My father was at Padgate for Basic Training in 1941, he spoke proudly of his survival of it. He reckoned Padgate had the reputation of being the roughest of all Basic Training Camps. I never understood how such a reputation could be measured as I supposed all such units would have been much of a muchness. However, he said that post-training, when loafing around in Barracks for example, the usual in-house small talk would move occasionally to where you did your basic training, if, as in Dad's case, it was Padgate, apparently it was a conversation stopper, everyone wanted to know if the notoriety was justified.
FB