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Your in the Army Now
May 1934
Despite my mothers pleading, at the tender age of sixteen and a half, I decided to enlist in his majesty’s armed forces. My father had fought in the Boer war, serving in the Queen Victoria rifles. I could not enlist in that regiment, it having been disbanded just after the Boer war.
I was not around at that time, having been born seventeen years later. My brother had served some time in the Royal Corps of Signals, so I plumped for that, to be told that there were no vacancies, but “we do have vacancies in a famous old Scottish regiment. At that time of the century, I had only vaguely heard of Scotland, (apologies to the S.N.P. of course) except when the Scots came to Wembley to out-play and out-drink the sassenachs, then we heard of them. So, one day in may 1934, a group of London lads, most of whom had never been much farther than Southend pronounced, “Sarfend” entrained for bonnie Scotland, to a place named Achendinny in, or near a place named Penicuick, thence to the Royal Scots training depot. Imagine the various pronunciations we applied to those names our “inglish" was not too brilliant, let alone our Scottish! Of course the Scots fell head over buttocks with laughter over our attempts at the pronunciations "0ch laddies, ye dinna pronuunce the wairds like yon", the cairrect pronuunciation, is, 0ocheendinny and Pinnycook. D’ye no ken the kings English?” Of course we all knew that the king was English, with a little German thrown in, but what had that to do with the Scots dialect?
We were thrown in at the deep end from the word go, our civvy clothes taken from us, uniforms and equipment issued, short hair cut by the regimental barber, (Sweeney Todd).
Deloused, fumigated, short arm inspection (that is the little one between the left and right legs) showered inspected for (pedicula pubis) crabs. After that, everything was done at the double, the shower was the worst… get on with the story!…(most of us , in the poorer class, at that time, if they were lucky, bathed in a large tin bath on Friday nights. It depended on how many in the family, and your age, whose turn it was to bathe, and how clean the water would be - and how free from urine, (Eliza Doolittle did not know how lucky she was) that’s how it was for the poor in the twenties and the thirties. Great empire, hungry Britains, ragged, semi- educated kids. Nowadays, I, at 83 years of age, am amazed at the amount and variety of different food, from all over the world, but where was it when great Britain had the biggest empire the world had ever known, and how is it that, after a great war, there is an abundance of food, but not in every country of the world?….still, I must get on with my story…
After all the delousing etc, we were formed into squads, our squad was named," Bell Squad", mainly composed of Londoners and a few northern chaps, but no Scots. All the other squads were solely composed of Scots. The following day our training commenced in earnest. First of all, after forming ranks we were inspected by our Squad Commander, also a Londoner. Sergeant Stamford, (Sammy for short. of course, we recruits were obliged to address him as Sgt. (to his face.) he walked down the ranks tearing all of us to pieces, verbally. He came to me and said, "when did you last shave?" I so far had only grown “ bum fluff” so I proudly said “ this morning sergeant," “well stand nearer the f--------ing razor next time!” so he went along the line, castigating everyone, he looked at one bloke and said
“ which is the best squad in the depot?” reply: - “ I dunno Sergeant”, "Bell Squad!” Sammy roared, "this f---------ng squad! Don’t you ever forget that! From now on everything will be done at the double, or even faster" (phew). We ran, we trained, we doubled and then we trebled, from reveille until dusk. Full battle kit, route marches, three mile runs, musketry training, you name it we did it, but by God we got fit, and our Scottish was improving so much so that when I went on leave to London, my family could barely understand me.
After some leave, we were posted to the Royal Scots first battalion stationed at Dover, a long way from " sarfend" or, rather, “Southend ". Micky and I met for the first time when we attended the same army educational course, at a place named Shorncliff, near Dover. During the course, we were given a book to read and digest, with a view to us all being examined on it in due course. As to the story, it was (still is) called "the tale of two cities", by Charles Dickens. Micky was the first examinee. He was well prepared. He mentioned Lucy Mannette’s old nurse, who, I think, was Mrs. Prosser, whom Lucy addressed as "0ld Prossy” – mistake, Mick.
With the most innocent of expressions on his face, (where else) he rose to his feet and said in the most straightforward of tones," this old Prossy, She was not really not, er, not a woman of ill repute, Sir?" A prossy was In those days, an abbreviation of prostitute" .our innocent instructor looked puzzled " of course not Myles, to Miss Mannette, it was merely a term of endearment to her old governess.” Those that knew Micky guessed that this was not the end, and looked forward to more. More was forthcoming. " But sir, I would na ca ma Mither 0ld Prossy, would you sir? Sir replied, “ I do not know your mother, Myles " (one up to sir) but sir had lost all control “ carry on reading", said sir to Mick, Micky carried on reading, but every time that he had to mention “ Old Prossy” he did it in a manner which I cannot describe, but every time that "0ld Prossy", popped up it was to loud chuckles from all except “ Sir”.
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