Memoires 01 (1971) - Adolf Hitler, My Part in His Downfall Page 4

  NIGHT OF THE FIRE RAIDS

  The night of September 7th, 1940, Harry and I went to the Playhouse Cinema in Western Road. It was ‘Black Moonlight’ with Anton Walbrook, Terence de Marney and the bloody awful Warsaw Concerto.

  When we came out the night was filled with what sounded like relays of German bombers headed inland. There was remarkably little Ack Ack to deter them. Cloud was low and most of the antiaircraft batteries were further inland, grouped around strategic cities. After a quick drink in The Devonshire we ended up at the Forces Corner to finish off the evening. I started chatting up the birds, one especially, Betty Aspnel, a plain girl who made up for it with a sensational figure, man has to be satisfied with his lot, and man! this girl had the lot. I tried to create an atmosphere of Caviar and Champagne while eating beans on toast with tea. The things soldiers did to impress girls.

  A gunner, with a tremendous Welsh accent, tried to make a girl believe he was an American millionaire who had thrown in his lot with the British Army. It was something to hear him say “Gee whizz baby, ain’t I lucky to have joined the little old British Army. Shucks, if I hadn’t I’d never have met you,” with a Cardiff accent. Harry wandered up to the piano and started to play a few tunes. One of the W.V.S. girls who was serving sidled up to the piano. She was the daughter of a retired Admiral in Cooden Road. She was tall and beautiful with a County School Accent. “Can you play ‘Foolish Things’?” Harry complied. At first she only hummed the tune, then started to sing. Christ! She sang a quarter tone flat the whole way through. I caught Harry’s eye…he was suffering. Always a gentleman, Harry, at the end of her effort said, “Lovely.” Encouraged, she said “Do you know ‘A Pair of Silver Wings’?” Harry did. At that moment he wished he had a pair. He had to sit through some seven songs, agonisingly sung, before he escaped. “She must have cloth ears,” said Harry as we walked home.

  The bombers were still droning over. As we approached the billets we could see a glow in the northern sky. The sound of distant ack ack could be heard. “Someone’s copping it,” said the sentry as we walked into the drive. “Looks like it could be Redhill,” said Harry. But I had my doubts. He was the only man I knew who could get lost in his own street.

  After the war, when I lived at Shepherds Hill, Highgate, he said he would show me a short cut to his house in St John’s Way, Archway. We walked for a hour that night, during which time we never got more than three hundred yards from my house. “I can’t understand it,” he said. “It’s the magnetic north, it must have changed during the war.” Whatever that was supposed to mean I’ll never know. We climbed into bed. “I’ve never heard so many bombers before,” said Harry. We lay in bed smoking for about quarter of an hour, then Smudger Smith came in. “Cor, it looks like the sky’s on fire over there.” We pulled on our trousers and climbed up on the roof. The sky was on fire. Other Gunners had joined us. We watched in silence for a while. “I fink it’s London,” said a cockney voice. “Could be,” said another.

  George Vincent went down for his prismatic compass. The bearing showed the fire dead on the line to London. Mick Haymer, a Londoner, tried to phone his family, but was told there was ‘disruption’ on the line and all calls to London were blocked. We looked at the blaze and it seemed to be getting bigger. I think we all knew it was London. My mother, father and brother were there. I’m not sure how I felt. Helpless, I suppose. Bombardier Edser switched on the BBC Midnight News, but there was no mention of any raid. Lots of the lads from London (we were a London Regiment) found it hard to sleep that night. In the dark of our bedrooms there were attempts at reassurance.

  “They’ve all got Anderson Shelters, they’re dead safe.”

  “Yer, dead safe.”

  “…and there’s all that anti-aircraft fire…that keeps ‘em up ‘igh.”

  “…and there’s the Underground, nuffink could break them.”

  The window near my bed faced north. As I lay there, I could see the glow of the fires. The bombers were still going. Some must have been on their way back as we heard cannon fire as night fighters got onto them. What a bloody mess. Men in bombers raining death on defenceless civilians. Still, soon we’d be doing it back to them, on a scale never before imagined. For the love of me I couldn’t get the feeling that I was part of this. Killing of civilians was an outrage I couldn’t swallow on any basis, on any side. In the end there were no sides. Just living and dead. Next morning we got confirmation of the raid.

  I managed to get through to my father at his office in Fleet Street and he told me all was well with the family. He was a fire warden on top of the Associated Press building and had seen the whole of what looked like St Paul’s on fire. The papers carried stories of how many German planes were shot down, heroism of the fire brigades, wardens, Red Cross and night fighters, etc., etc. But it didn’t mention the casualties that were heavy, well heavy for that time of the war; later on it appeared that London got off extremely light.

  BATTERY CHARACTERS

  Some people live a nothing life: the most important thing they ever do is die. Thank God for eccentrics! Take Gunner Octavian Neat. He would suddenly appear naked in a barrack room and say, “Does anybody know a good tailor?”, or “Gentlemen-I think there’s a thief in the battery.” He was the bane of the Regiment. When the fancy took him he would go ‘on the trot’.

  “I’m off sand-ratting,”↓ he’d say.

  ≡ Sand-rat: seaside whore.

  A month later he would give himself up, get fourteen days detention and start all over again. Leather Suitcase was baffled. Why should, an English man in his right mind leave a perfectly good war?

  “Look Neat, why do you keep going A.W.O.L.”

  “It’s something to do with the shortage of money sir.”

  Leather Suitcase as usual gave him fourteen days, and he was remanded for a psychiatrist’s report.

  “I don’t like the uniform,” Neat told the psychiatrist.

  “And what’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s dangerous. Germans shoot at it on sight.”

  The report said: “There is nothing wrong with this man. He has a wholesome fear of being shot by Germans.”

  “Right,” said Leather Suitcase. “We’ll put you where they can’t get at you, fifty-six days detention!”

  “Look sir,” said Neat, hopefully. “Supping I say sorry?”

  “Very well, say it.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, very, VERY sorry.”

  “Finished? Right! fifty-six days detention!” Nead stood tottering for a moment. “.May I have a last request, sir”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you go to Beachy Head and throw your bloody self off!” This got him another fourteen daps on top of the fifty-six. After this he was posted. Where to? The Tower Armoury.

  Gunner Herman Frick was our hypochondriac. He wanted out. He told the M.O., “I have got hereditary flat feet.” After inspecting them the M.O. gave him three aspirins. Which is the Army way of saying you’re a bloody liar. “The doctor’s anti-Semitic,” raged Frick. “I’ll prove my feet are flat.” He smeared the soles of his feet with Brylcreem, then stood on a piece of paper. “There,” he said holding up the print, “genuine flat feet.”

  “You’re too bleeding fat, mate,” said Gunner Knot. “It’s all that weight that makes ‘em look flat.”

  Outraged he replied, “I’ll bloody show you it’s not,” and then stood on his head while two of us held up a board covered in paper while he pressed his feet against it. At which moment the orderly officer entered the room. He stood silent before the strange tableau, muttered something to the duty sergeant and left. Next morning Gunner Frick was remanded for a psychiatrist’s report and Part Two Orders bore this warning:

  “An orderly officer has reported that certain black magic rituals are being practised in barrack rooms. This contravenes King’s Rules and Regulations in that within the structure of a Regiment no secret rituals or such organisations can be allowed except Housey-Housey.”


  To my utter amazement there was a man in the battery who had actually been with my father’s Regiment in Belgaum, India, in 1923. He said he remembered my father as the Mad (quarter-bloke, which explained a lot. ‘Busty’ Roberts had joined the Royal Artillery in 1914 and since then had steadily risen to the rank of Gunner. Now the crunch: someone with a perverted sense of humour made him a Lance Bombardier. Roberts went insane with power. The war now consisted of two people, him and Hitler. His command of the language gave off some classic gaffs. “It’s invenerial to me, sir.” Books: “I like to read friction.” He was the supreme bullshitter. He would sleep to attention, polish his cap badge on both sides. Cleaning his rifle one day he pulled the trigger and sent a bullet, through the roof; at once he put himself on a charge. Other than a firing squad the C.O. didn’t know what to do with him finally he was posted.↓

  ≡ The act of being sent sideways, see p. 64.

  A night freak was Gunner Lichenstein: he’d suddenly sit bolt upright in bed, shout “Oh, the Goats,” then lie down again. Gunner ‘Spiv’ Convine would dip a sleeping man’s hand in a bucket of cold water and make him widdle the bed.

  There was Lance Bombardier Dodds who slept in the Q. stores. He aspired to Opera. His powerful voice was not improved by singing a quarter-tone flat, especially as he started after lights out. We decided to act. One night as he lay singing “Your tiny hand is frozen,” he must have heard the door open:

  “Who is it?” he said. Hurling a bucket of water, I replied, “Puccini.”

  This crude military life was terrible for our Jehovah’s Witness, Bombardier MacDonald. Through all the vulgarity and blasphemy his voice would come out of the darkness. “I tell ye all repent! The day of judgement is at hand! Armageddon is nigh, only they that believe will be saved.”

  “Piss off!”

  “Mock ye now, but hear me! When Jehovah cometh, you will stand to be judged!”

  “Bollocks.”

  Despite these witty replies he maintained a non-stop attack on military morals. Like most fanatics, he didn’t enjoy religion, he suffered from it. Every weekend we’d find his pamphlets on our beds. A terrible end they came to. But the pressure was too much and gradually MacDonald became less and leas religious: he started drinking and swearing (“I tell you the bloody day is at hand”). The end of the holy man came one revealing night. And it came to pass that Gunner James Devine was on midnight guard when he was awakened by a rhythmic thumping from the back of the coal shed. Investigation showed Bombardier MacDonald, his trousers round his ankles, having a late-night knee-trembler with a local fat girl. The noise was her head thumping against the shed as the holy man pressed home his watch-tower. Gunner Devine watched until the climax was nigh, then shouted, “Halt! Who comes there?” The effect was electric. MacDonald ran into the night shouting ‘Armageddon’↓

  ≡ I can only presume it meant ‘Arm-a-geddon out of here’

  The girl, still in a sexual coma, was given Gunner Devine’s rifle to hold, while he terminated her contract. Truly they also serve who stand and wait.

  B.S.M. ‘Jumbo’ Day thought he would test the military reflex of the Battery by sounding the six G’s on the bugle. The call demanded immediate muster by all ranks, but no one in this conscripted army knew that. During the next fifteen minutes, alone in a dark field, the B.S.M. blew the six G’s until he had fits, a hernia, and realised the age of the horse was over. He was knocked out in the early Montgomery Purge. Anyhow, we had learned our lesson: we knew now what six G’s on the bugle meant. Hernia, fits, and your ticket.

  Gunner Mosman. He’d get blind drunk, stagger back by 23:59 hours, feel his way into the barrack room then urinate in a corner. One day a well-spoken recruit, Gunner Donald, arrived. “Do you mind if I sleep in this corner?” Of course we didn’t mind. That night, we heard the sound of Mosman streaming on the sleeping form of Gunner Donald, and strange damp screams from the victim who was a mouth breather. Gunner Donald bided his time. Next night he returned the compliment full in the sleeping Norman’s face. It wasn’t long before Part Two Orders read: “The practice of urinating on sleeping comrades will cease forthwith.” One Bombardier, who shall remain a nameless Bastard, had it in for all of us. Revenge was very sweet. One night he came in stoned out of his mind. We waited until unconsciousness set in. Removing his trousers, we carried him and his bed to a lorry. Driven with great stealth, he was deposited in the middle of Bexhill Cemetery. Next morning, he was delivered back to us by Military Police, wrapped in a blanket and foaming at the mouth.

  POSTING

  Posting is an evil ritual: it was with devilish glee that one unit would pass on to another a soldier who they knew to be bloody useless. However, to keep the joke going, these failures were never discharged, just posted. There must have been, at one time, thousands of these idiots, all in a state of permanent transit, spending most of their life on lorries. Lots gave lorry numbers as a forwarding address. Hundreds spent the duration on board lorries, seven were even buried on them. There is a legend that the last of these idiots was discovered as late as 1949, living on the tail-board of a burnt-out ammunition lorry in a Wadi near Alamein. When located, he was naked, save for a vest and one sock: he said he was ‘waiting to be posted’.

  ‘MONTY’

  In 1941 a new power came on the scene. Montgomery He was put in charge of Southern Command. He removed all the pink fat-faced, Huntin’, Shootin’ and Fishin’ chota peg-swilling officers who were sittin’ round waitin’ to ‘see off the Bosche’. To date we’d done very little Physical Training. We had done a sort of half hearted knees-up mother brown for five minutes in the morning, followed by conducted coughing, but that’s all.

  One morning a chill of horror ran through the serried ranks. There in Part Two Orders were the words:

  At 06:00 hours the Battery will assemble for a FIVE MILE RUN!

  Strong gunners fell fainting to the floor, some lay weeping on their beds. FIVE MILES? There was no such distance! FIVE MILES!?!? That wasn’t a run, that was deportation! On that fateful dawn the duty Bombardier bade us rise: “Wakey Wakey, Hands off Cocks on Socks.” The defenders of England rose wraith-like from their blankets. All silent, save those great lung-wracking coughs that follow early morning cigarettes. The cough would start in silence; first there was the great inhale, the smoke sucked deep down into the lungs, and held there while the victim started what was to be an agonised body spasm. The face would first turn sweaty lemon, the shoulders hunched, the back humped like Brahmin bull. The legs would bend, the hand grabbed the thighs to support the coming convulsion. The cough would start somewhere down in the shins, the eyes would be screwed tight to prevent being jettisoned from the head, the mouth gripped tight to preserve the teeth. Suddenly from afar comes a rumbling like a hundred Early Victorian Water Closets. Slowly the body would start to tremble and the bones to rattle. The first things to shake were the ankles, then up the shins travelled the shakes, and next the knees would revolve and turn jelliform; from there up the thighs to the stomach it came, now heading for the blackened lungs. This was the stage when a sound like a three ton garden roller being pulled over corrugated iron was heard approaching the heaving chest. Following this up the convulsed body was a colour pattern, from a delicate green at the ankles to layers of pinks, blue, varicose purple, and sweaty red. As the cough rose up the inflated throat, the whole six colours were pushed up into the victims face. It had now reached the inner mouth; the last line of defence, the cheeks, were blown out the size of football bladders. The climax was nigh! The whole body was now a purple shuddering mass! After several mammoth attempts to contain the cough, the mouth would finally explode open.

  Loose teeth would fly out, bits of breakfast, and a terrible rasping noise filled the room, Aweeioussheiough!!! followed by a long, silent stream of spume-laden air: on and on it went until the whole body was drained of oxygen, the eyes were popping, and veins like vines standing out on the head, which was now down ‘twixt knees. This atrophied pose held
for seconds. Finally, with a dying attempt, fresh air was sucked back into the body, just in time to do it all over again. Bear in mind this was usually performed by some sixty men all at the same time. Whenever I see those bronzed ‘Jet Set Men’ whose passport to International smoking is a King Size, I can’t help but recall those Bronchial Dawn Coughing Wreck.

  So to the great run. Hundreds of white shivering things were paraded outside Worthingholm. Officers out of uniform seemed stripped of all authority. Lieutenant Walker looked very like a bank clerk who couldn’t. Now I, like many others, had no intention of running five miles, oh, no. We would hang behind fade into the background, find a quiet haystack, wait fen the return and rejoin them. Montgomery had thought of that. We were all put on three ton trucks and driven FIVE MILES into the country and dropped. So it started. Some, already exhausted having to climb off the lorry, were begging for the coup do grace. Off we went, Leather Suitcase in front: in ten seconds he was trailing at the back. “Rest,” he cried, collapsing in a ditch. We rested five minutes and then he called, “Right, follow me.” Ten seconds—he collapsed again. We left him expiring by the road.

  Many tried to husband their energy by running on one leg. It was too cold to walk, we had to keep moving or hour frost got at the appendages. One by one we arrived back at the billets, behind was a five mile train of broken men. It took two hours before the last of the stragglers arrived back. As a military disaster, the run was second only to Isandhlawana. It was the end of the line for Leather Suitcase.

  Our new C.O. was Major Chaterjack, M.C., D.S.O. In the months that followed he ran us across two-thirds of Sussex, the whole of the South Coast, over mountains. through haystacks, along railway lines, up truce, down sewers anywhere.