Bobby had actually taken the field that October afternoon as Lance Corporal Charlton, for by 1956 he was in the middle of his National Service. When he had been summoned to join the army, he had been told by Busby to apply for the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. This was because their base was in Shrewsbury, not too far from Manchester, so Bobby could still play at weekends. But when he had finished his basic RAOC training at Portsmouth, he received his orders to go out to Malaya, where the British Army had been fighting a long campaign against the communist insurrection led by Ching Peng. The threat to young servicemen was very real, for almost 500 of them lost their lives during this 12-year conflict. In a sense of panic, Bobby phoned Old Trafford to explain his predicament. He was told not to worry: ‘We are certain your orders are to travel to Shropshire, not Malaya. It will be sorted out,’ the club informed him. Manchester United obviously had friends at the top of the War Office. The next day, Bobby was instructed to take the train to Shrewsbury.
After his initial bout of anxiety, Bobby spent two uneventful but physically demanding years at the RAOC barracks there, humping around shells, equipment and crates of bullets. ‘I didn’t like the army simply because it seemed to be interfering with my progress as a footballer,’ he said later. But this was hardly true. Bobby was allowed almost as much leave as he wanted to play for United. Furthermore, he was part of a brilliant army team which would have beaten most sides in the First Division. Its players included internationals like Dave Mackay, Cliff Jones, Graham Shaw, Alex Parker and the England keeper Alan Hodgkinson. Above all there was Duncan Edwards, who happened to be serving in the same Shrewsbury depot as Bobby. Just as he had done at Mrs Watson’s digs in Manchester, the giant, kindly Duncan looked after Bobby. ‘Duncan was a year older than I was and he took charge of me the moment I arrived in the army camp. He had my billet arranged and everything. When he showed me to the billet, he noticed there was a spring sticking out of the bed. “We can’t have that,” he said. It was a great big iron bed, but he hoisted it over his shoulder, mattress, frame and all, and went off in search of a better one for me,’ recalled Bobby.
Still in the army during United’s championship-winning season of 1956/57, Bobby played in 14 League matches, as well as the Cup Final against Aston Villa, in which Peter McParland’s vicious, jaw-breaking challenge on keeper Ray Wood probably cost United the Double. When Wood had to go off for treatment, Bobby was an obvious candidate to take his place between the posts. He had always loved keeping in practice sessions, and, according to Bobby Harrop, ‘He could have been a professional goalkeeper. We used to stay out after training, I would go in goal while he shot and then we would change over. I said to him, “You could be a keeper.” He had it all, speed, good reflexes, could cover the ground and deal with crosses and chips.’ But on this occasion at Wembley, United captain Roger Byrne signalled the Ulsterman Jackie Blanchflower to take over.
By the middle of the 1958 season, Bobby was establishing himself in that great United team. There was even speculation about an England place. John Giles, who joined United in 1955, is full of admiration for him at this time. ‘He was only 19 but he was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Even amidst all that talent at United, he stood out for me because he could do it on his own, instinctively. He was a very instinctive player. He had such natural ability, with pace and beautiful balance. I have to admit that he was not always so enjoyable to play with as to watch. It was hard to relate to him on the pitch, in terms of working together on the ball, because he would be doing his own thing. When I first went to Old Trafford, I was taught by Matt and Jimmy: “As soon as you get in a nice position, find another player, let the ball go simple and quick.” But playing with Bobby, I found that, sometimes, when I got in a good position, I did not get the ball from him. And I would be thinking, “Oh come on Bobby.” Then I saw that he had suddenly gone past three or four players and was threatening the goal. He could break all the rules because of his individualism.’
Giles also remembers Bobby, in this period, as a ‘shy individual but always friendly. We got to know each other because we were both young, living in separate digs and, in the evening, there was often very little to do. So we would wander up to the park and play bowls. In the right company, with people he trusted, he was one of the lads, enjoyed a drink, a game of cards, a song – he loved Frank Sinatra and had a good voice. He could be funny as well, with a dry sense of humour. Yet if a stranger came into the group, he would switch off immediately. He just would not be the same. And he could also be moody. If someone said what he considered to be the wrong thing, then he would take it to heart. Again, he was not a big drinker, but he liked a beer.’
Wilf McGuinness, one of his closest friends at this time, agrees about his shyness. ‘Bobby used to come in to Mrs Watson’s, just pick up a paper and start reading it. He did not converse that well, partly because he had a very strong Geordie accent.’ But, for all his shy nature, Bobby should not be thought of as a loner. For he revelled in the company of the Babes. It is no exaggeration to say that this period was probably Bobby’s happiest in football, when he was surrounded by friends of his own age and was enjoying the first freedom of adulthood. In later years, he would use the word ‘paradise’ to describe the pre-Munich years he spent with Duncan Edwards, Eddie Colman and the other United greats of that era. He was particularly fond of the streetwise Eddie Colman, as he told Eamon Dunphy: ‘I had come from the north-east which was, I suppose, a bit parochial and Eddie was the flash little townie. He was the first person I ever saw in drainpipe trousers. But he was brilliant. I was very close to Eddie. We were all close at that time. At Christmas I would stay with him. We’d play in the morning, then go back to his place for the turkey. His family were nice, lived in a tiny little street, where there was a real community spirit.’
The Babes also enjoyed the Manchester nightlife, going to the Bodega jazz club or the Plaza, run by Jimmy Savile, or the Continental, run by Eric Morley. Bobby’s Manchester in the 1950s was a much more exciting place than Jack’s Leeds. Wilf McGuinness recalls: ‘We were just ordinary lads. We’d go to the Plaza, have a bit of a snogging session, if we were lucky. Maybe we would see them again, maybe not.’ A more sedate activity was going to the pictures. As one of the perks of being on the staff, United players had free passes to all the cinemas in the city, as well as to the dog tracks at Belle Vue and the White City. ‘You’d be in the cinema on Saturday night, and suddenly you’d hear an “aaah” and a big “uggh”. It was the sound of footballers with cramp in their thighs and their hamstrings. We didn’t have rubdowns as they do today,’ remembers McGuinness. Bobby adored the cinema, according to Albert Scanlon: ‘A perfect day for Bobby would go: training, lunch in town, and then, in the afternoon, a visit to the News Theatre on Oxford Street to watch cartoons. He loved cartoons and would watch any that were showing. He regularly went into town two or three times a week, even by himself.’
Bobby could be high-spirited as well. Ronnie Cope, who was at United between 1950 and 1961, told me, ‘Bobby was a cheeky little kid. He, Wilf and Shay Brennan were so close, they always liked a joke, taking the mickey out of someone. We used to call them “The Three Musketeers”.’ Twice as a young player Bobby was hauled up before Matt Busby for rather puerile offences. The first occurred when he and some other young players, travelling through Manchester by bus, started firing off water pistols at pedestrians in the street. In fact, according to Ronnie Cope, the toy guns contained urine rather than water, which made the incident all the more serious when it was reported to Old Trafford. The second difficulty arose when, still under the legal age limit, he was reported for having a beer in a pub. As Busby wrote in his memoirs, Soccer at the Top: ‘When he was a mere lad, I had to put him right. He was very young and I heard he had been seen to have a drink of beer. So I sent for him and I told him, “If I ever hear you have been drinking beer again before you are old enough, you will be for it.”