Author:
Dave P.
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Date Posted: 21:54:31 04/19/05 Tue
As a boy soldier we were paid the princely sum of £2.10/- (£2.50) per week. £1 to our mum (compulsory), £1 to credits (compulsory) and 10 bob for ourselves. Payday was Thursday, after lunch and followed by a frantic dash for the NAAFI shop. 20 Woodbines (Park Drive or, for the hardened smoker, Capstan full strength), tin of polish, tin of Brasso, yellow duster and, if enough left over, a Nelson cake and that was us broke, waiting for the next payday. We couldn't have survived without those food parcels from home! Nearly every boy, in those days smoked. We were actively encouraged to by advertising (BE A MAN, SMOKE MARLBRO!) or our peers. One of the abiding memories I have from those days, is the one where, at the lighting up of a cigarette you would be assaulted by cries of "Twos up!" from every direction. As the week wore on and payday beckoned, the cries would be for "Threes up!" and, even "Fours up!" There is nothing so demeaning as trying to get a drag out of a couple of strands of soggy tobacco, between two, very burned, fingers. Many the time I witnessed two boys, who may have been the best of friends, fighting, tooth and nail, over a discarded fag end.
Thursday evening was bliss. O/D'd on nicotine and sugar, and Top of the Pops on telly. TV was viewed in the communal TV room by about fourty boys, scrambling for ten, or so, chairs. The only boys who steered clear of the TV room at all times, was the NIGs (New Intake Gunners) or boys in their first term in the troop. For they where terrified of coming to the notice of a Mustering Gunner for Mustering Gunners were GODS! These where the boys, or should I say men, who were in their last term as boy soldiers. They held the rank of Gunner, irrespective of their junior rank, and therefor outranked EVERY boy with the exception of the J/RSM, who was a L/Bdr, remember? Anyway, their favourite stunt to pull on a nig, was to pack him off to the NAAFI for 10 fags, a sausage roll, Nelson cake and a bottle of coke but not to give him any money!! God help the poor wretch who didn't return soonest with the 'supper'. Never mind that the poor kid probably had no money himself, he would beg, borrow or steal the money rather than face the consequences.
The only other TV available was in the W.R.V.S. This wasn't the main reason why boys went in there though. Apart from the snooker tables and the library, the main attraction was the WRVS ladies. We all tried, desperately, to get a peek down their blouse or 'accidently' rub up against them as we squeezed passed on one pretext or another. The irony of this was that they where usually a bit of a 'munter' and the local girls in town, much prettier and, more importantly, willing? Incidentally, it was in the WRVS one evening in 1963, that I learned of the assassination of J.F.Kennedy. I remember at first being stunned and sickened at the pictures on the screen. Then, later, terrified because we thought it was a Russian precursor to WW3. We truly thought the missiles where on their way. It took the CO (Col Portious V.C. R.A.) who paraded the Regt in the cookhouse, to reassure us that we were safe and that it was some individual 'nutter' named Lee Harvey Oswald. Where were you?....................
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