AND ANOTHER THING
Bugles softly blowing, National Service was a time to treasure
PAUL JOHNSON
It is a surprise to me that so many postwar conscripts look back on their two years' National Service with disgust. I found it an ideal bridge between the fantasy world of Oxford and the gritty reality of work. In its combination of theoretically relentless disci- pline with a numinous inefficiency of its own baroque devising, the Army seemed to me very like the Roman Catholic Church, to which I was well used. You got to know how the machinery functioned, and how its wheels could be made to turn to suit your own purposes. I was originally turned down, on the grounds that I was too tall for my weight (these tables had not been revised, I think, since the Crimean War). I protested that this made no sense since I had boxed and run for my school, climbed a lot of Alps etc. 'Sony, old man, no can do. War House ruling.' I persisted. 'Do you fellows have such a thing as a medical board?' Well . . . of course.' Then I want one.' Shock, horror. But I got one, and they upgraded me Al. The brigadier who presided said to me at the end, 'You think the Army is a peculiar insti- tution, don't you? Well, it is!'
I recall my service as a series of images, mostly genial. First, Bushfleld Camp on the hills outside Winchester at dusk, the regi- ment's bugles softly echoing, a magical sound which still makes my heart turn. Inside our wooden hut, you could get up a good fug in the evening, the coke stove almost red-hot, the air heavy with rifle-oil, Duraglit, blanco powder. One of our offi- cers was the scion of a great jam clan, another the portly heir to a soup fortune, so we ate well. On the bed next to me was a double first, an egghead with a cranial capacity so immense that no regulation steel helmet would fit him: he went on to preside over classics at Christ Church. Then there was a pale-looking youth, who committed the enormity of dropping his rifle on parade, a serious matter in the King's Royal Rifle Corps. But he survived to become a hero of the Gloucesters when their battalion was attacked by an entire Chinese division in Korea. Most of the rest were Wykehamists or Etonians, including Sir Anthony Eden's handsome son, later the first prominent English victim of Aids. Like all other recruits, we enjoyed every- thing except bayonet practice, learnt to swear horribly, and to light up half-burnt fags when reveille sounded.
The next image is the old barracks in Winchester itself, the regimental depot. It was said to have been condemned half a century before, in 1900, as unfit for human habitation. Now, half a century later, it has become luxury flats. It was then cold, smelly, echoing, redolent of the 18th century and clay-piping. Some of us were waiting to go to cadet-school, others were old lags, adepts at `Coming the Old Soldier', learned deposito- ries of tricks to avoid work. `Jacko', their flamboyant elder statesman, turned up only for meals, had managed to get his name taken off every nominal role except pay- parade, and evaded weekly kit inspection by hoisting his entire possessions through a manhole into the roof.
Then the scene shifts to Eaton Hall, a vast Victorian pile, complete with clock tower and golden gates, set up by the first Duke of Westminster to proclaim his wealth and strawberry-leaves. I slept in State Bedroom Number Six, along with three other officer- cadets. At Bushfield, I had had to unlearn Guards' drill, acquired at school, and accel- erate to rifleman's speed, 140 (not 90) paces to the minute, all orders executed at the dou- ble. Now it was back to Guards' drill, under the ferocious eyes of Coldstreamers, NCOs and officers, who regarded Greenjackets with peculiar suspicion and were anxious to lock us up as often as possible. We were worked extremely hard, all the time, and were usually too tired to go into Chester, a garrison town for nearly two millennia, and a haven of lust, where mothers had passed on their well-honed skills to daughters for 30 generations. But I occasionally walked in the gardens of the Hall, where we were not sup- posed to go, and met there an old gentleman who asked me what I thought of the place. `I think it is absolutely beautiful,' I said. 'So do I,' said the old man, 'but you are the first person I have ever come across who agrees.' It occurred to me much later that this must have been Bendor, the old duke, the fiery fellow responsible for sending into exile Earl Beauchamp, his brother-in-law — or 'bugger-in-law'. as Bendor called him — thus giving Evelyn Waugh the char- acter of Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited. Bendor didn't look fiery any more, just sad, and of course as soon as he died they pulled the place down.
Then comes the image of Gibraltar, sun- baked but often muggy and cloud-capped, cluttered with bits of military architecture going back to the Treaty of Utrecht. Commissioned in the Education Corps and upgraded to captain (acting), I was well paid and enjoyed delightful expeditions to the august Reina Victoria in Ronda; the famous inn of the swans in Granada; Tang- iers with its weird expatriates like Barbara Hutton and its traditional brothels, El Gato Negro, the Blue Lagoon and so on; and Marrakesh, where the bloodthirsty El Glaoui and his scimitar-wielding cavalry still ruled and the Mamounia was then the best hotel in the world. I lived first in the old garrison officer's mess in Library Square, from whose ornate veranda we sur- veyed the smart world of the Fortress per- forming its evening paseo. In the annual `Cat Week', when cats not kept indoors or swathed in silk could be shot as vermin, some of my comrades potted them from the same veranda, for want of something better to shoot, but I thought it miserable sport. Later we moved further up near the Rock Hotel, the great caravanserai in those days. From this vantage point I have another image: of the British Mediterranean and Atlantic fleets gathered together with the American Sixth Fleet in a stupendous display of naval might, anchored together in neat lines through the Bay of Gibraltar and beyond. They still had battleships in those days, and lots of formidable aircraft carriers, spiky cruisers and countless destroyers. There must have been more than 200 warships in sight. All now gone with the wind and time. The American ships were dry, of course, and on Saturday thousands of their crewmen debouched into the bars and honky-tonks. As I was garrison duty officer that night, I had a busy time of it, despite squads of military and naval police wearing side-arms. The next day some of us paid a formal call on the Yankee admiral, clambering aboard awkwardly with our swords, then drinking vanilla milk-shakes in the wardroom.
Conscription was no good for the Army, which found it almost impossible to do large-scale regular training. We now have an all-volunteer professional army, proba- bly the best in our history, and the French, of all people, are about to imitate us and drop conscription too. But I don't regret those two years. Home again, I replied to a small-ad in the Times offering a miraculous job in Paris on a French magazine. So did nearly 1,000 other young men. I got it, and afterwards asked the editor what made up his mind. 'Military record, mainly.'
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