The Day Gone By Read online

  I may have given an impression of a rather serious — even humourless - man. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the mess John was excellent company and most

  amusing, while always retaining that slight degree of reserve that a commanding officer must. I well remember our drinking parties, at which John often showed a predilection for a particular bawdy song, no doubt still in circulation, about Three Men of Nor-or-folk, Nor-or-or-or-folk, folk, folk. Terrible things happened to this trio. They all fell down a pre-ci-pice (pre-e-e-ci-pice, pice, pice) and had to go to hospitool, but there were no be-eds va-a-cant. John would join in singing this song with a kind of joyous gravity, as at the celebration of a rite. He drank his whack, but I never saw him the worse for drink. He was very fond of contract bridge, and there was nothing he liked better than a four. I was shocking bad - still am - but the M.O., Dr Willard, was good, and so was Phil Bushby, the Workshops officer. Once, at Nijmegen, we played bridge with the odd shell dropping from time to time. No doubt lots of other people have, come to that.

  From the top of the Company to the bottom, the men all had the greatest liking and respect for the O.C., and it was only necessary to say to your N.C.O.s ‘The Major doesn’t like -’ or ‘The Major thinks we need to -’ for his will to be done without the least demur.

  Captain Paddy Kavanagh was quite another thing. He was about twenty-nine and before the war had been a journalist. He was, of course, Irish, though he had no brogue.

  Paddy was a sensationalist; by temperament entirely the public’s idea of a parachute officer; good-natured, debonair, generous, always in high spirits (I know John Gifford, despite his liking for him - you couldn’t not like Paddy - found him a bit much at times), a deviser of dares, afraid of nothing (including jumping), so it seemed. He once jumped with a kit-bag on each leg, to show that it could be done: another time he jumped with a large wireless transmitter. He had a bucko sergeant, McDowell, and the two of them used to get up to some rare old larks. Once, Kavanagh was going to make his platoon crawl under live fire from a Bren gun, and began by setting them an example. After about a quarter of a minute he called to McDowell, on the gun, to aim closer. Afterwards, they found bullet holes in his airborne smock. Another time, when he had his platoon out on the Derbyshire moors on a bitterly cold day in the winter of early 1944, they came upon a steep-sided reservoir. ‘Fancy a swim, Sergeant McDowell?’ asked Kavanagh. The sergeant looked at him and bit his lip. ‘I will if you will, sir.’ So the pair stripped off and plunged into the near-freezing water. Paddy was out first, heaving himself up the shelved walling. But Sergeant McDowell was below middle height, and what with the terrible cold, simply could not pull himself out. Instead of helping him, the platoon stood round laughing at him and he very nearly died in the water before someone gave him an arm. Sometimes Kavanagh and McDowell would take the pin out of a live grenade and toss it between them until one of them (‘Cissy!’) threw it down the pit or over the wall.

  John Gifford’s quiet certitude, however, was always finally a match for Paddy, as Hazel’s was for Bigwig.

  I recall one of my own men, Driver Fisher, saying ‘I’d like Captain Kavanagh to train me, but I’d hate him to take me into action, because I’m sure he’d kill me.’

  The evening I joined the Company, I went out drinking in Lincoln with the O.C., Kavanagh and one or two more. I don’t know whether or not I was being looked over, but they couldn’t have been nicer: Kavanagh was perfectly charming, as a matter of fact. I remember seeing some Other Ranks near by, with their red berets pulled under their shoulder straps, and that I asked Paddy whether that was the thing to do. ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘we don’t quite do it.’ (Meaning officers.) He could have said ‘Good God!’ etc., couldn’t he? That evening I was treated like a guest and no one asked me anything military at all; but somehow I felt confident. This was the new deal at last.

  Next morning John interviewed me formally in the office. ‘How do you feel about jumping?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to jump, sir.’

  ‘Well,’ said John, ‘we can see about that. There’ll be time. But I think an officer of your experience should have an independent command, rather than being subordinate in a parachute platoon. I’m going to give you C Platoon.’ (This was one of the platoons of glider-borne jeeps.)

  Oh, C Platoon! Reader, please forgive a brief rhapsody. Was there ever such a platoon - was there? What a plague could I do for C Platoon that they couldn’t have done without me? That wasn’t quite true, actually - there has to be an officer, or things start getting wugular - but jolly nearly. Both the N.C.O.s and the men were beyond the wildest dreams of any subaltern. They were not only extremely competent - Sergeant Smith (Gerry) was a great deal more competent than I - but splendidly keen and very diverse. From Corporal Bater (Devonshire) - whom I have personally seen drink sixteen pints in an evening and then drive a jeep (I was in it) - to Corporal Herdman (‘Wheel him in, ah ha ha ha!’), a Geordie, there wasn’t a dud in the lot. Well, of course, there couldn’t have been, not in 250 Company, only I just wasn’t used to that sort of style, see? Even the Lance-Corporals (Barnard and Rushforth) would have made damned good corporals anywhere else. And when I start remembering the men individually - Eggleton, Fisher, Williams — well, a reader is bound to feel this tedious; but don’t forget that I’m not the first writer to have found commanding a good platoon the most fulfilling and rewarding thing they have ever had to do. Herbert Read, for a start. And Robert Graves and - a whole lot more. I wish I were back there, straight I do.

  The first thing C Platoon had on their plate after I’d taken them over was to go to Wellington, in Shropshire, and collect forty jeeps and eighty trailers - to make us effective according to establishment. Now airborne trailers were tricky things. Towing one empty one behind you was dangerous: towing two was even more dangerous. If you went too fast, the empty trailer might well turn over, and if it did, then the open-sided jeep went over with it. I have known at least one man (not mine) killed in this way. With two trailers per jeep, we had to drive back from Wellington to Lincoln at no more than twenty m.p.h. all the way.

  The evening we got to Wellington was actually the evening of the day on which I had taken up command of the platoon. I asked the N.C.O.s how they intended to pass the evening and they said they were going out on the beer. I immediately asked whether I could come along, and of course they said Yes: they couldn’t say anything else, really, but I saw an apprehensive shadow cross a few faces. They thought I and my pips were likely to be a drag on the evening. I knew that it was vital for the future of our relationship that I should join them and that in the course of the evening they must come to decide that they liked me without, at bottom, losing respect for their new officer. Well, it worked. It was really that they liked themselves and their red berets so much that they were essentially good-natured and well disposed. They liked being who they were, they liked what they were doing and they liked being under the command of John Gifford. They felt no resentment against the army or against the set-up they were in. As the pints took hold and Corporal Rawlings talked to me of how the company had been formed, in 1942, under the command of Major Packe, and of what they had carried out in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, I felt even more fully committed to what we were doing and to trying to be an airborne officer. I had never dreamt that there could be a platoon - or a company - like this. They should have every scrap of me, twenty-four hours a day. I honestly believe that the N.C.O.s went to bed that night feeling that the new officer at least liked his beer, had a sense of humour and might turn out to be not too bad.

  As for the men, there was none of the peevishness, shoulder-shrugging or ill-concealed resentment with which I had become all-too-familiar elsewhere. Neither was there any of the kind of spirit expressed in ‘We are Fred Karno’s army, we are the A.S.C.’ They did not regard themselves as Fred Karno’s army. They were glider-borne troops of the 1st Airborne Division: Hitler had a nasty shock coming. I don’t mean that they
had no sense of humour, or that I didn’t get my leg pulled in all the minor and time-honoured ways. But none of them ever ran down the Company or the Division. (‘’Wish Ah was out o’ this f— lot.’ To which the answer would have been ‘Well, you can go tomorrow morning — easily. Your passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into your purse.’)

  With everyone in this frame of mind, of course, the role of the platoon commander became according. You could treat the men with semi-familiarity. You didn’t have to drive them. You didn’t blast people, threaten them or put them on charges. (If there was one thing John Gifford hated like poison, it was a charge. ‘Couldn’t this have been avoided?’) On parade I reproved mostly by mock, histrionic severity. ‘’Orrible man!’ became a platoon catchword. Lady Godiva reappeared, and another crack I had acquired from somewhere. ‘I will not have this place left looking like a Chinese revolving shit-house!’ In Tunisia they’d all picked up the Arabic, of course - Maaleesh, stannah shwire and so on - which at that time was still a sort of initiates’ language. With a platoon like this, all you really had to do was try to work still harder than they did, prevent them from being buggered about by anyone else (outside the company, I mean), appeal to their self-respect when necessary and take every opportunity to set an example: get the first needle-jab, be the first man up in the morning, change a flat tyre with your own hands and generally have a bash at anything that offered. When in doubt, ask yourself what Gifford or Kavanagh would do. Given youth, health, energy and enthusiasm, it was simple.

  Anyway, I know it worked (relatively) because since the war I have talked to demobbed people who were on the receiving end and are now free to say what they thought.

  An example of what zest and esprit de corps can do to your metabolism was the cross-country. The cross-country was John Gifford’s idea. He devised a course of about four miles over the rural western outskirts of Lincoln and gave orders that everyone would participate - clerks, medical orderlies, mess waiters - the lot. Now I had never been any good at running. At Bradfield I used to stagger round on appointed afternoon runs with less than no enthusiasm, and had been only too delighted when being a fives colour had got me out of the senior steeplechase. But this was different. I knew there were some very rapid people among both the officers and the other ranks. I suspected that I might well be still on approval. Somehow, I had got to do creditably. With an effort that nearly killed me I came in sixteenth. (John Gifford himself was eighth and Paddy fifth.) C.S.M. Gibbs was the only man excused: I think it was thought that it would excite risibility and be bad for discipline if he appeared puffing and blowing with a place in three figures.

  As spring drew on and the unknown date of the invasion of Europe (D-Day) came closer, airborne activities began hotting up. I was sent to some local aerodrome or other to get glider experience, and spent a couple of wonderful days flying from somewhere near Lincoln down to the south coast and back, as theoretical co-pilot in a Horsa in tare (empty). The real pilot was a delightful chap and I learned a lot from him about how to be helpful to glider pilots and what not to do in a loaded glider.

  Then C Platoon went to Hope, near Edale in the Peak District of Derbyshire. ‘Edale’ was a particular private wheeze of 1st Airborne R.A.S.C., the invention of Major David Clark, 2 i/c C.R.A.S.C. David was a hell of a goer, one of the most rugged, stalwart officers in the Division. He had been an amateur county cricketer (Kent) and he could cover steep, mountainous ground for hours at almost incredible speed. (Late on, in 1945, when he was among starving prisoners in Germany and being marched backwards and forwards between the collapsing fronts, David was an inspiration and a hero, whose compassion and endurance saved many lives.)

  David had devised a week’s mountain ‘course’ at Edale, to toughen the blokes up (and half-kill some of them). All platoons (including those of the heavy companies) were sent on this course in turn. It was a good racket for David, since he lived in two rooms at the New Inn, and administered the course - when himself not out on the tops. Mr Herdman, the landlord, was also a keen walker, beer drinker and singer of songs; he couldn’t have had a more congenial guest and companion than David, and of course a steady succession of thirsty airborne soldiers in large numbers was exactly his ticket.

  I reported C Platoon to Major Clark at about four o’clock on an early spring afternoon. He was in what I can only call his parlour at the New Inn. ‘Hullo, Adams,’ he said. ‘Do you like Delius?’ I said I did. ‘Sit down for a bit, then.’ It was, as I remember, A Song of Summer. It seemed appropriate.

  That was a week and a half! The platoon climbed Kinder Downfall (yes, they did), with the help of one or two ropes put up by David; walked miles all over Kinder Scout in battle equipment; did a grisly night exercise in which all N.C.O.s had to use prismatic compasses; and in between whiles drank Mr Herdman’s beer in gallons. One night at Edale there was a dance, with the local girls brought in lorries (illegally authorized by David). At about ten o’clock he, Sergeant Smith and I were drinking in the bar when David said that for two pints he would now, personally, go out, climb the top that stands north of Edale (1,937 feet) and be back in fifty minutes. He did so. (He said he’d done it and no one dreamed of doubting him.)

  Another day, I had to take the platoon on a fairly wearing walk (it wasn’t a march: we went by sections, I think) over the tops. We reached our destination at about half-past two, where we lunched on haversack rations, after which the men were free to laze about until lorries came to take them back.

  A Kavanagh-esque idea occurred to me. ‘I’m going to walk back,’ I said to Sergeant Smith and Sergeant Potter. ‘Care to come too?’ They said they would not. I put it to the platoon as a whole. Only two people felt like coming: Lance-Corporal Rushforth and Driver Williams. So we set out.

  Well, it was a sod: I don’t say it wasn’t. But we did it —just. Williams, a nice lad, was first class: he covered the distance without distress. It was poor old Rushforth who really suffered: I remember we pretty well had to help him down the last stretch, a steep valley known as Golden Clough; but he was game all right.

  I left Edale with a very proper sense of my own limitations on Kinder Scout. You see, I had always hitherto had a good notion of my abilities as a walker, based on my childhood on the Downs, my ramblings with Alasdair in the Trossachs and so on. Before going up to Edale I had even felt impatient and begrudging of David Clark’s reputation in 1st Airborne R.A.S.C. The outgoing lot before us was one of our own para. platoons, Captain Gell’s. I remember saying fatuously to Daniels, their subaltern, ‘What’s so marvellous about Clark, anyway? Can’t any fit bloke walk on the tops?’

  Daniels, a big, husky fellow, paused for a few moments. At length he replied ‘You seen him go?’

  A week or two after we had come back to Lincoln, it became noised abroad that there was to be old utis. General Urquhart, the Divisional Commander, was coming to inspect 250 Company. Apart from being the Divisional Commander, Urquhart as a man enjoyed the sort of esteem you’d expect. An officer of the Highland Light Infantry, he had been on the staff of 51st Highland Division in the Western Desert, and had taken over 1st Airborne after the previous commander, General Hopkinson, had been killed by enemy fire in Italy in 1943. He was known to be completely fearless but to hate gliding, which made him feel sick. As a rule, of course, he concentrated his attention on the six parachute battalions and three glider-borne battalions of infantry which were the fighting guts of the division, but naturally his gunners, sappers, signals, R.A.S.C. and other brigade and divisional troops also needed looking over from time to time.

  John Gifford was not the sort of O.C. to be put in a tizzy by inspections from anybody at all, but nevertheless a divisional commander’s visit had to be taken seriously. Sergeant-Major Gibbs was given carte blanche, and for days his roars of rage and disapproval could be heard from North Hykeham to Washingborough. C.Q.M.S. Greathurst, an instructed scribe, brought forth out of his treasure things new and old. Chinese revolving shit-houses we
re swept and garnished within an inch of their lives. When the great day came C Platoon, in their rather isolated, Nissen-hutted, jeep-ranked location at North Hykeham, were ready for anything: not a boot-eyelet unpolished, not a Pegasus out of alignment.

  We had a watcher out at H.Q., of course; it was Corporal Pickering, who came duly zooming back on his motor-bike. The General had arrived, and the O.C. had given him, Pickering, a nod that he meant to bring him up to C Platoon. In our apprehension was mingled real pride. With the whole company to select from, Major Gifford had decided to take the General to C Platoon.

  The cortège duly arrived and Urquhart, a dark, big-built, hefty man, got straight out of his car and walked ahead into our location as Corporal Simmons slammed the turned-out guard into the present.

  ‘Where’s the platoon commander?’ he asked.

  I found myself walking with him easily away from the Div. H.Q. retinue. Alone together, and amicably, the General and I strolled round the location. We chatted. I realized he was not looking for faults. This was a different sort of inspection.

  ‘What are your problems?’ he asked.

  I couldn’t even invent one for him. I showed him a few patches of damp, and that was the best I could do. I introduced two or three of the N.C.O.s, who told him they were as happy as larks and ready to take their sections anywhere.

  General Urquhart had not come to carp or to pick holes. He had come to inspire trust and win our confidence. He did that all right. He left after about twelve minutes, telling John Gifford that we were first-rate, or words to that effect. It was, as you might say, anti-climactic. Later, in the mess, John remarked quietly ‘I’m glad the General seemed pleased.’