As the Crow Flies

“My name is Captain Trentham,” the man informed the expectant band of untrained warriors in an accent that Charlie suspected would have sounded more in place in Mayfair than at a railway station in Scotland. “I’m the battalion adjutant,” he went on to explain as he swayed from foot to foot, “and will be responsible for this intake for the period that you are billeted in Edinburgh. First we will march to the barracks, where you will be issued supplies so that you can get yourselves bedded down. Supper will be served at eighteen hundred hours and lights out will be at twenty-one hundred hours. Tomorrow morning reveille will be sounded at zero five hundred, when you will rise and breakfast before you begin your basic training at zero six hundred. This routine will last for the next twelve weeks. And I can promise you that it will be twelve weeks of absolute hell,” he added, sounding as if the idea didn’t altogether displease him. “During this period Sergeant Major Philpott will be the senior warrant officer in charge of the unit. The sergeant major fought on the Somme, where he was awarded the Military Medal, so he knows exactly what you can expect when we eventually end up in France and have to face the enemy. Listen to his every word carefully, because it might be the one thing that saves your life. Carry on, Sergeant Major.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Sergeant Major Philpott in a clipped bark.

The motley band stared in awe at the figure who would be in charge of their lives for the next three months. He was, after all, a man who had seen the enemy and come home to tell the tale.

“Right, let’s be having you then,” he said, and proceeded to lead his recruits—carrying everything from battered suitcases to brown paper parcels—through the streets of Edinburgh at the double, only to be sure that the locals didn’t realize just how undisciplined this rabble really was. Despite their amateur appearance, passersby still stopped to cheer and clap. Out of the corner of one eye Charlie couldn’t help noticing that one of them was resting his only hand against his only leg. Some twenty minutes later, after a climb up the biggest hill Charlie had ever seen, one that literally took his breath away, they entered the barracks of Edinburgh Castle.

That evening Charlie hardly opened his mouth as he listened to the different accents of the men babbling around him. After a supper of pea soup—“One pea each,” the duty corporal quipped—and bully beef, he was quartered—and learning new words by the minute—in a large gymnasium that temporarily housed four hundred beds, each a mere two feet in width and set only a foot apart. On a thin horsehair mattress rested one sheet, one pillow and one blanket. King’s Regulations.

It was the first time Charlie had thought that 112 Whitechapel Road might be considered luxurious. Exhausted, he collapsed onto the unmade bed, fell asleep, but still woke the next morning at four-thirty. This time, however, there was no market to go to, and certainly no choice as to whether he should select a Cox’s or a Granny Smith for breakfast.

At five a lone bugle woke his companions from their drowsy slumber. Charlie was already up, washed and dressed when a man with two stripes on his sleeve marched in. He slammed the door behind him and shouted, “Up, up, up,” as he kicked the end of any bed that still had a body supine on it. The raw recruits leaped up and formed a queue to wash in basins half full of freezing water, changed only after every third man. Some then went off to the latrines behind the back of the hall, which Charlie thought smelled worse than the middle of Whitechapel Road on a steaming summer’s day.

Br

eakfast consisted of one ladle of porridge, half a cup of milk and a dry biscuit, but no one complained. The cheerful noise that emanated from that hall wouldn’t have left any German in doubt that these recruits were all united against a common enemy.

At six, after their beds had been made and inspected, they all trudged out into the dark cold air and onto the parade ground, its surface covered in a thin film of snow.

“If this is bonny Scotland,” Charlie heard a cockney accent declare, “then I’m a bloody Dutchman.” Charlie laughed for the first time since he had left Whitechapel and strolled over to a youth far smaller than himself who was rubbing his hands between his legs as he tried to keep warm.

“Where you from?” Charlie asked.

“Poplar, mate. And you?”

“Whitechapel.”

“Bloody foreigner.”

Charlie stared at his new companion. The youth couldn’t have been an inch over five feet three, skinny, with dark curly hair and flashing eyes that never seemed to be still, as if he were always on the lookout for trouble. His shiny, elbow-patched suit hung on him, making his shoulders look like a coathanger.

“Charlie Trumper’s the name.”

“Tommy Prescott,” came back the reply. He stopped his exercises and thrust out a warm hand. Charlie shook it vigorously.

“Quiet in the ranks,” hollered the sergeant major. “Now let’s get you formed up in columns of three. Tallest on the right, shortest on the left. Move.” They parted.

For the next two hours they carried out what the sergeant major described as “drill.” The snow continued to drop unceasingly from the sky, but the sergeant major showed no inclination to allow one flake to settle on his parade ground. They marched in three ranks of ten, which Charlie later learned were called sections, arms swinging to waist height, heads held high, one hundred and twenty paces to the minute. “Look lively, lads” and “Keep in step” were the words Charlie had shouted at him again and again. “The Boche are also marching out there somewhere, and they can’t wait to have a crack at you lot,” the sergeant major assured them as the snow continued to fall.

Had he been in Whitechapel, Charlie would have been happy to run up and down the market from five in the morning to seven at night and still box a few rounds at the club, drink a couple of pints of beer and carry out the same routine the next day without a second thought, but when at nine o’clock the sergeant major gave them a ten-minute break for cocoa, he collapsed onto the grass verge exhausted. Looking up, he found Tommy Prescott peering at him. “Fag?”

“No, thanks,” said Charlie. “I don’t smoke.”

“What’s your trade then?” asked Tommy, lighting up.

“I own a baker’s shop on the corner of Whitechapel Road,” replied Charlie, “and a—”

“Ring the other one, it’s got bells on,” interrupted Tommy. “Next you’ll be telling me your dad’s Lord Mayor of London.”

Charlie laughed. “Not exactly. So what do you do?”

“Work for a brewery, don’t I? Whitbread and Company, Chiswell Street, EC1. I’m the one who puts the barrels on the carts, and then the shire ’orses pulls me round the East End so that I can deliver my wares. Pay’s not good, but you can always drink yourself silly before you get back each night.”

“So what made you join up?”

“Now that’s a long story, that is,” replied Tommy. “You see, to start with—”

“Right. Back on parade, you lot,” shouted Sergeant Major Philpott, and neither man had the breath to speak another word for the next two hours as they were marched up and down, up and down, until Charlie felt that when they eventually stopped his feet must surely fall off.