This was particularly irritating because the girls had finished target reconnaissance: they reported that Farmer Bowker, who worked a section of land between the camp and the Larkhill firing range, regularly at the same time on the same day of each week cycled out to the edge of the range, left his machine behind, and went off shooting with his twelve-bore.
The operation had now taken on a painful urgency. Not only was it necessary to redeem our honour; there was the imminent prospect of being humiliated by a gang of girls. Problems were compounded because there was no guarantee that you would find what you needed when scavenging around the base.
But then we discovered a large cylindrical device out on the ranges: 4 feet 6 inches long and 3 inches in diameter, it was marked TAIL PROPELLING U3 ROCKET. It was fitted with a replica concrete warhead and appeared to be electrically initiated: two wires trailed from the venturi. Although at first sight this looked a little daunting, we’d all seen smoke generators with their attendant wires and had watched them being set off; we trusted that the rocket’s ignition system would function in similar fashion.
We repatriated the U3 and lugged it across five miles of undulating downs. We hid it as near to the target location as possible, covered it with loose earth and leaves, then trudged back home on aching legs.
The day of the attack dawned like any other summer’s morning, the sun climbing lazily up from the horizon, limning the dense stands of beech and horse chestnut cradling the camp. We were already in position when Farmer Bowker arrived. I peered out from between strands of meadow grass, feeling the hardness of the ground, listening to the drumming of my pulse, thinking that at any moment Bowker would hear the same tattoo and come to investigate. But after setting his bicycle down he merely hefted the shotgun and strode off towards the ranges.
One minute. Two minutes. And then we sprang from cover, dragged the U3 from its hiding place and carried it over to the bicycle. Eager hands steadied the frame while the rocket was attached, nose pointing out beyond the handlebars and wicker carrier basket, tail unit resting on the rear carrier tray. Within seconds it was lashed into place front and back; extra cable that had earlier been connected to the original venturi wires was run out, snaking back across the grass to a firing position we’d established behind a nearby concrete pillbox.
The original plan – to launch the rocket at the moment when Farmer Bowker reappeared on the scene – had had to be scrapped because none of us were sure whether we’d mastered the technique of electric ignition. If the thing didn’t go off, then we’d either have to run away and abandon our prized weapon or retrieve it but risk being shot at in the process. We therefore thought it best to push the ends of the cable into the sockets of our army radio battery and see what would happen.
I don’t know what we were expecting, but the explosion wasn’t like anything we could have imagined. The rocket ignited in a great gout of flame, made the most appalling – and frightening – noise, and then screamed off into the sky, taking the bike with it. Thrown completely off balance by the unorthodox load, the U3’s flight path abruptly degenerated into a series of agonized bounds. It managed to clear about 200 yards before smacking into the earth, shedding large chunks of the bicycle on impact, then took off into space at breathtaking speed only to screech back down and shed a few bits more. Again it bounced up, and again it crashed down, until like some strange incandescent kangaroo it finally disappeared from sight in the heart of the ranges, pieces of bicycle spraying out in its wake.
There was a moment of dumbstruck silence – I think it was silence, we were all so deafened we couldn’t have heard anything anyway. Then slowly, hesitantly, we came out from behind the pillbox to survey the launch site. Where the bicycle had stood only moments before there was now just a patch of dark scorched earth. Wisps of smoke hung languidly in the air.
Later, I confessed to my father. There was no alternative: there were bound to be questions about a low-flying bicycle suddenly exploding across the Larkhill firing range. Someone would have to carry the can and, as I was the ringleader, it was me.
To my surprise, my father literally fell about laughing. He went on laughing for what seemed like a very long time. And then he gave me an Almighty Bollocking, Grade I, concluding it by saying he would visit Farmer Bowker and offer both explanation and financial compensation.
I was amazed. ‘You’re going to pay for it?’
‘No. You are.’
So my father regaled Farmer Bowker with a lengthy and apologetic tale of a mishap during manoeuvres; and I found myself having to meet the cost of restitution by lifting sugar beet for countless days and weekends afterwards.
According to my Birth Certificate, I was born on 12 December 1931 in Greenwich. According to my grandmother, I was born on 12 December 1931 in Limehouse. There was a world of difference between the two boroughs: trim, leafy Greenwich, a respectable suburb on the south bank of the Thames; noisy, dilapidated Limehouse, almost directly opposite on the river’s north bank: a teeming outpost of London’s East End. My mother registered my place of birth at her parents’ address: in an era when respectability was all, Greenwich clearly made for a superior pedigree.
I remember neither Greenwich nor Limehouse from my earliest years. What I do remember are the camps, the succession of married quarters we inhabited as we followed my father’s regiment from one barracks to another.
Father was an infantry soldier with the Royal Hampshire Regiment. Slim, athletic, and of average height, he had dark brown wavy hair and a moustache as trim and as rakish as Douglas Fairbanks Junior’s. He called my mother ‘kid’; she called him ‘Ed’. She seemed to me to be tall in comparison to other mothers, full-figured, very upright of carriage and bearing. She always walked with head held high, her movements imbued with a dignified gracefulness.
Despite its unsettled nature, family life in the different camps and barracks was probably as good as anywhere else in 1930s England, especially as Father was only away for short periods. Even one of the furthest duties, Palestine, did not seem to require a prolonged absence.
Our nomadic existence eventually ended when we moved to our tin hut at Netheravon. The army proclaimed them to be the latest thing in corrugated iron, but they were ugly and flimsy. Thankfully, in time we progressed to better things: first a bigger tin hut with three bedrooms, and finally to a house in one of the brick-built terraces.
In its early years Netheravon was the army’s Machine Gun School and, later, the Support Weapons Wing of the Small Arms School Corps. Finally it became the Infantry Heavy Weapons Wing, a centre of specialist activity and a tight-knit community itself.
Once we had settled into Netheravon I was sent to Figheldean Infants, a two-roomed schoolhouse ruled by a small and bespectacled lady called Miss Berlin. She had a presence that belied her size and a speed that denied her age. Her energy did wonders for one’s concentration; the camp children and the village children were united in absorbing the four Rs of reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic and retribution. The school lay two miles from the camp; we walked there through field and woodland and over the three bridges that spanned the River Avon and two of its tributaries.
Spring gave new impetus to what we called the Big River, the Small River and the Stream. The Avon quickened its pace, racing with us as we sped along the riverbank in search of new adventures.
In summer we chased each other round narrow grassy verges of wheat-filled fields then flopped breathlessly down, air rifle in hand, to wait for rabbits to pop their disbelieving heads from their burrows. We swaggered home with our treasure for ‘the pot’ much to the delight of our mothers.
By autumn the rabbits had learned to keep their heads down. Instead we turned our attention, and our rifles, to vermin: rats and grey squirrels whose tails brought us a one penny bounty.
Winter had little impact on our carefree lives. We cheered when snow fell hoping only that it would fall long and fast enough to leave a worthy toboggan run. It crunched underfoot as we tramped to school with light hearts and snowballs flying past our ears. Christmas came, and Christmas went, and the seasons unfolded around Figheldean, a picture-book village in an enchanted landscape.
Eventually