At this juncture, a voice – a seemingly ghostly voice – froze each one of us to the spot. “You lot looking for me? No. 10, like?” He emerged from the blackness with his bundled-up chute grasped to his body. “I thought you might be worried. Got caught up on the plane, you know. Must have been a couple of miles away before the bloody thing shook free. Then I got this lift. I’ve been as quick as I could.” He related his remarkable story endlessly as he walked toward us. We wanted to be mad at him until we realised that his elated animation was no different from ours, but he had more to be grateful for to the Gods. His providential escape only enhanced our celebratory booze-up in the NAAFI canteen. I did not get drunk. I wanted to savour the rare enjoyment of achievement and to glory in my new status.
Weather Disrupts Training
The euphoria generated by having won our ‘wings’ incurred a considerable dent immediately on our return to the camp at Nahariya on New Year’s Day. Very little had changed. Certainly not the weather, and the weather impinged on everything at unprotected Nahariya. It was natural for us to suppose that nobody cared and, although officers suffered equally badly, they were targets for our bottled up, seething discontent, which blamed them for doing nothing to arrange for our reasonable protection from it. Forty years later the regimental war diaries at the National Archives at Kew showed me that our seniors were actually risking accusations of insubordination at the time, with their forthright representations to Middle East HQ at Cairo on our behalf: “Batteries will not be ready... After three weeks of rain, no drying, bathing, hot water facilities… impeding training.” The strongest possible stance was taken on 21 January 1944, however, “It is once more stressed that a camp of this nature and on this site is the worst place imaginable in which to organise and train a new unit for early operational target dates. They cannot give due care and attention to their training when they are wet through, lacking in changes of clothing and boots and have nowhere to go except a cold and draughty canteen hut or a soaking wet tent which may or may not stand up against the daily and nightly storm.” The Acting Commanding Officer sent that one. Similarly, it is also easier now to understand Cairo’s attitude at the time. Obviously, a new, permanent – or even semi-permanent – camp would not be built in the wilds for a unit as ephemeral as ours. We were required to be in Europe as soon as possible, not swanning around in the Middle East – and we were ‘swanning’ weren’t we? To GHQ Cairo, the weather was just bad luck, and was probably considered an exaggeration anyway. One can imagine the comfortable occupants of Cairo’s cosy office premises sneering, “Wish they wouldn’t keep on about their wretched showers up there in Palestine. Aren’t they supposed to be hairy-chested paratroopers, anyway?”
Back at Nahariya, one could detect an air of urgency. Weapons and equipment had begun to roll in, adding to the frustration of having nowhere to muster a group of men together for training purposes, except for the rare, opportunistic occasions when the storms actually abated. Even then, officers had to act rather gingerly: there are limits to the number of times you can expect men to sit or lie on wet ground, to enhance their skills at operating and maintaining unfamiliar weapons, without arousing their fury. Genuine military operations are a different matter.
Explosives Training
Some batteries – or major parts of them – were sent off to other parts of the Middle East to train. The feeling grew that their readiness was less critical than ‘C’ Battery’s – the one I was in. Yet, amazing as it seems to me in retrospect, we learned some more about our main weapon, the 0.5 inch Browning machine gun in which we soon developed a respectful confidence. We had a short course on explosives and demolition, and we suffered demoralising lectures on what our duties were on being captured. The explosives course is worth a mention, if only because it was the one activity for which the weather was actually beneficial – at least from the safety aspect. I cherish the memory of that course’s first practical exercise; the setting of a fused detonator in a handful of plastic explosive, the ignition of the fuse and the withdrawal to a safe distance for the resultant explosion. NCOs from the Royal Engineers were our excellent tutors from whom we learned the first, cardinal rule for all explosive settings – “Never run away from a charge.” The theory is that it should never be set on so short a fuse as to need to do so anyway, but the maxim’s main concern is the avoidance of panic in others who may be unaware of the fuse’s time setting.
Towards practical indoctrination of the discipline of this dictum, 30 or so of us were placed in a straight line, with fingers just touching and thus a double arms’ length apart, and facing a parallel marked line 15 paces away, in open ground. We were each given half a pound of plastic explosive (looking and feeling like fresh, mouldable putty), a detonator (resembling, in size and appearance a standard cotton reel or bobbin), a length of fuse (similar to modern coaxial aerial cable) timed for a 10 second duration and finally a box of special fuse-igniting matches. Our instructions were brief and unambiguous. We were to set the detonator firmly into our lump of explosive, gently push the length of fuse cable into the hole provided in the detonator (like in our cotton reel), then advance with our ‘bombs’ to the marked line, together in line and keeping our distance.
Distance between us was again checked before we each obeyed the instruction to place our bomb on the ground on the line and directly at our feet. “Now take out one of your matches, but do not strike until I give the command for you to do so.” Perfectly clear so far. The Sergeant instructor next reiterated, “I do not want to see anybody running – remember that!”
“You have all seen what a lit fuse looks like, so I don’t want to see any unlit fuses that you ‘thought’ were lit when we retire from the charge.”
“You will now kneel down with your matches ready.”
“When I give the command ‘Strike’ you will strike your match on your matchbox, ignite the fuse, and when you see it lit and ‘fizzing’ you will retire to your ‘start’ position in orderly fashion – no running.”
“You have each got 10 seconds, which is about twice the time needed to walk briskly back to your start mark.”
“All ready, then?”
A quick glance along the line confirmed that we were each hovering over our bombs with matches poised.
“Strike!”
I brushed the match against the abrasive side of the box. Nothing happened. Nerves perhaps? One second… I tried again. No ignition. Two seconds… Must be a duff match, fiddle in the box for another – Hell’s bells, my fingers are shaking… Three seconds, four seconds… Why won’t it ignite? God! The bloke’s fuse on the left is fizzing only five or six feet away from my head – and he’s walked almost halfway back! I struck the match successfully and applied the flame to the end of the fuse wire... Come on for God’s sake, ignite, FIZZ! Five seconds, six… the one on my right is fizzing now. No running, remember. NO RUNNING? That’s a laugh. The stampede back to safety would have put to shame the Charge of the Light Brigade.
It was a disgraceful exhibition of timidity – he said so. Only nine out of 30 had been lit and had exploded. Whether by accident or not, the Royal Engineers had given us a simple lesson in psychology – in human