Boy Entrant; The Recollections of a Royal Air Force Brat (41 page)

The Field Gun Competition involved teams from various ships and naval bases, each team consisting of eighteen naval ratings. The object was to manhandle a field gun and its gun carriage a number of times from one end of the arena to the other. The problem was that they had to get it over two 5-foot high walls and across a wide intervening 28-feet long “chasm”. The complete gun assembly was too heavy to get over the walls in one piece, so part of the race involved disassembling it and then moving it over the walls in its component pieces. Both teams had obviously practised the drill many times and when a loud explosion signalled the start of the race they soon set to at removing the gun barrel and wheels from the gun mount, at the same time detaching the mount from the limber—the forward wheeled part of the carriage that supports the ammunition box. Then various groups of ratings skilfully manhandled their limber over the first wall by running the shaft, by which it was pulled along, over the top of the wall until the wheels of the limber came hard up against the obstruction. In doing this, the towing end of shaft arced upwards until it could go no further. Almost immediately, two of the men climbed atop the wall and launched their body weight against the tee-bar that formed the end of the shaft, pivoting the heavy parts of the limber upwards until the wheels could be pushed over the wall. Some of the other team members rigged up a tightly suspended rope line between the two walls and then one man hung onto a small trolley contraption riding atop the line on two grooved wheels that whizzed him from one wall to the other. But he wasn’t just joy riding; he carried both of the heavy gun mount wheels with him, one suspended from each shoulder. A tag line on the trolley enabled it to be pulled back to the starting position, where four other team members suspended the gun mount from it, using a rope sling. Then all four men balanced precariously on the gun mount, whilst hanging onto the trolley handles, as they rode it to the second wall.

Meanwhile the limber group had pulled their carriage across the intervening ground, before removing its wheels and manhandling the parts through a narrow gap in the second wall. This was closely followed by the gun mount, which was then reunited with the wheels that had already been taken through the gap. As the pieces arrived at the other side of the second wall, the teams worked furiously at reassembling their gun in a firing position, with the limber at some prescribed distance away. And then, when the assembly was complete, one member raced to the limber, opened the ammunition box and retrieved a round that he cradled in both arms as he bolted back to the gun position. The gun team muzzle loaded the blank round and when all was ready, one of the gunners yanked on a lanyard, firing off the round with a deafeningly loud explosion that temporarily filled the arena with a large expanding cloud of blue smoke. But no sooner had the round been fired, than the runner raced back to the limber for another round so that the procedure could be repeated. In all, each team fired off three rounds. Then, a brief rest only to be interrupted by a bugle call and they were off again, repeating the same drill, but this time in the opposite direction. Three more rounds were fired off at the end of that run and then another rest period. Soon, the bugle sounded again and one more run was made, but instead of firing off some more rounds, the teams raced the gun and limber combination down the sides of the arena instead and across the finish line to complete the competition.

The audience was going wild, cheering the teams on. Apparently, different naval stations competed at each performance and on this particular night it was Chatham against the Fleet Air Arm. I couldn’t make my mind up which team to cheer for—my father’s home port had been Chatham when he’d served in the Royal Navy during the war, so I felt I should support them. But I was torn by loyalty to my aviation brothers of the Fleet Air Arm. In the end, the familial association won and I supported Chatham, who went on to win by a very close margin.

Both teams were visibly exhausted by their heroic efforts and breathed heavily whilst a senior naval officer faced the royal box and saluted the royal person. It wasn’t Her Majesty the Queen, but another member of the Royal Family; the Princess Royal, I think. After this brief rest the teams departed the arena pulling their gun carriages with them, as the arena sound system played
“All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor”
, much to the amusement of the wildly applauding audience.

The next event was also staged by the Royal Navy. It involved a number of manned scenes, acted out under the bright cones of spotlights that illuminated them one at a time and in isolation from the otherwise darkened arena. The scenes started with one that depicted the manned gun deck of Nelson’s ship and ended with the portrayal of a guided missile being fired from a ship.

It took the arena crew several minutes to remove all the scenery and props after the lights came up, which gave the audience time to stretch their legs before the Royal Marines’ massed bands entered in a breathtaking spectacle of precision marching and stirring music.

Five combined Marine bands paraded through the arena as one, seeming to fill it entirely. There must have been around 250 individual players, each of whom was dressed in the customary dark blue dress uniform surmounted by a white tropical helmet. We were treated to an amazingly varied repertoire of music, most of which was military, although some pieces like
“Ave Maria”
clearly were not.

After the Royal Marines had made their exit through the great doors, the arena turned quiet for a short time, but before long the doors slid silently open again to permit a large troop of mounted Royal Household Cavalry to enter the arena. Each trooper carried a lance in the vertical position, with a pennant fluttering at the top near the sharp end. As if the pageantry of the cavalry in their plumed helmets and shiny breastplates wasn’t enough, they were led into the arena by the colourfully dressed Royal Horse Guards Kettledrummer astride a huge horse that, we were informed by the announcer, was named “Hannibal”. Two large, heavy-looking, ornately decorated, silver bowl-shaped drums slung across the horse’s shoulders were being beaten with the type of padded drumsticks used for bass drums. Four trumpeters, garbed in the same colourful uniform as the kettledrummer, rode in a row immediately behind him. The drummer beat out the rhythm for the troop as he led them all the way to the centre of the arena, where they eventually came to a halt. Such a spectacle was rarely seen, except during the Queen’s Birthday Trooping of the Colour ceremony, or other rare State occasions. By this time, a solemn hush had fallen over the audience and so all was quiet when the four trumpeters raised long, straight, silver herald-trumpets, that each dangled a banner bearing the Royal coat of arms, to their lips. They paused in this position for a moment and then played a fanfare that resounded throughout the great cavernous hall. That done, they departed the arena, led by the kettledrummer and we were left alone with two troops of the Household Cavalry—the “Blues,” wearing royal blue tunics and red plumes on their helmets and “Royals,” who wore red jackets that were offset by the white plumes atop their helmets.

What followed was a musical ride by the 32 mounted riders that lasted for several minutes. Harnesses jingled and hooves pounded on the sawdust-covered arena floor as they trotted and cantered through a series of intricate manoeuvres, during which the horses narrowly missed colliding with each other by miraculous split second timing, as their columns interwove and criss-crossed in the centre of the arena. Gleaming helmets and breastplates glinted under the bright overhead lights, as the cavalry troopers turned and wheeled in time with the music. The long horsehair plumes that streamed from the pinnacles of their helmets danced and bobbed in rhythm with the horses’ body movements.

As a finale, the kettledrummer and trumpeters solemnly re-entered the arena to perform a closing fanfare, during which the officer in charge saluted the Royal Box. Then the entire troop of cavalrymen slow-marched their horses out of the arena, to the steady boom of the kettledrums and thunderous applause of the spectators.

But even the noble horses of the Royal Household Cavalry are subject to the call of nature, which wouldn’t have been so obvious if the pomp and circumstance that we had just witnessed hadn’t been immediately followed by the unheralded entry of an overall-clad gang of shovel-wielding, wheelbarrow-pushing young soldiers, who expeditiously scooped up the still-steaming horse detritus, much to the amusement of the audience, who gave them a heartfelt round of applause as they quickly departed the now-clean arena just as swiftly and silently as they had arrived into it.

When the next display group entered the arena, it appeared that the pooper-scooper crew had been wasting their time, because this event also featured horses. The thick layer of sawdust on the arena floor couldn’t entirely deaden the sound of thudding hooves as three separate teams of The King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery thundered through the open doors. Each team, consisting of six horses harnessed in pairs, was pulling a field gun behind it. What seemed very unusual was that all three horses on the left side of each team carried a rider, who was dressed in an ornate Hussar uniform. Unlike the cantering Household Cavalry, these teams galloped around the arena at a very fast pace, turning and twisting the field gun through many intricate manoeuvres. Given the tight area in which they were required to perform, such sharp turns at speed would probably have been impossible without the three riders each controlling his pair of horses. In fact, there was no other way to guide the horses since the gun that they pulled had no place for a driver to sit.

Up and down and around and around they galloped, gleaming harnesses jingling and hooves thudding in the sawdust of the arena floor. The Hussars’ uniforms made ours look plain and nondescript, in spite of our braid and white belts. The cap they wore was the most distinctive part of their uniform, being like a flat-topped Busby with what appeared to be a flap hanging over the right side from the crown and surmounted by a stiff plume that stood several inches vertically above the headgear. The uniform itself could hardly be described as nondescript. If anything, it resembled a uniform that could have been worn by Cinderella’s Prince Charming, with its high-necked collar and several narrowly-spaced horizontal rows of ornate gold braid that covered the chest area of the tightly fitted jacket. Epaulettes of gold-braid adorned the shoulders and an intricate design in gold piping decorated the lower arms of the sleeves.

No doubt there was much history behind the uniform and wearing it certainly didn’t detract from their skill as horsemen, as they wheeled their teams to interact with each other and in time with the music that played over the sound system. They performed intricate figures-of-eight and crossovers at a speed that seemed to suggest that a writhing heap of horses, Hussars and field guns could occur in the centre of the arena at any moment. But nothing like that happened and they completed the display without mishap. The pooper-scoopers made another appearance, greeted by some light laughter and applause from the audience.

We were then treated to a massed pipe band made up of a number of Irish regimental bands. Even though I was Irish, this was a little unusual for me. Growing up, the only pipe bands I’d seen had been tartan kilt-clad in the Scottish tradition. But these pipers wore plain light brown kilts and long green cloaks. I love pipe music and enjoyed the Irish pipes just as much as the Scottish. And they played Irish tunes that had a deeply nostalgic familiarity, all the more so because it had been a long time since I had heard many of them.

Although there were a large number of other events, let me just describe one more that honoured the island of Malta, GC and made a big impression on me.

It began with the arena plunged into darkness as props were rushed in under cover of darkness. Then, in the darkness, the deep resonant voice of actor Jack Hawkins came over the arena loudspeakers. He spoke of how the small island nation had been such a thorn in the side of the enemy during the Second World War, because it sat astride Field Marshal Rommel’s supply routes between Italy and North Africa. About half of Rommel’s supplies were sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean by the Maltese forces and this became such a problem for the German High Command that they ordered Malta to be either bombed into oblivion or invaded and captured.

The island was pounded day and night by endless air raids and seemed ready to fall, but incredibly refused to give in. King George was so awed by the courage of the Maltese people that he awarded the George Cross to the island for its valour. But the decoration, impressive as it was, didn’t help too much—they needed reinforcements, especially fighter planes to beat off the German and Italian bombers. British and American aircraft carriers then arrived off Tunisia, bringing several squadrons of Spitfires which were to be flown off the carriers, land, refuel and then take off as soon as possible to avoid being knocked out while they were still on the ground. But first the bomb craters in the Maltese airfields had to be filled in, so that the fighters could land.

The display depicted how the entire population of Malta went out onto the airfields and runways to fill the holes, repairing them to provide a landing place for the Spitfires. At one point, spotlights illuminated an anti-aircraft gun emplacement and we heard and saw a realistic simulation of the gun crew firing at enemy bombers. Then another set of spotlights focused on the arena entrance, as a real Spitfire taxied into the display area. Thinking back on it, there must have been some stagecraft involved because the aircraft’s whirling propeller should have kicked up a cloud of sawdust, but this didn’t happen, so I really don’t know how the fighter was made to behave so realistically. Anyway, it taxied up to the gun emplacement where a crew of Royal Air Force, Army and Navy personnel swarmed over it, performing the refuelling and arming operations. Then, when they were complete, the Spitfire taxied back out of the arena and we heard a simulation of the sound of its engine at full take-off power, as it climbed into the sky to do battle.