The move to Colchester

 

The family moves to Colchester

My father had been a pre-war Territorial Soldier and was embodied into the Regular Army at the outbreak of war in 1914. He loved the life so much that he continued as a Regular at the end of hostilities by which time he must have been a very very young Regimental Sergeant Major.      

Soon after my father returned from the Army of Occupation we moved to Colchester in Essex, where the old man was to be Permanent Staff Instructor with an R.A.T.A. unit. For a while we lived in George Street, in the heart of the town. Colchester, one of the oldest military garrisons in England was a delightful place in those days. We three children went to a school at the bottom of a hill below the Castle, but we moved again about a year later to the outskirts of the town and again, within a few months, to married quarters in Berechurch Road. The married quarters were contained in three blocks running parallel to one another. Each block contained a series of four flats, two on each ground floor with a concrete staircase leading to two more on the first floor. We occupied an upper flat consisting of a sitting room and kitchen, with a double bedroom and a flight of stairs, leading to two smaller bedrooms built into the eaves of the building. There was no central heating or hot water system and coal was delivered weekly to the quarters by a horse drawn G.S. Wagon. There was an outside lavatory on the landing. Cooking had to be done on a coal fired, blacklead-polished range, and lighting was from oil lamps. We were rationed for bathing twice a week in a communal bath-house in a corrugated iron building situated at right angles to and at the end of the three blocks. Women and young children were allotted certain days, while men and teenage boys had the use of the baths on other separate days.

Colchester was paradise for any young boy. We were surrounded by troops, stables and horse-lines, and there was always something exciting and spectacular going on. Rough riders could be seen daily breaking in new remounts; there were constant cavalry and infantry exercises and parades, and at a tender age I could put the words to every bugle and trumpet call and could whistle the Regimental March of every Corps and Regiment in the Garrison!


Church Parade, Colchester 1924

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