It was only around two centuries ago that the authorities reluctantly started to accept the need to take some responsibility for housing the wives and children of soldiers. Before then, families were required to fend for themselves, which was fine if your husband or father was an officer of independent means, in which case you would take lodgings appropriate to your social status. Near-penniless non-commissioned officers' families who were determined to accompany their serving soldier had little option but to camp out in the open or squeeze into a basic billet when on the move with the army, or else to rent a squalid space near the barracks.
A new phase of barrack-building from 1793 resulted in a chosen few wives and families being allowed to live in a curtained-off corner of a barrack hut or room, which was not a satisfactory situation for anyone, as Lieutenant Colonel A H Trevor, reported: '. . . these wretched creatures [soldiers' wives] are allowed to crowd into Barracks, with their starving children - some with families of 5, 6, 7 & 8 (I have this last number in the depot) taking up the room, bedding, tables, fires of the men - destroying their comfort, and all attempts at cleanliness - making the Soldiers discontented & driving them to the Canteen or Beer Shop and frequently to Desertion' (The Naval and Military Gazette, April 1843). The situation eventually improved during the latter half of the nineteenth century, with the gradual implementation of a programme of construction of separate married quarters within barracks, ranging from a room or two (sometimes shared with other families) through huts and flats to modest houses. Luxurious these married quarters weren't, nor is service family accommodation (SFA) today, but at least they gave families some privacy.
Married quarters at Tidworth, Wiltshire, in the days when army wives wore long skirts and their sons, flat caps.When a regiment was posted abroad, its dependents were generally accommodated apart from the local populace, on-the-strength families in India before World War II being housed in military cantonments, with those stationed closer to home after the war (in Cyprus or Germany, for example) usually living either 'within the wire' (within the bounds of a military base) or in specially constructed 'patches' (housing estates) of married quarters. The army sometimes rents flats or houses from locals for its families, and there has recently been an increasing trend for army children in Britain to live in homes that their parents have bought, rather than rented from the army at a subsidised rate, be it as an investment or as a home base in which the family can put down roots.
PICTURE: 'THE CAMP AT ALDERSHOT – ON DUTY', MARRIED QUARTERS IN 1871
A soldier and his family are depicted at the door of their married-quarter hut (Number 23) in Aldershot, Hampshire, in a print that was first published on Saturday, 16 September 1871 in The Graphic, a weekly illustrated newspaper.
PICTURES: NINETEENTH-CENTURY SERVICE FAMILY ACCOMMODATION ("TOMMY ATKINS" MARRIED – PAST AND PRESENT, 1884)
Taken from "Tommy Atkins" Married – Past and Present, a print comprising nineteen scenes that was originally published in The Graphic on 12 January 1884 (click here to see it), the images reproduced below illustrate three types of nineteenth-century service family accommodation. The first shows that tents were once the order of the day when in camp at Cove Common, Aldershot, with two further details from the print contrasting the crowded barrack-room accommodation that was originally allocated to married solders and their wives and children with the more private married quarters that were increasingly being provided towards the end of the nineteenth century.
Below: 'A Soldier and His Family in a Corner of a Barrack-Room in the Old Days'.
Below: 'Modern Married Quarters: "Haw! Are You Crowded Heeaw?"'.
'WHERE THERE ARE FIVE CHILDREN, THE REGULATION PROVIDES FOR FOUR ROOMS AND A SCULLERY': CHILDREN OF THE REGIMENT IN 1896
As 'Red Cross', the author of an article that was published in The Navy and Army Illustrated on 18 September 1896 observes, the accommodation officially allocated to army families was once little more than a space in an already crowded barrack room. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, increasing numbers of families were being housed in purpose-built married quarters. Modest this accommodation may have been, but it was certainly a great improvement on being 'bundled into a large barrack-room', as Red Cross explains in the following extract from 'Tommy Atkins Married'. (And click here to read a general description of the 'children of the regiment'; here for an indication of the subjects in which they were schooled; and here for an outline of what they were fed.)
'The improvements in the soldier's condition have been, though slow, sure, and the same may, perhaps even in a greater degree, be said of those of the soldier's wife. The present writer well recollects when it was nothing unusual for several families to be bundled into a large barrack-room, which they had to screen off as best they could, and wonderfully ingenious, albeit saddening, were the devices to which they were driven in their endeavours to maintain decent privacy.
First, as regards his quarters, Tommy Atkins the Benedict, would be hard to please if he were dissatisfied with those now placed at his disposal. They are usually built in blocks, close to but distinct from the barracks occupied by the single men.
They are bright and airy, well ventilated, gas and water laid on. In almost every case a family, even without children, are given a two-room quarter, the number of rooms being increased in proportion to the number of children: thus, where there are five children, the regulation provides for four rooms and a scullery. The kitchen is fitted with a cooking range, small but thoroughly effective, and which delights the heart of every housewife, an abundance of shelves and cupboards. I may here say that every living room must have a cubic space of 1800 feet.
Government provides all absolutely necessary articles of furniture, with beds and bedding, but nothing is provided in the way of adornment, and it is simply astonishing how home-like and comfortable a soldier's wife manages to make her surroundings. When it is considered that regiments seldom remain more than one or two years at a station, and that two or three hundredweight represents the quantity of baggage allowed to be taken, it may easily be conceived that it would be injudicious to spend money, even if it could be afforded on furniture which it would be impossible to carry about.
Nevertheless, in spite of the difficulties which have to be contended with, the married soldier's quarter is invariably neat and tidy, almost always cheerful and cosy, and often shows evidence of an artistic feeling found deficient in the homes of people who would consider themselves very much higher in the social scale.'
PICTURE: MARRIED QUARTERS, FLORIANA, MALTA
Dating from around a hundred years ago, the postcard reproduced below is captioned 'Military Married Quarters Floriana – Malta'. (The town of Floriana, where these quarters stood, is situated on the outskirts of Malta's capital, Valletta.)
PICTURE: MARRIED QUARTER, KENNEDY ROAD, HONG KONG
The old postcard reproduced below, labelled 'Married Quarter, Kennedy Road, Hongkong', illustrates the type of accommodation provided for British army families in the Mid-levels area of Hong Kong Island during the first half of the twentieth century.
PICTURE: MARRIED QUARTERS, CATTERICK CAMP, NORTH YORKSHIRE
The postcard below is captioned 'Warrant officers' married quarters, Royal Signals, Catterick Camp'. The Royal Corps of Signals was based at Catterick, in North Yorkshire, between 1925 and 1994, so plenty of children whose fathers served in it will have lived in these six quarters.
To read the memories of an army child who was born in Catterick Camp (later Catterick Garrison) in 1929 and who spent his early years there, see 'PERSONAL STORY: EXPERIENCING TERROR AND THRILLS AT CATTERICK CAMP AND WAR'S OUTBREAK AT ALDERSHOT'.
PERSONAL STORY: A MARRIED-QUARTER CRISIS IN EGYPT
Chris Fussell was living with his family in Moascar, Egypt, on, as Chris describes it, 'the terrible day Dad came home drunk from the sergeants' mess to our married quarter'. Read on to find out what happened, and for more about Chris' life as an army child, see the 'MEMORIES & MISCELLANEA' page ('PERSONAL STORY: WARTIME IN THE UK; PEACETIME IN MALTA, EGYPT AND OXFORDSHIRE', 'PERSONAL STORY: EXPERT FIRST AID IN MALTA' and 'PERSONAL STORY: MAYHEM IN A MALTESE MARRIED QUARTER'), the 'LIVES & TIMES' page ('PERSONAL STORY: 'EVER HEARD A SHOT FIRED IN ANGER?'' and 'PERSONAL STORY: BULLFROGS, CICADAS AND MACHINE-GUN FIRE IN EGYPT, 1951'), and the 'SCHOOLING' page ('PERSONAL STORY: MY EDUCATION AS A MARRIED-QUARTERS' CHILD').
'We were living in a spacious, shady, comfortable, brick-built, deep-verandahed married quarter in the large Egyptian Canal Zone British garrison of Moascar, next to the sizeable Suez Canal town of Ismailia, about halfway down between Port Said and Suez, i.e., to the south, on Lake Timsah (said, by some, to be near the site of Moses' crossing, when the Israelites were fleeing Egypt and the pharaoh's chariots were in hot pursuit). Dad had been medically downgraded as a war-injured traumatic epileptic by 1951, but was still soldiering on in the Royal Pioneer Corps (not "his" beloved parent regiment, the Royal Warwicks) in the post-World War II army to get back his staff sergeant's "crown", as well as a better pension and maybe a better post-war life for our family. He was on phenobarbitone tablets and not really supposed to drink alcohol at all. Occasionally, though, he put a shot of rum in his early morning tea. Even our mum, a very strict lady, winked at this, saying, "He needs a bit of a boost", and "Shut up, you kids, give your dad a bit of respect!"
On that terrible day, first Dad arrived home very late for Saturday lunch – it was a bit overcooked by then. He smelt of beer and seemed sleepy. Mum cried, and then shouted at him. (Strong stuff for a twelve-year-old boy to witness? I loved them both! I think my sister was out at work at the time – lucky her.) Meanwhile, a neighbour, the wife of a bombardier in the Royal Artillery, was physically setting about her "old man" for coming in drunk – and noisily. You couldn't help but overhear them all: it was hot, so everyone was out on their loofah-plant, creeper-screened verandahs to try to keep cool, and anyway, all of the doors and windows were open in that midday heat. Dad fell over, seemed to go to sleep, was a bit sick and started snoring. Mum positioned him carefully on his side, fished out his tongue (this was very important, she told me) and went to get another neighbour, a nice sergeant in the Royal Army Medical Corps, from the nearby military hospital. (Mum and his wife were good friends.) He checked out Mum's first aid on Dad approvingly, slid a thin blanket between him and the cool floor tiles, put a basin by his head and said, "No need to worry and no need to report it – if he has not slept it off in four to six hours, go for the medical officer. We will take your Chris here to the swimming pool, and you send for me before you summon the doctor – the pool is not far. OK, Missus?"
That sergeant was a rare West Indian in that 1951 British Army. We played with his kids, but some others, sadly, did not. Much later, it turned out that Dad's colleagues had tried to get him drunk, so that he would readily accept a temporary promotion (that coveted "crown"!) and would take over the woefully deficient camp stores as an acting CQMS [company quartermaster sergeant].This would have got the sergeant major, and even the officer commanding, out of some potentially nasty trouble looming over them with an impending stock-take and audit by officers from another command. (Nice chaps! And, as Dad said, "Case explained"!)'
Chris Fussell (b.1939).
PERSONAL STORY: MARRIED QUARTERS IN HOHNE, GERMANY
Terry Friend, whose father was in the Royal Horse Artillery, and his brother, Chris, lived with their parents in Hohne, (West) Germany, from 1951 to 1961. In this extract from his memoirs, Terry recalls the Friend family's arrival in Hohne, and describes their new home there. (Click here for Terry's memories of the camp at Hohne; here for his memories of attending school in Hohne and Wilhelmshaven; here for his childhood view of the repercussions of the Hungarian uprising in 1956; here for his reflections on Remembrance Day; and here for his account of Christmases in Germany. And if you're interested in learning more about Terry in later life and his music, visit his absorbing website: http://www.anothercountrysong.com.)
'The cases stood waiting. The military travel warrants were all in order. We were once more to set sail from England. On arriving at the Hook of Holland, we boarded a train and commenced a day-long rail journey across Holland into Germany, to arrive rather late at night at a place called Soltau. Road transport was on hand to take us the last few miles to our new home. Our final destination: an army garrison called Hohne (pronounced "Hoenuh").
I've lived in many places, but very few of them have had the impact upon me, or impressed me, as much as Hohne did. Our new address was Flat 6, Block L7. The married families were accommodated in one area of the camp in two-storey blocks containing six flats in each, three to each floor. Each block was within its own landscaped area of grounds, which was surrounded by a chain-link fence, the ground area being larger than a football pitch. Most had a sandpit as a standard extra. Immediately surrounding the building was an area of lawn. This eventually gave way to the remaining area (about half), which consisted of naturalised heather (a fruitful hunting ground for lizards) and woodland, mostly silver birches and the occasional fir tree. This was, after all, the North German plain, part of Lüneberg Heath [Lüneberger Heide].
Our flat was situated on the top floor, and took up most of the rear of the building. There were also cellars. In ours were stored our bicycles, sledges and garden tools. Later on, it doubled as a shooting gallery for us, where we would practise for hours with our "Diana" air rifles. The flat itself was not only roomy and spacious, but had central heating! Yes, radiators in each room and hot water twenty-four hours a day. Also double-glazing. Ours consisted of two sets of windows, about 4 inches apart. One set opened outwards and one set opened inwards. To crown it all, we also had a maid! Yes, we really had a maid. Throughout the remainder of our lives, the Friend family would never again live better than we did for the decade that we were to spend in Germany.
I believe that at this time father was still a sergeant, but he couldn't have held that rank for too long as I only ever remember him as a battery sergeant major. He was an old hand of the British Army in India, so he was no stranger to having servants – char wallah, dobi wallah, boot boy etc – but for my mother, having a maid must have been something that she could never have visualised, even in her wildest dreams. At this time, 1951, Germany was in a terrible state, and for the ordinary people, these were very hard times indeed. Being a British Army sergeant, father's weekly wage was not very high. Our maid must have come very cheap to have enabled us to be in a position to afford to hire her services.
So for us all a new era dawned. Everything in the flat, from the largest piece of furniture down to the smallest kitchen utensil, was army issue. There were no heating or electricity bills to pay either. What a simple way to live! The families' rations came around on time every week in the ration truck. A large, wooden box was hauled into the kitchen and placed on the floor. It contained all we required for the week, including the Sunday joint. I used to have a special place in my heart for those fat, army sausages.
Now, what of the flat itself? At the top of the wide, stone-slabbed stairway was a landing with three doors: one to the left, one to the right and one in the centre. This one was ours. Opening it revealed a fairly large hallway, and, stretching right and left, a corridor with a long, pale-blue carpet on it. On turning left at the front door and proceeding down the passage, there were two rooms. The first on the right was the kitchen. It was quite large – large enough, in fact, to seat six people, and for that purpose there was a table and six chairs in the centre. To the sides were various cupboards, as well as a larder and a fridge. This again, was a new toy for us: never before had we owned a fridge. The walls were tiled, as was the floor. The room at the end of the passage was the living room. It was the largest room in the house and contained a three-piece suite, a dining table and its accompanying chairs, a cupboard and a sideboard. Like the kitchen, this room had two sets of windows. The dividing wall between the two rooms had a very handy serving hatch in it. Again, this was something that we had not come across before.
Turning right down the passage from the hallway led to four rooms, the first of these being the bathroom, which also contained the toilet. Like the kitchen, it had tiled walls and floor. In here, above the bath and suspended from the ceiling, was a purpose-built drying rack, which consisted of about five or six racks, joined together at both ends, which was the same length and width as the bath into which the drying garments would drip. The whole contraption was raised and lowered from the ceiling, as you would raise and lower a lifeboat on a ship, with a simple pulley system. Very clever, and so useful, too.
Next door to the bathroom was the washroom. As the name suggests, it was a purpose-built utility room. It was also the smallest room in the house. It contained a large sink unit, with draining boards on each side, one of which housed the mangle. Just inside the door was a huge (to this small boy it was anyway) hot-water tank and airing cupboard. Also kept here was a boiler, plus all of the pots and brushes, mops and so on necessary to clean a building.
Next to the washroom was the smaller of the two bedrooms. This was where Chris and I slept. My bed was beside the window and radiator, and Chris' was in line with mine on the opposite side of the room. At the end of the passage was mother and father's bedroom. Very much bigger than ours, like the living room and kitchen, it had two sets of windows and radiators in it.'
Terry Friend (b.1947).
TACA ACCOMMODATION ALBUM: ENGLAND
TACA ACCOMMODATION ALBUM: INDIA
