An Evening with Johnners Read Free Page B

I didn’t understand a thing about coffee. I can confirm there are an awful lot of coffee beans in Brazil but that’s about all I can tell you.

    I don’t think the manager took to me very well. He thought he’d got me one day. I’d had a late night and arrived about ten o’clock and he summoned me to his office.
    ‘Johnston,’ he said, ‘you should have been here at nine thirty.’
    ‘Why, sir,’ I replied, ‘what happened?’
    And he didn’t like that a bit. So it was a good thing for me when the war came and I was able to say to them, ‘Sorry, I won’t be coming back.’

    A gain, I was lucky, because just before the war began, in about March 1939, some friends and I decided that war was obviously going to come, so we ought to try and get into a good regiment.
    By a little bit of luck, and the fact that a cousin of mine was commanding the 2nd Battalion at Wellington Barracks, I got in what obviously I think is the best regiment in the British Army – the Grenadier Guards. We had to train every evening. We used to go from the City in our bowler hats and pinstripe suits and march up and down throughout that hot summer, until in the end they said we were qualified to be officer cadets.
    When the war came in September this meant we could go straight to Sandhurst to learn how to become officers.
    I can never resist making a bad joke, as you probablyknow, and I tried one out in the first fortnight I was there. They used to have a thing called TEWTS: Tactical Exercise Without Troops, where they took twenty of you out and gave you various military problems to solve.
    The officer took us up on a high ridge and said to me, ‘Johnston, you’re in charge of a section on the top of this ridge and approaching a hundred yards away are a squadron of German Tiger tanks. What steps do you take?’
    ‘Bloody long ones, sir,’ I said.
    He didn’t think that was very funny. I was ‘put in the book’ for it and had to do a couple of drills, but in the end I passed out from there and got into the Grenadier Guards.
    Now when you join the Brigade of Guards it is very strange. You go into the mess and they cut you dead for a fortnight. You probably know half of them, so you try and talk with them but no, they turn away. This is evidently to make sure that new boys don’t get too swollen headed.
    After a fortnight is up, they more or less look at their watches and say, ‘Hello, Brian. Are you here? Have a drink!’ and it is all very matey. A bit stupid, I thought, and it happened to me at Shaftesbury when I joined up in 1940.
    But at the same time a friend of mine was joining up down in Sherborne with the Hampshire Regiment and his Commanding Officer treated him completely differently.
    ‘Very glad to have you with us. Want you to get toknow people. Want people to get to know you. Monday night we’ll have a thrash in the mess. Lots to drink, never did anybody any harm.’
    My friend said, ‘Terribly sorry, sir, don’t drink.’
    ‘Don’t worry about that then,’ said the Commanding Officer. ‘On Wednesday night we’ll get a few girls up from the NAAFI and have a bit of slap and tickle in the mess. Great fun. You’ll enjoy it.’
    My friend said, ‘Terribly sorry, sir, I don’t approve of that sort of thing.’
    So the Commanding Officer looked at him for a moment and said, ‘Excuse me for asking, but you aren’t by any chance a queer?’
    ‘Certainly not,’ said my friend.
    ‘Pity,’ said the CO, ‘then you won’t enjoy Saturday night either!’

    S o I actually had a very good war with the Grenadiers, and I only mention them, really, because it is thanks to them (or not) you have had to listen to me, if any of you have, since I joined the BBC in 1946. When we were waiting to go to Normandy, two well-known commentators from the BBC, Wynford Vaughan-Thomas and Stewart MacPherson, came to brush up on their war reporting, so I got to know them, which was a bit of luck.
    I got out of the army in 1945. I went