I arrived in Catterick camp after the longest train journey I had ever taken which had been delayed due to heavy snow over the bleak North Yorkshire Moors. Ahead of me lay six weeks of basic Army training. Having been warned to expect life to be tough, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, not only did I not find it tough, I loved it!
Shortly after I arrived a whole bunch of us raw recruits were lined up and told to undress in preparation for our first medical examination. The Medical Officer came down the line towards me giving each recruit a very brief physical assessment, generating a loud cough from each one in turn.
‘Stand up straight, lad!’ said the Corporal as the M.O. approached.
He stood in front of me and cast his eyes from head to toe, taking a step backwards and focusing on my feet which, by now, had a few weeks of grime caked on them. I began to wish that I hadn’t spent my fortnightly bath money on chips and sweets. I felt fairly certain that I was in for an embarrassing bollocking in front of my newly acquired peers. But it didn’t happen. Instead, he stepped forward and whispered in my ear.
“Don’t let me see your feet like that again soldier. You know where the showers are – use them.”
That M.O. made a lasting impression on me, and I certainly took his advice. From that day forward my feet have been a sight to behold, and getting my shoes and socks off has always been an important part of my courting ritual.
We were certainly kept busy during this introductory period to my life in the army. At five-thirty every morning the silence was shattered by the booming voice of the corporal in charge.
‘Reveille! Hands off cocks, Hands on socks. Twenty minutes be standing by your beds, ready for PT!’
After PT, we were kept continuously on the go until lights out at ten o’clock from Monday to Saturday, and on Sunday it was church parade. Church parade was the part of basic training which I disliked the most. It entailed turning out in our best uniforms and being thoroughly inspected by the troop sergeant. We were then marched to the relevant church which catered for the denomination declared on the initial recruitment form. This would either be Church of England or Catholic, since there was no provision to indicate agnostic, atheist or any other religion. For over an hour we were made to stand, or kneel, in front of the padre and mumble the appropriate bits of the service where the congregation are meant to join in. All this chanting was mumbo-jumbo to me since the only times I had ever been in a church was to attend weddings, funerals or christenings.
For the first time in my life, I was being supplied with three good meals a day, which I certainly took advantage of. I gorged myself on everything from black pudding and sausages in the morning to jam roly-poly in the evening. The huge intake of food and the many hours of gruelling physical exercise each day meant that, by the time I got to the end of my basic Army training, I was in superb physical condition. I was still not quite, eighteen years old.
Having qualified as a trained soldier, and being designated the rank of signalman, which is a private really, but signalman sounded marginally better. I was entitled to my first period of leave.
The seventy-two-hour long weekend pass which I was granted, was spent strutting around Accrington in my shiny new boots and uniform and splashing out the small fortune I had saved from my seven pounds seven shillings a week amongst my old, school mates.
Over the next fourteen weeks the Army and, more specifically, the Royal Corps of Signals taught me a trade. At the age of eighteen, not only was I now a trained soldier, but I also became a qualified lineman, which was basically a second, or even a third-rate telephone engineer.
My first posting was to Royal Air Force Station, Laarbruch on the German/Dutch border with the nearest large town being Roermond in Holland.