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| Caterham Barracks |
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| 1877----1960 |
| For more than a century, the Guards Depot at Caterham in Surrey played a major part in military history, the War Department purchased the land in 1875, the Guards Depot was built in 1877, at a cost of �46.273. Thousands upon thousands of recruits, Grenadiers, Coldstream, Scots, Irish, and Welsh Guardsmen, passed through the depot on their way to the various Regiments. Caterham Barracks ceased being a training Depot in 1960, after which one of the five Regiments of the Brigade of Guards, were stationed here until 1995. On Thursday March 23rd 1995, the flag of the Nijmegen Company Grenadier Guards was lowered for the last time and the Guardsmen marched out. |
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| The red double-decker bus was obviously of pre-war vintage, and seemed to be making slow progress up Caterham Hill, probably as a result of my own wishful thinking. I took a quick glance towards the luggage rack and my battered little suitcase (packed so lovingly my Mum the previous evening with socks, sighs and solemn warnings) � yes, it was still there. A few weeks after my soldier Dad arrived home on demob, (he had been fighting with the 5th Army in North Africa and Italy) - he gave in to pleadings from his son and gave parental consent for me to take advantage of the news that the Brigade of Guards was now reintroducing the peacetime policy of allowing the enlistment of Boy soldiers to its exclusive ranks. As a Yorkshire lad, I had been keen to join the Coldstream Guards, so it has remained a mystery to this old Grenadier, how - on the 12th day of October 1945, I found myself standing in front of the Recruiting Officer in Leeds holding the bible in my right hand and taking a solemn oath to defend His Sovereign Majesty King George the sixth, his heirs and successors as a recruit in the ranks of�..The Welsh Guards! How that came about I will never know, probably someone balancing the books? After duly signing on the dotted line, I made my way to Leeds Central station, clutching a travel warrant for my bone rattling journey by steam locomotive to London and the Guards Depot at Caterham in Surrey. Part of my journey during this long wearisome day, entailed finding find myself in London for the first time in my young life and encountering the faceless hurrying hordes of this great city which one day I would learn to love. My reverie was suddenly shattered by the friendly clippie�s shout of �here we are me ducks � the Guards Depot, but mind you don�t go in the wrong gate, the uvver place next door�s a loony bin!� So, I duly found myself deposited with my meagre belongings on the pavement gazing wistfully after the cocooned warmth of the disappearing bus and the pretty waving girl on the platform � I never saw her again unfortunately, she had chatted encouragingly on and off during my trip from Caterham station to the Depot �Aye! tak a last wee look laddie, then let�s be having you in here� � I turned with a start towards the source of this remark and almost flattened my nose on a gaily coloured band of medal ribbons on a sea of khaki which was the chest of the tallest man I had ever seen. My gaze seemed to climb for ever until I met two kindly but quizzical blue eyes peering down at me from the underside of a �rib-stitched� peak cap. At the top each shoulder was a blue designation with the words Scots Guards picked out in gold letters. My attention was distracted for a moment by the sight of a boy much the same age as myself, (or so I thought) in the background who seemed to be grinning in a friendly manner at me. I will always remember he had a tooth missing from the upper row - he was wearing a soft looking khaki cap with a minute gleaming silver star set in the front, and, for some reason was leaning on a walking stock. As soon as our eyes met however, the young mouth snapped shut � I swear I heard the click! � drawing himself up to his full height, he screamed out in a juvenile, albeit refined voice, �Carry on Sergeant!� This was my first encounter with a Guards Officer, and I learned later that he was about twenty years of age and not long out of Sandhurst as an ensign. I was to discover that the walking stick carried by that young officer is a vital piece of parade equipment for Guards Officers (except when wearing ceremonial dress) and it is more correctly referred to as an �Ash Plant� rather than walking stick � I understand however that officers in the Irish Guards carry a �blackthorn�? Whilst the Sergeant of the barrack guard questioned my unseemly arrival on a Friday (a �no intake� day), I noticed the reassuring outlines of the church opposite the Guard Room, and my sinking spirits took a slight uplift as I comforted myself with the thought that my God had not forsaken me! In later days I was to spend quite a few soul searching hours in that beautiful Guards Chapel at Caterham � (I was confirmed there the following year by The Bishop of Woolwich). Directly in front of the church wall was a sentry box painted with the blue-red-blue stripes of the Household Brigade and this was the back cloth for a young soldier of the Irish Guards standing rigidly �at ease� (I had learned a bit about drill in the Army Cadet force) with a Lee Enfield rifle at an angle between his right hand and the asphalt roadway. Equally motionless in front of the guard room door was another Irish Guardsman minus rifle, who suddenly slammed both boots together and seemed to jump about a foot in the air as he flew in to the guardroom in response to the Sergeant�s scream of �Picquet Sentry!� After a long string of unintelligible commands to the quaking young soldier, the Sgt then let forth another screech which embraced the pair of us, and off we shot down a seemingly endless driveway past vast expanses of drill grounds, barrack blocks and tear stained windows, until we arrived at the small building which was the �receiving room� and where I was to spend my first night in the army. A waxy museum smell enveloped us as we entered the small four roomed block and stood in the glow from a pot bellied stove reflected by the highly polished floor and the glass of the many group photographs which covered the walls. Some of the photographs were obviously dated back to the time of Modder River, Ladysmith and the like, as some of the groups were wearing white shell jackets and pillbox caps (the sailor type �Broderick� was a much later version of this jaunty headgear) Sad faces, many adorned with waxed �Guardee� moustaches gazed at me vaguely over the years, and I started to feel the first stirrings of a chilly apprehension. My companion opened his mouth to bellow �New recruit for you Trained Soldier!� and giving me a broad wink he whispered in a broad scouse accent �Pity you couldn�t get in the Micks la� and scurried away through the beckoning doorway amid a decreasing clatter of heel irons and studs. I was left to gaze in fascination at a seemingly ancient old man who, with a bamboo swagger cane under his arm was approaching me from the shadows of his lair under the stairs. He sported no chevrons of rank, but, at the bottom of his left sleeve was a row of inverted service chevrons and two gold wound stripes. On his right upper sleeve was a gleaming brass star within a circlet bearing the words �Trained Soldier� I discovered later that there was one of these veterans attached to each squad, and as disciplinarians in their own right, they were responsible to the squad instructors for barrack room discipline and for imparting those many aspects of army �know how� which can only come from a fount of experience recalled whilst sat round in those magic moments of chatting to his recruits in the atmosphere of the barrack room. At the top of each sleeve he displayed the red and white designations of the Coldstream Guards, and reposing on his head was a short-peaked khaki cap, on the front of which twinkled a brass replica of the star of The Garter � the badge of the Colstreamers. �Not only do they send me a recruit on a �no intake� day � but it has to be a flipping kid for me to baby sit!�he muttered - then, seeing the first slight tremble of a previously stiff upper lip, his manner softened as he said �never mind me son, I was a drummer boy myself back in the twenties � you�ll be OK once you get with your future squad mates tomorrow� This was my first clue had I noticed it at that time, that my future was to be as a member of a Corps of Drums, and NOT, as I had been expecting, learning to play some exotic instrument with a Guards band and performing on the BBC in such things as �Music while you work� radio programmes etc. A certain recruiter in Leeds would have some explaining to do if I ever got the chance to challenge him about his promises of musical glory! After issuing me with a white china pint mug, knife fork and spoon, (ever after to be referred to as �eating irons�), he led the way to an upstairs room and a number of fold-up beds, each with a set of three-piece small mattresses known as �biscuits. Wherever he is now, that craggy faced man with a heart of gold, I hope he had a long and happy retirement and the happiness that was his due � for he displayed a wealth of human understanding that night to a young homesick boy who was starting to have second thoughts about the challenge of a soldier�s life. He seemed ancient to me at the time, but he was probably only in his mid thirties! Sleep eluded me for quite a while after I had tried to get comfortable in the hairy warmth of the coarse blankets (�no sheets in the Guards son � they all get allocated to the �Brylcreem Boys� in the RAF!�) every time I swallowed the homesick lump in my throat and started to doze off, it seemed some devilish plot conspired to send a bugler to issue a brazen taunt under the window, only ceasing at about 1030pm with �Lights Out� At odd intervals thereafter, the silence was broken by the double bell chimes of the Guards Depot clock � two at quarter past the hour, four at half past and so on. Faint memories were brought back to me of my previous year at Naval School in Wales as the familiar bells chimed throughout the night. How many thousands of Guardsmen must have cursed those all pervading chimes over the years � but in other less secure circumstances would have given all they possessed at the time to be back within range of the sounds of the Guards �Family Clock�? My awakening on my first full day in the army was not as harsh as others during the following weeks, thanks to the understanding of the Trained Soldier who knew what the future held for an enlisted boy in the Guards, as he led me through the early morning routine at a fairly leisurely pace. Taking me over to a huge dining hall filled with hundreds of shorn headed young men who seemed intent on teasing me with calls of �you�ll be sorreee� he helped me to collect some hot metal containers and a galvanised bucket half full with some vicious looking tea, and after picking up some thick slices of bread from a tea chest at the end of a trestle table on which stood a contraption like a sausage machine which dispensed little scallops of margarine, we went back to his block for a leisurely Saturday breakfast accompanied by a few more words of wisdom from him. After the previous six years of wartime rationing and a scarcity of certain items of food, that first breakfast in the army seemed like a feast � we must have had double rations, and I tucked in for all those recent skimpy schoolday breakfasts enforced by the war. I did not even pause to marvel that for the first time in my life I was being introduced to the peculiarities and ingenuity of army chefs as they catered for the demands of hungry, hard pushed soldiers. Who ever heard of braised liver and mashed potatoes for breakfast? It was delicious and I have never forgotten either the taste � or the company of that Trained Soldier. All good things must come to an end however, and after helping me to return our utensils and plates back to the messroom, he started to get me ready to move out of the reception room. It seemed that the time had come for me to �gird my loins� and prepare to meet my future companions. Picking up my suitcase, I found myself scurrying after the TS, who seemed to have regained his mantle of authority as he suddenly barked over his shoulder �Come on lad � move yourself!� There had been a stray �doodlebug� bomb the previous year which had found its way to the Depot and demolished part of one of the Barrack Blocks � all of them named after famous Generals etc. It transpired that I was to be accommodated during my �unsquadded� weeks in the part still standing of the one concerned � ROBERTS Block � the demolished section had been cleared and the space turned into a small drill ground. Standing in the entrance of the block was the man who was to be my Trained Soldier - Guardsman �Dusty� Smith of the Grenadier Guards � like my companion, he too had a couple of wound stripes at the bottom of his left sleeve (was this the prerequisite of being a Trained Soldier at the Guards Depot? I wondered) After speaking for a while to my previous companion, he turned and with a brief smile cooked a beckoning finger at me as I followed him in to the block to meet my future squad companions and Destiny!....................................... Continued. |
| Rodney Angell-Baker (�SPOT� BAKER). |
| MY INTRODUCTION TO LIFE IN THE GUARDS OCTOBER 1945. |
| MY INTRODUCTION TO LIFE IN THE GUARDS OCTOBER 1945. |
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| Copyright � 2006 Rodney J Angell -Baker |