where I was eventually overpowered and croquet-hooped to the lawn. The Adjutant, a captain, explained to me that officers never left the mess before the Colonel. After about half an hour I managed to struggle free and thoroughly angry, pissed off and furious at what I thought was their pathetic behaviour, I returned to bed. After the morning parade I was summoned to see the Adjutant, who with no reference to his own presence at the previous night’s fight on the lawn said, ‘I have been informed that you were on the mess lawn drunk and improperly dressed last night. This is unacceptable behaviour and you will do seven extra orderly officers.’ I saluted and left his office burning with a sense of outrageous injustice. Everybody took it in turns to be orderly officer: rather like a hotel duty manager, you inspected the camp guard throughout the night, visited any prisoners in the camp clink, did the fire rounds and toured the troopers’ mess at each mealtime. Seven on the trot is bloody miserable. The one consolation from the first few weeks of misery was that my fighting exploits had thoroughly impressed my troopers who, I discovered, had nicknamed me ‘Bomber’.
After my extra stint of orderly officer there was a marked change of attitude and the other officers started to include me ‘in’ and life became rather good fun. Sometimes we would go clubbing in Hamburg; other times we would go on gastronomic safaris in Hanover. A starter in one restaurant, a main course in another, dessert in a third and so on. The summer passed away happily enough on the shooting ranges or on tank manoeuvres, although there were few of these owing to defence cuts which resulted in a shortage of fuel and ammunition. I was given all sorts of responsibilities like being appointed the religious officer, basketball officer – duties which held no interest for me whatsoever. In reality I was bored and I found some aspects of the training quite absurd. Once on exercise on the vast expanse of the Liineburg Heath, we came under imaginary nuclear attack, which meant that you had to batten down all hatches and proceed as normal. The tiny glass observation prisms in the turret quickly became obscured with dust and there was no visibility. Much to the amusement of my troop but to the fury of our squadron leader, I managed to ram his tank broadside on, putting us both out of the exercise.
After a full season of training under the helpful guidance of Sergeant Linneker, I was finally sent to Bovington to attend my tank commanders’ course, which was quite absurd because I now knew all there was to know and consequently found the classroom instruction rather juvenile. I skipped as many of the lectures as I could and spent as much available time as possible in the casino and night club in Bournemouth. I returned to my regiment with an unflattering report. Phrases like ‘arrogant know-all’ and ‘too smart for his own good’ peppered the pages. Also they didn’t like me wearing bow ties with my civilian clothes and indeed my Colonel forbade me to wear them in the mess. Because of my interest in food and wine and also because I was the newest subaltern I was given the job of ‘messing member’. This meant I had to arrange the menus and functions for the officers’ mess with the assistance of the stewards and catering staff. For most officers it was the most unpopular chore; to me it was a godsend. My enthusiasm for hurtling around the Lüneburg Heath in noisy, uncomfortable and cramped Centurion tanks was waning fast and I threw myself into my new role with ostentatious vigour. With the aid of our mess cook Corporal Feast and Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking
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