Joshua Levine - Fighter Heroes of WWI - The untold story of the brave and daring pioneer airmen of the Great War

Ultimately the six prisoners were released and the sergeant major in charge of training was relieved. He was replaced by another sergeant who found us to be a very satisfactory, efficient body of recruits – much to his surprise – and he couldn’t understand why we had acted as we did unless there were justified reasons for it. He said, ‘I want you now to be good soldiers and if you do as you’re told and you continue to do your work properly, we shall get on very well together.’ And that’s exactly what we did. When he reluctantly left us, we made him a presentation. We found out that this hefty, jovial, soldierly sergeant was a big pipe smoker so we were only too pleased to give him a couple of pipes in a case. He was clearly very pleased – and surprised.

Irish charm made S. S. Saunders’ life a little easier:

Sergeant Major Waddington from the Guards was a gentleman off parade, but a bastard on parade. I found that I could say things to him which he took in a good way because I was the only Irishman, and he sort of took things from me. One day, he put me on the Awkward Squad, because I wasn’t properly shaved. The Awkward Squad was a squad which Sergeant Major Waddington took himself after lunch. We had to get on parade with our full kit including rifles and full pack. And he’d drill us like hell up and down there for about an hour. And then he’d dismiss us.

Well, we were issued with rifles which the Infantry had had for some time, and some of them had been lying in the mud for ages and practically rusted through. They were cleaned up and issued to us. Well, I had a rifle one day on the Awkward Squad and we were doing a drill where you pull back the bolt and hold the rifle in a certain position so that the inspecting officer can look down the barrel, and see that it’s properly clean. We had done this four or five times but Sergeant Major Waddington wasn’t satisfied. He said we weren’t all together and we weren’t making enough noise. So he shouted, ‘Pull the bloody thing back till you break it!’

So I pulled the bolt, and when I did, it came away in my hand and left the head in the rifle. I just remained in the same position I was in, with my right forearm parallel with the ground and the bolt in my hand. He looked at me and he said, ‘What the bloody hell’s wrong with you Saunders?’ And I said, ‘Nothing sir. I’ve obeyed the last order. I’ve broken the bloody thing.’ The other chaps were getting a side glance in and he chewed them up. He shouted, ‘Look to your front!’

He came over and he looked at me and I could just see a slight suspicion of a twinkle in his eye and he turned round to me and he said, ‘Get off this squad immediately. You’re too bloody awkward for the Awkward Squad. Dismiss!’ So I hadn’t to go on any more on the Awkward Squad, but the other fellows had to make up for it.

For William Hawkins of the Royal Naval Air Service, the end of a day’s basic training brought a soothing recreation:

When I was training at the Crystal Palace Depot, square bashing, route marching and rifle training finished at about 5.00 pm and then, in the evening, we had dancing. There was no one of the opposite sex so we had to dance with each other. We waltzed and we did the Boston two-step – the old-fashioned dances. It was quite a lot of fun, actually.

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