MORNING SERIAL
A DESERTED coastal gun station, the gunners long gone. But it wasn’t a bad location to await his demob. It had a fine view out, high over the River Tamar emptying into Plymouth Sound.
On being posted to Plymouth he had become part of what the Press called Monty’s New Army. He felt he was enjoying the benefits of experience. The new Prime Minister, Mr Attlee, had been an infantry officer in the Great War thirty years earlier. He had fought at Gallipoli and had been lucky to survive. Fifty thousand men had not been so lucky. Mr Attlee went on to fight in Mesopotamia and on the Western Front in France. Mr Attlee understood the common soldier. And now all those years later he was prime minister and had begun building the Welfare State. He was also concerned about making the lot of the British soldier a lot more bearable. For the first time in the history of the British Army, soldiers had been issued with bed sheets, pillows and pillowcase. Until then the regular issue had been a groundsheet and two blankets, one of which would become the soldier’s shroud and coffin if he was killed on active service with the cost of the blanket charged to his last pay.
It was by chance or luck that he found himself in Plymouth. He had reported to Southampton to board the trooper ship, the Corfu. He was to be shipped back to Burma, to re-join his unit. But the crew of the Corfu had gone on strike. They were striking for better conditions. When a British merchant ship was torpedoed and sunk, the time the surviving crew members clambered into the lifeboats was logged by a Royal Navy escort. When and if the survivors got picked up, they found the time, which could be days or even weeks spent in the freezing cold or blazing heat often without water or food, was docked from their pay because they weren’t considered to be on duty. It was a time of change alright. It was not worth sending him back to Burma. He had become surplus to requirements and was getting used to it.
Boys of Gold by George Brinley Evans is published by Parthian at £4.99 www.parthianbooks.com
CONTINUES TOMORROW