I’m not sure why but I feel the need to explain the title of the book simply because there’s a clever little pun there that will be totally missed by a vast amount of readers in North America. Probably vast is the wrong word, humongous may be more accurate.
The favourite viewing for millions of Brits from 1968 to 1977 was a comedy show about the endeavours of a group of men who formed just a small part of a big WW2 British organisation which was made up of those too young or too old to fight in the regular armed forces together with an element who worked in important industries known as reserved occupations. It was called the Home Guard but it was also mockingly known, by the young and fit of the regular forces, as ‘Dad’s Army’.
Week by week, we followed the well meaning antics of the Warmington-on-Sea platoon as they tripped and staggered from one near disaster to another. There was a pompous man, the local Bank Manager, who’d decided he should be the Captain in charge but who, every once in a while, displayed courage that made your eyes go all misty. His social and ‘class’ superior was the under manager at the bank, a well educated man somewhat lacking ambition and the drive to achieve more who preferred to hand his ration cards and his washing to a woman whose teenage son grew up to call him ‘Uncle Arthur’. This young lad was known to us all as ‘Private Pike’ a generally gormless soul whose neck was permanently attached to a woolly scarf his mother had knitted and insisted he wear, even in full battledress. He had a predilection for American gangster films and was known to the Captain in charge as ‘You stupid boy!’
The rest of the main characters were made up of - a local ‘spiv’, supposedly refused regular service because he had flat feet but if you wanted anything else, from gasoline to silk stockings, he was the ‘go to guy’ – the funeral director, an over the hill, dour and doom ladened Scotsman – the town butcher, an old, old soldier who’d fought in more colonial wars than anyone thought humanly possible and whose battleplan was to ram his bayonet up somewhere dark because ‘they don’t like it up ‘em, Sir, they don’t like it up ‘em.’ – and a very nice but decrepit old bloke who carried the platoon medical bag (consisting of some ointment, a couple of bandages and some plasters, which you probably know better as ‘band-aids’). Notwithstanding the platoon’s original thoughts on discovering that this man had been a conscientious objector in WW1 the later news that he had won a bravery medal as a stretcher bearer during the conflict earned him their complete respect and the coveted First Aid satchel.
But it was the sometimes ridiculous things the Army made its soldiers do or perhaps the stupid things we simply decided to do which, in a way, always reminded me of these well meaning and courageous men who were, despite their ineptitude, willing to confront an invading enemy whilst armed only with a handful of bullets and a ‘sticky’ bomb made from a pair of their old socks. Heck, in the early days, they’d been prepared to do it with a broom handle, carving knife tied to one end and brush still attached to the other. I often felt a kinship.
But there’s another part of my ‘brilliant pun’ which is revealed at the end of the book so I don’t want to spoil the surprise and the moment when you nod to yourself, sagely, feeling the power of this newly acquired special knowledge.
So, these are the reasons why I’ve clung to the book title.
On the other hand, I could have just changed it to something catchy like, ‘My time in the British Army’ or ‘Please tuck me in, Sergeant Major’. It would have been much simpler than writing this explanation but I fear it could have resulted in the loss of a little intrigue.