'I remember being number six and washing in this bowl of filthy water in this tent. I remember the training sessions in Norton Hall with Sgt Deacon and I remember he chose me to be his junior NCO. He was a religious maniac and I remember him at the end of the day getting down and his knees because he was lucky to be alive at Dunkirk. And these other senior sergeants of the Beds and Herts they would throw boots at him and deride him for praying, for getting on his knees. But I felt sorry for him. He was getting this abuse from the other sergeants. Deacon was eventually transferred from us to another Battalion of the DLI and eventually he was killed at Catania Bridge in Sicily. The news got back to me and, what a shame. He has a good soldier, I've always remembered Sergeant Deacon.

'My next memories: from Norton Hall, we were in Dunfermline and we were marching down the hill in Dunfermline to an old carpet factory where we were based. We were in this empty carpet factory which was used as a barracks at the bottom of the hill. And there was a London sergeant called Sergeant Stern and he was an old Beds and Herts chap of about 40 or 41, very heavily built with a purple red face due to booze, ex- Indian Army Service and he was a real terror of a man. Very, very ignorant chap as well. We are all on parade outside in the street in Dunfermline and he was marching them up and down in the street. it was a quiet part of Dunfermline, it was down at the bottom of a hill and he says: "Get up there! Halt!" He was deriding someone for being out of step or something and then he'd be giving someone a ticking-off. Marching them up and down at his word of command. He was really a typical pre-war Sergeant. And a window opened in one of the houses in the street and a woman filled this window and she shouted down: "You bully! You wouldn't teach my son like that!"

'He says: "Wouldn't I? You send your husband down!"

'I remember particularly this row between Sergeant Stern in the street and this woman who was in the upstairs window, pitying the poor chap who was getting a telling off.

'I remember marching up the hill in Dunfermline at DLI pace Finally now we could hear our feet on the metal road. And I remember quite a lot of chaps married local girls. And I remember attending the Sunday Service in Dunfermline Abbey where Robert the Bruce is buried. And I remember the Carnegie Building down the hill there. I remember Dunfermline very well, I've always wanted to return there. I liked the place, though it was very, very hilly, it was really Scottish.

We were getting on with the training, three months, four months and I was promoted. Ive got AB Part Ones with all my promotions. I was promoted very quickly, up to Corporal and then Lance Sergeant in a matter of months and by the end of the year I was Sergeant. And then they decided to form a Headquarters Company.

For photographs of Sgt Jimmy James training the Signal Platoon in 1940, click here.

For a photograph of a 1940 16 DLI training squad at Edinburgh click here.

For more on Sgt Wilfred Deacon, see this page.

Notes:

(1) ITC: Infantry Training Centre. Kempston Barracks in Bedford was the Depot of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment.

(2) RSM: Regimental Sergeant Major.

(3) Light Infantry soldiers marched at a strenuous 140 paces per minute (‘Light Infantry Pace’) as opposed to other Army units’ 120 paces per minute. Arms drill was also very different, for instance LI men marched with their rifles ‘at the trail’, held horizontally in the right hand.

(4) ‘Norton Hall’ is the spelling in the 16th DLI Battalion History, but a surviving envelope addressed to Jimmy James’ fellow ex-Beds and Herts NCO Charles Bray spells it as Moreton Hall.

(5) Sgt Wilfred Deacon was later commissioned and was killed serving as a Captain with 8 DLI in the Battle of Primosole Bridge in July 1943.