WHEREFORE ART THOU, FOOTPRINTS?

I have kept a little diary from 1960 - 50 years ago now - during the time I was called up to do my National Service. It tells me that, about the end of April, I and my fellow inmates had concluded our basic training and our `trade` training. So we would spend the next couple of weeks in what was known as the Regimental Holding Troop (RHT) before having a bit of leave prior to being transferred to our permanent regiments.

I always thought that RHT was a euphamism for Don`t Know What To Do With Them Troop (DKWTDWTT) and my suspicions were confirmed when I was sent to the stores to get something one morning. When I arrived, there was no-one to be seen despite the fact that the door was open, so in I went. Moreover, no-one appeared for the rest of the day and no-one enquired as to my own whereabouts, so I made myself comfortable and spent a restful day in quiet contemplation as to what next might befall me.

What befell me next in my military career was the train from Richmond in Yorkshire to Harwich, an overnight voyage in a flat bottomed troopship to the Hook of Holland and another long train journey across Holland and Germany until I finally linked up with the 10th Royal Hussars (the Shiny Tenth) at their base near Paderborn. I wasn`t sure they quite knew what to do with me either, but I found myself in the Orderly Room which turned out to be anything but orderly. It was `managed` by the Orderly Room Quartermaster Sergeant (ORQMS) who was an interesting and rather engaging character. He was universally known as `Footprints,` for that is really the most you ever saw of him as he left just the merest suggestion of his presence on the floors of the Shiny Tenth`s corridors. He was always in a hurry to be somewhere else and I wondered why.

In his absence, the Orderly Room came under the gaze of Footprints` second-in-command, an avuncular sergeant who had a certain air about him. A mixture of confidence verging on bombast but yet an underlying vulnerability that made it difficult to take him seriously, particularly as he was partial to tuneless humming, reminiscent of the Mongolian throat singers. But most of all, there was perhaps more than `a hint of lavender` about him, which probably explains why Footprints was seldom, if ever, to be seen. Apart from his footprints, of course.