About Our Words: Treading Coke
An article on National Service brought back memories for V.B, who sent an e-mail from the West Midlands.
http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2006/01/national_servic_1.php
My memory must be playing tricks because I think I enjoyed most of my National Service,. I even bought an RAF tie!
I was at Hednesford in 1954 and ended my N.S. as one of the first Junior Technicians with an upside down stripe.
I recall another odd occupation. On first entering our hut the lino floor was scratched all over and ingrained with coke dust. Our first task was to get the floor polished and smooth and very shiny.
After a painstaking hands and knees job for 30 of us the floor looked a lot better, but not good enough! For weeks after we skated over the floor on polish-soaked pads made from bits of blanket. No one ever put a boot on it. By the end of square bashing it was polished to perfection and passed inspection.
We were ordered as our last job in the hut to slide over our beautiful floor in our hobnails and tread coke into it to make it worse than we first found it, all for the "benefit'' of the next intake of recruits.
