We were to set the detonator firmly into our lump of explosive, gently push the length of fuse cable into the hole provided in the detonator (like in our cotton reel), then advance with our ‘bombs’ to the marked line, together in line and keeping our distance.
Distance between us was again checked before we each obeyed the instruction to place our bomb on the ground on the line and directly at our feet. “Now take out one of your matches, but do not strike until I give the command for you to do so.” Perfectly clear so far. The Sergeant instructor next reiterated, “I do not want to see anybody running – remember that!”
“You have all seen what a lit fuse looks like, so I don’t want to see any unlit fuses that you ‘thought’ were lit when we retire from the charge.”
“You will now kneel down with your matches ready.”
“When I give the command ‘Strike’ you will strike your match on your matchbox, ignite the fuse, and when you see it lit and ‘fizzing’ you will retire to your ‘start’ position in orderly fashion – no running.”
“You have each got 10 seconds, which is about twice the time needed to walk briskly back to your start mark.”
“All ready, then?”
A quick glance along the line confirmed that we were each hovering over our bombs with matches poised.
“Strike!”
I brushed the match against the abrasive side of the box. Nothing happened. Nerves perhaps? One second… I tried again. No ignition. Two seconds… Must be a duff match, fiddle in the box for another – Hell’s bells, my fingers are shaking… Three seconds, four seconds… Why won’t it ignite? God! The bloke’s fuse on the left is fizzing only five or six feet away from my head – and he’s walked almost halfway back! I struck the match successfully and applied the flame to the end of the fuse wire... Come on for God’s sake, ignite, FIZZ! Five seconds, six… the one on my right is fizzing now. No running, remember. NO RUNNING? That’s a laugh. The stampede back to safety would have put to shame the Charge of the Light Brigade.
It was a disgraceful exhibition of timidity – he said so. Only nine out of 30 had been lit and had exploded. Whether by accident or not, the Royal Engineers had given us a simple lesson in psychology – in human frailty. There had been nothing wrong with the matches or the fuses, as we proved minutes later after we had witnessed the minimal effects of the explosions on the muddy earth and executed the tiresome misfire drill. We had been guilty of panic and of engendering panic. On the third trial of the exercise one hundred per cent success was achieved. From that moment on, explosives and demolition and the sophistication of such things as time-pencil fuses became a subject of fascinating interest to almost all of us, exemplified later in the year by the almost daring contempt for the rules so clearly enunciated by those astute and much underrated men of the Royal Engineers.
Escape and Evasion Training
The high ranking officer, who had been sent from GHQ Middle East to depress us with the conduct expected of us as prisoners of war, paradoxically cheered us with the implications of imminent involvement in hostilities. It was difficult to decide whether to applaud or rebuke High Command for imposing on us so negative a subject, but I suppose in the spirit of boy-scout preparedness it had to be delivered simultaneously with the surprising issue of what was described as an escape kit. The other point in its favour was the confirmation that we were rather special. No other units that we had heard of had received items which indicated the likelihood of action behind enemy lines, which suggested a fair degree of individual independence and implied almost certain co-operation with Partisan organisations.
In logical terms, it was sheer pessimism to envisage a situation calling for any of those objects – a file, a crude compass and a map of the Balkan countries – but their issue redeemed some of GHQ’s otherwise besmirched reputation, in their concerns for our welfare. The four-inch-long file was wholly concealed in a flat, innocent looking strip of rubber, which had been designed to fit snugly in the pleat of the field dressing pocket of our battle-dress trousers in the hope of avoiding detection in the normal frisking. My trouble was that it added further rigidity and bulk to a pocket already bulging with my forbidden diary, to the point where a passing medical officer might one day suspect one of the most frightening examples of unilateral hernia he had ever diagnosed – and without the removal of the patient’s trousers at that. So I found another home for it – the file, I mean, not the diary.
The compass was at once simple, yet quite ingenious: a two-part brass trouser button (on the face of it) which obviated the need for sewing. With the two parts separated by the trouser material, the spike on one part clicked into the recess in the other, effectively locking the button in an almost irremovable position. The recessed half of the button had been magnetised and marked with a tiny luminous spot to indicate north. One simply had to place the magnetised part on the spike of the lower part to see it swivel instantly to indicate the direction of magnetic north. Useful to know in a blind trek for freedom.
The map had been printed on one side of an otherwise innocuous looking, folded field handkerchief. The unmistakeable utility of these items hardly warranted even the few words of explanation which they produced. Perhaps the promise of the future issue of gold sovereigns, as universally accepted tender for emergency purchases in countries where wartime internal fiscal and political chaos had rendered their national currency worthless, posed more questions than the speaker answered. But both speaker and recipients seemed to be reduced to embarrassed speechlessness (at least initially) by another item issued. The conjecture, the jokes and the moral sensitivity which the personal issue of a couple of packets of rubber sheath contraceptives later provoked would make an interesting book in itself. Suffice it to say that none of the escape items issued were to be ‘exposed’ before our arrival on the scene of military operations.
Morphine tablets comprised the final means of ‘escape’. We were instructed in the dosage for relieving extreme pain – and how much it would take to kill. I imagine that this was to beat the Germans to it if they appeared to be intent on carrying out Hitler’s declaration of 18 October 1942: to treat all Commando-type infiltrators in occupied countries as spies and execute them. Fortunately, his instructions were not always carried out.
The exclusivity of our unit gradually became more outwardly noticeable, with the issue of gear which advertised to all in the Haifa area that ours was a somewhat distinctive military role. Our secret existence had obviously been exposed, so what did it matter if the hitherto exclusive beige berets of the Special Air Service suddenly appeared in greater profusion? Although we had become part of a Special Services brigade, the regiment acquired its own rather eye-catching, coloured cap badge emblem depicting a winged torch, and showing the capitals RSR with the biblical legend from St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, ‘Quit you like men’. It is true that the wags and the detractors soon fastened on to the word ‘quit’ in its American usage, rather than ‘acquit’. All this, together with a Commando dagger and our smart, brown, calf-high South African Army boots (instead of the black, standard issue Army clod-hoppers) unfortunately prompted a swaggering braggadocio in some of our more aggressive types. Long before it had a military reputation, the Regiment developed an unenviable one of loutishness through aggression, vandalism, drunkenness and looting, which suggested an undisciplined rabble rather than the crème de la crème esteem which the speciality of our training claimed for us.
“Those first few nights of learning left enduring memories of terror-stricken shrieks of pain piercing the night air...”
Chapter II
Daily Life At Nahariya
After constant pressure and in a rare gesture of conciliation, the War Department decided to erect a galvanised structure around and above our latrine
