CHAPTER 4 THE BRITISH ARMY

Lucky to touch it, a shillin’ a day

RUDYARD KIPLING

1600 hrs on Thursday 3rd June 1948 was one of the Greatest Moments in military history although until now little has been written about it.

It was at that precise moment, according to my diary, that the British Army and I joined forces. I was 18 years and 3 months old and thereafter for the next 21 months I was 22035565 Signalman WINTERS, R. until transferred to the Army Reserve Class Z.

My induction into soldiering was no more traumatic than it was to many thousands of other National Servicemen over the years of compulsory conscription into the armed services in peacetime: in fact I had several advantages over my fellow recruits. My civilian office was run on unspoken near-military lines: I had started my employment there shortly after the cessation of hostilities and the senior partners were two ex-Army Majors (A.P.Marsh, OBE., TD., of the First World War and M.J.W.Marsh, MC., of the later and most recent conflict). The next-in-line for Managing Clerk was a recently discharged Petty Officer, RN., the cashier a demobbed Bombardier Sergeant RA., and the personal assistant to the head of the firm was an ex-WRNS lady. In addition I held the rank of CQMS (Company Quartermaster Sergeant) in the local Army Cadet Force. Discipline and the pecking order were not new to me and in fact I quite liked the arrangement.

Much against my father’s better judgment and wishes (he had served and had been wounded in the trenches in WWI and had seen horrors of which he seldom spoke) I enlisted in the 2nd Battalion, Leicestershire and Rutland ACF on 31st October 1944 - I was discharged on 1st June 1948, some forty-eight hours before I joined the Army proper. I enjoyed my years in the ACF, learning parade-ground drill, and eventually teaching it, small arms drill, fieldcraft, Regimental signalling and how to be smart on parade. We met on Tuesday evenings and Sunday mornings at the local Drill Hall. I passed my Certificate "A" examination at Roundhill School on 21st July 1946 and was promoted to CQMS on 28th September 1947 via two lesser ranks. All this held me in good stead when I was called-up.

I caught the 10.15 bus from Melton to Grantham (noting in my diary that as I left "Mam cried a little"), trained to Darlington then Richmond and was taken by lorry to Catterick Camp, arriving at 4 pm. We had tea and were in bed by 11 p.m. My summing-up of the day reads "Reasonably happy - but very tired". Reveille the next day was at 0600 and with 200 others I proceeded to "Documentation", medical tests and kit issue. No more need be said on the subject - it has all been written and spoken about hundreds of times by hundreds of men and follows a time-honoured pattern.

On Day 1 I found the Camp Radio Club - an essential thing for me!

Parades, foot drill, square bashing, arms drill, the NAAFI, rifle lessons, Corps history and the PSO interview at my new home, 7 Selection Regiment, Catterick were all part of my new life.

The interview with the Personnel Selection Officer proved interesting and satisfying and was to open the door for my future service. The Officer was a young subaltern not much older than me, (I surmised freshly out of University), and he suggested in view of my previous occupation that I should perhaps join the Judge Advocate’s Division: my retort is not for these pages, but was followed by an explanation that the JAD was no place for a dedicated conveyancer, draftsman and budding Registrar!! I was asked to name a choice and elected for, not surprisingly to you, Radio Mechanic. I had already talked my way into the Royal Corps of Signals and had the ambition of spending my enforced period in the Army in deep in the bowels of wireless sets. He scanned my school record and, being satisfied that I was sufficiently good at English and Maths, said he required to test my manual dexterity. A shoe box of assorted parts, produced from under his desk, turned out to be the components of a bicycle pump - now I had been and still was a very keen cyclist (had I not biked to Land’s End and back with my pal Bill Butteriss once?) - the puff of rubbery air I pumped into the PSO’s face some seconds after he had removed the lid from the box convinced him that I had sufficient manual dexterity to make and repair sophisticated wireless equipment as then current in the telecommunications of HM Forces!! I was in! And my card was stamped accordingly.

I was soon picked out of small arms drill as a "bright" boy - in fact I could strip and put together a Bren gun, blindfolded, kneeling on the customary Army grey blanket as fast as the Drill Sergeant, so he told me to go away (or words to that effect) and start studying wireless somewhere!! Similarly on the Drill Square. Guard Duty was no problem to me, an Old Sweat of the first Order!! Kit inspections necessitated much preparation but I was used to "Bull" from my Army Cadet days. Jabs, inoculations, injections, vaccinations were all taken in normal stride although the effects were sometimes debilitating.

I had some recreation time and was able to go fell walking or cycling (I had my trusted bike sent up by rail) in the Dales staying at Youth Hostels when possible at weekends.

Pay Parade produced my £1 for the first week’s service but it was enough to keep me in near-luxury since we were housed and clothed and fed.

Passing Out Parade necessitated physical fitness (perhaps an indication of my future walking habits was that I did the 5-mile walk with full kit and rifle in 58 minutes) and smartness. That over I received my posting to 1 Training Regiment, still in the Garrison - to see the back of Baghdad Lines and to be trained as a Radio Mechanic.

I was interviewed on Monday 19th July 1948 by the OC and the next day by the CO as a possible WOSB candidate (War Office Selection Board) the first rung of the promotion ladder but with typical lack of self esteem I declined. That day I started the 20 weeks’ of my radio training.

My first week’s examination produced a 70% mark and ensured my success if I kept up my studies and my concentration. And this is how it turned out to be in the end. Radio Mechanic Class AIII (one of the highest Trades at the time in the Army) and passed fit for service anywhere.

Diversions during the 5 months of the Course were few and far between but on 30th July I was granted a 48-hour Leave Pass - my first chance to go home! I arrived by train at Grantham at 10.20 p.m. The last ‘bus for Melton had left at 9.45. I walked home!! I arrived at 3.30 a.m. tired but relieved and happy, pleased to see my parents and pleased to see my new short-wave receiver which had arrived a few days earlier.

By early August I was attending the Catterick Garrison Radio Club and living and breathing wireless day and night. No sooner had the Army assigned me the accolade of Radio Mechanic but four days later I was posted to BAOR - British Army of the Rhine - Germany. I was feeling the cold of North Yorkshire in Winter quite badly but Embarkation Leave brought me to the relative warmth of the Midlands. I re-started work at Oldham & Marsh on 4th December 1948 for the duration of my leave and spent most of my free time short-wave listening.

From many places in the United Kingdom we now-qualified-troops returned to Catterick on 16th December ready for overseas, only to be told to go home - we had been granted Christmas leave!

Memory fades but the ink of my diary entry does not and it burns my eyes to read:-

The draft, en route for Germany, via Harwich and the Hook of Holland was kitted-up and medically examined. Chickenpox! The cry rang out throughout the Medical Centre of the British Military Hospital, Catterick. As if it were The Plague! The draft was off and "Quarantine" was the Order of the Day.

Fortunately I was never discovered, but my private records reveal that I outstepped the bounds of medical isolation and escaped to the cinema in Richmond from time to time thus risking a national as well as local epidemic of the dreaded varicella.

The authorities kept us busy, outdoor exercise, PT., snow notwithstanding, marching to and from and otherwise deserted dining hall, forced to watch inter-Unit football matches - oh plenty of fresh air for these lads - kit inspections ad nauseam - then the discovery that if you haven’t embarked within a certain period of Embarkation Leave you are entitled to more Embarkation Leave (now who WAS carrying a copy of Major Michael Marsh’s Kings Regulations in his kitbag and revealed the law??). So home again!!

I was not to see Catterick again for many years - not until 1972 in fact when I started attending the Corps’ Amateur Radio Society Annual General Meetings on a regular basis. We trained from Richmond on Tuesday 25th January 1949, King’s Cross, Harwich and on board the very crowded troopship "Empire Wansbeck" of some 3,000 tons displacement.

Holland impressed me with its cleanliness - the sea-crossing was enjoyable and the train journey through the country of windmills and clogs to the frontier with Germany at Blentheim excellent. I arrived at Bad Oeynhausen and was transported by Army Bedford 3-tonner (I can hear the whine of their back axles now with a pang) to Bad Lippspringe to discover my ultimate destination was the 5th Royal Tank Regiment at Belsen. The Camp tailor removes my Catterick Roses from my tunic and replaces them with Desert Rats - I am in the 7th Armoured Division. I spend time in the Royal Signals Workshops learning more of the radio sets I shall be dealing with during my stay with the RAC.

My private transport, an Army 15 cwt. comes for me on Tuesday 1st February - the Driver being one Corporal "Jock" Summers. So it’s hey ho! and off we go Summers and Winters, via Hamelin (of Pied Piper fame) and Hannover (yes, that’s the way it is spelled in Germany), Celle and...........................Belsen. Bad blizzards caused us to skid off the road, the long journey caused our lights to fail, we were towed away and repaired but otherwise an uneventful journey across a country I’d only heard about and in the full brunt of Winter snows.

I draw the black (Tank Corps) overalls that were to cover me daily throughout my stay. I am introduced to the Royal Signals personnel in the workshops that were to be my companions and my home throughout my stay, but there’s more ...............

I discover the Barracks have a Radio Club - defunct but ripe for reawakening and the callsign DL2LC. I also discover that I have a German civilian to sweep and dust my room every day and light my fire - by local custom I pay him in cigarettes!!

I learn SO quickly: I start a "Demob Chart" - 303 days to go - Roll on Death, Demob’s too slow!! I find much local interest in short-waving - it augurs well. Am given work to do - that which I have been trained for so expensively - repairing radio sets, Army style. I start listening in earnest, gain permission to use the HQ Army Wireless Set No.52 - all 100 watts of it and endorse my diary "Terribly happy" on 7th February 1949.

And so it goes on - workshops all day, radio shack at night, working successively Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Italy etc. Omnibus letters to and from home, dining room food forsaken for the better NAAFI grub, the WVS canteen. The dreaded BCI arrives on my doorstep - Broadcast Interference - my transmissions (in profusion) are upsetting barrackroom radios and complaints are laid. I make my first radio contacts with dear old England and don’t get to bed until 2 a.m. I start getting jobs in the Regimental Offices - inter-departmental telephones etc. I start bartering and illicit Black Market dealings - the stock-in-trade being repaired civilian receivers, and the currency - yes, cigarettes!!

Cigarettes were disposed of for essential German Marks by standing nonchalantly on a street corner of nearby Celle with a bulging pocket. In no time at all some German would sidle up and whisper "Sie haben Zigaretten zu verkaufen?" A quick nod, a joint survey for loitering Military Police whereupon if all was clear money and tobacco changed hands, the parties to the transaction separated quietly and quickly. Money was needed for food. Camp food both Cookhouse-supplied and that purchased from NAAFI and WVS to supplement and vary the diet left hungry young men in need of good old fried potatoes, eggs and bacon, washed down with glasses of beer or Steinhager (a gin-like potent liquid). For this we would go into the nearby Gasthaus and order "Zwei Spiegel eier und gebraten mit ein bißchen speck, bitte" (the German for fried eggs being "mirror eggs". We wolfed this lovely food, with black bread and really enjoyed it. One had to be careful though in possessing the foreign notes and coinage. Technically it was an offence but if proper application was made and one took part of pay in German Marks and had this entered in the Pay Book it covered all future illicit gains!

I started to get my Seven shillings a day Trade Pay and thought I was rich! Oh for the life of a soldier free!

My sojourn in the Fatherland brought me into contact with things I would otherwise never have encountered and moulded my thoughts and attitudes for the future. You must remember I arrived there but not too long after its horrific happenings had been discovered: I was young, innocent and vulnerable. My eyes and my mind were opened. Has too much been written about it already? Would just a little more here serve to let us remember?

The foreword to the RAC (Royal Armoured Corps) Training Centre Prospectus reads:-

The famous Jewish Memorial inscribed stone reads:

"Israel and the world shall remember Thirty Thousand Jews exterminated in the Concentration Camp of Bergen-Belsen at the hands of the murderous Nazis. EARTH CONCEAL NOT THE BLOOD SHED ON THEE" This was erected on 15th April 1946 (114th Nissan 57061) the first Anniversary of Liberation by the Central Jewish Committee, British Zone. "Belsen and this monument symbolise a singular historical fate. This memorial is for the sons and daughters of foreign nations, it is for German and foreign Jews, it is also for the whole German people and not only those whose bodies also have been hastily covered with the earth." With these words the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss, commemorated the victims of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1952. The Belsen memorial calls to mind all the human beings who had to suffer here innocently under the National Socialist régime and who lost their lives in unimaginable numbers - this on the occasion of the Lower Saxony state taking over the care for the Belsen memorial in 1952. Eberhard Kolb produced the main study in 1962 "Bergen-Belsen: From 1943 to 1945" which is available in German, French and Dutch.

Note "Bergen-Belsen" the proper name - Stalag XIC/311 BERGEN-BELSEN - and the blaming of the Nazis and not the Germans.

"When we passed through the gate of Bergen-Belsen, we dropped out of life" - a survivor’s words for the unspeakable horror which overcame them when they arrived from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück, Neuengamme or other concentration camps.

Activity in the so-called Radio Club increased and I was able to enlist the help of the Regiments Signals Officer, Lieutenant Nash, RAC., and others into erecting better aerials and smartening the shack. In March 1948 we worked our first Indian station, Turkey and North Africa according to the logbook. I was joined by a fellow Radio Mech. Henry Turner from Ruislip and formed a close friendship - we still exchange letters at Christmas nearly 50 years later!

One of my duties took me to the Jewish Camp just outside our Barracks area (the Barracks had formerly housed SS Troops during the War and were palaces compared to the "spider" huts of Catterick). There I was in charge of a Public Address system, Bill (Corporal Ball of Nottingham whose grandfather had designed the original John Player & Son’s original cigarette packet) drove the 15cwt truck and the system was used to direct many DPs (Displaced Persons) onto trains which were to take them on the early stages of their journey to Israel. Spring certainly sprung that year - and beautifully so on its appointed day of 20th March I recall.

Spring was a time for preparation: fitting WS19s into the ubiquitous Jeeps, bigger wireless sets into bigger vehicles, checking the communications within and between the Regiment’s tanks (Centurions mainly - huge beasts) and our own mobile workshops. Kit inspections - a rare item on the military agenda since my arrival. Something was in the air and so on All Fools’ Day 1948 we set off:-

Another Scheme took me out further in early May - I see the famous Reich Autobahn for the first time on the way to Bielefeld, describing it as "each half as wide as any English road" and begin to sleep in a one-man bivouac instead on the workbench. I seem to swan around half of Western Germany on these Exercises, visiting Guterslöh, Paderborn, Sennelager, Fassburg, Osnabrück, Detmold and all those places beloved of British troops serving in BAOR at the time and later. Moving off at 2.am was just part of the fun!!

Back in barracks one of my radio contacts is with G8OC of Beeston, Nottingham, a gentleman’s outfitter who knew my Uncle Ted, the railway station manager. June was an important month: Henry and I play much tennis in our free time, share the joys of amateur radio and the YMCA opens. Yes, yet another Canteen within our compound, and Orders pronounce that "w.e.f. 7th June dress will be shirt-sleeve order". King’s Birthday Parade on 9th June was cancelled due to rain, and I was back on the wrong side of the dock again. Charged by the SSM (Squadron Sergeant Major) with "conduct prejudicial to good military order and discipline, Sec. 40 of the Army Act" (they can "get" you for anything under this!!) in that on being detailed so to do I had failed to get my haircut in time for the Sovereign’s anniversary parade!! Hauled before the OC I explained that I had spent several hours the previous day in rigging up his now beautifully-working inter-office telephone, sitting resplendent on the desk between us, and the Camp Barber had disappeared by the time I got there. Case dismissed!! Much to the chagrin of the SSM.

It wasn’t all work and all amateur radio. We were allowed one Continental Leave period per year - mine came on 22nd July - with hindsight I should have chosen the Harzburg mountains but instead went with Bill, via Hannover to Norderney, in the east Frisian islands off West Germany. - along journey necessitating a night in the Royal Engineers’ barracks at Hamm and a boat crossing. We spend our holiday wandering the beaches, horse riding, cycling, walking and as usual enjoying the delights of German food.

August brought more excitement in the way of a big Scheme on Luneberg Heath - much work on radios, telephone lines, in and out of Centurion and Comet tanks, swanning around the "battle area" in an open Jeep from one broken radio to another and generally thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Bad thunderstorm - lightning kills one of the Tank Corps lads. October saw the end of the Exercises and we were back in Belsen, bronzed, fit and eager for living in bricks and mortar again and proper beds.

25th October and my Home Leave. Long road trip to the Hook of Holland, extremely sea-sick on the crossing on the "Empire Parkeston" and by nightfall next day was in the cinema at Melton Mowbray! By the next day I was back in the Office at Oldham Marsh & Son as it had become with Michael joining the firm. Commence work the next day. A calm return voyage and in Belsen by 18th November.

Christmas Day 1949 it seems I had little to do but read Shaw’s "Man and Superman" and found it difficult. Events on Boxing Day took a turn for the better: one of the assistants at the Camp YMCA, Uschi Kunze, about 2 years older than us, invited Henry and I to her home on the edge of the Camp. She later marred Heinz Ploch who was an Officers’ Mess Steward. We had a fine time, drinking, eating, playing cards and finding it very nice to be in a civilian home. We were subsequently to supply Uschi and Heinz with all their radio receivers, chocolate, cigarettes etc. I received my 47th consecutive Christmas Card here in Melton from her last year - we exchange photographs each year - she is now widowed, living in Brunswick, has had two strokes and is in poor health. Last year I sent her a dozen red roses. She was most kind to me throughout my stay at Belsen.

I was hauled before the Court again: charged under the same section - being in the YMCA after 1030 a.m. - I was admonished and discharged because of my still-clean crimesheet!!

The preface to my 1950 diary declares that I have had a happy year, gained experience and hoped that I had helped to make other people happy.

My anti-typhoid inoculations (boosters) make me poorly in the early days of the year but thereafter it was workshops and amateur radio and joyful anticipation of demobilisation which set the scene for this very cold Winter.

My homeward journey to freedom, Belsen (the Barracks later renamed Hohne), Hamm, Bad Oeynhausen, Bielefeld, Essen, Dusseldorf, Munchen-Gladbach, Utrecht, Hook of Holland (again the Empire Wansbeck - she had brought me here in the first place), across the North Sea, Farnborough, Aldershot and by 6.30 p.m. on Friday 24th February 1950 I had obtained my release. Demob Group 135 - tattooed on my heart. Waterloo, St.Pancras, Leicester, taxi home. And that was it an interlude over.

I was in the Office next morning at 1000, and slipped back easily into my routine. Little did I know I would be there still some 45 years later - the story of that appears in Chapter 7.

My demob testimonial reads: "Signalman Winters has served with the Royal Signals: I have found his work satisfactory. He is a clean smart and honest soldier. He intends to be a solicitors clerk on demobilisation but I cannot say that his work will directly benefit him in civilian life except in a general way, namely that he will be able to look after himself . A fairly cheerful personality, he is popular with his friends."

"You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges: the old ones, grub." And in my case a soldering iron as well.

Page design and Extract © 2000 Richard Winters