12:04pm Wednesday 24th December 2008
By Dennis Signy
As a callow and skinny teenage youth I spent one Christmas in the mid-1940s on my own based in a bungalow in Peshawar on the NW frontier of India as one of the last of the British Raj. If my memory serves me correctly, I relieved my boredom by driving through the Khyber Pass across to the Afghanistan border when my 60-year-old bearer finished pandering to my needs and went home to his eight children.
Another more recent Christmas I spent travelling the high seas on a Caribbean cruise with Mrs S. And then there was Christmas in Colchester in 1944 ... based in Meanee Barracks as a rookie squaddie preparing for life as 14894617 Sergeant Signy.
My introduction to life in khaki began 64 years ago on Sunday when I answered the call to arms by rising early at the family home round the corner from Brent Station (now Brent Cross).
It was dark, cold and uninviting and, as I sipped a cup of tea before setting out for a brave new world, I wondered if I should wake my parents and brother Larry to tell them I was off.
In the event no-one stirred and I shuffled round to the station to take the Northern Line to Charing Cross where, by arrangement, I met a group of my new playmates bound for Canterbury and a New Life.
My close friend Harry, although two months younger, had been called up a fortnight before me and was already esconced at Canterbury. "See you in the canteen at 7 o'clock", he had arranged.
When we arrived at Canterbury Station a rough and ready sergeant marshalled us and marched us along the roads in the centre of town, a hobbledey-hoi bunch, some with carrier bags and others with cases. The inhabitants totally ignored our unseemly mob, unimpressed that we were en route to do battle for King and country.
As we swept through the barrack gates to a steady screech of "Left, right, left, right" from our NCO escort I saw Harry by the roadside. "Canteen, 7", he shouted.
'Twas not to be. The Army decided to induct us alphabetically ... and, being an "S" I was still sitting around at lunch-time when the news broke that Canterbury was full and the rest of us were being despatched to Colchester.
Back to the station we marched ... back to London by train ... then a 15 hundred weight truck ride to Liverpool Street ... and another train ride to Colchester.
When we arrived we were shown to our new barrack room home and given plates of cheese sandwiches, my first food of the day. At that moment the call came "Lights out" and we ate them in the dark.
Minutes later we were in our bunks, with a chap from the Old Kent Road regaling us in the dark with tales of his mother that still make me blush to recall and stories of villainy south of the Thames that have made me wary ever since about going to Millwall or Charlton.
Minutes later, or so it seemed, a voice was yelling "Wakey, wakey" and pulling the blankets off me.
I was allotted the task of keeping the coal bunker by the door clear of litter. In my naivety at the time I wondered why the coal was always wet ... it turned out that my new pals couldn't be bothered to go out to the toilet and relieved themselves in my bunker. Suffice to say I grew up quickly in my new life, woken each night by chaps screaming and feigning illness or mental disturbance in an effort to be discharged.
Is it any any wonder that I recall that particular Christmas Past?
The Intelligence Corps, to which I was assigned, had more casualties from motor bike accidents than other regiments had combatting the Germans and the Japanese.
I was thrown off a motorcycle course when I was based at Earl Fitzwilliam's estate in Wentworth Woodhouse, our living quarters in the stables. My bike stalled on the flat one day and when I got going again, helped by an abusive lance corporal, I joined my squaddie colleagues in an exercise going round and round the trees in a wood.
Unfortunately, as I went round the first tree I encountered my colleagues coming the other way in line and I wrote off two bikes.
I was transferred from MI6 (I think) to something like MI13. It may be coincidental to my signing on but a few months later it was VE Day when we beat the Germans and, by the time I was in Rotherham waiting to join the boat that was to take me to Bombay, the Japanese, too, were beaten and we celebrated VJ Day.
Don't think I wasn't a hero though. An excitable Punjabi gentleman stuck a knife in my right hand in some riots in India. If I see you after Christmas I'll show you the remnants of the scar.
This year it's Christmas at home with elder twin Claire, son-in-law Woody and my adorable 20-month-old grandchild Connie. There will be calls from Steven in the USA, Julie in Goa, Rick in Suffolk and Kathryn in Bradford. Perhaps my brother will ring to tell me that Brentford are going for promotion; I'm not sure I'll take his call.
I guess Connie will be awake at dawn looking to see what Santa has brought her. But at least she won't screech "Wakey, wakey" in my left earhole.
Happy Christmas all.
PS I don't know how long Harry waited in the canteen at Canterbury .. I didn't see him again until he knocked on my door in Rawalpindi more than a year later for a delayed reunion.
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