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 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.

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

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.

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 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,

shoulder . . . ARMS.” This we had carefully rehearsed. Up, two, three; over, two, three; down. “Contingent, present . . . ARMS.” Arm, two, three; rifle, two, three; stamp – five hundred feet come crashing down. “Contingent, forward . . . MARCH.” This too we had carefully rehearsed. We march forward, closing ranks until all five hundred of us are marching in place with our nose in the nape of the neck ahead of us. “Contingent, . . . HALT!” We halt. “Contingent, stand at . . . EASE!” We stand at ease. “STAND . . . easy.”

This is the moment for Montgomery to address us. “Men,” he begins in his clipped voice. Then he explains how hot it is and how if you are in the desert fighting the Germans as he had been it can be beastly uncomfortable, which is why he had had our platoon commanders turn us around. Then he asks us to sit on the ground. This we have not rehearsed and is in fact impossible. We are so close that there is not enough room. Nevertheless we try. We slide down our rifles and manage to get the seats of our trousers onto the melting macadam. Then he tells us how important we are to the defence of the country and how important the country is to the defence of the rest of the world and how considerate he has been in having us sit down now and how when we have two million men under our command as he had had we will remember this day. He concludes and we climb back up our rifle butts, black tar stuck to our behinds.

“Contingent, atten . . . SHUN!” “Contingent, remove . . . HEADGEAR!” Head, two, three; up, two, three; down. “Contingent, three cheers for the Inspecting officer. . . HIP, HIP . . .” And from five hundred throats “HURRAYYYY . . .” and five hundred arms with five hundred berets go up in the air.

Twice more. And then, “Contingent, replace . . . HEADGEAR!” Up, two, three; head, two, three; down.

 Monty Inspecting the CCF

This of course is where it all breaks down – five hundred berets are now balanced incongruously on five hundred heads. However the Army is never at a loss.

“Contingent, stand at . . . EASE!” Stamp. “STAND . . . easy.” We stand easy. “Contingent, adjust . . . HEADGEAR!” Shuffle, shuffle, five hundred rifles slither between a thousand legs. We adjust our berets.

Then we march past the reviewing stand and salute Montgomery who salutes us back and then the entire cadet force breaks up into demonstration units.

My parents are there and dimly as I climb the ladder I can make them out on the fringes of the crowd, my mother in a summer dress and a hat with a veil, my father in one of his German suits, smoking. We go through our routine half a dozen times and suddenly Montgomery and his party are upon us. We line up. The Air Force Commander explains that this is a parachute demonstration, that Under Officer Williams, Sergeant Groves, Corporal Walsh, Corporal Stedman-Jones, Leading Cadet Jacobs, and Leading Cadet Sorkin will be representing Wind and that Leading Cadet Hirsch crouching in the parachute harness will now climb the ladder and jump off the equivalent of a thirteen-foot wall.

I climb. I walk out on the plank. At the signal I jump. Wind, however, keyed up by the importance of the occasion, starts running before I hit the ground, with the result that I miss the mattress altogether and land with the rope wrapped between my legs and Wind already tearing across the playing fields in the direction of the tarmac. I am screaming because not only can I not reach the harness release but also the rope is in danger of ending my sex life before it has even begun. We are mere specks in the distance, long past the playing fields, three quarters of the way across the parade ground, before I finally get free and Wind rushes headlong into the School wall.

My father says later that he heard Montgomery tell the Commanding Officer, “Damned effective show.” Or as my father says that night at dinner, “Nicht schlecht.” Or as my mother says, “Ach, all this marching, all this uniforms, they always have to make so ein Getue und Getah.” 