Salisbury was almost fifteen miles from Netheravon. Unfortunately the only means of getting there was the eight o’clock bus, a public transport renowned more for the attractiveness of its rural route than the accuracy of its time-keeping. I so often missed morning service in the school chapel that Mother began to wonder if the Wilts & Dorset Omnibus Company was seriously intent upon turning her son into a heretic.
Classes at Bishops ran only from 9.10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Such was the intensity of the teaching regime that to be even a few minutes late was to be left like a runner at the starting block while the rest of the field forged far ahead. The school day was so severely truncated because Bishops had to accommodate both its own intake and another from Portsmouth, boys who slipped into our desks in the afternoons (what they did in the mornings was and remains a mystery to me). Displaced pupils from a city under attack from the Luftwaffe, they learned in one shift and we in the other.
For war now raged, a war that was changing everything, yet which at its outbreak had meant surprisingly little to the children of the camp. The summer of ’39 had been like all other summers; the world of the adult and the world of the child had continued to maintain their separate orbits. There was much to do, even on wet days, for that was when we gathered together to discuss future projects that usually never amounted to anything or to plan tree houses that most impressively did.
With the rain beating down outside it was a good time to resort to conventional pursuits, to barter carefully hoarded copies of comics such as the Hotspur and the Rover, to entertain each other with silly impressions of Tommy Handley and Dick Barton. When the sun shone again we were back outdoors, playing football according to rules that were few and simple: stay within the lines and don’t hit anybody.
Though outdoor life was preferable to indoor life, of all the pleasures of that era, one was arguably supreme: going to the pictures, either at the camp or at RAF Netheravon, a three-mile walk away. The RAF had a plush and proper affair with pull-down seats, a projector that always worked and a twice-weekly programme change. By contrast our cinema existed more in spirit than substance; a giant Nissen hut normally used for lectures and training sessions, it offered but one film a week on one day a week, though disconcertingly rarely on the same day each week because screenings were scheduled around camp exercises. The screen flickered and shimmered and frequently managed to do no more than depict grainy white blobs against an uncertain background to the accompaniment of an equally shaky soundtrack. Intervals were frequent due to the primitive projection equipment: when a reel had to be changed, the film was stopped and the lights turned on while the projectionist frantically struggled with the spools and cogs. The film would frequently break and the ‘cinema’ erupt in a chorus of booing and catcalls.
The giant hut was cold, too, in spite of the two coal-fired stoves. A seat near either was to be desired, except on the occasion when someone threw a handful of 9mm cartridges into the fire and the things started popping and banging all over the place.
That summer slowly turned to autumn, and shadows lengthened early across the fields. My father was not in the British Expeditionary Force and thus remained at home; my sister Maureen, born in July 1936, had at last become interesting after what seemed an unending period of babyhood. Even the anticipated arrival of another baby sister or brother – I couldn’t have cared either way; all they did was make a lot of noise and demand a lot of attention – did nothing to undermine the serenity of family life. Days of laughter were followed by nights of content, and I slept unaware of faraway death. And then, one quiet afternoon, death was no longer so distant.
The purpose of the Small Arms School was to teach infantry men to use weapons other than the traditional rifle and bayonet. Because of the war everything was now geared to getting the maximum number trained in the shortest time possible.
Speed was all: out went the practised rituals of drill parades and kit inspections, in came a new urgency, an acceleration of tempo that achieved more yet overlooked much. Safety was no longer given the attention it required; though rules were not deliberately waived, the pressure on training schedules was such as to narrow the margin between discretion and disaster. That afternoon the margin narrowed fatally.
I was going to get some flour for my mother from the NAAFI, yet another of Netheravon’s ubiquitous tin huts with a canteen at one end and a shop at the other. The canteen was frequented by soldiers who could purchase everything they needed – beer, Blanco, shoelaces, cigarettes; the shop was more of a general store with a long counter, old-fashioned till and goods stocked on ceiling-high shelves. The place was popular with the thirty or so families quartered on the camp because prices were low, stock was reasonably comprehensive, and it saved you a two-mile hike to the nearest village shop.
That afternoon there was no reason to hasten, not with the sunlight still warm on the grass and the soldiers unwittingly providing an outdoor entertainment – a training session featuring the 29mm Spigot mortar, the unconventional ‘Blacker Bombard’.
A conventional weapon is aimed by sighting its barrel and firing. The propellant charge ignites and pushes against the base of the projectile which then travels up the barrel and flies away in the direction of the target. Unusually, the Blacker Bombard had a spigot instead of a barrel, a machined steel rod inserted into the end of the projectile’s tail tube. The propellant – a cordite charge – was contained in a cartridge at the inner end of the tube; on firing, a striker on the spigot would hit a percussion cap on the cartridge and ignite the propellant. Gases generated by the burning cordite would then force the projectile off the spigot and send it towards its intended destination. Lacking the heavy barrel and recoil mechanism of conventional weapons, the spigot type was much lighter and therefore much cheaper to manufacture. Although it also lacked range, it could accurately lob a 20-pound bomb containing 8 pounds of high explosive over a distance of around 450 yards.
I watched the soldiers as they formed a semicircle around the instructor and the Blacker Bombard. Voices carried clearly on a strengthening breeze. From their actions it seemed they were using a dummy mortar, one where both warhead and propellant were totally inert, rather than a practice mortar, where only the warhead is safe. Obviously they were rehearsing aiming and firing procedures; when they pulled the trigger, nothing would happen. The bomb was black and hooped with a yellow-painted ring. It was loaded on to the spigot. At the instructor’s command, the trigger was pressed.
From my vantage point on the perimeter grass I watched with disbelieving eyes as the bomb hurtled from its spigot, the crack of its cordite charge splitting the air. The dark, frantic blur struck one of the soldiers, and threw him aside like a rag doll. It careened off into another, shredding tunic and flesh as it tore out most of his chest. It felled a third victim, then veered away towards a nearby building, slammed against the wall, bounced back, rolled over and over and lay still.
The figures remained where they had fallen. The others stood in frozen profile, matchstick men pinned into place. Inert, incongruous, the bomb lay negligently on the grass; sunlight now added a paler stripe to its bulbous form. The breeze stirred the trees around me. Into a vision of searing lifelessness, horse chestnut leaves came fluttering down like ragged stars.
Eventually I moved away, bought the flour and walked slowly home, neither thinking nor feeling.
My mother chastised me for taking so long. She chastised me again later, when the news came out that I was the boy who had witnessed the accident, that day when a spigot mortar had been mistakenly loaded with a practice round.
We sat in the reverberating gloom of the Anderson shelter, Old Bill, my grandmother and me. The rubbery smell of gas masks mingled with the dank scent of moist cold earth. Another night raid was under way; the ground shook and shuddered as bombs rained down on both sides of the Thames.
Because my mother had thought it would be good for me to get away from the dangers of the camp, I had spent part of my school holiday at my grandparents’ home, arriving at roughly the same time as the Luftwaffe.