TRAINING


A short time after enlistment I was sent to a Reception Unit at Oswestry in Shropshire. It was a strange environment to find myself in, and at first it seemed interesting in that everything was very different to what I’d hitherto been used. I don’t recall being frightened or overawed at the discipline forced upon us – it was much, much worse later on once I got to a Training Regiment – but I found myself one wet, dark morning marking time outside the Cookhouse, with my head shaved and my mess tins and knife, fork & spoon in my hand behind my back, and found myself wondering ‘What the Hell am I doing here?’ It seemed to me at the time that I wanted out of it and I started planning to run away.

AWOL (Absence Without Leave)

My first attempt at flight was a disaster. Having shinned over a wall I stuck my thumb up to hitch a lift from passing traffic, only to find the car that stopped was full of Police, who promptly returned me to the Army. I went up on orders and was sentenced to 7 Days CB (Confined to Barracks) for my trouble. I continued with my plan to leave and started selling bits of my kit to my roommates. One or two were very kind and just gave me whatever money they could spare. I took what kit I had left and set off again. I can’t remember how I got there, but I ended up at my Aunt Peg’s in Bradford, who tried to persuade me to go back and give myself up, but I was determined on my course of action and, leaving my kitbag with Aunt Peg, I set off on a ferry from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire in Southern Ireland, where Mother had gone to live recently after leaving Dad and running off with Pat McKernan.
They both met me on arrival and made me feel very welcome. Prior to leaving England I’d written to Helen asking her to join me in Dublin, and she came over within a few days. Life was tough for us all at that time. Pat had a job somewhere and my Mother worked part time as a cleaner in a club, but what came in wasn’t enough to keep us all. Helen and I both smoked and Mum used to bring home all the dog ends from the ashtrays at the club where she worked. She’d tip them all out on to the table and we’d sort them all out together, splitting the dog ends and separating out the useable tobacco from the cigarette papers and the black, burnt bits. We used what we saved to roll our own cigarettes.
Helen managed to get a job as a waitress in the Palm Grove café on Dublin’s famous O’Connell Street, which was OK until she asked for a sausage roll with her lunch one Friday, thus betraying to the other girls that she was not a Catholic. This started some rather unpleasant treatment from them, causing Helen to leave shortly afterwards. I tried to find work myself, but it wasn’t easy to get a job in Dublin in those days. I even went for an interview with an officer in Dublin Castle to see if I could join their Army, which seems crazy looking back on it, but I guess we must have been getting pretty desperate. I eventually got taken on shovelling coke in a railway coal yard, with the biggest shovel I’d ever seen in my life, and it was only a few hours later that I had to be taken home on a truck after I’d racked my back to the point where I couldn’t stand up. It took ages to get better.
Circumstances convinced me to go back and give myself up to the Army, which I did as soon as I recovered, turning myself in at Bradford Police Station. Helen was with me, but they wouldn’t allow us to say goodbye, nor was she allowed to visit me whilst I was in custody there, so she returned to Greenock. The Police took me to Halifax and handed me over to the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment to await escort back to my unit.
My escort arrived the next day, a big, fat Sergeant by the name of Joe Massara, who looked just like King Farouk who was on the Egyptian throne at the time. Joe pushed his big gut against me, forcing me into a corner of the cell. He kept calling me Dillinger and threatened to tear my head off if I even thought of trying to escape his custody during the journey back to Oswestry. Apart from that he was reasonably kind, buying me cups of tea and something to eat on the journey. There is an amusing sequel to this, when our paths crossed again some years later, by which time I had been promoted to Sergeant-Major whilst Joe had remained a Sergeant. He was serving behind the bar in a Sergeants’ Mess marquee at a training camp in Reinsehlen in Germany. He didn’t recognise me, and I teased him a bit until asking him if the name Dillinger meant anything to him, when the penny dropped and it all came back to him. We had a good laugh about it, so no hard feelings.


DETENTION

Back with the Army after 81 days on the run, I anticipated being charged with Desertion and getting sentenced to at least 112 days in the military prison in Colchester, commonly known as the ‘Glasshouse’. Imagine my complete surprise when I was charged with Absence Without Leave and not Desertion. What I didn’t realise at the time was the subtle difference between the two charges. A soldier cannot be charged with Desertion unless it can be proved that he had no intention of returning and, if he retains his equipment, that can be evidence of an intention to return, so keeping my kitbag at Aunt Peg’s may have saved me from a long stretch in prison. On the other hand, maybe my youth and inexperience were the deciding factors. In the event, I was sentenced to undergo 28 days Detention, which I served in the Guardroom at Kimnel Park Camp, Rhyl. I remember feeling that I could have leaned over and kissed the Commanding Officer when he passed sentence, such was my joy and relief!
Detention in those days was hard by any standard. Everything was done at the double and life was a hectic round of being shouted at all the time, getting drilled on the parade ground, doing fatigues around the barracks, doing senseless tasks in my ‘spare’ time (such as treating a lump of coal with khaki Blanco, then washing it off and doing it again with white Blanco, etc), strict kit inspections every morning by the RSM and every evening after Guard Mount by the Orderly Officer, and so it went on. We were rationed to two cigarettes a day, which had to be smoked in front of the Provost Staff, after lunch and after dinner, five minutes allowed to smoke each cigarette.
In our cells at night we were able to pass small items between the cells via the holes in the partition walls where the central heating pipes ran between cells, and we would occasionally manage to get the odd cigarette to share, but mostly we had to resort to smoking improvised fags made by plucking the wool from the blankets and rolling it in newspaper or toilet paper. I recall asking Helen to smuggle me in some tobacco and cigarette papers by hiding them at the bottom of a tin of Duraglit metal polish. This duly managed to get past the security checks, but she’d not thought to wrap the goods to protect them from the permeation of the oily Duraglit, so the fags I was able to roll tasted absolutely foul!
Hard as the regime was, I managed to keep my nose clean and earned four days remission of sentence for good behaviour, so only served 24 days inside. I emerged fit as a fiddle, and with a real, heart-felt determination that they’d never get me inside again. The tough conditions were a real incentive to behave myself in the future, and that lack of such toughness is, I believe, what’s wrong with our prison service today.

ESSEN-KUPFERDREH


After my detention, I was put on a training course and passed out as a qualified Signaller and posted to 42 Field Regiment Royal Artillery, stationed in Essen-Kupferdreh in what was then West Germany. This was an exciting time for me and I remember I couldn’t wait to be let loose in the town so as to practice my school German on someone, which I can’t remember as being particularly successful, probably due in some part to shyness or lack of confidence. As a matter of fact, during my next tour of duty in Germany years later, I learned more of the language from German television than I had ever learned at school.
In those days the troops in Germany were paid in BAFS, British Armed Forces Special Vouchers, which was a scrip issue at the time due to rampant inflation in Germany after the war. They could only be spent in barracks and came in note form only – no coinage. I think the lowest denomination was the threepenny note (3d). Pay was automatically given in BAFS unless a previous request was made to the Paymaster for Deutschmarks or a mixture of Marks and BAFS.
All the new boys were well warned about the strong German beers and advised to take it easy, which didn’t stop me getting absolutely drunk in the NAAFI canteen on our first night there. I can recall talking to someone and being suddenly aware of a hush in the canteen. A big fellow was standing on a table and had apparently been singing when my loud talk interrupted him. ‘I don’t like you!’ he said, to which I apparently replied, ‘I don’t particularly like you either!’ The rest of the night is a blank, but I was told my companions managed to smooth things over and get me back to my billet in one piece.
Standing in the cookhouse queue at lunchtime next day, I received a tap on the shoulder and looked round to see this huge guy next to me. ‘Still want to fight me?’ he asked – an invitation I hastily declined, apologising for being the worse for drink and making a fool of myself. This guy was really big, and a very hard man. Jim Kelly was his name, and a sequel to this is that he was sent to a Canadian Corrective Centre in Korea for 56 days Detention and came back a chastened, broken man whose hair had literally turned white due to the harsh treatment meted out to him. The place had gained some notoriety for actually killing some guy who collapsed whilst drilling in the hot summer with his packs full of bricks.
42 Regiment promptly put me on an advanced Signals Course, in which I came out with top marks. I was therefore more than a little disgruntled when the top five students were promoted to Lance Bombardier, with the exception of me. I expect looking back that my absence and detention were behind the decision, but I didn’t see it that way, and I lost all interest in getting on, and developed a large chip on my shoulder, which took years to shift. As a result, I became a bad boy and got myself into many unnecessary scrapes and minor breaches of discipline. Most of my short time in Essen-Kupferdreh was spent on ‘Jankers’, or Confined to Barracks to give it its proper name. CB was really tough in those days, the worst part being parading behind the Guard every evening in best dress and full FSMO (Field Service Marching Order) to be inspected by the Orderly Officer of the day. These junior officers were wont to summarily issue you with several more days CB, and I often despaired of ever getting free of it.
My mates used to rally round and help me with my kit, but it didn’t really matter how well I was turned out, it was never good enough. I don’t recall how I got off ‘Jankers’ in the end, but it was a depressing experience, which I had no wish to repeat, but in fact I was given ‘Jankers’ several more times over the course of the following year. Although always unpleasant, they didn’t depress me the way they had in Germany (maybe I just got more used to them).

In case anyon's wondering, the foregoing articles are copied directly from a short book I've written about my life experiences.

It was written primarily for family use, so hopefully you'll make allowance for the occasional digression from Army matters.

I hope you'll have enjoyed them nevertheless!

hi dereck.
I doubt you remembering me as i didn't a distinquished military career. but i remember you were one of 3 brothers from Bolton
Lofty Mtatt and Barry Hands i also remember. I left the army in April 1969.
In 1975 I emigrated to South Africa and then In 1976 I emigrated to Rhodesia. I am now living in Johannesburg where I have been since 1989.
I would welcome any correspondence from anyone who was in 49 battery the same time as me.
warren williams

Warren, I was in 49 Bty but your name doesnt ring a bell. I was in SA in march but in Cape Town and Durban for a holiday. I will email you the link to the 49 Battery web site and you could get access to the forum, in the meantime I will copy and paste your comments mate. 49 is having a big reunion in November in Walsall Birmingham. actually you left the battery in Devizes about 2 months before me. I lived next door to Lofty in devizes, loft has been divorced and remarried.

Hello,

I'm researching for my father's eulogy, and trying to remember all the regiments and batteries he served with.

His name was George Reeves and he was a Battery and then Regimental Sgt Major. My mother can't remember when he was made RSM, and the Army Personnel Centre won't release any information without £30, a copy of a death certificate and about a months notice, so I'm reduced to trawling through the internet to try and find anyone who knew him.

I was born in 1963, and I know he served with 22 and 42 Regiments, he was in Pembroke Dock in 1960 (one of my sisters was born there), and in Dortmund and Bielefeld, (another sister was born in Hamm), I was born in Wallsend in '63 but haven't as yet found anything which tells me who he was with then.

If there IS anyone out there who remembers him I'd be very VERY grateful if you could respond.

Thanks.

Jude Ayres

I seem to rememeber that the 2 i/c or adjutant also batted for the other side and got caught at it and disappeared whie we were in Slim Barracks.