Turnbull and asked to explain my reasons for choosing the Cherry Pickers.
I told him that I had studied military history from the Hundred Years War right through to the Great War of 1914. I had read Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That, every word of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen; I had read All Quiet on the Western Front, I had read Lions Led by Donkeys, Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade and seen Zulu and much, much more. But, through my association with Fraser, De Rougement and many other fellow cadets, whose names I can sadly no longer remember, I realised that I did not have what was required for the 11th Hussars, to wit the ability to ride, to play polo or, indeed, cover my mess bills. The Cherry Pickers were an elite regiment. Amongst others, Prince Michael of Kent was a serving officer at that time. It was implied to me that the regiment had a fund available to assist desirable young officers of limited means but, despite the blind romanticism that drove me on at this time of my life, I realised that I would be more comfortable in an ultra-professional, modern-day regiment; one which was steeped in history and glory, albeit only since 1916; a regiment which eschewed the values of the historic cavalry but was not encumbered by its tradition. I elected to join the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment and serve with the likes of Lieutenant Bale and Corporal Maclver Jones.
Shortly before our commissioning parade, for some reason a few of us, including Douglas-Home, grandson of the former Prime Minister, found ourselves near Bristol and I took them all home to 50 Coombe Dale, where my mother cooked them homebaked bread, faggots and peas.
Years later, when I was running a bistro in Bristol, I had the uncanny feeling that Douglas-Home had left the Army and attended Bristol University and, as a student there, was a customer at the bistro. Or if that wasn’t the case, he had gone into horse-training and had just turned up one day.
Also at this time, on one of the final parade rehearsals, Major Edwards made a rare visit to the drill square. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘remove your hats. Last night, the greatest leader died. Winston Churchill is dead. It is possible that some of you will be selected to attend the state funeral.’ I know for certain that if I hadn’t shot my goddamned bed, not only would I have at least been a Junior Under Officer, I would have lined that funeral route. But curiously, there does exist a 35mm film that shows both Winston Churchill’s funeral and my commissioning parade. It was taken by David and Hillary Taft, who attended both ceremonies along with my mother and father, who once again caused me a wince of embarrassment when he, in his modest and courteous way, addressed my platoon officer, Captain Kitchen, as ‘sir’. That night, as blood brothers, my course comrades and I, at a celebratory dinner in the Hen and Chicken Inn (where we ate what we thought was a splendid dinner of corn on the cub, potted shrimp and roast duck with orange sauce, Stilton and port) ripped in half and signed pound notes which we swore, one day, we would match and commemorate this occasion. It never happened.
We were all granted commissioning leave prior to joining our regiments. I took the Dover to Calais ferry and hitchhiked down to the Loire valley. One evening as dusk was falling, a battered, grey deux cent trois Peugeot pickup truck stopped to give me a lift. A man of about forty, gnarled, tanned, with black wiry hair, wearing blue denim overalls, was in the car. He was drunk and had a raffia-covered bidon of coarse, red wine on the floor of the cab which he offered me, and I slurped it gratefully. After several stops at ill-lit, scruffy cafés, I was also drunk. I had no bed for the night and didn’t know where I was. His driving became more terrifying, but eventually we bounced into the drive of a small cottage surrounded by an unkempt garden full of manky dogs, squawking chickens, derelict farm vehicles and dirty, snotty-nosed children. He indicated to me that I could stay here for the night and ordered his fat, black-clad wife to throw the already sleeping young children off their urine-stained bed onto a tattered couch, to heat up some food in a chipped pale blue enamelled pot and remake the bed for me to sleep on after I had eaten a bowl of saucisson and lentils. When I awoke the following morning, he had gone. His dishevelled wife gave me some bread and apricot jam and a mug of bitter, grainy coffee. I washed under a pump outside the house, murmured my embarrassed goodbyes and set off down the road towards Blois, where, in an early-morning café, I breakfasted again on grilled river perch and a glass of red wine. I was twenty-one or twenty-two, I think, I held the Queen’s Commission and in four days I had to report to my regiment at Fallingbostel, the current headquarters of the 3RTR in between Hamburg and Hanover. I was brimming with confidence, feeling fit and full of pride, but, as they say, pride comes before a fall…
Aware that freshly commissioned second lieutenants are bumptious and full of themselves when they arrive at their regiment, a series of elaborate practical jokes is played on the unwitting victim; also nobody speaks to you unless it is absolutely essential for at least two or three weeks. I arrived just in time for dinner after a five-hour journey by Land Rover from the airport. It was some weeks before I realised the airport was only in fact about forty minutes away and that that had been the first of many practical jokes. I ate my dinner in silence because that evening the other six or seven subalterns at the long, highly polished table spent the entire meal reading books or doing the Telegraph crossword. This was practical joke number two. The next couple of days consisted of interviews with the Adjutant, the RSM and the Colonel and guided tours of the camp. Apart from that I was left much to my own devices, collecting odd bits of kit and moving into my rather splendid room in the Kommandantur. I was then introduced to my troop and my three tanks. To my absolute delight my troop sergeant turned out to be no less than Sergeant Linneker, which was doubly good because, as yet, I hadn’t even sat in a tank, never mind knowing anything about them. As things stood I was an infantry officer and had not attended the complex technical course at Bovington in Dorset which was scheduled to take place in two or three months’ time. In the meantime I attended morning parade, inspected ‘my’ men and wandered off back to the mess for coffee break. I would return to the tank park and chew the fat with Sergeant Linneker until lunchtime. After lunch we might play five a side football, go for a run, or, on Sergeant Linneker’s suggestion and using his notes, give the lads a lecture on the art of tank warfare, something which I knew absolutely nothing about. And, except for dinner, I spent most evenings in my room listening to Bob Dylan and the Beatles and reading The Great Gatsby while I sipped chilled white German wine.
Occasionally the Colonel would decide to dine in, to entertain some high-ranking visitor. On these occasions we were required to wear mess kit as it was a very formal occasion. I took my place at the table and after Grace the mess stewards served dinner. It was, I recall, mulligatawny soup followed by poached grey fillet of fish in a lumpy parsley sauce followed by roast stuffed chicken, vegetables and roast potatoes. Not quite as disgusting as it might sound except that my own meal was served to me partly frozen! Practical joke number three. I had no choice but to eat it. The whole table was in on the blague and I reckoned any protest from me would result in some heinous retribution. After dinner the Colonel withdrew to the corner of the mess to play cards with his guests whilst the subalterns got drunk and played mess games. Well, actually I didn’t play any mess games, I was the mess game.
First of all they played ‘canoes’. This involved me sitting in a cut-down tea chest with two poles running through it, rather like a sedan chair, whilst the other officers ran the canoe and me around the mess in some kind of grotesque relay race. The object being to tip me out as many times as possible, and of course each time I fell out, I had to pay a penalty, which was to drink some disgusting cocktail devised by my boisterous ‘chums’. When they tired of this, it was decided to play ‘aeroplanes’. This involved piling up the leather cushions from the sofas some feet away from the highly polished mess table, which had now become the deck of an aircraft carrier. The object of this jolly jape was for me to be held spread-eagled by half a dozen of the pranksters and swung backwards and forwards until I had gathered sufficient momentum to be launched from the table and hopefully land on the cushions. The senior officers, engrossed in conversation, chess and cards, paid not the slightest attention.
Eventually the evening calmed down. Someone played the piano and sang, others played in a billiards tournament or a card school, none of which I was invited to join. By about midnight I was bored and not a
