The railway man : a pow's searing account of war, brutality and forgiveness by Eric Lomax Read Free Book Online

precise information so that the guns in their remote emplacements out on the cliffs wouldn't fire blind, and to understand the importance of accurate communication between the different parts of an army. Later I would wish that some of our teachers had learnt their own lesson a little better, but for now war was still only a word.
    After this genial brush with the army, I spent the rest of the lovely summer of 1939 perfecting my scheme for improving and expanding the garaging arrangements for the Telephones vehicles in the city, swimming, hunting classic engines and going to Chapel.
    On 24th August 19391 received my mobilization papers, went to work as usual and closed my file on Garage Requirements. After saying goodbye I took the No. 23 tram up Hanover Street and the Mound and walked up the Lawnmarket to the Casde. Lomax had gone to war.
    Mills Mount was now a crowded and hectic base. Royal Signals reservists firom all over the country were turning up, short of beds and equipment, and I found myself sending out more mobilization orders to other reservists. I was issued with full battiedress, all rough cloth and webbing - except for the trousers. There was a shortage of trousers. The guard commander, like most of his kind in Scottish regiments, couldn't share our joy at walking around centaur-like in civilian pants.
    I was sent down to the Assembly Rooms in George Street in Edinburgh to take charge of the confused lines of would-be signalmen of all ages and classes who were trying to enlist. Some had been sent by the BBC, the Post Office, the private electronics companies; they were to be the technical elite of the army. I was struck by how effective a single man in uniform, confident of his authority, could be in maintaining order over several hundred men unsure of their position.
    Each night I would go back up the Mound, and walk inside the old black walls of the castle which dominated the city like a crouching beast, as it does to this day. It is difficult to imagine it now as anything other than a tourist attraction. Times change, and so do buildings. Changing people is harder, or so I have found.
    In the barracks we had radios on all the time, as you would expect. At 11.00 am on 3rd September, we heard Arthur Neville Chamberlain say in his exquisite reedy voice that we were now at war with Germany.
    Fifteen minutes later, the air raid sirens sounded throughout Edinburgh. From Mills Mount I could look down into the main streets of the city. On Princes Street, the trams came to a standstill; every motor vehicle stopped where it was. Passengers walked with a swift nervous urgency, making for the air raid shelters in Princes Street Gardens, through which the main railway line was sunk. It was empty and silent now. Within minutes the streets were deserted except for the immobilized vehicles, some with their doors open, stretching away down Princes Street. A hand had swept over the city, stopping its heart: the war came in this silence.
    Nothing happened; there was no raid. I had tangled up the straps of my gas-mask, and had to be rescued by a company sergeant-major called Dennis Bloodworth, who really was as strong as he sounded. We went back to preparing ourselves for real battles.
    Equipment now began to arrive in earnest. We already had a 'Wireless Set No. 3', a big and seemingly powerful thing, with controls on the vertical front; it was made of stamped grey steel with none of the ornamentation of domestic sets. This was a machine for keeping open a channel of communication between Edinburgh and London, in the event of telephone lines being broken, and it did not hide its function of grabbing electromagnetic waves as brutally as it could. Everything about it spoke of war and emergency. It was noisy to operate, it gave out heat, and I had to sleep next to it before I wangled a bed in the barrack block at the West End of the Castle. It was an austere place but at least I could sleep. I was learning that you have to