and the routine was dawn patrols along the roads surrounding the town. A few days later Julian Brougham was orderly officer and said he didn’t feel well. I said I’d relieve him if he didn’t improve and an hour or two later when I went to see him he was so obviously ill I called the doctor. The next day he died of polio. A short time later I was on guard duty and had to wake a fellow officer to tell him that his wife had also died from the same cause.
In October 1951 Sir Henry, the High Commissioner, had been murdered by communist bandits, and Sir Gerald Templar had been sent out to replace him. Already, vigorous policies launched before his arrival were beginning to bear fruit. Isolated villages were being shut down and the inhabitants moved lock, stock and barrel to newly built villages surrounded with barbed wire and watch towers. In this way the terrorists were prevented from preying on the villagers and demanding food and other supplies from them. But descending on a village at dawn and herding terrified men and sobbing women and children into lorries with only what they could carry was not a pleasant task.
The new High Commissioner soon began to make his mark. He set about seeing that the police were reorganised and retrained, took steps to see that intelligence was properly coordinated and that the information services were smartened up so that people knew what was going on and why. Gerald Templar was very popular with all who had dealings with him. He was particularly nice to junior officers, full of enquiries about their families, careers and ambitions. On one occasion I was responsible for providing an escort for him and, over a meal in a village hall, engaged him in conversation. He was limping badly and I asked him at what stage in the War he had been wounded. ‘Wounded?’ he said. ‘I was getting a grand piano out of the mess at Naples ready for our move up to Rome when someone dropped it on my foot.’
One of my troopers was of hideous aspect with broken and blackened teeth. And I discovered why. We stopped at a roadside café for a drink and rather than wait for the man who brought the beer to produce a bottle opener, he struck the bottle forcibly against his bottom teeth and the beer foamed forth.
My next posting was to the Cameron Highlands to command an enlarged troop responsible for escorting food lorries up and down the hill. My troop sergeant, Sergeant Greetham, had won a Military Medal in North Africa during the War, and no one could have had finer support. The village or township of the Cameron Highlands was spread out around a golf course and two rather fine hotels, and at 5,000 feet the temperature was superb. From one end of the village a road wound its way down to the plain. At the other end there was a police post at a gap in the wire surrounding most of the settlement and the dirt road then meandered away across the plateau for thirty miles or so past various tea plantations managed by intrepid Europeans in almost permanent fear of their lives. Some had gone native and had Malay or Chinese girlfriends or wives. Most seemed to get their sustenance from gin or, in one case, cherry brandy.
One particularly demoralised planter invited us to stay for the night and he laid on a concert for our benefit. Some very beautiful girls danced for us – or rather they looked like very beautiful girls but at the end of the show turned out to be men. We were enjoying the entertainment when a volley of shots rang out and the place was plunged into darkness. The manager ordered one of the Malays to shin up a pole to see what was wrong with the lights, which were strung along the top of the wire surrounding the buildings. When he demurred the manager drew his pistol and the Malay went up the pole at great speed. I led a few soldiers out of the gate in the wire and prowled around for a while in the pitch dark, but not surprisingly did not come across a single bandit.
The journeys up and down the hill were very monotonous but we got a little innocent enjoyment at the half way mark where there was a Sakai camp in which both men and women were almost entirely naked. Down at the bottom was Kuala Kubu Bharu (or KKB), and there we sweated in steamy heat for a few hours before setting off back up the hill in late afternoon. As we climbed it got colder and colder and it usually began to rain, so we were glad of a hot bath by the time we got home.
Back again in Ipoh we were sent off every now and then to lay ambushes in the jungle in the hope of bagging a communist courier carrying dispatches from one bandit unit to another. We were never successful. With the jungle so thick and visibility so slight I thought that I was far more likely to hit a running terrorist with a blast from a shotgun than with a bullet from a rifle so I used to take out my twelve-bore. One night in the pitch dark I set an ambush, taking each man to the spot where I wanted him to lie, and at first light found myself looking down the muzzle of a bren gun. Sometimes, Borneo head hunters acted as guides for us and, through an interpreter, I asked one why we were so unsuccessful in our efforts to bag terrorists. The man answered that the terrorists could smell us a mile away, and indeed we did smell, having covered ourselves with all sorts of unguents designed to protect us from mosquitoes, leeches and other beastly things which inhabit the jungle.
I was determined to have at least one success over the terrorists and devised a brilliant plan. A track ran off into the jungle a few miles from Ipoh and I decided that if I could get my armoured car and APC (armoured personnel carrier) down the track for a few miles we could strike out from a secure base and perhaps score a notable victory. Disaster soon followed. The APC slithered off the track and overturned, the wireless would not work, nightfall was upon us and there was nothing for it but to sit tight until dawn. And then in the middle of the night some shots rang out. The only trouble was that it was impossible to see two feet in front of one’s nose and extremely difficult to know from which direction the shots had come. So we did precisely nothing. The next morning a party walked all the way to the main road and had to ring regimental HQ from a police station. We were then rescued in the most ignominious fashion – a number of surly soldiers having had to walk five miles with a very heavy winch in order to haul up the APC from where it had landed.
A few days later I went on another expedition and got completely lost. I reasoned that if we hit the railway line we had only to walk up it or down and we were bound to reach civilisation – so I asked my sergeant which direction was the railway line. Without any hesitation he pointed to the left. I asked the Corporal and he with equal confidence pointed to the right. I decided to go straight ahead and soon the line came in to view.
All good things come to an end. I sold my typewriter to pay my last mess bill and caught the train for Singapore. I made my way to the troop ship MV Georgic and offered my pistol to those on duty at an army post on the dock. They flatly refused to take it. I threatened to throw it in the dock and they said that if I did I would be court-martialled. I said I would take it on board ship with me and hand it in at Liverpool. I was told that that was prohibited. In desperation I hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take me to Changi, then British HQ on the island. Today a motorway runs from Changi Airport to the city centre. Then there was only a narrow country road and the journey seemed endless. But eventually I arrived at the Guard Room, handed in the pistol, got a signature for it and sped back to Singapore just in time to catch the ship.
Three weeks later we arrived in Liverpool. In the eighties I went as a minister to see a youth project at the mouth of the Mersey and there was not a ship to be seen, but in 1952 we were in a mass of shipping as we waited for the tide to turn. Eventually we entered the river and then began to come alongside, and on the quay I could see my parents and my sister Zoe. The next morning I disembarked and, after a quick word with the family, boarded a train bound for the Royal Armoured Corps headquarters, Bovington. I had 180 men under my charge, all due to leave the army, most with homes in the north of England and all fed up at not being allowed to go home at once. I sensed the danger and resolved to keep a very careful check on numbers. On leaving Crewe my 180 had shrunk to ninety-eight, Stafford left me with seventy. Before we arrived at Euston I gave my depleted band a strong lecture on the dire consequences which would follow if they did not board the train at Waterloo in three hours time, but at Waterloo my band of followers had dwindled to forty-three and when we got to Wool, the station for Bovington, there were only seventeen left.