Chapter 2: Pre-WWI - My Undistinguished Career as a Cadet

My first flop was as a cadet recruit in 1912 at the age of thirteen. Just a month after joining George Watson's College Officers' Training Corps (OTC) we were piped to the railway station in Edinburgh and puffed off to Dalmeny, the country seat of the Earl of Rosebury, who had been Britain's Prime Minister until recently before our visit.

In one month I had managed to learn "Form Fours", slope, order and even present arms, but handling the bayonet was still a mystery. Naturally they hid me as far back as possible in the rear ranks. When the order came to "Fix - Bayonets", somehow I managed to drag my eighteen inch bayonet from its scabbard. A nearby Corporal clipped it expertly onto the muzzle of my rifle for me and we survived the "Present Arms", as the Earl and his staff moved in procession along our ranks. However, when the order to "Un-Fix - Bayonets" came, I could not get the pesky thing unstuck!

What followed was a ceremonial March past the Reviewing Stand. I was the only cadet in the company to perform this maneuver with a gleaming bayonet towering high above the serried ranks! I should have known right there that my future military career was to be crowded with pitfalls.

Two years slipped by with summer camps at Barrie on the East Coast, and rifle practice, known as musketry, at Hunters Bog, by Edinburgh's Arthur's Seat. On one occasion I distinguished myself by scoring two bull's eyes on the target next to my own, but received no credit at all for some reason.

A few of us, who had grown tall but had little other claim for advancement, were selected to attend an NCO's Course at rugged and venerable Edinburgh Castle. Here we labored at foot and bayonet drill. Part of our instruction was in the art of giving the "Executive" word of command "Halt", or "About Turn". This word was to reach other ears of our squad just as the right foot passes the left while on the march. In my effort to achieve this, I hesitated too long so that my scornful squad marched right into the castle wall! It wasn't exactly a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object - the wall still stands! The subsequent comments of the members of my squad were biting and to the point.

In August 1914, when WWI broke out, the various contingents of the Junior OTC, drawn from many schools in Scotland, had just returned from their annual summer camp at Barrie. The vast bulk of us, near Military age, besieged the various recruiting depots, eager to see action in the field in a war certain to be over and won well before Christmas!

A quota of us cadets found scope for our patriotic urges by providing guards for a number of vital railway bridges, which would otherwise have been blown up by German spies and saboteurs. We received no pay so in turn we slipped home to draw rations. In September, when school reopened, our enthusiasm as bridge guards a trifle blunted, we returned to our studies. The spies and saboteurs must have been all rounded up!