The Day Gone By (50 page)

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 were 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.'

It must have been about a week after General Urquhart's visit that Paddy's platoon, one morning, were jumping at a near-by airfield. Lincolnshire was full of airfields. On the flat land south of Lincoln, east of the Grantham road, they were laid out side by side like Brobdignagian tennis courts. It was from these that the hosts of Lancasters, Stidings and Flying Fortresses used to set out to bomb Germany. We grew accustomed to seeing hundreds deployed in the sky, manoeuvring into position before their departure.

An airfield, ready-cleared, makes an excellent dropping zone (D.Z.). A morning's activity for a platoon - nothing in it, really, as long as it's not you. Someone had mentioned to me that Paddy and Co. were jumping, but I hadn't given it much attention, being too busy with C Platoon's rifles. We'd just been told that all rifles which weren't accurate in the aim were to be handed in. About mid-day I had come down to Company H.Q. to talk to C.Q.M.S. Greathurst about this matter, when I ran into Sergeant-Major Gibbs.

‘You 'eard, sir - we ‘ad a man killed this morning? Private Beal.'

The way he said it, it sounded like ‘Private Bill'; almost like a joke. It was no joke, however, but, like all fatal accidents, a horrible business.

What had happened was this. There were at this time two methods of jumping; one standing up, from the port rear door of a Dakota (C.47), and the other - the first-devised, original way -sitting down and propelling yourself feet forward through an aperture in the middle of the floor of a Whitley bomber. (‘Jumping through the hole', as it was called.) Twenty men could jump from a Dakota, but the complement for a Whitley was only eight.

For a ‘stick' of eight men to jump correctly required cool heads and accurate counting off. Sitting sideways on the floor and inching forward, each man in turn had to swing his legs and body through a right angle into the hole, and then push himself off to drop through it. There was a song (to the tune of ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown'):

‘Jumping through the hole,

Whatever may befall,

We'll always keep our trousers clean

When jumping through the hole.'

I have never jumped through the hole, but John Gifford told me once that, in comparison with a Dakota, you got a much more frightening view of the ground rushing past below.

Normally two containers, each with its own parachute and filled with arms, ammunition, etc., were fastened under the body of the ‘plane and released by the pilot to drop in the middle of the stick (to ensure the best possible accessibility on landing). When the green light came on, the whole stick used to shout aloud as they jumped: ‘One, two, three, four, container, container, five, six, seven, eight!' With number eight out, the despatcher would shout to the pilot ‘Stick gone!' This is why old airborne soldiers still sometimes talk about a ‘container-container' when they mean a container (e.g., in Marks and Spencer's or somewhere like that).

A man on a parachute has, as many people today have seen for themselves, a good deal of directional control. Containers, being inanimate, exercise none. What had happened was that poor Beal, jumping number four, had had a container dropped immediately after him (and therefore above him). The container, oscillating on its parachute, had bumped into Beal's canopy and collapsed it, and he had fallen to his death.

The incident cast a gloom over the company for several days. Many, many years later, when I was on the Great Barrier Reef off Australia, I met Arlene Blum, the American girl who led an all-woman expedition to climb Annapurna in 1978. Among other things she said to me was ‘What I learned on Annapurna is that you can be well-equipped and well-trained and do everything properly, and you're still in horrible danger.'

Now preparations for the invasion were mounting by the day. There were tanks and guns all over the place. Nazi-occupied France was attacked nightly by Mosquitoes - fighter-bombers - with the main object of destroying enemy communications. The railways were bombed to pieces, and I remember hearing that it was intended to leave not a bridge - any bridge - intact north of the Loire. This was actually achieved. (Such was our air supremacy that during the subsequent campaign, which culminated in the German debacle in the so-called ‘Falaise box', German troops could not move at all by day, and even by night were severely restricted by the universal devastation.)