Ken has been a successful author for over 60 years. Each month here he publishes a memoir of his life and influences as a writer. The latest chapter is listed below.
Missed a chapter? Click here: Chapter One | Chapter Two
Chapter Three
3. Chapter Three
In 1949, every male had to register for National Service before his eighteenth birthday. At the medical examination, as cursory an affair as one could imagine, we were asked to list which branch of the services we wanted to be considered for. I opted for the army and, as a regiment, put down the Intelligence Corps as my first choice, and the Education Corps as my second.
When my call-up papers and travel warrant arrived a couple of months later, I discovered I had been posted to the Royal Army Medical Corps. Their depot was at Aldershot, one of the largest barrack towns in the country.
Although at first I resented National Service because it was interfering with my career, even wrecking my chances of getting a reporter's job on a newspaper, I quickly settled into the military routine. My instincts for self-preservation have always been good, and I knew when to risk making a nuisance of myself, and when to toe the line.
Line-toeing was clearly the sensible approach to basic military training. The conscripts who did not were given a very rough time of it. Those of us who were, for the time being at least, prepared to stand up straight, keep our kit clean and tidy, and obey instantly the most pointless commands, glided smoothly through the rigours of being turned into soldiers.
Probably because I was six feet four inches tall and had been a prefect at school, I was promoted to acting, unpaid, militia lance corporal after a week. This is the lowest of all ranks in the army after private. It carried no extra pay, but marked one out as being likely material for promotion at a later stage. My duties were never outlined to me but they seemed to be limited to getting everyone out of bed in the mornings.
I think I was probably also supposed to report to the NCO in charge of us anything untoward that was happening among the men. If this were so, I failed miserably, for I did not notice that one of the recruits, desperate for his mother, was finding military life unbearable.
Towards the end of the first - and by far the worst - two weeks, he was found dead in the latrines. He had drunk a bottle of Thawpit - a toilet cleaner as vicious as paint stripper. I cannot remember the boy's name. I can remember only that I felt a deep sense of shame that I had been so concerned with my own survival that I had not noticed what he had been going through.
Towards the end of my first two weeks in the army, I was asked if I would like to become a Regimental Policeman. Instant promotion and a variety of perks were offered, but I am happy to say that I rejected the offer without giving it a thought. RPs spent most of their time shouting at recruits and being thoroughly beastly to anyone who passed within their orbit. They were, almost without exception, bullies and sadists.
A few months later I was asked if I would like to become a Military Policeman - these were men, I suspected, who made a career of sadism. Again I declined. I have great admiration for honest, hard-working police officers, but there was an enormous difference between the civil police who exist to protect law-abiding citizens from the activities of criminals, and the military police whose role in life seemed to be to make life miserable for national servicemen who had broken no laws, but had left a button undone or missed a train or, heinous offence, gone AWOL - absent without leave.
After basic training, which in the medical corps was hardly onerous as we were non-combatants and did no arms drill of any kind - we were given a two month course in anatomy, physiology and nursing which was supposed to train us to be nursing orderlies. The actual nurses in military hospitals were mostly women - QARANCs - officers in the Queen Alexander's Royal Army Nursing Corps.
I contracted acute sinusitis in the middle of my training and spent several weeks in hospital on the receiving end of military medical care. It was not a pleasant experience.
When I returned to my unit, all my intake had left, having completed the course, and no one knew what to do with me. Then one of the staff sergeants had a brilliant idea. I could sit for the passing out examination on my own, and as I had missed so much of the course, he would discreetly tell me the questions a few days in advance so that I would have time to swot up the answers, pass the exam, and cease being a nuisance.
This was a very sensible solution to the problem. I took the exam and achieved the highest score in the history of the RAMC. Hugely impressed by this achievement, the company officer asked me how I would like to spend the rest of my army service. If I wanted to try for a commission, I could apply to attend an OCTU - Officer Cadet Training Unit - but this would mean leaving the medical corps. The only officers in the RAMC were doctors, scientists, or very long service soldiers who had worked their way through the ranks over 20 years or so.
My other choices were pharmacist, radiographer, nurse, hygiene assistant or 'pox doctor's clerk'. This last was a specialist nursing position, carrying instant promotion to sergeant. It involved treating soldiers with VD. Rather to my surprise my friend, Jimmy Gilbert, opted for it. I chose hygiene assistant, the RAMC euphemism for sanitary inspector, and was posted to the Army School of Health at Ash Vale, a few miles on the London side of Aldershot.
It was at this rather imposing establishment that after a two month course in tropical hygiene and field sanitation, I was promoted to full corporal. At first I had to give the occasional lecture to 'chinless wonder' officer cadets spending a few days at the School, but I was soon able to relinquish all my military duties. I realised that I could get excused all parades, excused even wearing boots, by taking on a variety of useful, but wholly non-military duties.
I quickly became Unit Post Corporal, Unit Entertainment NCO, weekend relief telephone operator and, most importantly, Unit Librarian. I achieved this last position because among his blessings to me, Max Fuller, had appointed me prefect in charge of the school library.
Although my various duties at the Army School of Health meant that I actually did a great deal more work than anyone else, it was work that had some meaning to it and carried considerable benefits. As Post Corporal I was entitled to a room of my own because I had to start work before everyone else and needed peace and quiet for my early nights. This position also not only got me out of the barrack room with its on-going kit inspections and nightly orchestra of snores and farts, it also meant that I ate my breakfast with the cooks after all the other soldiers had collected their mail and gone on parade. Whereas they were served routine breakfasts, I was asked what I'd like and it was cooked especially for me.
Many conscripts complained about the poor quality of army food. I had no complaints. I ate hugely and continued to grow, soon hitting six feet five inches. It was in the army that my height became an advantage instead of a problem. I had to have a uniform especially tailored for me, and was able to choose a much softer, better quality cloth than everyone else had to wear.
In fact, life was quite pleasant at the Army School of Health. I put on an Agatha Christie play in the unit cinema run by the Army Cinematographic Corp - a regiment I would have applied for if I had known it had existed. I also wrote some sketches for and produced a revue - a project that was almost my undoing.
The show went down well with the men, but one of the privates from, I think, the Field Ambulance section, fancied himself as a comedian. The script he submitted seemed harmless enough. Unfortunately, he decided to ad lib.
The C.O. - a colonel - was sitting in the centre of the front row, as was appropriate for the commanding officer. My comedian walked to the front of the stage, and asked the C.O. to lean forward, which, though a little puzzled, he did. The comedian then bent forward and adjusted his tie, using the C.O.'s shiny, bald head as a mirror. The audience 'fell about' as the saying has it. One soldier actually had hysterics and had to be assisted from the cinema.
The C.O. was not amused, and the next day I was summoned to his office. I can remember only the finale to the interview. He told me that if we were in civilian life he would not employ me. I responded politely that if we were in civilian life I wouldn't have applied for the job. This was the nearest I ever came in the army to getting myself into serious trouble.
Although the Regimental Sergeant Major, who knew very well what I was up to with my non-military life style, threatened to 'get me' he never did. Perhaps this was because I was frequently seen escorting to NCO's dances and the bi-weekly movies the Company Officer's exquisitely pretty daughter.
My best friend at the School, was Jens Arup, the son of Ove Arup the famous Danish civil engineer - among other buildings he finished the Sydney Opera House. Jens, a humble lance corporal, was in charge of the entomology lab where his duties consisted mainly of feeding, with his bared arm, the anopheles mosquitoes that were being bred at the School as part of a research project into malarial control. Malaria and other diseases had killed or incapacitated far more troops in Burma and Malaya than the Japanese, and the Army was determined that this kind of wastage would not happen again.
Jens' home was at Virginia Water, just a long walk along a canal from Ash Vale. Not that he needed to walk. He usually drove into camp in his elderly Daimler which he parked near the Guard Room. Unfortunately, his sense of time was not too good, and he was usually nowhere to be found when he was wanted. We worked out together a plan whereby if he was phoned at the lab, the caller would be told he was on the way to the library. If he was phoned at the library, the caller would be told that he was on his way to the lab. With a little luck, by the time all this had been checked out, Jens would have arrived.
Though he was my best friend during my National Service - and we kept in touch for some years after leaving the army - Jens was not, however, the most important person in my life at the School of Health. The most important person - though he had no idea of the effect he had on me - was Captain R.V. Coombs.
'Harvey' was a dapper, regular soldier in his late thirties, an entomologist by training. One morning he came into the library. I stood up as one had to when an officer entered a room. He told me to sit down and then explained that he was awaiting a court martial - something to do with officer's mess funds. Pending his trial, he had been sent to work in the library. He informed me that he had no intention of doing any such thing. Instead, he would work on his new detective novel - he wrote them as a hobby - and he expected me to get on with my work while he got on with his. Was that understood? It was.
But 'Harvey' was an amiable man, and before long he was asking me questions about myself, in particular my plans for when my National Service came to an end. I told him I wanted to be a writer. 'In that case,' he said, 'you must first get yourself a qualification of some kind, something that you can always fall back on when you need it. Go to Teacher's College, get a Certificate, then when the writing isn't paying you can always teach.' He added that if I applied immediately for the forthcoming academic year and was accepted, I would be eligible for a Class 'B' early release from the army.
It seemed that I had nothing to lose. I applied to the College of St Mark and St John, a Church of England Training College in Chelsea, part of London University's Institute of Education. I was interviewed and was accepted. My father's income was means tested and I was found to be eligible for free board and lodging and tuition. I had to pay only for my books and personal expenses. Within 6 weeks of applying to the college I was out of the army and presenting myself to the man designated as my personal tutor.
I don't know whether 'Harvey' was found guilty as charged or not. I never saw or heard of him again, but his advice was the best advice I have ever had. Everything good that has happened to me professionally resulted from my taking it.
Kenneth Best, Max Fuller and now 'Harvey' Coombs. To this trio of major positive influences in my life another name was soon to be added: Sidney Heaven, my personal tutor at Marjons.
To be continued
