Aware that freshly commissioned second lieutenants are bumptious and full of themselves when they arrive at their regiment, a series of elaborate practical jokes is played on the unwitting victim; also nobody speaks to you unless it is absolutely essential for at least two or three weeks. I arrived just in time for dinner after a five-hour journey by Land Rover from the airport. It was some weeks before I realised the airport was only in fact about forty minutes away and that that had been the first of many practical jokes. I ate my dinner in silence because that evening the other six or seven subalterns at the long, highly polished table spent the entire meal reading books or doing the Telegraph crossword. This was practical joke number two. The next couple of days consisted of interviews with the Adjutant, the RSM and the Colonel and guided tours of the camp. Apart from that I was left much to my own devices, collecting odd bits of kit and moving into my rather splendid room in the Kommandantur. I was then introduced to my troop and my three tanks. To my absolute delight my troop sergeant turned out to be no less than Sergeant Linneker, which was doubly good because, as yet, I hadn’t even sat in a tank, never mind knowing anything about them. As things stood I was an infantry officer and had not attended the complex technical course at Bovington in Dorset which was scheduled to take place in two or three months’ time. In the meantime I attended morning parade, inspected ‘my’ men and wandered off back to the mess for coffee break. I would return to the tank park and chew the fat with Sergeant Linneker until lunchtime. After lunch we might play five a side football, go for a run, or, on Sergeant Linneker’s suggestion and using his notes, give the lads a lecture on the art of tank warfare, something which I knew absolutely nothing about. And, except for dinner, I spent most evenings in my room listening to Bob Dylan and the Beatles and reading The Great Gatsby while I sipped chilled white German wine.
Occasionally the Colonel would decide to dine in, to entertain some high-ranking visitor. On these occasions we were required to wear mess kit as it was a very formal occasion. I took my place at the table and after Grace the mess stewards served dinner. It was, I recall, mulligatawny soup followed by poached grey fillet of fish in a lumpy parsley sauce followed by roast stuffed chicken, vegetables and roast potatoes. Not quite as disgusting as it might sound except that my own meal was served to me partly frozen! Practical joke number three. I had no choice but to eat it. The whole table was in on the blague and I reckoned any protest from me would result in some heinous retribution. After dinner the Colonel withdrew to the corner of the mess to play cards with his guests whilst the subalterns got drunk and played mess games. Well, actually I didn’t play any mess games, I was the mess game.
First of all they played ‘canoes’. This involved me sitting in a cut-down tea chest with two poles running through it, rather like a sedan chair, whilst the other officers ran the canoe and me around the mess in some kind of grotesque relay race. The object being to tip me out as many times as possible, and of course each time I fell out, I had to pay a penalty, which was to drink some disgusting cocktail devised by my boisterous ‘chums’. When they tired of this, it was decided to play ‘aeroplanes’. This involved piling up the leather cushions from the sofas some feet away from the highly polished mess table, which had now become the deck of an aircraft carrier. The object of this jolly jape was for me to be held spread-eagled by half a dozen of the pranksters and swung backwards and forwards until I had gathered sufficient momentum to be launched from the table and hopefully land on the cushions. The senior officers, engrossed in conversation, chess and cards, paid not the slightest attention.
Eventually the evening calmed down. Someone played the piano and sang, others played in a billiards tournament or a card school, none of which I was invited to join. By about midnight I was bored and not a little embarrassed at being so completely ignored so I decided to slide out of the mess and go to bed. Within seconds I was asleep. Suddenly I was woken by a heavy hammering on my bedroom door and the shouts of five or six subalterns demanding that I open the door, which I did. I was swiftly grabbed and dragged onto the mess lawn, where I was eventually overpowered and croquet-hooped to the lawn. The Adjutant, a captain, explained to me that officers never left the mess before the Colonel. After about half an hour I managed to struggle free and thoroughly angry, pissed off and furious at what I thought was their pathetic behaviour, I returned to bed. After the morning parade I was summoned to see the Adjutant, who with no reference to his own presence at the previous night’s fight on the lawn said, ‘I have been informed that you were on the mess lawn drunk and improperly dressed last night. This is unacceptable behaviour and you will do seven extra orderly officers.’ I saluted and left his office burning with a sense of outrageous injustice. Everybody took it in turns to be orderly officer: rather like a hotel duty manager, you inspected the camp guard throughout the night, visited any prisoners in the camp clink, did the fire rounds and toured the troopers’ mess at each mealtime. Seven on the trot is bloody miserable. The one consolation from the first few weeks of misery was that my fighting exploits had thoroughly impressed my troopers who, I discovered, had nicknamed me ‘Bomber’.
After my extra stint of orderly officer there was a marked change of attitude and the other officers started to include me ‘in’ and life became rather good fun. Sometimes we would go clubbing in Hamburg; other times we would go on gastronomic safaris in Hanover. A starter in one restaurant, a main course in another, dessert in a third and so on. The summer passed away happily enough on the shooting ranges or on tank manoeuvres, although there were few of these owing to defence cuts which resulted in a shortage of fuel and ammunition. I was given all sorts of responsibilities like being appointed the religious officer, basketball officer – duties which held no interest for me whatsoever. In reality I was bored and I found some aspects of the training quite absurd. Once on exercise on the vast expanse of the Liineburg Heath, we came under imaginary nuclear attack, which meant that you had to batten down all hatches and proceed as normal. The tiny glass observation prisms in the turret quickly became obscured with dust and there was no visibility. Much to the amusement of my troop but to the fury of our squadron leader, I managed to ram his tank broadside on, putting us both out of the exercise.
After a full season of training under the helpful guidance of Sergeant Linneker, I was finally sent to Bovington to attend my tank commanders’ course, which was quite absurd because I now knew all there was to know and consequently found the classroom instruction rather juvenile. I skipped as many of the lectures as I could and spent as much available time as possible in the casino and night club in Bournemouth. I returned to my regiment with an unflattering report. Phrases like ‘arrogant know-all’ and ‘too smart for his own good’ peppered the pages. Also they didn’t like me wearing bow ties with my civilian clothes and indeed my Colonel forbade me to wear them in the mess. Because of my interest in food and wine and also because I was the newest subaltern I was given the job of ‘messing member’. This meant I had to arrange the menus and functions for the officers’ mess with the assistance of the stewards and catering staff. For most officers it was the most unpopular chore; to me it was a godsend. My enthusiasm for hurtling around the Lüneburg Heath in noisy, uncomfortable and cramped Centurion tanks was waning fast and I threw myself into my new role with ostentatious