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(This chapter is part of Len Baynes' book '
The Will to Live
', an account of his wartime experiences with the Cambridgeshire Regiment, his capture in Singapore, and the four years he spent as a prisoner of the Japanese.)

Equipped With Second-hand Uniform and Rifle From 1914 War

A week before the war was declared, a part of "A" Coy 1st Battalion The Cambridgeshire Regt. was mobilised, and posted to RAF Duxford. I, one of that party, was then 20 years of age, and a part-time private soldier, having been in the "Terriers" for somewhat less than a year.

This all took place at very short notice. It appears that some brilliant researcher at The War Office had uncovered the fact that Duxford (a key RAF station, involved in the defence of the country, and where many of our then rare Spitfires were stationed), was entirely without ground defence or ack/ack on the base.

Our territorial regiment had, in theory, been trained in the use of the Bren machine gun, but since we only had one of these for the whole company (instead of the ordained one per section), we were far from familiar with this weapon. That hardly mattered, however, because that one Bren gun could not be spared.

So we arrived on station with only the clothes we stood up in, and our 1914-dated, Short Lee-Enfield rifles. My ammo, as I recall, was stamped 1917. Although I am now 85, my memories of the following couple of months remain very clear.

Before thinking of fighting off the Luftwaffe, we had to find somewhere to doss down, as the RAF quartermaster, it seemed, was disinclined to share the airmen's (or Brylcreme boys', as the squaddies called them) accommodation with common soldiers.

In the end it was the Padre who provided the solution; following the Barnardo dictum, "No-one turned away", he allowed us to sleep on the floor of the church hut. Although about half of our number were old soldiers, this was my first experience of the barrack-room.

We were to sleep on the floor, one row of beds along each side of the long building. My spot was next to friend Bernard Webster, with whom I had joined up, and a couple of spaces further along was the bed of Peter Cumberledge. He was a clean-cut young fellow, then rather shy, and obviously well brought up.

Opposite were two old soldiers, White and Lander rough diamonds both, and each of them six-footers (I stood a little over five-feet - five inches).

That first evening, as we settled down on our beds, this pair decided to have what was their idea of "a bit of fun". With a tin of blacking in hand, they announced that they were coming over to blacken Cumberledge's private parts.

Seeing the terror in the lad's eyes, I jumped up and stood between the lad and the old soldiers. There was ice in my heart, and I nearly wet my pants as I managed to look White, the ringleader, in the eye, and to growl, "Leave him alone!"

To my intense relief and surprise, the pair turned and went back to their own spots without a word.

The next day, further research revealed a first world war weapons store somewhere or other. We were introduced to half-a-dozen grease encased Lewis guns, and one tattered manual. I think it is generally accepted that this particular machine-gun is the most complicated and difficult to learn automatic weapon that was ever devised, with over a couple of dozen different "stoppages" that it was necessary to learn by heart; and none of us had ever seen one of these guns before.

One of our new toys was placed on a trestle-table outside, and our Lance Corporal Furness was given the task of instructing us in the dismantling and re-assembling of it.

Now this particular NCO was of very limited mental and practical ability, to say the least, and his vocabulary consisted mainly of four-letter words. Added to that, he was impatient and short-tempered; but he was all we had. By undoing a screw here, and a bolt there, the first four hours of concentrated cursing saw the gun dismantled.

We went off to eat, and when we returned to our moutons we found Furness there before us, standing with the gun's oil-brush in his hand, and an expression that was a cross between bewilderment and frustration on his face; and he was supposed to be teaching us.

We all gathered round and waited for the action with interest. For a quarter-hour or more he picked up piece after piece, in the hope of finding two that might be prepared to marry.

Then, having a practical turn of mind, and a lamentable inability to resist showing off my wisdom, I was unable to remain silent any longer, and attempted to indicate to him how the first two bits could be assembled.

Furness had only been waiting for a chance to "kick the cat" as the Australians put it, and rounding on me with an expression of uncontrollable fury, he thrust the oil-brush at my face. I just had time to turn my head, and it went in my ear.

While our squad was trying to learn, another was erecting sand-bagged gun emplacements round the perimeter of the base, and a wooden platform for another on the roof of the main hangar. This was accessed by a series of long ladders, reaching up there from the ground.

By the time we'd learned which end the bullets were meant to issue from Lewis guns, it was time for us to take up our firing positions. As there were so few of us, we had to man the posts for four hours on and four hours off, twenty-four hours a day, instead of the regulation two on and four off.

Then we heard over the radio that war had been declared, and knew it was all for real now. We all hoped the Luftwaffe would never find us, as those guns in our hands would not have been much more use than pea-shooters.

One day, after about a week, those of us that were off duty were working away on our trestle-table by the main hangar, trying to familiarize ourselves with the intricacies of our Lewis guns, when there was an almighty explosion, the sound of which seemed to come from everywhere at once.

We looked at each other in panic, thinking that the first bomb had fallen from the sky. But a few seconds later Furness came almost falling down the ladders, moving really fast for probably the first time in his life. It was the only time I was ever to find him speechless; as he tended to stammer when stressed, all he could do was to mouth a string of 'F's!

It hadn't been a bomb. Furness had been on duty on the hangar-roof ack/ack post, when the corrugated-iron roofing beside him had suddenly become like the lid of a pepper pot, while simultaneously had come the terrifyingly loud explosion which was followed by the rapid descent of our lance corporal to terra firma.

It seemed what had happened was that someone in the hangar had been demonstrating a safety device on the Spitfire, whereby the red button that fired all eight of the Stirling machine-guns in the wings at once, only worked once the plane had taken to the air. It must have been out of order, and the Spitfire at rest points upward fairly steeply. The burst from the eight rapid firing guns in that enclosed space had sounded like one great explosion.

A few days later we were all vaccinated against small-pox, and, as far as I was concerned, it was for the first time. I spent a most miserable month with vaccine-fever, but daren't report sick, as it would have meant that I would be returned to the regiment, thus to be separated from my friend.

I needn't have bothered though, as we were all shortly to have another medical examination (the one we were given on joining the "Terriers" had been no more than the formality of a cough!). My friend, who had bad eyesight, was categoried, and posted to Blandford before we left Duxford.

Because of the sudden urgent need for pilots in those early days, and the fact that it takes some time to learn to fly those sophisticated planes, many of the air-crew were insufficiently trained, and from our gun emplacements we would watch the ham-fisted attempts to take off and land.

Often on landing, a pilot would apply the wheel-brakes too soon, or too hard, and the Spitfire would tip up onto its nose as it came to a halt. At that time the alloy three-bladed variable-pitch air-screws cost, we were told, 拢1000 each - a considerable sum then, and the blades would curl back like flower petals, as they made contact with the ground while still turning.

Before the first couple of months had elapsed, others took over the task of defending Duxford, and we rejoined our regiment in Cambridge. Although I only lived three miles away, I was not allowed to sleep at home, so I was billeted with a policeman's family, in City Road, which was one of the back streets behind our East Road Drill Hall. Our cookhouse was situated in Zion Baptist Church, opposite.

The air force had decent cooks, and our meals at Duxford had been good. I soon discovered that was rather different from the army. My first pudding, for example, was smothered with a bright orange semi-transparent custard, made from custard powder and water, with no milk or sugar; it was bitter and uneatable. But we were to have worse, much worse, before we returned to civvy street.

Chapter 3

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