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1948 started a new year in more senses than one for me, remembers Harold Taylor, then aged 22.
Over the Xmas period I had worked as a porter on Chichester Station, and immediately after I went to the Marine Superintendent's Office at Southampton to sit my PMG exam. This was with two or three others who had been to sea before and were on the 3-month short course at Southampton University to study for our 2nd class certificate.
I did not know how long I had to wait for the result, so went to the Labour Exchange and found myself another job. I was highly expectant to pass the exam and so did not want to get to immersed in a job in case I was going to cancel it and proceed to sea.
It had not been an easy choice in the first place to sacrifice all my savings to suspend working and go studying. The savings were intended to provide our nest egg for marriage.
In the second place, it had been a hard decision to return to sea and give up all I had been striving towards, only to have the vision that I would be going away from home and missing it, and delaying the time before I got married.
I took a job on the Chichester Rural District Council as a labourer. The job I got attached to was converting Tangmere Rectory into 4 flats and one house. It was an interesting job and I found almost a favoured niche there with the foreman, seeing that I was not just an idle nerk.
Subsequently a Carpenter from one of the previous firms I had worked with turned up, and at times I worked with him on the roofs. Conversing with him I discovered that he had been a Quarter Master Sergeant in the West African Royal Rifles and had been at the camp at Lagos during my last visit to Appapa when we played football.
There was another carpenter on site with whom I also got on well. He had been an estate carpenter from Oakwood School. I was also to meet him again in later life.
Every day I anticipated the result of the exam, but it did not come till the first week of March and it recorded failure. I was both pleased and disappointed, especially as I considered I had probably scored a mark rate of about 82%.
There was always a very unsatisfactory thing about the PMG exam; no pass rate was ever published. It was either pass, or fail. And no one was ever able to get a sensible answer.
The various schools that took the courses openly said that to the best of their knowledge it worked out that the pass rate was 75%, but they were not prepared to say whether it was of marks or candidates. 75% is very high for most exams anyway.
The day the result came through, I left work early and went to Police Head Quarters in my working clothes, unchanged and unshaven, where I was taken to the recruiting Inspector, Barker.
He asked me some questions, which I answered immediately, and he told me that he had a new course of recruits starting on Monday, and he would try and fit me in. As it turned out, he was not allowed to do so, as I had not sat the proper entrance exam. I had to wait a week to sit the exam, and we were signed on from there. This was the 15th March 1948.
Possibly why Barker had been prepared to accept me so readily may be because he knew my father and the family. Barker had been a sergeant in the police, I am not sure if he was called up for the war or not, but at the end of the war they had recruited policemen to help reform the German Police, and Barker had been one of the volunteers.
What rank he started out at I do not know, but when his spell with the Control Commission finished he held the rank of Major.
My brother, Henry, was also a Major, in the army Intelligence Corp, and was Political Security Officer for the Hanover Region. He had had many an argument about Germany and various matters in the Nag's Head Pub with Barker, where they would meet from time to time when on leave.
I subsequently passed the entrance exam, as did everybody but one who had made the trip, and we all felt sorry for the chap who was rejected who had travelled all the way down from Yorkshire.
About twelve of us reported the next day and started a short course of introduction and fitting of uniform in preparation for going to the training school at Sandgate, Kent. The one big drawback at the time was finding enough clothing coupons to buy boots. I think they cost 10 a piece and one had to go equipped with two pairs.
I do not remember the date I went to Sandgate, but we went for 13 weeks training before we would be posted to our respective divisions. There were about 8 forces sent their trainees to the college and were in classes about 30 strong, of which I think there were five.
Each month there were tests. The first two exams I was below the pass mark, but in the final analysis I got well above it. I was posted to Horsham in the West Sussex County Force.
Other forces that used the No. 6 District Training Centre at Sandgate were East Sussex, Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings Borough Forces, Kent, Berkshire and Reading Borough, Hampshire, Southampton, Portsmouth and Bournemouth Boroughs, Surrey, Guernsey. Dorset may also have been included. So one was able to get integrated into all the forces that surrounded you.
I suppose after passing out of the school I went home for the weekend, before reporting to Horsham on the Monday morning.
Harold Taylor West Sussex 2001
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