J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
WITH A YOUTHFUL IMAGINATION fired by Mr Kennedy’s stories of the Royal Navy, and fed by my experience in the Sea Cadets, my preference was to do my National Service in the navy. Unfortunately, the Royal Navy did not accept conscripts at that time, so it had to be the Royal Air Force. As it turned out I was not to be disappointed in the slightest. For a young man eager to explore life and widen his horizons, the Air Force suited me down to the ground.
First came a week of ‘kitting out’ at RAF Cardington, where hundreds of dazed and subdued eighteen-year-olds gathered to be allocated to billets, receive severe haircuts and don the blue uniform of the youngest service. Pit-Pat’s final advice to me the previous day seemed particularly daunting: ‘George, you must disclose that you are a Christian right from the start. Don’t be ashamed of your faith. When lights go out, kneel by your bed and say your prayers.’ This had seemed easy enough to agree to when in church, but I confess that as I surveyed the crowded billet on my first evening, with the good-natured banter of high-spirited young men all around me, my resolve wavered. Nevertheless, taking a deep breath, I knelt and spent several minutes in prayer.
The reaction was interesting. First there was a quietening-down of voices as everyone realised I was praying and, unusually courteously, gave me space for prayer. The second reaction – clearly predicted by Pit-Pat – was that it marked me out as someone who took his faith seriously. The following day at least six young men in the billet took me aside and declared that they were practising Christians. By the end of the second day we were told of a SASRA (Soldiers and Sailors Scripture Readers’ Association) Bible-study meeting that evening. SASRA was particularly favoured by nonconformist and evangelical Christians, and throughout my National Service I found it a wonderful source of fellowship and support.
I never found that my practice of public praying, which I kept going for a great deal of my time in the Air Force, limited or negatively affected my relationships with other servicemen. To be sure, there were often jokes when I knelt down to pray. There were several times when things were thrown at me, and once my left boot was stolen while I was on my knees – just minutes before an inspection. Somehow I managed to keep to attention with one boot on and one off as the officer advanced through the billet.
Years later, in fact just a few weeks before I retired, I was touched to receive a letter from a Mr Michael Moran, who wrote to my secretary at Lambeth Palace:
Dear Sir,
Are you able to tell me whether George Carey spent the early years of his National Service at the basic training camp at RAF Cardington? When I was there at that time I was deeply impressed (and this has remained with me ever since) by the devotion and courage of an eighteen-year-old named George who knelt to pray at the side of his barrack-room bed. At no time in the following two years did I see anyone else show such evidence of his faith.
I was rather uncomfortable to receive such praise, because I did not kneel down to impress people by my courage, or to be the odd man out. In fact, I shrank from doing so. I did it simply because I felt Pit-Pat was absolutely right: if prayer is important, and if one is in a communal setting with no private place to pray, one ought not to be ashamed or embarrassed to be known as someone who loves God and worships Him. Later in life I would put the issue as a question to others: ‘Muslims aren’t ashamed to pray publicly, so why should Christians feel embarrassed? If it is a good way of praying when one is alone, why should we be ashamed of acknowledging a relationship with God when we are with others?’
The relative calm of the kitting-out week was followed by eight weeks’ hard square-bashing at West Kirby, near Liverpool. To this day, while I am left with many questions about the psychology behind the tyrannising and brutal attitude of the Platoon Leaders and Sergeants, there can be little dispute that it is a highly efficient way of moulding young men into effective members of a military unit. For eight weeks we were terrorised by screaming NCOs who told us in unambiguous terms that we were the lowest forms of life ever to appear on earth: ‘You are a turd of unspeakable putrefaction’, ‘a cretin with an IQ lower than a tadpole’, ‘You are the scum of the earth! What are you? Repeat it after me: the scum of the earth’, ‘You are hopeless, hopeless, hopeless.’
The verbal ingenuity of some descriptions was rehearsed in the billet long into the evening, as we sympathised with victims or rejoiced at the misfortune of a rival platoon. There were times when I too became the object of the Squad Corporal’s wrath. ‘Carey, you little bleeder!’ he screamed into my face, his saliva making my eyes water, ‘I am about to tear your ****ing left arm off and intend to beat your ****ing ’ead in with the bloody end, until your brains – if you have any – are scattered far and wide.’ Imagine my disappointment when I discovered later that this threat was far from original, and was in fact a tried and trusty favourite of that particular NCO.
I was able to gauge attitudes to the Church from the viewpoint of the ordinary conscript. The vast majority of my ‘mates’ had no contact with institutional religion. Although most of them, deep down, had faith, few of them had the ability to convert it into anything of relevance. They were not, on the whole, helped by the Chaplains, who held officer rank and talked down to the conscripted men. We all had to go to compulsory religious classes, and I can only say that from a Christian point of view these were something to be endured rather than enjoyed. The talks were usually moralistic, and the most embarrassing were about sex, a subject on which the Chaplains were definitely out of touch with the earthy culture of working-class people. I remember asking myself: ‘Why are they so shy about talking about the subject where they are expert? About the existence of God, about spirituality and prayer, about Jesus Christ and His way?’
Even more frustrating to me was the fact that I never saw a Chaplain visiting the men, either in the mess or in the billets. Far more effective was the ordinary ‘bloke’ from SASRA, who at least had the courage to meet the men where they were. Church parades were no different. The hymns were sung indifferently, and the sermons went over the heads of all. I was often embarrassed by the effete way services were conducted, and felt that overall they did more harm than good to the Church.
Although I was glad when the square-bashing was over, I have to admit that it taught me a lot about myself and how to cope when pushed to one’s limit. At the end of the eight weeks I was posted to RAF Compton Bassett in Wiltshire to train as a Wireless Operator. If I was not able to be a Wireless Officer in the Royal Navy, well, being a Wireless Operator in the Royal Air Force seemed an interesting challenge. And so it turned out to be. The training took twenty weeks, and included elementary electronics as well as having Morse code so drummed into us that by the end of it most of us were able to send and receive Morse at over twenty words a minute. As VHF was still in its infancy even in the RAF at that time Morse code was a reliable and efficient form of communication, though of course very slow.
At Compton Bassett we were able to participate in many activities, ranging from sport to hobbies of all kinds. Discipline continued to be very strict, but we were now finding that the ordered life enabled work and leisure to function smoothly. I played a lot of football, and enjoyed running as well. At weekends evening worship at Calne Parish Church was certainly far more authentic than the formal and compulsory church parades.
At the end of the training, everyone waited with impatience for their postings. I was astonished to be selected for the post of Wireless Operator on an air-sea rescue MTB (motor torpedo boat) operating out of Newquay in Devon. It seemed that at last my dreams would be fulfilled. If not the Royal Navy, at least I would be at sea with the RAF. But it was not to be. Two days before taking up my posting I was told to report to the CO’s office, where I was given completely different instructions – to go home on leave immediately, and to report to Stansted airport the following Sunday evening for an unknown destination.
I was among twenty or so extremely puzzled airmen on a York aircraft which left Stansted that September Sunday evening in 1955.