Fifty Years Ago: Tuesday, 13th July 1976
(Okehampton Camp, Dartmoor (Age 14.9)
We piled into the three-tonner and headed off to the shooting range.
Twenty rounds of SLR followed. I’m an OK shot, having been taught as a boy by my father. Looking back, I must have been nine or ten when he first taught my older brother and me to shoot. We started with a .22 rifle and later progressed to a shotgun, perhaps one designed for younger people. First it was targets. Later it was clay pigeons. Eventually we were entrusted with culling rabbits and crows.
It was only one of many practical skills he passed on. He taught us how to shoot a bow and arrow, fly a kite, identify birds in flight and by their song, fly fish, ride a bike, polish your shoes, break into a car when you’ve locked your keys inside, put up a rope ladder and prune a mature tree. My father was often preoccupied, but he was also extraordinarily handy. If something needed doing, he usually knew how.
I was a better shot than most of the boys here, though not as good as those who regularly practised on Sedbergh’s rifle range. They had an ease and consistency that comes only with repetition.
Lunch followed.
After that came a long period of hanging around.
We did a lot of ‘Oggies’ to relieve the boredom.
We waited in the rain for three hours before transport came. We were mostly in the open or leaning against the rifle range wall. There was little to do except watch the weather and wait for somebody somewhere to make a decision.
If anything would put me off the Army, it was this.
The shooting had a purpose. The waiting was unnecessary.
What makes it stranger in memory is that this was the summer of the great 1976 heatwave. Across much of Britain people were worrying about drought and hosepipe bans. Yet somehow we had managed to find rain on Dartmoor.
Eventually transport arrived and we went straight back to camp.
I had a good hot shower. A hot shower with a firm and reliable jet always felt good. There was something restorative about standing under properly hot water after being cold, wet and fed up.
Afterwards I read Foundation and Empire.
The Foundation books offered exactly what I needed. I cannot remember which section I was reading, only the sense of escape. Asimov’s vast Galactic Empire felt more convincing than much of what surrounded me. His universe ran according to logic and grand historical forces. Corps Camp seemed to run according to rain, delays and confusion.
At some point I fell asleep.
I woke at 5.45 p.m.
I was very tired and had a headache, probably from standing around for hours in the rain. I dashed down to supper, still groggy and not entirely sure where the afternoon had disappeared.
Afterwards we watched television in the NAAFI. Whatever was on has vanished completely from memory. The room remains clearer than the programme itself: a collection of tired cadets, a television in the corner and another evening of camp routine.
Then there was a lecture on ‘Sail Ass:’ (sic), which was very interesting, I wrote at the time, but Forty-eight years later I have absolutely no idea what “Sail Ass” stood for. Sail Association? Sail Assassination? Something entirely different? Whatever it was, it interested me enough to record it.
This was followed by a lecture on “Rat Catcher”.
That title has survived as well, although the meaning has not. It might have been a weapon system, an operation, a piece of military equipment or perhaps the story of a lone sniper. The name lodged somewhere in my memory even as the details evaporated.
Another Army day completed: rifles, rain, waiting, science fiction, sleep and lectures.
Corps Camp was an experience, but not necessarily a desirable one. Attendance was compulsory, and much of what I saw put me off the military. It felt underfunded and inefficient, a little past its best, almost like an echo of National Service lingering after the event. I enjoyed learning practical skills. I enjoyed the ‘great outdoors’ and competence. What I saw less often was efficiency.
The Army was not for me.
Even at fourteen, I think I already suspected that my future lay elsewhere, among books, ideas and possibilities rather than uniforms and chain of command
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