ET CETERA Robin Hirsch (1956-61) remembers the Combined Cadet Force’s Annual Inspection from his memoir, LAST DANCE AT THE HOTEL KEMPINSKI.
Leading Cadet Hirsch “The Annual Inspection of the Combined Cadet Force this year will be conducted by a distinguished Old Boy of the School, Field Marshal Viscount Bernard Montgomery of El Alamein.”
which the legendary RAF was made. Indeed it was largely because I was so inconspicuous a presence that I found myself this year in the central role of the Air Force demonstration. I had been volunteered.
We all knew about Monty. He was a nebbish, he had a totally undistinguished school career, he had a totally undistinguished career at Sandhurst, but by dint of hard work he had risen in the ranks, gone to Africa, defeated Rommel, and saved the country from the Germans. Then he came back and saved the rest of the world with some American named Eisenhower who was now President of the United States – indeed they had planned and executed the entire Normandy Invasion from their joint Headquarters in the High Master’s (aka Trickle’s) study.
We were going to demonstrate a parachute jump. The force of landing in a parachute is equivalent to jumping off a thirteen-foot wall. I was going to be strapped in a parachute harness with a rope attached. At the end of this rope would be six other Air Force Cadets who would collectively represent the Wind. I would climb to a plank suspended between two ladders thirteen feet above a mattress. At a given signal I would jump. After I landed the six cadets representing Wind would pull me across the playing field until I released myself.
Annual Inspection was at best a dreary business, five hundred of us ranked in platoons, schoolboys pretending to be soldiers, standing on the tarmac behind the school at the height of summer, dressed in thick itchy woolen uniforms with boots, buckles, belts and webbing mercilessly polished, rifles with fixed bayonets at our sides, waiting for the Inspecting Officer with his aides de camp to walk up and down every single line looking at our nose hair. After this there would be demonstrations by the different arms of the Cadet Force. I was in the Air Force, but I was hardly the stuff of
42
ATRIUM
SPRING / SUMMER 2021
The day arrives. It is of course the hottest day of the year. Teachers in gowns, parents in lightweight suits and summer dresses are arrayed on the playing field stands. We are arrayed five hundred strong on the tarmac, which is melting. We wait. We wait interminably. We mutter. I wonder about my parents out there on the grass with their German accents – please God, may they not speak to anyone. Eventually, instructions filter down to our platoon commander and we are told to stand easy. We wait some more. Trickle, the Captain of School, and the Senior Under Officer appear from a balcony on the second floor
looking for Montgomery. They confer. The Senior Under Officer descends. Trickle and the Captain of School with-draw. On the tarmac now boys faint. Members of the PT squad in white shorts and shortsleeved shirts rush in and remove them on stretchers. Finally, after two and a half hours, a black bullet proof Avis roars round the school and onto the tarmac and a little man in a beret jumps out, followed by several larger men in military hats. Platoon commanders now spring into action, bringing their exhausted troops to attention. Trickle and the Captain of School reappear on the balcony. The little man strides up to the Senior Under Officer and begins the inspection. He looks at boots. He looks at trouser creases. He looks at pimples. It takes forever. After inspecting a given platoon he instructs the platoon commander to turn his men in a different direction. After he has finished with the last platoon he disappears inside the school and reappears on the balcony with Trickle and the Captain of School. Platoon commanders are busy bringing their troops to attention and turning them round again. “Pltoon, atten . . . SHUN,” is heard all over the tarmac. “Platoon, left . . . TURN.” “Platoon, right . . . TURN.” “Platoon, about . . . TURN.” When we are all back facing in the original direction, the Contingent Commander shouts, “Contingent,
