My Regimental Band, my user name and this posting I put up in another forum and it was suggested I put things up here.

Aha! I’ll await the continuation, love the duck explanation, thank you and welcome.

A continuation: The Revenge of the Sergeant concerned.
Since I had leap-frogged him and in his view quite wrongly, he began to persecute me. As I was a mere trooper he had a lot of power. Each day when the band finished practicing around 4 p.m. or so, we had down time.
The sergeant would come round shouting for me by name and take me off on "S**t patrol", which involved me picking up rubbish around the camp, cigarette ends, chocolate wrappers, anything really, while he stood watching me, smirking happily. After a few days I decided to hide from him. At first it was easy. I had a bed in the corner and my "lockers, wooden" as the army termed our lockers had a door that, when opened, concealed my bed. And of course concealed me. The sgt. would shout my name and glance over at the door and assumed that I was not there so left looking for me. I got away with this for maybe six days or so then he caught on and booted the door shut, grabbed me, and off I was taken, back to picking up the rubbish.
The next day I opened the door and did not lie on the bed but went off to the camp library. I was told that the sgt. came in, saw the open door, laughed and booted it shut shouting "Gotcha!" But he failed! A minor win for me.
My army pals tried to make me stop baiting him in this way but I was on a winner. He really was thick and fell for it for a few days before giving up.
Whenever he could find me I was back picking up rubbish until suddenly one day I was told by the bandmaster "You are First Alto Saxophone today and henceforth!" Well, the army is like that. You do as you are told. I was actually a decent sax player but was better on the clarinet. But there was a benefit for me. The evil sgt. promptly stopped his persecution of me! I was no longer a 20-year old trooper on First Clarinet while he was a 40-odd year old sgt. below me (as he saw it) on Repiano.
In retrospect, I suspect the bandmaster had heard the story and rather than order the sgt. to leave me alone, he cunningly gave me a different job! Well, it worked! No more s**t patrol for me!

Looking forward to the next episode!

I read that repiano means the part in a band that is not a solo part, but a supporting one that plays in accompaniment with the main melodic line.

What period are you speaking of IWFC? Were you a professional musician before you joined the service and what was the musical training and practice regime in the army? Have you continued to play since leaving the army?

A family history story -

Youngest male child in a Victoran family of nine children. Mother had died having her tenth. Father couldn’t cope. After that, they were termed an “in out” family meaning in and out of the workhouse.

Foster homes were in their infancy, called scattered homes. Scattered homes were a system under the Poor Law for housing destitute children in ordinary houses within a local community, where they lived in small groups under a paid foster parent.

He and his next two younger siblings went to different scattered homes.

At 12 he was sent to navy training ship TS Exmouth where the boys were taught music. He showed an aptitide for the clarinet. His service record shows he became a Royal Marines bandsboy at the age of 15 although his record shows him to be a year older than he was. He was only 14. He served for 15 years including WW1.

His record lists all the ships he served on as well as charting his periods of musical training at the Royal Marines School of Music at Eastney, Portsmouth where his proficiency improved from fair to superior.

After leaving the service, he found work in London theatre orchestras but must have missed life at sea (or was struggling like many at that time to find regular work) as he joined the Merchant Navy where he travelled to the USA visiting various port cities including the jazz city of New Orleans. I’ve love to think that he heard Sidney Bechet play.

Thanks for starting this, IWFC. Any other military or town band stories from GNers?

Like all ex-army folk I have a lot of stories. Most of them are repeatable, although when I told my adult daughters that the best gig I ever played was in a strip club in Singapore, they were aghast!

"Dad, You are not like that!" "I was when I was twenty!"

I was talking about 1956-58 inclusive. I only became a semi-professional musician after I left the army, aged 21. In the army we got no musical training but had band practise every week day, all day long, and jobs whenever they came up. We did quite a lot of commercial work on outside jobs but we musicians saw none of the money. Maybe I was an unpaid professional?

I was good enough to play in a night club band for my last year but that was for food and drink, not cash. It was illegal and I was chased my Military Police now and then. When I got caught I faced disciplinary charges for 1. Breaking out of camp 2. Breaking into camp 3. Out after the midnight curfew and 4. Conduct prejudicial to good military order and discipline. The last is a catch-all for anything they felt was not a good thing. Because the nightclub did not close until maybe 3 in the morning I was forced to "break out of camp", i.e, I had not signed the book!

I was always found guilty. I was always given 4 days jankers. Finally I got the nickname "Four Days" and a friend told me that in his view I could murder someone and would only get four days!

After I came out of the army I carried on playing, this time for money,. This was Musicians Union rates, not very good, but better than playing for food and drink. I finally stopped when returning from a gig in Withernsea in the East Riding of Yorkshire in the middle of a foggy winter, we had a head-on collision with another car at aroung 3 a.m.. Not anyone's fault really. There was a sharp kink in the road and the cats' eyes on each side of the bend just stopped at the start of the bend. Both cars of course carried on straight and.... wallop! OK, the driver had been drinking. We were musicians, it's what we did. Drugs had not entered the scene at that time. The other car was a write-off and we limped home after forcing the fan forward and out of the bent radiator. I decided that MU rates were not worth risking my life for! So I stopped.

Do you still play an instrument?

I played in a band until I was 76 years of age, then stopped as I did not have the energy to continue. Recently I gave my sax and my three clarinets to the Camden School for Girls along with several bundles of music and a box of music bits and pieces. I felt that the instruments should be used not just sit around my flat.

Anyone interested in the time I fell asleep in the path of thousands of migrating ants?

Definitely! 🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜

Brilliant. Keep going.

It began like this. I was playing alto in the band at a dance in the sergeants' mess. They were generous people. The beer flowed if not like Niagara, at least like a reasonable mountain stream. Around two in the morning the dance ended and we walked, although some of us staggered, back to our beds.
I got undressed and naked as I was (this was in the tropics) I threw myself on my bed and prepared to relax into sleep.
Then I began to itch. I scratched myself a few time in different places and in the end put on my torch to see why I was so itchy. I was disconcerted. I am normally white. This time I was black. Totally black. I looked closely and discovered that the reason I was black was that I was entirely covered in black ants; not a patch of white showing anywhere. However, not one of the little perishers had bitten me. I looked at the bed, there was a stream of black ants, maybe a yard wide, walking along it and I had thrown myself on top of them.
Unfazed by this they had simply continued to march over me from the bed head end to the bottom of the bed, down the legs and re-joined their mates. Under the bed was similar, a yard wide stream which was part of a huge line of ants coming into the hut, either under or over my bed, and out the other side.
It was a mass migration that ants do now and then I gather, I know not why. There might have been millions, there were certainly many thousands of the perishers. I had carelessly made myself into a barricade but it daunted them not a bit.
I had to stagger off to the showers, which were all cold, no hot water supplied at all, and sluice myself clear, then walk back. Staggered there but walked back? Well, a cold shower at around two-thirty in the morning sobered me up, I can tell you.
The next day there was not the slightest trace of the ants. Their migration, at least my part of it, was over.
I still wonder why they never bit me. One track minds I guess. Or perhaps they just did not care for the smell of beer?

Great story brilliantly tolfm

Laughing so much I can't type. Thank you.

I learn not to complain in the army
It was my first week in training, up in Carlisle, That was a long way from my Yorkshire town. My God, the other side of the Pennines. But at least it was not in Lancashire. The War of the Roses definitely had unintended consequences. There's a Law along those lines somewhere.
Day one and I was sitting in the canteen for the evening meal when this officer came round. "Any complaints?"
"Yes, Sir!" I said. "This fish is off." It definitely was - it smelled awful. I cannot tell you what it might have tasted like.
"Know a lot about fish do you?"
"A bit Sir. I come from a fishing port. My dad's a trawlerman. And we eat fish two or three times a week"
"Was there a choice between fish and meat when you got served?"
"Yes Sir!"
"Then you chose the wrong one!"
And off he walked.

It was to be two and a half years later before I decided to complain again.

Love the travelling ant story.

Love the 🐟 story!
Thank you for sharing it IWFC 🙂

I’ll bite.
What did you complain about two and a half years later?
🤔

My second (and final) complaint. Well, you did ask.

I was on active service in Malay helping to prevent a communist takeover by playing my clarinet at both friend and, on one rare occasion, foe. I was sitting at lunch with the rest of the band and we had just finished eating when the Officer of the Day came round with the usual "Any complaints?" He always got "No, Sir!" of course. On a sudden whim I said "Yes, Sir!" He was delighted! His very first complaint! "What's that soldier?"
"There are weevils in the rice Sir!"
Well there were. There were always weevils in the rice. In Malaya as was, the rice was delivered with weevils. We just ate them and regarded them as a source of extra protein.
"Surely not!" he said. I showed him my rice, with its little dead black corpses scattered throughout. He went off to see the Cook Sergeant, a really nasty peace of work, a huge bully of a man.
My band member colleagues at the table said "Ah, you should not have done that. Poor young officer, he hasn't a chance against the Cook Sergeant." Now this was true. The officer was maybe 19 years old and still wet behind the ears.
The officer returned. "The Cook Sergeant told me there was nothing that could be done. He explained why it happened. The weevils walk up the walls, across the ceiling, then the heat of the pans overcomes them, and they fall in!" I said thank you to him, now I understand, while trying not to laugh, as were all my fellow musicians at the table.
It was a win-win. I had had fun and he had received his first complaint. Maybe a win-win-win as the Cook Sergeant had also had his bit of fun.
My only hope was that the officer would not retail the story in the Officers' Mess that evening as he would be laughed at. Everybody knew that the uncooked rice came with built-in weevils.

Shame there is no like button

I love your stories, First Clarinet.
I suppose there are funny things that happen in any job. I can think of a few when I was a teacher of modern languages and I used to organise the trips abroad. Stuff always happens!

Romola

I love your stories, First Clarinet.
I suppose there are funny things that happen in any job. I can think of a few when I was a teacher of modern languages and I used to organise the trips abroad. Stuff always happens!

Does it ever! We took a party from Yorkshire to London for the day, equivalent of year 8 or 9 in today's money, we must have left incredibly early! In the mid afternoon we'd done a lot and after Westminster Abbey we said they could have a couple of hours free to wander, imagine doing that today! They all arrived back, one group of lads had gone by tube to see how many football grounds they could see. We went back to the coach did the head count and set off back up the M1 which was when we discovered a couple of stowaways, two boys some girls had met! Stopped at the services and phoned their school, spoke with a panic stricken head and arranged to carry on to a services further on, their head and parents collected them with looks indicating they were not pleased with them! Amazing how we managed before mobiles.

More Military Madness
Around about day three of joining the British army the whole intake was called out on parade. The army loves inventing its own words and acronyms. All the new soldiers, as yet untrained and “passed out”, a slightly misleading phrase, were “an intake”. Other words, previously not part of my vocabulary, were “enbus”, or get on the coach, “entrain” get on the train – well you get the idea. Debus and detrain were rapidly added to the list by the nature of things. ”Stand easy!” is also quite different from “stand at ease!”
But back to the parade. A strange sergeant, well, strange to us, as we had never seen him before addressed the line-up.
“Are there any musicians here?” This was met with total silence.
“Come on lads, there has to be a few musicians among you!” Again, no response. It sounded like a dubious proposition to me. Before long I was to discover just how dubious it was.
“Look, I need you for a special job that I can’t entrust to the usual clumsy layabouts we get. I need someone I can trust!”
Somewhat hesitantly I put up my hand. After a few seconds, a few other young men followed suit.
“Well done, lads! Follow me!” Which of course we did.
He took us to “the square”. This was a huge empty concrete covered area where we “the new intake” would spend the next five weeks learning how to drill and march. Yes, one has to be taught how to march. It is not built into the human DNA it seems. A few minutes later, we reached a massive pile of coal on the edge of the square. The sergeant, so far presenting himself as Mr. Nice Guy, now smiled evilly. You have probably seen photographs of sharks’ mouths. He did not look all that different.
He told us to grab a shovel. There were about eight of us and only four shovels, so half of us were suitably equipped. Then he marched about twelve yards, pulled out a piece of chalk and drew a large cross.
“I want you to take your shovel. Fill it with coal. Then walk over to the cross and dump the coal there. Keep doing that until all the coal has been moved and I return at four o’clock.” He went off, looking rather pleased with himself.
We began, making two teams because we did not have a shovel each. We did get a short break for lunch then we back to it. Back-breaking work, frost all over the ground, and a strong cold wind, not exactly the job we had hoped for as musicians.
Someone, somewhere, must have done a time-and-motion study of moving a pile of coal because we had only just shifted the entire pile when the sergeant returned at four o’clock and hit us with another evil smile.
“You should thank me, lads! You have just learned your first useful lesson in the army: never volunteer for anything!”
Then he walked off.
The lesson worked. I never volunteered again during my army service. I also learned an unintended lesson from the episode which was - never trust the word of a non-commissioned officer and, by extension, even be very wary about the word of a fully commissioned officer.