Teaching the Band Boys

A fellow-sergeant at the depot in Guildford, Surrey, in 1947 was a sergeant in the Army Education Corps. He confided in me that he was gay, although not, as far as I remember, using that word, a fact which may or may not be relevant to this story. As it was the depot of the regiment, The Queen’s Royal (West Surrey) Regiment, there was a contingent of boys, recruited I believe at the age of 15 or so, who were intended to become regimental musicians. One of the tasks of the education sergeant was to engage in the boys’ education. He found this an immensely difficult undertaking, finding it virtually impossible to maintain discipline. He complained about this to me several times until, in a moment of blind bravado, I said that I would take a class.
I’ve no idea why I said it, having only a tiny amount of teaching experience. Part of that I described in my article ‘A young supply teacher in wartime’ A3336059 . Otherwise I had had three months’ teaching practice when in the sixth form at school and a short period in 1945 as a Local/Paid Education Sergeant. Not really very much. At the appointed time I waited in the empty class-room, somewhat anxiously. Then in they came, roaring, swearing, punching each other in a jocular fashion, climbing over the desks. Then they sat down at their desks, suddenly quiet, silently looking at me expectantly, trying to anticipate my reaction.
I wondered what to say. I had no fund of ideas or practice on which to fall back. I waited for a little time and suddenly I found myself saying: ‘That word you keep using. You need to say it properly. It ends in “ing“. There’s a “g” at the end‘. There was, I fancy, a collective gasp. They had never heard anything like that before, mild though it seems today. No doubt they had expected me to shout at them to behave, perhaps to threaten them with all manner of punishments. They continued to keep quiet and I took the opportunity to start the lesson. I cannot now remember what I was trying to teach them and in fact their comparative silence did not last the whole lesson. Towards the end they became unmanageable, just as the education sergeant had described to me. I was glad to escape. I did not offer to repeat the experiment.

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