J.T.R Troon. January 8th -9th January 1963.

Oh, my God, what have I done was the first thought that went through my mind as I stepped off the train at 11pm on 8th January 1963 onto the platform of Kilmarnock Railway Station. I had been sitting in the front carriage of the train as we stopped. On alighting the wonderful steam engine that had brought me the 350 miles or so from Bedford (The Flying Scotsman), I looked along the platform through the smoke and steam, coming from the Iron beast that had carried me this far, (I am convinced to this day it is the longest platform in the world) to see in the distance a man with a skirt on (Kilt I was later to learn) he was shouting my name. How did this person know me? I had never been to Scotland before, and if this is the way they talk to you I won’t be staying long, (that was my second thought.) After this my thoughts were many and I lost count of them.

I picked up my suitcase and walked the length of the platform to confront this person that was shouting at me (how rude), I asked him if he was talking to me, he said "yes if your name is f*****g Gadsden", I told him that it was my name, he then told me to get on the back of this great big (well I was only 15) lorry, I had never had to climb into the back of a vehicle that high in my life. I was the only passenger. Evidentially I was pushing my luck with timing. My letter from the MOD said I had to be there by midnight, in my eyes I was an hour early, but according to the little man in the skirt I should have made an effort to get there by 6pm. (There is no keeping some people happy is there). We trundled our way to TROON, I already wanted to go home, I was cold, miserable and hungry, and that person shouting at me wasn’t helping matters, I didn’t care for the reasons why he was shouting at me, I wanted to go home. Then with all these thoughts running through my mind, it was getting worse, we arrived at J.T.R. Troon (Dundonald Camp). Oh my good God this place was going to become my home, there was no way back now!!! Or was there?

Okay I thought, I signed the papers, relax it cant get any worse than that ride from the station!!!!! My arse was hurting after sitting on that hard wooden slated bench in the back of the truck, the tailboard dropped, and he was there again, “off you get”, well I think that’s what he said, as I had never heard that language before!!! I clambered to the ground, then another person was there and in a civilized voice he told me to enter a door into a Block (Spider blocks!! Any one remember them?) Find the TV room Son; they will look after you, how nice I thought some one that cares!!!! (Not).

I followed the corridor and eventually found the door that had a label on it saying TV ROOM. I entered, there was about 10 six foot tables in a semi circle, behind each was a soldier in uniform, I started at the first table on my right, "is your name Gadsden" the person asked, yes I said, "SIGN HERE", is all I got, besides the stare, and so it went until I had been interrogated at each table. I had noticed that each and every person behind the tables growled when they spoke, I thought it must be the food. The person at the last table explained the route I should take to find my bed space. "Out the door, follow the arrow on the wall" that’s what he said!! So with arms full of uniform, and things called mess tins I exited the room. Low and behold there on the wall was a poster with an arrow on it, and underneath it read Gadsden follow Arrow to bed space. I could hear mutterings coming from the TV Room, after about five minutes the door opened and one of the soldier’s came out and growled at me, "What are you still doing here"? I was so pissed off with the treatment inside that TV Room I said to this person” The f*^***^ Arrow hasn’t moved!!!” Oh dear!

On entering the leg of the spider that my bed space was in I had to turn on the lights, there were 18 beds in that room, the only empty one was half way up on the right hand side (I guessed it was mine), I had only just switched the lights on, when in unison the occupants of the other 17 beds sat up and in one voice said "Are you Gadsden" I said yes, and with that they all laid back down and I didn’t hear another sound from them until the morning. I had been used to sleeping in a bedroom with two brothers that were younger than me, I was not happy with the situation and things were getting a tad tight at home, but that’s another story, now I found myself in a room with 17 strangers. If these guys had to endure what I had just gone through earlier in the day I am sure they were all as frightened and as apprehensive as I was. The prospects ahead were quite daunting as I put my head on a rather hard Army pillow at 12.45am, sorry 00.45hrs.

Waking up the next morning was an experience; there was a hell of a lot of banging and shouting going on as I opened my eyes at 06.00hrs, oh my God!!! He was there again, the geezer in a skirt (Mother had warned me about people like him), there was no time to question his attitude, he was horrible, so horrible, he was banging the lockers by the beds, (“Hands off cocks and onto socks”), well it was him saying it, he was a monster that they had let loose from one of those asylum’s that were mentioned in hushed words when I was a child, is this the place that they were sent to? Many questions passed through my mind, I have been sent to a mad house, I f**”^*! well volunteered. Shit I am sane!! Am I? I wondered? Was my Father right in not wanting me to join up? This was crazy, some hairy arsed geezer in a skirt bellowing and shouting like that can’t be right!!!!  Just a thought.

It was now time for Ablutions. We all washed and shaved (well the ones that had facial hair shaved). Yes he was there again in the ablution block, “Make sure you wash your bollocks you dirty lot,” he screamed. Shit!!! This is no fun, the other guys were just getting on and washing themselves, I washed and shaved, and went back to my bed space and got dressed, and nobody was talking to me, I assumed it was because I was late getting to camp, and that I had woken them all up in the middle of the night. It was at this time I remembered the recruiting Sgt telling my Mother that if I didn’t like it after six weeks I could get out if they paid £20.00, if I went now it wouldn’t cost a penny, would it???

Then it was time for breakfast. It was nice walking down to the cookhouse, It was cold but nice, reminded me of getting the cows out of the pastures back home at 5am for milking, only now it was I and the other new lads being herded along to the cook house. Mother had packed a nice thick jumper for me, her words ("you might find it a little cold in Scotland Son"), as she waved me goodbye at the station, she was right! Cold! It was f*&^^”* freezing, I learns very fast what Monkey’s and Brass meant.

Breakfast was an experience that every modern day 15 year old should experience; Cornflakes were on the menu, nice, but come on, with no sugar and watered down Condensed milk? What 15-year-old today would be happy with that? There was also scrambled egg on toast, fatted bread (and they meant FATTED) and beans, (anyone out there ever eaten powdered Egg?) Egg was shit; the toast was three days old. Oh I nearly forgot, there was BACON and Sausages, yes! Bacon and sausages, (both varieties tinned), great stuff!!!! Oh dear what had I let myself in for? Even the baked beans had a flavor that only an Army cooks have the recipe too. But I for some unknown reason was grateful. I couldn’t help but notice that we were separated from all the other Soldiers, we were segregated behind metal framed folding cloth divider's, like you used get in hospitals, and every now and then one or two people in uniform would look over and say "that’s him" "That’s Gadsden". Now I was really getting worried. I had never been so hungry in my life; even Mum’s cooking was a better option.

Why everyone was pointing and staring at me was really getting to me, all I had done was joined the Army, I knew that I was a bit of a rebel in civi street, in fact I had lost my cool and left my own brother for dead in Vicars walk (that is in Putnoe, Bedford). But he survived. Did all these people know about that? If they did, HOW??? No, that was when I was fourteen when that happened, and my brother had been twelve, nobody up here could have known about that! So why were all these strangers pointing and making jibes at me? Even the guys sitting around me in the same situation started pointing at me. Did I have two heads? I know I had long hair, and wore healed cowboy boots, but so did the rest of the recruits.

It was now time for the MEDICAL? SHIT!!!! This was something else, but when I saw the other guys stripping down to their Y Fronts (yes they were the fashion once) I had no problem, some of the guys didn’t have a bulge to talk about, but looking down the row I was pretty well off in the organ stakes. Now I have always been shy!!!! (YES I HAVE) and my shyness has taken me down many an exciting avenue in life, (thank you ladies) (wives of) and daughters of as long as you were over 18.

Anyway there we were, in shreddie order, we were lined up against the wall of this rather old Victorian building, I was about half way down the line when the large oak doors burst open and all this brass (Officers) walked in, there was enough there to start an impressionable scrap heap. I glanced to my left and as this bunch walked slowly down the line they were looking each one of us up and down as if we were pieces of shit (evidentially we were, in their eyes), this entourage stopped right in front of me, the guys with pips on there shoulders formed a half circle around a little tubby chap with scrambled egg on his sleeve, it was he that spoke to me. His first words were (in a rather deep growling voice), "What’s your name Son"? Well I thought!!!!! Someone else that doesn’t know me, calling me Son?? (This one didn’t have a skirt on though). I replied rather sheepishly, "Christopher". He then asked me what my full name was, (At this point I noticed that his face was going a little redder and the veins in his neck were sticking out a bit) I replied "Christopher Gadsden" (Confidently). (I was glad that I only had one Christian name). He had a stick tucked under his arm (I now know it as a pace stick) and it was shaking some what, his face was even redder and the veins were now swollen, I thought he was being a bit forward calling me Son in the first place, maybe I had at last found my Dad, (my own Father had said on many occasions that I was no Son of his) and if so why was he getting all upset?

He then informed me that in the Army they used the terminology Sir!!!! I knew when he shouted, "NOW WHATS YOUR NAME?” he was getting very angry!!! So to keep him happy I replied, (foolishly!!) "Sir Christopher Gadsden". Oh dear, he started shaking, his face was now so red you could feel the heat coming off it, he was right in my face and his facial veins were at bursting point, I was getting concerned that he might collapse or worse explode, he then said,” Son (there it was again), "forget the Christopher and put the Sir on the other end, NOW what’s your F**%ing name?” "GADSDEN SIR!" I replied!! There was a pregnant pause, his chest heaved, the pace stick quivered, the veins were bulging, his eyes were blood shot, and his face was a picture that was so red and heated I new there was something wrong, and with a bellow that shook the building he said "SO IS MINE SON, AND I AM THE RSM". SHIT!!!

My Uncle Tom had been an RSM in the war (RASC) and he was not a man to be crossed, but he was a nice man whom I had been close to as a child, I loved my Uncle Tom. So whom was this man standing in front of me calling me Son? I had only yesterday morning bid farewell to my Father, well that’s what I called the man that raised me.   (As it turned out this man that was shouting at me was related to the family, but a distant uncle).

After the medical was out of the way it was now time to visit the Regimental Barbers shop, my hair was long and it was my pride and joy, jet black and wavy, typical of, that is to say, the hair style of the sixties, “NEXT” was all I heard, and I was in the chair, two minutes later I was standing up looking down at my tresses on the floor, I looked into the mirror and I had been scalped. Now I knew to some degree what the cowboys in the last century must have felt like when my ancestors captured them.

That afternoon we were issued with our Regimental numbers, mine was 2******7, this number was to be etched into my brain at every conceivable point from that day to this, it has an effect on your whole being, at the end of the day your were nothing other than what that number meant. We all had to learn this personal number off by heart within a few days, the permutations of getting it wrong are unknown, but trust me, I must have got it wrong a thousand times.

On reflection, within the first 12 hour of being in the Army I had managed to upset the most important man in any Regiment the
RSM, (God, in any other interpretation). Sadly RSM Gadsden had this vision that I would make Junior RSM!!!! Not a chance, I was in the Army to have a good time, and of course, do what I could to become a good soldier??? The next twenty months of my life at Troon were to say the least, "interesting". I will try and justify my actions and that of others in my thoughts next, as I experienced the life of a soldier (junior) going through training in Cassels Company (RAW RECRUITS, and nasty little b******s), into Murray Company (Trade Training and getting your life into some sort of perspective).

RSM GADSDEN (RA). And those that are related to you). Thank you from all the guys that served with you in your Regiment, you were a hard man, but you were a fair man,(you had served through the second world war and had seen more than most of us will perhaps ever see again), if only now in 2006 we had the same sort of Men as you, the UK would be a safer, and happier place to live. GOD BLESS YOU.