At five a lone bugle woke his companions from their drowsy slumber. Charlie was already up, washed and dressed when a man with two stripes on his sleeve marched in. He slammed the door behind him and shouted, "Up, up, up," as he kicked the end of any bed that still had a body supine on it. The raw recruits leaned up and formed a queue to wash in basins half full of freezing water, changed only after every third man. Some then went off to the latrines behind the back of the hall, which Charlie thought smelled worse than the middle of Whitechapel Road on a steaming summer's day.
Breakfast consisted of one ladle of porridge, half a cup of milk and a dry biscuit, but no one complained. The cheerful noise that emanated from that hall wouldn't have left any German in doubt that these recruits were all united against a common enemy.
At six, after their beds had been made and inspected, they all trudged out into the dark cold air and onto the parade ground, its surface covered in a thin film of snow.
"If this is bonny Scotland," Charlie heard a cockney accent declare, "then I'm a bloody Dutchman." Charlie laughed for the first time since he had left Whitechapel and strolled over to a youth far smaller than himself who was rubbing his hands between his legs as he tried to keep warm.
"Where you from?" Charlie asked.
"Poplar, mate. And you?"
"Whitechapel."
"Bloody foreigner."
Charlie stared at his new companion. The youth couldn't have been an inch over five feet three, skinny, with dark curly hair and flashing eyes that never seemed to be still, as if he were always on the lookout for trouble. His shiny, elbow-patched suit hung on him, making his shoulders look like a coathanger.
"Charlie Trumper's the name."
"Tommy Prescott," came back the reply. He stopped his exercises and thrust out a warm hand. Charlie shook it vigorously.
"Quiet in the ranks," hollered the sergeant major. "Now let's get you formed up in columns of three. Tallest on the right, shortest on the left. Move." They parted.
For the next two hours they carried out what the sergeant major described as "drill." The snow continued to drop unceasingly from the sky, but the sergeant major showed no inclination to allow one flake to settle on his parade ground. They marched in three ranks of ten, which Charlie later learned were called sections, arms swinging to waist height, heads held high, one hundred and twenty paces to the minute. "Look lively, lads" and "Keep in step" were the words Charlie had shouted at him again and again. "The Boche are also marching out there somewhere, and they can't wait to have a crack at you lot," the sergeant major assured them as the snow continued to fall.
Had he been in Whitechapel, Charlie would have been happy to run up and down the market from five in the morning to seven at night and still box a few rounds at the club, drink a couple of pints of beer and carry out the same routine the next day without a second thought, but when at nine o'clock the sergeant major gave them a ten-minute break for cocoa, he collapsed onto the grass verge exhausted. Looking up, he found Tommy Prescott peering at him. "Fag?"
"No, thanks," said Charlie. "I don't smoke."
"What's your trade then?" asked Tommy, lighting up.
"I own a baker's shop on the corner of Whitechapel Road," replied Charlie, "and a—"
"Ring the other one, it's got bells on," interrupted Tommy. "Next you'll be telling me your dad's Lord Mayor of London."
Charlie laughed. "Not exactly. So what do you do?"
"Work for a brewery, don't I? Whitbread and Company, Chiswell Street, EC1. I'm the one who puts the barrels on the carts, and then the shire 'orses pulls me round the East End so that I can deliver my wares. Pay's not good, but you can always drink yourself silly before you get back each night."
"So what made you join up?"
"Now that's a long story, that is," replied Tommy. "You see, to start with—"
"Right. Back on parade, you lot," shouted Sergeant Major Philpott, and neither man had the breath to speak another word for the next two hours as they were marched up and down, up and down, until Charlie felt that when they eventually stopped his feet must surely fall off.
Lunch consisted of bread and cheese, neither of which Charlie would have dared to offer for sale to Mrs. Smelley. As they munched hungrily, he learned how Tommy at the age of eighteen had been given the choice of two years at His Majesty's pleasure or volunteering to fight for King and country. He tossed a coin and the King's head landed face up.
"Two years?" said Charlie. "But what for?"
"Nicking the odd barrel 'ere and there and making a side deal with one or two of the more crafty landlords. I'd been getting away with it for ages. An 'undred years ago they would 'ave 'anged me on the spot or sent me off to Australia, so I can't complain. After all, that's what I'm trained for, ain't it?"
"What do you mean?" asked Charlie.
"Well, my father was a professional pickpocket, wasn't 'e? And 'is father before 'im. You should have seen Captain Trentham's face when 'e found out that I had chosen a spell in the Fusiliers rather than going back to jail."
Twenty minutes was the time allocated for lunch and then the afternoon was taken up with being fitted with a uniform. Charlie, who turned out to be a regular size, was dealt with fairly quickly, but it took almost an hour to find anything that didn't make Tommy look as if he were entering a sack race.
Once they were back in the billet Charlie folded up his best suit and placed it under the bed next to the one Tommy had settled on, then swaggered around the room in his new uniform.
"Dead men's clothes," warned Tommy, as he looked up and studied Charlie's khaki jacket.
"What do you mean?"
"Been sent back from the front, 'asn't it? Cleaned and sewn up," said Tommy, pointing to a two-inch mend just above Charlie's heart. "About wide enough to thrust a bayonet through, I reckon," he added.
After another two-hour session on the now freezing parade ground they were released for supper.
"More bloody stale bread and cheese," said Tommy morosely, but Charlie was far too hungry to complain as he scooped up every last crumb with a wet finger. For the second night running he collapsed on his bed.
"Enjoyed our first day serving King and country, 'ave we?" asked the duty corporal of his charges, when at twenty-one hundred hours he turned down the gaslights in the barracks room.
"Yes, thank you, Corp," came back the sarcastic cry.
"Good," said the corporal, "because we're always gentle with you on the first day."
A groan went up that Charlie reckoned must have been heard in the middle of Edinburgh. Above the nervous chatter that continued once the corporal had left Charlie could hear the last post being played on a bugle from the castle battlements. He fell asleep.
When Charlie woke the next morning he jumped out of bed immediately and was washed and dressed before anyone else had stirred. He had folded up his sheets and blankets and was polishing his boots by the time reveille sounded.
"Aren't we the early bird?" said Tommy, as he turned over. "But why bother, I ask myself, when all you're goin' to get for breakfast is a worm."
"If you're first in the queue at least it's an 'ot worm," said Charlie. "And in any case—"
"Feet on the floor. On the floor," the corporal bellowed, as he entered the billet and banged the frame on the end of every bed he passed with his cane.
"Of course," suggested Tommy, as he tried to stifle a yawn, "a man of property like yourself would need to be up early of a mornin', to make sure 'is workers were already on parade and not shirkin'."