‘Fill in the time,’ they had said. But how? It clearly wasn’t going to be long before I was in battledress but, as I have so often been, I was lucky.
At that time the Dunlop Rubber Company, then one of Britain’s greatest companies, awarded 12 scholarships a year to what they regarded as worthy recipients and I was fortunate to win one of them. Sadly, Dunlop now exists only as a brand name, having been fragmented and taken over by other companies including the Japanese Sumitomo organization whose country it did so much to defeat in the war. But back then Dunlop, with its proud boast ‘As British as the Flag’, was a force in the world of industry with many thousands of employees all over the world. It owned vast rubber plantations and produced, distributed and sold tyres, footwear, clothing, sports goods, cotton and industrial products and Dunlopillo latex foam cushioning.
Its scholarship students were based at its famous Fort Dunlop headquarters (part of which still exists beside the M6 in Birmingham) and had tuition and fieldwork on all of its activities as well as instruction from top people on every aspect of what makes a business tick, from production and distribution to marketing, law and accountancy. It was an invaluable grounding. I had a whale of a time, living in digs at 58 Holly Lane, Erdington with the Bellamy family, spreading my wings and discovering, amongst other things and to my surprise and delight, that girls had all sorts of charms I hadn’t experienced at Highgate.
But then came the call via a telegram. ‘We’re ready for you now, Murray. Report to the 30th Primary Training Wing at Bovington, Dorset on 1 October 1942’. I went there as a boy and rather more than four years later was demobbed at Hull as a man.
In August 1939, at the age of 15, I was having the holiday of a lifetime in Austria, accompanying my parents to what was then the most prestigious event in the world of motor-cycle sport – the International Six Days Trial. Sadly, like the Mille Miglia and the Targa Florio, it has long since been discontinued because of road congestion, but then it was exactly what its name implies: a gruelling, and virtually non-stop, road time trial for modified road bikes with tremendously demanding speed stages. Britain excelled in the event and in 1939, following three successive British victories, it was to be held in Austria. Following its annexation by Germany, Austria was totally under the control of the Nazis, who offered to give Britain an organizational rest and to base the event at glorious Salzburg.
It was a superb location amid the glorious Alpine scenery and my father, who knew the event thoroughly as ex-captain of a winning International Trophy team, had been invited by the War Office to give expert guidance to the British Army teams. The political situation was extremely tense with the threat of war between Britain and Germany, and while we were in Salzburg the Foreign Ambassadors of Russia and Germany, Molotov and Count von Ribbentrop, signed the Russo-German non-aggression pact. Hitler was aggressively rattling his sabre at Poland and the inevitability of war was gloomily forecast. In those days international communications were not as they are now, so the War Office said that in the event of, and only in the event of, an extreme emergency they would send a telegram detailing action and instructions.
Unusually for anything German, the Trial suspiciously showed every sign of having been hurriedly thrown together, almost as though they hadn’t really expected to be holding it. ‘There will be no problem,’ said Korpsführer Huhnlein, the Nazi boss of all German motor sport, ‘as there will not be a war now that we have signed the pact with Russia.’ On day five though, with all the British teams in very strong positions, a telegram that had been delayed for 24 hours arrived from the War Office, reading: ‘War imminent. Return immediately.’
Panic stations! While maps were urgently consulted to find the quickest route to the border, my father went to see Huhnlein.
‘We’re off,’ he said.
‘Why on earth are you doing that?’
‘Because the British War Office has instructed us to go.’
‘But there isn’t going to be a war and even if there is I give you my personal guarantee that you will all be provided with safe conduct out of Germany.’
‘Just one question,’ said my father, ‘What is your level of seniority in the Government?’
‘I am ranked number 23,’ said Huhnlein.
‘Well what happens if any of numbers one to 22 reverse your promise?’
‘That wouldn’t happen.’
‘Sorry, but we cannot take the risk. We go.’
For me the trip had been wonderful: the long car ride from England to Salzburg in my father’s Rover, exploring beautiful, Mozart-dominated Salzburg with my mother, watching the riders race by, the charm of the sun-soaked Alpine scenery, and the quaint Austrian hotels. The dash home through France was full of drama too but shortly after we returned to Enfield Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that Britain was at war with Germany for the second time in 30 years. Not so very much later I would be heavily involved in it myself. But first, back to school and glorious Devon, my scholarship at Dunlop, and, as my time approached, the decision about how I could best get into the war.
If you haven’t actually been in one, no matter how much you’ve read about it, you just don’t realize how horrific war is, how brutal, bestial and mindless. My image of tank driving included racing across the desert trailing great plumes of sand, having leave in exotic Cairo and being in my element with something mechanical. It was an ignorant and absolutely pathetic attitude but I was fresh off the farm, full of patriotic fervour, desperately wanting to do something about the evil which then looked likely to overcome the world. So once I got the call on 1 October 1942 I took the train from Waterloo to Wool in Dorset and reported for duty as number 14406224 at the 30th Primary Training Wing (PTW) at Bovington.
Bovington was and is the home of the Royal Armoured Corps and the whole area seethed with tank activity. There were gunnery ranges at Lulworth, the workshops, the wireless schools, the maintenance areas and driving ranges, not to mention the NAAFI – Navy, Army, Air Force Institute – Bovington’s centre of social activity and culinary excellence. (‘A char and a wad please, dear.’) It was a popular belief that they put bromide into the buckets of tea to suppress the libido of the licentious soldiery. If they did it was just as well, for the fraternization between the ATS girls and the lads was frequent and vigorous enough as it was.
My ignorance of life outside my loving family and school friends was compounded by my youth and inexperience so the 30th PTW was an exciting new experience and a huge culture shock for me. As a wet-behind-the-ears army private, I found myself amongst all sorts of people that I’d never come across before. In the bed on one side of me in the barracks room was an incredibly upmarket chap, whose name I have genuinely forgotten and whose general uselessness was well nigh unbelievable. On the other side was a laconically lovely bloke called Ted Nicklin who, if I remember correctly, was a welder from Walsall and as streetwise as they come. I am convinced that living as part of such a disparate mix did me all the good in the world, because it taught me there were other points of view, other ways to speak and more ways than one to skin a cat.
The 30th PTW was all about the beginnings of discipline – what armies win or lose by. ‘Do what you’re told. Don’t question it. Do it!’ was the unbreakable rule at the 30th and rightly so. Soldiers in combat must instinctively obey, not argue whether their orders are right. So