Were you an " 'Orrible Little Man" ?

12/07/2010

By the time National Service ended in 1963, more than 2.2million teenagers had been called up to boost the numbers of regular servicemen. And some 70 of them, now aged in their Seventies and Eighties, have contributed to a new book, You ’orrible Little Man. In it they record their memories — with some 250 photographs —  of those days in uniform.

 

Some had been called on to fight in places like Kenya, Malaya and Korea. Others reminisce fondly about foreign travel and exciting times in places like Gibraltar, Japan and Jamaica.

 

Those who remained in the UK frequently found their period of conscription to be merely boring. But all of them have stories to tell their children and grandchildren.

 

In the book, former RAMC corporal Peter Elgar tells the story of the occasion he was sent to find a sergeant’s severed nose. Dale Johnson explains how he was almost responsible for starting world war three.
Cliff Passmore says that in Japan a father who was concerned about his young daughters’ virtue offered him “a lower caste cousin to satisfy his urges.”

 

Mike Bowyer was called up for basic training in the Royal Fusiliers at the Tower of London where drill was often carried out in front of visitors to the Tower. He remembers:  “On one hot, sunny day the RSM was operating at full blast, watched by a particularly animated crowd of American visitors.
“Suddenly he paused in mid-command, sniffed and marched straight at me. I was in an advanced stage of shock by the time he reached about a fag-paper width from my nose. ‘Can’t you smell it, laddie?’ ‘No sir.’  ‘Well, for god’s sake boy, you’re on fire!  Look at your right foot.’

 

“He was, of course, correct. A cigar butt had been flicked from the crowd and settled in the fold of my battledress trousers, just above the gaiter, from whence a smouldering was in process.

 

“Deftly the RSM flicked the butt away with his pace-stick and extinguished it with his boot. A policeman was instructed to move the visitors on. ‘Nobody messes with the British Army. Now let’s get on with it.’ “

 

 

You ’orrible Little Man is available from Brian Davis at Wayletts, Brentwood Road, Brentwood CM13 3SH, price £15.99 plus £3 postage