THE young pupil peered nervously around the door of the school cadet corps stores. “What do you want, boy?” the Quartermaster bellowed.

“A new jumper, sir.”

“NO, YOU DON’T. Try again.”

Slightly confused, the lad had another go.

“PLEASE can I have a new jumper, sir?”

“NO. Tell me what you want.”

“A new sweater, please?”

At this point the moustachioed QM exploded and steered the youngster away from the storeroom with the toe of his boot.

“It’s a jersey, heavy wool, olive drab. NOW GET OUT.”

The experience obviously did Paul Bassett no harm, because following 10 years at the King’s School, Worcester, he went on to a distinguished military career in the Royal Engineers, rising to the rank of major and being awarded the Military Cross.

However, it has stuck in his memory for 30 years and the encounter with QM Paul Thompson – aka the Latin master – is one of the golden moments recalled in a centenary history of the school’s cadet corps.

Obviously intended for internal consumption only, it nevertheless contains much material that will be amusingly and occasionally distressingly familiar to anyone who has attended a school that runs a Combined Cadet Force (CCF).

Such as the time in 1935 when the King’s School corps was parading in front of College Hall and at the “present arms”, one lad’s rifle slipped and knocked four teeth from the mouth of an adjacent colleague.

Although there was a cadet corps at King’s for a short time in the 1860s the real beginnings of the current force followed a Government initiative in 1908, when schools were encouraged to set up officer training corps (OTC). The Boer War had revealed a lack of “good officer material” and the move was aimed at providing officers for a new territorial force, which would be a reservoir of officer talent in the event of war.

King’s was one of 87 schools throughout the country that took part in the scheme. Its OTC was attached to the Worcestershire Regiment, which supplied drill and band instructors, while the officers of the corps were recruited from the teaching staff.

Until the 1950s it was an army corps, but towards the end of the decade a Royal Naval section was added, followed by an RAF section.

Sadly, the RN section closed in the 1970s, but the RAF increased in popularity and remains strong today.

One of its most distinguished old boys is Timothy Garden, now known as Air Marshal Professor the Lord Garden, who became a senior commander in the RAF and a Liberal Democrat politician. He contributes a couple of columns of career memories to the publication. These include shaking the hand of American president John F Kennedy and dancing with a Miss World. Two obvious incentives for joining the RAF.

However, not all members of King’s School Cadet Corps reached such lofty military heights. Among them Tony Davis (1949-56), who reveals his lack of service ambition, when he writes: “Oh, and I almost forgot the corps band. With a modicum of musical talent you might get selected for this, then you didn’t have to carry a rifle.

“You got a much prettier uniform and if you played the bass drum you got to wear a leopard skin.”

Then there was Chris Tarrant, now a famous name on TV, but in the 1960s he was a pupil at King’s.

David Barlow, who later became a school governor for more than 20 years and one of the TV star’s contemporaraies, recalled: “It must be said, Cadet Tarrant was of world championship class in the accrual of awards for extra parades.”

David Watson (1948-1958) appears to have spent most of a hot summer’s day exercise on Bringsty Common, near Bromyard, working out when it would be safe to attempt a “monkey run” to the local, the Live and Let Live, for a refreshing pint. For the most part though, the book is full of nostalgic memories for a school activity that seems more attractive to some when viewed through rose-tinted binoculars – now they no longer have to wear the itchy shirts or get shouted at on the parade ground.

Many enjoyed it, no one positively hated it, and everyone seems to have been in awe of some of the characters involved, notably Company Sergeant Major “Paddy” Barrett, who doubled as the school’s PE teacher and had formerly been a drill sergeant and boxing champion in the Irish Guards.

During the 1950s and 60s CSM Barrett ruled the King’s parade ground with the roar of a thousand lions. His “bellowed Irish expletives” also being particularly handy for swiftly ejecting a tramp, who was discovered trying to sleep overnight in the corps’ activities centre, the Old Chapel, near Crickhowell, Powys.

As David Watson writes: “I’m glad I didn’t have to do national service. I missed the last draft by three months but I wouldn’t have missed the CCF for anything.”