ĂŰŃż´«Ă˝

How WW2 saved me from the Civil Service.

If it had not been for WW2 and my military service in it I would not have followed the career I did , a career which provided a not unreasonable living for over fifty years.

In the late thirties I passed my School and Higher Certificate exams, the GCSE and A Level equivalents of the time, which gave me the necessary qualifications for university, the costs for which however, even with scholarships and bursaries , would have been far beyond my parents’ means. Educationally though I had reached the appropriate standard for the executive grade of the Civil Service, and without a great deal of study I duly sat the exam in early 1939. I came, I remember, 600th out of the 3000 who took the exam, a level good enough to be accepted for the appropriate post, but in September war broke out and all entry to the Civil Service was suspended.

While I was at school I had been actively involved in drama and music, playing leads in school plays, and after I left I joined an amateur group which also, as part of the local authority further education evening classes, gave basic training in drama: voice production, movement, stage technique — the only aspects it lacked were fencing and ballet.

It was accepted in my generation — I was born in 1920 — that war would come sooner or later, and my inclination in view of the government policies which led up to it, was to conscientiously object to taking any part in it. But the greater evil of Hitler and Nazism and the fact that I was Jewish quickly put paid to any thought of not doing my bit towards their downfall.

Being close to conscription age, I did try for the Air Force, but being short-sighted was turned down for flying, while being fully fit otherwise I was not eligible for ground crew; in the event I was not actually called up until 1941; by then aged 21, conscription having been suspended following the influx of returning soldiers after Dunkirk.

Having survived the blitz in London, my call - up papers when they came were for the RA Ordinance Corps. I had no idea what this was; the RA I took to be something to do with the Royal Artillery, which at least meant I would be spared action in the front line. On arrival at Leicester racecourse, the venue for our training, I learned that what I was now a private in was the branch of the army which provided all equipment: personal (uniforms, blankets etc), Military (armaments of all sorts), mechanical (vehicles and their parts), anything one could think of other than food, as well as the facilities to repair them. This was a great surprise and I wondered how I, whose technical abilities were less than nil, should find myself in such a service. All however became clear when I finished my basic drill, button-polishing, discipline, etc, and found that my “trade” in the army was that of clerk. Presumably as a result of my being at least literate.

It was not long after my enlistment though that the technical and mechanical side was separated from the equipment side, which remained RAOC, to become an entirely new corps, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, REME. This seemed even more remote from my basic capabilities, but they needed clerks too, and it was in this capacity, mugging up on the spare parts side of vehicles and guns, that I became a sergeant, and it was in this capacity that in November 1942 that I went overseas in a workshop support unit for the invasion of North Africa. And it was with similar units, within the sounds of battle but not, thankfully, in it, that the tide having turned, I progressed through Sicily and Italy and eventually, after the 1944 invasion, France and Belgium, arriving finally in April 1945 in Germany. Within days Hitler had committed suicide and on May 6th the war in Europe was over. (I don’t really think there was any connection between my arrival and Hitler’s suicide — I was just bloody lucky.)

The war was still not over in the Far East, but having been overseas without any leave for more than three years, I was not eligible for service there, while the time for my demobilisation, based as it was on age and length of service, would not come for at least another year, if not more. Germany for the foreseeable future was to be occupied and ruled in their allocated zones by the victorious Allied armies, and sergeant clerks who were expert in spare parts were not going to be a very vital part of this; indeed my job in my workshop unit, which was being disbanded anyway, was going to be non-existent.

Again luck came into it. During my workshop years, in periods when we were not actively involved militarily, I along with others who had had similar theatrical and entertainment experience had put on shows to keep our fellow-soldiers amused and generally maintain morale. Word went round now that this sort of activity would be needed more and more among the large number of occupying troops, and before long orders came along that anyone with theatrical experience, of any sort, should be sent to area headquarters for auditions with a view to forming official entertainment units to provide this service. The new unit I found myself in didn’t have a job for me anyway and the commanding officer leapt at the chance of getting rid of me, sending me off in his car, with his driver, to attend one of the auditions.

I was able to find a suitable piece and I duly performed it for the benefit of the casting director — actually a private — who was taking the auditions. Following his “Thanks old boy, we’ll let you know”, I went back in the CO’s car to my unit. His face fell; he thought he’d got rid of me. The only other thing he could think of was to send me on leave.

And it was while I was on leave that, dramatically, a telegram arrived instructing me to return, when my leave was over, not to the REME unit but to “the 30 Corps theatrical pool of artists”.

This I duly did, and needless to say it was a station very different from those in which I had spent the previous four and a half years. An ordered but relaxed atmosphere pervaded our activities. There was still a command structure as we were being mustered into companies - dramatic, revue, concert party, whatever — but this was that of theatrical production, not military. In due course I was sent to join a play that was already on the road, but with one of its actors due for demob. I was there in time to see his final performance in the role which I was to learn and take over the following night. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end!

The play was “Men in Shadow” by Mary Hayley Bell, topical inasmuch as it was about the army in a wartime situation. The next one however was fully escapist, Terence Rattigan’s “French Without Tears”, and in this and the one that followed we toured all over the various towns and venues of British occupied Germany including the British Zone of Berlin. Incidentally, a few years ago on a tourist visit to Berlin I found the Renaissance Theatre where we had played — back then one of the few left standing — and it seemed unchanged. I had lunch in a restaurant opposite the stage door and I asked the proprietors how long they had been there. “Since the twenties, they told me. I didn’t pursue it.

I have to admit that cushy — by the standards of the time — as it was compared to the military life, and luxurious compared to that of the Germans themselves, I did not enjoy being a conqueror. So when, midway during my third play — Shaw’s “Arms and the Man” — in August 1946 my time for demob came, I was quite happy to leave;
I remember describing the situation, somewhat graphically, at the time as “a bit like a maggot in a corpse”.

The circumstances of the demob were to have a significant effect on my future. Those running the Army Theatre Unit were all theatre people in civilian life, principally theatre agents, and along with our demob notices they also told us that if we were intending to carry on in “the business” they would be happy to represent us. Whenever I had thought about what I would do when I left the army, and I don’t remember doing it all that much, I took it for granted that having been accepted for the Civil Service — Executive Grade back in ’39, that was what I would do.

But now, what was this? I’d already been doing what seemed a highly satisfying job for the past fifteen months. True, it might not be quite the same as the reputedly hard competitive world out there, but in place of the Civil Service — Executive Grade…?
I had been married while I was in the army, just before I’d gone abroad in ’42 - a not unusual situation: a four or five day honeymoon which, in our case, was to last fifty-six years. So on one of the rare opportunities for a phone call I told my wife Rose about the theatrical possibility. “No harm in giving it a try.” was her response; which
was not entirely surprising; for it was in that amateur group/ evening class that we had first met, and while she did her national service in ARP — Air Raid Precautions -
she also managed to get a qualification, LRAM (speech and Drama), which enabled her to work as a drama teacher in Further Education.

EPILOGUE

So I duly left the army in August ’46, lived on my gratuity for a bit, then got my first job in November — found myself taking over a part overnight — again! This led to weekly rep — a different play every week — in which I was fortunate enough to work in one or other of the many companies around London where I lived; and so in due course to other fields in which actors were involved. To begin with there was radio — three seasons with the ĂŰŃż´«Ă˝ Drama Rep — and then in the fifties into television, which in those days was live. Eventually with recording there were those classic sitcoms, many of them still current, and here “Dad’s Army” springs somewhat relevantly to mind; never as one of the regular characters, but in different roles in at least two episodes; as a Man from the Ministry, so I did make it to the Civil Service, while in another as Brigadier, quite a leap from sergeant back there in Germany. My only appearance as a regular character was in the childrens’ series “Rentaghost”, and it’s as Mr Perkins that I often get hailed by youngish middle-agers — it went out in the late 70’s/early 80’s — who recognise me.

Amazing really, but it worked. And now, more than sixty years later, well…I suppose you could say I’d retired.

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