In Boys Coy the training laid on was fine as far as it went, but 2 Battalion took it all further. I did courses of varying length at Willems, or elsewhere but arranged by 2 Bn, in Drill, in Methods of Instruction, in Weapon, Clerical and Driver Training, in the new NBC Warfare, in G.C.E. Geography and English (passed former, failed latter) and including a 2½-day tactical exercise employed as a Sentry/Gofer for the student WOs on a RASC WO1s Field Force Familiarisation Course. In December 1956, with time on my hands before posting out in the New Year, I applied for the ‘Regimental Barber’s Course’ but the RSM, Paddy Attwell, told me run along and stop wasting his time.

There was Battalion Fife & Drum band and I joined as bass drummer. Never volunteer? Well, this worked a treat because 72 hour passes were like gold dust in those days and the band played at Passing Out Parades which were held fortnightly along with which went - a 72 hr pass for all participants! My pal from Boys Coy, Johnnie Ray, was also in the band, as a side drummer as was 3-year regular Corporal Tom Pether, and Sgt Willets, who’d earned himself the MM at Arnhem where he’d been badly burnt, was chief bugler (as well as a great bloke).

My pay on joining 2 Bn was £2/9 shillings a week (in Boys Service I’d been on 15 shillings) and two weeks later it went up to the new rate of £3/3 shillings. Another good thing about 2 Bn was that, in complete contrast to Boys Coy, we were allowed to leave our beds made down but neat and tidy. It was hard, at first, getting used to not having to box blankets, lay out kit, Brasso name plates etc.

HQ Coy’s CSM was Joe Beckett, a real hard worker. When Suez flared up in October 1956, Joe was in evidence 24 hours a day for over two weeks as hundreds of RASC, REME and ACC Z-Reservists were kitted out on their way to sort out, with our French and Israeli allies, Egypt’s Gamel Abdul Nasser after he’d nationalised the Suez Canal. Another ever-present guy was the RSM, Paddy Attwell and I had to admire both on their devotion to duty and, more especially, to the cheesed-off Z-Reservists they dealt so kindly with. Speaking of the RSM reminds me that in the Cavalry Barracks there was a legal or illegal, I know not, pig farm tended by a fulltime corporal and I suspect either the RSM himself, or at least the Sergeants’ Mess (and probably the CO, Lt Col Potter) benefited from the pork and bacon resulting from the hogs and a good liaison with the RASC Butchery at nearby Clayton Barracks.

Thanks to the well-oiled organisation of No 2 (Training) Battalion RASC, I had a very busy time in my eleven months but it wasn’t all work. The Band 72s were a useful perk that got me off the patch quite a bit, both to my parents’ home in London and also further afield, all the way to near Doncaster, on one occasion - her name was Carol Dixon and we met when she was on holiday in Aldershot. Carol lived in Thorne, in Wyke Gate Road which then was in the heart of countryside but I bet it isn’t any longer. Ginger Halstead was a good friend, and Reg Grainger, Jerry Page and Des Desmond, and I was also friendly with civilians Brenda Gardner, Pat Reading and, a real feather in my cap, Anne Jennings - Miss Aldershot 1956. In readiness for my first working posting, HQ BAOR, on 11 February 1957 I left 2 Bn on Embarkation Leave with orders to report to Depot Battalion RASC on 26 February.