Paul Daniels (9 page)

In my mid-teens, Dad and I would sit up at night after he came home from work and just chat. We would discuss life and the universe and, naturally, put the world to rights. Motorways were under discussion; these new wonder roads that would allow everyone to travel easily great distances with no delays. Yeah, right! Dad had an idea that has stayed with me – at the same time as they were building the motorways, they should put large tubes alongside them, possibly underground, maybe two to three feet in diameter. These tubes would join all the major cities of the UK and belong to the Post Office. Inside the tubes there would be, for want of a better word, torpedoes. In London, a torpedo for, say, Leeds would be filled with post and loaded into the tube. The tube at that end sloped downwards slightly and as the torpedo went in it would activate a sensor switch that activated an electro-magnet. The head of the torpedo would be magnetic and it would be pulled, aided initially by gravity, towards the magnet, picking up speed. As it approached the magnet another switch would de-activate electro-magnet number one and switch on number two and so on. After a very short time the magnets could be well spaced out as the torpedo would be travelling at very high speed. As it approached Leeds some 20 to 30 minutes later, the electromagnets would be switched on
behind
the magnetic head to pull it back and eventually stop it at the Post Office. No train delays, no traffic jams, nothing would stop our postal system. Like so many ideas, we did nothing with it.

A long brown envelope awaited my return home one evening. It wasn't a surprise as I had been expecting the communication, though I wouldn't have been disappointed had
it not arrived at all. It contained my call-up papers for National Service. Every 18-year-old, if they passed a medical, was expected to train in the services for two years in order to keep Britain's fighting strength at its maximum potential. World War II may be over, but problems in the Far East, the Middle East and the Cold War with the Soviet Union were still threats to be taken seriously.

Registering at my local army offices, the choice was Army, Navy or Air Force. I didn't have any knowledge of the military system at all. My father warned me not to volunteer for anything so I didn't. When asked about going on OTC (Officer Training Courses) or whether I wanted to be an NCO or a WO or any of that stuff I just said ‘no'. I should have asked what it meant but I didn't. The rumour was that whatever you volunteered for would be ignored. Not only that, but the famous joke based on truth was that you would be sent to the entirely opposite type of service you proposed. It was all part of the early ‘break-down' procedure that was to turn us young boys into brainwashed recruits, so I waited for the date of my departure to be confirmed and details of where they would send me.

By now I had been working on pay systems so I expected to go into the Pay Corps. They put me in the infantry. I was to join the Yorkshire Regiment, The Green Howards. ‘Collection' day, Thursday, 7 February 1957, was an unhappy day as I prepared to leave family, friends and home behind to become part of Intake 5703, whatever that was. Worst of all, I had to abandon all my beloved magic equipment and books. My props were gone and I was on my own again. Little did I realise that once in training, I wouldn't have enough time to go to the toilet, let alone perform.

As I piled on to the train, along with 100 other pasty youths, I looked at Mam trying not to cry. Dad's voice was ringing in
my ears, ‘there are some things in life that you can do something about and some things you can't. Don't waste your time worrying about the things you can do nowt about.' As the train pulled away, I surrendered myself to the next 24 months and it was a good job that I didn't realise then just how tough it was going to be.

I suppose I should have had some idea of what lay in store after arriving at our destination and being quickly pushed into the back of an old, green army wagon. We rattled, banged and swerved our way up the steep incline of Richmond Hill, bruising each other's arms as we did so. I am sure that the Army specially designed the open-backed truck, so that, as it travels along, it sucks the exhaust fumes into the back, making all the occupants extremely nauseous. It was winter and extremely cold, so by the time we arrived at the barracks in Richmond, Yorkshire, we all had heads spinning, stomachs churning and teeth chattering.

This was just the condition that the Sergeant Major required. No sooner had the truck stopped, than the pins at the back were removed, the metal flap banged down against the truck and a terrific roar filled our ears:

‘GET OUT OF THAT TRUCK THIS INSTANT, YOU 'ORRIBLE LOAD OF PANSIES!'

There had been no preparation at all for what were to become some of the hardest days of my young life. As the voice continued to shout at us, I wondered where on earth I was.

‘GET YOUR FEET DOWN 'ERE, YOU 'ORRIBLE LITTLE MEN!' I noticed that no matter how tall you happened to be, you were still an ‘'orrible little man'.

We were pushed and shoved into some sort of line before the next command thundered forth:

‘LEFT TURN!' came the scream, only to be followed by a complete scramble of panicking youths, uncertain at which was
the left or the right way to go. After a few bumps we somehow fell into the rattling rhythm of ‘LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT…' fired off in such quick succession, that none of us could keep up.

We were led to a freezing cold, concrete barracks with rows of beds stationed along the side of each wall. It's OK if you have been brought up to share a bedroom with a lot of other men, but I hadn't. Neither had most of the others, I guess. The shock of all that I was experiencing began to sink in and I didn't like it. As I sat on my allocated bed, it hardly gave way under my weight. The thin mattress sat on a metal tubular frame and wire base, covered with several sheets and blankets.

Without a moment to think, the voice screamed again and we were ordered into another room to collect our kit. None of this fitted, of course, which was all part of the plan. One pair of boots was issued for parades and the other for work.

Twenty minutes later, Private Daniels 23370053 stood to attention. What a wreck. Did England really think I could defend it? I was now part of the elite Green Howards Regiment. Well, they were elite until I joined them.

Learning the history of this regiment was a first priority. Apparently, the Green Howards got their name when, long ago, regiments were named after their commanding officer. In the British Army at the time, there were two ‘Howards' families – one wore buff colours and the other green, thus creating the name, the ‘Green Howards'.

‘NOW THAT YOU ARE IN THE BRITISH ARMY,' the Sergeant Major blasted (they never talked), ‘YOU WILL BE TRAINED TO OBEY A COMMAND WITHOUT QUESTION. WHEN YOU ARE GIVEN AN ORDER, YOU WILL NOT THINK, YOU WILL JUST MOVE.' Somewhere inside me, the little boy who had questioned the accuracy of his teachers was saying, ‘I will believe this when I see it.' I soon saw
it. The next eight weeks introduced me to the most horrendous military conditions I could ever have imagined as we began our basic training.

From the moment I was shouted out of bed at 5.00am to the last seconds of climbing into bed, I was active. If not on parade, I was cleaning something, shooting something, learning something. I became a natural marksman on all the weapons, perhaps because of my hand-to-eye coordination. I put no real effort into learning this; I just understood the logical mathematics of the techniques. There was no time to be lonely, to be homesick or grieve over lost magic. There was simply no time for feelings of any kind and barely the space to write home at the end of an exhausting day when I would collapse into bed and be asleep within seconds.

We buffed and polished and did keep fit and marched and drilled with rifles in a non-stop, high-speed way, day in and day out. For one hour every evening we would sit on the hard floor of the barrack room, backs against the wall and polish our parade boots. Polishing your boots was an art form. You used a lit candle, a spoon, a lot of spit, a duster and boot polish, of course. Army boots come covered in little bumps. Using the heated spoon you had to iron the bumps flat on the front toe cap and on the heel section. This took for ever. Then you burnt the polish into the leather again using the heated spoon. Then you spit and polished. Over and over again. You could get shaved in the reflection of those boots. This time each evening was called Shining Hour. When I wrote home and mentioned this, Mam thought we were having Sunday School lessons again. I wished!

The second weekend we were told that we were allowed visitors, but they also decided to give us our ‘jabs' at the same time. As I took my place in the long line of men, I could see two army doctors standing on either side of the queue. When
each man passed, both doctors would inject needles into the man's arms at the same time. As I made my way to the front of the line, I kept my eyes firmly ahead so as to avoid the sight of needles simultaneously piercing my skin. Several of the lads had already passed out and I didn't want to succumb to any possibility of needle phobia.

The pain was acute and some suggested that the Army filed down the ends of the needles deliberately, so I was proud to have emerged from the ordeal without disgracing myself. As I was leaving, I overhead one of the nursing staff state that the pay books, in which all the inoculations were recorded, had not been collected. I offered to collect them, went next door and did so. I turned to come back and fell unconscious to the floor. Remember, I could have been defending you in times of trouble!

Waking up in my metal bunk, the room was swimming, but I knew immediately where I was. I felt like, and apparently looked like, death. The NCOs hauled me up into a sitting position and I was handed my boots together with a lit candle, a spoon and some polish. Understanding the order was one thing, carrying it out was quite another, as my arms had engorged and looked like balloons. Nothing but nothing matters in the infantry like the shine on those boots.

In the middle of all this: ‘GET UP, DANIELS! YOUR MOTHER'S 'ERE, YOU NAMBY PAMBY LITTLE MUMMY'S BOY!'

My parents had arrived at the camp to collect my civilian clothes. Poor Mam took one look at me and burst into tears. ‘What have they done to you?' she sobbed.

Dad thought it all hilarious. Thanks, Dad. I remained ill for the next few days, but I was still expected to continue training. Sick leave was definitely not on the agenda.

The grilling and drilling made one day merge into another
and for some it was too much to cope with. There was only one way out of National Service – pretend you were mad. Several of the chaps tried this, but no one ever succeeded. When one guy was ordered to ‘Blanco' his kit, he used it as an opportunity to ‘prove' his insanity. Blanco was a sticky, paste-like substance used to provide a waterproof covering on the surface of our belts, gaiters and straps of our uniform, which, once applied, dried to a greeny/brown polish. The lad got hold of several tins and Blanco'd not only his kit, but his bed, blankets and his locker in his dormitory. When the officers were greeted with the extraordinary sight of what he had done, the poor lad started jumping up and down on his bed as if he had flipped. Being used to this type of con, it was the officers who flipped and the lad was sent back to the start of his basic training, where he stayed for a very long time.

There seemed no end to what lads would do to try and get out. We had one man who went home for the weekend on leave and shot his trigger finger off, thinking the Army would dismiss him. They merely moved him back a couple of training sessions and taught him to shoot with his middle finger.

Not all of our platoon was from Yorkshire. One of the lads came from the heart of the Black Country in the Midlands and I felt sorry for him because he could not make himself understood. His accent was so thick and we had to spend a long time training him to speak our version of English. He couldn't read or write either, so I used to read his girlfriend's letters to him and write letters back to her in his name. Her letters were better than my dad's book, I can tell you that.

‘Jankers' was the term for serious punishment that would consist of extra-hard duties that would make you feel you had indeed died and gone to hell. I was hauled in front of the officer in charge on many occasions and given three days and, in one case, seven days ‘Jankers'. My transgression was a dirty rifle barrel.

I had been shown how to clean my rifle with a piece of lightly oiled lint attached to a cord, which was then passed through the barrel. The inside of this was ‘rifled', containing a groove, which spun the bullet and made it more accurate. Opening the breach, you would put your thumb in it when commanded during an inspection. The officer would come along and look down the barrel at the light reflected up the barrel off your thumb. According to the officer, if your thumb was dirty, your rifle was dirty and it would be three days ‘Jankers'.

I cleaned toilets and scrubbed floors before the sun rose and painted white lines after all my colleagues were in bed. It was possible that you would be ordered to march up and down the parade ground by yourself for several hours at a time in the middle of the night. If the tasks set before you were not dealt with in the most efficient manner, your ‘Jankers' could be extended to any length of time seen fit.

On one occasion, the Sergeant Major inspected our dormitory toilet block, entered our barrack room during Shining Hour and marched slowly up and down.

‘I HAVE FOUND A FLECK OF BROWN ON A URINAL STAND.' Actually what it sounded like was ‘HI ‘AVE FOUND HAY
FLECK
OF BURROWN ON HAY YOURAINAL STAND…'

He went on, savouring his discovery and the impending doom he would unleash on someone. ‘IT IS AT LEAST ONE-EIGHTH OF AN INCH LONG AND A SIXTEENTH OF AN INCH WIDE. WHICH OF YOU PATHETIC CREATURES WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE CLEANED THE TOILETS?'

One of the lads, I think he was called Tut Brett, continued concentrating on polishing his boots as he came out with, ‘I was, Sarge.' The Sergeant moved in front of the sitting soldier and bent over at the waist to address him. We all kept very quiet.