Dit alert! Found this account of Warrant Officer (WO2) Bill Griffiths encounter with Private Arthur (Nick) Carter, then QM.
On arrival at the Quartermaster's store, I was surprised to see what I considered to be quite an old chap behind the counter. He had lots of stripes upside down on one sleeve, and I was told that these were known as service stripes, and represented numbers of years service, and this chap I was told was one of the oldest serving private soldiers in the British Army. Nick Carter was his name, but here was another chap who had to be called ‘Sir’ out of respect for his age and experience.
He proceeded to throw equipment and clothing onto the counter, which I was told to stuff quickly into the kit bag, which was the first item given to me. The old boy kept muttering about how small I was and ‘how was he supposed to kit out midgets, from the kit available to him’ . But he continued to find stuff from all corners of the store, and kept on throwing it onto the counter, and I kept stuffing it into my kit bag. I thought, how the hell am I going to carry all this lot? and he hadn’t finished yet. He had got to the stage of finding a uniform for me. He looked puzzled. "We don’t have battledress to fit midgets" he said. "How tall are you"? "Four foot ten" I replied. I gathered from his conversation with another chap in the store that there was nothing anywhere near my size, and that I would have to be taken to the regimental tailor who would have to conjure up something for me. In a funny sort of way, I felt quite pleased with myself, here I was, not even one whole day in the army, and it seemed as though I was one up on their system, but to be fair, I suppose I was extra small, and I recalled how my choirmaster Sir Percy Hull, had always called me midget!!
Link to source:
Long Service & Good Conduct?
Chapter One
The inside story of (WO2) Bill Griffiths begins on a fateful day in May 1946 when the MP on the gates of the KSLI Guard Room at Copthorne Barracks Shrewsbury, demands recognition as "Sir" and tests the responses of this giant of a man who, while small in stature and still growing, will begin a Military adventure spanning almost 4 decades until his discharge in 1984. Any former soldier of the post WW2 era will relate to this humorous tale of mischief, devilment and typical Army conduct and challenge.
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