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In July 1965 the Royal Corps of Transport was formed and a few weeks later I joined it. I started my service life as an heavy crane operator in the maritime branch of the Corps and in 1992 I was finally posted to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers list, soon after which the RCT ceased to be and the

Royal Logistic Corps was formed.

During my career I held nine ranks in four trades. I served in twelve Corps units and set my uniformed feet on the soil of twenty countries. I held appointments with the Royal Navy, the Royal Marines and

the Royal Air Force. There is a story in there somewhere and as memoirs are not the exclusive domain of generals.......

.....this is my story.

It is based on my experiences, about people and places and events that I have known, not a definitive record of the Royal Corps of Transport, but my life in it. I have had great fun researching and writing

it. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Brian Young1996

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contents

Chapter 1 - Basic Training page 7

Chapter 2 - Maritime Army

page 17

Chapter 3 - The Far East page 24

Chapter 4 - The Royal Marines and The Royal Navy

page 37

Chapter 5 - Split With Maritime page 53

Chapter 6 - The Junior Leaders

page 58

Chapter 7 - Germany page 66

Chapter 8 - Master Driver

page 78

Chapter 9 - Germany Again page 82

Chapter 10 - Cyprus

page 89

Chapter 11 - The Final Tour page 99

Chapter 12 - One More Tour

page 107

Captions to illustrations page 111

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written, produced and published by

Brian Young 1996

for

RUSSELL

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fter all these years the thought that I most clearly remember having during the train journey from Waterloo to Aldershot was how would I cope away from home if I was ill! Being ill was something I had only ever done at home, and I was apprehensive about not being at home if I

was ill. I made a mental note there and then to try and not be ill until I was ready to cope with it by myself.

I suppose the train carried quite a few of us Army recruits to Aldershot, “The Home Of The British Army”, on that day but I was not aware of it. I had the feeling that I was the only one and tried hard to look confident, as though joining the Army was something I did regularly. Well, it was the regular Army I had joined, but the truth was, naturally, I was terrified.

September 1965, Aldershot railway station, Hampshire, and I was half pleased and half surprised to discover that here, a million miles from home, someone knew my name. It was on a board, with many others, and called out by the very first soldier I had ever seen in the flesh. (Discounting the Army Careers staff at Colchester who didn’t really count as real soldiers as they had perfected the art of smiling, when there was not any need and called me Brian, a certain giveaway). This one was a corporal called Moss and he was to feature not only in my basic training but later in my service life again.

No smiles, false or otherwise, no first names, but my initiation into the delights of travelling in the back of a Bedford RL 3 ton truck. A soldier very quickly gets used to the idea of travelling in the back of a lorry, it is the standard form of transport en masse, but it comes as quite a shock to the system the very first time you here the words, “get your kit and get in the back of that truck”. For generations hundreds of thousands of soldiers have travelled in a style that permits them only a view of where they have been, you never get to see where you are going from the back of a truck!

We were trundled up the famous Gun Hill and down into Mandora Barracks consisting of old two storey brick barrack blocks in geometric formation, which faced downhill and overlooked the dreaded Buller Barracks, home of the Royal Corps of Transport. The RCT was formed less than two months previously from the Royal Army Service Corps on the 15th July 1965, although I didn’t know that then. And if I had of done it would not have made the slightest difference.

I was not disappointed in Corporal (Cpl) Moss, he really did look the part with his ammo boots that sported the toe caps that cartoonists draw: enormous and very highly bulled. With shirt and trousers over tailored to the extreme and a slashed peaked black and white No 1 dress forage cap that appeared to be a part of his head, he looked like Desperate Dan in the Guards and wielded a pacestick, the like of which I had never seen before. It is not conventional to describe someone’s appearance from toe to top but I listed the features as I saw them. You learnt to avoid eye contact very early in the Army. To handle “Wadda you lookin’ at?” needed a much larger measure of confidence than I had brought from Clacton-on-Sea.

Those of us that had arrived on that train were herded into a large open room, the Reception. No one spoke to each other out of fear I suppose while we waited to be interviewed. It was all very overwhelming for the senses because it was all so very different. Every now and then someone in uniform would appear from one door, cross the room and disappear through another. Whenever this happened we all stood up, not to attention as we didn’t know how then, more as in a church, although most of us didn’t have very much experience of that either.

After some form filling in followed by more form filling in and then more still, we embarked on a ritual that was to become a feature of my early years in the Army in many parts of the world; personal equipment collection from the Stores. The word stores is not normally a proper noun and doesn’t qualify for a capital S, normally, but in the Army one very quickly learns that the Stores are not normal places.

Firstly, they are always inhabited by creatures not from this planet, and certainly not in the Army I belonged to. They seem to be a law unto themselves. Invariably overweight, over promoted and downright impertinent to anyone remotely senior to them. Secondly, it doesn’t really matter what it is you want or need, it is either not available, reserved for someone else or the wrong size, shape or colour. The Stores is a domain that in twenty six years of service I was never able to successfully penetrate.

A

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But this visit was not with the benefit of any preconceived notions and was to be very special - the initial issue of kit, one or two items I still have to this day. It is a physical impossibility for one person to carry, unaided, all the clothing and equipment issued to them, but the Army has always persisted in trying. So there we were, a long crocodile of day one recruits, piled high with mysterious items of clothing and assorted other peculiar kit such as “button sticks”, gaiters and webbing, weaving our way to our first ever barrack room in Mandora Barracks. It was a scene reminiscent of the old BBC TV programme called Crackerjack where contestants in the quiz were festooned with items as they answered questions from the late Eamon Andrews.

Stray items such as belts and leather boot laces were periodically dropped and trodden on as we weaved our way up the hill to our new home. (You always seemed to be going “up” hill in Aldershot for some unknown reason). But the most prominent sound was that of the large white china mug, always perched on top of everything else by the sadistic quartermaster sergeant as we left the stores, tumbling to the concrete with predictable results. Very few of us reached our destination with the china mug intact! We learnt on the first day the very slick system the Army has perfected over generations of how to recover money from the unsuspecting by making them sign for a new one.

We were hustled into a large grey and red stone and brick two storey building that was identical to the those in front, behind, to the left and to the right of it. The large rooms had lists of names attached to the doors and once we had found our room we selected a bed space and dumped our kit on the wire sprung grey painted bed next to the grey painted six foot steel locker. Above the head of the bed on the wall was a grey painted metal hooded lamp which really served to identify the location of each bed space, and next to the bed was a grey painted metal bedside locker. The windows were high sash wooden frames and the view was into the courtyard formed between each of the buildings. We were to become very familiar with that courtyard as the weeks unfolded.

The next trip, almost immediately, for the out of step gaggle was to the bedding store, which was located at the furthest point from the place where the bedding was needed. This feature is, as I was to discover as my military life unfolded, common to many barracks. Another of Army life’s imponderables.

And so back we trundled, arms wrapped around a horsehair filled mattress rolled up around grey and brown blankets, one with it’s corners missing and called the US (unserviceable) for going under the mattress but destined to be cut up and used for polishing the floors, and in the middle of the roll were the pillows, sheets and pillowslips, with the grey bedside mat perched on the top.

During these trips on our first day we spied many groups of recruits in various uniforms marching and running (doubling in Army speak) to the sounds of permanent staff screaming “Lep Ripe Lep Ripe” which, when translated into the English language, meant Left Right Left Right!

Cpl Moss, who accompanied us throughout, also yelled similar noises but when you are struggling with overloads of kit or bedding you can’t really do anything but falter and stumble into the person in front. But we were to quickly learn that you went nowhere in Aldershot military garrison without arms flapping front to rear and head held high whilst someone or two would be forever calling “Lep Ripe Lep Ripe”.

The initial few days were devoted to learning the basic essentials of survival as a recruit in the Depot and Training Regiment of the RCT.

How to make our bed properly with hospital corners and if a coin was dropped at arms length onto the top blanket it should rebound like a trampoline. The penalty for anything less was for the inspecting member of the staff to suddenly invert the bed causing the weight of the spring frame to drop out of the head and end and the lot collapse in a heap in a split second.

How to layout our kit as per a diagram which had every item we possessed drawn in either the locker or on the bed. Clothing was folded and pressed into eight inch squares and all other items had their correct place in the world. The pace stick carried by the dreaded Staff Sergeant Metcalf could winkle out minute errors in the pattern and send the offending article clear across the room in the blink of an eye.

Life in those first few days revolved around bulling our kit and learning our new regimental numbers. Mine turned out to be: 24071121. I will never forget that number as long as I live. The Army regimental number dominated every aspect of military life.

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And so we became Intake 116, more than ninety of us, commanded by Lieutenant (Lt) Gillespie, and terrorised by Staff Sergeant (SSgt) Metcalf, Sergeant (Sgt) Rachael and Cpls Moss and Evans. We had six weeks to make the grade for the Pass Off Parade on the Buller Barracks main drill square, or we were out. Within our number were two re-enlistments; Lloyd and Riley. Although they had not served together previously they had both been members of the parachute element of the RCT, 63 Parachute Squadron RCT, based in Aldershot. Members of that squadron wore the distinctive red beret with the RCT cap badge and to qualify had had to complete the Parachute Regiment basic course and complete a certain number of jumps. They also wore the parachute wings on their shoulder and Lloyd and Riley were granted their old regimental numbers and authority to wear the wings, despite having to undergo complete basic recruit training all over again. It seemed that if a soldier wished to re-enlist after having been discharged more than so many months they would need to start again as significant changes in basic military matters may have changed and the most effective way to update those that chose to return to the fold was to make them start again!

Despite the arrogance and air of superiority those two wore they were in fact very helpful in countless ways and must have saved many of us all sorts of problems that would inevitably be encountered as we were thrust into the ways and means of service life.

Learning foot drill was an experience that on the surface seemed totally pointless. And to a raw recruit it seemed totally pointless under the surface as well. The party line was that it inspired and encouraged unquestioning discipline so that when we received an order we obeyed it instantly. This is true from the point of view of the military mandarins but when you are within three ranks of gawky teenagers desperately trying to coordinate uncoordinated limbs with a red faced Sgt Rachael with bulging eyes yelling “left turn, right turn, left turn, right turn” continuously for fifteen minutes you do wonder if there really is any point to it. These thoughts are reinforced by the breathless grumbling from those on the flanks echoing your own thoughts.

But slowly, very slowly it came together. We were initially taught to stand......to attention, at ease and easy. Who would ever have believed so much time could be devoted to instructing young adults how to stand! But we learnt and we learnt how to turn, (at the halt, which means executing a 90 or 180 degree turn in two very distinct movements with a short pause of total motionlessness between them, culminating in a crescendo of foot stamping that was never loud enough for the instructor), how to march and how to stop marching, known as to halt in military speak. How to march and turn and halt. How to salute whilst stationary and on the move whilst looking forward, to the left and to the right. How to march at half speed, understood as slow time, and eventually how to do all of the above with the additional burden of a heavy rifle for company.

A great deal of time was spent on drill throughout the training, and everywhere we went we marched, with our arms swinging exaggeratedly, our heels digging in, our chests stuck out and our stomachs pulled in.

A birds eye view of Buller Barracks at any time would have afforded a science fiction image of robotic clockwork males going every which way, staring straight ahead, in perpetual fear of encountering an officer that required saluting or, worse, an NCO who would find fault with something and start shouting in a language that was incomprehensible.

Drill went hand in hand with turnout in training. At no time did we escape the detailed scrutiny of the instructor before every drill session. Fastidious in detail and impossible to please, the staff insisted that we assigned hours every evening to meticulous cleaning, polishing and pressing.

Our day to day uniform consisted of a blue beret that required repeated shrinking and shaping to encourage it to look more like a beret and not a helicopter landing pad, with an adonised RCT silver star badge, perched just over the left eye, that thankfully required no cleaning, the only concession to spit and polish. A khaki flannel shirt that was thick and very hairy and caused irritation no end had epaulettes that had to be starched and pressed to perfection which were threaded through the tailored slits on the shoulders of the V-neck olive green pullover and buttoned to the “woolly pulley”. Working trousers were a heavy denim material in olive green that had to sport knife like creases and were held

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up with a thick webbed blancoed (with a soluable green paint) belt that sprouted two brass buckles on the back and a four piece buckle that came off and apart for endless polishing every day.

The jumper was tucked inside the trousers and the trousers were tucked into gaiters. These were strange anklets that covered the top of the boot, were blancoed every night as was the belt, and had the additional delight of fixing together with thin boot polished straps that fed into small brass buckles. The trick was to blanco the gaiters with a stiff brush and plenty of water and, when they were dry, polish the straps and buckles using ingenious cardboard templates to avoid getting brasso or black boot polish on the blanco surface.

And then there were the boots. Old soldiers of yestertimes will say how cushy life must have been without the dreaded “ammo” boot with its tough leather sole festooned with metal studs. For we were the first generation to wear the DMS (durable moulded sole) leather boot. It was comfortable after the initial breaking in period but that lasted several weeks. Our two pairs of boots were brand new and very unforgiving throughout our training weeks, and much groaning and blood encrusted foot plasters were the order of the evening in the early stages. Lloyd and Riley, the re-enlistments advocated wearing the boots in a bath to allow them to mould to the feet, and that tip was one of many that made life just a little easier to bear during the hectic, exhausting and bewildering days of recruit training.

Unlike the Guards division, and some other lunatic units who bulled all of the upper part of the boot, we were only required to bull the toecap and heel. The word “only” distorts the actual amount of effort required to bull leather and until you have spent endless hours with a yellow duster tightly wrapped around your right index finger, regularly dipping into a tin of black boot polish and the tin lid full of tap water, (no one would ever have enough spit), to trace endless circles on the leather in the search for the mirror finish, you can have absolutely no idea what it is like. It becomes a large regular part of your daily routine and if it is not the “working boots” you are working on for the following day, it is the “best boots” for the inspection and parade.

The truth is that both pairs had to be nothing short of gleaming at the start of the day, the only difference was that the best boots stayed in the locker and the working boots carried the reluctant owner into mud filled trenches and branch strewn woods. We tried not to look at them by mid morning as the sight of the toe caps that so much love had been lavished on the night before would generate deep feelings of despair within us. Instead we would laugh and joke about how much we were all looking forward to bulling them again that night, and thus we learnt the art of the military sense of humour that would prove so invaluable in the years to come.

There were three basic weapons that we were to become so familiar within those early days and weeks. The Self Loading Rifle (SLR), Sub Machine Gun (SMG) and the Light Machine Gun (LMG). The SLR had a dual role for the recruit as it was also the “arm” carried during drill periods. It had peculiar properties from the drill point of view: it weighed nine and a half pounds when it was drawn out of the armoury and it always seemed to weigh twice as much when it was returned some hours later. The foresight had a special feature that managed to winkle out a single thread in the right armpit of the jumper whilst the rifle was being carried at the “shoulder” and it would then quietly unravel a great hole that would be noticed next by one of the staff who seemed in a perpetual state of screaming at the tops of their voices. This would result in a session of darning that evening at best, or the purchase of another jumper with the dreaded red ink entry in the pay book next payday.

But weapon training was designed to teach us the real purpose of the SLR and LMG. Pistols, rocket launchers and grenades played no part in the basic training of a Royal Corps of Transport driver, they would appear much later. The SLR was, and until the late 1980s when the next generation of rifle was adopted by the Armed Forces, the soldier’s personal weapon. It was kept on a rack, with dozens of others, in a highly secure armoury, and drawn out for all drill and weapon training periods. It was never left unattended for even a moment. And it had to be scrupulously cleaned before returning it to the armoury with much serial and butt number checking. We were taught in groups of about a dozen to strip it, assemble it, load it, unload it and shoot it.

The shooting took place on the ranges and it usually involved a complete day. Targets, strangely enough looking like a German soldier with “square” helmet and rifle running towards us, were placed in metal frames on a pulley arrangement that could be pulled up or down to order exposing the target over the reinforced bank of the butts. The butt party lurked under the lee of the bank and hauled the frames up and down on response to the bark of the senior member of staff in

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charge of the butt party. After the rifles had been fired from distances between a hundred and six hundred yards the butts would be instructed, by way of a wind the handle to ring type of field telephone, to paste up. This involved bringing the large heavy metal frames down to ground level, counting the number of holes in the plywood target and with a brush and battered tin of water based paste cover up the holes with squares of paper held in strips like raffle tickets, in shades of black and brown.

The firing point was a highly disciplined environment and naturally so, due to the high risk of someone getting shot as a result of a careless recruit pointing a loaded, cocked high velocity rifle at someone else. Every step of the way was planned and executed with detailed precision and never was a shot fired without clear precise instructions being given by the firing point officer first. The same basic system works to this day very well and accidents or incidents on the ranges are thankfully a very rare occurrence. I enjoyed the days on the ranges and, without becoming obsessive about competition in later years, became a very good shot consistently qualifying at marksman level in all personal weapons.

As the ranges were some distance from the barracks and town it would involve a journey, in the back of the beloved army truck, the Bedford RL, and this meant the mid-day meal was taken in the field. And it was always “all in stew” and tea. The stew, transported in large insulated boxes and the tea transported in large insulated urns, became the staple food of outdoor activities. There were two choices; take it or leave it. The finicky went hungry.

And we all smoked. It was fashionable in the mid sixties, it was reasonably inexpensive, it was believed to be a good way of coping with the additional stresses of the army lifestyle. Cigarettes held many social keys too. To offer a cigarette was a sign of friendship. To take part in a round between several others was a sign of belonging to a group, and to smoke gave us something to look forward to between long hard periods of training. To hear the magic words “smoke break” during the long days of physically and mentally draining activities was something we all looked forward to. There was little else.

Fieldcraft was another activity that took us outside the barracks. Fieldcraft was the art of living and surviving in the field, or more likely in a wood. We were taught the mysterious tricks to camouflage, moving silently through densely wooded areas in full combat clothing, wearing ammunition pouches and packs, known generally as webbing of which there seemed to be no shortage of for cleaning and blancoing, and carrying our personal weapon, the SLR. Crawling face down on the elbows and knees in a wet, cold and muddy thicket for a couple of hours was taking the school playground game of hide and seek to the absolute limits. No matter how hard we tried to feel mean and warlike it was difficult not to let the thoughts that it was going to take hours that night to clean everything again dominate.

We learnt how to dig a trench six foot long by three foot wide by four feet deep. It would be our home for a night. The skill of the instructors in creating a latticework of string criss crossing two thirds of the trench to support our groundsheet covered with mud and grass was a wonder in field engineering, which we had to perfect, and I for one studied very carefully when we were told that a Landrover would be driven over our trenches with each of us inside them. But it worked and was surprisingly cosy in a sleeping bag, once we overcame the obvious thoughts that a military survival trench and an adult grave were not altogether dissimilar.

The twenty four hour ration pack was introduced and the delights of dehydrated stew hydrated with water boiled in an aluminium mess tin on a tiny hexamine burner in our trenches made the cookhouse in Buller Barracks far more appealing. Yet we survived and enjoyed the Boy Scout wargames because we were becoming a team, a group, a squad.

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Classroom work also played a part in our training and many periods were devoted to the history of the Corps, which strangely enough had only formed two months prior to my joining the RCT, on the fifteenth of July 1965. Before then the RCT had been the Royal Army Service Corps and the formation of the new corps involved drawing in trades from other arms and corps, particularly from the Royal Engineers. I was to meet the resentment of that decision head on in a few months.

The structure of the Army and the riddle of the ranks and their respective badges were slowly unravelled and throughout my service life I never ceased to be surprised at how few non service people understood the organisation. Who got called Sir, who were saluted, when were the badges worn on the right side only and when on both. Everyone was senior to us at that stage and the only ranks we ever got to see were those of our training staff.

In 1965 a soldier was paid in cash, weekly, by presenting his paybook to the paying officer. The format was the same the world over. A table would be set up for the paying officer and the Royal Army Pay Corps SNCO (senior non-commissioned officer). Two of the soldiers to be paid were nominated to be witnesses and they had to stand either side of and behind the officer to observe the transactions. When the Pay Corps SNCO called the names, one at a time and always in alphabetical order, we would march up to the table, halt, salute and hand over the paybook that had been given to us moments beforehand. We did not get to keep our paybook. The SNCO would read off the amount and the paying officer would count it out from the pile of notes, enter the amount into the paybook, sign it and hand it over. We would then pick it up, salute, turn about and march away to instantly hand over the paybook again to another of our number, volunteered for the task. It was a ritual that had to be gone through every week. And throughout the proceedings the dreaded Cpls Moss and Evans would be prowling around us finding fault with this or a problem with that. And the further down the alphabet your surname resided the longer it took.

The very first pay parade I will never forget. Lt Gillespie, the Troop Commander of Intake 116, was the paying officer. We were treated to a series of precision instructions as to how the time honoured tradition would be observed. We had to remain totally silent and get ourselves into an alphabetical line. There were more than ninety of us and we had no idea what day of the week it was, let alone the surname of the all the other recruits, particularly as we had only formed a matter of days before. It seemed obvious to me that with my surname I would be right at the back of the queue and so, hoping that there would be enough money left for me when it eventually got to be my turn, I stood aside and let the others attempt to sort themselves out. All I would then need to do would be to join the back of the line. Simple. What I had not bargained for was Cpl Moss, with his radar sensors at full power, interpreted my logic as total apathy. He demanded to know, at over a hundred decibels, the initial of my surname, and I told him. Either his knowledge of the alphabet did not stretch to the twenty fifth letter or he just could not believe that a week old recruit would question him. Whatever, he appeared to have a very noisy fit and frogged marched me to the guardroom, giving me no chance to explain that the initial of my surname could very easily be interpreted as a question. The Regimental Police (Provost) Sgt released me after half an hour and they probably had a good laugh about it behind the scenes. It did not, however, improve my enjoyment of my basic training.

Another incident during another pay parade also had a long lasting affect on my observations of the Army. Again it was Moss who played a leading role although I didn’t feature on this occasion. By now the pattern of pay parades had been set for some years to come as far as I was concerned as invariably the last two in the line were the natural choice for the task of pay witness. This was a drag because whilst everyone else was able to mingle and collect or repay their debts, have a smoke break and so on, they had to stay until the bitter end and witness the laborious performance of the final consolidation of the paperwork. And Dvr Yendle and myself always seemed to be the last.

So, as pay witness I was to witness a scene that puzzled us all when we related it in the NAAFI (Navy Army Air Force Institute) club, time after time.

All entries in the paybook were made in black, or blue unless they were a negative entry, either a fine or for the payment of lost or damaged kit, in which case they were written in red. On this occasion Lt Gillespie, acting as pay officer, yet again, was using a red biro from the start. Nobody had seemed to notice, not the Pay Corps Sgt, each individual marching up and receiving his money with the usual stamping of feet and saluting, and certainly not the pay witnesses. When suddenly, well into the letter g, Cpl Moss on one of his prowls spotted the offending ink colour and brought the proceedings to a halt. With much blustering all the books written in so far were recalled and

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overwritten in black, me and Yendle were strafed by Moss for not noticing and more than ninety recruits, having only just learnt that rank ladder from private to general, were staggered to witness the power of a corporal.

We had much still to learn.

Throughout the basic training weeks we ran cross country, we ran on the roads, individually and in squads. We marched at speed for hours carrying full packs, webbing and rifles. We met pain on the assault course and fear on the high scrabbling nets. We learnt new tortures in the gymnasiums. We climbed ropes, fell off high beams and we assaulted with heavy medicine balls. We boxed each other until we drew blood or one of us was knocked senseless. And we played many, many team games that demanded much in stamina and endurance.

The physical training element was the hardest to survive. It was the time when the strong realised they were not and the weak thought seriously about giving up. And some did. Yet it was the physical side that taught us all the most about ourselves and each other. The Army was a form of disciplined violence and it was for warfare we were ultimately being trained. There were no short cuts to making the grade. If you were not fit enough, you did not survive.

In truth, the problem was that most, if not all of us had come into the Army very unfit. We were not being moulded into supermen, we were in fact being dragged, reluctantly, into a physical state that able bodied teenagers ought to be in.

The Army was no place for the timid. It was no place for the thug either. Intake 116 had its fair share of both and as time passed we all undertook personal journeys towards the acceptable standards of attitude and ability required for full time service in the Corps.

The NAAFI Roundabout Club in Aldershot town was where we would seek refuge on a Saturday afternoon from the rigors of the barracks and spend some of our precious pay on sausage egg beans and chips and gaze out of the large windows onto a world that we no longer belonged to. That same club would play host to the Saturday night entertainment that invariably degenerated into a full scale drunken brawl between RCT and Parachute Regiment recruits. It was predictable when so many young people, held in an enforced climate of strict discipline sought a means of letting off steam. Coming from a seaside town regularly the scene of pitch battles between the sixties Mods and Rockers, and police, it held no attractions for me.

Drunkenness was, as I was to learn throughout my career, the major cause of trouble and unpleasantness between normally rational and tolerant people. And there were always a few that had to spoil it for the rest. To have a cluster of heavyweights stagger into the barrack room in the early hours of the morning, cause mayhem by turning all the beds with their occupants upside down and throw handfuls of polished and pressed kit out of second storey windows into the wet courtyard was to prove the downside of Army life for many of us in those early days, and for years after. One of the sorrows of service life is to discover what a pain a friend can become when they drink too much.

In November 1965, after watching those intakes before us “pass off” the Buller Barracks drill square at fortnightly intervals, it became our turn. Throughout the training we had individually been scored on all aspects of the programme and each intake presented a best recruit, the one with the highest overall score. The result was announced a few days before the parade and as no running score had been published during our training it was to be a complete surprise to most of us. (Indeed, most of us would have been more than pleased to know that we had made the grade at all and would therefore be eligible to progress to the driver training phase).

It was hence no more of a surprise than to me to discover that the decision was to be made from either me or Dvr Phillips.

To make the final decision the Regimental Sergeant Major of the training Regiment, RSM Genever, was invited to watch Phillips and I drill on the main square, in front of the rest of Intake 116, in quick and slow time, and to choose the best recruit.

It was me.

And I was thrilled. I hadn’t achieved very much up to that date in my entire life, and from that moment I knew that there was a career for me in the Royal Corps of Transport.

The parade was held on the main square of Buller Barracks in fine weather, despite being

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November. The inspecting officer was Maj Gen Sir Kenneth Darling and he presented me with a medal engraved with my number, rank and name. The medal is rather unusual in that on the obverse was the Royal Army Service Corps badge but on the reverse, after my name, it said RCT. All subsequent best recruit medals featured the RCT badge, and those issued prior to July 1965 were for RASC recruits. This made my medal even more special to me, although some were quick to point out the fact that my career had already started with a mistake!

My mother, father, brother Derek and grandmother travelled to Aldershot for the parade. This was an unheard of accomplishment for my family who did not travel anywhere, at any time for any reason. I was proud of them that day although I did learn years later that the return journey for them was a nightmare of breakdowns and faulty navigation. Still, they made the effort for my big day and did not embarrass me too much in the NAAFI after the parade.

Although the basic military training was over at long last we were still in a training

environment and were to be posted to 6 Training Regiment RCT located at Yeovil in Somerset. And we travelled, en masse by train the following week.

We were met by JNCOs (junior non-commissioned officer) who were a lot less tick-tock than we had experienced up to then and the whole atmosphere was more relaxed and less hostile. We still had to parade in the morning for inspection, have barrack room inspections and still be chased around by the staff. But that was all within Houndsdown Camp.

On the other side of the road was the driver training wing, staffed almost entirely by civilian instructors. Here we were to qualify as B3 drivers, our first step on the trade ladder, the basic requirement of the RCT driver, and with it - more pay.

Pay was a complex subject but essentially we were paid a basic rate on joining and the engagement we joined for determined the scale. Some joined for three years only, others for six and so on in three yearly increments. The longer we joined up for the more we were paid but the harder and more expensive it would be to leave. Everyone enlisted for at least three years as most of us had, but as we entered a less regimental atmosphere with more talk of trades and postings to “working” units, we started to take stock of our futures. I altered my engagement to the maximum of twenty two years to ensure full career opportunities and the best rate of pay. The trade structure in the Corps was B and A trades graded from 3 up to 1 and each had their own place on the pay banding scheme. Higher grades were only achievable after experience had been gained and proven and were often a prerequisite for promotion which itself offered the attraction of higher pay. Allowances for postings overseas and for specific abilities such as parachuting, diving and flying rounded off the equation, and it would have been very difficult to find two soldiers with identical incomes once they had left the training organisation.

So the B3 driver trade was essential and we lost our identity as Intake 116 and became individuals.

1965 was still six years away from the introduction by the government of Heavy Goods Vehicle driving licences, and four wheeled vehicles were categorised as either light or heavy locomotives. The car was a light locomotive but a three ton truck was heavy. The only qualification to be able to drive a truck was to have a car licence and be over twenty one. Members of the Armed Forces had a dispensation over the age requirement and their driving licences were endorsed with a stamp declaring exemption to the age requirements when in use for Naval, Military and Air Force purposes.

Some of us had already passed the Ministry driving test before joining the Army, and some had not. Those that had not were trained in Landrovers to drive by the civilian instructors and the rest, including me, were allotted to our very own Bedford 4x4 RL general service three ton truck, plus

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personal instructor.

Our days were spent trundling about the roads of the West Country with frequent stops for tea breaks and lunch at transport cafes that now no longer exist. They had names like The Frying Pan on the A303, The Copper Kettle on the A30, and Black Cat. We were always fascinated by how we would drive for hours without seeing another military vehicle and then, on instruction from our instructor we would find and turn into a cafe to see dozens of identical trucks in the park already. No one was ever first it seemed. I could never have known then that some years later I would be a senior member of staff of just such a training unit.

But those days were wonderful. Just hours and hours of driving a large truck. No one shouting the odds, no rushing to be at the next place for drill or weapon training, and only a few evenings engaged in hours and hours of bulling and pressing for guard duty.

On some days we took out a Landrover for the experience and on others we would stay in the classroom for training on mechanical principles. We learnt, in detail, how a vehicle works, how to identify faults and how to repair some of them. Major breakdowns were the domain of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) but we would have to deal with minor defects.

We were also introduced to the military transport system and how the front line units relied on the RCT to resupply them with the essentials of war in battle conditions; food, fuel and ammunition. Cross country driving techniques by day and by night were taught and we drove hundreds of miles in convoys, without instructors in the cabs, and we had even more fun. The horrors of war were not real to us. We were teenagers driving grown up vehicles, and we were getting paid for it. Life was great at Yeovil.

I will always have a soft spot for the Bedford RL although it was about that time that the trials were being carried out for the next generation of general service transport and during one week in January 1966 I became part of a team of four chosen to drive the four different prototype trucks that were being evaluated for replacing the RL. They were a new Bedford called the MK, a Ford, an Austin and a Dodge. We had to drive them and drive them by day and night. Unloaded and loaded with pallets of ammunition boxes filled with stones. On main roads and cross country. We changed over regularly so that we all experienced each of the trucks. We had a marvellous time, and then they were taken away to somewhere else for others to evaluate, until they fell to pieces. I like to think that even in those early days of my career I helped to choose the Bedford MK as the new truck of the British Army, which was the one eventually chosen and survived almost unchanged until the late eighties.

During my time at Yeovil a Major from the RCT Records Office in Hastings came and interviewed each of us. That interview determined our futures in the Corps and most of us were never likely to see or hear from each other again once our posting dates arrived. There were many different trades within the RCT and within each of those trades there were many different units in which to serve, in many different countries. Most of us were destined to travel from Yeovil alone.

I cannot remember the name of the Major, if indeed I ever knew it. When my turn came, in alphabetical order naturally, I had the benefit of hearing every other destiny. Those that were to remain as general transport drivers would receive postings for specific Regiments in the UK, Germany, somewhere in the Middle or Far East, or even one of the more obscure parts of the world. Others of our number would be going on to units training specialist trades such as clerks, staff car drivers, tank transport drivers and radio operators. But a surprise was awaiting me at my interview, because for reasons I to this day know not, no other recruit from Intake 116 was to join the Maritime branch of the Corps. I was told that I was to be posted to the RCT Port unit at Marchwood, located on the west bank of Southampton Water, for training as an A3 Heavy Crane Operator! This was good news from the

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point of view that I was to become an A tradesman, with consequently a higher rate of pay, but a crane operator was not quite what I had in mind when I selected the RCT. In fact I did not know what a heavy crane was. I was to find out a few weeks later and I was to be very pleased with myself. So that night we all trooped down to the town of Yeovil and drank lots of very cheap cider to consecrate our new destinies and we were all very ill. I have not touched cider from that day to this, which is surprising when I realise that I seemed to have settled in the heart of cider country.

Our postings arrived and we started to disperse to the four corners of the world. Strangely I remember very few of the recruits from those days. Probably because I saw so few of them ever again. But Cpl Moss and I were to serve together, and one Fred Eaton would also share some of my space in a few years to come. But that is all, out of ninety recruits, apart from occasional fleeting times when at an airport or on an exercise I would say hello to a vaguely familiar face.

My orders were to join 17 Port Regiment RCT at Marchwood in the early months of 1966, and as I stood completely alone on the exposed and deserted platform of Yeovil Junction railway station with all of my possessions in a suitcase and kitbag I felt very apprehensive. I had every reason to,

My life was about to change into an altogether different gear.............

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y introduction to 17 Port Regiment came sooner than I had expected. I initially travelled from Yeovil to Salisbury and had to connect with the Scotland to Southampton train. When I boarded it I was more than a little surprised to find virtually every seat occupied by a

soldier in combat dress. RCT soldiers to boot and all ranks in the advanced state of sitting on a train for hours and drinking beer to help to pass the time. My appearance provoked squeals of ridicule as, with my new Army pattern suitcase, kitbag and haircut I could only be a recruit in transit.

When they discovered that I was an RCT recruit en route to my first unit, their unit no less, I was treated like a long lost son and assured that they would get me to my new home without fail. I was not sure if I should be pleased or dismayed at having run into hundreds of members of 17 Port Regiment RCT returning to Marchwood from their annual camp in Perthshire.

At Southampton railway station the now familiar Bedford RL trucks waited for the multitudes and I was bundled into one of them with my heart going ten to the dozen. But they were true to their word and after about half an hour we arrived at Marchwood and I was noisily dumped, with kit, in a heap outside the guardroom. It was here that I met Sgt Parry, the provost Sgt for the regiment and terror to all within screaming distance. He seemed to go berserk at the sight of me and I can remember being petrified at the prospect of spending the rest of my career at the hands of such a beast. Sgt “Taff” Parry’s bark was much worse than his bite but at that time I was in no position to assess that. After being grilled for a while I was allowed to speak and explain who I was, where I had come from and where the hell I thought I was going. I eventually found myself in a barrack room within the camp, in a bedspace with my name on the locker door and, after the obligatory tramping all over the camp with my bedding, with time to take stock of my lot.

McMullen Barracks, my new home, was a comparatively modern complex by the standards of Mandora, Buller and Houndsdown, my only experience of Army camps to date. Several two storey buildings were well spread out in an open plan style with much mown grass in evidence. A large single storey dining hall sat mid layout and the drill square was located adjacent to the NAAFI complex. The Officers Mess was a drive away and the Sergeants Mess was well away from the barrack blocks, and the whole place appeared quiet and peaceful for an Army barracks. The real reason for this was that during the day hardly anything happened in McMullen

Barracks. The military port was on the other side of the road, a mile and a half away. In the far distance could clearly be seen the ranks of Southampton dockside cranes peering over the funnels and superstructures of the many merchant ships berthed alongside. A high chimney close by, attached permanently to the Marchwood power station dominated the view to the north and the perimeter of the camp was lined with trees and bushes.

My room, which I was to share with six others, was located on the ground floor of the 53 Port Sqn RCT accommodation block. There were four such rooms in all, two up and two down, with several individual rooms, called bunks, for JNCOs, and large spacious and spotless washrooms on each floor. The beds and lockers were wooden and new and the painted walls were bright and pristine.

I was not alone in the room it seemed as the six other beds were made up and later that afternoon the occupants returned. They had all recently outgrown the Junior Leaders Regiment RCT and were to start the same course as me the following week. They were: Martin Atterbury, George Coote, Jake Carter, Dave Huggett, Taff Jones and Pete Shepherd. I had not even heard of Junior Leaders but this group had been pals for the past two years and it was clear that I was not from their school, for that was effectively what the Junior Leaders Regiment (JLR) was. They were friendly enough but I was to remain on the outside, so to speak. (As it turned out, years afterwards, the

M

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privileged start they all had in the Corps produced very little in the way of results in adult service). Two others joined us on the course also but they seemed very old to us then as they had families and lived in married quarters. As teenagers we didn’t relate to that.

The course lasted many weeks and, befitting an A trade grading, was very comprehensive. The heavy crane was just a part of it and we became skilled operators of all manner of lifting and moving vehicles and equipment.

Not only were we trained to use shore side heavy equipment but also to operate the twenty and ten ton cranes fitted to the recently introduced fleet of logistic landing ships, named after the knights of the round table.

Our weeks were full and interesting and the whole new world of port operations unfolded. The port trades consisted of the A traded Heavy Crane Operator and the B traded Stevedore. There was little love lost generally between the stevedores and the crane ops due mainly to the complete difference in status within the trade structure, but each respected the skills required of the other and the two trades were inter-dependent. And which ever way it was viewed, it was hard work.

Two “working” squadrons, 51 and 52, were based at Marchwood and 53 Sqn administered the training. Not only was our once yearly course being staged but upgrading courses for both trades were

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also running at various times. It was a busy place. Ships regularly arrived at the military port for loading and unloading with troops, vehicles and supplies coming from and going to places with exotic sounding names. Some of these ships were owned and crewed by the RCT and others were large civilian ships chartered to the Army with Merchant crews.

One element of the course I did not enjoy related to the Stothert and Pitt dockside cranes. It was often very cold, wet and windy during the course in January and February and the control cab of those cranes was over sixty feet up. At the start of the day, those of us on the S&P element, with the instructor, would negotiate a narrow metal ladder running up the outside of one of the four supporting legs. Our first stop would be the engine room, just below the giant slewing ring, which was just below the control cab. The large diesel engine had to be started by running starting initially a small donkey engine. This would then provide the power to turn over the main engine and start it, when the donkey engine would be cut off. Because of the intense cold at that time of the year, and at the mercy of the wind at that height, we were taught the trick of setting fire to a metal bin containing diesel soaked cotton waste. Once we had all gathered round it and stopped shivering it would be wafted about everywhere to thaw out the fuel lines and warm things up a bit. I learnt just how inflammable diesel isn’t in those days, particularly when the instructor, John Hulley, used to extinguish cigarettes in buckets of diesel fuel!

Once the giant engine was running out we would troop onto the precarious walkways, trying to convince ourselves and each other how afraid we were not, step out onto the ladder again, and up to the control cab. After throwing the power switch we had the monster at our mercy and could raise and lower the hook, lift and lower the massive jib to extend or shorten the reach, and slew left or right 360 degrees. The view was spectacular and we were warm and dry. Not so bad after all, particularly when we could see others on the dockside braving the wind and rain.

The element I did not enjoy however was the essential journey from the cab to the end of the jib, some ninety feet in the air. This was part of the task as servicing of the pulley wheels was part of the responsibility. In the past the jibs of the cranes had collided when they were too close together, they travelled up and down the jetty on wide rails embedded in the surface for access to different parts of the dock, and as a result the catwalk and supporting rail was distorted in places. Climbing around bent and broken metal on a swaying latticework finger in the freezing cold over the brown, beckoning water was no picnic. The instructor had to slew the jib out over the water in case we fell off. We were told that we were still unlikely to survive the fall but it would not be so messy for those detailed to scrape us up! Not very long after our course the powers that be decided that it was no longer safe for that exercise.

That decision would have disappointed one Marchwood military lunatic by the name of Lyons. His party trick was to jump from one jib end to another, a feat only possible if the two jibs were pointing at each other and that could only be achieved if they were over the jetty. But after all was said and done we became dab hands at controlling a several ton container at the end of the line in full swing. Let the load get out of control and the potential for very expensive damage to the ship or vehicles on the quayside was extremely high, as I was to discover some years later on completely the other side of the world.

It is debateable as to which item of very expensive equipment we handled gave the most delight, but for me it was the AEC ten ton lorry mounted crane. The cab roof of the truck cradled the jib when it was stowed for road travel and it projected thirty six feet beyond the front of the flat fronted cab. The driver and passenger could only see each other by peering through the narrow gap formed between the engine cover and the underside of the cradle. Just enough room for the passenger to pass lit cigarettes to the driver. The noise level prevented any conversation and journeys were long and slow. No power steering in those days, mighty unforgiving gear levers that would not engage if

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the ratio between gear and engine speed was not precisely right, and the added fun of weaving the thirty six foot jousting pole through built up areas made it a truck not for the faint hearted. I loved driving them.

The crane on the back was a Jones. Unlike the dockside cranes, when the jib was raised and lowered altering the reach, the hook did not remain the same height from the ground. Therefore to jib out, reaching further out, the load had to be lifted to prevent it going down as the end of the jib did. The hallmark of a good operator was the ability to slew and jib in or out simultaneously without wrecking anything or everything in the surrounding area. Stevedores, whose job it was to load and unload the hook, were often sent running for cover.

A task that got the adrenaline pumping involved using the Jones for a particularly hazardous task. One of the craft in use with the Corps around the port was a raft called a mexifloat, made up of large metal floating pontoons pinned together. The flexibility of these rafts was fascinating. They could form floating bridges quite capable of supporting the weight of a tank, and they could be fitted with gigantic Harbourmaster engines and driven about. Fitted with movable ramps at the front they could act as landing craft on and off beaches or to logistic ships anchored away from the shore.

Each of the pontoons was the size of a large truck and weighed several tons. But they were hollow. If they leaked they weighed more. To lift them out of the water for storage, maintenance and painting, (they were painted often), the crane operator would reverse the lorry mounted crane to the absolute edge of the quay, extend the supporting legs for maximum lift and raise the pontoon sections out of the water, slew ninety degrees to the side and plonk them onto the waiting outstretched arms of the large Michigan rough terrain fork lifts which would trundle them away. When the jib of the crane is extended, for reach, the load capacity of the crane is reduced, it is all to do with the principle of levers apparently. To reach out far enough to lift the large pontoons vertically out of the water, the weight of the mexifloat would be very close to the safe working load at that particular setting. Sometimes the safe working load would be exceeded and bells would ring and lights would flash, if the pontoon contained water.

Technically we would not lift it but to refuse meant all sorts of problems for the others; pumping out after removing the inspection hatches held on with dozens of nuts and bolts, rescheduling the lift, and so on. We always had a go if we could.

The first time I did the job and I hooked myself a heavy one I overrode the safe working load devices and carried on lifting. The front of the truck started to paw the air like a begging dog and the front wheels cleared the ground by more than six feet. Total value of crane then, about £25,000. Total weight of vehicle and load, about thiry tons. A heavy and expensive balancing act but it earned me a beer in the NAAFI that night. It seemed a reasonable arrangement.

WO2 Brown, a very quiet and smiling man unlike any warrant officer I had yet seen, directed the training team with Sgt Dave Parker, Cpl Eric Corlette and Dvrs Wedge and Hulley always with us. There were, of course, many other names and faces as this was my first Regiment and they all played a part in my life in the mid sixties at Marchwood.

Martin Atterbury had an older brother, Dick, (the sons of the then quartermaster of 6 Training Regiment RCT at Yeovil), serving at Marchwood in 51 Port Sqn. Dick had completed the previous course and we three often got together socially. And then the two of them bought a car between them and we became the Three Musketeers. The car was a red and white Austin Nash Metropolitan, built for the American market and fitted with the BMC B series 1500 cc engine. It had a single bench seat and column gears and a valve radio as standard fitting. I loved it and promised myself one, one day.

In the sixties private cars were not in great evidence on Army camps. They were too expensive to purchase and run. The few cars that were parked here and there generally belonged to the senior ranks and officers. Car parking was never a problem and to have the chance to drive was always

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longed for. I could not drive the “Metro” because of the lack of insurance, but to have the opportunity to travel in it occasionally was great.

But sometimes a couple of us, without the opportunity to drive, would take the number 59 bus from Calshot into Southampton, buy the Echo newspaper and, over a cup of tea in the bus station cafe, pick out advertisements for used cars we wanted to drive and phone the numbers. If the address was not too far from the town centre we would arrive as a prospective buyer and, after the customary walk around, peer into the boot and kick the tyres, we would be offered the test drive. With the owner tucked up safely in the passenger seat having assured us it was insured for any driver, (a prospective buyer without a car is hardly going to have insurance cover themselves after all), we would go for a spin. That used to satisfy the yearning for a drive for a while and we would justify it to ourselves that it gave the seller a bit of practice at lying about the faults it did not have. We drove some nice cars in those days. How else could we sit in the NAAFI and pontificate about the virtues of the Humber Hawk over the Ford Zodiac if we had never driven one.

My mother’s mother, always known as Nanny Mac, came to live in the new forest at New Milton. I have no idea why. She lived alone and I would sometimes cycle to see her at the weekends, despite it being a very long cycle ride of some considerable miles, on my aged bike I brought from home on the train. One day, during the summer of 1966, she arranged to meet me at Totton, a town size village not far from Marchwood on the way to Southampton, and bought me a brand new Raleigh Runabout moped. I was over the moon. Always a motorcycle fan but never allowed to have one in my early youth, and unable to afford one now, this was a compromise I grabbed willingly with both hands.

Apart from making the trip to New Milton much easier I was also able to visit all the south coast towns and villages in pursuance of my love of sailing. I had never been a successful or keen field sportsman. Whenever a school football or cricket team was being picked I always seemed to have been the extra person. It didn’t take me long at the secondary school, where fate had shovelled me, to discover that the school sailing club was just the thing for me. The East Essex coast boasts some of the finest sailing centres in the country and I became hooked.

During my time at 17 Port I joined the sailing club and raced the Bosun dinghy, the standard service sailing craft for many years, with some success. My ability opened the door to the Army’s sporting opportunities and days were often granted for entry into competitions and regattas all over the south. The Army Sailing Club was based at Netley on the opposite side of Southampton Water to Marchwood, and many events were staged there through the summer. I learnt the finer points of dinghy racing there and the management of race days as an assistant to officials.

I was posted after my course, along with the all others, to 51 Port Sqn RCT, my first real working posting. I only had to move my possessions from one barrack room to another belonging to 51. Once I had left the protection of the training squadron and entered the real world of the military port life seemed to slow down. For the first time my routine was not directed by a set programme as it had been at Aldershot, Yeovil and for the first few months at Marchwood. I, and the others who had by now dropped the tag of “ex Junior Leader” for their own good, became members of the Plant Troop in 51. There was also a Lighterage Troop (for the RCT water craft trades such as seaman, marine engineer and navigator) and a Freight Handling Troop of stevedores. The rest of the squadron personnel were clerks, cooks or worked in the stores and formed the Squadron HQ. 51 Port Sqn RCT was commanded by a Major, several other officers in the shape of Captains and Lieutenants were in evidence and the Squadron Sergeant Major, a Warrant Officer class 2, was everywhere.

Sgt George Wilkie, a red haired Scot, was a hard man and so were the majority of the troop; Johnny Merquis, Tam Shaw, Phil Boyd to name but a few. We were new meat for the old soldiers and they had us running around fetching and carrying, cleaning and servicing with little in the way of actual crane driving jobs to be done. For each piece of equipment in the troop there were three people and the new boys were at the back of the queue when it came to meaty tasks. Such was life initially but I started to take stock of my life in the RCT then and wondered where I was heading.

I would have liked to have been in the Lighterage Troop, had I known anything about it when the postings were being decided in Yeovil, for they seemed to hover somewhere between the Army and the Navy. Their uniform was different than ours in that they wore blue trousers and shirts in working uniform and in the winter when we had the V necked woolly pulley they had thick cream polo necked seaman jumpers. But they were still soldiers in the RCT and out of the port environment they wore the same as the rest of us. They spent their time afloat in launches, work boats, landing craft

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and on mexifloats. 20 Maritime Regiment RCT was the home of the trades afloat and was located at Gosport in Hampshire. There were berthed the larger LCT that sailed the world and were crewed entirely by RCT officers and soldiers. I applied to transfer to the seaman trade, thinking that my sailing proficiency would have some sway, and was laughed at in no uncertain terms by my superiors. Tough luck, I was told, too late, I was told. Then followed the lecture about how many millions of pounds had been spent on training me to be an indispensable heavy crane operator and I knew I would not be leaving my new world for some time.

But I became a good operator and popular with the stevedores who knew the job would be done without delay and properly. I felt very comfortable with large vehicles and heavy equipment and bounced my way around the port on the balloon tyred Michigans as well as the best of them. Marchwood port covered an enormous area and the perimeter road was over three miles long. The military railway, connected to the British Rail system, ran through the port for the transportation of vehicles and stores that arrived from all over. Indeed, we actually travelled by train from McMullen Barracks to work each morning it was so far to the port. I got to know every inch of that port. Life centred around the gigantic sheds that were home for the cranes and fork lifts and our rest room, within the sheds was a dirty, smoky corner

filled with old car seats and a table for cracked tea mugs and playing cards like blankets. Our uniform consisted of army overalls, boots and beret. It was a far cry from the Army I had expected but it was good to be part of a team with real work to do.

The real work was the constant movement of freight in and out of the port and we worked when required. Ships arrived and left according to tides and it was not unusual to be driving in and out of the gaping bow doors of a Landing Ship Logistic (LSL) or Landing Craft Tank (LCT) at one in the morning. The Army was then almost everywhere on the globe and RCT maritime elements from Regimental strength to isolated troops were dotted all over the world map. Throughout the Mediterranean, in many ports in the Gulf and Middle East and all over the Far East. The British Army in its thousands serving in West Germany was also supplied through Marchwood and the North Sea European ports by service shipping. It was a busy life and had very interesting elements to it.

In the Autumn of 1966, a year after I had joined the Army, another door creaked open which started me up the rickety and all important ladder of promotion.

It became clear that the maritime trades were a closed shop. Postings were predictable revolving around Marchwood, the Middle and Far East, and Marchwood. Promotion was dependant on vacancies and they only appeared if someone died or retired. The vacancies were filled by the natural

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successors and everyone else moved slightly as a result. Woe betide anyone who tried to buck the system. Prior to the RCT forming in 1965 Marchwood and the maritime element belonged to the Royal Engineers and to a man they were not at all happy at having to re-badge, particularly when the RE was still in existence. The majority of those at Marchwood had been at Marchwood for years. Prospects for “getting on” were very poor in the maritime world, despite the high profile portrayed by the Corps to the outside world.

My chance came through a different door. The gymnasium door to be precise. Volunteers were required to train as Assistant Physical Training Instructors and with the qualification went a local, unpaid stripe as Lance Corporal. Not much, but something extra to life for an eighteen year old. I did the course, with two others from Marchwood, at the school of PT in Blandford Forum in Dorset. It was hard physical work and I struggled but I did qualify and I was a JNCO.

I worked full time as a PT instructor in the gymnasium with two others under the direction of the Army Physical Training Corps WO2, Mr Sandford, on a detachment for a couple of months and learnt the art of trying to persuade overweight, uninterested stevedores to run up and down the gym carrying a medicine ball between their knees. I learnt when to not bother too.

About a year after I had first arrived at Marchwood, I travelled, by train, with hundreds of others, to Cultybraggon in Perthshire, for the annual camp. Two weeks of adventure training, sport and excitement! I realized, as we travelled back, that my maritime life had turned a full circle and I wondered if there would be any poor unfortunate recruits waiting on the platform at Salisbury bound for Southampton. But there was not.

So there I was, an acting lance corporal, assistant PT instructor, heavy crane operator (A3), member of 51 Port Sqn RCT and based at Marchwood for the foreseeable future. And just as I was resigning myself to my fate, it all changed.

To be summoned to the SSM’s office was not generally good news and as I had to relinquish my seat behind the controls of the 20 ton crane on board the LSL Sir Galahad for a colleague to continue the job to get there I was worried. I was steered into the OC’s office and given the bad news. Bad news for Dvr someone or other (the name has long been forgotten) but good news for me. This other person, a member of the plant troop in 52 Sqn, had got himself into some serious mischief and could not now be posted to 10 Port Sqn RCT the following month as planned, and as I was young, free and single, I would go in his place. 10 Port was a part of 33 Regiment RCT in Singapore. I had jumped the queue. I had about three weeks to take some leave before going to the other side of the world and I was delighted. I can clearly remember the excitement I felt when I drew all my tropical kit from the Stores. Strange items of clothing with even stranger names: hosetops, puttees, jungle boots, OG (olive green) shirts and shorts. I was given a brand new plywood box to pack all my kit that was not needed immediately on arrival, which I would not see again until several weeks later in Singapore after it had travelled by sea. I was to fly, by British Eagle Airways, from Heathrow, alone.

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he flight, in a four-prop Britannia, took more than twenty-four hours and went via Kuwait, Colombo in Ceylon, and Kuala Lumpa in Malaya. I hoped secretly that I gave the impression to all the other passengers that I was a seasoned world traveller, even though a day trip to Calais

from the end of Clacton pier was my only foreign trip up to that point. On reflection I doubt that I did, and with even more reflection I doubt that any of the other passengers would have been bothered anyway. But when you are a nineteen year old A3 heavy crane operator flying half way around the world, you think that it matters.

We landed finally at Paya Leba airport, Singapore, late at night and nothing could have prepared me for the wall of heat I stepped out into that night. And the peculiar smell that pervades everywhere was so new and mysterious. It was a very humid heat and even at midnight I felt damp in the heavy European clothes I arrived in. People were milling about all over the modern terminal in shirtsleeves and a glance in any direction captured several different cultures. It was quite a shock to the system and I felt very relieved when I spied the familiar RCT cap badge with LCpl Smith, the 10 Port Sqn duty driver that night, under it.

Singapore is not unlike the Isle of Wight in shape and size, but that is about all it has in common. We had to travel from one side of the island to the other to reach Gloucester Barracks, my new home to be, and Lcpl Smith could not resist the temptation of giving me a guided tour right through the city centre on the way. We travelled in a long wheel base open topped Landrover and my senses reeled at the sights, sounds and smells so different from anything I had experienced before. Eventually we arrived at the barracks and crept up the hilly paths between the wooden rooms with open shutters to the four man room waiting for me. The buildings were single storey tropical open plan designs and my bed had two sheets and a pillow on the mattress. Nothing else was necessary in that temperature. A large fan twirled quietly, and my locker was identical to the one I had just vacated in Marchwood. That somehow fascinated me. Here I was on the other side of the universe and I had an identical locker.

The barracks, totally silent except for the honk of the bull frogs and the constant buzz of crickets, was perched on the side of a hill, on the south side of the island, with the lights of the city in the distance on full display. This was a totally different world for sure. My guide and answerer of all my questions informed me that I would not start work for ten days, to allow myself to get acclimatised, but he would take me to the port, some three miles away, in the morning to book in, get my kit sorted out and have a look around. My body clock was almost exactly twelve hours out of step and I could hardly sleep. I watched a large lizard wander about the ceiling for what felt like hours before I finally crashed out.

10 Port Sqn and 18 Amphibious Sqn, located in a private little harbour called Tanjong Berlayer, was quite different from Southampton Water. Most of the buildings were white to reflect the sun. The squadron offices were strung along two levels of embankment overlooking the jetty and slipway into the warm water and the port area was enclosed in a horseshoe shaped bay. Palm trees were everywhere and geographically we were situated at the end of the industrial ports along the southern coast. About a mile in

front of us was the small island of Pulau Brani, the base for 37 Maritime Sqn and 75 LCT Sqn (Landing Craft Tank), and another larger island, called Blakang Mati, a little further to the east, was the home of the Regimental Headquarters of 33 Regiment RCT, to whom all these squadrons belonged.

The waterways teemed with craft, from ocean going ships to hundreds of sampans, little outboard driven local water taxis. RCT landing craft, launches and work boats also plied their way between the islands and Tanjong Berlayer. The Corps flag flew high above the port and faces I had seen before at Marchwood were dotted about on my first visit to the squadron. I felt less strange, just

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different, as time passed. Familiar also were the Michigans and Jones cranes. This ability of the British Army to recreate its surroundings anywhere in the world was something I would eventually get used to, but this early in my life it was an unusual experience.

Some confusion arose when I booked in as they were expecting Dvr Young as the short notice replacement, not Lcpl Young as I had been for several months. In truth I was only a local LCpl at Marchwood but when I had left the chief clerk of the squadron winked and said if I carried it with me the new unit might let me continue to wear it. As it turned out they did, until they were able to establish whether I was a LCpl or not. By the time they did, some weeks later, my promotion to substantive LCpl was published and I never stopped wearing it!

My visit to the SQMS clothing stores, on the first day, did not fail to confound me. After lovingly carrying all the new shirts, shorts and trousers in tropical olive green, issued to me at Marchwood, the SQMS took them straight out of my arms and threw them onto a heap of others. He then gave me a chit in exchange. I would never wear my new clothes it seemed, I had just brought them out to replenish the stocks! My chit would get me a fitting at the military tailors shop in Gloucester Barracks and my clothes would be made to measure from the materials supplied by the Army in the first place. Welcome to the Far East.

The footwear was a peculiar set of items too. After putting on socks these long footless, blue hosetops were pulled on and then the boots. The bottom of the hosetops would be level with the top of the DMS boot and to join the two together brown puttees were wound round and round the ankle and secured by tucking in the ribbon on the ends. A very odd set up but remarkably comfortable. To finish it all off we wore red cloth flashes to poke out of the hosetop turnovers on the outside of each leg. This all set off the tailored shorts fastened by the new RCT stable belt in the Corps colours of red white and

blue, and the open necked OG shirt with the sleeves rolled up and pressed flat. The clever, but not so wise ones, cut their sleeves off just above the elbow to make the turn-up easier to press. They were soon caught out when we found ourselves working beyond six in the evening and sleeves were ordered down, to avoid insect bites. (Others often wondered how the insects knew when it was six and to start biting). The beret remained the same.

The Lighterage Troop personnel wore black non slip shoes and thin knee length socks. I still wished I could transfer.

Now that I was no longer fresh out of training, but a LCpl serving in the Far East, I started to add qualifications to my credit. I passed the JMQC (Junior Military Qualifications Certificate) to be eligible for the rank of corporal and I also passed the Driver B2 grade within the first few months of my tour. Eighteen months later I passed the Driver B1 course held at the Headquarters of the Far East Land Forces in Tanglin Barracks, and during that time the film “The Virgin Soldiers” was being made on location in Singapore and we frequently saw Lynne Redgrave and Hywel Bennett in the same barracks.

Jungle survival courses were regularly staged at the Jungle Warfare school in Malaya and they were a far cry from the fieldcraft training periods we had at Aldershot. Catching and cooking snakes did not appeal to everyone on the course. It did not appeal to anyone on the course come to think of it.

Malaya was accessible across the causeway and we had occasion to go into Malaya many times by road and sea for exercises and annual camp. The contrast of hundreds of miles of dense jungle to the hectic concrete life of Singapore City was always a shock. The eastern coast of Malaya

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was a picture postcard of tropical deserted beaches and crystal clear blue seas for hundreds of miles. There were only two roads running south to north, one up the east coast and one up the west. Both of them left much to be desired in parts and in the rainy season were often quite impassable. At intervals along the roads were tiny villages that time had not touched. Towns were few and far between and were sparsely inhabited by western standards.

The city of Singapore was teeming with life at all times of the day and night, although the life-style differed with the times. During the day the city centre contrasted two approaches to the subject of spending money. The large expensive shops with branded name products were a world apart from the streets of small shanty shops and stalls selling a profusion of electrical products and clothing. Due to the heat all the shops had wide open fronts in these places, (the top shops in the top areas were naturally air conditioned), and with every second shop selling radios and record players a deafening cacophony of Eastern and Western music would assault the ears of the milling crowds. The multitude of “cook it in front of you and you eat it in front of the cook” stalls produced a permanent smell to the city that mingled strongly with the filthy, polluted and stinking river smells. An acquired taste for the visitor but simply a part of the way of life for the resident. Cameras, watches and the latest in tape records were piled high at the front of shop after shop. It is worth noting here that the cassette was then in fierce competition with the eight track continuous tape player and it was to be a few years before the cassette eventually won the day.

The noise from the roads and street traffic added to the overall city sounds. The Singapore driver was not shy when it came to communicating with the outside world by means of the horn. The black and yellow Farina bodied Austin Cambridge and Morris Oxford taxis, fitted with diesel engines, were everywhere. They jostled with the cycle based trishaws that provided an alternative for the tourist or the poor. The Singapore trishaw differed from the Hong Kong variety, which had the rider in front of the two seater chair, in that the bicycle was fitted to the side of the seat, sidecar style. But one thing that they did have in common, which I was to discover in the future when I would go to Hong Kong, was that they were all ridden by aged men of mere skin and bones, hardly capable of getting on without help, let alone pedalling at any speed with two heavyweight passengers aboard. But they did and they did remarkably well. There were ranks and ranks of them parked outside the Britannia Club all day, and all night.

The Britannia Club was the Club for the services in Singapore. Every Army camp, every Naval base and every Air Force station had their own NAAFIs and clubs but every service man and woman had the Britannia Club. By day we could relax in a tropical environment and play various sports and games in the grounds, swim in the large pool, or eat in the large dining room. By night entertainment of some sort would be in evidence with vast amounts of Tiger beer consumed by all. Entrance was free, on production of the treasured service identity card. The club was located immediately across the road from the famous Raffles Hotel.

Visiting services were also welcomed and at that time the Americans were well into their campaign in Vietnam, and Singapore was swarming with US soldiers and sailors on R&R, (rest and recuperation). They usually had four months pay in their pockets and four days in which to spend it. The British stationed in Singapore were not slow to act as tour guides and personal advisors to those Americans in need of assistance with spending their money. They came by the plane and ship load and were very predictable.

Night life was cheap and brash and dominated by the British Forces. All corners of Singapore island had bars and local restaurants in abundance and in support would be many shops that never seemed to close. Whatever the time of night there always seemed to be many children, like oriental street urchins from a Dickens novel, racing

in and out of the shops. Babies would be asleep on the counters, tended by their mothers between

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bouts of trying to sell some of the wares. Bright neon lights were everywhere and it was a far cry from Clacton, or Aldershot, or Yeovil, or Marchwood.

But a young soldier, with any sense, could only go out for a drink with the crowd so often, before it became too expensive and boring. Most of us bought some sort of cheap music centre and most nights were spent either in the barrack room playing cards, listening to the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) or playing records of the sixties music in the UK but already months out of date in the Far East, and writing home or reading. Alternatively we could be found in the camp NAAFI, with a pint of Tiger tops, (local lager with a dash of lemonade) and a plate of toast. We all ate lots of toast. It was the one European dish the Orientals could reproduce almost exactly, that did not give us mild food poisoning.

But for single soldiers, the ultimate luxury was to be pals with a “pad”, service jargon then for the married and accompanied soldiers living in married quarters dotted all over the island. I was pals with John Merquis and spent many happy hours at his house some evenings and weekends. John was a big man and people very rarely argued with him. He was a very good friend and therefore people very rarely argued with me. John was also a member of the Plant Troop and we carried out tasks together, such as the complete unload of a ship, with coordinated skill, one on the crane and one on the rough terrain fork lift tractor.

We had a variety of different duties to perform at out of normal hours times, such as guard duty on one of the islands and duty watch in the port, but a favourite, because it got us out and about, was that of duty driver. And whilst on one of these duties I had the task of driving to the civil airport, at Paya Leba, to collect a family of new arrivals and take them to the hotel they were booked into until a married quarter was ready for them. They were the Corlette family, and I knew Cpl Eric Corlette from Marchwood. He had been one of the instructors with 53 Sqn when I did my crane operator course. I became his friend and baby-sitter in Singapore.

Gloucester Barracks was located along the Ayer Rajah Road about three miles away from the port. Across the road was the vehicle park and offices of 32 Regiment RCT comprising almost entirely of locally employed personnel, (LEPs), Chinese and Malay soldiers in RCT uniform. Their role was that of administrative transport throughout the island and drove a range of vehicles including white luxury coaches, minibuses, staff cars and landrovers. There was never a shortage of transport and never a shortage of demand for it. The savage financial cuts were some years off and cost never seemed to be the reason that transport was not available in the services.

The staff of 32 Regt lived also in Gloucester barracks but they never really mixed with the Europeans socially and we saw very little of them. We also had separate dining and NAAFI facilities. In fact our dining hall was not in our barracks but in the next camp along the road called Rowcroft Lines. This was home to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and apart from the dining room it housed the service medical facilities for the two camps. It was only a five minute walk from our room to the dining room but that was enough to put most off from the journey to breakfast in the morning. This was to the benefit of the canteen in the Tanjong Berlayer which was always packed before and after work officially started.

We were trundled from the barracks to the port in the back of a Bedford truck each day, although several owned their own elderly and battered cars and used them, at their own expense. The other alternative was to take a taxi, which was the staple form of transport on the island for most of us as it was so cheap and always available. I do not think there was ever a time during my tour in Singapore when there was not a black and yellow within sight.

And so life became a routine very quickly, once the “whitey from Blighty” title faded in direct proportion to the skin changing colour. Some turned dark brown without trouble but the fair haired and fair skinned brigade, of which I was a fully paid up member, had to be very careful with the constant, equatorial sun. I could not work without a shirt and sunburn in the Far East was considered a self inflicted wound if we went sick with it. The arms and legs coped well but the torso varied from eggshell white to bright pink. But the humid Singapore heat was soon to be replaced, for a few months, by something much, much stronger.

One day, as all good stories begin, in the later part of 1967, Part 1 Orders, the daily means of written communication for everyone in every barracks throughout the British Army, instructed some of us to report to a meeting place the following day. No hint of the reason but the list of names and

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from where they were drawn gave us much to speculate on that evening in the NAAFI. Some of us were from the Plant Troop, others were stevedores, others belonged to the Lighterage Troop and the list rounded off with cooks and clerks for good measure. Clearly we were to be a self contained organisation but to where? The fact that there were many married men on the list convinced us that it was probably not for long and probably not too far away. We were quite wrong on both counts.

As ordered, the following day after the usual morning working parade, we all assembled in the large hanger that housed the cranes and fork lift trucks, and awaited our fate. Capt Winskell, a 10 Port Sqn officer, appeared and gave us our orders to report to the SQMS stores to draw new uniforms of a sand colour as opposed to green, to report to the pay office for an advance of pay, and to report to the MI room, (the doctor), for examination and inoculations. After that we could have the rest of the day off, we were to leave in the morning! Leave for where? Secret, we were told when we asked, read the papers we were told.

Vietnam! It couldn’t be. And rumour control moved into top gear and we had another night of deep speculation, without the foggiest idea of where we were off to the next day. But the instruction to draw personal weapons from the armoury first thing was ominous, to say the least. We all gathered, with full kit and weapons, early the next morning at Tanjong Berlayer to carry out the one task that soldiers through the ages have perfected; wait. We waited and waited whilst much to-ing and fro-ing was in evidence around the offices. We drank endless cups of local coffee in the small NAAFI situated in the port area. We played cards, seven card brag for the majority and bridge for a few of us. Bridge schools were surprisingly popular in Singapore amongst the rank and file, which is what we were.

Finally a couple of trucks arrived and we scrambled on board to be driven to the main civilian port a few miles away. The mystery was enhanced when we were directed to board two large Landing Craft Marine (LCM) carrying the markings F1 and F3. We had never seen them before, although they were not unlike our own Ramp Powered Lighters (RPL) that we used in the RCT maritime fleet. But these were crewed by Royal Marine soldiers and we knew where they came from. And as we weaved our way through the dozens and dozens of merchant ships anchored in the “Singapore Roads”, awaiting clearance into the harbour, we saw her much further out and well away from all the civilian shipping. It was the very distinctive and almost unmistakeable silhouette of HMS Fearless, the Royal Navy Assault warship. I say almost unmistakeable because although the Fearless was very new, there was an even newer identical sister ship, HMS Intrepid, somewhere in the world. This was fascinating, as we had no idea that the ship was even in the Far East, let alone anchored just off Singapore.

The two landing craft, expertly guided by the RM SNCO coxswains, entered the massive open stern of the ship and under the helicopter flight deck. Standing off were two other LCMs, F2 and F4, and when we were positioned in the dock, side by side, the other two came in behind. The ramps were lowered and we stepped onto the internal vehicle decks of the ship. It was a cross between something from science fiction and the innards of a car ferry. The enormous stern gate was raised, the dock pumped out and the landing craft sat down on the wooden dry dock ready for the voyage.

We were threaded through the maze of passageways and finished up in a messdeck in the depths of the ship. Sailors, Royal Marines and Army personnel were everywhere and the ship was buzzing with activity. I had a bunk in a mess the size of a cupboard with five others. Eric Corlette was also there, along with the two other members of the plant troop, Joe Metalli and Gordon Wooley.

By midday we were en route for Aden. By the time we had dumped our kit in our bed space, secured the SMGs in the ship’s armoury, and found our way onto the upper deck Singapore was slipping over the horizon. Our knowledge of Aden was sketchy, to say the least, and HMS Fearless was to be our means of getting there only. Once there we would be living and working ashore, for work was what we were going there to do. It transpired that two rival political parties, the NLF and

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FLOSSY, were engaged in a power struggle for South Arabia and, to put it simply, the British had outstayed their welcome. Our job was to join forces with a similar detachment as ourselves from good old Marchwood, and outload the port of Aden with all the British military equipment and vehicles onto the many waiting ships for the task.

Our voyage was to take many days and nights and we stopped at the tiny island of Gan in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and Bahrain on the way. At Gan we had a few hours to stretch our legs on dry land and saunter along the white sandy beaches amid the palm trees. It looked like a tropical paradise but interest would not have been maintained for very long, there was virtually nothing at all there. An RAF runway, for RAF long haul flights to refuel, a couple of buildings and a NAAFI canteen and bar. A handful of RAF personnel were posted there for months at a time and when we left we were not exactly sorry to be on our way. A swim, a drink or three, and a walk and we had exhausted all the options within an hour. Someone suggested a football knockout competition between the Navy, Army and Air Force and someone else suggested it was too hot. Such was life in the Maldive Islands, of which Gan was one.

I do not know why we called into Bahrain but we did for two days. My only trip ashore was achieved by catching a lift, on one of the ships Landrovers, to the British Consulate for the ride. The sun was very bright, and scorchingly hot, and what I saw of the city looked every bit as I expected a Middle East city to look like. Dust and sand everywhere with white coloured flat topped buildings in the suburbs and an ultra modern city centre with green grass forced out of imported soil by constant watering. Large Mercedes cars with air conditioning swerved around rickety carts drawn by animals, and people in their long desert robes floated everywhere. It was only a glimpse of the Middle East but the contrasts of wealth and poverty were impossible to overlook. The pervading smell was different from that of Singapore, but closely related for a nose educated on the sea front of an East Anglian holiday town.

Eventually we arrived at Aden, having spent our time discovering what it was like to live on an Assault Ship, which was to prove more appropriate than I then imagined. The “barren hills of Aden”, as mentioned in the words of the song, looked very barren as we slowly manoeuvred into our anchorage. When we disembarked we discovered very quickly that the city of Aden was very barren too. The incredible heat we had started to become used to on the voyage could always have been escaped from by returning to the stable temperature maintained within the citadel of the ship, but once we found ourselves assembled on the quayside of Ma’alla Wharf there was no escape. It was well over a hundred in the shade and so dry. The fact that we were now in a war torn city was the least of our troubles, we were thirsty and the cold water machines dispensed water that tasted like sea water. Salt was added to replace the salt we lost. It tasted horrible and we did not drink it.

Along came the inevitable truck to pick us all up and take us to our new home, but this time it was battered, unlike the usual highly maintained and immaculate military vehicles we were used to, it had no canopy or superstructure and sitting at the back was an RCT soldier with a loaded SMG as escort. For good measure another was poking out of the hatch in the cab with an SLR riding shotgun and we were in Aden.

The journey to the barracks was to rapidly open our eyes to a another world that we had only seen in the news. Derelict buildings bearing scars of small arms and mortar attacks. Rubble where buildings once had been. Deserted streets save for the odd vehicle or Arab hurrying across the road, but generally a city in name only.

We were trundled along the infamous Ma’alla “murder mile” straight and then turned left at a small roundabout, out of the city limits and towards RAF Khormaksar along the coast. Normandy Lines, opposite the RAF airfield, was to be our new home for our stay in Aden for an indefinite duration. The buildings were single storey prefabricated huts in ranks along one side of the camp, and at the outer end of the hut was a large lean-to that housed the air conditioning unit. The noise of the ACU dominated the interior and we were going to have to get used to it if we were to ever get any sleep.

The furniture consisted of rows of closely arranged double bunk beds with an old locker between each. A large table took up most of the space in the centre of the room and the windows were small and high. And it was very, very hot.

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The plant troop were all accommodated in the same block. In the centre of the camp was a large open area that had once been the parade ground but was covered in sand and dust. A large screen had been erected, similar to roadside advertising hoardings, in this area and whenever a film was shown, by means of the standard 16mm projector, found in every barracks, troops would appear from their nooks and crannies with a couple of cans of beer and a chair and turn the parade ground into an impromptu cinema.

We were driven daily to one of three locations in the city to out load the many tons of stores and vehicles owned by the British onto a constant turnover of ships. The transition of Aden to independence did not progress smoothly and the British withdrawal was nothing if not rapid.

The first place we operated from was the wharf we first landed at on out arrival, Ma’alla. The movement controllers were also located there and it was a very busy terminal. All sorts of water craft were constantly buzzing backwards and forwards to the many ships anchored just offshore. RCT workboats tugged large flat rafts from the quayside to the ships laden with containers, vehicles and other military paraphernalia. The lighterage troop drove the boats, the plant troop operated the cranes and fork lift trucks and the freight handlers handled the freight.

The same routine continued a couple of miles along the coast at Obstruction Pier and also at HMS Sheba, the soon to be vacated Royal Navy shorebase. At Sheba LSTs (landing ship tank) were able to berth alongside the jetty and loading was direct from shore to ship without the intermediate loading and unloading of “flats”. Sheba was the furthest point from our barracks at Normandy Lines and the journey to and from was the most vulnerable to terrorist attack. Fortunately we were troubled very little, mainly due to the very overt presence of Lt Col Mitchell and his Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders, still smarting from the massacre at nearby Crater. The attack had made headline news in the UK and “Mad Mitch” patrolled the streets of Aden in a formidable way.

Normandy Lines was the permanent camp of 60 Sqn RCT who had also suffered just prior to our arrival. One of their convoys had been ambushed and eight RCT soldiers were killed. All the married quarters were empty and most of the Sqn were withdrawing as we arrived. It soon became clear that we were going to be the last to leave the Aden garrison, and that was many weeks away. Many weeks of port operations on a scale so difficult to describe. The Singapore detachment became formally titled 423 Troop RCT.

Rumours were a daily feature as to when we would leave, and the married ones were becoming more and more concerned that we would not see Singapore before Christmas. We were missing out on lots of real life things slaving away day after day in tremendous heat in one of the cabs of one of the machines on one of the quays or on one of the ships. When we were not working we were eating or sleeping. There was little else to do on active service.

We did receive a visit from a Combined Services Entertainment Show with Mike and Bernie Winters as the stars, and BFBS radio was still alive and kicking in the evenings keeping us abreast of all the happenings on the UK music scene in the UK. Much was indeed happening on the UK music scene in the UK and “Flower Power” seemed to then be what it was. On reflection, we were probably better off where we were! Whenever I hear the “Excerpt from a Teenage Opera” I think of the hut in Normandy Lines with the noisy air conditioner that never missed a beat.

To help us cope with the heat everyone was issued with two bottles of fruit cordial a day but as the water was always so salty and impossible to drink we all acquired a taste for orange or lemon cordial neat. The alternative was the local fizzy drink in a can called “Stim” and places of soft drink refreshments were known locally as Stim Bars. But we had to buy Stims and beer and being almost

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permanently thirsty meant that most of our pay was poured down our throats.

In the UK a totally new concept troop of RCT was forming. I of course had no idea then that it would have an effect on my entire service life.

An RCT Capt, SSgt, Cpl and six dvrs from the maritime branch of the Corps together with a Sgt, a Cpl and four sappers from the Royal Engineers, plus a cook Sgt and a Pay Corps Sgt formed up and joined the ships company of the brand new HMS Intrepid, the identical sister ship to HMS Fearless. They became part of the Royal Marine Amphibious Detachment and were the first RCT soldiers to serve in an inter-service capacity aboard a Royal Navy warship. When the Intrepid successfully completed it’s sea trials it headed out to the Far East to replace the Fearless on route back to the UK.

They both met, for the first time in Aden in late 1967, and I was there.

One of the RCT drivers was none other than Martin Atterbury and within hours of their arrival I had been invited on board and we were sharing a beer in his messdeck. Their next port of call was to be Singapore and we agreed to get together there as soon as I returned from war torn Aden.

I felt quite sad the day Intrepid sailed out of the harbour. Martin had been a good friend in those early times at Marchwood and it had been great to see him again. But I did wonder when our paths would cross again for Royal Navy ships do not stay in ports for very long and by the time I got back to my Far Eastern home they might well be gone to other exotic parts of the globe.

Almost all evidence of the British Garrison was gone when we did finally file down the steps of Obstruction Pier to board Tango 5, one of HMS Intrepid’s LCMs, for our ship home. We knew that

it was gone because we had spent months shifting it. Private cars, serviceable and wrecked military vehicles, large containers and even larger containers stuffed with anything and everything. It had all gone in the direction of the UK but we had to go the other way. All of the ships had

gone in the direction of the UK too except for Intrepid, bound for Singapore, and the LSL Sir Bedivere. We were to travel on the Bedivere, a much more comfortable proposition than a warship, but slower.

That final day in December 1967 I stood with Eric Corlette on the upper deck and we watched the final ships depart. HMS Intrepid had already sailed but two LSLs, the Sir Galahad and the Sir Geraint, were still at their moorings and about to leave. I took a final photograph of the barren hills of Aden and the remaining ships and thanked my lucky stars that we were all returning, from whence we came, unscathed, several stones lighter and burnt to cinders.

We went below to our relatively luxurious accommodation by any standards we had experienced for months, had showers, had excellent food cooked by the ship’s Chinese crew, and got drunk.

The ship, gleaming white with the broad blue horizontal stripe from stem to stern, the markings of the British and India Shipping Company, headed East for our well deserved heros welcome.

We arrived on a Sunday and were secured to a mooring buoy just off Blakang Mati, and we waited. And we waited and waited for someone to come and at least fetch us, but no one came. Capt

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Winskell tried again and again to get in touch with duty personnel on shore but it took ages for an RPL (Ramp Powered Lighter) to finally arrive to take us to Tanjong Berlayer. While we were waiting Capt Winskell went berserk when a couple of our launches went by loaded with 10 Port Sqn families heading for one of the small islands for a day trip and bar-b-que (known as a banyan). He was leaning over the side yelling at them to go back and arrange transport for all of us and they had no idea what he was saying and cheerily waved back. It would have been a shame if he had had a heart attack and been our only casualty of war.

Our return to Singapore was just in time for Christmas, my first abroad. As we were situated only a couple of degrees north of the equator it was hot and humid all year round with a few weeks of monsoon rains annually. Christmas in the far east is nothing like the UK, not unnaturally, and I was on watch duty on the 24th of December. An unwritten policy was for the single or unaccompanied personnel to carry out the duties over the holiday period to let the pads be woken up at five in the morning by excited and confused children. The different oriental groups that live on Singapore island do not all celebrate Christmas and so festive decorations, if evident at all, were confined to the camps and NAAFI shops. But the British being what they are, and have always been, will force the issue no matter what and in a married quarter it was Christmas, hence the children’s dilemma.

As a concession that night the Duty Watch commander, a corporal from the lighterage troop, wrote in the log at 2359 hours that a strange craft resembling a slay, pulled by a team of animals with antlers and driven by an elderly bearded man in a red coat passed overhead. We all thought that was very funny and we all signed it for prosperity. However, flippant comments in an official security log did not win the favour of the Squadron Sergeant Major, WO2 Johns, and the Watch Commander was awarded a couple of extra duties. Happy Christmas!

Off duty life varied between swimming in the large pool at Gillman Barracks, half way between Gloucester Barracks and Tanjong Berlayer, or lazing at Sandes Soldiers Home, a short walk from the Ayer Rajah Road, behind 32 Regiment’s barracks. Although the establishment was run by an elderly woman and there was a Christian flavour about the place, all service personnel were welcome to make use of the facilities. It was always peaceful and a good place to relax and read or write. The pool was popular but refreshments were non alcoholic which served to keep the hardened drinkers away. And in 1968, with many ex National Servicemen in evidence, amongst the trades worked in the docks, there was no shortage of hardened drinkers.

I did meet Martin Atterbury again in Singapore, several times. HMS Intrepid, now based in the Far East, became a regular sight in the Singapore Naval Base although geographically that was situated on the opposite side of the island from my base. But we got together and had many a night out at one end or the other, and often in the middle, for a meal and a drink or three in the noisy, bright city centre.

My next excursion from the routine of port operations was the squadron camp in Kuala Terengganu on the north east coast of Malaya. I was not scheduled to go as I had been away for several months in Aden so the bulk of the squadron personnel were already there when I discovered that I would be going after all.

Another long wheel base Landrover and some essential supplies were required and I was to be one of the two drivers to take it up. The other driver was Lcpl Smith, the duty driver on the night that I had first arrived in Singapore.

We left very early in the morning with the ‘Rover completely stripped of canopy and superstructure and loaded to the gunwales with stores and our personal kit for the remainder of the camp. We had many hundreds of miles to drive and we planned to do it fast and non stop. We even changed over at the wheel without stopping, a feat bordering on the dangerous when the condition of the roads was taken into account, and we refuelled on the move too, from jerry cans. The two fuel tanks were located under the seats and we kept filling up the passenger side. There was absolutely no reason to do the journey non stop, we thought it would be a good idea. The achievement was met with total indifference when we did arrive. Cpl Pete Goodchild and John Merquis were lazing in deck chairs by their tent when we roared up and completely covered them in dust. Our entrance was not popular and as I was not in the drivers seat at

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the time I was able to escape the barrage of abuse directed at Smith. I was off loaded into that twelve by twelve foot tent, the home of the plant operators, and Smith took the Landrover away to the MT (motor transport) section where he was employed.

Squadron camps are a mixture of training and fun, meant as an annual break from the work routine of the home base, and I arrived at the end of the first of two weeks. Everyone was relaxed and enjoying themselves sailing, swimming and walking during the day with 16mm projected films in the NAAFI tent at night followed by boozy singing and silly games until we tumbled into our camp beds in the early hours. We would be roused early the next morning for a run in the cool morning air, followed by a swim before breakfast.

Sometimes we found ourselves engaged in some military training like jungle survival or weapon handling, and other times were spent loading and unloading the RPLs and LCT (landing craft tank) that had sailed up from Singapore for some beach landing practice. The sea was crystal clear and beautifully warm. The bottom and the coral could be seen clearly at even great depths and it must have been the stretch of coast they used to film the Bounty Bar TV ad. White sand that burnt the feet and palm tree forests up to the waters edge. It was also the place that the giant turtles cames ashore to lay their eggs, but not while we were there.

At the end of the camp I sailed back to Singapore on the LCT, which took a couple of days, and loved every minute of the voyage. I took the wheel several times and nothing I had ever experienced before could match the feeling of standing on the open bridge of that LCT running down the East coast of Malaya under a tropical sun. I wished even more that I had been in the Lighterage Troop. Indeed then I even considered asking if I could transfer to the Navy as I had so much enjoyed the voyage to Aden on the Fearless and the return trip on the LSL Sir Bedivere. Even the storms I weathered well and it seemed I was one of the breed that never seemed to be troubled with sea sickness. That blessing was to last me to the present day.

During the middle of 1968 the squadron received it’s annual inspection and the inspecting officer was Brigadier R L Clutterbuck, the Chief Engineer. To impress him and to do something different, a two seater chair was specially built onto a pallet used for loading ammunition. The idea being that the Brig and the Sqn OC (Officer Commanding), Major Frank Arnold RCT, would sit on the seat and be scooped up by the Michigan rough terrain forklift and lifted up to the maximum reach for a tour around the port to view all the departmental demonstrations.

I was to be the driver.

At one stage I had to drive right up to the edge of the quay, with the chair on the forks suspended high over the water, for the Brig to see the diving section and mexefloat assembly displays. Before the visit we rehearsed the route and the timings and this gave other members of the Sqn an insight into the scheme. I was offered huge amounts of money to tilt the high ranking officer into the drink, and untold violence if I didn’t by the “heavy gang” that was very prominent in freight handling troop of 10 Port Sqn in those days. But I didn’t, despite the rumour that circulated that I would, and a little while after a report appeared in the Corps journal, The Waggoner, describing the inspection and praising my “very careful driving”. I was mercilessly taunted for weeks afterwards.

Later that year I was to go to sea again and this time even further away from Clacton-on-Sea. In fact to the opposite side of the planet. To Queensland, Australia.

My transport this time was the LSL Sir Galahad which was berthed alongside in the civilian port and I was tasked as the ships heavy crane operator for Exercise Coral Sands. A large 20 ton crane resided immediately in front of the bridge amidships. That crane could lift from either side and served the main hatch. The main hatch could slide away like a car sunroof for loading and unloading the vehicle deck below that ran completely through the ship, car ferry style, or it could be lowered at one end and served as a steep ramp. This was used for vehicles that had entered through either the bow

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doors or the stern ramp and were to be parked on the upper decks for a voyage if they were not craned onto the upper decks. Towards the bow two identical 10 ton cranes were located either side. These three cranes contributed to the distinctive silhouette of the Landing Ships Logistic.

My first task was to load the ship with exercise vehicles and helicopters. Two of the helicopters were Royal Naval Fleet Air Arm Whirlwinds and they had to be secured in the lower vehicle deck. This was achieved by opening the main hatch cover and craning them over the side from the jetty. The problem was their overall length which was longer than the length of the hatch opening. It was decided, by whoever was important enough to make that sort of decision, that two lines should be secured to the tail of the helicopter and when I had it suspended over the hatch, with the hook of the crane looped through a shackle attached to the centre of the rotor spindle, two gangs of freight handlers in the lower deck would take the lines, tug of war style, and pull the tail down. With the aircraft then at an angle of 45 degrees I could lower the hook and at the same time draw it towards me by “jibbing in”. This shoe horned it, an inch at a time, into the cavernous vehicle deck where it was allowed to assume the horizontal before I put it down. The plan went fine and two large, delicate and very expensive choppers were secured for sea.

The interior of an LSL, accommodation wise, is far superior to a Naval warship as all the miles of pipes and wires and junction boxes are hidden away behind gaily coloured panelling. The bunk spaces are far more generous and lounge areas make the voyage much less boring. LSLs are troop carrying, vehicle carrying landing ships chartered to the Army for service throughout the world.

Crewed by British Merchant Navy officers with Hong Kong chinese seamen, cooks and laundry staff. There were six LSLs, all identical but for the first to be launched, Sir Lancelot, which had a slightly different upper deck layout with four cranes instead of three.

My return from Aden in the Sir Bedivere had made me an old hand at LSLs, not to mention the many hours I had spent operating their cranes in Aden and Singapore, so the trip to “Os” was less of a sea adventure than it might have been. If, two years previously when I was stationed at Marchwood, someone had said that I was to have survived active service in the Middle East, basked on a tropical beach in Malaya and taken a trip to Australia as pure matter of fact I do not think I would have believed them. Still, “Join the Army and See the World” was the saying of the sixties, and I did and I was.

Charley Devene, a tall lanky Scottish freight handler, brought a tape recorder with him for entertainment in the messdeck. It was a portable reel to reel affair, the cassette player was still very much in its infancy then. However, he only brought one spool of tape and seemed surprised that only one song seemed to be on it. As a result we heard the Beatles singing “Hey Jude” several hundred times as we played cards on that voyage. No one had the heart or courage to tell Charlie to give it a rest, although ingenious methods of sabotage were secretly discussed.

We were to join a fleet of ships off the Queensland coast for a two week exercise. From our point of view it was an amphibious exercise with beach landings and ship to shore to ship movements. But the scale was much larger and other British and Australian Forces were involved in coordinated activities elsewhere in land. Queensland certainly knew we were coming for the local radio stations made much of our arrival and the major inter-service manoeuvres about to take place.

We initially went in alongside to off load the embarked forces, their vehicles and the helicopters at a place called Rockhampton, miles from anywhere. The reverse procedure was used to get the Whirlwinds out, which went smoothly, and as soon as everything was unloaded we sailed again and finally parked up adjacent to a stretch of coast that was completely flat and featureless. As far as the eye could see there was nothing to look at, except nothing. We may well have been in Australia but

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we would never have known it!

During the first day several ships appeared and anchored well apart off the same coastal stretch. A mixture of naval shapes, including aircraft carriers and the distinctive silhouette of HMS Intrepid, settled down for two weeks of hot manoeuvres. To relieve the heat, in between bouts of coming and going of helicopters and landing craft, we were able to swim off the lowered stern gate of the ship. The water was very warm and clear, but the requirement for shark watchers on the upper deck when we were in the water gave it an added flavour.

The local radio, broadcast from the largest town in the area, Townsville, treated the whole event as something very special and gave regular reports of the exercise progress. We particularly liked the references to the “luxury white B&I liner”, us apparently, that would be berthing in Townsville for a few days R&R (rest and recreation) after the exercise.

And after the exercise we did get a few days ashore, the Galahad berthing alongside in Townsville. We were made very welcome by the locals, who generally seemed to have all emigrated from Britain, and wanted to know how Lowestoft and Newcastle were in their absence. When they discovered that we actually came from Singapore and most of us had not seen “good old Blighty” for years ourselves they were quite depressed. Different ships headed for different ports for R&R and the Intrepid gave Brisbane the benefit of her company.

When Australia had had enough of us, and we of Australia, we returned to Singapore, past the Great Barrier Reef and through the many Indonesian islands. On one day cameras were lined along the starboard side as we came into view of an active volcano with trails of smoke floating into the blue clear skies. But it did not erupt for us and the subsequent long distance snaps were not going to prove very convincing evidence when we told our tales.

Exercise Coral Sands had been a great success by all accounts, but disaster struck our little world when we were finally unloading in Singapore docks. And I was in the thick of it!

I was craning out the first Whirlwind helicopter, in the reverse way of lifting and jibbing out simultaneously whilst the crews below pulled the tail down with the ropes, and at the same time other eager freight handlers were manoeuvring the second helicopter close by for the second lift. Suddenly one of the ropes snapped. All of the tension was transferred to the remaining rope and the “tug-of-war” team left holding the broken rope fell flat on their backs. The tail of the aircraft was now being pulled only to one side and it hit the side of the hatchway hard. This impact caused the shackle attaching the helicopter to the hook of my crane to give way and the whole lot crashed down onto the vehicle deck, and the second helicopter.

I had a ringside view from my elevated cab but was powerless to do anything but watch. Very fortunately no one was hurt but the sight of a dead Whirlwind laying on its side with the tail embedded in the nose of another was something everyone wanted to see. They came from everywhere. From all over the ship and up from the dockside. And then everyone looked up at me.

The subsequent enquiry established that the operator’s responsibility stops at the hook and the freight handlers are ultimately responsible for the way a load is attached and the condition of all lifting gear that is not a part of the crane. In other words, it was not to be pinned on my lapel. But I would always have a special memory of the LSL Sir Galahad and it is tragic to think that she finished her life in the Falklands conflict some fourteen years later and now rests at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

After my fifteen minutes of famous destruction, life returned to normal in Singapore and I submitted my posting preference application for my next tour. I had to complete three choices and I entered UK on all three. I was sure that RCT Records Office, in Hastings, would see that although I enjoyed my tour in the Far East I was ready to return to home shores. It had been quite an exciting couple of years and there were plenty of others in the UK ready to give a limb or two for the chance to serve in “Singers”.

I enjoyed life as much as any single soldier could then. Plenty of sport opportunities existed and I visited the sailing club quite often, but it has to be said that the services sailing club was not the place for a young single soldier. Most of the members were officers and senior NCOs with families. The ability to sail well seemed secondary to the colonial social scene the club provided.

A car could be hired, by the hour, from the clump of shops opposite the British Military Hospital just walking distance from the barracks. And I often did explore the island and southern

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Malaya for a few dollars and the opportunity to drive.

And the quest for modern popular music dominated much of my spare time. Having lived as a teenager through the sixties revolution and grown familiar with the pirate radio stations anchored just off my home town, Singapore was not the place to be for up to date pop music. The services radio station, BFBS, provided the best chance of new sounds and personalities, and I became a familiar face around their studios, but they only broadcast a few hours a day and in the style of the home service in the UK.

Evening markets, a feature of Singapore night life, was a favourite haunt. Brightly lit stalls were erected for miles along a different road every night of the week selling everything one could imagine. Record stalls were in abundance and most of the records and tapes were recorded in Australia. Much of my record collection today contains many discs pressed on the other side of the globe and bought at the “Armas markets”.

It was therefore quite natural for a nineteen year old to wish occasionally that the final hours of the sixties could be spent in the UK, somewhere, and not just read about in a binder for export containing a weeks worth of Daily Mirrors at the Sandes Soldiers Home. So when I was told that my posting was through I could not get to the Chief Clerk’s office fast enough to discover my fate. It was not what I had expected. I had still to learn that what a normal person sees as logic, the Armed Forces seemed to see from an opposite direction.

I was to go to Hong Kong!

There was in fact much more to it than that. I was to go to Hong Kong to join HMS Intrepid for the remainder of her tour in the Far East. The RCT detachment, 409 LPD Troop RCT, was changing over personnel and I was to fill the full corporal appointment. I was being promoted on posting.

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was filled with a variety of emotions. Disappointment at not being posted back to the UK. Delight at promotion to Cpl. Apprehension at joining a Royal Marine amphibious detachment aboard a Royal Navy warship for an indefinite length of tour. Would I be happy, and was this really what I

joined the Army for. But I had always wanted to be a part of the RCT element afloat and now I was to be, in a big way, all twelve and a half thousand tons of it.

I had sailed to Aden on HMS Fearless, the sister ship, and visited Martin Atterbury in Aden and Singapore many times on the Intrepid, so the ship itself was not a total mystery, just the life awaiting me. Martin was now back in Marchwood having completed the first tour, and another Troop was forming in the UK to join HMS Fearless. That troop became 408 LPD (Landing Platform Dock) Troop RCT and I was posted to 409.

On the due date of my posting I was driven to RAF Changi to catch a flight to Hong Kong. No luxury civil aircraft this time. I found myself as the only passenger aboard an RAF C130 Hercules transport plane loaded with large pallets and containers. It was a long, slow and very noisy flight but I did spend most of the trip on the flight deck and savoured my first real taste of flying. I was hooked and loved every moment.

Landing at Hong Kong was quite an experience zooming in low over the buildings and streets onto the single runway that jutted out into the harbour, and the very first thing that caught my attention was the dress of the servicemen and women I saw dotted around the place. Some were in tropical kit, as I was, and others were in temperate climate uniforms. It seemed that at that time of the year the weather bordered between the two climates and different units based in Hong Kong were at different stages of dress. I had not seen a No2 Dress uniform worn for what had seemed like a very long time and it struck me as odd, so far away from home. Just a memory that had no significance but stayed with me ever since. I travelled with just my Army issue suitcase and sausage shaped kitbag. The bulk of my kit and personal belongings were boxed up in Tanjong Berlayer at the MFO (military forwarding organization) store and would be sent on. Just when and where was one of service life’s unanswered questions, but I was assured that somehow my MFO plywood box would find me in the next few weeks.

Waiting at the terminal for me, my suitcase and kitbag was an RCT driver, in an even stranger form of dress than I had seen out of the windows of the Herc on my arrival, middle eastern khaki drill, and he led the way to a blue Royal Navy landrover.

Days like that day have to be taken each minute at a time. Every sight and sound was new and, most importantly, there was no home to return to at the end of the day. I was on my way to it. I knew to halt at the top of the brow (the gangway), face aft and salute, from previous visits, yet it felt

odd somehow that this was not a visit, but permanent. Once on board I was introduced to Capt Owen Murray Jones RCT, my new Troop Commander. He wore the badge of an RCT ocean watchkeeper on his upper arm which meant that he came from the maritime branch and had commanded one of the Corp’s sea going vessels. He was very much at home on board although he too had only recently arrived in post, and he

in turn introduced me to the Royal Marine Amphibious Detachment Commander, Maj Mike Marsden MC, my new OC.

The troop staff sergeant was one Harry Dakers, a small elderly looking individual who was at the end of his tour. I was the new Cpl and the rest of the RCT troop were; Lcpl Humphriss, Dvrs Gillespie, Morrish, Jones, Bajina, Morton and Fred Eaton who had been a member of Intake 116 with me in basic training. Indeed Fred and I were linked by almost consecutive regimental numbers. There was also a handful of Royal Engineers with a Sgt in charge under the control of our troop commander,

I

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and two Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. (I later discovered a number of Royal Signals serving on board with the Navy communications branch but they had nothing to do with the Amphibious element and we saw very little of them). Two other Army personnel were part of our number, an Army Catering Corps Sgt and a Royal Army Pay Corps corporal. And we all came under the operational control of the Royal Marines.

HMS Intrepid carried four LCMs, the large landing craft, that were parked in the dock, and it also carried four smaller landing craft which were housed in davits, two each side of the ship. These craft, called LCVPs (landing craft vehicle personnel) were also crewed by Royal Marines and those crew members and the RCT contingent shared the same messdeck. The bulk of the Royal Marines detachment lived forward in the area of the ship referred to as the barracks. I had entered a strange new world full of new terms and expressions with odd routines and customs. It was daunting and exciting.

Maj Marsden, a warlord undoubtedly, welcomed me warmly and the idea of Army integrated into a Royal Marine detachment aboard a Royal Navy ship was as much a novelty to him as to the rest of us. He suggested that I meet the other members of the Army contingent and have a “run ashore” that evening, but I had to be on board in time for departure early the following morning. And where were we going..... Singapore! If they had delayed my posting for just a few days I would have been able to join the ship there. Still, it gave me a flight to Hong Kong, and I had nothing else pending at the time.

Hong Kong night life was very similar to that of Singapore really. Brash, noisy and built to keep the neon light manufacturers in business. The equivalent to the Britannia Club in Singapore was the China Fleet Cub. This also played host to the American forces and the harbour was full of US warships. We spent the evening in the China Fleet letting the American sailors buy us beer.

The voyage south gave me the opportunity to discover the tasks of 409 LPD Troop RCT. HMS Intrepid was effectively hollow for the rear two thirds, the last part featuring the dry dock which housed the four LCMs. When the time came for the landing craft to be used the port and starboard side tanks of the ship were flooded, causing the stern to sink and fill the dock. The massive stern gate, hinged at the bottom, was lowered by massive hydraulic rams into the water and out of sight giving access to the dock, which was divided by a central barrier to assist the docking. Over the top of this area was the helicopter flight deck, that gave the ship its distinctive silhouette.

At the forward end of the dock was a ramp that led into the main vehicle deck. Lower vehicle decks were reached down a steep ramp and when the ramp from the flight deck was lowered the two aligned to give a long steep descent from upper to lower decks. The lower vehicle decks had very restricted head room and could only accommodate Landrover size vehicles and numerous supporting pillars had to be negotiated. Festooned on the vehicle deck walls (bulkheads) were racks of chains and tensioners to secure vehicles to the circular “elephants feet” attachments all over the decks.

This was the territory of the RCT troop. Whenever we took on an embarked force, complete with all vehicles, our task was to load and secure them ready for any sea condition.

We also carried our own vehicles in the shape of two Landrovers, one Army petrol and the other a Navy diesel, a Bedford 4 tonner and a variety of fork lift trucks, including the rough terrain Michigans. Two were the property of the Royal Engineers team and used for laying and recovering roller trackway up soft beaches, and we, the RCT troop, used a medium size “Michi” which, apart from general humping and dumping duties, had a unique roll on board. Whenever we were at flying stations and helicopters were landing, we had to provide an operator, fully kitted out in a fire fighting

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suit, parked on the flight deck ready to push off into the sea any aircraft that crashed! This was to avoid a fire taking hold which was, apart from actually sinking, the worst thing that could happen on board a ship.

Control of the ship’s transport became one of my primary functions and I was to discover that in far flung dockyards transport was always in high demand. In naval dockyards I would liaise with shore based transport units to supplement our own fleet, but it was never enough. I was also to discover how to arrange for a staff car, then the beautiful Humber Hawk, to be flown all over the world to meet us for the Captain to attend high profile engagements. It was certainly a different world from anything that I had before experienced.

Whilst at sea the troop would be employed in maintenance and repair of all our equipment and vehicles, and there was a constant need for painting everything mechanical due to sea water corrosion. We also had wider responsibilities on board as duty personnel in various parts of ship, and I found myself on the duty JNCO list. The entire ship’s company was divided into four equal parts, called watches: the first and second part of the starboard watch and the first and second part of port. On any one day, around the clock, anywhere in the world, one of the four parts would supply the duty personnel for that day. On a twelve thousand ton warship, there were many duty personnel.

All of this was revealed to me as we sailed south, back to Singapore. I was also introduced to the ancient Navy routines that modelled the lives of all on board, from “call the hands”, the pipe for waking everyone up to “pipe down”, last thing at night. There was literally nowhere on board that was not in view of one of the black conical loudspeakers. In every compartment, passageway, and deck space, the voice would reach you. And it spoke constantly. It was called the pipe.

The pipe was activated from the bridge, when at sea, and on either side of the upper deck, where the gangway was attached, when alongside. The duty quartermaster rating was the voice of the pipe and messages were passed to him over the internal telephone. He had control of where the messages would be broadcast by isolating various areas of the ship, such as the wardroom, (officers mess). But most of the time it spoke with barely a minute or two between announcements; “Leading seaman Smith report to the regulating office”, “Sub lieutenant Bartlett ring 267”; “duty SNCO flight deck”... and so on, endlessly. The trick seemed to be to only hear the pipes that affected you, which was quite difficult initially but became part of ship life very quickly.

The movement of the ship through the water I really enjoyed. It gently corkscrewed along, rolling from side to side and pitching up and down when the sea was anything but calm. Not everyone enjoyed the motion but sea sickness was uncommon on board, except when we had an embarked force as guests, and then it could be like a North Sea car ferry on a bad day.

As we neared Singapore I started to get to grips with the routine of life on board and my new role as troop JNCO. I could not resist the opportunity to take the Army Landrover, sporting the ships’s crest on the front and the words HMS INTREPID in white on each door, back to Tanjong Berlayer to say hello again to those I had only recently said goodbye to. Life in 10 Port Sqn had been an important education in life, and on reflection then, had not been easy. It was to get worse too. A JNCO does not have anything like the authority that is likely to command much respect from the driver rank, the gap between them is too narrow, and there is nowhere to hide. A corporal may be given a command task but if the execution of that task is not popular with the soldiers, that JNCO is still going to have to eat, sleep and drink with the same soldiers at the end of the day. Unswerving dedication to the task, at any expense, would sometimes result in bad feelings and often arguments, that just made life harder. The opposite approach, attempting to please everybody, was guaranteed to result in total failure and a complete lack of respect to boot. It was a very difficult path to tread, and impossible to negotiate without obstacles. The trick was to encourage others to do what they did not necessarily want to do without too much debate or descent. And in a Port unit, where many boasted more brawn than brain, it had been a testing time. I was therefore quite glad to have seen the back of a few of the “heavy gang”, but the good times far out weighed the occasional bad and I wanted to show off my new second stripe.

We stayed at HMS Terror, the Singapore naval base, for a couple of weeks before starting a voyage to Devonport. Devonport, Plymouth. Plymouth, England. I was actually going back to the UK after all. I thought that Tuesday, 15th April 1969 would be the final time I would see the Singapore coast line, but as it was to turn out it was not, and we sailed for Sharjah in the Gulf. Dr David Owen, then the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Navy had enjoyed a day on board before we left Singapore waters, one of very many high profile visitors the ship played host to. I was twenty one

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years and thirteen days old and happy to be pointing towards a part of the globe I had not seen for more than two years.

We arrived at Sharjah nine days later, embarked helicopters and an embarked force of elements of British Army units, and sailed again the same day for Bahrain. We were there within twenty four hours and more soldiers, kit and vehicles arrived on board. I started to feel my feet very quickly and we were skilfully shunting trailers into spaces ordinary mortals would never have believed possible. Catching the drivers of the vehicles before they disappeared from the vehicle deck and introducing them to the joys of lashing their mounts to the deck with heavy chains required a sadistic streak in all of us. If the drivers didn’t do it then my drivers had to, and it was my responsibility to

report the vehicle deck was ready for sea to the Troop Commander. A loose, fully laden truck in a heavy sea could prove expensive at the very least and may disable the ship with disastrous consequences. It was a responsibility we all understood and took very seriously.

The exercise happened off the east coast of Oman and I was involved in my first amphibious beach landing from the ship. Once we had anchored off shore the dock was flooded and the LCMs and LCVPs headed for the beaches full of Royal Marines to secure the beach from the “enemy”. They took with them the large Michigans and the Royal Engineers in one of the LCMs to clear a beach head and lay roller trackway from the water edge over the soft sand. Another LCM carried the REME element of our contingent who drove the BARV.

The BARV was a very strange beast that we carried on board. BARV stood for Beach Armoured Recovery Vehicle and it was basically a Centurion tank without the gun turret. In place of the turret was a submarine like conning tower giving the tank a very odd shape. It was fully waterproofed and capable of driving into the sea to drag out any vehicles that became stranded between leaving the landing craft and the beach, if the shore was too shallow for the landing craft to reach the waters edge.

For four days there was much coming and going from the air, in and out of the dock, and alongside. Many other ships were involved and Intrepid was the focal point of activity constantly. The pipe spoke incessantly. Emergency drills were practised again and again.

For my first naval exercise afloat, Ex Coral Sands off Queensland did not really count on that score as I did not really taste the flavour of the navy at war, was exciting and hectic, but after four days “endex” (end of the exercise) was declared. We headed back to Sharjah and Bahrain and discharged our embarked forces with all their vehicles and helicopters. The RCT troop worked harder then for it was a real task that had to be done. When it was over the ships company quickly returned to normal

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routine and we headed south.......for Durban in South Africa.

My life was becoming one continuous geography lesson, which in itself was ironic for I only achieved 16% in the mock GCE exam at my secondary school and the teacher, one Mr Bert Evans refused to allow me sit the real examination. I made a mental note to return to the school and remind him of his decision one day. Bert Evans had also been the teacher who ran the school sailing club where I was first introduced to dinghy sailing, and now here I was, half way round the world aboard the Royal Navy’s latest warship, preparing one of the two Bosun dinghies we had on board for some serious leisure sailing in Durban!

We secured alongside in the middle of May and my first impressions of the South African city were very mixed. On one hand it appeared as I imagined the USA to appear; wide geometric streets lined with modern skyscrapers. Drive-in banks, restaurants and cinemas with much affluence in evidence judging by the bright panoramic store windows. However, it did not take too close an inspection to see that there existed a totally different world to any I had seen before. Red buses for whites and green buses for “non-whites”. Many bars and cafes advertised who could and who could not enter. I was to witness 1960s apartheid at first hand, although we did get a taste of it when we arrived. Dvr Bajina, a black african, was asked, none too subtly, to remain on board during the stay as whites and blacks seen in the company of each other would have proved something of a problem. Ethnic minorities were, in my experience, no problem within the services, everyone was remarkably tolerant of each other as we were all from different backgrounds anyway. There was little to choose between Geordies, Paddys, Brummies and Fijians when we were all in the same uniform, doing the same work and getting the same abuse levelled at us by a drill sergeant on the parade ground. But to experience a country where no quarter was given to people with a different skin pigment was very difficult to shrug off.

I hired a car for a couple of days to travel a bit and see something other than the city closest to the harbour. The car was a Chrysler Valiant which was huge. It sported electric everything, which was then state of the art in flash cars. and I thoroughly enjoyed myself escaping from the ship, from my new found colleagues and everything military for a few hours. At a hamburger bar I met an Englishman working there who had jumped ship from the Ark Royal some years before. He did not have much of a life but was happy enough I think. But I was en route for the UK and couldn’t wait to get back to buy myself a car, and some independence, although I’d saved very little during my Far East tour.

We didn’t get to sail the dinghies as the wind was too strong during our stay, but there was plenty to see and, after the recent exercise, just having time to rest was welcome enough.

We stayed in Durban for five days and then we were on our way again. The ship had looked fantastic at night as I saw for the first time the method by which the Royal Navy shows off its hardware. Bright lights, on very long poles, are erected from the sides of the ship to illuminate it for all the world to see. Its distinctive features stood out for miles and we were the talking point of the town while we were there. Yet once the lights had been stowed and the bow nosed out of the harbour entrance we found ourselves in the teeth of a gale and I discovered what it is like to live and work on an erratic lift. One moment the deck beneath the feet would drop away and we felt almost weightless and then it would be rising faster than the senses could adjust and apparent bodyweight was returned threefold. At the same time we were hurled from side to side and if we happened to be making our way along a passageway we tried to avoid being impaled on one of the many items fixed to the bulkheads. And it was great. When the weather was really rough only essential duties were carried out to minimise the chances of injury and damage and much sleep was slept and books read, and uckers played.

Uckers, I soon discovered, was the Navy’s bastardized version of the board game Ludo. It was played in every messdeck and towards the end of a voyage the mess champions would be pitted against each other in the main galley. I had not realised at first that the tiled pattern of the galley deck was in fact a giant uckers board and the finals were played using huge counters and dice with the ships company hurling abuse and beer cans at the opposition. I still had that experience to come.

Another tradition on board that I did learn about very soon after joining the troop was the issue of the famous tot. Every man on board was graded either “G” (for Grog), “T” (for Teetotal) or “UA” (for UnderAge as junior sailors also served on board). Every lower deck mess, meaning not the senior ratings or officers, was issued with a copper fanny, a copper measure and sufficient tot glasses

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for each “G” member of the mess. At the magic hour after morning work routine ceased and before lunch was served, the nominated person from each mess, called the “mess cook”, took the fanny to the canteen where the duty officer and SNCO would supervise the ritual of rum issue. Here would be found the half barrel bearing the polished brass lettering: “THE QUEEN GOD BLESS HER” in which the neat rum was mixed with water to make the grog. Diluting the thick navy rum meant that it had to be consumed within an hour or it became undrinkable, thus preventing it from being stored.

After the duty officer was satisfied that the precise number of tots for the day was calculated from the daily nominal rolls the appropriate amount of rum and water would meet each other in the barrel and once considered duly mixed one measured tot, about a third of a pint, for each “G” in the mess was meticulously measured into each of the waiting copper pots. However, there was no scramble back to the messes for all the “cooks” would hover for the spillage that would inevitably be left in the barrel. This was then shared out and the tot would be safely taken to the waiting mess members.

Here another religious ceremony would take place. Every mess had a board with the occupants of the mess listed in strict order of seniority and by each name were three holes. A peg in the appropriate hole determined whether you were on board or not and if you were whether you had had your tot. The mess cook, in our case one Royal Marine Cpl “General” Booth, would overfill the copper measure from a glass, then fill our glasses from it in turn until they were all filled. Any remainder was poured into a spare glass and called “Queen’s”. General Booth would then hand us each our glass, in seniority, and tradition required us to hand it straight back and offer him “sippers”, or if we really wanted to make a gesture we would say “gulpers”, for fetching it and dishing it out. Then the glass would become our own and the more junior Marines and Drivers in the mess would get theirs.

This was a daily routine on board and had been so for centuries, by all accounts. The tot was a form of currency too for if a favour was owed it would be repaid with a “call round”, which invited that person, after they had their own tot in their own mess, to come round and share yours. Of course, their invited presence in the mess also meant that others in the mess would offer them “sippers” and the guest would invariably lurch off for lunch with a huge grin from ear to ear.

The routine in the Naval Petty Officers and the Royal Marine/Army Sgts Messes was different. They were allowed to store theirs and they were issued with it weekly by the bottle. But the Grog was delicious, had a mellowing effect and always seemed to result in a ravenous appetite.

The very rough weather did not last for long and the west coast of the African continent had long disappeared over the horizon. Ships of the navy did not follow commercial routes and weeks could pass without sight of other vessels or land. Days of the week lost the significance that they had on land and set daily routines provided stability.

The voyage to Gibraltar was punctuated with a stop at the tiny island of St Helena. We were there for only a matter of hours and I did not go ashore. The Captain’s launch was lowered and several senior officers made the trip. St Helena is somewhere that I can say I have seen, albeit from half a mile away, and know next to nothing about.

Gibraltar however I did see. It was strange in some ways as many features of the town resembled the UK. Policemen wore the British helmet and red telephone boxes lurked on street corners. Signs were in English and my first task was to drive the paymaster to the bank. I was lulled into a false sense of UK security on my way out of the dockyard however, as I had assumed that they drove on the left too. They didn’t, and I had no sooner navigated the army Landrover through the main gates than I brought the street to a standstill, with us on the wrong side of the

road. The ship’s paymaster was most impressed with my skill at avoiding the lunatic “foreign” drivers until he too realised the mistake.

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In the few days there I managed to fit in most of the tourist attractions including a trip to the top of the rock for a chat with the apes, and a peer through the gates into Spain. (On yet another reflection it is odd that in all my travels I have set foot in almost forty countries to date yet I have never been to Spain. I wonder if I am the last person from Britain not to have done so).

After so long in the Far East, and a sea journey back to England, I probably did not make the most of my opportunity to discover Gibraltar as I really only wanted to get home. And it was for all the insignificant reasons that I was keen to return. I wanted to drink a pint of milk that tasted like milk. I wanted to read today’s newspaper today. I wanted to do the million and one things I thought idly about from time to time for no real reason other than the fact that I just could not do them. Travel on the London underground. Visit the Southampton Boat Show, the list was endless and once back I knew that I was unlikely to do many of them. There is probably a name for the syndrome when we want something we cannot have and when we can have it we do not want it, but I do not know what it is. I think I would name it servicelifeitis as I do not believe I was the only sufferer by any means. So we eventually bade the Rock farewell and ploughed into the notorious Bay of Biscay on the final leg of the voyage home.

I had never been to Plymouth before but I was sure to see it the traditional way, through a Royal Navy dockyard. Plymouth is known throughout the RN as Guz for a reason I know not, and was one of the largest naval dockyards in the country.

We sailed into port in bright sunshine and it seemed that thousands of people were there to greet us. It only seemed that way because of the numbers of tourists along the Hoe and coastal paths, for once we had passed into the mouth of the river Tamar we entered the dockyards on the right and merged with the many other grey ships parked everywhere.

But I and the rest of the ships company were not to stay on our grey ship for very long. The ship was to be subjected to a bottom scraping and many bits of the interior would be refitted during our stay in the Royal Navy dockyard, Devonport, Plymouth. I was to move in to the famous naval barracks, traditionally referred to as a “landship”, HMS Drake. The buildings were large grey stone affairs that did not look warm or inviting and the interiors of the accommodation blocks were functional, spotless and hostile.

The RCT troop were housed together in one of the giant blocks and we had to move into it before departing on leave. That first day I walked into the city centre and opened my first bank account with the then named National Provincial Bank, which several years later merged with the Westminster Bank to form the National Westminster. I did not have much money, in those times it seemed to come in and go out as a steady flow, but what little I did have I lodged with the bank. I had also opened a Post Office Savings Account when I first joined the Army and a trickle of my pay was credited direct, but it was regularly raided to supplement my day to day living costs and it did not give the facilities that a bank account did.

From the bank I visited a jewellers and wrote out my first cheque for a small signet ring that I had promised myself on my return to the UK. It was wonderful that afternoon, strolling around Plymouth in the summer sunshine just being back in England after so long. I bought newspapers, pints of milk and many of the other things I had wanted to do when so far away and was unable to. I had no idea what the future had in store and at that time I do not think it mattered anyway.

HMS Intrepid was due to return to the Far East in a couple of months and I was given the option of being posted back to an Army unit again, most likely Marchwood, or remaining with 409 LPD Troop on board for another eighteen months. I had to decide before we all dispersed on leave and I really had no doubts about what I wanted to do. It was a very rare opportunity for a young single soldier to serve with the Royal Marines on board a Royal Navy warship and voyage all over the globe, and I was enjoying myself. I jumped at the chance to stay with the troop and in doing so I probably changed the whole course of my career.

The troop had another change of personality by this time and old Harry Dakers, the troop Ssgt had gone back to Marchwood for his final tour and was replaced by George Wilkie. He was a completely different person. Our paths had first crossed at Marchwood in 51 Port Sqn and he was well known then as very capable and a popular SNCO. Ginger haired with a broad Scottish accent, SSgt Wilkie brought our troop tighter together and made the life much more enjoyable from our point of view. He was younger than Staff Dakers and seemed more in touch with the soldiers under his

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control. I suppose that my decision to stay was partly due to him.

So with that decision made I returned to Clacton and 29 Seymour Road for the first time since departing for Singapore in early 1967.

Nothing had changed. Clacton-on-Sea had been a thriving seaside resort, mainly for Londoners, during my early years but after my exotic travels around the world it looked a lot less attractive then. On my second day there I bought, for one hundred pounds cash - after drawing it out of my new bank account - my first car. It was a Ford 105E Anglia Estate. It had few virtues and more than a little rust but it was all mine and I had at last independent transport. It certainly went well and looked tidy so I was pleased with my buy. I toured my old town. I met up with some of my old school pals but my tales of adventure were not well received. Either they did not believe me or they could not relate to my life style now. Either way, it became clear that I no longer really belonged in my own home town. I suppose there is something odd and mysterious about “being in the Army” and for those that were not their preconceived and inaccurate notions led to a distance always being maintained from those that were. I was soon eager to return to Plymouth and back with my own kind. This was a shame for the “stigma” of being a soldier was something that I was to grow used to but never understand. Even today it never ceases to surprise me about how little civilians know about their own armed forces and the stereotype images of the Army Sergeant Major portrayed in television and films does little to help. So once the sailing club, cafes and other previous haunts, for so long the images that I treasured in far off lands, had been visited, I realised that the past is perhaps better left where it belongs and I had the golden opportunity of making something of my career “in the Army” without Clacton making any further demands on my future.

We reassembled as a troop back in HMS Drake and our short term plans for the refit period were unfolded. I was to return to Marchwood to do the Heavy Crane Operator AII course, which as a higher grade qualification would result in more pay. I had already passed my driver trade BI in Singapore and so my trade qualifications were growing. After the course at Marchwood I was to return to Aldershot for the Senior Military Qualification Certificate course which was an essential soldiering credential if I was to ever gain promotion to Sergeant.

The SMQC did mean a return to basic military training with lots of drill, bulling kit again, ranges and military law for a couple of weeks which would be a break from the normal routine and an opportunity to meet up with other corporals in the Corps, some of which I would perhaps know.

But the four week AII course at Marchwood came first and I was again reunited with the world of port operations and familiar faces. Johnny Merquis and his family again made me very welcome and I spent lots of my off duty time during the course as his guest at his married quarter. He took a liking to my Anglia and I had fallen in love with an Austin Nash Metropolitan in turquoise and white that was being sold by a Sgt in 17 Port Regt. We did a deal. Johnny bought my Anglia for the price I had paid for it and I then bought the Metropolitan. It had style that suited my style, or so I liked to think, and it was the nearest I was ever going to get to a sports car. The truth be known I would have much preferred to have bought a motorbike but there was no way it would have served any practical purpose with all the kit I was hauling around and the luxury of a car and bike was unthinkable. The bike would come one day.

The course was fun and interesting, similar to the AIII basic course in 1966 but with knobs on, yet I believed I could see the writing on the wall for my career and the maritime element of the RCT did not feature in it. The problem was that it was unheard of for A trades to be abandoned in favour of the general transport world of the Corps, but with 17 Port Regiment being such a closed shop future promotion would depend almost entirely on the departure of the old guard. As one retired a predictable movement in strict seniority took place and as to who would be promoted to fill a particular vacancy could be forecast with considerable accuracy. This did not bode well for thrusting young newcomers and anyone who had jumped the queue into a Far East appointment and then languished in what was considered by some to be a cushy role on one of the assault ships cruising around the world could not expect to be welcomed with open arms when they did eventually return to do some work! I rather fitted this description exactly and got the message loud and clear that when I did reappear in a permanent capacity I would be at the bottom of the favours list in the closed shop of the maritime world. This was fine by me because I really did not see the rest of my career as a heavy crane operator. I wanted to be an RCT soldier in the traditional sense I suppose, and to me that meant trucks and convoys and Germany.

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The immediate problem was that while I was having serious thoughts about not being a heavy crane operator here I was completing a course that would immerse me ever deeper into the trade. It was a good course too which even included the steam driven rail mounted heavy lift crane which required an introduction into the workings of the British Rail system. The other course members and I even spent a day in the Totton signal box as part of our training and at the RCT railway depot at Longmoor in Hampshire were we spent a couple of days. All in all the course was much more detailed on the mechanical side of all the equipment, and was generally very interesting and enjoyable. A dockside in Southampton water is far more friendly weather wise in July than in the middle of winter.

I did not return to Plymouth after the course at Marchwood but went straight to the Depot and Training Regiment, RCT at Aldershot. After a life on the ocean wave and a month in the relatively laid back environment of 17 Port Regiment, Aldershot came as something of a shock to the system. The original Buller Barracks had gone as had all of the associated buildings. The guardroom, drill sheds, armoury, stores had all been razed to the ground completely. In their place were prefabricated concrete rectangular slabs, arranged into rectangular boxes of one, two, three, four and more storeys high. The new Buller Barracks had become a concrete jungle with purpose built accommodation blocks, classrooms, offices and stores adjacent to a new Regimental drill square, that sloped down hill. We were destined to sweat on that square for many hours that summer.

I confidently thought that as a full corporal I would find life considerably more of a breeze than when last there as a raw recruit. How wrong I was. Indeed the opposite was the case. From the moment I arrived and met up with fellow SMQC hopefuls loud blood curdling barks were directed at us from permanent staff for our complete lack of military bearing. The loudest and grisliest voice belonged to drill Ssgt Ron Booles. He was unique for a Corps Ssgt in that he wore a leather sword belt with his uniform and wielded a pace stick. Only a Sergeant Major ever wore a sword belt normally but at the Depot things were different. For sure there is the training unit and there is the rest of the world, and when you enter the former you are not allowed to forget it. We instantly became clockwork soldiers again swinging our arms shoulder high staring zombie fashion directly ahead and just knowing that the next step we took would be wrong in the eyes of the instructors. Phrases like, “shut up when you’re speaking to me”, were the norm from now on and we had to just grin and bear it, providing we were not seen grinning! A microscopic speck of dust in the welts of the boots resulted in parading behind the guard for a humiliating inspection of best kit by the Regimental Orderly Sergeant that evening. The minutest trace of carbon deposit on the working parts of the rifle that had fired dozens of rounds on the range that day was rewarded with a couple of hours cleaning machine guns, and so on. We were reduced to rubble and rebuilt into fine examples of RCT junior NCOs fit for consideration for promotion to the rank of Sergeant, they told us. As far as we were concerned it was an unavoidable trial to be endured if we did want to get on any further and every SNCO and Warrant Officer had been through it at some stage in their career.

On completion of the course we all got very drunk and hurled our best boots from the top floor windows into the NAAFI courtyard below with much noise and ceremony. Strangely some were missing when we eventually went down to collect them and the following day there were basic recruits seen wearing the most immaculate footwear save for a few minor cuts and abrasions.

Other members of 409 LPD Troop had also been away on various courses whilst the opportunity existed but we reassembled again at HMS Drake for work up trials prior to sailing a few weeks later. Every department on board, that was now ashore whilst the ship was in dry dock, had to get fit and ready for sea trials prior to our sailing back to the Far East. The Royal Marine detachment, with all Army elements, moved into Fremington camp on the North Devon coast. The four LCMs sailed round from Plymouth and for a couple of weeks we rehearsed beach landings on the sandy flat beaches that are such a feature of that area. Just a few miles along the coast was AXE, the Amphibious eXperimental Establishment where we were taught the art of fully waterproofing our vehicles for wading through deep water and learnt the finer points of amphibious techniques. It was a great couple of weeks and I developed a soft spot for Fremington.

By the time we returned to Plymouth Intrepid was no longer propped up by numerous planks of wood in the dry dock but afloat again and alongside. This did not mean that she was ready to be lived in yet however for the “dockside maties” were still crawling all over it and everywhere large black pipes slithered up from the quay, over the side and into the guts of our ship. Cardboard had been laid on all the passageways to protect the deck surface and this gave the overall impression of the interior looking its worst. Rolls of wire, boxes of equipment and removed bulkhead panels had to be

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navigated constantly, and on one occasion, in the wet, going down a short ladder from the flight deck onto the starboard quarterdeck (back right) I had to step over some of this kit and slipped. I took a chunk out of my right shin and still have the scar to this day. In fact I didn’t realize just how badly I had hurt myself at the time, leaping up immediately with simulated bravado for the benefit of anyone that had watched the spectacle, only to discover later that my trousers were ripped and bloodstained. Wet metal ships could be dangerous places at times. No wonder it was called a warship. I was certainly in the wars that day.

Eventually the dockyard handed it back to us and we were able to resume normality. The signals department were thrilled with their new toys. A satellite communications system called Skynet that was hailed as being a breakthrough in what ever it was for. We knew nothing about it at our lowly level other than the fact that there was yet another strange looking dish on the upper superstructure.

One form of communications we had become accustomed to was the television. At sea and in foreign parts the TV was either non-existent or of very poor quality and the UK channels were undoubtedly the best in the world. Top of the Pops was always a major attraction and in particular the six girl dance group called Pans People. The members of my mess, Royal Marine LCVP crews and RCT personnel decided to write to Jimmy Saville, a host of the TV show, and ask if we could have a mention on one of the shows before we departed home shores for the Far East again. We were somewhat surprised at the reply. How would it be, Mr Saville asked, if Pans People visited the ship in Plymouth and used it as a backdrop to one of their dance routines to be broadcast later that month. I became elected as organiser and first approached the Captain, James Eberle RN, for permission. He liked the idea and secured clearance for the visit and I found myself with a task and a half on my hands.

The dance troupe plus manager and technicians arrived on a Saturday morning by rail. We, the mess deck members, met them with a coach from the dockyard pool of vehicles that I had access to, and we took them to their pre-arranged hotel in the city. After a quick change and freshen up we then drove them to the ship. Word had got around like wildfire and the naval base was packed around the Intrepid. It was quite a feeling to escort the famous Pans People up the brow onto the ship and introduce them to the ships senior officers and our own Troop Commander, Capt Murray-Jones. But this time the navy did us proud and did not try to steal them away to the

wardroom. It was our show and we were left alone in that respect. The Petty Officers kindly agreed to let us “borrow” their dining room to entertain our guests for lunch, but before that we showed them our mess deck where we lived. Over a coffee we discussed what they wanted to do and we told them where they could do it, and then the show began.

We trooped up onto the upper deck where thousands of people on the quayside cheered for their super stars to dance. One of the technicians played the latest Hermans Hermits record on a portable tape recorder and the six dancers, go-go danced to the music on various parts of the upper deck. After a few minutes they stopped and clambered onto a different piece of equipment and started again whilst the two cameramen circulated and captured the cavorting on film for later editing back at London. One of the six dancers, Flick Colby, was also the choreographer and it was very interesting watching her improvise with the ships fixtures and fittings and organising the others with their

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routines.

After an hour or so they had completed the filming and signed autographs for the ships company. We returned to our mess for the Tot and introduced them to the historical performance and then we escorted them to the POs mess for lunch. There was something ironic in the fact that here we were, two RCT soldiers and four Royal Marines lunching the most famous group of pop music dancers in the world, being waited on by sailors in the Petty Officers dining room on board the Royal Navy’s most modern warship in Plymouth. I am not sure to this day how we pulled it off but we did and it all went very well. I was over the moon at having achieved such a successful high profile exercise, against many odds.

During the journey back to their hotel Flick Colby really made our day. She explained that as they were not returning to London until the following morning, and the technicians were planning on propping the hotel bar up all night, the dance troupe invited us to have dinner with them that evening at a restaurant of our choosing.

Initially those on board when we returned to the Intrepid refused to believe that the six of us were going to dinner with Pans People that night. Eventually their disbelief gave way to downright envy and eventual resignation when they saw us depart in our best Hong Kong suits.

I cannot remember the name of the restaurant we went to but it was in the old port by the waterfront. We had a great evening and they were very entertaining with tales of famous names in the pop music world. I sat next to and danced with Barbara Lord, the distinctive blonde member of the six, who in later years married the actor Robert Powell. It was a magical evening for us with just a glimpse into the world of the famous, spoilt only by the ravings of their drunken manager when we returned them to the hotel. He was most concerned at how late it was as they had to leave early in the morning for their return to London. It was an eye opener to see them treated like school children, particularly as he was the least likely to be fit for the journey, but it was no longer our scene and we departed after Flick Colby had made embarrassed apologies for him. It had still been a day to remember and one that was talked about for a long time on that ship. The following Thursday evening we witnessed on the TV the finished product and cheered all the way through it. What a shame the video recorder had yet to have been invented then. It would have made a good memento.

My cherished Austin Metropolitan failed the MOT test and would have required a small fortune to put it right. A fortune that I did not have and I learnt one of the many lessons in car ownership that year. Reluctantly I virtually gave it to a car breaker who would doubtlessly have made a handsome profit on the deal, but I was due to sail again and a very sick car without an MOT was a financial liability and became a major worry to me, hence my decision to cut my losses. I had been completely seduced by an opportunity to own the nearest thing to a sports car I could afford and I suppose I paid the price. But it had been fun while it lasted and I would no doubt make other unwise decisions over motor vehicles before I was through.

We sailed in the Spring from Plymouth to Portland for sea trials prior to our voyage back to the Far East. We were, for a week, at the mercy of the Naval boffins who decide if the ship and its company are fit for sea, and during that time we ran through every drill and exercise imaginable. We endured simulated fires and major mechanical failures day and night off the south coast of England. We were attacked by fictitious enemy aircraft and submarines. We lowered the LCVPs and launched the LCMs. They returned to their davits and internal dock to be launched again. We were tested and tested again in all of our different roles. My watch duties were interesting and exciting even though there was the occasional loss of humour by some of the senior officers under considerable pressure. But at the end of it all the ship and crew came through with flying colours and we had passed our sea trials.

Families and loved ones were gathered on the quayside on the wet and cold November day when we sailed for our first foreign port. We cleared the Isle of Wight on our port side and headed back to the Bay of Biscay for warmer climes south. 42 Officers and 520 men, including 80 Royal Marines and 40 soldiers were on their way to Casablanca.

North Africa was almost as I had expected it to be. Very hot and bright with no vegetation as such and lots of dust and sand. Flat topped buildings were almost all painted white to reflect the sun and the customary dress seemed to be long flowing loosely fitted robes. It reminded me very much of Aden. We were not there for more than a few days but during that time a very large function was held

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at the British Embassy and we had on board a very senior Naval Officer who was to attend the do. We didn’t carry a car on board for the Captain as he had a dedicated Landrover for any visits he had to make and whenever we were alongside in a Royal Navy dockyard, anywhere in the world, a staff car could be called from the dockyard transport pool if required. However, there is no RN dockyard at Casablanca and a senior Admiral was not going to arrive at the Embassy in a Landrover, no matter how shiny.

It was therefore decided that an immaculate Humber Hawk staff car would be flown from Gibraltar and I was to drive it when it arrived. This involved sending a signal to Gib with my driving licence details so that a special permit naming me could be issued to cover it’s use in Casablanca.

The car arrived on an RAF transport plane and with it was my special permit, that I still have to this day. I drove the Admiral and the Captain to their party and took them back to the ship again in the early hours. Mileage covered, no more than five miles round trip. Later that day I drove it back onto the same aircraft that had waited overnight. No doubt, had the British taxpayers known, they would have all considered that money well spent! I did get out and about in the Landrover on various trips before we sailed and most of us had the chance to sample the markets and local places of liquid refreshment.

But we were soon on our way, our senior naval officer having flown back to the UK. Next stop, Cape Town, South Africa.

On the very day I write this history is being made in South Africa and Nelson Mandela, after spending 27 years in prison for protesting about apartheid and now president of the ANC party, is about to become the first black President of a free South Africa as the last of the votes of the first ever free election are counted. However, in 1970 we were returning to a quite different South Africa. Cape Town proved to be very similar to our visit to Durban when we last returned from the Far East, politically that is, and I had the opportunity to see the extremes of society during that visit.

I had become very friendly with the ship’s chaplain, Mike Chapman, since I had been on board, although not in any religious sense. We just seemed to get along well and often had a drink and chat together in different parts of the world. In Cape Town Mike made contact with an Irish priest he knew who lived and worked in the heart of the most troubled area of Cape Town. I was asked to drive a minibus full of very deprived children from that area on a trip of the Cape and National Park. It was to be a treat for them from Mike Chapman I jumped at the chance to do it. We all had a wonderful day and travelled to see the wild animals and the famous rugged coast of the Cape of Good Hope. Apart from the break it gave the kids, it also gave me the opportunity to see and find out a little about the country.

The ship was “dressed” with the lights to show her new paint to best advantage at night, and the officers entertained in the manner that they were world famous for. Colourful canopies covered upper decks and necklaces of lights sparkled around their edges. The guests dressed in their best evening frocks and the officers wore their Mess Kit. We were kept out of the way.

When the parties were over and diplomatic protocol had been judged a success, we headed again for the open seas where in truth most of the matelots seemed most at ease. We took the round-a-bout route to Singapore, via Mauritius, the Seychelles and RAF Gan. The island paradises of Mauritius and Seychelles were just brief stops for a day or two where we had the chance to go ashore, resist the temptation to buy a souvenir carved out of a coconut and try the local aviation fuel which they cunningly kept hidden in rum bottles. My last visit to Gan had been on the way to Aden in 1967 in Intrepid’s sister ship; Fearless. Who would have ever guessed. And there I was again having another swim, another drink or three, another walk and again all the options were exhausted within an hour.

During that leg of our journey I became chief broadcaster on Radio Intrepid. Known officially as SRE - Sound Reproduction Equipment - we broadcast every evening at sea between seven in the evening and pipe down (lights out), at ten thirty. The programme schedule included home and world news courtesy of the signals department and their highly technical equipment (which they probably tuned into BBC World Service), comedy hour using BBC recorded radio programmes such as “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again” and “The Goons”, record requests from our quite well stocked record library, interviews with key members of the ship’s company and so on. It gave me quite a taste for broadcasting and the majority must have approved or they would never have put up with me. I did get a bit of flak from the Commander when I ran a quiz as the prizes, beer usually donated by the Cypriot

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NAAFI manager, were awarded to the first to the studio with the correct answers. Dozens of sailors racing through the passageways did not go down well with watchkeepers trying to sleep. As every mess had a phone I was forced to invent the worlds first phone in radio quiz programme. I have never had recognition for this achievement.

On 31st of July in that year of 1970, in the Indian Ocean I saw grown men cry. After hundreds of years of tradition the daily issue of the tot ended. All over the world Royal Navy personnel exchanged sippers, gulpers and sandy bottoms for the very last time. The main brace was spliced and everyone received a double ration and we were all presented with an engraved shield to commemorate the event. As a soldier with very limited time on board a warship to my credit it did not have any impact on me as such. It was a shame of course to lose the tot as it was certainly a highlight of our routine, but for crusty old salts that had served for twenty years and more it was devastating. Not a happy ship that week.

We arrived in Singapore on August 16, 1970 and Singapore was more or less as I had left it. Becoming a seasoned traveller now I stepped ashore at HMS Terror, the naval base, with confidence. Here I was just north of the equator on the opposite side of the planet to my home town and I felt more at home than when I was at Clacton on my leave. The Singapore and Hong Kong bases would feature prominently for the rest of my tour on the ship as wherever we went we always seemed to return to one of them.

For the next few months we were involved in maritime exercises off the coast of Borneo and Brunei and after a stay in Hong Kong we headed north to pastures new for a major exercise with the South Koreans in their waters. I didn’t get to see their country other than on the horizon for a few days, but after we disembarked them for the last time we went off to make some more history. For the first time since the second world war a British warship was to enter the harbour of the Japanese city Hiroshima. We were that warship and I was on board.

My first task when we moored alongside was to be driven to the British Consulate in a diplomatic car to collect the number plates for our own vehicles. We were not allowed to off load the Landrovers and 4 tonner unless their registrations were in Japanese characters. By the time I was returned to the ship my lads had the Army and Navy plates off and were ready to fix the new ones on. Now for a secret confession... when I opened up the parcel of plates I had collected that were to replace ours, from the details that had been sent well in advance, I had no idea which plates went on which vehicle! There was no english translation or any other guide. With the Captain and the Commander demanding their transport a decision had to be made. We laid them out on the tank deck and matched them into pairs and “allocated” each pair to a vehicle. Working on the principle that if I didn’t know then neither would anyone else, we agreed not to spill the beans, or rather the rice, under the circumstances!

I, and the other transporters, were surprised and delighted to hear that we had been invited as the personal guests of the Director to the Toyo Kogyo company for a guided tour. Although it was a massive motor vehicle manufacturer in Asia, we had to admit that the name Mazda meant very little to us then. However we very soon learnt what a force to be reckoned with they then were. They built buses, lorries and cars and had recently bought the continued development rights to the german rotary Wankel engine which was to be installed in the supercar, the RX3, which would not be seen by the public until 1973. The factory tour was amazing and the most impressive thing to me was the fact that they not only made the vehicles but the machinery that made the vehicles. Just about everything necessary was created on that plant. They were also the first to employ the system of multitype vehicle assembly on the same assembly line. We were treated like royalty from the time we were collected from the ship - in one of their own luxury coaches - to our return after driving the RX3 on their test track, being dined in their restaurant and presented with gifts. Japanese management and working practice is nothing new to us today but in 1970 it was quite an eye opener. To say we were impressed

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would be an understatement, it was a day we would never forget, and the fact that it took place in Hiroshima certainly made it extra special.

The ship was opened to the public on our second day there and the queues of people, patiently waiting for hours to come on board was a sight to be seen. The queue zig-zagged through the dockyard and out into the city as far as the eye could see. It was though every member of the community had come to see us. The Royal Marine detachment, as always on these open days, turned the vehicle decks into a children’s fairground with rides, slides and stalls all designed and made on board. The Royal Marine band gave concerts on the flight deck whilst the visitors clambered in and out of the helicopters. In every compartment (with a few sensitive exceptions) were Japanese faces peering out of hatches and into cupboards. They were fascinated by everything and were the absolute model of politeness. Hundreds of families wanted to take sailors home with them to show us the Japanese way of life as their guests.

Although the oldest buildings in the city were no more than twenty five years old there were numerous monuments to the historical event that effectively ended the Second World War. The two most significant were old and new. The old was the steel skeleton of a large church that had been very close to the ground zero target of the bomb. The actual target had been a “T” shaped bridge in the centre of the city and as the bomb was designed to explode above the surface the structure of the church miraculously survived the blast. It was left as a monument when the city was rebuilt and contrasted strangely with the ultra modern structures surrounding it.

The other significant monument to the atomic

explosion that completely destroyed Hiroshima is the Peace Museum. A large rectangular building standing high on stone pillars in a large quiet garden, it provided the visitor with a complete walk through of models, artifacts and photographs depicting the story of the total devastation and rebirth of the city. A very moving experience for everyone who visited it. Every visitor was provided with a tape recorder and earpiece with a personal commentary in their own tongue as they entered, which in 1970 was technology right up to the minute.

Japan was very expensive and most of my mess only ventured out once for a meal and a taste of the infamous sake. Japanese culture did not accommodate western tastes then and by the time we were ready to leave, we were ready to leave.

We sailed south to Hong Kong for a stay before moving back to Singapore. Our next trip to foreign parts, (I no longer considered Singapore and Hong Kong as foreign parts having spent so much time in them by then), was a return to Australia for me, but this time to the western side at Fremantle. However a tidal wave put paid to that, not in Australia but East Pakistan. In October 1970 a cyclone caused total havoc and put most of the country under water. We immediately found ourselves on relief work.

Around the clock we unloaded the vehicles and equipment we had just loaded for the exercise in Australia and reloaded with relief supplies of food, clothing and medical equipment plus additional landing craft and assault boats. We also embarked nine Fleet Air Arm Whirlwind and Wessex helicopters and made haste to the area that had become the scene of global attention. On the way we paraded through the dining hall and received injections in all of our arms, legs and buttocks, with a couple of pills and lumps of sugar for good measure. We were not sure what tasks would await us but it was pretty certain that health was going to be at risk it the country’s complete infrastructure had collapsed, as it was reported to have done. There were not many of us that night that did not react in some way or another to having umpteen doses of nasty diseases injected into us.

After a few days we arrived near the coast of East Pakistan, although the first problem for the ship’s navigating officer was to establish where the coast actually was. The tidal wave had rendered all previous mapping useless and it was decided to stand a long way off the coast for safety sake. We anchored about 30 miles off Patuakhali in the Bay of Bengal. The helicopters were cranked up and

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flew off to see first hand what awaited us while the landing craft were readied and loaded with emergency supplies. The RCT contingent did nothing as the vehicles were always ready for use. We just had to wait.

When the helicopters returned the news was very bad. Water covered everywhere it seemed. No roads at all. No idea of the depth of the water for the landing craft to navigate. And tens of thousands of people gathered on areas of dry land with no drinking water, food or protection from the weather.

It was decided that use of land vehicles such as the 4 tonner and the landrovers could not be usefully employed but the Michigan rough terrain tractors could and they were also loaded onto the larger landing craft, the LCMs. Whilst the senior echelons of authority flew to the capital, Chittagong, to establish some sort of command and control of emergency relief work throughout the country, the landing craft were dispatched to make immediate contact with the peoples that needed that the food and blankets. They set off into the unknown, to return when they had distributed their wares.

Some of the RCT lads went on the LCMs as extra hands and others remained on board ship. I found myself in the left hand seat of one of the Whirlwinds to keep the pilot, a Royal Navy Lt, company and awake during the long flights over the monotonous sea. My first trip, with an underslung net containing sacks of rice, was some shock to the system. After the half hour or so across the sea we passed over the indistinct coastline and instantly saw many dead bodies either floating in the brown water or lying in grotesque positions on patches of land. In addition there were bloated carcasses of cattle everywhere. Those people we did see that were alive were bedraggled and seemed to be wandering aimlessly in groups that got larger as they found each other. The further inland we flew the greater the numbers of people, bodies and animals we saw. At the largest gathering near a sort of village we hovered, grounding the net, let it go, and returned to the ship. Initially the hundreds of faces were terrified as we got nearer and they retreated from the storm created by the rotor. But as we climbed we could see them rushing to the net in an uncontrolled frenzy to get to the food.

Very quickly temporary camps were set up for distribution of the supplies and members of the ships company were sited at those camps. As loads could only be brought in by either air or water most of the camps were at the edge of rivers where the LCMs and LCVPs could lower their ramps. The scale of devastation was impossible to comprehend and very difficult to attempt to describe. I had the opportunity, by flying with the Fleet Air Arm, to see many places and they were all very bad. Outside the camps thousands gathered waiting to be helped, looking so forlorn and wretched.

The tidal disaster that claimed an estimated half a million lives received world wide media attention and many ships including the converted carrier HMS Triumph and my old friend the LSL Sir Galahad, plus others from many other nations, were anchored near the Intrepid in the River Ganges delta. The operation became known as Op Burlap and was the largest relief operation Britain had ever undertaken. Air activity increased many fold and I was fully employed keeping the pilot informed of the precise whereabouts of other aircraft near us when we were airborne to avoid collisions. Our routine revolved around picking up an underslung net full of supplies from the flight deck of our ship, flying to a prearranged site, low hover for the ground crews to unhook the net, ground hover for empty nets to be loaded inside, take off with great care so as not to collide with one of the many other helicopters doing the same thing, fly back to the ship and land on the rolling flight deck, refuel, unload empty nets, hook on another full cargo net and do it all over again. Sometimes to the same site and other times to yet another one. We did this for sixteen hours a day, day after day, week after week. The aircraft were serviced over night and when I was not flying I was either eating or sleeping. There was little relaxation.

I learnt how to fly a Whirlwind helicopter during those weeks and flew backwards and forwards between ship and shore many times. My pilot, who was technically Sir to me being a commissioned naval officer but who I called “Skip”, personified the service pilot in being cool, very capable and a really nice person. He taught me the names and uses of all the controls and I was soon experiencing “hands on” flight with complete control of the aircraft as he sat in the right hand seat, hands and feet away from his set of controls. Level flight was followed by turns and alterations to altitude. Over the sea it was more difficult without obvious reference points to sight on but reliance on instruments was easier to understand that way. I never did land or take off from the flight deck of the ship, he would have probably lost his job if I had, but I did have plenty of opportunities at the other ends of our sorties. I of course knew that there was so very much more to flying than just driving the

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thing but I experienced, many times during those weeks, the absolute thrill of commanding a large helicopter in controlled flight. Needless to say, I wanted to become a pilot!

I did join the crew of Tango 2, one of our LCMs, for a round trip of several days from the ship to a main supply depot up river and back during the operation and it was an experience defies detailed description. We stopped many times to bury countless bodies floating in the water or laying on the banks. We saw thousands of lost souls trying to get to emergency camps for food and medical attention. And always overhead were the sounds of helicopters from European and American ships in the Bay. The tot may have ended earlier that year but we had a good supply on board and there wasn’t any left when we returned to our ship. The sun relentlessly blazed down on us during our travels in that muddy water and we had erected canopies to hide from its intensity. I spent many hours at the wheel during those days and often wondered how it was that since joining the Army I had been trained as a heavy crane operator, almost against my wishes, and in the space of a few hours I had flown a helicopter and helmed a large landing craft. I had not really found myself by that point, but I was not complaining. Life had been exciting and interesting to say the least and I had certainly seen a fair amount of the world.

However my time with 409 LPD Troop RCT was drawing to a close and shortly after returning to Singapore, in the December, HMS Intrepid began to rotate the crew. My posting order came through, determining the next phase of my service career, and this time I was not surprised to find that I was to return to the maritime fold at Marchwood, to 51 Port Sqn RCT, again.

I left Singapore for the final time in January 1971 aboard a Royal Air Force VC10 from RAF Changi.

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y first priority during my leave on my arrival home was to purchase another car. Still without a fortune but with a little more wisdom in value for money matters concerning second hand cars, I became the umpteenth owner of a bright red Hillman Imp. It was quite

tidy, as they say in the trade, and would serve my need again in the UK for economical transport. Plus it was cheap.

I took up residence again in McMullen Barracks and felt immediately at home with the familiar Marchwood power station tower looking down on me. Hampshire is a lovely county and with the New Forest just over the road and Southampton Water alongside I felt very comfortable. In the two storey accommodation block I lived on the ground floor, in my own room or bunk as it was called. This came with the privilege of being a full corporal, along with the responsibility for the two barrack rooms adjacent to it. This was the first time since I had joined the Army that I had any sort of privacy, and I loved it. I could leave my possessions, such as my stereo system and books out without fear of them being stolen or damaged because in the bunk door was a key. My key to my room.

Being a corporal also meant that my job differed from the last time I had served with 51 Port Sqn. The squadron was still made up of separate troops of lighterage, stevedore and plant trained personnel with the inevitable headquarters element dealing with all administrative tasks. I, naturally enough, returned to the plant troop to some familiar faces plus others who had joined the ranks of the heavy crane operator during my travels to foreign ports. Most of those that had been on that original AIII HCO course in 1966 were there; Huggett, Carter, Shepherd, and Martin Atterbury. They were all married now and living within a few doors of each other in the married quarters. Even children were appearing. Life was moving on it seemed. But the days of actually operating the equipment were, to all intents and purposes, over for me because a full corporal had responsibility for several vehicles and items of equipment and their driver/operators. This meant that the day would be centred around the management of the plant, rather than operating it.

The position of a corporal was probably the most difficult to make a success of, particularly at Marchwood. A corporal is a member of the rank and file and it is with the drivers and lance corporals that the corporal must work, eat, drink and socialise, and at the end of the day they all share the same accommodation. There is nowhere to hide, (albeit that some camps have a Cpl’s Club but it has no privileges or rights as do the Warrant Officers and Sergeants Messes), it is to all intents and purposes an extension of the NAAFI facilities. So an ambitious corporal must tread a very careful path if recognition is to be earned without the scorn of subordinates. The British Army rank structure is designed very much in a pyramid and a corporal is very close to the widest bottom layer. The leap up to the prestigious SNCO world means fierce competition and, as for all other promotions, selection is based entirely on merit, once all relevant trade, education and military skills qualifications are gained. Length of time in the current rank did not enter into the formulae, providing the necessary qualifications were held.

This merit based system gave rise to situations where quite junior yet very able individuals rose rapidly above their contemporaries. And that led to considerable ill feelings within some. Life for the ambitious was fraught with highly volatile situations that tested the best from the rest, particularly within the mass of JNCOs. I was ambitious and I did not make too much of a secret about it. It was time to take stock of my life and career, because I was not really happy in the trade that had been thrust upon me in Houndsdown Camp, Yeovil, in 1965. The major obstacle to doing anything about it was that nobody relinquished an “A” trade in the RCT maritime world. I was to be the first.

About this time I did make serious enquiries about becoming a pilot with the Army Air Corps but I did not get very far. I passed the aptitude tests and was pronounced physically fit. My academic fitness let me down. Failing the 11+ at Clacton-on-Sea in 1959 and consequently being sentenced to the local Secondary school with very limited opportunities to educationally prepare for the future was to haunt me for most of my adult life, it seemed. I did have an “O” level GCE in physics, (much to the amazement of Mr Thomas, the physics master), but it was a mathematics credential that I lacked. Go away and get a couple more “O” levels I was told, and then try again. I did give it serious thought but the opportunity just did not exist to study part time then within the service environment. Perhaps if my desire to fly had burnt a lot greater I may have achieved the aim, but it did not and therefore neither did I. What was more, the minimum rank to be an Army pilot was sergeant and my position in the ancient pecking order of Marchwood personnel was very low. Fate directed that I was to stay on the

M

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ground for the time being.

It was in fact the government of the day that directed my fate because in 1971 a law was passed requiring the drivers of heavy goods vehicles to hold a separate licence in addition to their “ordinary” driving licence. This legislation had a tremendous effect on the Armed Forces for it had many hundreds of heavy vehicles. Because so many drivers, civilian and services, were already driving heavy goods vehicles (HGV) on the roads it had been decided to operate a year of grace employing what was known colloquially as Grandfather’s Rights. This meant that drivers who could prove that they had driven a particular class of vehicle for ten out of the previous twelve months would be granted the licence for that and all lower classes of HGV without taking a special driving test. Drivers that did not qualify had a year in which to take and pass the test otherwise they would be unable to drive without a qualified driver accompanying them and would need to display the newly design HGV “L” plates. This caused some interesting problems. Most of the SNCOs and Warrant Officers in positions of authority in the RCT naturally applied for exemption from the test under the Grandfather’s rights scheme, and most of the applications were refused! The licensing authority, which happen to be the South Eastern for all of the Armed Forces HGV drivers, considered that Sgts, SSgts and MT WOs, (warrant officers in charge of the motor vehicle transport), did not actually drive the vehicles on a regular basis if at all. They may well have been very experienced drivers and in previous years have driven millions of miles in heavy goods vehicles, but the law only allowed for the previous twelve month period and they had to take the new test. Fury reigned in many WOs & Sgts Messes that year, particularly when many of the old and bold new they had little chance of actually passing a two and a half hour comprehensive driving test on a vehicle that they hadn’t even been in for years. What is more, the requirement to hold certain classes of HGV licence were to be an essential component of many trades, not least the basic trade of driver, and future careers looked at stake.

In line with this major change in licence regulations the Army School of Transport designed a two week course to train HGV driving instructors in order to meet the needs of the future. I was granted my HGV licence as a JNCO heavy crane operator (skilled at driving the AEC six wheeled 24 ton lorry mounted crane) and I applied to be considered for the HGV driving instructor’s course. My application was approved and accepted and my first step out of maritime and into general transport was about to be taken.

My new found privacy in my bunk in McMullen Barracks ceased in August 1971 as I became married to Valerie Starkey, a bank managers daughter in Clacton. We had met at the sailing club when I was on leave from Marchwood before being posted to Singapore and we maintained a long term correspondence during my years overseas. The decision to get married was taken at very short notice as a private hiring had become available. Married quarters were allocated on a points basis and points were awarded for rank, length of time married, time spent waiting for a married quarter to be allocated, and so on. I had no points as a single man, and if a single person did marry it took quite a while to qualify for service provided accommodation. However, there was a system where the Army would pay a rent allowance if the married soldier occupied a private hiring approved by the families office and the owner of the property. There were not many hirings but they helped the then shortfall of married quarters in the UK. These were not allocated by the families office as they were privately owned and occupants usually vacated them to eventually move into a quarter. I was advised that a bungalow in Totton, midway between Marchwood and Southampton, was going to be available at short notice and took it. My Hillman Imp therefore gave way to her Austin Mini estate and her bank overdraft reduced the sum total of my wealth to seven pounds. I had became a pad and in doing so unwittingly improved my chances of promotion into the world that revolves around the Sgts Mess.

By 1972 I had passed my driving instructor course at the Army School Of MT in Bordon, Hampshire and my course report recommended that I attend a new course called the Advanced MT NCO that was due to start later that year. I was detached from the plant operating troop into the Regimental MT section, a move that pleased me but was not seen as a wise career move by the officers of 51 Sqn. After all, no one relinquished an AII HCO qualification.

I returned to Bordon later in the year for the new course and found myself in the company of real MT corporals from all units of the RCT. It was a very detailed, thorough and enjoyable course which culminated in selection for those considered suitable as light vehicle (as opposed to heavy goods) QTOs - qualified testing officers, or in civilian parlance, driving examiners. QTOs had to hold

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the minimum rank of Sgt but the experiment on this course was that we would be fully trained to carry out testing as soon as we were promoted to Sgt. I was one of the few to be selected and passed the QTO course as a corporal, then a unique situation. Very unique as it turned out for all subsequent courses did not feature that element again.

Marchwood was a working port in every sense of the word. Ships were loaded round the clock if necessary and everything we did related to keeping the country’s only military port operating. It was real soldiering in the overall picture of logistic operations of course, but close up the nearest we ever got to seeing a soldier was watching them troop on and off the ships! An occasional day on the ranges, for those that could be spared. An annual training camp in Scotland or on the Isle of Wight with freight handling sergeants instantly becoming knowledgable weapons lecturers and marine engineers warning us of the dangers of a nuclear blast did not fit in all the proper places. My course report was glowing and I had found my real interest in the Corps, trucks. Not just trucks but trucks that supplied the front line forces with food, ammunition and fuel in battle. That was what I had really joined the Army for, and the RCT in particular, in the first place. Yes I loved the sea, although I had had more than my fair share of it by that date, and dinghy sailing was my sport and hobby. But I was not a docker and I suppose I was not really happy with my career.

When I got the summons from the RSM, WO1 Russett - cousin of the WO1 Russett who had been the Regimental Sergeant Major of 17 Port Regt in 1967 - to prepare to be interviewed by the Regimental Second in Command, I was convinced that I was about to have my future read for me. This was the time for me to put my cards on the table and request that my heavy crane operator qualification be relinquished in favour of my Driver B1. A posting to a proper RCT regiment would be sure to follow. I was on my way.

Major Jim Payne, a huge man, sat behind his desk in his large important looking office on the second floor of the Regimental Headquarters (RHQ) and in front of him was my course report. He read it to me (even though I had already seen it) and my chest puffed out. He told me what a model corporal I was and how much attention had been given to me by many officers of the Regiment. I was afraid the buttons on my shirt would give way if my chest puffed up any more. He told me that I had been identified as ideal to fill a very important role in the Regiment. My heart beat with anticipation. He told me that with immediate effect I was to take over as the Officers Mess steward.

At the age of twenty four in the office of the 2i/c I very nearly had a heart attack. I could not believe my ears. I refused to believe my ears. I do remember asking him if he was joking which immediately prompted a near fit from the RSM who was lurking just behind my right shoulder, as RSMs do in important interviews. When I realized that he was not joking I ruined several years of hard work by telling him flat that I was not, under any circumstances what so ever, going to be the Officers Mess steward. The RSM did throw a fit then and I was wheeled out into the corridor and treated to a hundred and twenty decibel oration on how to speak and how not to speak to God’s right hand man.

I was sent home to cool off, as the 2i/c put it. At breakfast I had been on top of the world knowing that I had an outstanding course report for the area of the Corps activities I most wanted to be involved in, (since the lighterage trades would have meant completely starting again and flying was very much on the back burner), and by lunchtime I was feeling quite wretched, not quite sure what had happened. This Officers Mess idea had come completely out of the blue, not so much as a whisper on the jungle drums in any of the usual circles, and had not been prepared for it at all. My lords and masters in RHQ had obviously had designs on me for some time but I was having none of it, and it did not go down well at all.

Several days passed which were most uncomfortable. I was in a sort of suspension, unofficial leave, until one of the MT drivers came to take me back to the RSMs office. Surprisingly he was quite pleasant and my fears subsided a little. It seemed that maybe the decision to employ me in the Officers Mess had not been such a good one but they now had a dilemma as to what to do with me. It could not be seen for Cpl Young to buck the system and get away with it, yet I could not be forced to carry out the duties that Mess work would have required if I clearly objected to the idea so strongly. Every soldier learns, usually more than once, that you cannot beat the system, and my lesson was a sort of compromise I suppose. I was to report to the Quartermaster for duties in the stores until further notice. The message went out to the Regiment loud and clear and I became an assistant to the elderly corporal responsible for bedding.

Maj Shaw was the QM and, like all QMs was a commissioned Warrant Officer. He was in the

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twilight of his long career and clearly wanted, and got, a quiet life. The pace in the stores varied between dead slow and stop. Tea breaks were a religion and the staff were very religious. But SSgt Lou Costello and his not very merry men made me welcome enough and I fell in with the routine which wasn’t so bad so long as I put all my urges to thrust ideas at people on hold. The Warrant Officer in charge, known as the RQMS (Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant) was WO2 Taffy Johns who had been the Squadron Sergeant Major of 10 Port Sqn in Singapore for part of my time there. He was okay and made sure I kept a low profile whilst I served my penance for failing to conform to the system. Life was not always fair in the Army and up until then I had little to complain about. It was a good job I did not have a crystal ball.

My release came by way of a complete change in the job specification of the freight handler. It had been decided to bring the stevedore and crane op trades into closer alignment and rename them Port Terminal Despatcher and Port Terminal Operator respectively. Part of the change meant that the despatchers would be required to drive some of the vehicles and none of them held the HGV class two licence that would be necessary. A large HGV driver training commitment landed in the Regiment’s lap and they had an urgent need for HGV instructors. What is more it was decided to set up an HGV driver training wing under the control of the RHQ and SSgt Tom Tully, from the Regimental Training Wing, got the job of setting it all up. What he needed was a trained and qualified assistant who knew the ins and outs of setting up the new fangled HGV training system and could also instruct the trainees. Where do you go if you need something in the Army.... to the stores, where he discovered.... guess who!

So now I was flavour of the month and Tom Tully and I had a fine old time scouring the squadrons for suitable JNCOs to take on the role of instructor. We ended up with half a dozen wary volunteers, including Alex Scott from Intrepid days and Jake Carter from the HCO courses. We collected from the Royal Army Ordinance Corps (RAOC) loan pool a fleet of elderly AEC 10 ton gun tractors for driver training which were pigs to drive but ideal for our purposes as they were identical cab and chassis wise to the lorry mounted cranes used in the port. We were given an office in RHQ of all places and the Commanding Officer, Lt Col S Ball RCT, took considerable interest in the project.

Many of the stevedores could not even drive a car. Some had passed the “ordinary” test and owned cars but it was because some had shown no aptitude for driving and could not pass the driving test at basic training level that they were chosen for the trade of freight handler in the first place. It seemed odd to me that wearers of the RCT cap badge were unable to drive but the situation was the same for the clerical trades too and it would not be for many years that a basic driving licence was essential to serve in the Corps. I had to remember of course that the RCT had only been formed in the mid 1960s and then with personnel from other Corps. The maritime trades had come over from the Royal Engineers where there had never been an across the board requirement to drive.

There I was, out of the stores and into a nightmare. Me and a handful of untrained instructors were going to convert dozens of non driving stevedores into qualified HGV class 2 licence holders using ancient Royal Artillery gun tractors that nobody wanted any more. And it got worse. When I suggested that we taught all the non drivers in a Landrover first and then move them into the HGV training phase it was made perfectly clear to me that as the law allowed non drivers to take the HGV test without having driven anything before, and if successful they would automatically qualify for the car licence, there was no need to waste time or energy doing it any other way. Another lesson I learnt in those days was beware of the senior officer who employed qualified people to carry out a task and then proceeded to tell them how to do it. I was to meet quite a few of those in due course.

Tom Tully and I took Mary Poppins’ advice and introduced a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down and an element of fun was introduced into the training and after all was said and done, it went very well. We booked the training camp at Fremington in North Devon for one night every two weeks and used it as a base for a long convoy drive with an overnight stay. We devised training routes all over the south coast that made the students on our courses want to go out for the day. With their positive attitude the instructor’s life became more manageable. The QTO at Marchwood was kept very busy conducting the driving tests as each course came to its conclusion. Fails were retrained and retested and both accidents and “no hope” students were very rare.

Tom Tully was promoted to WO2 and posted to an RCT TA regiment in Doncaster after a few weeks and I took over full responsibility for the driver training throughout the second half of 1972 and the first few months of 1973.

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The Mini Traveller made way for the first of a long line of Renaults, the first being a used but smart R4, of shopping bag advertisement fame in those days. The hiring at 11 Arundel Road, Totton was vacated for a married quarter, a second floor flat - 39 Mulberry Road in Marchwood.

Things were getting back on track after all and although I was still in a maritime regiment I was at least working in a rubber wheeled environment, which is really what I wanted. Despite the constant reminders that nobody relinquished an “A” trade for a lesser status “B” trade, I submitted my application to do just that, and it was accepted without any fuss by RCT records in Hastings.

What had I done.... I was now a B1 driver trade corporal with seven and a half years service, three of them in my present rank. I had gained my Educational Promotion Certificate (EPC) and passed my Senior Military Qualification Certificate (SMQC), both essential for promotion to Sgt. In addition I was an assistant PT instructor, HGV driving instructor and had passed the new advanced MT NCOs course with a QTO certificate. I held an HGV class 1 licence and I was certainly never going to be the steward of the 17 Port Regiment Officers Mess. What a joke it would have been then if I could have known that I would one day walk through the doors of that Mess as a Captain myself.

Yet in the Spring of 1973, following a surprise CO’s interview, I was escorted by the RSM, for the very first time, through the doors of the Warrant Officers and Sergeants Mess, to be welcomed in by the members as a Sergeant. And with the promotion came a posting, away from Marchwood and the maritime world to an even more “specialist” unit.... to the RCT Junior Leaders Regiment in Taunton, Somerset.

Another lesson I was learning was to expect the unexpected! I wondered if I would ever see an RCT transport regiment. In fact I would with a vengeance, but not just yet.

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orton Manor Camp, situated a couple of miles north of Taunton on the road to Minehead, had once been a military hospital and most of the single storey wooden blocks, or spiders as they were known, were inter-connected by covered pathways. The camp was not dissimilar to

Houndsdown Camp at Yeovil and Blandford Forum where I had done my PTI course. Now it was the home of the Junior Leaders Regiment RCT, which consisted of three squadrons, - A, B, and C, a Senior Troop where the Juniors spent their final term before moving into Corps units, a Regimental Training Wing and an External Leadership Wing, and an Education and very large driver training organisation which were both staffed and run by civilians. There was, of course, the usual elements of any Army unit; Gymnasium - two at Norton Manor, RQMS stores and an MT section. Everywhere was smartly signed and looked generally immaculate, mainly because there was never a shortage of young, fit and obedient labour.

Junior soldiers were sixteen and seventeen year old males who had left school and joined the Corps earlier than adult service normally allowed and benefited from a head start in military and trade training over the usual recruit aged seventeen plus. Some of them wore badges of rank, as in the adult Army but with a red background to distinguish them, and although their rank held no authority in the adult Army it did give them various responsibilities amongst themselves. Their ranks were preceded with the word Junior and they were keenly gained for the extra pay and privileges that came with them. As a result, each of the three squadrons almost ran themselves with only a handful of Corps officers and sergeants to organise and control daily events. Each squadron was commanded by a Major with a Captain as his deputy, and within each squadron were three troops, usually named after a Corps historic figure such as Dalton or Murphy, commanded by a Lieutenant who was guided by a sergeant. The squadrons constantly competed against each other for almost every aspect of service life within the Camp, and Juniors had thrust upon them the highs and lows of success and failure from the word go. Every member of staff was enthusiastic beyond the point of devotion and each had been interviewed and chosen for their appointment.

It was this element that governed the postings of staff into the JLR that puzzled me. I had not been selected to attend an interview as all the squadron SNCOs had and I wondered what I would be doing. Many of the permanent staff had been Juniors themselves and the different life and routine in the Regiment was easy for them to adjust to.

I had been allocated a married quarter in Liddymore Camp, at Watchet, on the North Somerset coast about twenty miles from Norton Manor, and “marched in”, as the expression went, before reporting for duty at the camp the following week. Virtually all of the occupants of the quarters in that small estate worked at Norton Manor and on my first day of duty, proudly wearing my new badge of three stripes on the right arm of my immaculately pressed shirt, I joined the convoy of private cars that snaked its way towards Taunton. My Renault 4 had, as a result of my new found wealth, been part exchanged for a newer, rear engine, shiny white Renault 8 in Southampton. I was ready for my new life.

I duly reported to the RSM, WO1 Arthur Lambert MBE, that first morning for COs interview, to discover my fate. RSM Lambert was a broad accented Londoner, with a wiry frame about five feet seven inches tall and sported a huge fair haired handlebar moustache.

The CO, Lt Col Willson-Lloyd, revealed all employment wise. I was not there for squadron duties but to combat a bulge. A recruit bulge that had been moving through the Regiment over the previous couple of years as a direct result of a change in the school leaving age. For the term starting in September, (the JLR worked on the same three term system that schools did), there would be twice as many junior soldiers moving into their final phase of training than normal. It was during this final phase that they undertook driver training.

The driver training organisation was entirely staffed by civilian supervisors and instructors and they were unable to handle the increase in demand. By September a fully operational Military Driver Training Wing had to be up and running and that was what I was there for. From the CO’s office I returned to the RSM’s and was educated in matters of the real world - that of the Sgts Mess and all who sailed in it. We marched, one did not walk about in Norton Manor, to the Mess and I met my new boss, WO2 Barry Phillips, who had also just arrived in post for more or less the same reason as me. A career based almost entirely on the regimental side of life, his role was to manage the forty odd JNCOs that were to become the instructors of the new wing. Barry Phillips and I had almost

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nothing in common yet strangely we got on together very well. We had been given the empty half of the External Leadership Wing building and that was where we first sat down and worked out our plans. He would run the wing, and I was to organise and run the training. On a smaller scale I had been doing just that for the previous year at Marchwood and so I believed that I would be well able to handle the challenge. The only problem was we had no other staff and no vehicles.

Norton Manor camp, that July in 1973, was practically deserted because almost everyone else was on summer leave, and not due to return to work until September. These long leave periods for the staff, and Juniors, offset the long hours every day and most weekends that activities took place during term time. To all intents and purposes the Junior Leaders Regiment was a military boarding school for future leaders, that is warrant officers, of the Corps, but I was not to be part of the normal regime it seemed. Again I found myself in a role slightly away from the conventional.

Over the course of the following few weeks the “instructors” began to arrive. RCT records had trawled the Corps for suitable blood and, apart from a few square pegs in round holes, they were a good and mixed bunch. They were corporals and lance corporals from regiments in the UK and West Germany, and very few of them were qualified driving instructors.

My first task was to run HGV instructor courses to equip our fresh, new staff for their task. With over forty of them it was clear that I could not cope with them all on one course and several in-unit driving instructor courses were run end to end. I trained the full corporals first and using their talents I employed them to assist in the hands on teaching of the subsequent courses until they had all passed through a bastardized form of the course I had done at the Army MT School at Bordon. I produced reams of paperwork based on my own books and pamphlets which compiled into an individual handbook for each instructor. Those that were not on course were employed collecting the Landrovers and Bedfords for our fleet.

By the time the Juniors returned from their leave to Norton Manor we were ready. In house trained instructors, a large fleet of vehicles gathered from many different sources to make up the numbers, and a comprehensive network of routes for trainees at differing stages of training. The MDI Wing instructors actually outnumbered those in the civilian wing by two to one and although the individual students were nominated by the staff of the Driver Training Wing initially, we actually operated independently, and very successfully.

Testing was arranged centrally with the QTO section, staffed again by civilians, who accepted bookings from either wing for Landrover or HGV tests as required. Now that I was a substantive Sergeant my own QTO qualification for what was then known as Part III of the Road Traffic Act, (light vehicles), came into force. However, the testing of drivers was a sacrosanct subject in the JLR and no military member of staff was permitted to carry out the tests for which they had been trained. Civilians were employed on a strict contract and the QTO qualification was considered the ultimate level for them. The attitude was that service personnel carried out driving tests in addition to our other duties when for them it was their only duty. That was all very well if civilian QTOs were contracted to work everywhere service personnel were tested, but they were not and the military QTO had to exist. To deprive the members of the military staff who were qualified to carry out tests for the duration of their tour with the Regiment really deprived them of valuable ongoing experience. (Later in my career

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I would see great changes in the testing system that would take this into account).

Having said all of that, the civilian QTOs would not test motorcycles which was left to the military members of staff who were qualified. My growing passion for motorcycles meant that I would have to take the test myself, as I had never had the opportunity before. The sergeant that did carry out all of the testing was Terry ‘TC’ Byrne who worked in Senior Troop. When we met and he learnt of my circumstances regarding my testing qualification and my desire to take the bike test he introduced me to Sgts Pat Dunn and George Richards who ran the Motorcycle Training Wing. It was not long before some comprehensive rider training under their control was arranged for me on the 350cc BSA B40, which was then the standard army motorcycle, and I subjected myself for the test, with non other than TC Byrne. I passed.

I had many wonderful days during that tour, and some not so wonderful in the cold and wet, conducting bike tests by following the candidate on a separate motorcycle. The Ministry of Transport, as it was then known, used to have the examiner walk around the block and occasionally glimpse the candidate on test around each corner. It would be sixteen years later before the government sat the examiner on a motorcycle too. I know for I was one of those Department examiners, but that is another story!

During the term time Norton Manor camp literally buzzed with activities. To look in any direction on almost any day would capture a view of junior soldiers drilling, or running, or climbing or driving or riding a motorcycle or a horse. The stables on camp was run by my namesake, Sgt ‘Paddy’ Young and his son, Peter, was a corporal in the Senior Troop. It seemed almost every day a truck load of Juniors would be off sailing, trekking or brass rubbing in a local church. They went gliding and water skiing. In the evenings they developed photographs, printed menus and invitation cards, sang in choirs, built model aeroplanes or took cars to pieces in clubs and hobby rooms. They were left on their own for very little of their waking hours and the staff worked hard, very hard.

It is said that for every force there is an equal and opposite force and if the staff worked hard they certainly played hard. The focal point of social life was the WOs and Sgts Mess which comprised of two single storey wooden buildings, in keeping with most other accommodation structures, tucked away on the eastern edge of the camp. One block provided single accommodation for staff and visiting SNCOs that required it and the main building housed the dining room and kitchen and the bar and lounge. It was not palatial but in comparison with my life to date it was luxury. Little expense was spared for the comforts of Sgts Mess life and I was to learn how important that was throughout the Army. Every morning most senior ranks would gather for tea and toast at ten around a long table in the dining room with the RSM’s chair at the head. The cut and thrust of in house conversation would prevail and members of the Mess generally clutched in their usual groups, by squadron, wing or department. I always felt welcome but I was not a part of any group as such because, apart from fleeting appearances in the MDI Wing of Sgts French and Kerr, the powers that made the decisions decided Barry Phillips and I did not need the valuable resource of two additional sergeants and they were relocated to other parts of the Regiment very soon after being posted in. So I usually found myself gathering with others who belonged to small departments with only one or two SNCOs, such as the motorcycle wing and the MT. It often amused me to see each of the squadron sergeant majors (SSMs) surrounded by their loyal and trusty sergeants whenever I set foot in the place.

Most Saturday nights played host to an event of some sort or other. A games night, (between departments!), a disco, a cheese and wine party, or a formal dinner such as a Regimental Dinner Night or a Ladies Dinner Night when formal evening uniform, referred to as Mess Kit, was the order of dress. Mess Kit was very expensive to buy, as we all had to do on promotion to sergeant, but I was lucky to step straight into one belonging to a warrant officer who had retired and wanted a fraction of the cost of a new one for it. It fitted like a glove, although it did not have any gloves, and everyone

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told me how very lucky I was, or words to that effect!

The activities of the Mess were handled by a committee that was elected for each term at a Mess meeting. The RSM was always the President of the Mess and his committee consisted of a PMC (President of the Mess Committee) who would be a WO2. A PEC (President of the Entertainments Committee) was a SSgt and his committee would number four or five sergeants. In addition a treasurer, bar member, silver member and various other appointments had to be filled and it was not long before a Mess member Sgt found themselves serving on the committee. The RSM nominated the next committee members and it was all very democratic except that none of the members ever had a say in the matter! One learnt very quickly that although the most senior person is the CO, the most powerful member of any regiment was the RSM and nobody but nobody questioned anything he did or said. Senior officers asked his advice and consulted him over all aspects of regimental life and junior officers, Captains and Lieutenants, did as they were advised. In the Mess, everything revolved around the RSM’s approval. If he did not approve, it did not happen. I was now a member of this world and I learnt very quickly how to avoid conflict.

Another member of the Mess, and a troop sergeant with B Sqn, was Sgt Mick Moss, none other than my training corporal in Aldershot in 1965. It was odd to stand at the bar, in an equal rank, with the very same person that we all lived in fear of all those years previously. The movement of personalities up, and down, the promotion ladder was a particular feature of service life. He had spent some years attached to the Army Air Corps as a pilot of helicopters but due to a back injury found he had to return to the Corps. It must have been even stranger for him to find himself in the company of those he had introduced to the weird and wonderful ways of army life.

The two major events in the Mess calendar, every year, were the Summer Ball and the Christmas Draw. Formal evenings with many officer guests and their partners. To be a member of the Mess Committee for either one of these events, as I was several times, meant weeks and weeks of planning and preparation always with the aim, it seemed, to better the previous year. They were grand affairs and for my first tour as a SNCO it was a special introduction into their society.

RSM Lambert packed his bags after I had been there about a year, to become the RSM of 8 Regiment RCT in Germany. He bought and took delivery of a new, duty free 3 litre Ford Capri and dispatched his MFO boxes to BAOR (British Army Of the Rhine). At his farewell do in the Mess it was announced to him, and everyone else, that he had just been selected for commissioning and would not be taking up his post in Münster after all. We will never know what he really thought about that at the time I do not suppose, for it meant that he had to pay all the tax on his very expensive car and it would take ages for him to recover all his kit once it had entered the mysterious system of the stores. As coincidence was to have it I would serve with Arthur Lambert again, in Cyprus, when I would be an RSM and he would be a Quartermaster Major! Wheels within wheels.

Our next RSM, WO1 Tom Bunting was a completely different creature and he had a very hard act to follow. It was the natural way of things in such a role and with personality changes there would always be adjustments to make. The CO also handed over to his successor, Lt Col Peter Marzetti, a devotee of the leather saddle and the hay filled animal that went under it. The pace of life changed quite noticeably and much of the fun was replaced by a need to stay very much on our toes, if we were to stay out of any sort of bother.

There always seemed to be someone coming or going during that tour, probably because the vast majority of permanent staff were WOs or SNCOs. Barry Phillips was very unexpectedly promoted to WO1 and posted to Hong Kong after only a year, and his successor was the all singing and dancing WO2 John Lyons, who was also promoted and posted very soon after his arrival. He did not have to travel far however as he became the RSM of the RCT TA regiment in Taunton. Yet another coincidence for me, in the making.

My three year tour at Taunton was in fact divided into two very separate halves and at the midway point everything seemed to change for me. I was allocated a more modern and convenient

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married quarter in Taunton, in the heart of the then headquarters of the South West District in Sherford Camp. I bought an odd little second hand Vespa motor scooter to trip backwards and forwards to work and enjoyed flying through the narrow little lanes that connected the two locations. Some years later those lanes were to disappear under major reconstruction of the road system in Taunton, but then it was a delightful ride through the countryside.

My job changed too for the second part of my stay in Norton Manor Camp. I left the MDI wing to join the Senior Troop to form a new wing called Corps Training. Myself and other sergeants including John Maskell, Mike “Taff” Parsons and TC Byrne were responsible for capturing the Juniors after they had passed their driving test and educating them in the ways of the RCT resupply system in Germany. This was, of course, something of a farce as far as I was concerned as I had never served in a BAOR unit and knew next to nothing about the Corps in mainland Europe. I do not really think that this fact had been realized when I was given the job, but I was keen to actually get into that world so there did not seem any point in making it more difficult than it was. I very quickly became an expert on the theory of the Corps resupply system and gave a rip-roaring lecture to the Juniors who were blissfully unaware that my expertise was based completely on secret study and covert brain picking. It did amuse me to think that everyone assumed by the time we had made it to sergeant we must all be old lags of North West Germany units. I played it off the cuff. My biggest triumph was when Capt Paul Evans, John Maskell, Mark Corthine and I were tasked to mount a full scale field exercise on Salisbury Plain as the culmination of all the lectures and practical training the Juniors had been treated to. (Mark had been one of the corporals posted into the MDI Wing and his recent promotion to Sgt sent him, via Senior Troop for a short time, into “A” Squadron as Masters Troop Sgt. We became good friends for the rest of our service life and were to meet each other many times again after our JLR tour).

The senior Juniors were to put into practice, under our expert guidance, convoy drills and cross-country driving by day and night, moving into and living in densely wooded areas with full camouflage of their trucks, and so on. For many reasons beyond our control it was a catastrophe. After the event I was invited to write an account of our tale for the Easter 1975 edition of the Regiment’s own magazine called “The Waggonette”. Reading through it again, after twenty years, it still speaks for itself and I reproduce part of it here......

On Monday morning, 2 December (1974), Sgt Maskell, Ben the cook, twenty lads from the troop and two Bedfords departed for the troop location on Salisbury Plain to set up the Admin area.

Mid-day Tuesday saw the main party depart with fourteen RLs, four motorcycles and two Landrovers with the remainder of Senior Troop.

An uneventful convoy drive to the location terminated in a good move in with a first class hot meal provided by the advance party.

Wednesday morning divided the troop into two, half taking a convoy of stores from Bulford to Bovington under simulated tactical conditions, the remainder experiencing the thrills and spills of cross country driving over a rather severe circuit on the Plain.

This proved to be too good for our luck (after all 24 hours without incident!) and Dvr Allen, no doubt to break the monotony, tried his hand at negotiating a hundred yard long 1:2 descent sideways! Not a pretty sight! However the vehicle was promptly put back on the rails with a little help from 19 Tank Transporter Squadron, exercising nearby.

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On a parallel ascent a further Bedford not wishing to go on with the punishment burst into flames and promptly blocked the circuit. Late afternoon saw all the cross country vehicles safely into location although we hadn’t planned towing in the programme quite so soon.

Sgt Corthine returned late evening with the stores convoy minus one motorcycle and Sgt Maskell would like me to mention at this point how much we enjoyed the all night recovery operation to Bovington for the little vehicle!

Our programme finally fell completely to pieces on Thursday as all available vehicles and personnel were required for an ammunition move from Luggershall to Larkhill.

We couldn’t leave the Bulford area without some small gesture and this turned out to be in the form of eight tons of live ammo deposited all over the main road through Bulford Garrison, the result of one vehicle running into the rear of another.

We quietly nursed what was left of our troop out of location at 0100 hours Friday morning after breaking camp in total darkness, driving back through the storm-torn night arriving back at Norton Manor in time for breakfast.

With my new role as Corps Training instructor I also inherited responsibility for three spider legs full of Juniors. Each side of the accommodation buildings were mirror images of each other and each sprouted three long rooms housing up to twenty souls per room. The toilets, drying rooms and so on were located in the middle and shared by both sides. The SNCO in charge of a side of a spider, (the Troops in the Squadrons but just referred to as groups of seniors in the mis-named Senior Troop which was in fact larger than the size of a squadron), had an office of their own and for the first time in my working life I felt that I had arrived. It was a large office and my mirror image on the other side was Sgt Jimmy Williams, a laugh a minute Scot. Our spider was virtually our home during the term and we kept a complete range of uniforms in our offices for the comprehensive programmes of military and social activities, pressed and sparkling courtesy of a few willing volunteers from the group! My office became my space and all the personal trappings associated with being a sergeant responsible for a couple of dozen young men appeared in there. I didn’t know it then but for the first time I was experiencing the valuable lessons in management that would be vital for a successful career. It is a fine line between the extremes, such as being too severe with a wrong doer or being too soft. Knowing when to allow humour and when it was time for strict discipline. There are no books of rules to teach what the right decision is, only the experience route. I started to cut my teeth during the second half of my tour with JLR and it was a learning curve that would never really level out.

Although I was qualified for promotion to the next rank, that of staff sergeant, the biggest hurdle to be overcome to enter the very narrow gateway into the class of warrant officers was a course called EPC(A). This was the advanced version of the service education certificate necessary for promotion to sergeant. Without it there would be absolutely no hope of ever wearing the crown on the wrist. It was a policy at the JLR that sergeants would be given every opportunity to gain that qualification before they were posted, and for the majority of sergeants the four subjects forming the EPC(A) were tackled on two separate courses. I studied for, and passed, the first two at the Royal Army Education Corps centre at Bulford Camp, just off the A303 in Wiltshire, and the remaining two at Bovington Camp, the home of the Royal Armoured Corps.

On each of these courses I, with three others, car shared for each of the four weeks. On the first course, to Bulford, on the Monday morning when it was my turn to drive, Sgts George Richards, Alan Belton and a cook, whose name is lost in the mists of time, piled into my Renault 12, which had recently replaced the R8. As we zipped along the A303 in the very early morning we heard on the radio that black ice had caused chaos all over the country even at that hour. We commented on how lucky we must have been to have escaped it when, on an uphill stretch just before Mere where the

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Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire borders converge, we saw a car approaching us slide off to its left and over the bank. I stopped so that we could see if we could help and George, as he stepped out of the car, slipped straight onto his back! When I got out, a little more gingerly, I discovered that we were literally on a sheet of ice and we could hardly stand up without holding onto the car. The other driver was alright but his car needed a recovery vehicle to pull it back onto the road, so we attempted to continue our journey. Either I had driven brilliantly or we had been lucky not have even realized that the roads were so slippery.

However, once we were back in the car the two in the back had to get out again to push to help us get going up the hill. The front wheels would not grip the road. At the top life took a complete turn for the worst, in fact several turns as we just skidded down the hill spinning around and bouncing off the grass verges until we got to the bottom, fortunate that nothing was coming the other way. I crept very gently through the village until we came to a cafe and pulled onto the car park so that we could decide what to do next. Although it was early and the cafe was closed, the proprietor came out to collect his crate of milk, that was not there, heard our tale and let us in. Four cooked breakfasts all round and a window seat to watch the world slither by. We phoned the Sgts Mess at Bulford where we stayed during the week to explain to be told that hardly anyone would be at work that morning, and to get there when we could. That day was a national day of road disasters it seems and we had been very lucky.

The cafe was located on the corner of a small road that joined the main A303 and during our breakfast the awaited milk float came down the side road and instead of stopping it skidded straight across the main road. The miracle that it was not hit from either direction was short lived for it plunged over the bank and into the field scattering milk crates and bottles hither and thither. The milkman salvaged enough unbroken bottles to deliver to the cafe and after the inevitable phone call he joined us for breakfast.

The second part of the EPC(A) course, this time in the company of George Richards, Dave Bate and Mick Davies, at Bovington went without incident some months later in glorious summer weather, and on its completion I was very pleased to have got it out of the way for future needs.

On the 22nd of October 1975 my only son, Russell Anthony Young, entered the world in the afternoon at Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton. He was destined not to lead a conventionally static childhood but would travel in his early years, due to having a father in the Armed Forces. Indeed he would spend his first birthday in a foreign land.

The pace of life in Norton Manor Camp remained ever busy following its seasonal routines like clockwork. Pass-off parades involving motorcycle displays of high speed passes and highly polished Landrovers and Bedfords being driven slowly past inspecting officers heralded the departure of each Senior Troop, to be replaced the next term by yet another. The PTIs proudly shepherded their muscular flocks in exhibitions of physical wonders, and the Junior Leaders Band, pride of Trumpet Major Pete Kirk and winner of countless consecutive annual band competitions, entertained the Mums and Dads. And then it was out of the gate for the final time and off to their Regular Army units worldwide.

Eventually the permanent staff would follow, as individual tours came to an end, and another chapter would close. The funny thing about the JLR posting was that I would be forever meeting again members of the permanent staff during that period, much more so than any other unit I had served or would serve in again.

One morning in the Spring of 1976 I was summoned to report to the RSM’s office at the double. I had just returned from an overnight Corps Training exercise, again at Salisbury Plain, and I was filthy. It did not seem to matter as the RSM demanded my presence without delay. RSM Bunting had not stayed long at the JLR as he too had been commissioned and posted, a few weeks previously, and his successor was WO1 Brown. I got to his office as soon as I could with my heart pounding and my mind racing wondering what I had done this time.

It did not give me confidence to see him come out of the Chief Clerk’s office with the CO’s business book, a charge sheet - AF252 - and my documents under his arm, and go into the Commanding Officer’s door. Despite doing my best to get the Chief Clerk to tell me what was going on, without any success, I was told to stand outside the RSM’s office until called for!

In I eventually went with the RSM calling “left, right, left, right”, in double time to discover

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the Adjutant stood just behind and to the right of the colonel seated behind his large polished desk. This had all the makings of real serious trouble and I still had no idea what it was about. The Adjutant, a captain and personal assistant to the CO, read out my number rank and name and asked me if they were correct, to which I replied, of course, that they were. That was when the CO grinned and told me they were not, as I had been promoted to the next rank of staff sergeant, and posted to..... Germany.

Talk about out of the blue. It was a perfect surprise and wind-up and I was naturally delighted. The drinks were on me in the Mess that lunchtime and I happily told everyone my fate. I was to join 9 Sqn as a Troop SSgt in 10 Regiment RCT, Bielefeld, West Germany. As soon as I said those words to my colleagues I got, almost to a man, the same reaction. It would start with a long

sucking in of air followed by a long drawn out “Oh dear” and finish up with a look consisting of sympathy and gratefulness that it was not them.

I told myself, and everyone else, that I was genuinely delighted, not only at being promoted but to be going to Germany at last, which after all was what I had wanted. “Yes but 10 Reg” was all they would say!

Having hailed from the maritime world it meant nothing to me, but deep inside my thoughts I had to admit that all the comments started to make me anxious.

The day soon arrived when I had to hand over the ‘quarter in Sherford and head off to my new role in BAOR. I had been told that 15 Wessex Road was to be refurbished after my march-out and the heating and hot water system had to shut down before I handed it over. So the day before I twiddled all the appropriate stop cocks and thought no more about it.

Mark and Sharon Corthine, a few doors down the road, played host with morning coffee whilst I dutifully followed the housing and PSA representatives from room to room. We finally ended up in the lounge and after being told how well the married quarter had be prepared for handover the papers were signed and handed over releasing me of any further responsibilities. At that very moment the lounge ceiling gave way and hundreds of gallons of water, that had filled the void between the upstairs floor and the downstairs ceiling since I had switched off the system cascaded all over the aged housing office man. With my papers in my hand I bid them a farewell and retired to the Corthine’s for refreshments.

With my Renault 12 and wooden luggage trailer on tow, I had to drive over to my new regiment alone, via the Harwich - Bremmerhaven North Sea ferry crossing, and my posting order informed me that I would be allocated a quarter in Bielefeld quite soon after my arrival. As it was to be my first taste of the British Forces in Germany I would be able to get to grips with some of the strange rules and customs before taking over a quarter. So it was, as I joined the queue at Harwich, just a few miles from my home town, I was going foreign again and wondered what lay in store. Try as I might, it was difficult to ignore the terrible tales of 10 Regiment that I had been told during the previous few weeks when my fate became public. On one hand I knew that they were pulling my leg as I had not served in BAOR before, but on the other hand......

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espite my worldly travels to date, albeit always in an easterly direction, I was growing quite nervous about the coming days as the large ferry came alongside in the northern port of Bremmerhaven. It was early morning and I was one of the first off, because I had been one of

the first on, because I had arrived at Harwich many hours earlier than necessary for fear of missing the boat. A trait that stayed with me all of my life, incidentally. I had studied the map of my journey many times and had drawn up a route with every possible detail. It paid off too and before I knew it I was heading south on the marvellous autobahn system towards Hannover and beyond. I had never seen anything quite like that motorway. Great wide lanes with little traffic cut through beautiful wooded countryside. Germany made an impression on me right from that start and it was a favourable one that would last.

At the Bielefeld turn off I followed the signs for the town and found myself on the main Detmold to Bielefeld dual carriageway named Detmolder Strasse. From quite far off the imposing grey stone high three storey blocks of Catterick Barracks beckoned me in and I had arrived at my new place of work. The very large town was still some miles away and it would be some days before I would see it. But for now there was more than enough assaulting all my senses and I was directed to the WOs and Sgts Mess car park. It was a Friday afternoon and I walked straight into a “we have just got back from a two week Regimental field exercise” session and the noise was deafening. Almost everyone was in dirty combat dress, the air was thick with duty free smoke, and tales of the previous three weeks were being exchanged for the umpteenth time.

As dictated by military protocol I had written to the RSM when I learnt of my posting and introduced myself as a SNCO joining his Mess. The RSM was one Ron Booles, the terror of the drill square at Buller Barracks in Aldershot when I had done my SMQC. His gravel voice floated across the Mess that afternoon and I made my way to it to introduce myself in person and he in turn introduced me to my new Squadron Sergeant Major who was stood next to him. WO2 (SSM) Ken Maher stood head and shoulders above all around him and he was built like the proverbial brick building. His wicked grin as he wheeled me over to meet my future collegues of 9 Squadron spoke volumes and I knew then that my service life had changed beyond all previous recognition. I had arrived in the core of the Corps, so to speak, and I was very apprehensive. However, I was there as a staff sergeant which counted for something among so many Mess members and I was no longer such a junior member of the Mess. My apprenticeship had been served at Norton Manor over the previous three years and I was quite able to hold my own. What was more, absolutely nobody in 10 Regiment knew me or anything about me, and my maritime background enhanced the mystery.

I had a top floor room in the Mess, until I took over a married quarter, and was not required to start work for a week, although I would be visiting the Squadron offices on the Monday morning to meet the OC and sort out all the administration that goes with a posting overseas; pay, uniforms, duty free facilities, registration of car and issue of duty free petrol coupons, and so on. I also met that afternoon WO2 Les Stanley, the Master Driver of 10 Regiment. The Master Driver concept was something that was new and I knew relatively nothing about it. But my enthusiasm for motorcycles came up in the conversation over my first glass of Hereforder Pils and Les turned out to be number one motorcycle fanatic in the whole world. That Sunday he was taking part in a German trials event and asked me, if I had nothing better to do, if I would like to go along. Of course I jumped at the chance and arrangements were made for him to collect me from the Mess after breakfast. That left me with the Saturday to explore my new territory. As the Mess members floated off to their homes for the weekend I went back out to the car park to start to unload my belongings to discover my wooden luggage trailer had been uncoupled from the car and turned upside down! The stories I had heard back at Taunton were already starting to come true. 10 Regiment was indeed going to be something else.

The following morning I breakfasted with those members who, for one reason or another, lived in and started to piece together the jigsaw of my new unit.

10 Regiment RCT consisted of a Headquarters Squadron and two “working” squadrons: 9 and 17. (Another squadron, 36, was geographically seperate in the town of Osnabruck and was to all intents and purposes a different unit). We were a third line transport regiment which basically meant that our role was to out load the large depots located all over North West Germany and deliver the stocks of ammunition, food and fuel, the three main combat supplies, to locations where the second line transport regiments would take them to the teeth arms such as the Artillery, Armoured Corps and

D

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Infantry at the front line of battle. This role was practised regularly by way of tactical exercises that lasted from a day or two to several weeks and formed the staple diet of activity for BAOR units.

I was to be the ‘B’ Troop SSgt of 9 Squadron, within 10 Regiment, which was part of a Brigade, within an armoured Division. A very little cog in a very large machine.

Catterick Barracks was a large piece of German real estate and all of the buildings were solid imposing structures. The internal roads were cobbled and tree lined and it was really like no other barracks I had seen before. In fact it was very much like many German built barracks throughout the country but this was my first taste of them. The steel and glass fronted gymnasium stood over the regimental square which was also surronded by aged trees. Trees were a very prominent and pleasant feature everywhere it seemed. The gym was the predominant territory of the regimental boxing team who were the British Army champions for some seven consecutive years. 10 Regiment was famous throughout the Army for its boxing team’s prowess and this was often more trouble than it was worth for those not involved with the team.

The camp was built on a slope and the main entrance from Detmolder Strasse was at the lower end and topside was the Regimental Headquarters which surveyed all it commanded. However the most striking feature for me was the massive vehicle park where all the regiment’s vehicles were lined up in squadron and troop rows. This third line transport unit used AEC 10 ton trucks of two main persuasions; the ancient Mk1 and the new left hand drive Militant. There were dozens and dozens and dozens of them. Each Troop was responsible for about twenty trucks and there were three troops in each squadron. Some of the trucks were fitted with folding cranes between the cab and the large cargo space surrounded by dropsides. All around the lower area of each truck were a variety of bins and boxes that were each secured with a padlock. The many locks with their many keys per vehicle were an ongoing nightmare for the Troop SSgt. Another feature of the AEC 10 ton truck was its wheels which looked superficially the same all round but because it was a split-rim, held together with many studs, it could be assembled to be fitted either to the front or the rear, but not both. As only one spare was carried by each truck it would often turn out to be the wrong one when it was needed. But despite their foibles they were hard working vehicles and looked impressive in precision lines. I remember standing at one end and looking down to the distant other end and not one truck was so much as a couple of inches out of line. It would not always be like that I was sure, but as the regiment had just returned from a major exercise the final stages would have been to secure the vehicles properly after cleaning and de-kitting them. In a normal working day the parking would naturally be less precise but that weekend stroll through the vehicle park impressed me no end. I had to admit that for the first time I felt that I had joined a “traditional” Army environment.

On my first Sunday morning in Germany Les Stanley, his wife Janice and their son Del and daughter Leanne arrived at the Mess to pick me up for my first look at a German forest. Attached to the rear of their VW 411 estate car was a motorcycle trailer containing two machines. One was a trials bike and the other could only be discribed as a miniature version of the same. Like father like son it seemed.

We arrived at a large wood, of which there was no shortage in and around the Bielefeld area, and thrust ourselves into the spirit of a major motorcycle sporting event, even if I had absolutely no idea what anyone was saying. Les disappeared into the depths of the forest as he tackled each of the special stages of the event and I just enjoyed being around the bikes. After lunch, when the event was back into full swing, Del, in full motorcycle leathers astride his baby motorbike racing up and down the tracks, too young to take part in the event having great fun none-the-less, turned into a track that

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had a tree trunk suspended across it. The horizontal tree was precisely the same height as his head and that is what collided with it at speed. Absolute pandemonium broke out and someone somehow, from the middle of a forest called for an ambulance. By the time it arrived Les had arrived on the scene and was distraught, naturally. The ambulance crew loaded Del on board and Les asked me to travel in the ambulance as he would follow in his car. Needless to say the Mercedes ambulance left him standing and arrived at the hospital minutes ahead. As the crew wheeled Del into a room a doctor started to tear into me for allowing him to ride a motorcycle at his age! Not then being able to speak a word of German I did not know what he was saying of course but I was puzzled by the tone. It was when a nurse realized that I did not understand that she translated the tirade for me. There was even more puzzlement when I told her to tanslate back the fact that I had only met the boy that very day for the first time. Les finally arrived on the scene and relieved me of any further explanation.

Fortunately Del only suffered concussion but Les still had a large bill to pay for the call out. What a welcome to Germany I was having.

In Singapore, almost ten years previously, I occasionally had the task of taking the son of Maj Harding, the Officer Commanding the Joint Services Port Unit in Tanjong Berlayer, to school. A tall lanky boy with an effervescent character I remembered him mostly for his cheek. When I walked into my new office in Catterick Barracks I saw him again, actually sitting on a desk opposite the desk that was to be mine. He was now Lieutenant David Harding, Troop Commander of B Troop, 9 Squadron, 10 Regiment RCT. I was the Troop SSgt.

In the following days the wonders of a third line RCT transport squadron revealed themselves. 9 Squadron was made up of four task troops entitled A to D, together with a squadron headquarters troop.Each of the task troops was commanded by a junior officer, a lieutenant or a second lieutenant, run by a staff sergeant and administrated by a sergeant. The troops were in turn broken down into sections commanded by a full corporal and made up of lance corporals and drivers. Depending on the strength of the troop there were three or four sections and they operated the AEC Militant 10 ton trucks. I had about thirty of them, as did the other troops, and it was to be a full time job maintaining them in a roadworthy condition. We also held within the Squadron large tankers and Eager Beaver rough terrain fork lift trucks. The list of associated equipment for all of these vehicles was a mile long and it was all held in our respective stores in the cellars of the Squadron block. From rigid tow bars to hundreds of padlocks and keys. From snow chains to superstructures and canopys. From vast tool kits to tyre valves. And one of my first duties was to carry out a long and comprehensive check of every vehicle in my troop and all of the equipment belonging to it. Everything, and I do mean everything, was itemised in a complete equipment schedule, that itself was subject to up to date ammendments as some items became obsolete or updated.

It was no secret that each troop had deficiencies and the JNCOs tasked with looking after all the kit were masters of purloining missing items when the need arose. I was to learn that it was the law of the vehicle kit jungle and every SSgt’s priority was to appoint their biggest crook as the stores JNCO. As my handover/takeover of B Troop took place I quickly realised that a potential nightmare lurked in those cellars and loss of even minor items of kits would be very expensive. Major losses cost many a career and mine was not going to be one of them. With each hour that passed I became more

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and more overwhelmed by the sheer scale of everything to do with each troop.

9 Squadron was mirrored within the walls of Catterick Barracks by 17 Squadron and the two task squadrons alternated and shared many regimental resposibilities. The third squadron, 36, located in the town of Osnabruck some twenty odd miles away, would, during my three year tour with 10 Regiment, move back to Bielefeld.

I had to admit that up until this point in my career life had been without too much stress and little responsibility. Even as a sergeant at Taunton each of our roles had been pretty well defined and there was little scope for deviation from the normal and little danger of getting everthing very wrong. The more senior I became, the greater the responsibility, which was of course the logical progression. I was now beginning to feel the weight of that responsibility and this tour would very much determine my future in the Corps. In other words the potential for disaster was never to be far away in 10 Regiment.

WO2 Ken “The Bear” Maher, my Squadron Sergeant Major, was a very large, very brash Welshman covered in scars, the latest on his cheek from a dustbin lid hurled at him during a recent tour of Belfast, and I was to work very closely with him for the greater part of my tour. He spoke his mind, loudly, knew the Army and in particular the Corps routine backwards and stood no truck from anybody. I learnt very quickly to watch myself with him, he was not famous for his tolerance. He also spoke German like a German. His loud and frequent clashes with the Officer Commanding the squadron, Major Freddie Crabbe, were legend throughout the Regiment. There was little love lost between them and serving in 9 Sqn was not far removed from surviving in a war zone. I had in fact met Maj Crabbe before, in my days at Marchwood in 1966, when he had been a Lt in 17 Port Regiment, however it made no difference to the fact that life under “Freddie” was going to be fraught at best.

A couple of weeks after my arrival I took over a married quarter in Fridjoff Nansen Strasse, behind Rippon Barracks, about ten minutes drive from my place of work. It was a mid terrace two bedroom house with a cellar, as have most German houses, and it was reached by ascending a steep hill that was to prove interesting during the heavy winter snow falls. Rippon Barracks was another of several British military establishments in and around Bielefeld. It was a garrison town as were many others within just a few miles; Bünde, Herford, Osnabrück, Hamlen, Minden and Münster, to name but a few. Further to the south the pattern was repeated with many other towns in the region of the Rhine. I was in the heart of the British military sector of West Germany, geographically in the north west. We saw very little of the American forces who were located much further south. The East German border was a few miles due east in the region of the Hartz mountains. I had certainly arrived in the thick of the main stream general transport element of the Corps, and now I had a home there too.

Gradually I got to grips with the many strange procedures and routines associated with life in BAOR. My car had to shed its UK registration for a British Forces Germany (BFG) number. These had to be displayed on all private vehicles owned by members of the British forces, UK based civilians such as teachers and BFBS staff, and their dependants. The number plates were distinctive in that they were black with a white border and comprised of two letters, three numbers and the letter B at the end. My Renault 12 became MU 416 B but not until it had passed the BFG roadworthiness inspection carried out in the REME workshops of each unit. This was the equivalent of the MOT test at home and was an annual event that also ensured the car met some of the German traffic law requirements including the presence of a warning triangle and a first aid kit. UK road tax was not necessary and the owners of all BFG registered vehicles could buy a monthly ration of petrol vouchers from the unit pay office which made motoring in Germany very cheap. However insurance charges to cover permanent use in Europe were considerably higher.

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Everyone also had to sit and pass a BFG highway code test within the first month of arrival to qualify for the issue of a BFG driving licence, yet another requirement necessary to drive over there.

The role of the regiment was quite different from anything I had been involved with before, with perhaps the exception of the “Corps Training” element in the Senior Troop of the Junior Leaders Regiment.

In very basic terms, the Threat was believed to be from all points east of the border with East Germany: the then USSR. Frequent exercises were staged to practice all the relevent elements that made up the First British Corps, whose headquarters were located in Rippon Barracks, a mile or so from 10 Regt on Detmolder Strasse, and just below my married quarter.

The task of 10 Regt was to move out of barracks and hide in either thickly wooded areas or villages, where the enemy were not supposed to be able to find us. Convoys of trucks would then be sent from their locations to large depots of fuel, ammunition and rations for loading and then despatched, along predifined MSRs (main supply routes) to field dumps and cross loading areas. These stores would then be taken from us and forwarded to the teeth arms at the front line by squadrons of the second line armoured divisional transport regiments. On completion of the fun and games we then rounded up and attempted to return the simulated combat supplies from whence they came.

And so the year consisted of troop exercises to practice the moving in and out of locations and the art of living “in the field”. Then squadrons would exercise with all of their troops for the same reasons on a larger scale, which really meant that senses of humour failed earlier and in much bigger ways, with regimental exercises gathering all the well practised skills by all of the squadrons together. Even bigger sense of humour failures then. Heads had to be kept very low at times.

It would then be the turn of the Brigade to play war games with all of its various regiments and toward the end of the season the Division would stage the big one. It does not require a great stretch of the imagination to work out that at troop level we went on exercise many, many times a year. This generally started in the Spring and the major field exercises, known as FTX for field training exercise, took place towards the end of the year.

A troop location in a wood would consist of a circuit of some sort to ensure that vehicles did not meet each other going in opposite directions, particularly at night when everything moved without lights, for fairly obvious reasons. A sentry at the entrance to the circuit, covered by another soldier hidden in the undergrowth, would challange any vehicle entering and it would then be directed further along to the control point (CP) which was an ingeniously constructed unofficial wood and canvas “caravan” built onto a Landrover trailer. This contained the Ssgt’s exercise worldly goods, in particular the “battle board” which listed every vehicle in the troop and its whereabouts. It also included a map of the location and the driver would be directed to his slot between the trees until called out again.

Elsewhere, often in the same wood, other circuits contained the other troops and each of the CPs were joined by miles and miles of black wire to the Squadron headquarters. Their trailer was a much grander affair, a four wheeled job about the same size as, and towed by a Bedford 4 tonner. The communication system was a simple office type squawk box and the duty watchkeeper at the Squadron HQ, when tasked by the Regimental HQ by radio to supply so many trucks, would decide which troop would supply them and pass the information onto the Troop Ssgt.

The ten tonners themselves were hidden around the circuit between the trees and covered, like everything and everyone else, with large scrim nets. A hessian camouflage skirt would be unrolled which covered and disguised the six large wheels. Another huge chunk would be draped over the cab to cover the glass areas. The nets themselves, once draped over the truck and its load if any, then had to be poked out into irregular shapes with long poles scavanged from previous woods and carried as part of the truck’s equipment. The overall effect was for twenty or so very large trucks, their drivers and all the supporting vehicles and stores to disappeare off the face of the planet. No lights, no sound, minimum movement, for days on end.

Each troop also had a Bedford general service truck and water trailer for the G1098 stores. In simple terms the cooking, washing and essential supplies. Over the years each G1098 truck driver had designed and redesigned a shelter to enable cooking to take place under cover, out of sight, out of mind..... and in the dry. Large petrol driven burners emitting a flame several feet in length were sunk

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into a trench over which the pots and pans were placed. There was no warmer place on exercise than in the cooks tent, and the Ssgt had exclusive access. It was his troop after all. It was of course all relative but when you were into your second week of a major FTX, tramping through freezing cold and wet woods, the finest food and by far the best cups of tea came out of the “G10” as it was known.

For the drivers the days could be long and very tiring. Every time they arrived at a location they had to “scrim up” before doing anything else, and always dressed in full combat clothing with webbing and a rifle to hand. Food was got when it was going and sleep fitted in around it. They slept in their cabs, where they could always be found, never under the trucks for fear it sinking in the mud or being driven over them. But compared to the infantry soldiers who lived in holes in the ground, the RCT driver was not badly off at all.

The Troop commander and the Ssgt shared the Landrover and trailer for duty watches and sleep and the Admin Sgt lived and worked in the G1098 setup.

Daily the OC held an Orders Group meeting at his location, after he had previously been to the CO’s “O” Group at RHQ. At these meetings each level of command passed on the details of what was going on, and what was supposed to be going on, often the two were complete strangers to each other, and when the Troop Commander returned he would gather his flock around him in the Troop location and tell them what was in store for the coming twenty four hours. At least that was the theory.

When the location was a village we literally parked trucks up against walls of buildings stringing camouflage nets from the roof to make like a house extension. It was a strange life to be at full readiness for war whilst the village people went about their business. Soldiers and their kit spread all over a German village was not unusual in those days but it was still a magnetic attraction for the multitudes of children that would appear after school time. For hours they would patiently stand and watch in the hope that they would be allowed to enter the mysterious tents and canopies, to see the secrets of how an RCT squadron functioned. Endless questions would be asked of course but as so very few British soldiers bothered to learn the language of our host nation the only answers were equally unintelligible. We did practice the village routine quite often, but more often than not we were found, or more precisely could not be found, in the woods.

When a change of location was ordered, which was not unusual for tactical reasons, a strange sort of disciplined chaos would break out. There was always much to do in the physical preparation of getting many trucks, in packet order, ready for the road, without actually making the location look like a tourists campsite. We still had to believe we were still at war and we still had to do everything as silently as possible whilst taking every precaution against being disturbed by the enemy. Only at the very last minute would the trucks be driven out onto the track for final departure to the next location.

Prior to all of this activity either the Troop Commander or the Ssgt would go on to the new location to recce the area and sign in the vehicles, ready to start all over again. This job generally fell to the young officer who, with Landrover and trailer, driver and kit, scurried off without much idea of how much space was needed for the trucks and the Ssgt ensured the Troop got to the new location. This was why I spent most execises on a motorcycle. My personal kit travelled in the Landrover and I was able to control the convoy, split into fun sized packets of five or six vehicles. The motorcycle gave me great flexibility and a level of independence that other Troop Ssgts did not have when they elected to travel in the warm cab of the lead truck. The only other one of my peers to enjoy the use of a motorcycle was Ssgt Ernie Houndslow of A Troop.

On one particular exercise, aptly titled Exercise Freeze Up, the two of us had been detailed to ride ahead and recce a large wood for the entire squadron to move into. The squadron was already on the move and we had to get there as fast as possible to reduced the level of chaos destined to come about for several reasons. Firstly, the Squadron HQ and each of the troops were leaving different places at different times and there was no way of telling who would arrive first. Secondly, it was a very large wood that we had never used before, hence previous experience of tracks and so on could not be called on. And, most seriously of all, we were exercising in thick and falling snow! After some hair raising riding by Ernie and me his bike gasped its last and we managed to load it onto the back of a passing truck from the sister squadron, 17. However, if Ernie had travelled with the truck his mission would have failed so he elected to travel on the back of my bike. Two large men wearing thick, soaking wet tank suits and webbing, carrying sub-machine guns on slings over the shoulder, astride a BSA B40 would have looked ridiculous if anyone had seen us, but in a driving blizzard that was unlikely. Somehow we got to the wood before anyone else and decided to ride through each of the

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tracks, in the failing light, to work out where to put who. The snow covered rutted tracks threw us off time after time after time. Getting back on and restarting the bike was exhausting until eventually we slipped sideways off a high track and tumbled over and over to the bottom of a gully. I can remember the pair of us lying flat out in the deep snow listening to the hot BSA hissing and clicking in the snow. We were not hurt but totally, utterly knackered and we laughed until we ached, unable to even get up. It was about then that the first of the trucks started to arrive.....

Of course, life was not all living under a constantly dripping canopy of wet trees with wet boots, wet combat suit, wet everything. A great deal of time was spent in barracks clearing up after the previous exercise, or preparing for the next.

The trucks demanded constant attention to stay roadworthy and their servicing schedule had to be strictly followed. All vehicles were serviced on a time or mileage basis, whichever came first, and the large servicing bay was kept in constant employment. Driver maintenance was an even higher priority as prevention was considered better than cure. The ongoing problem for Troop Ssgts however was finding enough drivers for the trucks. The nominal role may well have sported sufficient names to appear that each troop had enough drivers but the truth was always that leave, courses, sickness, detachments and internal employment on other tasks throughout the camp constantly meant that there was never enough drivers. The thousand and one jobs that always needed to be done on the vehicle fleet were attempted daily but never ever completed to anything like the level they should have been. Naturally, extra effort was given to the task prior to major inspections, but generally it was an uphill struggle to hold on to the men when every department constantly cried out for labour.

And there was another task that demanded continuing energy. 10 Regt was one of the Corps units that regularly received soldiers straight from the training organisation. The problem for us was that the recruit was only trained and qualified to drive Heavy Goods Vehicles of Class 3, a rigid goods vehicle with no more than four wheels. Our massive fleet of AEC 10 tonners were HGV Class 2, rigid goods vehicles with more than four wheels. (Class 1 were the prestigious articulated vehicles of which relatively few were in use in the RCT, or indeed in the Army as a whole).

This meant that the steady flow of recruits into the regiment had to be not only trained and tested for their BFG driving permit but also trained and tested on HGV Class 2. Les Stanley, the Master Driver, was responsible for all testing of drivers and it was he who controlled the testing activities of QTOs in the area, and I, of course, was one of them. Virtually every week I would be tasked with several HGV 2 tests to conduct, and as each one took about two and a half hours it was often a juggle to fit everything in to my very busy routine. But despite the frantic, “everthing had to be done by yesterday” approach to life and the often savagery of the tongue lashings from the Sergeant Major, the OC and even the CO, I really enjoyed the “soldiering”. I was reasonably fit, held a good rank and on the ascendancy. Physical fitness was probably the highest general priority throughout the unit and almost every morning started with a Troop run up the hill and into the woods at the back of the barracks. I found this particularly hard as my troop had its fair share of reprobates, as did all the others, and that meant chasing them constantly to keep up. As I was older than my soldiers I had to work harder to keep up myself so shouting at the stragglers, nipping up and down the three ranks and so on just about did me in. Running became part of the staple diet of the British Army during the seventies and formed the basis of the all ranks Basic Fitness Test (BFT). This test consisted of two

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parts, the first part demanding a run of a mile and a half in a squad timed precisely to fifteen minutes followed by another mile and a half immediately afterwards as an individual best effort. The

maximum time allowed for the second stage depended solely on the age of the individual, in five year stages up to forty. Failure to complete the second stage within the time limit was the next worse thing to dying. Indeed dying on the second stage was not accepted as an excuse for not completing it. Soldiers who failed the BFT would be given a second chance and if that was not successful they would be medically down graded, which effectively put a freeze on any and all aspects of their career. Remedial training, once the Medical Officer had certified them fit for

remedial training, would then become a high priority in their life and after another attempt at the BFT their future would theoretically be decided on the result. A pass would put them back into the mainstream of service life but a fail again meant that they were unfit, and subsequently liable for medical discharge from the Army. In truth, the fat, lame and lazy found their way into jobs that seemed to be populated almost entirely by fat, lame and lazy soldiers. The Quartermaster’s stores springs to mind, for one.

For a soldier holding any sort of rank to fail the BFT was considered appalling and for a SNCO with designs of promotion it was the finish. I had no intention of ever failing a “basic” fitness test, but that did not mean it was not hard. And it got harder every year. I never liked running but the fear and disgrace of ever failing drove me on and I never came close to failing throughout my career. But I did grow to hate running.

On the personal front I allowed myself to be seduced by, for the first time, a new duty free car. However, I did not want to be paying for years and years for a car well beyond my means just because it was duty free. I decided therefore to concentrate my designs on well equipped top of the range small cars rather than something larger but bottom of the range for features. After visiting the NAAFI duty free car sales situated along Detmolder Strasse conveniently midway between my work and home, I rushed into ordering the latest model Renault 5 GTL. I regretted that decision a few weeks later when I picked it up and drove it for the first time. After a succession of Renaults that I had been happy with I knew I had made a mistake. Despite the test drive of a similiar model before ordering it I just knew in those first miles that it was not the car for me. It was noisy, did not run properly in all the time that I owned it, despite frequent visits to the local Renault garage in Bielefeld, and was the wrong car for all sorts of reasons. In less than a year I advertised it in the BFG paper and an RAF Jaguar pilot bought it cash, for his wife. It was not until he had driven away that I realised he only had the second set of keys and they did not feature the petrol cap key. I never saw or heard from him again, I wonder what he did when he first stopped for fuel on his way back to Brugen.

With the spoils from the sale I returned to the world of the used car, where I felt happiest, and bought from the Provost Sgt in Catterick Barracks a beautifully sleek, green, mean Renault 17 TS. I was very happy with that car.

At the start of my tour, in 1976, BFBS had yet to bring television to the forces overseas and radio was our only means of entertainment, in English. German television, naturally enough in German, was quite different and very inferior to that in the UK, and Mr Sony was a few years off inventing the video cassette recorder. Major films were shown in the popular Services

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Kinema Corporation (SKC) cinemas that could be found in most garrison towns. BFBS radio was a very personal radio station that attempted to cover just about every aspect of service life in Germany and bring us up to the minute information of the goings on “back home”. It was also a springboard for some presenters who were destined for greater fame. I was quite attached to it and in later years would become much more so.

Bielefeld itself was a very interesting town and for my first taste of the German way of life it opened up many aspects of the culture I was now a temporary part of. The public transport system was very efficient making extensive use of trams everywhere. From a driving point of view it took a little getting used to for the trams generally ran along the centre of the road and when they stopped for passengers other traffic was not permitted to pass, giving passengers a safe passage to the pavement. To the highly disciplined German people it all worked very well. Indeed, the traffic system, not only in Bielefeld but throughout the country worked extreemly well and driving there was a joy.

For those that made the effort there, life, with duty free goods and considerably more pay in the shape of a generous overseas allowance, was pretty good. British forces families were a community encouraged by the system that promoted active Mess lives, wives clubs, unit arranged activities such as sports days and outings and so on. In reality this meant that there was little peace for the soldiers as there were always activities that had to be planned, organised, run and cleared up. Younger, single soldiers living “in” the barracks were fair game for labour when required. Few of them made any effort to learn to speak German and their trips into the town for night time entertainment were often frustrated by the reluctance of the Germans to speak English. The solution to this was for many to just get drunk and the consequent follow on to that would often end in trouble. Monday mornings usually started with someone stood trembling outside the SSM’s door.

One very inescapable feature of life in a BAOR based RCT regiment was that of Operation Banner, the then ongoing commitment to the peace keeping role in Northern Ireland. Everyone was involved and most went on one occasion or another, some many times.

The RCT provided drivers and the administrative support to them for the Humber “Pigs” and six wheeled Saracen armoured personnel carriers used by the infantry units supporting the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Neither of these vehicles were used in any other capacity by the army and prior to an Op Banner tour each unit would take over the pool of training vehicles that circulated throughout BAOR to bring their drivers “down” to speed, so to speak. Too much speed in a Humber rendered it virtually impossible to control as it had originally been a one ton general purpose truck but over the years progressive armouring had taken its overall weight to more than seven times the original. Four wheel drive had to be engaged just to move off or the drive shafts would snap. Moving into second gear automatically disengaged four wheel drive by means of some ingenious Heath Robinson selectors. These trucks were used to transport the infantry around the city locations in relative safety and for many years have been a familiar sight on the streets of Belfast and Londonderry. The Saracens performed the same role but in the more rural areas, and some were fitted out as ambulances.

Driver training on these vehicles started well before the troops departed for their four month tour of duty in Northern Ireland, and the tours came around about every eighteen months. Most soldiers on a three year tour in BAOR could expect to complete two Op Banner tours.

During one of these training sessions we had programmed a night driving element and this involved the pigs being driven along planned routes throughout Bielefeld. One of my section commanders, Cpl Dennis Hewitt, had already been unkindly awarded the nickname “crunchie” for a string of unfortunate traffic accident mishaps he had been involved in at one time or another during his tour in 9 Sqn, but this particular night he was to go down in history. He was quite sensitive about it, particularly when the lads in the troop made a point of including a Crunchie chocolate bar in their NAAFI shopping and empty wrappers, neatly spread, out would appear wherever he went. It was no good being sensitive about anything in 10 Regt, the reaction was almost predictably savage.

Anyway, on this particular evening each of the Troops were operating from the Squadron Ops trailer positioned on the vehicle park. For the duration of the NI training period and four month tour the baulk of the 10 tonners were laid up in preservation, which was a major task in itself. Parked tightly together awaiting our return they made room for the pool vehicles used for training, which would then move on to the next RCT unit on the roster. In other words our lives still revolved around the vehicle park and late in the evening I, with the other troop SSgts, left the well oiled machinery of

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the night drive in the capable hands of our admin Sgts and went to the WOs and Sgts Mess to get very lightly oiled ourselves.

Sods Law wasted no time in wreaking its own brand of savagery on me as a brief message about an accident was passed to us and our presence back in the Ops trailer was considered a wise move. We did not know initially any details, which really meant that it could have been a vehicle allocated to any one of the three troops. However, when the German police arrived with some more details it became clear that it was one of mine. More than that, it was “crunchie” Hewitt himself. I hopped in my Landrover and followed the police to the scene.

The scene took quite some time to take in. Bearing in mind that it was dark and I stood in an unfamiliar place I was not certain where to look next. It seemed that as this particular Humber pig was trundling through a narrow street in a residential area, with parked cars each side of the road, a german buckaroo driving a black Opel Ascona approached it at speed and tried to pass by when there was insufficient room. The car initially glanced off the front gate like ram fitted to the front of the pig and rebounded into the line of parked cars on its right. After sliding along the outside of two of them, reshaping their bodywork, the Opel driver must have applied a little more right lock and embedded himself, with much destruction into a new Mercedes. Both cars would never move under their own volition again.

In the meantime the pig, under the shaky control of a trainee pig pilot, under the even shakier command of Dennis Hewitt also embarked on a campaign of distorting the sides of several parked cars on its nearside before getting a grip of one of them and tossing it aside as it ventured onto the pavement. Although speed must have been diminishing there was still sufficient momentum to ram a prefabricated block of garages which collapsed like a pack of cards on top of the cars there in. The noise had brought out many residents from the surronding homes which of course included the owners of the dozen or so cars that had been wrecked. A near riot was in the offing and the police were doing their best to keep the peace.

Although official training routes were meant to take in urban residential areas, to prepare the drivers for Belfast and Londonderry streets, it was decided after that evening to be kind to the locals and steer clearer of areas that could be considered as sensitive. I had to endure the razor tongue of the OC and his predicable comments about it being unnecessary to recreate the actual environment we would find in the Falls Road.........

During my three years with 10 Regt I returned to the UK for courses three times. In the first year, shortly after my arrival, I spent a month at the Army School of Mechanical Transport (ASMT) at Leconfield in North Humberside to upgrade my QTO status from just light vehicles to full HGV. This meant that I was then qualified to conduct driving tests on any vehicle from the motorcycle to the largest articulated truck. That qualification was put to considerable use testing new arrivals to the regiment after they had been trained to drive the HGV2 class of ten tonners.

My second visit to the UK was to the Depot and Training Regiment RCT at Aldershot for a four week intensive course of misery and hardship, under the guise of the Sergeant Majors Course. We were treated like basic recruits but expected to react like the experienced SNCOs that we were.

When my copy of the joining instructions had arrived in Germany it listed all the students on the course. I was surprised and pleased to find that I knew many of them, indeed quite a few had been permanent staff at the JLR in Taunton when I was also there, including Jim Lewis, Jimmy Williams, Alan Belton, Mick Davies and Mark Corthine. It was a noisy reunion in the Sgts Mess accomodation, which was at the very top of the prefabricated monstrosity that served as the ultimate RCT Corps Mess. On the Sunday night when I arrived most of the others were there already and in various states of settling in. Uniforms festooned everywhere and anywhere they could be hung. Pairs of gleaming black boots could be seen wherever an eye was cast. This was serious bullshit and a finer collection of warrant officers class two and staff sergeants you could not have wished to meet. Success on this course was absolutely essential if any of us were ever to make it to the altimate rank of warrant officer class one in the appointment of Regimental Sergeant Major!

The system was about to reduce us to rubble and we were going to put up the finest attempt to resist. The word circulated quickly around the top floor that night that for our first inspection on the Monday morning it did not matter whether we wore coats and gloves or not, as it was mid winter, so long as we all wore the same. Problem number one. Jimmy Williams, who had been the troop sergeant

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at Taunton on the opposite side of my spider in Senior Troop, had not brought his gloves. Jimmy, destined to become the course comedian, was told in no uncertain terms by the other nineteen or so of us that we were going to be wearing gloves - wooley pulley, green olive drab, keeping hands warm for the use of - and he was well advised to find some. We knew that we would be kept stood out in the freezing cold that first morning and we were not going to end up with frost bite in our digits for Jimmy.

We all duly creaked our way down the many flights of stairs, afraid to spoil the razor sharp creases in our trousers and concerned that someone would inadvertently tread on, and destroy, our black glass-like toe caps. We continued to wear our badges of rank but for the next four weeks they were meaningless within our group. Our instructors would all be SNCOs and WOs themselves but we might as well be recruits to them, whilst we were on the course. And it started that morning.

After we had organised ourselves into three ranks, to create a good impression we believed, we calmly waited for the arrival of the course warrant officer. I had never met, or indeed heard of, WO2 Eddie Jones but his broad Irish accent preceeded him around the corner of the building that morning as he bellowed at us to, “Stand easy everywhere, brace up and show the movement”, the traditional preamble to drilling a squad. We gave our best as he hove into view and in a trice we were stood to attention, in three ranks, at the open order ready to be inspected for the first time. Eddie Jones was flanked by a SSgt, by the name of Alan Young, whom I had also never met before, and he carried a very official looking clipboard. As the course warrant officer made a detailed inspection of each of us from head to toecaps he glanced at the face of the board which was hidden from our view and pointed at a score for Staff Young to record by our name for each of the elements of his inspection. This all took place in silence and lasted for ages and ages.

On completion of this ceremony we were treated to the predictable news that our turnout was disgusting, we were all to parade behind the guard in disgrace that evening and we had better show a vast improvement by the morrow if we were to survive the first week, let alone the course. We were then made to feel even better by being told that even though we probably thought we knew it all we would soon learn that we knew nothing and we were there to learn. Mouths shut, ears and eyes open and we might, just might, scrape a pass at the end of the four weeks of hell. To make his point he decided to demonstrate with one of us how useless we were and he threw into the air the rhetorical question, “If I asked one of you to prove, I wonder if that one of you would know how to prove correctly”. With that he levelled his pace stick directly at Williams and told him to “prove”.

Proving in the ranks was the equivalent of putting your hand up at school. It was not considered smart or tidy to have hands and arms waving about when soldiers were formed in ranks and so proving required one arm to be sharply brought up, bent at right angles at the elbow, pointing forwards waist high, accompanied by a shout of “Sir!”. The olive drab green Army sock that Jimmy wore on each hand, screwed up to look like a glove, now hung down by about a human foot length from his fingers as his right hand extended in the correct pose. It fluttered in the icy cold wind and we were all certain that Williams was done for.

Eddie Jones did not even glance in the direction of Williams but almost as a programmed robot screamed, “As you were”, which resulted in the sock disappearing from sight. “Wrong arm”, he rejoiced, “If Staff Williams had been holding a rifle he would have dropped it...wouldn’t he?”. The last bit was levelled at me and I also rejoiced with him in his revelation. But at that moment we all had difficulty not laughing aloud.

And so it went on for the full four weeks. It was a month of obligatory sheer nonsense and it provided us with a wealth of anecdotes that we would relive again and agin whenever we would meet in future days.

My third course in the UK during that tour was, like the first, at the Army School of Mechanical Transport in Leconfield. This also lasted a month but was of an altogether different type than the regimental course at Aldershot had been, for in 1978 I had been selected to attend the Master Driver course. This was a considerable achievement as the course was only held once a year, and it was seen as a prestigious step in the world of the RCT.

The Master Driver concept was relatively new and belonged to the RCT exclusively, although its effect was felt throughout the British Army. Master Drivers were warrant officers of both class one and two, (depending on their appointment) and the qualification was a culmination of all the driver

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trades. To be selected to attend the course we had to already be HGV driving instructors and all group QTOs, naturally be B1 drivers and to have passed the advanced MT course. Also be driver/radio operators and hold the other mandatory certificates for promotion to WO such as the EPC(A), which I had done in two stages at Bovington and Bulford during my tour at Taunton.

With few MD appointments world wide it was a select trade and carried with it a high profile. The Master Driver was responsible for advising the commanders of all the units within their patch on all matters concerning the training and testing of drivers, the proper maintenance and use of all forms of military vehicles and all aspects of road safety. All the registered driving examiners (QTOs) were controlled and supervised by the Master Driver and no driving test for anyone in any unit took place without the sanction of the MD for that area. The appointment really represented the pinnical of the driver trade and considering my start in the corps with the maritime division nobody was more surprised than me to have been selected for the course.

I thoroughly enjoyed the it and believed that I had discovered my forte in my military career, and I particularly revelled in the teaching and lecturing aspects of the course. I would not have been able to have done so well if it had not been for the jolt into the real world that 10 Regt had given to me and I was at home with general transport as the next person.

No indication was given throughout the course as to how well we were doing but I did feel confident and desperately wanted to pass. The only other alternatives to not being a Master Driver would have been as a WO2 SSM (Squadron Sergeant Major) which would have meant leaving the world of transport for the exclusive environment of the regimental, or WO2 RQMS (Regimental Quarter Master Sergeant). I wanted to be a Master Driver.

By the time I started the course Les Stanley had been posted from 10 Regt to the ASMT and was then the Master Driver of the Advanced Training Wing, and weekends found him, not surprisingly, up to his armpits in motor cycle competitions. He was considerable help to me and a source of inspiration as a Master Driver and it was during my course that he was selected for promotion to WO1 and notified of a posting within the ASMT to the External Training Team.

Not every one of the twelve students on my course was successful, but I was, and at the final interview with the Chief Instructor we were each told of our fate. I was to return to the ASMT on promotion to WO2 as the Master Driver of the Advanced Wing, to take over from Les Stanley.

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n the summer of 1979 I duly arrived at the North Humberside village of Leconfield to report for duty as the Master Driver of the Mechanical Transport Division (MTC Div) at the Army School of Mechanical Transport (ASMT). My brand new badges of rank, a large crown worn on the lower

arm, marked me as a Warrant Officer. No longer a SNCO, no longer badges of rank on the upper arm. I had to confess to a secret feeling that I had somehow arrived in the world of real credibility within the massive structure that was the Armed Forces.

Although I had a spot of leave before starting work I did visit Les Stanley in his office to tip my hat and let him know that I was ready willing and able to relieve him of his appointment. That was the last time that I was see that office because while I was on leave, visiting the family in Clacton, it burnt to the ground! No one was injured but considerable damage was done to the building and the extensive technical library that was housed in the next room. Still, I did get a new office out of it, and what was much more significant for me was that it was the first office that was exclusively mine, with my name plate on the door. I had arrived and if I went no further in the system I would have been happy. Well, for a time, maybe!

I was the Divisional Sergeant Major of the Mechanical Transport Control Division (MTC Div), a post that could only be filled by a qualified Master Driver, with a talent for lecturing. I was in my element and inherited a comprehensive programme of management courses for NCOs, WOs and Officers. I also inherited a team of SNCO instructors gathered from all arms of the Army including the RCT, Light Infantry and the Royal Engineers. They were a very dyed in the wool bunch and clearly did not welcome another WO at the helm with bright ideas that would mean changes to their routine. However, some of their routines, I soon discovered, needed a few changes and after a period of observation they had the pleasure of my intervention in their lives. It did not go down well, I could feel, but outwardly of course nothing was said directly. Comments relating to the fact that Les did not do it that way or we always do it this way I became quite hardened to and I had to eventually face the fact that I either gave in to their force by numbers or imposed my authority. Authority ruled, and without too much blood being spilt as they were intelligent enough to know precisely where the line was drawn. My years with 10 Regiment were not to go to waste.

The WOs & Sgts Mess was another area of strangeness, after all others I had known. Being a training establishment it had to cater for both permanent staff and visitors. The two did not always blend well socially. Instructors did not want their ears bent by course members every time they entered the Mess, understandably, but this did give rise to an atmosphere within the mess that really meant that it was not fully enjoyed by anybody. Having said that the committee did work very hard at laying on regular interesting events for the members and, due to the fact that Leconfield, an ex-RAF air base, was miles from anywhere, they were always well supported.

As a Warrant Officer my only commitment to the running of the Mess could only be as President of the Mess Committee (PMC) and there were plenty of other WOs in station in line before me. I was never destined to serve that Mess. Although I did win the Mess treasure hunt one Sunday which was probably my only claim to fame, function wise.

Leconfield’s four aircraft hangers dominated the skyline. At the far end of the line of monster buildings was the Driver Training Wing that catered for the needs of all novice drivers from most arms of the Army. All of the instructors were civilian employees that had, in the main, moved up from Bordon in Hampshire when the Army School of Transport was relocated to North Humberside. Other instructors, from the Junior Leaders Regiment, found their way north too and to all intents and purposes it was a completely closed shop from a uniform point of view. Politics aside, it was always, and probably still is, a bone of contention that soldiers were taught to drive by civilians when a few feet away the Advanced Wing taught soldiers to be driving instructors!

Every working morning crocodiles of recruits very recently from their basic training organisations would be marched up to the Driver Training Wing Hanger, each carrying their haversack rations for the day, ready to invade the countryside of North Humberside in LandRovers, Ford Escort estate cars and Bedford TK dual controlled trucks. Some, in their first few hours of training remained on the nursery circuit which was in fact the runway system of Leconfield’s predecessors. Amazingly accidents did occur despite the tremendous width of the runway and taxi ways due to the fact that as

I

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there was so much space the drivers seemed drawn to each other. During my time there I saw kerbs built, traffic lights erected and road markings painted to try and simulate normal road conditions. They still kept running into each other.

The Vehicle Division, also a Master Driver appointment at the ASMT and another division of the Advanced Wing, occupied a hanger and ran a whole variety of courses relating to vehicles from the snowcat to the fork lift, from tankers to articulated trucks. Driving Instructors and Qualified Testing Officer courses were also run from Veh Div although here again these “plum” areas of training were the exclusive domain of the civilian instructors.

The third hanger was utilized by the REME workshops that was kept very busy with the vast numbers and diversity of vehicles in the unit. I had very little to do with them in my role at the MTC Division. We did not have a hanger as a home, because we did not need the space for vehicles. Instead we had a complex of classrooms and a presentation theatre in a group of buildings also shared by the Signals Division, the third part of Advanced Wing, where, having been brought up from Aldershot, the range of Driver/Radio Operator courses were taught. The WO1 of the

Sigs Div was none other than Dick Atterbury. We were destined to meet many times throughout our lives it seemed.

My job revolved around planning and coordinating the courses that we ran through the year. The Head of the Division was Maj Tony Parkin, single and a resident of the Officers Mess, nearing retirement, drove a new VW Golf GTi and played squash. His 2i/c was an ex RCT Movement Control warrant officer, Maj Tony Lyons.

In many ways, chiefly due to the overall training bias of the unit, it felt like the Junior Leaders Regiment and despite the many negative features of 10 Regiment I did miss that sort of soldiering and environment. There were few fast balls to deal with in a routine that was meticulously planned months in advance. Despite its obvious importance and relatively high degree of prestige as an appointment, I became bored with the lack of demand for any decision making, and an almost total absence of soldiering. Even the uniform had sprouted little green “instructor” flashes on the epaulettes of the staff which seemed to say, “exempt conventional rules”. The ASMT was a self contained world that revolved around mountains of paperwork and an ideology that somehow failed to take into account the real world I had been introduced to and enjoyed in Bielefeld. A little unfair perhaps but from a personal standpoint the role of MTC Div Master Driver could not be described as a challenge. I fulfilled my obligations of ensuring the efficient running of a department staffed by a handful of experienced SNCOs that ran to a clockwork schedule set by others without difficulty, and had plenty of energy to spare. The initial excitement of promotion to WO2 and sole occupation of an office with my name on the door very quickly wore off.

The fourth hanger, adjacent to the Advanced Wing HQ complex was divided into two. In one part of it lived the beginnings of the Army transport museum, which today has become a major collection in the town of Beverley. In the bulk of the building however lived the RAF. A search and rescue setup with two yellow Wessex helicopters that mysteriously took off and returned on most

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days. One of the RAF WOs, a Master Air Load Master (MALM) was Bob Danes and one day we got talking in the Sgts Mess. The RAF seemed to have very little contact with the ASMT staff despite being members of the Mess and I asked him why the aircraft took off so often, just how many RAF aircraft crashed in the vicinity I wanted to know for that was their role there I had been told. Crew training was the answer and I was asked if I would like to take a trip with them. Would I like a trip. Was this not the same person that spent weeks in a Whirlwind during Operation Burlap of East Pakistan ten years previously. Would I ever. However, it seemed that I would have to earn my flight by acting as a casualty for the crew to rescue from the cliffs near Brislington.

I flew in the left hand seat to the training area and when we landed I had to put myself into a typical location for a rescue to take place. I have to confess to not being terribly fond of high cliff edges and I do not think Bob Danes and his pilot realised just how near to the real thing my “rescue” was!

It was a great afternoon out and the first of many sorties I took part in during my time at Leconfield. Bob and I became good friends and nobody was more surprised than him when he was awarded the Air Force Cross for a particularly hazardous rescue operation. Not satisfied with fame he found fortune too by becoming the husband of the grand-daughter of the famous painter Lowrie, after pulling her from the sea when a light aircraft she was in crashed off north Wales. It was odd to see his face appearing in the gossip pages of national newspapers during that time.

The two highlights of my tour were the organisation of a Master Driver course and the staging of a Master Driver convention. Les Stanley had moved into the job of WO1 Master Driver with the External Training Team, a job that took him all over the world visiting each of the other Master Driver posts, and was based at the ASMT. But the Advanced Training Wing also had a WO1 Master Driver in its headquarters, just up the corridor from my office, and during the greater part of my tour it was Peter McGrath that held the post. We got on very well and shared similar views on our roles, job and everything. It was with him that I worked to organise and run the 1980 Master Driver course. The names and the faces have all but faded in the mists of time for those students on that course, but I do remember well the many discussions that took place between the staff involved with running the course and the decisions that had to be taken over who would pass and who would not. For Pete McGrath and I it was particularly difficult as all the other instructors were officers yet we knew and had to entertain the course members without letting even a hint go about their progress and likelihood of success, or otherwise. For some were destined not to pass, and a few of those had no idea that they would not. It was amusing to hear them discuss their future plans with so much confidence. They thought they had it all worked out who would be posted to where to take over from whom, and so on. They seemed to believe that they were already in the closed shop of the Master Driver kingdom as they had been selected to attend the course, of which there would only be one in a year. Of course, I had to have sympathy with them as I had been in the self same situation on the previous course which was some eighteen months before.

The last morning of the month long course, following the last night party in the Mess, was not a happy occasion for everyone. Yet again Pete and I played host to them all in the conference room whilst they individually took the long walk up to the colonel’s office to discover their fate. At that interview they would be told whether they had passed or not and the successful ones would also be advised of their next likely posting. Some of those men shed tears when they returned to say goodbye to the others, having earlier been so confident of success. But such was the nature of the selection process. The hard part for Pete and I was the fact that we had known the results the day before. It had made conversations at the previous evenings social event awkward at times.

Strangely enough, another piece of confidential information would bring me grief at a later date and that concerned Master Drivers too. One in particular and a very big one to boot.

The Master Driver convention was held for the first time at the ASMT and they all arrived from the four corners of the earth for a two day conference with a dinner night splitting the two days. Pete McGrath and I had the task of organising and staging the event and it was the highlight of my short tour at the School. The WO1 appointments were at Leconfield (Adv Wing and the External Training Team), one at each of the six UK district headquarters and one on the staff of the headquarters in Germany, Hong Kong and Cyprus. The WO2 appointments were located in the UK at ASMT (MTC Div and Veh Div), the headquarters of the UKMF(L) based in Wiltshire, and 27 Regiment RCT at Aldershot. WO2s also enjoyed appointments in Germany with seven RCT regiments

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and one located with the Sqn in Berlin.

WO2 Steve Loasby towered over everyone around him, wore a smile that stretched from ear to ear and was black. Quick witted and a favourite with his peers and the units he served he was the Master Driver of 3 Armoured Division Transport Regiment RCT based in Duisberg in Germany. But I knew he was to soon be promoted to WO1 and posted as the Master Driver to HQ London District. He did not know it then and it would have been a serious breach of confidence if I had even hinted at it. Later that year when he learnt his fate he was furious with me for not preventing him from spending a small fortune on a family holiday only weeks before he was due to move. I know that he saw the position I was in but I daresay that if the roles had been reversed I would have felt the same.

It was fun meeting all of the MDs and being able to put faces to names that I had not met before. Of course many I did know, mostly the WO2s, mainly from JLR days at Taunton; George Richards and Alan Belton in particular that had been on the same Master Driver course as me the previous year. George was at 1 Div and Alan with 10 Regiment. There was a buzz at the convention that the then Master Driver of 2 Div was likely to be short toured and I also heard the rumour that I was favourite to get the job. For once rumour control got it right and in less than a month from the date of that convention I was the new Master Driver of 2 Armoured Division Transport Regiment.

I really had no regrets about leaving Leconfield. There is a particular atmosphere amongst the staff of a large training establishment that is difficult to identify and even harder to define. But it is there and I saw it first at Bordon during my Advanced MT NCOs and HGV driving instructor courses. It is something akin to us, being the staff, and them, the students, and I suppose at the end of the day I related more to the students than the staff. What is more, and I was most definitely on the receiving end of it at the MD convention, the Master Drivers “in the field” regarded the Master Drivers at the School as a plastic variety that did not have to actually do the job, just talk about it! The ASMT, on the other hand, saw a School appointment as suitable for only a particular few of the Master Drivers and our appointments were portrayed as prestigious.

Despite the paradox, after only thirteen months, I was moving again back to Germany. I was very happy about that. Very happy indeed.

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or the second time in my service career I was driving through West Germany to join a new unit. But this time I felt far greater confidence about it all. I knew the area quite well, although the small town of Bünde was not itself familiar territory, and the BAOR routine was not something

I would need to learn this time. I was now a second tour Warrant Officer and had gained sufficient faith in myself to carry this one off with no problem. This was not over-confidence but a genuine personal conviction that I could do the job, and do it well. For the first time I was going to somewhere I really wanted to go, to do a job I really wanted to do. As it would turn out the Bünde interval of my service life was to be a turning point and the final step towards my finest hour in the shape of my next posting. Of course I was unaware of that then, my next posting was still a couple of years away, but at that time I did feel sanguine. All I had to do was produce the goods and apply all that I had learnt over the last fifteen years.

Bünde was a much smaller town than, and situated about fifteen miles due north of, Bielefeld, just off European Route 30 which carved its way horizontally through North West Germany. The barracks that I finally entered after disembarking from the Harwich to Hook of Holland ferry in my tired Renault 17TS, towing the heavily laden Sprite 400 caravan purchased during my 10 Regiment days, was the home of two separate units. 2 Armoured Division HQ & Signal Regiment also shared Birdwood Barracks with 2 Armoured Division Transport Regiment RCT, and I was their new Master Driver. The HQ of the Division was at Lübbecke, an even smaller town than Bünde, and the many other units belonging to the Division were to be found in Osnabrück and Münster.

During that first week, when I once again found myself a temporary resident of the WOs and Sgts Mess awaiting a married quarter, I drove to Osnabrück in my car to familiarize myself with the lay of the land and at an acute angled T junction joining a wide main road I removed the side of an elderly German woman’s Opel Record. In no time at all a distinctive green and white German police VW minibus arrived on the scene and with a quick glance at the position of the vehicles one of the officers accused me of attempting to execute a left turn contrary to the sign ordering no left turn. I did my best to explain that I was turning right, stationary, and waiting for the other car to pass in front of me when she came so close that she hooked her front right hand wheel arch onto my front bumper and opened herself up like a sardine tin. But they were having none of it. The position of my car proved to them that I was going to turn left, they said, and indeed to be fair it did look like it. Sitting in their mobile office I was getting nowhere and suggested that they might like to sit in my car for a moment. Puzzled, they wandered over to it and one of them got into the driving seat on the right hand side and instantly all became clear to him. The Renault 17 was designed as a coupé and the small triangular rear windows were additionally fitted with vertical “gills” making vision to the left quarter almost impossible. It was for that reason that I had positioned at more of a right angle to the main road than normal so that I could see, HGV style.

Just when the situation turned to my favour, along came the military police and, no doubt spying my UK registration and short haircut, stopped to investigate. The RMP have much more sway in foreign parts than in the UK and particularly in BAOR they were prolific. Introducing myself amid the wreckage dented my initial confidence, particularly as I had yet to actually start work, but they saw the funny side of it and no doubt it gave the 2 Div jungle drums something to laugh about in those early days of my arrival.

I first met Lt Col Ian Baxter, CO of the 2 Div RCT regiment and Commander Transport for the division, on my initial interview a couple of days later. He made it quite clear what he expected from me if I wished to survive. My confidence was beginning to suffer grievous bodily harm by this time and I was still to actually start work.

His opinion of Master Drivers generally was not altogether complimentary and when I asked him what staff I had he almost fell out of his chair in shock. I put my neck on the block then and

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promised to prove that the Master Driver role had much to offer providing I had administrative support, for it was just not possible to visit all the units in the division and stay on top of the mountains of paperwork that arrived daily requesting the allocation of QTOs for driving tests and the subsequential issue of certificates to the passes. I must have been convincing for a clerk was assigned to full time duties with me although his on job training was to be solely my responsibility.

A fact of life for the Master Driver then was that his worth was really measured by the units that used transport, wearing every cap badge other than RCT. Within an RCT unit the MD was regarded by some, especially in those early days of the role, as a sort of curiosity. So on top of everything else, we all had a significant on going public relations role to perform it seemed, and not just outside our own camp perimeters.

Very quickly I settled into a routine and started to get myself known throughout the division. My first task was to visit every unit and introduce myself to their commanders and officers or warrant officers in charge of the MT. I had to beware of making promises that I would not be able to keep of course, but then again I had to be generous with offers of assistance and advice if I was to actually win my bread. And there were three specific areas that I was able to be involved irrespective of the size or role of the unit. Firstly I was able to advise on the structure and content of driver training courses and arrange for the students on the courses to be tested. Secondly I could identify weaknesses in the overall management of their transport particularly, on the run up to the annual inspections carried out by REME workshops. A poor report on this inspection could well mean that the unit was unable to perform its function in anger and no CO wanted to visit the GOC (General Officer Commanding the division) to explain why. The third hat I had to wear was that of Road Safety adviser, and the one that was, expectedly, the most contentious. Every unit was supposed to nominate a Road Safety Officer and arrange for that person to be trained, ideally by attending a course at Leconfield. But in the real world a lot of units had untrained RSOs boasting the full spectrum of enthusiasm and skills and it was convincing the units who always had much more important things to do that was the challenge to my task in that area.

To lend weight to the Master Driver’s status in the world of road safety and to help us tackle such an important and difficult duty we each attended the two week Assistant County Road Safety Officer course held at the RoSPA residential training school at Horncastle in Linconshire. My course was arranged during my first year in Bünde and I travelled back to the UK with another BAOR Master Driver, Matt Mathews then at 3 Div in Duisberg. On arrival we were delighted to discover that Pete McGrath from ASMT was also on the same course. We were something of a novelty to the civilian students, but we kept them well entertained for the fortnight and hopefully contributed something to the course content. Much of the course did not really relate to us as County Council budgets and major road engineering projects were not subjects we either knew much about or were ever likely to become involved in. Yet other aspects were very valuable such as the identification of trends and staging major road safety events. It was certainly a bonus to be able to attend a comparatively high flying course in that discipline and I wasted no time in putting it all to good use on my return to BAOR.

My first major road safety event was a traditional safe and skilled competition organised for the Osnabrück garrison and hosted by 1 Kings Regiment. I wrote the competition instructions and acted as the chief marshall. Virtually all units within the garrison entered teams and I felt very pleased with myself watching my ideas, originally sketched on paper, actually take place and involve so many people. There were presentation stands with REME personnel scrutinizing the condition of the vehicles and their documents, manoeuvring areas for motorcycles, LandRovers with trailers and 4 ton trucks. I had QTOs secreted along routes that would challenge the vehicle crew’s map reading and driving skills, and so on. It was a big day and competition was very serious and the scoreboard was always a hive of activity. All went very well except for one element and I was to learn an important lesson over it for future reference. On the manoeuvring circuit for the 4 tonners I had designed a reverse parking event that required the driver to back into a gated area twice the length of the truck on its offside between barriers at right angles to a kerb. With only one shunt permitted each of the offside wheels were measured from the kerb resulting in a score against the driver. A fixed penalty was awarded if either barrier was touched and the exercise terminated where they would move onto the next stand.

After the competition had been running for some time all hell broke out at that event and I was sent for by furious representatives of some of the competing units to adjudicate. Because of the allocation of penalty points and the degree of difficulty in getting in close to the kerb one team

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twigged that driving directly into the rear barrier would cost them less than even attempting the exercise. In short I had not graded the fixed penalty anything like high enough and once this was recognised all the teams were doing it. The protests were, of course, coming from the earlier teams who had attempted the task properly and paid dearly in terms of points for their trouble. What was more, the physical training Warrant Officer who had provided the hurdles for barriers was far from pleased at the damage they were suffering. What was the saying about pride before falls? It certainly applied that day. Much pride was at stake for the favourite units as well and as chief marshall I found myself with the executive decision. The Garrison Commander wasn’t that helpful either as he broadly grinned and said, “What are you going to do about that, Master Driver?”, in a tone that said whatever I did it would not please everyone, and the decision was mine alone.

I studied the score board and worked out that sure enough, whatever I decided to do, the overall positions of some of the teams were going to be affected. If I had let the results stand it would have made a mockery of the event. If I deleted the exercise from the competition it would have been detrimental to some teams that had scored well in that activity and ultimately affected their overall final placing. If I penalised the teams that drove into the barrier I would face the argument that there was nothing in the rules to prevent it, and I had written the rules. It was more than a safe and skilled driving competition there and then. It was a very valuable lesson to a cocky young warrant officer to thoroughly plan and prepare anything that was going to affect others. It was a lesson in carrying the burden of responsibility. No matter what I decided, someone would miss out as a result.

However, after all was said and done, I was annoyed that, despite this weakness in the scoring structure of the exercise it was obvious what it was designed to test and I did not consider that the spirit of the competition had been upheld by those trying affectively to be clever. The barrier touchers paid dearly that day and I made the best of what could have become a bad job. I organised and ran

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many other safe and skilled driving competitions after that and made sure that I never put myself in that position again. I always arranged for someone else to be chief marshall!

A minor claim to fame from that tour in Germany was the introduction of the Master Driver to the airwaves. During my tour with 10 Regiment I had organised a day trip to the British Forces Broadcasting Services (BFBS) studios in Köln for B troop as an interest activity. I had written to them first and was invited down by Andrew Pastouna who acted then as our host. On returning to BAOR I discovered that Mr Pastouna had moved up to Bielefeld and operated from the BFBS studios in Rippon Barracks, home of 1 (BR) Corps, and just below my first married quarter. So on this tour I invited myself along to meet with him again and suggested a regular feature of the Master Driver spot where I would cover riveting topics related to the world of road safety and motoring in general, once a week, to entertain and inform the Forces and their families throughout BAOR. Surprisingly he thought it a very good idea and I became a household name at twenty past twelve every Tuesday and Thursday morning. I enjoyed it too, recording programmes in batches of two or three weeks in advance sometimes. The topics covered all aspects of life on the road and became popular with listeners who regularly wrote in with questions that provided yet more material for each session.

For an experiment I carried out a driving test with my radio host behind the wheel of his Rolls Royce, which led to several other outside broadcasts including a Services Caravan Club open day which I organised at Birdwood Barracks, when he turned up in yet another of his three Rolls Royces, this time in an elderly landau which had once been owned by the Queen Mother.

On the personal front my Renault 17 gave way very early on in my tour for a brand new duty free car again. In fact my clerk bought the Renault from me, (without any coercion), and, although I had wanted to buy a new Audi 80, it was to prove too dear, and so I purchased the very first right hand drive VW Jetta, through the NAAFI on Detmolder Strasse in Bielefeld. It was the then top of the range GLS model in pure white and to this day was probably the best car that I have ever owned. Beautifully put together and a joy to drive. I bought and sold several VW Beetles during those years too and VW effectively put an end to my long standing relationship with Renault cars, having owned a 4, 8, 12, and 17. My married quarter was perched at the very end of a terrace of married quarters in Karl Arnold Strasse in the small village of Hünnebrücke on the road from Bünde to Bielefeld. Just over the road was the families NAAFI shop managed by the German wife of my former SSM in 9 Sqn, Ken Maher. They had their home in Bünde and I visited them several times during my tour, as Ken was now the MT warrant officer for 2 Div headquarters in Lübbecke. Despite its size, it sometimes seemed that the RCT was a very small Corps.

Birdwood Barracks was a good thirty minutes drive away, which I enjoyed through very rural countryside, and the barracks themselves were almost exclusively single storey buildings with the strange feature of virtually every significant structure duplicated all over the camp to facilitate the two large regiments. Two RHQs, two NAAFIs, two cookhouses, two Officers and Sgts Messes, and completely separate accommodation blocks for the living in soldiers. Needless to say there was little contact between the two units on a day to day basis but one couldn’t help notice that the Royal Signals

were always departing for exercises first, to set up the division’s communications, and they always seemed to be the last back in.

Occasionally one of the Messes would play host to their opposite number and later on in the calendar of events a reciprocal function would take place. Indeed on one occasion they were a life saver.....

The RSM on my arrival at the regiment was Jim Meek. We had met before, like so many others, at Norton Manor in Taunton, when he had been an SSM, and he treated me very well as one of his warrant officers at Bünde. The Mess was small and friendly and had an informal atmosphere, due mainly to Jim’s general attitude and approach to life. He invited me to be the PMC (President of the Members Committee) after I had served some time before the mast of 2 Div,

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and I accepted because, frankly, there was little option involved! The PMC ran the Mess on behalf of the RSM and by then I felt quite competent and qualified to handle the task.

The tour of duty was for a quarter of the year and at the same Mess Meeting that I was proposed, seconded and elected I also learnt of my new committee consisting of a SSgt PEC (entertainments) with his six sergeants, a Treasurer, a Messing member (responsible for food and drink) and Silver and Property members. The two main events in any Mess calendar are the Summer Ball and the Christmas Draw and I drew the Draw. My term was to cover the Christmas period and it would also involve the dining out of the RSM on posting. It was to be a busy time.

Not only was Jim Meek to be posted that year but he was also selected for a commission and would leave us to join the Officers Mess in pastures new. (Catterick Garrison as it happened). The night of the dinner was to be a grand affair, a formal Regimental do in the highest traditions of the Corps. Which of course meant the highest standard of food and wine, and entertainment. However, as I hosted the RSM on his last night in the Mess, circulating amongst the members and guests less than fifteen minutes before the call to dinner, the cook sergeant quietly drew alongside me and asked if he could have a word. He discreetly whispered that he had a problem. What was it I enquired. The cooling fans in the kitchen had packed up he told me. Open the windows I told him back and added that a cook sergeant ought to be able to make those sort of decisions for himself. I did not understand he purred. When the fans pack up, then so do the ovens and hot plates and all the other things electrical that cooks use to cook with. I quietly and confidently excused myself from the RSM and his guest the CO, who by then was Lt Col George Vaughan, and slipped out to the back with the cook sergeant, and panicked. Can it be fixed and quick was my first reaction. No, of course not, things like that never can, can they. So the long and the short of it was that anyone who was anyone in 2 Armoured Div Transport Regiment RCT was about to sit down that night in the beautifully decked out dining room, festooned with silver table candelabra, trophies and goblets...... with nothing to eat.

Royal Signals to the rescue, and in a matter of minutes secret armies of soldiers were sprinting from one Mess to the other as the parallel kitchen was brought into operation. We pulled it off and most people were none the wiser until the RSM surprised me, and everyone else, during his after dinner speech by commenting that he had known all of the time!

Jim Meek was succeeded by Ron Clarke as RSM, whom I allowed to soft soap me when he told me how important he believed it was for continuity in the first few months of his tour, and asked

me to continue as PMC of the Mess for a second quarter without a break. That was a very tough seven months all told and with hindsight I should never have agreed to it. The additional workload and commitment was very demanding in both time and energy, particularly for a busy, well supported Mess such as that one. Hardly was there a Saturday night or Sunday lunchtime that did not have an activity of some sort happening and

although I did not have to attend it was expected, not to mention the frequent stock checks and transfer of monies from bar and fruit machines that required my involvement. But I got through it without losing too much blood, sweat and tears, and looking back now that was the only time I ever held the appointment of PMC.

During my previous tour in BAOR, life revolved around exercises from troop through squadron and regimental right up to 1 (BR) Corps. Those sorts of exercises still took place but now I

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was nothing like directly involved as before. In fact I only dressed myself in now you see me now you don’t kit for the divisional exercises, (which no doubt contributed to the resentment sometimes shown to the Master Driver appointment from the SSMs), as my job took me to all the units in the division, all of the time. While my peers in 2 Div RCT only had to concern themselves with 2 Div RCT they sometimes lost sight of the fact that my appointment was divisional and the RCT regiment was really only my administrational base. It was often suggested within the Master Driver ranks that we could have been located at the Divisional HQ itself, but that would have meant no regular contact with our parent Corps. It was a discussion that came up repeatedly and it seemed to bother the WOs in the RCT regiments more than it did Master Drivers.

Attitudes aside, on my first div exercise, I travelled up to the Div HQ and became integrated with the Royal Military Police cell in the HQ. The truth be known there was no war time role for a Master Driver as such and so I found myself tasked on real life problems concerning transport and its movement whilst the exercise entered its make-believe guise. The GOC, then Maj Gen Martin Farndale, employed me as his trouble shooter when reports of accidents, particularly involving civilian vehicles, were reported during the exercise. I would leap off in an RMP LandRover and visit the scene, get the facts, nothing but the facts, and report back personally to the General so preventing the rumours starting.

Of course the fun was when I tried to find some of these incidents which could have been anywhere in a hundred mile radius. It often meant that nothing was left to see at the scene but I would have to located the parent unit of the vehicles involved to speak to drivers and so on. All, of course, within the exercise play of scrimming up, entering and leaving secret locations, using passwords and so on. Trying to speak to people about actual happenings when they are deeply immersed in fighting a war often gave rise to a conflict of interests and I was not always welcomed with open arms. Nonetheless, the mention of the GOC at the right moment usually did the trick and they found the time to explain to me why they had left a trail of destruction in their path on the last tactical move, or whatever.

On one of these exercises, during a relatively quiet phase one night, the RMP Major asked me if I wanted to accompany him to watch “Hell On Wheels” cross the river Weser just south of Hameln. Hell On Wheels was the unofficial name given to the Americans, by the Americans, for a very large part of their transportation forces. Their official nomenclature I have long forgotten. I did not know what to expect but what I did see I was not ready for. Bearing in mind that we were supposed to be in the thick of a full scale tactical exercise observing all the protocols of camouflage and concealment, low profile and vehicle packets of five or six for protection, we could see them coming more than two miles away from the bridge.

The bridge itself was constructed by the Royal Engineers using the massive vehicle bridge pontoons which were driven into the water and manoeuvred alongside each other, connected, and stretched side by side across the river forming a floating bridge that would easily take the weight of a battle tank. It was very dark except for the red lights marking the edges of the bridge which had only been constructed a matter of an hour before in

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readiness for the American column. In the distance what looked like a carnival procession lit up the sky as the first of the unfamiliar vehicles hove into view. They crossed slowly and noisily with virtually every vehicle sporting several revolving amber lights. Festooned all over the armoured machines were bodies in various states of combat undress, smoking, swigging from the ubiquitous Coke bottles and waving to the, by now, large gathering of onlookers as though they had just arrived to liberate us. It was unbelievable. For more than two hours I stood there watching every conceivable type of vehicle driven past in a never ending nose to tail procession. The oddest thing that struck me was that they were all gaily waving to us as they passed us by but none of us waved back. We just stood and watched this bizarre cavalcade until the last Jeep disappeared into the darkness and then it was back to the real war of creeping into location, stumbling over other people’s kit as we attempted to find our way through the maze of scrim nets and barbed wire surrounding our headquarters. It was the first time I had actually seen the USA military might on the move and it was a sight I doubt I will ever forget.

In “peacetime” I actually reported to the second-in-command of the regiment, Major Alan Bush and he was, to all intents and purposes my OC. We did not always see eye to eye on everything but he was always reasonable, allowed me plenty of sway and left me in no doubt when a subject was no longer open for discussion. One day in 1981 the officers of the regiment were congratulating him on his forthcoming selection to the rank of Lt Col. He had to attend a long senior officers course at the Latimer college first, and then take up his appointment as CO of 30 Regiment RCT, in Cyprus. A very plum posting by anybody’s reckoning. Before he departed however, it was my turn to be congratulated for I was, quite unexpectedly, to be promoted to Warrant Officer Class One and posted also to 30 Regiment as the Master Driver of the United Kingdom Land Forces and the United Nations Forces in Cyprus! Just like that. After less than two years in post. What was more, I had less than six weeks notice to move. Exciting.

I have to admit to being thrilled at the prospect of both the promotion and the posting. It really was the ultimate that a Master Driver could have wished for, and my peers in BAOR received the news with a mixture of delight, envy and, regrettably in one case, fury.

The following month I secured myself to cloud nine and it passed quickly with a whirlwind of farewell functions at many of the divisional units to which I had become a regular visitor. Yet again my life had to be packed into MFO boxes to travel across yet more water. I

decided to keep the Jetta, which I was still paying for each month, and store it at Clacton for the next three years in the unused garage of a bungalow belonging to a little old lady there. After handing over my job, in considerable better order than I had found it, my married quarter likewise, and my regular slot on the airwaves of West Germany, I waved farewell to BAOR for the final time and headed South East for the sun baked island of Cyprus parked in the top right corner of the Mediterranean Sea.

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ifteen years previously I had stepped off an aircraft into another world, the world of Singapore and the mysteries of the Far East. I was an acting Lcpl and in the early stages of my career in the RCT. It was an exciting time for me then, yet no more so than when I again stepped off an

aircraft into another world but this time as a WO1 and well into my career.

As I entered the arrival lounge in very bright sunshine at RAF Akrotiri I immediately spotted the familiar and friendly face of Terry (TC) Burn, another one time member of the JLR permanent staff at Taunton in the mid 70s, and now the person who was about to hand over their job to me. From that moment my life became a whirlwind, until we exchanged places a week later and I waved goodbye to him.

After being whisked off to the RAF WOs and Sgts Mess, literally around the corner from the terminal building, installed in my temporary accommodation and handed my first ice cold Carlsberg, we were on our way into the closest town of Limassol to “get me a car”. On the way there Terry explained the peculiarities of transportation on the island and the significant role played by the main car dealers. Cyprus it seemed had astronomically high import tax rates on new cars sold to Cypriots and so it paid the dealers to invite certain members of the British Forces to purchase a new car, duty free, use it for a year or so and then sell it back to the same dealer for the same price it was bought! This satisfied everyone apparently. The car dealers were then able to sell the car on the Cypriot market at a greatly reduced tax level making a relatively new car much more affordable to the local population and the first user of the car gets a year of virtually free use of a new car. The catch? Well those that the dealer smiled on and were able to take advantage of the system were expected to buy their new duty free car to ship back to the UK from the same dealer, of course. However, the car dealers needed access to the Sovereign Base Areas to sell their cars and I learnt on my first day the power of the Master Driver where that was concerned. The Master Driver’s power of veto was something that they all were well aware of and to woo the Master Driver with a new car was their aim.

So on that first afternoon we were on our way to the offices of one Andy Spyrou, main dealer for Subaru cars and bosom buddy of my predecessor. Once I made it clear, as I sampled my very first medium sweet coffee and iced water chaser, that languishing in a lockup in Clacton was my beloved and not yet paid for VW Jetta, I assumed all enthusiasm would quickly wane. But not a bit of it. No problem. The Master Driver can have anything he wants during his tour on the island without any obligation to purchase a car. I needed time to think about this, here I was less than twenty four hours into my ultimate appointment and I thought I was getting mixed up in some sort of swindle. But I wasn’t, it was a simple exploitation of the Cypriot import duty regulations that operated to the advantage of the British Forces.

Within the hour I was driving away from Limassol in convoy with TC Burn back to RAF Akrotiri, with a date for a Greek meal as the guest of Andy Spyrou and family that Saturday, and a battered Fiat 127 estate under my backside. It was colloquially known as a “gizzit” and was one of the many rough and ready vehicles the dealers kept up their sleeves for instant mobility. A more appropriate car would be arranged later. For now I had enough to think about. After my evening meal in the RAF Mess, alone for the first time since arriving, I took a turn through the gardens in the evening sunshine to reflect on my lot. The garden was in fact totally dust based as was virtually everywhere else I had seen so far. The intense summer heat made sure of that and the only things that were any shade of green could be best described as scrub. I knew nothing about horticulture but I did know that it was very, very hot. That evening I felt a momentary pang of panic in this very foreign land as I was quickly learning that the Master Driver in Cyprus was a far cry from the BAOR role. Here life was going to be much different, very much different.

The following week was to be a never ending round of visits, introductions and explanations. I made copious notes on the way.

Everything started to shape up into four quite distinctive areas; my parent unit of 30 Regiment RCT, every other army and RAF unit located all over the island, the Master Driver role in UNFICYP (United Nations Forces in Cyprus) and the social aspects of living on Aphrodite’s island....there were many and TC Burn had somehow managed to incorporate the forth part into the other three. Nearly everywhere we went involved an invitation to some function or other for him as a farewell, to me as a welcome or to the pair of us for the sheer novelty of having two Master Drivers to entertain.

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During my embarkation leave, spent at Clacton, I had visited a military outfitters in the Colchester garrison, (just around the corner from the very place I joined the Army seventeen years previously), I bought my brown shoes and soft brown officers hat that were to stay with me now for the rest of my career. Achieving the rank of WO1 was, without any doubt, the ultimate in an army career profile for a soldier who started from the bottom rung. It was a special rank that carried with it very considerable power and privilege, part of which was the unique opportunity to wear officer pattern uniform, at ones own expense. A WO1 in full flight, decked out in immaculately tailored officer’s dress, with the brightly coloured coat of arms badge of rank worn on the lower arm, and double soled highly bulled dark brown shoes was an unmistakeable sight that could strike fear into the hearts of soldiers and junior officers alike. And now I had made it. Nothing could top the achievement as far as I was concerned and all I had to concentrate on was to make a success of my appointment. To a WO1 the future becomes almost irrelevant. Being one was the future that every soldier aspires to but only a fraction ever achieve.

And I was to pay the price on my arrival in hard cash, for the officers of 30 Regiment had chosen a superior and locally made tailored uniform in favour of the army issue and Terry wasted no time in introducing me to the tailor who would do me the honours. Like non identical twins Terry and I travelled the length and breadth of the island in the self drive black Ford Cortina staff car, that was yet another perk of the job I was to inherit.

30 Regiment was in fact a Transport and Movement unit and did not boast the full complement of soldiers a regiment such as 10 Regt in Bielefeld did. The majority of the workforce were locally employed civilians who drove the military vehicles on the island. Shades of Singapore. The headquarters of the regiment was located about fifteen miles west of Akrotiri along the coast at Episkopi where the HQ of the Land Forces in Cyprus (HQLFC) were also located. Both Episkopi and RAF Akrotiri fell within the boundaries of the Western Sovereign Base Area (WSBA) which was, to all intents and purposes, British controlled. A special police force called the SBA police had absolute authority within the Sovereign Base Areas and although the roads through Episkopi were open and used by locals and tourists they were subject to British law and order.

Lt Col Richard Arlidge was the CO of 30 Regiment RCT and he also enjoyed the dual role of Commander Transport and Movements in his HQLFC role. The second in command, Maj John Lewis also had a staff appointment in HQLFC and the Adjutant was Capt Jonathan Shorer, expert windsurfer and orienteering officer. One of the warmest welcomes I received was from my one time RSM at Norton Manor Camp in Taunton during the early seventies, now Maj Arthur Lambert MBE, the regimental quartermaster and no slouch on a windsurfer either.

The regiment had two squadrons, 58 Sqn that had its HQ within RAF Akrotiri base with most of the personnel and vehicles, and about a third of the squadron was located at Dhekelia in the Eastern Sovereign Base Area about seventy miles from Episkopi, a few miles east of the port of Larnaca. The second squadron had a very familiar ring to it, it was none other than 10 Port Sqn, my first overseas unit and then, of course, in Singapore. When the British Forces quit Singapore in the early 1970s the squadron was relocated at Famagusta on the eastern coast of Cyprus, but as a result of the Turkish invasion of 1974 Famagusta fell into the territory that became the Turkish sector, and 10 Port again moved, lock stock and landing craft to a small harbour on the southern most part of the island within the perimeter fence of RAF Akrotiri. I looked forward to visiting that squadron in particular, but it would be as a result of one of my visits there that the role of the Master Driver appointment would change.

Two other elements of 30 Regiment were to be discovered lurking in the bright shadows of

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the island, the Movement Control element of the RAF airport was staffed jointly by RAF and RCT and in the civilian port of Limassol could be found the Joint Service Port Unit (JSPU) which handled all military freight that came and went through civilian shipping channels. 30 Regt RCT was a very complex unit and was very top heavy with officers, WO2s and SNCOs with only a troop strength of drivers at each of the two 58 Sqn locations. It became clear that virtually no regimental structure existed as such with each element looking after its own interests. That would soon change.

When the introductions to the RCT side of life were over my takeover took me on a series of visits to the other units on the island. 30 Regt, some years previously had its HQ at RAF Akrotiri and the Master Driver and Quartermaster still occupied tied married quarters there, but everyone else had moved over to “Epi” as it was colloquially known. So as the RAF station was also to be my home I did the rounds there and met an amazing number of people in very unfamiliar appointments. The RAF and I would get to know each other very well in the coming years, professionally and socially.

In Episkopi, other than the multitude of different facets to the HQLFC, there was also an infantry battalion permanently stationed and it was with them that my Master Driver hat would be worn the most. Likewise in the ESBA another resident infantry unit was established making up the bulk of the permanent forces on the island. Dhekelia garrison had its own HQ and yet another surprise was waiting for me in the shape of an RCT WO1 as the resident garrison sergeant major. That post seemed to be the exclusive property of ex-JLR permanent staff from my era as John Maskell was in post on my arrival and he was shortly replaced by Mick Davies for most of my tour. Mick and I not only served at Taunton together but did the same EPC(A) courses at Bovington and Bulford as well as the RCT Warrant Officers course at Aldershot. We were old pals and it was good to serve with him again. He never overlooked sending an invitation for me to his Mess for grand events. Stiff white cards appeared in my mail regularly. There were lots of bits and pieces of units everywhere as I discovered during the whistle stop tour. And I would have plenty of time to rediscover them in the following months. But the final day of the handover produced yet another hat for me to wear, both metaphorically and actually. The hat was in fact a United Nations blue beret and was issued to me, with arm band and UN identity card at the UNFICYP headquarters in Nicosia.

After the Turkish invasion the island became separated and the Greek people were restricted to the lower two thirds of the island with the Turkish occupation in the north. A horizontal peace line separated the two and effectively two countries grew out of one with the United Nations in permanent residence to keep them apart. Several countries supplied a contingent of forces to UNFICYP including Britain, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland. The Master Driver was invited to advise the UN road safety committee and to particularly take interest in the British transport elements which was of course an RCT squadron that changed every four months. During my tour the commander of the UN forces, then an Austrian general, decided to make 1982 the UN year of road safety with a 50% target for reductions in traffic accidents allocated to all contingents. To achieve it I was invited to stage a safe and skilled competition, (on the runway of the derelict Nicosia international airport) and give lectures to each nation. I designed a certificate that the commander presented to every driver who had an accident free tour, and the campaign was such an outstanding success that the general announced at the end of it that 1983 would be the year of road safety too, with another 50% reduction required from every contingent!

The overall impression was that Cyprus was certainly a wonderful place to be. And for no lesser reason than the working day started at seven in the morning and ended at one o’clock, with the rest of the day for rest and relaxation..... and sport. As a result, there was no shortage of “clubs” catering for every conceivable pastime to pass the time in the SBAs. Golf, gliding, parachuting, rock climbing, go-kart racing, tennis, hockey, horse riding and amateur dramatics to name but a few

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occupied corners of the garrisons everywhere. But probably the most popular were the water born clubs that stretched along the coasts of Akrotiri, Episkopi and Dhekelia. Canoeing, water skiing, windsurfing (in its infancy then) and swimming all attracted service personnel and their families, but the club I made a bee line for was the dinghy sailing club in RAF Akrotiri about two miles from my house and adjacent to the long deserted Ladies mile beach.

The club was called the Limassol Services Sailing Club, the LSSC, and indulged serious and casual sailors alike. Indeed it, as so many other clubs on the island did, boasted a social membership where no connection was required with club activities other than a passing interest. But social members were essential for their subscriptions were as good as the next members and subscriptions meant financial success to any club with so much competition. The LSSC was an official Royal Yachting Association training venue and courses were regularly run covering all aspects of sailing from basic to advanced racing tactics. It boasted a very healthy membership and was run along tradition sailing club lines with regular racing series staged throughout the year for those with a competitive flair and traditional management appointments were elected by and filled from the membership. The LSSC was to virtually take over my off duty life in Cyprus and there were literally very few days throughout my tour when I could not be found there. The membership covered all ranks from both services, although naturally the RAF numbers were greater. And, something of a novelty for me really, was that service rank played absolutely no part in the life of the club. Initially it seemed strange to think that when I

had achieved the ultimate rank in my service life I spent a large part of every day on totally equal terms with junior ranks and senior officers but it did work well and the RAF were far more relaxed about such matters than I had been used to. However, in uniform was entirely another matter.

After my predecessor was no more than a memory and I was really beginning to feel my feet I happened to be dropping in on 10 Port Sqn. A couple of seaman branch RCT soldiers were strolling from one of the RCT vessels in the port, as I was talking to a senior non commissioned member of the squadron, and when I commented on the fact that their berets on the backs of their heads and their hands in their pockets did not look particularly impressive I was asked by the indignant SNCO what it had to do with me. After I had left that gentleman in little doubt, I decided to discuss with the CO something that had been concerning me for some time.

By now Col Arlidge had left for pastures new and, as expected, Lt Col Alan Bush was the CO. We enjoyed a very good professional relationship and I was able to discuss, frankly, all matters

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concerning my job as Master Driver, and other matters concerning the regiment with him. I was uncomfortable with a lack of regimental structure and some of the basic soldiering instincts seemed to have been placed on the back burner in some areas. The regiment was a happy and efficient working regiment but living and working on a holiday island should not have meant that our soldiering was on holiday too. For a SNCO to have questioned a WO1 on matters of simple military discipline would have been unthinkable in BAOR, the UK or anywhere else I had served. Indeed the infantry units maintained a strict regime of soldiering in balance with Cyprus life, and it generally seemed to work well. The role of Master Driver therefore became a dual role of Master Driver and Regimental Sergeant Major with full approval of RCT records in Hastings. I became far more involved in regimental matters and was seen and regarded as much more than some sort of road safety officer when I took a turn around the unit locations. For the first time since I had been presented with it, by the 17 Port Regiment RSM when I was posted to the Junior Leaders Regiment, I drew my pacestick from its pyjama cord case, breathed magic on it so that it gleamed and it became a part of me for the next six years.

Before very long my life took on the distinct shape of a right angle triangle. Three sides, two of equal length which equated to the two different aspects of my RCT role, and the hypotenuse which represented the time and effort I seemed to spend at the sailing club! Everything in my life during those years fitted within. I lived in a different world from anything I had known before. It was the closest I would get to the perfect posting.

To travel the island and visit the units on road safety and transport management matters I had a self drive grade two staff car in the shape of a Mk IV Ford Cortina. By the standards of the day I was very fortunate indeed to have the luxury of my own army car, but on one occasion it very nearly bit me in the backside when I was off to feel important at the UN headquarters during my first winter there.

Mount Olympus, the highest part of the island, became snow covered during the winter months of November to April, despite the relatively warm temperatures at sea level. The Army maintained a ski school and winter holiday resort for service personnel at Troodos and at the very peak two immense snow balls could be seen for miles, which were in fact the distinctively covered radar installations that the RAF operated on the summit.

My round trip to Nicosia and back was a lengthy one and I had two alternative routes to choose from. The longer was to take the coast road east from Akrotiri towards Larnaca and then head north towards the UN buffer zone, or I could wind my way up the mountain from Limassol, over the top and drop down to the central plain and straight to Nicosia. If you travel to Cyprus today, as thousands of tourists now do every year, you will enjoy the thrills of motorway travel between each of the major towns on the Greek half of the island, but in the early 1980s the holiday boom had yet to

take off there. The profusion of modern hotels, nightclubs and restaurants that have now, and inevitably would blanket the coastal towns were not there then and neither was the supporting road system. For years after the 1974 invasion there had been considerable political debate about the construction of a major road and evidence that it had been started and then stopped as contractors’ promises became fantasy and then bankruptcy could be found dotted between Limassol and Larnaca. Indeed during my tour they did complete a stretch of dual carriageway in 1983 that the Cypriots insisted on calling a motorway despite it having crossroads and right turns off and on to it, but generally speaking their roads compared to UK “B” roads at best and rough tracks in the more remote regions.

Either way, journeying around Cyprus was a far cry from Germany and lots of time needed to be allowed for the unforseen, which was generally often seen, like a grossly overladen and overturned lorry blocking the only road for hours or a rock slide removing the road altogether. I chose that day to take the scenic route up the mountain and through the plains. The BFBS road report that morning had

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said that the roads were clear of snow and four wheel drive and snow chains were not yet necessary to cross the mountain.

The BFBS road report was wrong. As I approached the highest part of the route, after leaving the beautiful village of Platres looking like a Christmas card, the novelty of seeing snow again started to turn to concern. Should I continue or turn around and abandon the visit? I had an appointment to see the UN commander that day and to not turn up would have been an embarrassment that would have found its way into Col Bush’s office I had no doubt. I could have done without that, particularly as, on reflection, I should have taken the longer and safer route. Still, there I was just approaching the cross roads where my journey would start the descent, and the road surface had become very slippery. Not snow covered but icy like a skating rink. The rear wheel drive Cortina is dreadful to control well in those conditions and wheel spin became the feared reality. I chose to continue, after stopping at the intersection of all roads down for a look at the general lay of the land, and as I moved off I regretted it. At less than walking pace, in first gear, the sheer weight of the car overcame any chance of traction being maintained and I took on all the attributes of a sledge. Even breathing on the brakes would have meant certain suicide as the completely unguarded drop to the right on the slight left bend was sheer for hundreds of feet, despite the attractiveness of the snow covered trees holding out their branches to catch me. Steering seemed to have very little effect no matter how I employed all the experience of a senior Master Driver. And that was really the biggest problem right then for I knew I had made a completely wrong decision to continue and I should have known better. What was more, I had no witnesses. There was not another soul to be seen anywhere, which was quite normal anyway up there, and fate had now taken total control of my progress. I did briefly contemplate leaping out whilst I was sliding at a relatively low speed but all I would have achieved then was to hurl my self over the edge before the car. That was out for I had hoped to live longer than my transport at least.

I did not die though, as you have probably worked out for yourself, and miraculously I did not even bend the car. Somehow the car slow motioned itself from side to side of the road rebounding off the slightly raised edges, albeit at right angles to my intended direction at one stage, around the sweeping bend until I actually found myself pointing directly down the road ahead which had straightened out for a long way. A slight touch on the accelerator and I was off, gathering speed but in a straight line to where the road was visibly wet, as opposed to slippery, and I had somehow been given back control of the car and with every few feet the grip was returned and the journey became “normal” again. To this day I do not know how I survived my brief private tribulation, but I made sure that for any subsequent trip up that mountain during the winter months I swapped the pretentious staff car for a sensible Landrover.

A regular task I had to perform, one which I had inherited from my predecessor, was to give an hour long presentation to all units that were posted to or visiting the island, covering driving and road safety in Cyprus, both in and out of the SBAs. This was often staged in one of the SSVC (Services Sound and Vision Corporation) cinemas in each of the SBAs as the numbers were often in the hundreds. I worked hard on this until it became a well rehearsed and polished performance and using a mixture of slides, film clips and props I was able to alternate between having the audience rolling in the isles with laughter and making them gasp aloud with shock. The hot and cold treatment certainly held their attention and the CO frequently received letters from units praising the show. I enjoyed giving it and constantly tinkered with the content during my tour. Walking on stage to a packed house gave me a considerable thrill and it did allow the extrovert in me to have full rein occasionally.

The island provided a rich source of material for me to make good use of as the standard of local driving was not what we were used to in the UK or Germany, far from it. The Cypriots are lovely people and aggression and crime were virtually unheard of, but they did collide with each other at an alarming frequency. The vehicles were generally old and in a very poor state of repair, with no MOT roadworthiness inspection necessary. Documentation was pretty slack too and I remember sitting at a café in Limassol one day when two motorcycle mounted Cypriot police officers stopped a couple of feet away. Both machines had tax discs but they had both expired more than a year previously!

Keys could be safely left in the ignition and windows left down, nobody stole cars in Cyprus. They just got heavier as the layers of dust and sand inside and out grew and grew.

British classic car enthusiasts had a wonderful time too, as there were many examples of early vehicles from the fifties and sixties that bore the scars of many battles but showed no signs of rusting.

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The mechanical parts were recycled many times and they seemed destined to live forever. Forever, that is, until they met each other on a blind bend half way down the mountain road. The afternoon was the most dangerous time to be on the road as the heat was at its strongest and drivers were never far from dozing off, usually assisted by the local brandy which was drunk by the half pint glass.

The road conditions were bad enough generally, not to mention the occasional delight of meeting a tree in the middle of the road where the construction gangs had laid their tarmac each side of it, but the multitude of very dilapidated old lorries that constantly deposited oil and diesel on the road as they made their snail like progress made steering and braking hazardous. And in the grape harvest season the same lorries that trundled rock and sand and gravel all over the place became grape carriers for the wine makers. They were loaded to the extreme at the start of their journeys and the sheer weight of the grapes crushed those at the bottom so that a continuous dribble of grape juice joined the oil and fuel on the road surface. There is nothing more slippery, and so bad was it that huge warning road signs were erected in the SBAs during every season. These were just some of the charms of driving in the sun. But at least it was very relaxed and a far cry from UK city life, unless one took a ride in a taxi that is.......

30 Regiment RCT was, despite its fragmentation in three separate locations, a busy and happy unit. The 58 Sqn troop in the ESBA, commanded by Capt Alec Mutch, took care of the needs of the ESBA’s transport demands and RHQ staff made every effort to visit them when we could so that they did not feel too isolated. I tried to call in for a cold drink and a chat whenever I was at that end of the island for whatever reason.

The other half of 58 Sqn, in RAF Akrotiri, was much closer to home and it did field more vehicles and staff. Surprisingly 58 Sqn used, amongst a variety of transport, HGV class one articulated trucks for the transportation of the containers that were a part of life for the British Forces in Cyprus. I say surprisingly as these were rare beasts for soldiers, in any corps, and this remote Mediterranean holiday island was not where I expected to find them when I first arrived. The drivers and JNCOs were good quality soldiers, single and posted to the squadron for only a year. The transport office was staffed by locally employed Cypriots as well as military personnel and it functioned very well. The Sqn also managed an all ranks bar that was well used and rarely abused. It was a favourite watering hole for the comedian Jim Davidson whenever he was on a forces show tour or just on holiday. He was granted honorary membership and his own silver tankard, and he enjoyed the opportunity to drop in knowing that he would be left in peace if he wished. He and I became quite chummy and got along well. He loved all things military and the lads saw him and treated him as a frustrated soldier which he enjoyed.

10 Port Sqn, perched on the most southerly part of the island at the end of the beach road in Akrotiri, was my regimental retreat, for several reasons. The old school SNCOs, who had been indirectly responsible for my dual role of Master Driver and RSM, had returned to Marchwood or Gosport shortly after my arrival and for most of my tour I enjoyed the hospitality of Maj David Nicholas MBE and his staff, and in particular the REME ASM Nick Nicholls. As we were both class one warrant officers we were able to share confidences with each other and our friendly relationship was a highlight of my tour with the regiment.

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Cyprus enjoyed excellent flying weather for most of the year and RAF fighter squadrons visited RAF Akrotiri in rotation for several weeks at a time to practice their particular aircraft’s war role. This did mean that the base was often a hive of aviation activity during the weekday mornings and because of the concentration of flying, particularly over the water, 10 Port Sqn also had the task of surface search and rescue should any of the aircraft ditch. So apart from the two Ramp Powered Lighters (RPLs) so familiar to RCT port units the squadron took delivery of the new sleek fast launch, Michael Murphy VC whilst I was there and I enjoyed many trips out on it, under one pretext or another. Maj Nicholas often let me take the wheel and I often wondered why I had never tried to transfer to the seaman branch earlier in my career. Still, I had no complaints and I not only enjoyed the opportunity to skim the surface of the water but I was also very fortunate in being a regular left hand seat cockpit passenger in 84 Sqn RAF Wessex helicopters. These distinctive yellow Search and Rescue aircraft were flown and crewed by several members of the sailing club and one of the pilots, Flt Lt Nick Hall, and a Warrant Officer Master Air Load Master (MALM), George Muir, lived just a couple of doors from me too. Once they learnt of my passion for flying and my experiences in the Whirlwinds off HMS Intrepid during Operation Burlap in 1970, I occasionally found myself at the controls, flying backwards and forwards to UN bases for resupply.

On my first visit to the crew room prior to my first trip out with Nick Hall and George Muir I noticed that everyone was deeply engrossed in a game of Uckers, the bastardised form of Ludo that I first encountered on the Intrepid. Before very long I was locked in mortal combat with one of the crew as blobs and mixyblobs were atted, to use the secret language known only to devoted uckers players, and for the rest of my tour on the island the game of uckers dominated my leisure time. George Muir and I could regularly be heard playing game after game out on the veranda of either my or his quarter until late into the night. It is an addictive board game and part of the charm was the fact that the boards were generally roughly made from cheap and nasty coffee tables and the counters either painted draughts or sawn off slices from a broom handle. Although my trusty uckers table, carved with a steel rule and a screwdriver, is still with me to this day, the characteristic noise made by the tumbling dice and the clack of the counters moving around the board has not been heard for some time.

The virtually identical sister ship of HMS Intrepid, HMS Fearless, paid Cyprus a visit for a week en route to somewhere or other. She anchored a short distance off the 10 Port Sqn harbour, (known as the “mole”), and as the Royal Navy were not part of the structure of the HQ in Cyprus, my experiences as part of Intrepid’s crew earned me the role of liaison officer for the visit. Despite the ship’s very distinctive outline it did look even more unusual with its entire bow misshapen, having rammed a tanker apparently off Portland on its way out in the fog.

I had a wonderfully nostalgic time nipping backwards and forwards each day, treading familiar passageways and being hosted in the CPO’s Mess on board in their time honoured and very alcoholic tradition. Many outings and visits were organised for all members of the ship’s company during the stay and it was typical of the unusual activities that were common place during a tour in Cyprus.

Regimental activities revolved around particular fixed events in the calendar, and I found myself involved with the organisation of many of them. From cocktail parties staged aboard a gaily decorated mexefloat in Akrotiri mole to regimental orienteering competitions. From an all island safe and skilled driving competition to a regimental open day with side shows, rides on vehicles and vessels for the children and flying displays. There was always something cooking in the pot, and no sooner was one event marked down as completed, meetings took place for the next one.

However, WOs and Sgts Mess life was something of an oddity there. 30 Regiment did not have its own mess as there were too few members to justify it and those that we did have were located in the three main areas on the island, Akrotiri, Episkopi and Dhekelia and they subsequently belonged

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to either the garrison messes in the SBAs or the RAF mess in Akrotiri. The resident infantry battalions in each of the SBAs also had their own messes and invitations were often exchanged between them for social events. At Akrotiri however, things were different. It was, after all, an RAF base although there were large numbers of army mess members from the RCT, REME, RAOC, RAPC and Royal Signals units located therein, almost equalling the RAF members in number. The RAF operate somewhat differently than the army, naturally, and their mess routine is no exception. Because a member of the RAF can generally continue to serve until the age of fifty five, and their non commissioned rank structure differed considerable from ours, a warrant officer, (they do not have a WO2), would often be considerably older than an army WO1.

As I lived in Akrotiri and was the only designated RSM amongst the REME and RAOC WO1s I became, by default, the senior army member of the RAF Akrotiri mess. As I was also the youngest warrant officer for miles this was often the subject of much debate between the blue and green uniforms. Considerable efforts were made to harmonise the two quite different mess cultures and I think, after the RAF sampled our Regimental Dinner Nights and we enjoyed their Battle of Britain balls everyone was all the richer for the experience.

As both the Master Driver on the island and an RSM of a regiment, invitations came my way often and I was honoured to attend some brilliant functions as the presidential guest in other messes. One of the high points of these was when I was the only invited guest at the “Tumbledown Dinner” held in memory of fallen Scots Guardsmen at Tumbledown mountain during the Falklands campaign. When the second battalion were based in Episkopi as the resident infantry battalion I often spent time in the company of their senior warrant officer, The Sergeant Major, (the guards do not employ the title RSM). It was a very moving and dignified evening particularly after the senior member toasted their fallen comrades and in the distance two highland pipers could be heard playing. Slowly the level of the sound increased until, through the open patio doors, they marched in, still playing, circumnavigated the square table several times until they stopped either side of The Sergeant Major. After the traditional exchange of toasts they resumed playing and departed through the same doors with the sound slowly fading until we stood in silence for several minutes. All the mess members then toasted their fallen comrades together and that was all there was to the formalities. No speeches or any other of the normally expected formal dinner night events. The Brigade of Guards certainly introduced me to a different side of military life during my Master Driver contact, in Germany and Cyprus. It was all part of service life’s rich pattern.

My reputation throughout the island was magnified by my weekly Master Driver spot on BFBS radio and I also had the opportunity to broadcast other programmes during my tour as a guest presenter. Andrew Pastouna had written to the controller of the Cyprus station when I had left Germany and I was very soon doing a double act with the likes of Pete Johnson and Penny Vine. It was so successful that I was given a tape recorder to record interviews for the programmes and had free access to the studio in Episkopi. Because of the volume and frequency of the programmes that I became involved in I would often spend time recording them in advance and it was sometimes quite amusing to be at the sailing club when a programme was being broadcast and listening to the comments of people there who had no idea that it was me! I was also able to meet several well known names in the world of politics and entertainment who visited the studios for interviews and for a couple of years my life seemed quite removed from the rest of the

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world. A world to which I would have to one day return. But while I was there I took every opportunity to make the most of it. My routine every working day was to get up at about five, and whilst everyone else slept I would run for half an hour or so along the cliff top very near my home. The sea was nearly always glassy calm at that time of day and the sun would already be up and starting to make its warmth felt. To run later in the day was far from pleasant in the heat, and as the regiment carried out the annual basic fitness test monthly, under the instructions from the CO, it did not pay to become unfit.

I would be in my office by seven, having driven in whatever model Subaru I had at that time on a journey that I enjoyed and knew blindfold. After leaving Akrotiri and passing the many little local restaurants that survived on the patronage of the RAF base residents, with the salt lake to my right which became literally covered in pink flamingoes every year, I would drive through dense orange and lemon plantations before joining the M1. This was not, as its name suggests, a motorway, but a long straight road in fine condition, (probably the best on the island), which had been built by the Royal Engineers to link Akrotiri with Episkopi garrison without us having to drive out of the SBA, which was where the original road went.

At the end of the M1 I rejoined the old road and wound my way up the steep hill of Curium, past the ancient amphitheatre and along the coast road that overlooked the sea. It really was the perfect way to go to work. By one o’clock the heat of the day would be at its highest and work would be over. By two, more often than not I would be at the sailing club where I held office during my second year as Training Master and my final year as vice Commodore. My closest friends during those days were particularly George Muir, Chris Dodds and Tim Mortimer, all RAF, and their families, but all the members over the years were part of my life. We really

had no other life but our jobs and our clubs. Leave only meant that we did not go to work for that period. There was nowhere to go really. A day trip to Egypt, a chalet in the cool of the mountains at Troodos perhaps or a visit to the tourist attractions that had to be seen at least once before we left, but generally everyone’s life revolved around a similar routine. It probably kept us from getting too homesick and longing to read today’s newspaper today, drink a pint of fresh milk and enjoy awful weather once in a while.

Eventually, after living in a world that seemed to have stood quite still for three years, it was my time to go. A visiting officer from RCT records had asked me what I wanted to do for my next tour and I had told him that I wanted an RSM appointment, in the UK, and preferably at Marchwood or Taunton as they were the only places I had served in at home. Marchwood was out as a new RSM had just taken over, and although the JLR had moved from Norton Manor Camp to Wiltshire, the west country RCT territorial army regiment in Taunton was going to need a new RSM and it looked like being me. My career to date had been anything but conventional so why change the habit of a lifetime. The TA it would be.

(I have since returned to Cyprus, not as a serviceman but as a tourist, and it has changed out of all recognition from my time there. Due to terrorist activity the once open garrisons have become fortresses with high perimeter fences and guards at the only points of entry. The routine has also changed so that every afternoon and weekend is no longer spent at the sports clubs, and they have run down as a consequence. BFBS broadcasts UK radio and television. Of course the island is now as popular and cheap as former holiday favourites such as Spain. In consequence the few hotels have become many, the quiet coves and beaches have become holiday villages lit with bright neon lights and the bars have names like “Boozy Joe’s”. And it all came about after the mid nineteen eighties. I had left Cyprus by then.)

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he end of my three year tour in Cyprus also coincided with the end of my thirteen year marriage. Russell and his mother returned to Clacton direct from Akrotiri, and I arrived at Taunton alone. I had of course written to my new Commanding Officer to tell him that I would

be unaccompanied, and to all intents and purposes single, and he had replied with a most understanding viewpoint saying that, as a solicitor, he spent quite a bit of his time putting asunder those which had been joined together.

When I left the M5 motorway at junction 25 I did not at first recognise where I was. It had been nine years since I had last seen the town and in that time the entire road system had changed beyond all recognition. Indeed the motorway only existed then as a bypass between what is now junctions 25 and 26, the Wellington turn off. The rest had still to carve its way south west through Somerset and Devon. The main holiday route to Cornwall from the north was the A38 which went straight through the centre of Taunton. Things had changed much since Russell had been born in this town and now, for the first time, I would not see him daily, to watch him and help him grow up. That, more than anything else, was the most distressing thing about my change of personal circumstances, as the army preferred to call it. I decided to give as much effort to this tour as possible and I also decided that this tour would be my last. I realised my whole world had become a dark shade of olive green and I seriously questioned myself about whether I actually wanted to serve all my adult life in the army. I made the decision that I did not and that this would be my final full tour. It was 1984 and my twenty two years, the minimum necessary to qualify for a pension, would be complete on the first day of April 1988. I would not seek to extend my service beyond that date and I would not be registering as a candidate for a commission. I did not see this as a negative thought, quite the opposite in fact, but I had had a successful and eventful career so far and I really did want to end it on a high, so that when I looked back in years to come, as I am doing in writing this, it would have been something I was pleased with and proud of. With those thoughts I launched myself into life with a Corps Territorial Army regiment which I knew virtually nothing about.

I discovered that there are three varieties of human being in a TA unit; the regular soldier, the TA soldier and something in between called non regular permanent staff, or NRPS.

The regulars numbered very few. In the regimental headquarters could be found the offices of a Training Major, the Quartermaster, the Adjutant, the RSM and a Chief Clerk, plus the CO’s staff car driver whose office was in fact the front of a black and very shiny Vauxhall Cavalier. The CO would normally be a regular officer too but Lt Col Durbin was in fact a thoroughbred TA officer. In each of the three task squadrons there lived only two regular soldiers, an SQMS and a PSI (permanent staff instructor) WO2. As far as the regular army was concerned 155 was even smaller in strength than 30 Regt in Cyprus.

A NRPS Captain and SSgt was also appointed to each of the squadrons. These soldiers were all retired regulars who applied for and were employed as full time TA soldiers and made up the total strength of the regiment, less the TA themselves.

Yet when the TA themselves were present the regiment was a full strength third line transport unit quite capable of carrying out the same role as a regular unit of the same size. It took some getting used to as each squadron held on strength someone in every appointment from the OC, 2i/c, Troop Commanders, SSM, Troop senior and junior NCOs and drivers, clerks, cooks and bottle washers. What was more they were almost quite indistinguishable from their regular counterpart at any distance. It was only when looking into their eyes one saw an enthusiasm often not seen in the regular soldier.

But at this point in the story I had not yet met the TA. I had never knowingly met a TA soldier before this posting and knew so little about them that it really was a Corps, if not Army, failing that

T

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their image did not have a much higher profile within the regular army. Everyone knew “of” them, but few actually knew anything “about” them. I found it a touch embarrassing that I was the RSM of an RCT regiment that I knew nothing about.

However, I was fortunate in joining 155 right at the start of their two week annual camp, which that year took the form of a full tactical field exercise with the United Kingdom Mobile Force (Land), in Denmark. In fact I would leave Taunton the very next day with the Headquarters Squadron main party for Denmark. My handover / takeover with my predecessor was scheduled to take place during the exercise and on our return he would leave the regiment and I would be in the chair. Yorkie Ashton was the outgoing RSM and we had never met before. In fact I met him very briefly on the day I arrived as I was also to take over his two bedroom service flat in the town. As I arrived he was just leaving with the advanced party and after a swift introduction, invited to make myself at home in the spare room and a cup of coffee he was gone.

The HQ Sqn packet of vehicles, under the command of 2Lt Boden, whisked me across country, glancing off the atmosphere of Clacton-on-Sea, to the port of Harwich on the Essex coast where we caught the ferry to Denmark and travelled overland for several hours to a disused airfield at Karup. We arrived late at night and I met the CO, Adjutant, Training Major and, without knowing it then of course, my future wife Sandra. The following morning the temporary camp was dismantled and the RHQ moved on to its final destination, in the middle of a wood somewhere in Denmark and all of a sudden I felt that I was back with 10 Regt on yet another exercise. It had been some years since I had lived in the field although this time my quality of life had improved considerably. Two RSMs was more than most people could cope with and the HQ staff went out of their way to make sure we were comfortable and wanted for nothing. The TA willingness to “soldier” was remarkable and I began to warm to (most of) them right from the start.

Yorkie Ashton spent a lot of time introducing me to key members of the regiment and explaining the peculiarities of life in and with 155 and during that fortnight I got to grips with the structure of the unit.

In peacetime the RHQ was located at Bishops Hull in Taunton in a purpose built TA centre with offices for the regular staff. The Headquarters Squadron could also be found there, not surprisingly, and its prime purpose in life was to support the RHQ. To that end the squadron had a drill hall and several garages for the RHQ vehicles and their offices were located on the second floor.

The regiment consisted of three task squadrons and when “at home” they were spread all over the south and south west of England. In numerical order, 232 Sqn (TA units are identified by their three digit numbering) was based at Plymouth with a troop located at Tavistock and their role was both general transport and bulk fuel. 233 Sqn, a general transport unit, was in the large TA centre in Southampton and had two troops located away from its SHQ, one in Portsmouth and the other in Weymouth. The final squadron, 245, was an ambulance unit and when not attached to a field hospital somewhere behind the lines it was based in Bristol, with a troop at Swindon. 155 also had responsibility for a TA Air Despatch troop which was commanded by a regular army Captain and attached to the only RCT AD squadron at Lyneham in Wiltshire.

So, whilst I munched composite rations under wet scrim nets, somewhere in Denmark, I learnt that my new unit was to be found in nine TA centres in six counties and the soldiers only appeared for duty one evening a week and on Saturdays and Sundays, apart from two weeks a year for the annual camp. For this they were paid for every day, or part day that they were on duty at the rate for the rank they held, and providing that they met the minimum attendance requirements of so many weekends, so many drill nights and either an annual camp or a two week course, they received a tax free bounty each year. The TA had to be one of the best kept secrets I had ever come across, and many of the members of the regiment had not only served with the TA but actually in 155 for many, many years. I was really astounded that I had been in the army for so long and had learnt so little about the secret army that could be found in virtually every town in the UK. And of course, it was not only the RCT that had a territorial side. Just about every cap badge had TA units everywhere. What was particularly stupid of me was that when I was stationed in Taunton previously, between 1973 and 76 with the JLR at Norton Manor, my boss at one time, then WO2 Lyons, was promoted to RSM and posted to 155 just along the Silk Mills Road, and I had not picked up on the significance at all. Surely it wasn’t just me. During my regular service the TA were hardly if ever mentioned, other than as a warrant officer posting for what was thought to be by many as a posting “out to grass”.

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I had a lot to discover for myself as my predecessor’s opinions and attitudes were not from the same stable as mine. It was a little unusual to say the least for the handover between us to take so long during a major exercise and there were times when the RSM had things to do, with the CO, and two RSMs did nothing but complicate things. So I made good use of one of the CanAm motorcycles and became independent for a while, visiting squadron locations to meet people and see for myself what made them tick. I sat in lots of Ops trailers, drank lots of tea, and listened to the world according to members of 155 (Wessex) Transport Regiment RCT(V). I also learnt pretty quickly that little irritates TA soldiers more than to be asked what they did in “real life”. They all seemed to take their role in the army very seriously and I suppose the best way to describe the majority was that they led a double life, rather than being part time soldiers. Indeed some of them lived only for the TA and made a nonsense of the minimum attendance requirements for they always seemed to be at the TA centre, I would discover during my four years with 155.

I did do a bit of soldiering during the second week however. One of the features of the resupply system was the Main Supply Route which was managed by the Royal Military Police. Units got themselves to the start of the MSR, which could be many hundreds of miles long, and were controlled onto it at TCP1 (Traffic Control Point number 1). At the far end of the MSR the convoys would emerge at TCP2 and be directed into the battle zone.

TCP1 was then the responsibility of 155 Regt and during this exercise, Ex Bold Gannet, it took the shape of a nine by nine tent hidden in the woods adjacent to a lay-by on a main road. It was staffed by Mr Boden, the junior officer I had travelled to Denmark with, WO2 Brian Lapham, a TA REME Sgt and a JNCO from HQ Sqn, Cpl Sutcliffe, (who would become Lt Sutcliffe a couple of years later). All was not well at TCP1 for one reason or another and I was asked by the CO to call in, for a couple of days, and see if the procedures could be tightened up. As every unit travelling from the third line of the battle area forward to the second and front lines they would have to pass though the check point and be briefed on the route, timings and so on. The handful of self catering staff, in possession of all relevant information about passwords, unit locations, radio call-signs and so on were a mite vulnerable to say the least, and after that exercise the TCP1 was co-located with the RHQ where it was a lot more secure. But at that time, as the resupply system was forever in revision, it was being tried adjacent to a road that all units could reach easily without compromising the location of the headquarters. There was no perfect solution to any problem.

So I made my self at home and was made to feel welcome as I studied the finer points of slouching in a canvas chair, clutching a plastic mug full of luke warm tea, with the mandatory bits of twigs and leaves floating therein, wrapped up in my beloved fur lined Parka in the early hours of the morning. Mr Lapham was explaining how his very badly burnt and scarred face had been the result of a parachute jump that terminated in high voltage electricity cables, when a tremendous racket started in the lay-by some thirty yards away. 2Lt Boden was asleep in his bivouac and I left Mr Lapham in the tent whilst Sutcliffe and I slithered through the trees to the edge of the lay-by in the pitch dark. An army short wheelbase airportable Landrover was parked with a civilian box van behind it and many people were milling about shouting and yelling in accented English at the two occupants of the Landrover. I had no idea what was going on at first but when I realised that they were in uniform with red arm bands signifying that they were the exercise enemy, in fact the Danish special forces, and they were trying to hijack a British Army Landrover. The Landrover actually contained the WO2 Master Driver from 27 Regt RCT and a WRAC Lt who turned out to be their assistant adjutant. They were

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dragged out of the ‘rover and into the back of the van whilst several enemy got into the Landrover to drive it away. I instructed Sutcliffe to let off several rounds of blanks from his SLR as I drew my pistol and leapt forward to the driver’s door of the ‘rover, opened and dragged the driver out and down before he knew what was happening. In exercise agreed procedure I told him that they were surrounded and my prisoners.

As it happened, the one I had overpowered, with the benefit of total surprise, was the leader of the gang and he told everyone else to give up their arms and surrender. As they did our war games changed from role playing to nasty as one of the Danish army soldiers pulled a small knife and threw it at me. I would probably not be writing this today if it had not hit me on the buckle of my webbing that I had put on as we had launched ourselves out of the tent. Fearing that this was not the only lunatic stunt they might pull to get away, and still maintaining the secret that there was only two of us, I ordered them face down, spread-eagled, as the Master Driver manoeuvred the Landrover so that they were well illuminated in its headlights. I picked up the knife and kept it as a macabre souvenir which I still have. In all I had seven of them lying face down in the wet mud of that lay-by and whilst I waited for reinforcements from RHQ to take them to the RMP POW camp a civilian car turned up with a Danish army officer wearing the blue armband of an umpire saying that he would relieve me of my charges. He failed the password test and then there were eight!

My heroics earned me a slap on the wrist from the exercise commander for several breeches of the Geneva Convention and a reputation throughout my new unit in the days to follow that I was not to be toyed with. And I rode motorcycles too. I also received a formal apology for the assault and a small plaque from the Danish Army commander. No medal though. 2Lt Boden of course had to debrief the CO, which was a touch tricky as he had slept through the entire event!

It was decided that, at the end of the exercise, I would fly back with the advance party to enable me to get myself organised before taking over as the new RSM after the usual spot of leave following a major exercise. There were a lot of us, advance parties from lots of units, and we were to fly in a British Airways Tristar that was just coming into service with the RAF. It was crewed by both BA and RAF which might have accounted for the fact that, at another remote airfield somewhere in Denmark, we fell off the taxi-way into the mud. After sitting cooped up on the not going anywhere aircraft for ages the decision was made to take us by bus back to the tiny terminal building. They only had one bus and there were hundreds of us. It took forever and we spent the whole night there whilst they got the ‘plane out of the mud, flew a team of aircraft engineers out to inspect it, declared it fit and loaded us all back on board again. Bets were being taken that the main parties would arrive at their destinations long before the advance parties. It was certainly a long and tiring flight but I got to know Maj John Merritt, the Training Major, and had the company of Sandra too as she completed her first TA annual camp. We would meet again in the not too distant future.

As soon as the dust had settled after the exercise, 155 began to return to its normal routine of drill nights and weekend activities and my personal routine became shaped by the same. Sub units held their weekly evening activities on either a Tuesday or Wednesday and the CO and I visited each of them as often as practicable. We always seemed to be greeted as royalty at each of the squadron headquarters, and it was clear that each one wanted to make a better impression on us than the others. Indeed it was this very strong element of competition throughout the Regiment that made the unit what it was, happy and efficient.

Whenever Col Durbin and I, (and sometimes either Capt Martyn Witt, the Adjutant or the

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Training Major, John Merritt), visited one of the SHQs or a Troop location the OC and SSM of that squadron would always be in attendance and it gave me the opportunity of getting to know the SNCOs in their own environment. Before we departed we would almost always be entertained in their joint SNCOs and officers mess and naturally we would never be allowed to hold an empty glass.

On one occasion we were travelling back to Taunton along the M4 from Swindon, very late at night, and in the warmth of the staff car I must have nodded off despite the CO relating one of his truly entertaining anecdotes. Lcpl Marshfield, the CO’s driver, saw me asleep in his mirror and, being a good and loyal staff car driver, tried to wake me, apparently. However the first I knew about it was the following day when I was in the CO’s office and he asked me what I thought about Marshfield. I wasn’t sure what he was driving at and he explained that the previous night Lcpl Marshfield had rather surprised him by fondling his knee on the journey home. I assured the CO I would interview Marshfield and that was when he explained that he had been trying to wake me up and thought it was my knee he was poking from between the seats!

I very quickly adjusted to the unique routine of being the RSM of an RCT TA unit. I also adjusted to the fact that it was now very unlikely that I would ever have a conventional career. Here I was again, an RSM without real estate, without a WOs and Sgts Mess, despite my tours at Taunton, Bielefeld, Leconfield and Bunde living in and serving on the committee of Sgts Messes. I was not to enjoy the hardware of being the President of my own Mess. But the TA do have their own way of dealing with things and Mess life, essential to the well being of a warrant officer and SNCO, was not lost on them. Each squadron location had its own Mess and they each had the opportunity of hosting the events normally expected in a Mess life calendar; Summer Balls, Christmas Draws, Regimental Dinner nights and so on. The difference was that I decided where the next event would be staged and who would be responsible for staging it. I did not have A WOs and Sgts Mess, I had several of them!

Furthermore, whenever the regiment gathered for field events, such as a range weekend or a safe and skilled driving competition, which would feature overnight accommodation at one of the many weekend training camps spread throughout the length and breadth of not-so-well-known British countryside, I would use the opportunity for a Mess meeting and some sort of social event. The Sgts and Officer’s Mess members were well used to doing battle on these occasions. In short, the senior members of 155 did not miss out in the conventional sense and, if anything, their enthusiasm and dedication left some regular units I had known in the dark.

On the subject of dark I recall our annual two week camp for 1985 was held at the RCT TA headquarters in Grantham in Lincolnshire. The previous year, when I joined 155, they took part in a major FTX (Field Training Exercise) in Denmark and the following year was to be the same in Germany so the middle year was purely regimental based for military skills training. We had the run of Prince William of Gloucester barracks and I was able to make full use of their WOs and Sgts Mess. For the middle weekend I invited my PMC for the camp, WO2 Adrian Shepherd, the PSI of 233 Sqn, to organise an indoor games tournament between us, the officers and the Prince William of Gloucester barracks permanent staff, who did own the place after all. The REME designed and manufactured a suitable trophy and I gave strict instructions to “big Shep” and his committee that the trophy was to be ours at the end of the tournament.

On the evening of the grand event the Mess looked like a cross between the casino at Monte Carlo and the smoky back room of an illegal gambling joint, depending on one’s viewpoint. Despite the high degree of scene setting decoration, most attention was given to the many score boards dotted throughout the rooms as the results of snooker, billiards, cards, domino, carpet bowls and darts matches were recorded. I had not expected the contest to be so seriously fought over and some of the games became matters of life and death for the respective teams. This was a pity as we were losing, quite comprehensively. I summoned Adrian Shepherd to a tactical meeting at the bar which did not take long. I simply told him to do something about it, as an RSM does in these circumstances, knowing that our chance of winning was more than remote, but I could not be seen to not take a serious interest in our fate and the abstract content of my instructions shifted the decision making to the PMC, which was his job after all.

About half an hour later, whilst I was being gently ribbed by the CO as we traded glasses of whisky and Hamlet cigars, the entire building was plunged into darkness. Mutterings of power cuts floated throughout the rooms and from behind the bar came makeshift candle holders to give us a little light. I was instantly suspicious and surreptitiously glanced behind the curtains onto the world outside.

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If it was a power cut it seemed to have only affected the WOs and Sgts Mess. A matter of minutes later the power was restored and life returned to normal, or what passes for normal on these events. And then the uproar started, quietly at first as it began to dawn on the "home" resident team, and then more noisily as the officers joined in. My six foot four inch tall PMC and his committee had “arranged” the power cut by removing the main fuse in the cellar, and in the darkness had altered every score board to reflect the outstanding skill of my Mess team. We were winning, and none too subtly either. The officers seemed to enjoy the twist and took it all in good fun but sadly some of the permanent staff Mess members did not forgive us. Quite a few asked me for permission to leave, as tradition dictates, which I naturally refused them until all the officers had left. Some night that turned out to be! Although completely unconnected, Adrian Shepherd certainly deserved his subsequent promotion to WO1 Master Driver.

In 1985 two major happenings changed my life. Sandra and I got married in Taunton, surrounded by my new friends and colleagues from the regiment, and I learnt to play golf. The golf was particularly important as Cyprus marked the end of my life as a dinghy sailor. Land locked Taunton and working weekends did not fire the same enthusiasm as I’d had in Cyprus, and the unreliable British weather often thwarted all my efforts to get afloat when I could. I settled for an annual trip to the boat show and Sandra and I took our first steps onto a golf course in Taunton’s Vivary Park under the expert guidance of the resident professional, Ron Macrow. I became quite obsessed with the game and found lots of opportunities to punish myself alone and in the company of others until I became competitive enough to play in RCT competitions. My son, Russell, had by then also learnt to play golf and we enjoyed meeting up for a round together, playing for a trophy I purchased for our personal event. I won it the first time, but never again. What was more, his sailing prowess was also earning him many victories at his local sailing club in Essex, and I became a little more aware of the ageing process.

Not only did I learn the new skills of golf but after treating myself to a Sinclair Spectrum computer, out of sheer curiosity, I became quite bitten by the computer bug. Capt Witt was already quite enthusiastic and the RHQ had purchased a couple of Amstrad PCW wordprocessors. The reluctance to learn anything about computing, particularly in the Chief Clerk’s department, surprised me and I laid claim to one of the new yet unloved machines. And that was the start as Capt Witt and I experimented with the most basic of programmes to explore the possibility of using the machines within the headquarters.

Of course the rest is history as computers, from about the mid eighties, became commonplace in the working environment and I allowed myself to be carried along with the trend. Indeed, I am writing this book on the latest in a line of state of the art personal computers that seem to become antique in a matter of months. It is almost ridiculous to think that sitting in front of me at this

very moment is many times more computing power than they had available to send Apollo 11 to the moon. I should be able to conjure up a couple more chapters before it expires.

Not only did I commandeer a desktop computer I discovered, unused and unloved in the Q stores a VHS video camera. Once again, by the technological standards of today, this was a pretty much steam driven large camera and a separate luggable recorder for the full size VHS tape. I made it a mission to take it wherever I went in the unit, particularly on weekends away to visit squadrons

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doing their things, and compiled an amateur tape full of 155 happenings throughout the year. I climbed mountains in Wales with it, dodged bullets on the ranges with it, drove cross-country in deep mud with it and hung out of a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter with it. I was even seen darting about in Aldershot on Corps Day filming 233 Sqn marching with the RCT Staff Band with it. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but had enormous fun doing it, switching between being the big bad RSM and Richard Attenborough. I drew the line at calling my subjects darling of course so the finished article does lack a certain professionalism. After some fairly primitive cutting and editing, using my home video recorder as well, I produced a second generation recording that suffered in quality but not in enthusiasm, and called it “155 in 85”. One day it may be of interest to someone.

Another regular feature of the 155 calendar was the regimental driver training camp over two weeks based at Fremington Camp in North Devon. I enjoyed that fortnight each year particularly. We had the camp to ourselves and I ran it for the duration, with the occasional visit and overnight stay from the Training Major. Considerable effort needed to be put in well prior to the camp to arrange for the collection of the pool training vehicles and 232 Sqn took care of all the administration.

Despite the annual minimum TA commitment being one two week camp or course each year, plus so many weekends and drill nights, it never ceased to surprise me how many members of the regiment attended all of the events, and in particular the SSM of 232 Sqn, WO2 Ken Holmes. He came into his own at Fremington and ran an excellent Mess for the officers and sergeants as well as, with me, carried out QTO duties testing the drivers in LandRovers and HGV class 3 and 2 trucks. As a Master Driver I planned the routes that the tests were conducted over and managed to meet the commitment for testing from the QTOs in the regiment.

The accommodation was basic but warm and cosy and reminiscent of my Intrepid days when the Royal Marine detachment lived there during part of the ship’s refit, and when I worked in the driver training wing of 17 Port Regiment in 1972 and we regularly trundled the old AEC 10 tonners from Marchwood to Fremington and back with an overnight stay. I liked it there and always think of the driver training camp each year as one of the highlights.

I got to know the 232 Sqn SNCOs particularly well during those weeks and together with Ken Holmes I enjoyed the company of one of the few TA WO1s Dave Trend. He was held on the strength of the regiment and had a role with the UKMF(L). As a QTO he was a regular on the Fremington fortnight as were the NRPS SSgts and PSIs who made up the rest of the military driving examiners. Those were good days for me.

Ken Holmes also starred on regimental activities and was one of the most professional warrant officers I had ever met. In many ways he soldiered in the style of the old school and in many ways that appealed to me. Always immaculate either in or out of uniform, nothing was ever too much trouble and he was loyal and trustworthy to a fault. I was very sad when, suddenly on the 4th May 1987, he died at the age of 39. Lt Col Bruce Neeves had taken over as CO during the Germany exercise of 1986 and, on the two week summer camp of 1987, at Longmoor in Hampshire, he presided over the first military skills competition for the Holmes Trophy, to be held annually thereafter in his memory. Ken would have liked that.

I think that after all is said and done, 155 Wessex Transport Regiment RCT(V) gave me the best years of my career. Of course I did enjoy senior rank of which I hope I made good use, without abuse, as the Regimental Sergeant Major. I was always exceptionally well treated by the soldiers and officers alike and took pleasure from their positive and enthusiastic attitude. This chapter, and my army career, does not so much end here but merges into the next, for the next chapter in my life was also closely tied up with 155. To quote from the Waggoner, the quarterly journal of the RCT, “WO1 (RSM) Young left us in January......to return as Capt Young in April”.

I finally left the role of RSM, after three and a half years in 155 and almost six years as a WO1, to become a commissioned officer with the appointment of Staff Officer grade 3 for Operations and Training with the United Kingdom Mobile Force (Land), or in other words, the final chapter in my service life was as the SO3 Ops/Trg UKMF(L) !

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was shaken out of a deep sleep by a person unknown. I seemed to be laying on a piece of cardboard on a concrete floor under a row of sinks, in my sleeping bag. There were other similar shapes in most of the corners of what seemed to be a washroom, whilst some mysterious half

clothed people were washing and shaving above me. The only light was just a single forty watt bulb hanging by its frayed flex from a peeling and damp ceiling.

Was I homeless and in a refuge of some sort? Was I a hostage? Was I dreaming? As my senses and awareness eventually sharpened I realised that I was luxuriating in the world of the commissioned officer on exercise. It was the start of my second day as a captain and I was in the depths of an underground bunker somewhere in England. It seemed that I had twenty minutes to be up, breakfasted on a sausage sandwich and mug of tea before attending the Chief of Staff’s operational brief for the exercise that was about to begin. I remember thinking that I had truly arrived at the peak of my career, as I crawled out between the legs of a Lt Col brushing his teeth.

I felt particularly guilty about the sausage sandwich as I was technically eating it illegally because I had uttered a falsehood for the ration role. The previous day I had travelled up from the headquarters of the Logistic Support Group, my new unit at Bulford Camp on Salisbury Plain, squeezed into the back of an overloaded Landrover, aware that I had finally relinquished any claim to any of the army’s perks, such as my own Landrover and driver. A couple of weeks earlier, during my leave, I had received the letter from the Ministry of Defence informing me of the publication date of my commission in the London Gazette with my new personal number - 529817. I had been effectively discharged from the army and awarded a Special Regular Commission (SRC) as a lieutenant, acting captain, with promotion to substantive captain after one year. I filed the letter away in a safe place, in case I should ever take the fancy to write my memoirs, and on my first day in uniform, as we filed into the underground bunker, I was confronted with the worst case of private embarrassment I had ever known. As we lined up to be security checked in to the depths of the bunker I was asked for my number, rank and name by a clerk sergeant who was compiling a nominal role for the rations. I had absolutely no idea what my personal number was! There was no way I was going to declare to the SNCO with his pen poised that I did not know my number, ex-RSM or not, especially as I was flanked on either side by senior officers whom I had only met the day before in the LSG Officers Mess at Bulford. Quick as a flash I sang out the same two numbers that started the number of a previously entered captain on the list and invented the other four digits. After all, it was that sort of initiative that I was being paid for, I justified to myself. So there I was, eating breakfast that I really had no legal claim to. What a start.

For the next two and a half years I did many exercises with the Logistic Support Group of the UKMF(L). And when on exercise my life literally revolved around a watch keeping rota of so many hours on the operations desk helping to run a war, and so many in my sleeping bag. No gallivanting around the countryside on a motor cycle dropping into different locations for me anymore. I was a desk jockey now and danced to the tune of the Chief of Staff like all the other staff officers. The major event of 1988 was a return to Denmark where we did more of the same. This time I only saw the countryside as we shifted locations, and during the middle weekend when a day of rest and recuperation was a trip into Copenhagen, for a beer or two with my new found brother and sister officers.

For most of the time my previous life was no longer relevant. I was often reminded by my new peers that “I was an officer now” and to let the sergeant major do the sergeant majoring. But old habits die hard and it was initially difficult not to wade in when things were not going well. But of course I did adjust, as one does, and I settled into my new lifestyle. (Having said that however, there was one occasion after a particularly fraught twenty four hours in full NBC kit when one of the SNCOs cracked and announced that he was not going to play soldiers any more. He dumped his kit in a heap, tossed his anti-gas respirator away and lit himself a cigarette. I knew that it would not be long before the CoS invited me to “deal” with the situation after the diplomatic approach seemed to have very limited effect. I’d dealt with soldiers that no longer wanted to soldier before. I spelt out precisely what procedure Queen’s Regulations held in store for regular soldiers that wouldn’t soldier, in a language that he had no trouble understanding. He saw the light, pulled himself together, kitted himself up again, apologised, got back to work and prepared himself for a return to the corporals club after the exercise. No problem.)

I

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As I was on the administrative strength of 155 I also joined in plenty of their fun and games too. I specifically found myself at home on officer selection weekends where potential officer cadets were put through their paces over two days at one of the many weekend training camps we utilised. Initiative tests and endurance exercises were right up my street and Lt Col Neeves made good use of my talents in that direction. I ran the ranges for the regiment and also made guest appearances at the driver training camps at Fremington.

The regiment also based a training weekend at Marchwood on one occasion and I experienced real pangs of nostalgia running around the perimeter road on my annual basic fitness test, letting my mind return to the times I had served there as a driver and as a corporal twenty two and eighteen years previously. And I also derived a sort of sinister satisfaction at strolling through the entrance of the Officers Mess and being greeted by the mess steward, thinking, “I very nearly had your job once”.

Life was pretty good even though dinner nights were considerably more expensive and the BFT became no easier each year, but I had made up my mind to try my luck in the civil sector before I grew too old and in due course I was placed on the un-posted list at my own request. After a further year, during which I confirmed my decision to retire, I was posted onto the RARO, (the regular army reserve of officers list), which again was duly recorded in the London Gazette on 25th of February 1992 and where I shall remain until my fifty fifth birthday, world peace permitting.

It often intrigued me that we were paid by the day and not an annual salary. In effect this meant that February’s pay was always less than any other month. With that thought my nine thousand five hundred and forty three days of army life was finally over. Twenty six years and one month.

Which also means, so is this story over too. Of course I have left out far more than I have written. I have undoubtedly forgotten already more than I can remember and it goes without saying that the greater part of my service life was routine and uneventful and not really worth boring myself with, never mind someone else. But what I have written is, as far as I can be sure, accurate and honest. Many people touched my life during those years, some I have cheerfully forgotten about while the company of others I very much enjoyed. For all manner of positive reasons those I shall remember, in no significant order, were Johnny Merquis, the Atterbury brothers, Arthur Lambert, Ken Maher, Les Stanley (who was very sadly killed on a motorcycle during a holiday in Jamaica in July 1989), Col Alan Bush, George Muir, Chris Dodds, Col Peter Durbin, Ken Holmes, Martyn Witt and Col Bruce Neeves. There are of course many others who have and some who have not featured in this book, however one of the most important lessons that I have learnt is that everything is of its own time. There is little we can do about it, and I believe it can be a mistake to try and go back expecting to return to things as they were, or perhaps as we think they were.

This chapter of my life belongs in the past now, but it has shaped my present and will I suppose continue to influence my future. Sometimes my excess of confidence and desire to make all the right decisions is often frustrated in life-after-army where often the pace and style is different and sometimes difficult to accept as the normal. The rest of the world is not constantly awaiting an ex-soldier to take over the running of the show, indeed it seems that it is often quite hostile to the thought and people with service backgrounds are regarded as a threat. Stories that begin with “When I...” are rarely welcomed, even if they are tolerated, and I doubt that I will ever come to terms with the general lack of understanding about the services in the civil sector. I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked if “we were allowed civilian clothes” and “did we always have to eat in a cookhouse”! I very recently heard on the radio two wonderful quotes from a retiring RAF navigator that seemed to sum it all up for me. Firstly, he said, “I lived a perfectly normal life and went to work in an office. The only difference was that my office travelled at six hundred miles an hour”. Later, when his retirement was thought by the interviewer to be the key to open all doors he said, “Do you know what you say to a retired officer these days? You say, ‘Give me a Big Mac with regular fries please’”.

Yet I have nothing to carp about. Quite the opposite in fact. For eighteen months I was the proprietor of a professional and successful driving school but the lure to be a part of an organisation again proved to be too strong and I was accepted into the civil service as a driving examiner just before the recruiting campaign closed. Indeed ever since I joined they have been shedding staff and if I had left my decision any later I doubt that I would ever have got the job. My first appointment was at the Clifton driving test centre in Bristol and I was delighted to discover on my first day that I would be working with Joe Sadler, a past Corps man and second in command of 58 Sqn RCT in Cyprus during part of my tour there. I later moved to Weston Super Mare and met up again with Mike Pharaoh from

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the Junior Leaders Regiment days in the early seventies where we were both members of the Sgts Mess. Indeed Mike’s daughter was also born at the Musgrove Park Hospital the day before Russell, providing us with a double celebration in the Mess that weekend. And finally I received a telephone call one evening from Dick Atterbury to discover that he has become a neighbour, less than a mile from my door.

The Royal Corps of Transport has gone now, a casualty of the massive reorganisation and scaling down of the armed forces in the early nineteen nineties. Three stages of redundancy left many of my former colleagues, who had decided to continue in the services, with a brown envelope and without a job, and on reflection I am pleased with my decision to retire when I did.

The RCT was absorbed into the newly formed Royal Logistic Corps (RLC) along with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, the Royal Pioneer Corps, the Army Catering Corps and the postal and courier services of the Royal Engineers. It feels almost like a personal matter that the RCT was formed literally a few weeks before I joined the army and as soon as I left it ceased to be. It surely is only right that I should recount my personal story of life in the Royal Corps of Transport and this has been it.

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Illustrations (all photographs the property of the author, except where mentioned)

Chapter 1 page 9 This is the first photograph of me in the army, taken during basic training in Buller Barracks,

when we were permitted to wear our civilian clothes for the first time. I was actually wearing my army issue uniform tie (to match my army issue haircut)!

page 11 The only photo of Intake 116, taken almost at the end of basic training. Cpl Mick Moss is on

the front row with the drill cane (Cpls were not allowed to carry pacesticks). page 14 After the Passing Out parade in the Buller Barracks NAAFI. My Dad, Mum and brother

Derek. page 15 The Bedford RL 3 (later to be uprated to 4) tonner.

Chapter 2 page 17 McMullen Barracks, Marchwood. Port Admin Sqn accommodation block, my first home out

of training. page 18 Two photos I discovered whilst clearing out a cupboard in RHQ when I returned to

Marchwood in 1971 which were taken at Marchwood in 1966 during my first tour there. I appear in both, with the right knee bent as I walked past the tank on the mexefloat on the top photo, and standing on the right on the lower. The lower photo later appeared in the 1972 edition of the RCT annual book with the caption, "A landing craft tank and a ramp powered lighter return to base in a Far East port". Someone got their captions mixed up there!

page 19 The Stothert & Pitt dockside cranes that were used for both training and real work at

Marchwood. I never knew the furthest one away to work and when I returned from the Far East they had been dismantled and removed.

page 20 This is me in the cab of the AEC Jones 10/6 lorry mounted crane, taken by Martin Atterbury

during our A3 course. We then changed over and I took a snap of him! page 22 top: A Michigan 175 DS rough terrain forklift, known as a Michi. lower: My physical training instructor course photo taken at Blandford Forum. The two either

side of me were also from Marchwood, the rest from different corps and units.

Chapter 3 page 24 A Landing Craft Tank (LCT) being unloaded at Tanjong Berlayer, 10 Port Sqn RCT. A

175DS Michigan is towing out an Austin K9 truck. page 25 top: Proud of my new OGs (olive greens) in Gloucester Barracks lower: Driver BI course, Tanglin Barracks. page 26 Gloucester Barracks NAAFI: (l to r) Alan Booth, me, John Filer's wife, John Filer, Johnny

Merquis. page 28 Aden, the first time HMS Fearless (closer to the camera) and HMS Intrepid had ever been

together since their launch. HMS Hermes back right. Picture taken from Soldier magazine. page 29 The RCT ferry vehicle from Normandy Lines to Ma'alla Warf and Obstruction Pier, Aden.

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page 30 Actual guard duty above the gate to Normandy Lines, with live ammunition for the first time. page 31 The departure from Aden at Obstruction Pier to board HMS Intrepid's landing craft (LCMs)

for the trip out to the LSL Sir Bedivere, for the voyage back to Singapore. page 32 Malayan jungle, Kuala Terengganu. page 33 The 75DS Michigan I drove with Brig Clutterbuck and Maj Arnold, 10 Port Sqn OC, in a

pallet fitted with a seat during the Brigadier's inspection. Photo from The Waggoner. page 34 LSL Sir Galahad which took us to Australia.

Chapter 4 page 37 HMS Intrepid. page 38 Entering HMS Intrepid's flooded dock aboard one of its four LCMs with the ship's 175DS

Michigan, Bedford 4 tonner and Landrover aboard. page 40 HMS Intrepid's route during my two tours. Dotted line - the first leg from Hong Kong to UK,

unbroken line - second leg from UK to Singapore. Map taken from my copy of HMS Intrepid's commission book.

page 42 Gibralter, from a post card that I bought there on arrival. page 46 I introduce Pans People to Capt Owen Murray-Jones RCT on board HMS Intrepid in

Plymouth after collecting them from the railway station. page 49 Me posing on a bridge in Hiroshima. page 50 left: the bomb dome, the target for the bomb which was exploded in the air. right: me outside the Peace Museum in Hiroshima. Chapter 6 page 59 The military and civilian driver training wings for the first time at Norton Manor Camp,

Taunton. page 60 A Junior Leader aboard on of the BSA B40 motorcycles. Photo from the Waggonette. page 61 My first Mess Kit. page 62 The Officers and Sergeants Messes, JLR RCT. page 63 Two Bedford RLs on a passing out parade drive past. page 65 Long wheel base Landrover followed by two Bedford MKs on a passing out parade drive past. Chapter 7 page 67 top: Lcpl Chris Iddon running behind the WOs and Sgts Mess building, Catterick Barracks,

Bielefeld. lower: My Renault 5 GTL in front of my AEC 10 ton Militant trucks on 9 Sqn's vehicle park. page 68 B Troop, 9 Squadron, 10 Regiment RCT, Germany.

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page 69 Me clearing snow in front of my married quarter in Fridjoff Nansen Strasse, Bielefeld. The car is my Renault 12.

page 72 WOs and Sgts Mess Regimental Dinner Night, Catterick Barracks, Bielefeld. page 73 top: Me, front centre, with elements of B Troop after the summer camp initiative tests. lower: Me with Gill Butcher and Andrew Pastouna in the BFBS studios, Cologne. page 77 RCT flag over 9 Squadron summer training camp accommodation, Southern Germany. Chapter 8 page 79 Birds eye views of Leconfield, the one time RAF station and now home of the Army School

of Mechanical Transport. Chapter 9 page 82 My British Forces Germany (BFG) registered Renault 17TS and Sprite 400 caravan. page 84 Extract from Sixth Sense, the British Forces newspaper in Germany. page 85 top: My new VW Jetta GLS outside my married quarter in Karl Arnold Strasse. lower: From (another) pre Regimental Dinner photograph, Bunde. page 86 top: Long Service and Good Conduct medal (LS&GC) presentation, WOs and Sgts Mess,

Bunde. lower: Sgts Mess version of Blankety Blank with me on the panel, top right. page 87 Another extract from Sixth Sense, the British Forces newspaper in Germany. page 88 Looking across to Karl Arnold Strasse, Hunnebrucke from the NAAFI shop. My quarter is

the end one with the caravan outside. Chapter 10 page 90 & 91 A four shot pan looking across towards Episkopi bay from the road climbing into

Pissouri village. page 92 top: I learnt to boardsail in Cyprus and became a Royal Yachting Association Open Sea

Instructor. This is me on my HiFly 555 (with 20 Benson & Hedges tucked in my left sleeve!) lower: 30 Regt RCT taken at 10 Port Sqn location, The Mole, RAF Akrotiri. page 93 One of many "stiff white ones" received during my tour, this one for a UN medal parade in

Nicosia. page 95 30 Regt RCT taken at 58 Sqn location, RAF Akrotiri in yet another colour uniform. page 96 HMS Fearless off the Mole with one of her LCMs entering the harbour. page 97 top: The first ever Army Regimental Dinner to be held in the RAF WOs & Sgts Mess, RAF

Akrotiri. I presided over the largest formal dinner night of my career. All the RAF Mess members also attended the function.

lower: The photo taken by Sgt King RAF that was used every week at the head of my newspaper column which I wrote throughout my tour.

page 98 The start and finish of the Curium Beach to Episkopi windsurf race, which I won.

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Chapter 11 page 99 RHQ personnel, 155 (Wx) Tpt Regt RCT(V), Taunton. page 101 Me with Lt Col Bruce Neeves (right) and three of my warrant officers on Salisbury Plain. page 102 Me with my SSMs, Longmoor Camp, Hampshire. page 104 On the drill board of the JLR drill competition, Colerne, Wiltshire. page 106 Regimental Sergeant Majors Convention, Aldershot, 21 years after it all started there. page 109 Other ranks RCT cap badge.