IT`S THAT DAY AGAIN..
The picture above conjurs up memories of 53 years ago today when I was dragged from my provincial innocence and pitchforked into two years of National Service. Very much like in the picture, I had arrived, along with a number of other callow youths, at Richmond station in north Yorkshire after an all day journey from my southern comfort into the frozen wastes of a north Yorkshire February. We had been greeted at the station by some malevolent corporals, invited to take our places in the courtesy three-ton truck and driven to Catterick Garrison.
I can almost see myself in the line-up of querulous conscripts and can almost hear the first question barked at me by a rigidly metronomic sergeant, "You, lad, what`s your `orrible spewy name?" From that moment, things got progressively worse as I doggedly endured six weeks of stern discipline, endless square-bashing, kit-bulling and physical and mental exertion, all the while being shouted at and being fearful of the dire consequences involved for transgressing even the most minuscule demand.
It was all a bit weird, bordering on the bizarre, sometimes descending into such farce that I began to develop my now long held view that the most accurate contradiction in terms must surely be `military intelligence.` But what can you do? There you are, called up at Her Majesty`s pleasure, knowing the 731 days have to be done, so you shrug your shoulders and get on with it. After all, acceptance of sufferance is a useful experience....or so I was told, not altogether convincingly.
And of course, it came and it went, as all things do, and as I now recall the events of 4th February 1960, I also recall the same day two years later when my time was done, my duty to Queen and country at an end and I left the green hell of BFPO 16, back in my civilian clothes, clutching my completed demob chart and being called Mr. once more.
Those times are imprinted on my memory and every year when today comes around, I look back on those days with a mixture of resentment at the compulsion of it all, amusement at the futility of most of it, wistfulness at the good times, gratitude for the things I learnt about myself and fond memories of good friends with whom I still have the pleasure of being in touch.
In writing what has now become almost an annual ritual for me, I begin to feel a bit like Wallander`s father, forever painting the same landscape. But it has become something of a pilgrimage to look back on two years which had such a profound effect on the rest of my life. I hope you will forgive the self-indulgence.
I can almost see myself in the line-up of querulous conscripts and can almost hear the first question barked at me by a rigidly metronomic sergeant, "You, lad, what`s your `orrible spewy name?" From that moment, things got progressively worse as I doggedly endured six weeks of stern discipline, endless square-bashing, kit-bulling and physical and mental exertion, all the while being shouted at and being fearful of the dire consequences involved for transgressing even the most minuscule demand. It was all a bit weird, bordering on the bizarre, sometimes descending into such farce that I began to develop my now long held view that the most accurate contradiction in terms must surely be `military intelligence.` But what can you do? There you are, called up at Her Majesty`s pleasure, knowing the 731 days have to be done, so you shrug your shoulders and get on with it. After all, acceptance of sufferance is a useful experience....or so I was told, not altogether convincingly.
And of course, it came and it went, as all things do, and as I now recall the events of 4th February 1960, I also recall the same day two years later when my time was done, my duty to Queen and country at an end and I left the green hell of BFPO 16, back in my civilian clothes, clutching my completed demob chart and being called Mr. once more.
Those times are imprinted on my memory and every year when today comes around, I look back on those days with a mixture of resentment at the compulsion of it all, amusement at the futility of most of it, wistfulness at the good times, gratitude for the things I learnt about myself and fond memories of good friends with whom I still have the pleasure of being in touch.
In writing what has now become almost an annual ritual for me, I begin to feel a bit like Wallander`s father, forever painting the same landscape. But it has become something of a pilgrimage to look back on two years which had such a profound effect on the rest of my life. I hope you will forgive the self-indulgence.
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