Scouse Melvin was TQMS at one time and we in the LAD got on with him really well as he couldn't mess us about as our EME wouldn't have allowed it even if he wanted to which he didn't. I always found him to be aggod sort but I suppose being BSM you can't be too friendly with we peasants.

CYPRUS


It was a beautiful day when we docked in Famagusta in Cyprus. Buses took all the families to their Quarters or hirings; Quarters for all those who had sufficient points to qualify for one, private hirings for the others, including ourselves. We were one of the last to get off and so had the opportunity to see the nice villas and other properties allocated to the families. Eventually it was our turn as the bus drew up at a pretty villa in Justinian Street. We were glad to arrive and couldn’t wait to get inside and make ourselves at home. Joy turned to horror when we went into the kitchen and opened a drawer to see hundreds of cockroaches scurrying about! We tried hard to eliminate them over the period we stayed there but seemed to be fighting a losing battle. I routinely carried a rolled up newspaper whenever we went out, quietly opening the door on return, switching on the light and killing as many as I could before they scurried away. Cockroaches were to feature again later in another hiring when Helen woke one night with two huge ones running down her back.
We moved around several different properties in Famagusta during our two years in Cyprus, including a period when, to save money, we shared a house with Tom, Sally and their kids Jackie and Pat. The owner was called Savvas and he also owned the adjoining taverna, which was very handy! We lived in one small place where the builder had created as much space as possible with novelties such as a bed that folded up into a recess in the wall (for some reason Jimmy was afraid of that). Another property opposite a large orange grove had the Greek landlord Odysseus and his family living in a shack at the back of the house. They were in the habit of eating late outside in the open and quite often would lift Jimmy out from his bedroom window to join them.
The Eoka troubles for union with Greece were still rumbling along at that time, and although some sort of truce had been called, we were still required to be on standby and carry out patrols. The first months after arrival were hectic as we got to grips with gaining an intimate knowledge our areas of operations. The Regiment was responsible for a huge area of countryside and every soldier was required to be able to draw from memory a map of the whole Regimental area, showing locations and names of towns, villages, roads and strategic points, and have a good knowledge of the populations, ethnic make-up and names of the Muktars (head men). We still hadn’t been issued with our summer KD (Khaki Drill) dress and I still remember the evils of wearing our khaki flannel shirts, itchy and soaked in sweat, whilst slogging away throughout the hot summer.
The troubles soon passed and we settled into the familiar routine of life in barracks, basically starting early and finishing at lunch time during the hot summer months. A favourite Sunday routine was to picnic at Boghaz Beach together with Ginger and Jean Hargreaves. We’d get there mid-morning and had our Sunday roast dinner there, courtesy of pre-prepared meals in our pressure cookers. We generally had the whole beach more or less to ourselves, although occasionally a few young local Greeks would be a bit of a nuisance. They were not at all used to mixing freely with the local girls and the sight of bikini clad foreign women on a beach or in the water was a bit too much for them.
Ginger and Jean had no children, nor much of a liking for them, but they were always very fond of Jimmy, who would usually ride in their car with them. We frequently visited each other’s houses, when Ginger and I would leave the ladies and listen to jazz records, both of us dancing about simulating playing the instruments.
Our daughter Sheena was born in the British Military Hospital in Dhekelia on the 24th of September 1961. I had personally never wished for a daughter, believing they were liable to be more troublesome than boys when they got to their teens. In truth, Sheena was probably less of a problem than either Jimmy or John. She was certainly a very contented baby. My pal ‘Ginger’ Hargreaves christened her ‘Black Fred’ before she was born and would wind Jimmy up about it. Jimmy was fiercely defensive and protective of his wee sister. On the troopship home from Cyprus Helen and I once returned to the cabin to find Sheena hidden in her cot under a pile of pillows which Jimmy had put there to try to stop her climbing out and hurting herself.
Sheena married and was later divorced from John Mooney from Greenock, before marrying her present husband Paul Green, also from Greenock. They have a daughter, Emma 18, and currently live near us in Largs. We consequently see much more of them than the rest of the family and are able to socialise and holiday with them more. It would be nice to be able to share more time with Jimmy & John and their children but geographical distances do create certain difficulties.
Social life was very good in Cyprus. The only nightspot in Famagusta, the ‘Spitfire’, was out of bounds and, although we occasionally travelled the 20-odd miles to Dhekelia to attend a Sergeants’ Mess function, we basically socialised with a round of Saturday night parties at our homes, taking turn to act as hosts. Alcohol was duty free and very cheap and everybody would bring a bottle.
Although a lot of basic gunnery and infantry training took place in barracks in Cyprus, the Regiment carried out many exercises in the Libyan desert.
I couldn’t wait to get back to Cyprus after that trip as I’d as usual missed the family and was looking forward to the reunion with Helen, Jimmy and Sheena. I always said that getting back off long exercises was like a second honeymoon (not that we’d ever had a first one!). As I approached our home there was Jimmy playing at the gate. I called to him as I approached, expecting him to display a degree of excitement at my return, but he merely glanced up, replied ‘ Hi Dad’ and carried on with his task, leaving me not a little crest-fallen.
Cyprus was mostly an enjoyable experience for me; soldiers are always happiest overseas where they are free of the social distractions of the UK and are thrown together much more. Helen had more of a rough time of it, having to look after two children during the very hot summers, living without air conditioning and having to cook on a calor gas stove. She was very thin after our Cyprus tour, and no wonder. Cyprus would have been much more bearable with air conditioning and satellite television.

LIBYA


Libya was then an Arab Kingdom ruled by King Idris. Exercises in Libya would generally last for about six weeks or so. On one exercise 49 Battery set up camp a few miles from the town of Barce, about 50 miles east of Benghazi. We were warned about the presence of deadly scorpions and advised to take basic precautions such as keeping a good lookout for them and shaking out sleeping bags before getting into them. Sergeant Johnny Humble devised his own cunning plan and elected not to sleep in his bivouac tent, preferring to put his camp bed on top of a table outside, well clear of the ground and therefore scorpion proof. He certainly survived the night unbitten but wasn’t at all pleased to find his tent and all his belongings had been stolen during the night, All that remained were a few tent pegs with the remains of cut guy ropes attached to them!
Five other Sergeants and I got permission to visit Barce to buy some basic fresh foodstuffs to supplement our tinned Army Compo rations. This involved a hair-raising drive down a very twisty road in a Land Rover driven by REME Sgt Eric Boulton, who always drove flat out. We were all screaming for him to slow down but it made no difference. Arriving in one piece we separated into two groups, each with a list of items to buy.
All went well until someone (not me, I can’t remember who) tried to sell some packets of cigarettes he had brought with him. In no time at all a large group of grasping boys had surrounded us, pushing and shoving and trying to snatch the cigarettes. I was sitting in the Land Rover and, as the crowd rapidly increased and got more and more animated, I realised the danger, drove up alongside and shouted for my mates to get in. I then drove quickly along the narrow street, picked up the other group and headed out of the town, pursued by the screaming mob. A donkey wandered across our path and I tried to avoid it but clipped its hindquarters and spun it round onto its back. Looking back I was glad to see it get to its feet again.
Sadly, Barce was almost totally flattened by an earthquake a year later in February 1963, with the loss of 300 lives. Reconstruction has since taken place and the town is now called Al Marj.
Several visits and expeditions were organised during tours of Libya, including a group of hardy volunteers who went hundreds of miles deep into the desert to the Tibesti Mountains. I generally just wanted to relax in base camp most of the time, although I did go on a trip to the ancient Greek colony of Cyrene. Apart from the magnificent ruins the thing I remember most is the Arab women digging around trying to find old Roman coins to sell to tourists. They didn’t like me photographing them, apparently believing the camera to be The Evil Eye.
On another exercise to Libya we were camped just outside Tobruk and I took the opportunity to pay several visits to the military cemeteries in the area, mainly the British Commonwealth Cemetery, which was always a very moving experience. The cemetery was very well maintained and the neat rows of headstones made me imagine the dead soldiers on eternal parade. The German cemetery and memorial is totally different, being more of a very heavy, stark mausoleum of a place. I was told that this was because all the bodies were in a single grave covered over with concrete to prevent them being dug up and desecrated; I don’t know whether or not this is true.
Sergeant Pete Annette came to me one day and asked me if I could get the use of a Land Rover next day for something he had in mind. Next morning I told Battery Sergeant Major Alan Coulter I wanted to visit the military cemetery at Tobruk and he let me have the use of a vehicle. Pete drove to the NAAFI Bulk Issue Store at Tobruk, went in, gave a fictitious name and a fictitious unit, and said they were on exercise from the UK, we had 1,200 men and we wanted cigarettes for them. The clerk did a calculation and said we could only have 40,000 cigarettes over the counter. Pete signed his fictitious name for them, and then we drove 90 miles along the coast to Derna where we sold them to a local Arab for double the purchase price. Pete explained that as long as the bill was paid within 24 hours the NAAFI wouldn’t send out an invoice, so nobody would be any the wiser.
The BSM smelled a rat when we got back to camp late but I explained that we’d broken down. Unfortunately, we’d had to use the two spare jerricans of petrol all vehicles carried and were unable to refill them until next morning. Alan simply went to the vehicle, tapped the jerricans with his pipe and promptly gave me five extra duties for lying. As we had planned another trip the next day I had to use some of our profits to bribe Alan to let me start the extra punishment duties a day later. Fearful of getting caught, I sent all my share of the profits back to Helen in Cyprus for safe keeping; it was a tidy amount and almost paid for our first car, a brand new Ford Anglia.

PLYMOUTH (1953

Prior to going to Korea, we were stationed at Crownhill Barracks in Plymouth for a few weeks, where we were kitted out with winter weather gear, had all our jabs and took our Embarkation Leave. All I can really remember from that period is some good pub-crawls. On returning to barracks after one night out, my mate and I were surprised to see some whisky left in a bottle under my bed, when we thought we’d emptied it before going out. Of course, someone had urinated into the bottle,, but we drank it believing it was whisky, and enjoyed it nevertheless!


PLYMOUTH (1958)

We now moved into a one bedroom Quarter on Lambhay Hill in the shadow of the walls of the Royal Citadel. It was a very old upstairs flat and probably a former barrack room as it featured a rifle rack and webbing pegs and shelf in the bedroom, but we loved it; it was our home and fully furnished, right down to a mustard spoon. It was also where our firstborn Jimmy arrived on the scene. Jimmy was later to marry and divorce Beverley before marrying second wife Nerys from the small Welsh town of Llanidloes. They have two children, Kayleigh 21 and Jamie 18, and live in Heytesbury near Warminster in Wiltshire. Jimmy served 22 years as a regular soldier, finishing as an instructor in the Army Physical Training Corps. He is currently working in Dubai.
We’d been married for six years by then and had been trying for a child without success. Deciding to get ourselves checked out medically I went to the MO and asked him to arrange specialist tests. He made an appointment for me but said that most wives became pregnant very soon after couples decided to get checked out. Sure enough, Helen became pregnant almost immediately, so the appointment was never kept. I can only assume that there had been some sort of mental blockage thing preventing conception and the decision to check things caused some sort of relaxation to occur.
Jimmy was born at 5/2 Lambhay Hill the 24th of March 1958. There was a midwife, a nurse and an old Welsh lady from downstairs present and they just sort of ignored me as I hung about and set up a tape recorder. Helen was very good throughout the labour, no screaming as I recall. Jimmy came into the world face first and I recognised him for a McDougall as soon as he appeared. He weighed in at a paltry 5lbs 4 ozs, causing the midwife to exclaim ‘He’s just a tiny little scrap!’ Jimmy was baptised in the grandly named ‘Royal Chapel of Saint-Katherine-Upon-The-Hoe Within The Royal Citadel’; quite a mouthful.
Helen and I were both absolutely delighted to be parents at long last, and kept going to Jimmy’s cot to make sure he was still breathing. He soon afterwards started constant crying and we were obviously quite worried when it wouldn’t stop. Helen had been breast feeding up to now and we got to wondering if perhaps it wasn’t enough for him. I phoned the midwife and asked her if we could give him a bottle and she said it would be OK to give him some evaporated milk but to water it down. No sooner had Jimmy gulped the bottle down than he fell fast asleep and didn’t wake for ages. The poor wee bugger must have been starving!
About a year later we moved to a ground floor Quarter in the next block, number 4/1, where Helen could watch him from the window as he sat outside in his pram. Mother visited us briefly and was able to see her new grandson before she died shortly afterwards. Jimmy displayed a fascination for cars and, even at a very early age, could identify a few different cars with their owners. The Regiment was soon under notice to move to Cyprus and we got permission to take Helen’s sister Jean with us. She’d been in hospital with tuberculosis for some time and it was felt that the climate in Cyprus would suit her better than the damp weather typical of the West of Scotland. The three of us had some good social outings to the pubs in the nearby Barbican area before we headed overseas.
It was at this time that Helen’s brother Tom arrived unannounced with his wife Sally. He was apparently on leave from the Merchant navy and had decided to visit us. We were pleased to see them, of course, and gave them the use of our bedroom whilst we slept on a bed settee in the living room. Next morning Tom sheepishly informed me that Sally had wet the bed; it transpired that her waters had broken and she was about to give birth to their first child Jackie, who was born a short time later. When I asked Tom what his future plans were it transpired that he hadn’t any, apart from he wasn’t going back to sea and had no particular job in mind. I suggested he could do worse than think about the Army, took him for a tour of the Royal Citadel Barracks and within a day or two he’d signed on for 22 years. They went on to have three more children, Pat, Tommy and Tammy.
The Regiment’s time in Plymouth was spent mainly training on and around Dartmoor, and a cold, miserable place it was. It was the time that National Service was coming to an end and 42 Regiment was then the only all regular unit in the Army. We were also the first to be kitted out with the new military Service Dress which replaced the old battledress. Another first was that we were issued with the new SLR (Self Loading Rifle). A welcome diversion was when I met up again with John Maynard, who had left the service at the end of his engagement and had just re-enlisted. On re-joining the Army he had to come back in at his substantive rank of Bombardier (he’d only been an Acting Sergeant). In the meantime I’d been promoted to Sergeant myself and so out-ranked him. I spotted him coming across the parade ground and, as he came towards me with outstretched hand, it gave me great pleasure to greet him with ‘Hello, Bombardier!’ Revenge is truly sweet!
One interesting event was the unexpected arrival of Dad one day, who just turned up out of the blue, as was his wont. I can’t remember how long he stayed but it was probably a week or two. He was in a pretty scruffy state and I took him quietly apart one day and reminded him of how I remembered him after he came home from the Army, always smart and wouldn’t go out the door without polishing his shoes. A day or two later I was surprised to bump into him on Royal Parade in the city centre, wearing a sandwich-board advertising some café or other. That was just about OK, but it all came to a head when a Bombardier suggested I should get a grip of my father as he was making a nuisance of himself, saying he’d get his Sergeant son to sort out anyone annoying him. I’d had enough; he was on the next train out of Plymouth.

COURT-Y-GOLLEN (Crickhowell)


All this lovely life came to an abrupt halt when I was sent home to UK to do a Signals course at the School of Artillery, Larkhill, but at least it enabled Helen and me to spend some time together. She came down to see me and I remember picking her up from Salisbury Station and taking her to Bulford on the bus to spend the weekend in the ‘Rose & Crown’ pub. During the trip to Bulford, the bus stopped and the Conductor called out to enquire if anyone owned a brown suitcase, which turned out to be Helen’s. It had apparently been spotted falling off the bus platform by the driver of a following taxi, who gathered it all together and pursued the bus to return it to the owner. We often talked in later years about all our worldly goods being in one suitcase at that time.
We managed to find some rented accommodation in a Mrs Crumbler’s attic room in Salisbury. She was always telling us not to put tea leaves down the drain, and the only heating we had was to light the gas oven and sit at the open door for warmth. I used to take the first morning bus to Larkhill, but getting to the bus stop on time was hazardous, as we had no means of telling the time. One morning I was standing at the bus stop and asked a passing railway worker the time, to be told it was 4:30 in the morning, whereupon I went home, back to bed, overslept and missed the bus.
It was the intention that I should re-join 42 Regiment in Hong Kong at the conclusion of my course, so Helen and I were both very excited at the thought of the coming adventure. We went through all the preliminary procedures of inoculations and everything else, only to be told at the eleventh hour that the regiment was being posted back to UK and I was to proceed after my course to Court-y-Gollen Camp, Crickhowell, near Abergavenney in South Wales.
The only other abiding memory from those days was leaving Mrs Crumbler’s. We were still very poor then and decided to do a ‘moonlit flit’, i.e. leave without paying. On the appointed early morning we gathered up our bits and pieces and started creeping down the stairs, where we were startled to bump into Mr Crumbler on one of the landings. He was a nice, quiet, downtrodden man who just looked at us and said, ‘You’re going, then?’ to which we mumbled ‘Yes’ and scarpered as quick as we could. And so we left, only to realise that I’d left my cleaning kit behind; as neither of us was willing to go back for it, it got left there.
On arrival at Court-y-Gollen Camp, I discovered that there were only a handful of soldiers there to handle whatever needed to be done, one of whom was an alcoholic Quartermaster Sergeant known as ‘Waxy’, probably on account of his waxed moustache. He used to go to bed with a bottle of rum below the bed, most of which he would consume during the night. I found myself looking after the ration store amongst other duties, and can recall once giving a load of surplus bacon to the landlord of ‘The Swan’ public house on the main street in Abergavenney, in return for which I had several free pints of draught cider.
Public houses featured prominently in our lives in those days – I just wish I could remember all their names. There were ‘The Six Bells’, ‘The Bridge End Inn’, ‘The Red Lion’, ‘The Britannia’ and ‘The Bear Hotel’ in Crickhowell. ‘The Bear’ was a posh place that we didn’t frequent at all, not a place for the common soldiery. There was also ‘The Bell’ at Glangwrynny and a wonderful place a mile or two out of Crickhowell called the ‘Nant-y-Fen’ (as far as I can remember), which was basically a small sort of farmhousey room with a very tiny bar upon which stood an enamel jug full of rough cider, the only drink you could get there. As the jug emptied, the landlady would disappear into the back of the premises and refill it. It was strong stuff, costing seven old pence (about 3p) a pint, and three pints of it was usually quite sufficient to get you drunk.
It was at ‘The Six Bells’ that we first met a local couple, Ken and Flo Ware, with whom we became very good friends. Ken was small, mousy and very quiet local man, whilst Flo was the opposite, a noisy, boisterous, life and soul of the party type from Liverpool. Flo came to our attention when she did a handstand against the pub wall and seemed quite unconcerned about her skirts falling round her head. They invited us to their home at closing time that evening, and we made many visits to their home during our time there. Many years later, in 1990, we did a motoring tour of old haunts and had the pleasure of visiting them again and talking about old times. Calling again in 1999 we were saddened to learn that they’d both passed away.
An event that sticks in the mind was the time a fair came to Crickhowell, which coincided with Helen and I having a fall-out over something. I went out and got drunk on my own and finished up at the local fair. Helen, wishing to show me that she didn’t care, appeared and agreed to go on one of the rides with a fellow who asked her. At this, I boarded the ride and, after telling the lad that I was the lady’s husband, threatened him with death if he didn’t disappear, which he hastily did.
Another event was the time that an old comrade of mine from Korea, Taffy Jones, visited whilst we were out and, the landlady Mrs Gwillym let him in to wait for us. He found my wages that I’d put in a drawer and stole them. The end of that came when Jonah was eventually traced and came before the courts in Hereford, where I had to appear as a witness against him. He was found guilty, but I have no memory of the sentence imposed upon him.
Another incident involved Helen whilst she was working in a local factory. She received a phone call from a man one day, who said he admired her very much and wanted her to pose for him to take photographs. She hung up on him, much to my disappointment, as I would have preferred her to make an appointment with him and catch him out.
Our favourite pub in Crickhowell was The Corn Exchange, situated on a corner, where we often ended up before heading for home. Our Battery Clerk Bill Draisey, an old sweat, used to frequent this watering hole, and we often, at the end of the evening, played games to decide what spirits shorts we’d order to drink, Bill moving his pointing finger along the rows of bottles, whilst I’d keep my back turned and call Bill to stop at a random moment – a good way of getting drunk quickly! Bill always addressed Helen as Mrs McTush.
We lived in two different places during our time in Crickhowell. One was an upstairs room in a property in the High Street, where John and Shirley Maynard lived in a room next door to us. Everything was fairly basic, we had to share a kitchen and a bathroom with both the Maynards and the landlady and her husband. We had to put a shilling in the meter before we could have a bath, use the cooker or the electric heater in our room. We frequently socialised with the Maynards, visiting each other from time to time, and the thing that stands out is the way John insisted on me addressing him as Sergeant; he obviously found it difficult to relax the military protocols. The other digs we lived in were a couple of rooms owned by an old lady, Mrs Gwillym, who also lived there.
John was a big influence on my Army career and I learned a lot from him. He was quite an austere, strict, humourless character, who nevertheless tried to mix socially but never quite mastered the art. He was mean and very selfish; no doubt a legacy of a harsh upbringing, but a first class soldier and NCO. He was always very smartly turned out and demanded high standards from his subordinates, but he was failing in the common touch and, although generating respect from others, soldiers found it hard to like him. John could smoke a cigarette in front of his men who had none, and reason that it was their own fault if they were without, failing to understand the positive man-management benefits of being more understanding. John eventually became a Warrant Officer, and a very good one, but never made it to Regimental Sergeant Major, a rank he could and should have made had he shown just a bit more humanity in his approach to others.
John kept in touch with me after leaving the Army, mainly through requests to provide him with a reference every time he wanted to take over the position of landlord of a new pub. He’d gone into the licensed trade, much to my surprise, as he seemed less suited to that calling than anyone I knew. I suppose it was the prospect of earning big money that was the lure, and I’m sure he would have had everything running like clockwork, but I just couldn’t imagine him socialising as Mine Host. I called in to see him once in a pub in Leicester, where we chatted amicably for quite some time, but no offer of a drink was forthcoming – that was typical of John. I waited a few minutes before ordering a drink for both of us. We lost touch for a while until a notice I placed on Channel 4 Television’s Old Comrades Teletext page was spotted by someone who told John about it. We then met up again in 1996 at a Battery Reunion in Walsall. Later that year John & Shirley visited us in Dunoon for a few days. He died suddenly just before Christmas that year.
Discipline in the Regiment was at an all-time low during this time, for whatever reason I’m unable to say. Town Patrols were in force every weekend and there was a night when Helen and I went to a dance in Abergavenny Town Hall. At the end of the evening I was well drunk, went to the toilet and took a long time to reappear. Helen panicked and contacted the Town Patrol, who literally picked me up and took Helen and I back to our digs in Crickhowell. Luckily for me Bill Draisey was the NCO in charge, so I wasn’t reported or punished, but Bill advised me next day to ‘educate Mrs McTush’.
The indiscipline was widely reported in the local Press, particularly the South Wales Echo, and it wasn’t long before calls were being made to get the Regiment moved away somewhere else; and so it was back to Plymouth, to the Royal Citadel Barracks on Plymouth Hoe.
Helen has two reasons to remember the posting to Wales. Firstly, she experienced her first pub when I took her to ‘The George’ in Abergavenny; at that time women were generally barred from most pubs back in Greenock. She’s probably forgotten wearing my blues dress hat and loudly urging the pub pianist to play ‘Scotland The Brave’. Secondly, we were allocated our very first married accommodation in Abergavenny. Number 3 Temporary Dwelling was basically a large hut with two bedrooms and a stove for heating, but to us it was Heaven!

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 Jim Mcdougal

my name is Phil ware and i am the son of ken and flo ware from crickhowell, i stumbled across this lovely post from you about my parents.
please contact me at ware.philip.a@edumail.vic.gov.au

i would love to chat more to you about those days in Crickhowell

I spent three weeks, or so, attached to RA HQ 2nd Inf Division HQ at Hilden early in 1950. I was duty clerk one Sunday morning when the CRA Brigadier R.W. Jelf entered our accommodation and requested the office to be opened. I arose from my pit wearing only my 'drawers cellular' and did so - (the office being directly across the corridor), - returning to the room to get dressed more appropriately!. I went back to the office and sent him a couple of signals.
Some months later back with 42, during CRA's inspection, Brig. Jelf spoke to me in the Regimental Office - he avoided mention of our earlier "brief encounter")! A nice bloke, but everybody seemed to go crackers when his visit was on the horison. As I recall, any US equipment was placed under guard in a nearby field until his departure!

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

Jim,

As you were in Libya in 1967 you might be able to answer me this question.

I was there as a 13 year old with my dad who served with the 14/20 king hussars and stationed at Wavell barracks just off Benina road. We lived in Benghazi till January 66. But the 5th inniskillings we handed over to in Nov 65.
I have been searching out all regiments to see which barracks they were based at just in Libya and have put it on a site called "A Story of Two Bridges/colors of Libya".
As you were in Libya training in 67 four years after the Barce earthquake you mention going to Barce. I want to know if you went to see if Barce barracks was still standing and if so was it still being used and which British regiment was it still there or was it taken over by the arab army. If you dont know the answer. And your former members dont know. Where can I find the information for my research.
Thanks.
John.

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.