Braver Men Walk Away Read online

  I watched the soldiers as they formed a semicircle around the instructor and the Blacker Bombard. Voices carried clearly on a strengthening breeze. From their actions it seemed they were using a dummy mortar, one where both warhead and propellant were totally inert, rather than a practice mortar, where only the warhead is safe. Obviously they were rehearsing aiming and firing procedures; when they pulled the trigger, nothing would happen. The bomb was black and hooped with a yellow-painted ring. It was loaded on to the spigot. At the instructor’s command, the trigger was pressed.

  From my vantage point on the perimeter grass I watched with disbelieving eyes as the bomb hurtled from its spigot, the crack of its cordite charge splitting the air. The dark, frantic blur struck one of the soldiers, and threw him aside like a rag doll. It careened off into another, shredding tunic and flesh as it tore out most of his chest. It felled a third victim, then veered away towards a nearby building, slammed against the wall, bounced back, rolled over and over and lay still.

  The figures remained where they had fallen. The others stood in frozen profile, matchstick men pinned into place. Inert, incongruous, the bomb lay negligently on the grass; sunlight now added a paler stripe to its bulbous form. The breeze stirred the trees around me. Into a vision of searing lifelessness, horse chestnut leaves came fluttering down like ragged stars.

  Eventually I moved away, bought the flour and walked slowly home, neither thinking nor feeling.

  My mother chastised me for taking so long. She chastised me again later, when the news came out that I was the boy who had witnessed the accident, that day when a spigot mortar had been mistakenly loaded with a practice round.

  We sat in the reverberating gloom of the Anderson shelter, Old Bill, my grandmother and me. The rubbery smell of gas masks mingled with the dank scent of moist cold earth. Another night raid was under way; the ground shook and shuddered as bombs rained down on both sides of the Thames.

  Because my mother had thought it would be good for me to get away from the dangers of the camp, I had spent part of my school holiday at my grandparents’ home, arriving at roughly the same time as the Luftwaffe. Though no blame for this unfortunate coincidence could be attached to my mother, it seems strange that at a time when children were being sent out of London to safe havens throughout the English countryside, I should be evacuated from the countryside and packed off into the Blitz.

  London had moved from peace to war with little fuss or drama, at a pace so gradual yet so remorseless that what was unreal on one day passed unremarked on the next. To a child it was very exciting: air raid wardens, black-out curtains, streets without railings, whistles and sirens in the night; and especially the aftermath of bombing, when spent cartridges and steel splinters from anti-aircraft shells could be collected and, best of all from my point of view, unexploded incendiary bombs hoarded for future use.

  None of the names and places meant much to me, but my grandmother remembered the autumn of ’38: Hitler’s threat of war on 1 October if Czechoslovakia failed to return the Sudetenland, Chamberlain’s flights to Berchtesgaden and Bad Godesburg, the high anxiety of the weekend of 24 and 25 September, the dawn of Monday 26 September when the first sandbags appeared outside office buildings and posters printed in big black type advised of respirator distribution points (three sizes were available – large, medium and small; you were measured by voluntary workers who told you to take good care because each gas mask cost the Government two shillings and sixpence).

  Everywhere, she recalled, Londoners had a new phrase: ‘Just in case’, taking comfort in the fact that what was being done was more of a precaution than a necessity. When the KEEP OFF THE GRASS signs were removed from Hyde Park that Monday, and civilian labourers arrived in shirtsleeves, braces and cloth caps to dig deep trenches, it was ‘just in case’. When keepers and hostesses were photographed at Regent’s Park Children’s Zoo shovelling sand into maize sacks the newspaper headlines said the same thing: JUST IN CASE. Even when a dozen stations on the London Underground simultaneously closed, everyone said it was ‘just in case’; a spokesman testified to the sudden discovery of an urgent need for unspecified ‘structural alterations’.

  But then Chamberlain made a final visit to Hitler and returned from Munich on Friday 30 September with a copy of the pact which guaranteed that Britain and Germany would never again go to war. ‘I believe it is peace in our time,’ he said. ‘Go home and sleep quietly in your beds.’

  And now here we were, in an air raid shelter in a back garden in Greenwich, my grandfather complaining in a voice heavy with irony about how good it was to be at home, sleeping quietly in our beds.

  The darkness jarred again as something thudded near by. Bright light suddenly flooded the shelter and our shadows stood out in flickering relief. Grandmother pulled me to her, shouting: ‘It’s an incendiary!’

  Grandfather glared at her. ‘I know, I know!’ Pugnaciously: ‘Stop yer yelling, will yer?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to do something?’

  ‘What, now?’ He looked at her as if she’d gone mad.

  I stared from the one to the other, mesmerized by the sudden slanging match. The ground trembled again; sound came drumming as distant bombs fell. I was too old to be frightened but too young to appreciate what might happen next.

  Grandmother stubbornly refused to yield. ‘You’ve got to put it out, right this minute!’

  ‘If you think I’m goin’ out there in this,’ he said, rather as one might point to the folly of setting forth in a rainstorm without an umbrella, ‘if you think –’

  ‘Oh I see, I see! Let’s all just sit here and wait for the next one to drop! You know very well they use incendiaries as markers. They can see our house clear as day now.’

  A momentary pause, then: ‘Bloody Huns!’ and he clamped his bowler hat to his head and lunged outside.

  We watched him from the shelter entrance, shovelling earth on to the blazing incendiary. The first shovelful made the thing erupt in a spectacular shower of sparks; like a figure from a surreal fantasy, he hopped this way and that, frantically brushing at his shirt and trousers, all the while keeping one hand clamped to his hat.

  Old Bill’s bowler: the hat was inseparable from its owner. He wore it at breakfast and he wore it at suppertime and no one, not even the bloody Hun, was going to part him from it. In the neighbourhood he was regarded as a fierce old rogue, a description not entirely inappropriate. He was a self-employed plumber and used to bring home sections of lead piping which, for reasons never disclosed, he found it necessary to hide. By contrast, Grandmother was smaller, almost frail, yet each of them knew who ran the household, for her stubbornness usually defeated his bluster. If that failed, then downright guile was used.

  ‘They need help to clear up,’ she said, when one particular night raid had finally ended and volunteers were being sought in a door to door appeal.

  ‘They can manage without me,’ Old Bill said, shuffling deeper into his fireside chair. ‘Some of us ’ave already ’ad an ’ard day.’

  Grandmother smiled sadly. ‘What a shame. They’ll be wanting all the able-bodied men they can find, down at Lovibonds.’

  ‘Lovibonds?’

  ‘Mmmm. The brewery. It’s had a direct hit.’

  Old Bill briefly considered, then hauled himself out of the chair. ‘I’ll just get my coat,’ he said.

  As the war years slowly passed, and the Luftwaffe ceased to threaten London’s skies, Greenwich became more and more a place for holidays, a time for staying at Grandfather’s side as he laboured in his workshop or, even better, for walking together along the riverside, watching the sailing barges beating up and down the Thames.

  These holidays provided a welcome break from the rigours of school life at Bishop Wordsworth’s, and the interminable hours of homework. Scholastically, I was lazy; although I would eventually end up with an Oxford Schools Certificate, consistent underachievement disappointed both my teachers and my parents.

  However, w
here explosives were concerned it was a different story. By now I was skilled in the manufacture of weapons from various spares left lying around the camp. The most common were 9mm Sten gun barrels, which when fixed into a standard 1-inch signal pistol barrel could be used as a single shot weapon. Unfortunately they only lasted for a few admittedly hair-raising rounds, after which the material holding the Sten gun barrel in position finally failed and blew the barrel out of the gun. I lost count of the number of such weapons I managed to fabricate; I’m told that one such gun, allegedly made by me, is today on display at a Wiltshire police college.

  The war was bringing finer treasure, too, notably a crate of Maschinen Pistole 43s, a German assault rifle. A brand new weapon, its arrival for evaluation at Netheravon generated a flurry of interest that was not lost on the children of the camp.

  Several instructors, including my father, had an MP 43, but no one worried about leaving the weapons lying round – what little ammunition existed for them was safely locked away in the stores and could only be drawn by authorized users. I decided to make some of my own.

  It took time as well as practice but eventually I modified a couple of dozen conventional German rifle cartridges to suit the new weapon. Hopeful though not certain that the ammunition would work, I purloined Father’s MP 43 and then led two senior members of our gang out of the camp and across the Salisbury-Netheravon road to the firing ranges.

  About 400 yards in we found a set of old trenches. We crouched down while I took aim and fired at a trench wall twenty feet away. Unfortunately, though the rifle worked perfectly, the rifleman did not: a child’s strength was no match for the weapon’s ferocious kickback. The barrel lifted and the rounds went over the top.

  My companions were decidedly unimpressed. ‘Just look at him,’ said one. ‘Can’t even hit a bloody wall.’ He reached for the rifle. ‘Give it here.’

  But then someone landed in the trench. ‘What the hell are you lot doing?’ White-faced, shaking, the Orderly Officer pushed us aside and scooped up the ammunition. We were so dumbfounded by his arrival that it took a few seconds for his words to register: the bullets had not only sprayed over the trench wall, they’d also gone over the road, passed through the trees in the Top Wood – clipping off leaves and branches en route – and then whistled over the camp. For a few brief moments Netheravon thought the Germans were very close indeed.

  This time there were not only wrathful parents but a wrathful army to contend with. A couple of days later we were all taken before the Colonel. We had, he said, behaved in an extraordinarily irresponsible fashion. Yes, sir. We had put people’s lives and safety at risk. Yes, sir. Did we now realize the seriousness of what we had done? Oh yes, sir.

  Having identified me as the ringleader, the Colonel glared more at me than at anyone else. How, he enquired, had I managed to come up with ammunition for the MP 43? Haltingly to begin with, but then more fluently as his attitude seemed to soften, I explained the research and development programme that had preceded the firing. Despite himself, he couldn’t quite hide his fascination. Finally he said: ‘And now I’ve something to tell you, young Mr Gurney.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’ My face must have been bright with anticipation – after all, I had made the weapon work. That had to be some kind of achievement.

  ‘We’ve examined your ammunition and we’ve rechecked the rifles. And d’you know what?’

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘If you’d fired that thing just one more time it’s very likely it would’ve blown up in your face.’ The Colonel hunched forwards over his desk. His smile was humourless. ‘What d’you have to say to that?’

  I swallowed hard. I had nothing to say.

  As a lesson, it was well worth the learning; certainly, it was more readily absorbed than anything at school. My affinity with explosives should at least have stimulated an interest in chemistry, but unfortunately the subject was taught in such a way that it was about as fascinating as watching paint dry. Only on the playing field did I excel: after carrying off the Victor Ludorum, I was made School Captain of Athletics.

  When Grandfather learned I was a promising sprinter he borrowed a stopwatch and off we went for a time trial in Greenwich Park. He paced out what he claimed to be a hundred yards and sent me on my way. When I’d finished he was staring at the stopwatch and shaking it. I skipped over to him. ‘How’d I do?’

  ‘Under nine seconds.’ Old Bill frowned. He shook the stopwatch again. ‘Nah. Can’t be. Bloody thing’s obviously wrong.’ But when he looked up, he was smiling.

  The war that had dawned unrecognized was now ever-present, first in Greenwich and then in Netheravon. In June 1940 troops evacuated from Dunkirk arrived at the camp. Exhausted, disorientated, they crowded into tents. We watched and wondered at their sallow faces and shuffling movements, at the absence of smiles and the dullness of their eyes. They gave us handfuls of French coins. At first the NAAFI wouldn’t take them, but then relented, so we spent our francs and centimes on condensed milk and squares of jelly. I used to think the soldiers gave us the money because they didn’t need it any more, but as time passed I began to sense a different reason. Eventually I understood what had been meant by a soldier who handed me a souvenir – a leather belt to which had been carefully stitched a line of shining centimes, the thread sewn through the holes in the coins. ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want anything to remind me of France.’

  We continued to live at Netheravon beyond war’s end. Finally, when I was seventeen, Father transferred to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and was posted to the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). The rest of the family went with him – my mother, my sister Maureen, and the two others whose arrival seemed to have come out of the blue: brother John, born in November 1939, and Diane, born in January 1943.

  Because it was important for me to finish school at Bishop Wordsworth’s, I stayed behind in Netheravon Village, lodging with a couple whose son was at Sandhurst. Towards the end of that last term I was warned of my liability for National Service call-up and asked to state in which arm of the forces I would prefer to serve. After enquiring into the options available, I discovered that the army offered a trade as an ammunition examiner, it seemed a very interesting way of spending eighteen months. Luckily this was a Royal Army Ordnance Corps trade; I pointed out that my father was already in the RAOC, knowing full well that the selectors paid more attention to family ties than to anything else.

  Eventually a brown envelope popped through the letterbox. Headed ‘On His Majesty’s Service’, it contained orders to report to Aldershot, a postal order for one day’s pay – four shillings – and a rail travel warrant. It was 25 May 1950. I was in the army now.

  2

  Army Life

  An ammunition examiner’s job calls for the exercise of specialist knowledge, an ability to act calmly and responsibly under pressure, and a facility for matters mechanical. Challenges are many and varied. Tasks are often of considerable complexity and require the display of initiative and ingenuity. So the selection board at Parsons Barracks, Aldershot, gave me a dismantled bicycle pump and asked me to put it back together again.

  Each preceding test had shown the same sophistication of selection process: intelligence – a set of puzzles from 1949 Eleven-plus exam papers; psychological – a couple of pages of ink blots. And now, the bicycle pump.

  It made me realize how lucky I was to have got this far, for the army’s idea of sensible selection had a logic all of its own: a friend who had been one of London’s best bricklayers was made a driver; another, a genius with car engines, wound up as a clerk. Yet none of this was surprising because, after my first two weeks of National Service, it was obvious that the army moved in curious ways.

  Parsons Barracks comprised a series of wooden huts dotted around a grassed area and interspersed with the occasional tree. Each hut provided accommodation for thirty men in the main dormitory area; a small bedroom at one end was reserved for the permanent Staff Corporal. His job was to enc
ourage us through our training. Accordingly, he bellowed everything at the top of his voice, rendering every command well-nigh incomprehensible.

  The intake at Parsons was drawn from a wide social spectrum; it included a talkative Welshman, a taciturn Scot, an East End barrow-boy and a couple of chaps of ‘quaite refained’ upbringing. From Reveille to Lights Out every moment was taken up with training. After the evening meal at 1700 hours there was something called ‘Interior Economy’. This involved the cleaning and preparation of one’s kit for the following day: Blanco all webbing, clean all brass, press uniform, prepare bed space for inspection and ‘bull’ boots (bull being a verb for the act of polishing with one’s finger).

  In those brief exhausted moments after Lights Out there was little time to ponder on the army’s strange terminology or tasks like whitewashing coal, grading pebbles – and shaving blankets. All bedding had to be folded and boxed for morning inspection. But this being the army, boxed did not mean boxed; it meant sandwiching one’s neatly folded sheets between one’s neatly folded blankets and then wrapping another blanket around the assembled fabric to make an aesthetically appealing pile. The exposed faces of the folded blankets were required to be free from fluff. To ensure that, these needed to be shaved.

  Once you began to understand the thinking that informed this kind of duty, the task of arranging pebbles by shape and size or applying whitewash with a toothbrush to lumps of coal was of little consequence. The apparent aim was to mentally and physically exhaust every recruit to the point where every order, no matter how stupid, would be obeyed without question, which explained why the British army was the world’s best army and why those who ran it were very probably certifiable.