Pad's Army by Paul Addy - HTML preview

Dedication

To those who suffered me

and to those who cared or simply understood.

Foreword

I’m not sure why but I feel the need to explain the title of the book simply because there’s a clever little pun there that will be totally missed by a vast amount of readers in North America. Vast is probably the wrong word, humongous may be more accurate.

The favourite viewing for millions of Brits from 1968 to 1977 was a comedy show about the endeavours of a group of men who formed just a small part of a big WW2 British organisation which was made up of those too young or too old to fight in the regular armed forces together with an element who worked in important industries known as reserved occupations. It was called the Home Guard but it was also mockingly known, by the young and fit of the regular forces, as

‘Dad’s Army’.

Week by week, we followed the well meaning antics of the Warmington-on-Sea platoon as they tripped and staggered from one near disaster to another.

There was a pompous man, the local Bank Manager, who’d decided he should be the Captain in charge but

who, every once in a while, displayed courage that made your eyes go all misty. His social and ‘class’

superior was the under manager at the bank, a well educated man, somewhat lacking ambition and the drive to achieve more, who preferred to hand his ration cards and his washing to a woman whose teenage son grew up to call him ‘Uncle Arthur’. This young lad was known to us all as ‘Private Pike’ a generally gormless soul whose neck was permanently attached to a woolly scarf his mother had knitted and insisted he wear, even in full battledress. He had a predilection for American gangster films and was known to the Captain in charge as ‘You stupid boy!’

The rest of the main characters were made up of - a local ‘spiv’, supposedly refused regular service because he had flat feet but if you wanted anything else, from gasoline to silk stockings, he was the ‘go to guy’ – the funeral director, an over the hill, dour and doom ladened Scotsman – the town butcher, an old, old soldier who’d fought in more colonial wars than anyone thought humanly possible and whose battle plan was to ram his bayonet up somewhere dark because ‘ they don’t like it up ‘em, Sir, they don’t like it

up ‘em.’ – and a very nice but decrepit old bloke who carried the platoon medical bag (consisting of some ointment, a couple of bandages and some plasters, which Americans probably know better as ‘band-aids’).

Notwithstanding the platoon’s original thoughts on discovering that this man had been a conscientious objector in WW1, the later news that he had won a bravery medal as a stretcher bearer during the conflict earned him their complete respect and the coveted First Aid satchel.

But it was the sometimes ridiculous things the Army made its soldiers do or perhaps the stupid things we simply decided to do which, in a way, always reminded me of these well meaning and courageous men who were, despite their ineptitude, willing to confront an invading enemy whilst armed only with a handful of bullets and a ‘sticky’ bomb made from a pair of their old socks. Heck, in the early days, they’d been prepared to do it with a broom handle, a carving knife tied to one end and brush still attached to the other. I often felt a kinship.

But there’s another part of my ‘brilliant pun’ which is revealed at the end of the book so I don’t want to

spoil the surprise and the moment when you nod to yourself, sagely, feeling the power of this newly acquired special knowledge.

So, these are the reasons why I’ve clung to the book title.

On the other hand, I could have just changed it to something catchy like, ‘My time in the British Army’

or ‘Please tuck me in, Sergeant Major’. It would have been much simpler than writing this explanation but I fear it could have resulted in the loss of a little intrigue.

GENESIS

I had a happy childhood. Free, within reason, to gleefully roam all over the place and discover all manner of things: slow worms, lizards, amazing butterflies, smoke canisters, spent ammunition, used parachute flares, training grenades; the everyday stuff that young boys would find irresistible. In many ways it had been quite idyllic despite the fact that we lived in a tin hut. But it was a big tin hut, previously housing two families in small surroundings, now housing one in somewhat larger style. There was no heating other than the electric fires or paraffin heaters my parents bought and I doubt the space between the tin cladding and the inner board lined wall contained much more than air. If it did it was probably asbestos because in those days

‘health and safety’ was for scaredy cats. The floors were covered in ancient lino which was split and curled in many places making it adventurous to walk around in bare feet and early morning winter days were spent trying to scrape the thick ice from the inside of the windows just so you could see what the weather outside was like. We had two front doors, two back

ones and two corrugated tin enclosed back yards, one of which doubled as my fort. My big brother and I shared a bed at the far end of the house and slept with our dressing gowns on, sharing the rubber water bottle.

The whole ensemble was complimented by our duffle coats and a thick, itchy blanket. Around mid Spring we ditched the itchy blanket.

My father, a soldier, had fought in the Malayan Emergency and the Korean War, which he hotly denied starting. He later took part in the British response to the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya before settling for the more sedate life of being one of the British Army’s elite school of weapons experts, the Small Arms School Corps (SASC). These were the people who, as the Military websites stated, ‘were responsible for maintaining the proficiency of the Army in the use of small arms, support weapons and range management’.

They also taught the Army’s weapons instructors how to be weapons instructors.

I’m proud of the fact my dad had been one of the top 100 shots in the British Army seven times in his 12

year career with the SASC and had, one year, been the Army’s best shot with the Sterling sub-machine gun

(SMG). My own, meagre, ability with weapons couldn’t be compared with his but there was enough in the genes to give me a bit of a career as a police firearms officer and I might have had a somewhat more successful career as a ‘shootist’ in the Territorial Army (TA) had I remembered what he told me, earlier in the car park at the Army’s Northwest District Skill At Arms meeting, one day at Altcar Rifle Range.

I hadn’t asked for the advice. He simply came up to me, held a licked forefinger in the air and declared, “At six hundred metres put the left hand edge of your foresight on the right hand edge of the target,” and then walked off. Sound advice, as it turned out, but unfortunately I didn’t call it into play until I only had four rounds left. But what rounds they were! I then compounded my error by failing to clear the weapon properly and letting one loose down the range.

I’d have got away with it, had it happened just before the whistle went, the one that signified the allotted time for firing had ceased, but I couldn’t even get that right.

The Officer from the SASC (my dad’s old unit) stood before me and said, “Negligent discharge.

What’s your name?”

Standing at attention, I answered, “You know my name, Uncle John.”

He smiled. “I know I know your name Paul but we have to go through the formalities.”

And so I was led back to the Ranges’ main office by

‘Uncle’John, one of my dad’s best friends.

Unfortunately, he was unable to resist the urge to tell anyone we met on the way who knew Dad the mortifying truth that Frank Addy’s youngest son was a complete idiot. I was marched in and presented to the Range Superintendent who sat alone in his office. Dad looked up from his desk, smiled and said, “Hello, John.

What’s he bloody done, now?” Oh how we laughed!

Although I can recall one or two snippets of life from when my father had been stationed in Germany; a trip on the NAAFI bus with my mother and playing on the pavement outside our house on a very hot day, it was from Hythe in Kent, where the SASC were based, on England’s southern coast overlooking France some 26 miles away (and viewable on a fine day) that I had

most memories of my childhood and for many years it was where I told people I ‘came from’.

It was an ideal place to grow up. The summers were always hot and glorious and full of adventure. With a gang of like minded kids from the married quarters area, which was close to the firing ranges bordering a long strip of the coast, I would rise early and descend upon the range hut at the entrance to the training area to check the notices which were pinned there indicating the dates and times live firing would take place. On the approach, we would check if the red flag was flying for this we knew indicated the ranges were in use and that

“No Unauthorised Persons” were to proceed further.

We knew we weren’t ‘authorised’ because essentially the sign said for us “No non dads beyond this point”.

If the flag was flying we would revert to plan B

which was either play football or cricket on the army football pitch nearby or run madly up and down the small assault course that was even closer.

The extra special attraction at the assault course was Mr Broadbent who worked in the nearby elongated wooden hut which contained not only the apparatus to hold the straw filled sacks used for the soldiers to

practice their bayoneting skills but also the sacks themselves. Not only that but it also held targets, paste containers and the multi coloured patches used to cover the resulting holes in the targets following each shooting practice. The place smelled wondrously of creosote and glue and sometimes there were un-pasted targets which Mr Broadbent would allow the gang to paste up with the patches. A visit to Mr Broadbent’s was always followed by a nice cup of tea, specially brewed by himself, and a slice of his wife’s very tasty fruit cake. Mrs Broadbent was apparently very keen that Mr Broadbent didn’t get hungry mid morning and was under the impression that he was a bigger man than he actually was so there was always more than enough fruit cake to go round. After second helpings, Mr Broadbent would unceremoniously announce,

“Right you’ve had your lot and I’ve got work to do, so bugger off”. He was, despite his brusqueness, a nice man and the kids all loved him.

If the flag wasn’t flying, and our check of the notices revealed the availability of the ranges for our sole use, me and the gang, which had no discernible leader, would back track down the approach road and

disappear into the adjacent wood from where we could infiltrate the training area without being seen. The Range Warden who lived in the little wooden house next to the official entrance didn’t seem to fully understand the unwritten ‘rules’ and would, if he saw us entering by the front gate, deny access.

The journey through the woods would almost invariably consist of a jungle patrol, each member on special alert for Japanese snipers. It was well known, through our in depth knowledge of Hollywood and British war films, that Japanese snipers were particularly adept at hiding absolutely anywhere.

Upon safely negotiating this first hazard we would scamper across the open ground in an arrowhead or an extended line formation, as we’d seen our fathers do, before reaching the safety of the gorse bushes from where we knew we could move freely without being detected.

The best time for a range excursion was always following an Army night firing exercise, for that brought a wealth of treasures. Not only would we collect the empty cartridge cases that had been missed during the soldiers end of night clean up and the clips

that connected them into belts of ammunition for the machine guns but also the occasional torch or packets marked Biscuits (Fruit) together with tubes of greengage jam discarded from an army ration pack by some overfull squaddie together with small half drunk bottles of lemonade.

For such finds as a torch, ‘finders keepers’ ruled but food and drink was always shared out with military precision, as if a besieged garrison, whilst we sat patiently reconnecting the empty cases and belt clips.

When complete the resulting bandoliers made us look like Pancho Villa, the Mexican folk hero. I felt sure he would have been proud.

Then there were the parachutes from the parachute flares used to light up the ‘battlefield’ for the previous night’s firers. Finding one of these was like winning the FA Cup. It would be held aloft as the finder danced around taunting the others, for we all knew its worth as barter. One parachute was worth at least three ammo belts, easy! It was not unusual to see the lucky finder staggering home, almost drunkenly, under the weight of bartered bandoliers.

The most dangerous items found were part of the army’s pot flares. We knew a spent pot flare when we saw one (and in fact never found one that wasn’t, such was the thoroughness of the Army clean up in relation to these items). We would deftly remove them from the metal stakes they sat on for it was the stake that was the prize and usually two prizes because normal practice was that there would be another one a short distance away and it was this stake onto which the almost invisible wire from the pot flare would be attached. Anyone walking between the two stakes would in all probability trip over the wire which would cause the flare to activate and light up the surrounding area. Theory and practice was that defenders would place the flares out, noting the locations, and train their weapons, normally a machine gun, on them and when tripped unleash hell in that direction. When used on night firing it was normal for the flares to be placed so that they would be tripped by the tactically approaching troops in order that they could practise their drills in reaction to an ambush.

The stakes themselves consisted of a main length of thin solid metal sharply pointed at one end. This was

the part that was to be driven into the ground. Welded to it were two L shaped pieces of similar metal, one facing upwards and the lower one facing downwards.

The lower L helped to stabilise the stake when it was driven into the ground. The upper held the pot flare.

The overall shape of the stake made it ideal for use as a form of ‘Tommy’ gun as far as us kids were concerned and we would charge through the undergrowth shouting “Brrrrrrrrr, Brrrrrrrrr” in emulation of the sound a machine gun makes totally oblivious to the danger that the sharply pointed

‘weapon’ undoubtedly possessed. It was, I’ve often thought, a miracle that no one had ever been speared during the close quarter combat that followed such death defying frontal assaults.

Often, we would sit and watch the soldiers being given instruction on the field that doubled as a football and hockey pitch and which lay between the married quarters and the entrance to the ranges. Sometimes they would just be throwing the white practice grenades from the pits that were dotted around the periphery of the field whilst on other, more exciting, occasions they would be receiving instruction in the safe handling and

use of the simulated grenades known as

‘Thunderflashes’. These were ostensibly tubes of hardened cardboard containing gunpowder and an integral fuse that looked like the chocolate brown head of a match and they were ignited in much the same way except the striker, a solid piece of material that looked like the brown stuff on the side of a box of matches, would be drawn across the fuse. The thunderflash would then start to hiss and would be thrown varying distances depending upon the ability of the thrower.

Shortly after there would be a very satisfying ‘BANG’

and an even more satisfying cloud of smoke.

We were rarely chased away from these demonstrations simply because the Instructor would almost invariably be one of our fathers who would solemnly tell us to sit at the back and far enough away from the soldiers so as not to be a distraction to them.

This was serious stuff.

One of the favourite lessons was ‘Camouflage and Concealment’. On these occasions the gang would double back to the range road and into the rear of the bushes from where we could infiltrate the hiding soldiers’ positions. It was now that the game began. In

simple terms, we would engage our victim with a friendly, seemingly innocent, conversation. Things like

“What are you doing?” or “What’s that gun called?”

Having beguiled some hapless talking bush we’d go for the jugular with a “Got any sweets?” For the most part the soldiers were amicable and readily supplied the necessary, accompanied by a friendly “Now off you go, there’s good lads”. Occasionally, a soldier who wasn’t having a good day would tell us to “Fuck off”

whereupon one of us would start to indicate to the class at the opposite end of the field where the miscreant was hiding. This would bring an immediate pleading response which would only end when the question,

“We said, you got any sweets?” was answered with good grace and quick supply. Soldiers always seemed to have something they didn’t realise they no longer wanted in their pockets so on receipt of a few boiled, sticky sweets or, if lucky, a Mars bar (whose chocolate was mottled white through prolonged storage in a ration pack) we would move on to another victim.

Three or four was enough to satiate our evil intentions and retiring to the back of the little ‘wood’ of bushes, we’d sit in the grass and ration out the proceeds before

moving on to the next adventure. In winter things were a bit more sedate but the ranges, in our minds now the Russian Steppe, still needed regular patrolling.

On days when there’d been heavy snowfall we’d play ‘find the trench’. The winner was the one who successfully leaped forward into pristine snow and promptly disappeared from sight into one of the wood lined pits used for grenade throwing. You might think they’d be the loser but we didn’t quite see it that way.

Surprisingly, none of us ever got seriously injured.

If we were at a loss for something to do in the spring and summer, after football, cricket, dutch arrows and general exploring we’d go down to the nearby terminus of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway (one time reputedly the smallest public railway in the world), buy a platform ticket and bother the drivers of the small, but perfectly formed, trains until they thrust cotton waste at us and told us to wipe the engine down.

Once or twice they even used us as labour to push the turntable around so the incoming engine would be ready for its next outgoing trip. Other times, we’d simply head down to the adjacent Military Canal, pool what cash we had and hire, on a very short lease, an

Indian canoe which we’d paddle like maniacs up and down until the man called us back in.

The halcyon days of my little life in Hythe were interrupted when Dad was posted to Penicuik, in Scotland. Edinburgh lay only 15 miles away and so began my Scottish schooling at a primary school in the

‘hamlet’ of Milton Bridge.

At this time in history, corporal punishment and mental torture were popular in the teaching world, none more so than in Scotland.

The headmaster was essentially a decent man but felt that discipline was important. The Scots had a penchant for the strap, a belt like device with a specially manufactured split in the end in order to inflict maximum pain. It was applied to the palm of the hand. The good thing about getting the strap from Mr Naismith was his accuracy. There were no wild swipes to the wrist or fingers, no second attempts, palm of the hand, whack! Ouch! Done. He did, however, believe in applying maximum force in an effort to prevent further need. The punishment was usually applied in the entrance hall which led to what seemed to be a very

long corridor. I was always grateful he had no need of a run up.

Off the corridor lay a few more classrooms and what I can only describe as a small exercise area where we were weekly forced to perform ‘Scottish dancing’. As a direct consequence of this activity, to this very day, I have to be pissed as a newt to perform any form of dance movement.

The mental torture employed was to refuse you permission to remove your chair from your desk until you had answered a question regarding the ‘times table’. Now, whilst I was pretty good at 1 to 6 the problem was that everyone else was as well.

An early form of what would now surely be considered racial harassment against the token school Sassenach was the teacher’s inability to recognise me until we hit the 7 to 9 times tables. Basically, these were my weak point and, to be honest, nothing has really improved. To this day, I can tell you that 8 times 8 is 64 but before and after that I’m knackered unless I take my socks off. When we hit the 10 to 12 times tables I was back in my element but, seemingly recognising this, the teacher threw in the 13 times table

just for personal pleasure. At that point in my life I wasn’t sure that such things were legitimately allowed to go that high.

Another form of messing with our heads was denying us the opportunity to buy a McVitie’s ‘Royal Scot’ biscuit. At milk break time in Scotland you could, if you’d remembered to take your money, purchase some of these delicious biscuits to go with your milk. Our previous teacher had allowed us to run up a modest ‘slate’ if we’d left home without the necessary cash but all of a sudden the new one wouldn’t have it. Then came a double blow, McVities, obviously in league with our very own version of Cruella de Ville, changed the packaging from round to

‘squared off oblong’ which meant 4 biscuits less in a packet and then they had the impudence to charge the same price. This meant, for some reason I’ve never been able to work out, that we were rationed to two biscuits each and they cost twice as much. I suspected the 13 times table.

All in all though, it was a decent school and the head, despite his propensity to use the strap, was a likeable chap.

But there were other attractions and adventures. The disused railway line, the abandoned station, the railway tunnel and the railway viaduct over the local golf course, from which we would drop small clumps of cinder bound weeds onto the heads of the golfers below, whilst lying dangerously close to the edge.

There were the ponds in the village of nearby Auchendinny, fed by the River Esk, where there were plenty of minnows, sticklebacks and frog spawn to be found. There was the North Camp, a collection of mainly wooden creosoted buildings which served as accommodation for members of the TA on their weekend and annual camps. A former Prisoner of War camp, it was irresistible to every kid in the married quarters from the age of 6 to 14, particularly when the TA parked their vehicles on the former parade square.

Then we’d descend upon it and explore almost each and every vehicle whilst keeping a careful eye on any sentry posted to guard them. It was on one such occasion that I found and devoured a most satisfying half eaten fruit pie from the front seat of a jeep.

When not occupied, the camp was guarded by a series of watchmen, known to us as ‘Watchies’, all of whom appeared to be in an advanced state of decay and all of whom were no match for we battle hardened veterans of hit and run. When not staging various un-named battles of World War 2 we’d let ourselves into selected accommodation huts and play various games, usually consisting of someone marching up and down with a clipboarded inventory shouting derogatory

‘Army’ type remarks at the others who were being

‘made’ to perform somersaults over the collection of mattresses we’d dumped on the floor.

Then there was ‘the Bing’, a Scottish word for ‘pile’

or ‘heap’ which is exactly what it was, the spoil from the defunct coal mines of the area. An elongated ‘L’

shape, the part nearest the entrance was seemingly the oldest for it had an abundance of bushes large and small growing from it. The far end was devoid of such and was covered only by clumps of grass making it unattractive.

The Bing was where we all spent many happy hours charging up and down its steep slopes emulating the

‘taking’ and defending of Korean hills and German or

French Alps, whilst on other occasions it made an excellent hill top fort from which anything reasonably manageable to get up there in the first place could be rolled back down into the sword wielding hordes intent on conquer. We transformed the Bing, eventually, into Iwo Jima by digging shallow pits into its crust and shielding them with slatted wooden covers we’d constructed from bits and pieces scrounged from the Council Road Works site at its base. We’d camouflage them with grass and bushes before someone would slip inside ready to ambush any probing patrol or full on frontal assault. The Bing was put there for us and we knew it.

After 3 years, we were posted back to Hythe where I attended my brother’s old school, St Leonard’s C of E

primary which caused me and his former teacher, Mr Bishop, some confusion one day when, in the short corridor between the two ‘old arse students’

classrooms, he pulled me to one side and asked what I was doing back there again. Don’t get me wrong, it was a friendly encounter. I tried to tell him that I’d never actually been there in the first place but he was convinced that I had so I felt the need to agree with

him and said it was my father’s fault because he was in the Army. It was seat of the pants, spur of the moment stuff and it was the best I could do. He looked at me with a hint of sadness as if realising his former brilliant student had contracted some form of regressive condition. For me, it was probably my first encounter with the onset of senile dementia because I’d never thought my brother Graeme and I looked alike, he was a stick thin Mike Nesmith (of the group the ‘Monkees’) lookalike whilst I was a fatter faced cherubic looking pain in the arse to most people apart from my mother who quite clearly was either deranged or a saint.

The good news was there was no strap at St Leonard’s. They believed in tradition, so Mr Skinner, the balding rotund headmaster, used the cane instead but I’ll give him his due, he only used it as a last resort, when a stern talking to had failed to sufficiently impress. I was the beneficiary of two consultations with him and was mighty grateful for his lack of enthusiasm for a good thrashing. I hadn’t done anything amazingly wrong like burning the school down or dealing in drugs, the sort of things that became very popular in various cities in later years, but I and

two others had twice left the school at lunchtime without permission.

The first time was when we skipped down the alley way that led to the local fruit and veg shop to buy an apple and a carrot each. The second was when we wandered off to the local high street, coming back with a copy of ‘Itchycoo Park’ by the Small Faces, bought from Woolworths, and some action figure clothing from the local toy shop ( I’d weighed in my ‘Tommy Gunn’ soldier figure’s medal cards to get him a free pair of pants and a jacket). On this second occasion, the cane was flexed and waved around a few times for effect until we tearfully promised solemnly never, ever, ever to do it again, ever.

There were many good things about St Leonard’s.

Our teacher, Mr Vincent, was a lovely man who made every lesson interesting. He’d also spend many afternoons reading the brilliant stories of C S Lewis to us.

Also, the school had a fantastic football kit of green and white hoops, white shorts and hooped socks, the football strip worn by the mighty Celtic who’d just won the European Cup. I still struggle to convey the

pride and energy (having spent three years in Scotland) that pulling that jersey over your head caused. Sadly, it didn’t always improve our playing. To be fair, our pitch, on the common opposite the school, did consist of turf shyly clinging to a shingle base with divots and bald patches all over the place, especially in the goalmouths which were really ‘shallow graves’ filled with stones. But, having said that, ours was one of the better school pitches, at least it was flat. We used to play another school, I think it was Saltwood Primary, and their pitch couldn’t have been more than 30 metres in length with goals that were ridiculously wide whilst the crossbar was equally ridiculously low. It made for high scoring games where the goalkeepers were usually the highest scorers.

Another place we played at had a pitch with a big dip in the middle which was compounded by it being on the side of a hill. If the ball went out of play on the downhill side it was a three hour walk and a bus ride to get it back. I realised the problem when our manager called me back and gave me a packet of sandwiches and fourpence to phone home. After that I switched to playing centre half.

It was at this school that I passed my 11+ to enter Grammar school without really knowing what I was doing. In fact I was bitterly disappointed that I wouldn’t be going to the local secondary school with my mates, the added attraction being my brother was a prefect there so I expected some protection. Instead, I was sent to ‘The Harvey Grammar School’ in Folkestone, just up the coast, with the school swots Martin, Stephen and Michael. It turned out they were all splendid chaps and their studiousness rubbed off on me. Apart from the ritualised torture of the first week, I loved the place and the only remarkable thing that happened to me was I once bought a packet of crisps, from the woodwork and metal work annexe’s own

‘tuck shop’ which consisted of water and two soggy crisps, nothing else. Had I known then what I know now I could have dissolved into feeling ‘offended and bullied’, sued the bottoms off Smiths and retired to a beachfront villa in Barbados but I just went to explain and they gave me another packet.

Harvey Grammar School was where I began to live the life of my heroes Jennings and Darbyshire from the novels by Anthony Buckeridge and, although the

school didn’t take boarders, it was everything I imagined the dynamic duo’s school to have been. For the most part the teachers were hewn from the same rock that Buckeridge’s school masters had been fashioned; disciplined yet benign whose lessons were always interesting and often entertaining. The school was imposing and built on two levels. To me it was how a school should look.

In the first week, tradition dictated that the

‘newbies’, who were cleverly distinguished from others by their shiny little faces, shorts, new briefcases and caps, had to be corralled into a corner of the quadrangle opposite the Tuck Shop and unceremoniously half crushed to death, seemingly by the entire school.

Having survived this on three occasions I decided to delay any further attempts at visiting the Tuck Shop until the following week. Life was good and I thrived. I was, as far as I was concerned, quite simply living the

‘dream’.

It wasn’t to last though and, after 12 months of dreaming, we were sent to Warminster, on the edge of the Army’s Salisbury Plain training area, prior to Dad’s final posting in Lancashire. A temporary placement, it

meant I would have to change schools, either attending Frome Grammar or going as a boarder to another just outside the ‘metropolis' that was Preston. My parents sought the advice of a teacher from my brother’s school. I briefly overheard some talk about a different

‘syllabub’ and dismissed it because I wasn’t really bothered what desserts they served with school dinners.

I later discovered not all schools taught the same way.

It depended upon which ‘syllabus’ they were using.

Consequently, when Mum and Dad were kind enough to ask me what I wanted to do, I decided I didn’t want to emulate Jennings and Darbyshire too much so chose the comforts of home.

My first day at Frome was a bit of a shock. The school was nothing more than an over large bungalow.

Where was the top floor? Furthermore, I still hadn’t made my peace with the brown blazer and yellow striped tie I’d been made to wear. In my opinion, whoever decided this was proper school uniform was quite obviously unhinged and it didn’t take long to discover that instead of seamlessly meshing in with the rest of the kids the difference in the syllabus meant I didn’t have a clue what any of the lessons were about.

It’s like I’d entered a parallel universe. In the first French lesson, Pierre wasn’t in the garden anymore, the little sod had wandered through the dining room, left the house altogether and was visiting the railway station and various shops. The world had gone mad. If that wasn’t bad enough, maths lessons consisted of buggering about with ‘statistics’ and being overly concerned with ‘topology’. I’m still not absolutely certain what that actually is but it had something to do with the London Underground map, for reasons I’ve never been able to fathom. What happened to fractions and equations ?

I was lost and my defence mechanism was to imitate various teachers and be the class clown. Luckily, the summer holidays were quickly upon us and I’d managed to be in two different schools and syllabus’s before I’d even got out of the first form. After the holidays, same subjects but mostly new teachers. It gave me opportunities with some to avoid their classes and hide in the toilets reading the Beano. I’m fairly sure there was at least one teacher who didn’t even know I was absent because he’d never met me in the first place.

Thankfully, the temporary placement dragged by fairly quickly and I arrived at Hutton Grammar School, near Preston. The Lancashire Police Headquarters was only a couple of stone throws away. This was more like it. They even still had a few boarders. Looking at their accommodation I was more than happy to be a ‘day boy’.

There’s always a downside, though, and I spotted this one straight away. The sign on the gym door advised that all rugby boots and cricket footwear should be removed before entering. Sod all about football boots.

Now, I wasn’t a novice to rugby, we’d started playing it at Frome so I had a pretty good idea what it was about. It had been introduced by an enthusiastic teacher who I didn’t want to disappoint so I’d turned up and pitched in. It was the total absence of the

‘beautiful game’ that made my heart sink.

Cricket was no problem but it had lost its attraction to me once I’d seen the devastating effect it had on a fielder at ‘silly mid on’. He’d received a superbly struck cricket ball to the head and I’d never seen anyone collapse so efficiently. They’d carried him off

on an old door and it was weeks before anyone saw the chap again. Worse still was the discovery the school also conducted lessons on a Saturday morning. If I thought that was over the top, the bad news just kept on coming because if you showed a modicum of skill at rugby you were press ganged into one of the school’s teams and that was Saturday afternoon taken care of. It was a six day week!

I’d hoped to play the rugby dope but within a short time I had to show my ‘prowess’ at the game because I felt my life was in danger if I didn’t. Having been placed, initially, in the lowest set for ability, the first few games proved this was a very dangerous place to be. Most, if not all, of my team mates when standing still appeared normal decent human beings but once set in motion, they lost all coordination of their limbs. This made being tackled by any one of them a nightmare.

They would launch themselves haphazardly at the holder of the ball; arms and legs and hands everywhere resulting in the vanquished left on the ground bleeding from multiple facial scratches and clutching their testicles trying not to vomit. I decided I wasn’t going to die. Not here! Not yet! I summoned up everything I’d

learned and unleashed it with a vengeance. The games master couldn’t figure out what had happened. In another age he would’ve probably had me drug tested.

Promotion followed swiftly and I joined the elite band of boys who played on the far field. They knew the rules, testicles were off limits. Unless, of course, you were in a scrum.

Although this school had the same syllabus as my first, I struggled to recover the time spent avoiding lessons and, through a series of practical jokes and unfortunate incidents, I became one of ‘the usual suspects’ for a number of scholarly sleuths. I always felt this was somewhat unfair but had to admit I hadn’t helped my cause any. The ‘tin tack on the teacher’s chair’ caper hadn’t been thoroughly ‘risk assessed’. In the comics I’d read, this’d always been hilarious, even if the teacher had spotted it. In fact, I was amazed he hadn’t. I was fairly convinced I’d made it obvious.

Unfortunately the teacher, whom I actually liked, failed to use his observational skills to their full potential and sat down on it almost with a flourish. Right up until that moment, until hearing that awful scream, I thought he was playing ‘the game’ then, sadly, I realised that

having an 11/16ths blued sterilised upholsterer’s tin tack pierce your buttock wasn’t actually funny at all. I promptly owned up, well, maybe not that promptly. He threatened the entire class with a month’s detention. No one said a word. The solidarity of my peers was heart warming. Even the twins who were the class swots and shove halfpenny champions said nothing, not even a subtle inclination of the head. In my very own Spartacus moment, I bit the bullet and stood up. For the next four weeks I did my ‘time’ sat in a classroom, occasionally with one or two other dopes but mostly on my own, writing seemingly endless lines. I’d have to tell my parents something so I told them I’d been staying behind to play tennis. They bought me a second hand racquet.

It was the same with the unfortunate incidents. I’d no intention whatsoever to repeatedly break the windows in the art block. I always thought that if the school authorities had mended and extended the fence in the old tennis courts my efforts, during the lunch hour, to emulate Liverpool’s Emlyn ‘Crazy Horse’

Hughes’s blistering runs and cannonball shots would have ended more happily. The fact I always owned up,

many times reporting it myself, seemed to get overlooked. There was no time off for good behaviour at this establishment. Usually, my punishment was to spend my detention tidying the place up, brushing the floors and picking up bits of unwanted pots. Finding myself in a dusty room littered with bags of powdered clay at the start of my ‘career’, I was caught eyeing up the kiln in the corner. The art teacher told me not to remove a stopper that was tantalisingly sticking out of it halfway up because it would cause heat loss and possibly ruin the pots within. He then left, probably to mend a window. Alone, it was too much. I peered in and felt the heat gush out taking my eyebrow and eyelashes with it. It’s amazing how long it takes these things to grow back.

The times were changing and the ‘skinhead’ look was in amongst the really tough boys but we were only mock toughies so we generally decided the ‘suedehead’

look was preferable and sartorially superior – barathea blazers, military buttons, button down shirts and ridiculously wide parallel trousers and brogues if you could afford them. On the plus side, it allowed us to look more attractive to the less violent girls.

Up to this point, my mum had always insisted on choosing my shoes for me from a discount shoe shop in Preston called Tommy Ball’s. No doubt, he and the staff did their best to ensure the pairs hanging from racks against the wall were the same size but Mum seemed to have the knack of finding those that weren’t.

Consequently, I spent a lot of time wearing ill fitting fake crocodile skin winkle pickers which gave me corns. With the advent of my intended new look, I was desperate to ditch the shoes and get a pair of something more appropriate so Dad gave me a black pair of ‘Bata’

toe capped shoes issued to him by the Army’s quartermaster’s stores. The storeman must have wondered why my dad’s feet were shrinking but thankfully he said nothing. They were comfortable with a wide fitting and soon my corns and the accompanying funny walk disappeared. They helped me settle into the third form and, together with a new, long at the sides, short on top haircut, I looked sufficiently mentally unbalanced for people to think I was ‘well hard’. Having assumed the shoes were

‘steelies’ (steel toecapped), the hard knocks from the fourth and fifth forms gave me a respectful distance

and some welcome acceptance. My increasingly sullen looks complimented the overall effect.

I succeeded in making it through to the fifth form virtually unscathed and even acquired a real live girlfriend who suggested a new ‘just over the collar and stylishly parted in the middle’ hairdo which simply enhanced my reputation for being one of the right guys, which is sort of what brought about what comes next.

Midway through 1973, I and some others had a lucky escape. Having seen some tartan decked Irish individuals at the Liverpool FC matches some of the chaps from the year above, together with some selected people from my year, decided to form a ‘tartan gang’.

Now, in hindsight, none of us clearly understood the full implications of a tartan gang. We just knew they wore denim, looked dead hard and sometimes wore tartan, usually a scarf. The idea was to improve on this and trim the pockets and collar of your wrangler jacket with some natty red tartan, thoughtfully purchased by one of the chaps. I was asked to join. Now, to be honest, I’d probably struggle to fight my way out of a wet paper bag and once had to be rescued by said girlfriend’s ability to swing a handbag and place a well

aimed kick, but I’d discovered even then that image counts for a lot. Suffice it to say, I was honoured to have even been considered and if I stayed away from youth clubs my secret would be fairly safe.

One evening, whilst visiting her, there was a knock at the door. We were babysitting her younger brother and little sister and took a while to answer. At the far end of the close, silhouetted in the street lighting and strung out in a line, stood six individuals. Parallels, wrangler jackets and tartan. The theme from ‘the Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ was playing in my head. An emissary walked to a halfway point. My girlfriend went to meet him. I’d made the mistake of excitedly telling her of my invitation and knowing one or two of the individuals she’d decided it was never going to happen.

I was banished to doorstep guard. There was a short conversation, the emissary retreated, the gang turned as one and disappeared into the dark.

When ‘chided’ a few days later about how ‘your bird won’t let you out’ I said the first thing I could think of. “I was on a promise!” I lied. I was immediately forgiven.

Luckily, before I could ‘sign up’ by appearing in public, before I’d found someone who’d sew the tartan onto my jacket, before I could beg, steal or borrow the money for a pair of much sought after Fleming’s jeans, the tartan bedecked Bay City Rollers hit the charts with a vengeance and the rest is history. Realising the incongruity of being ‘dead ‘ard’ whilst dressed as a Roller’s fan, the tartan came off the others and the matter was never spoken of again.

My scholastic career ended with four ‘O’ levels out of nine taken: English Language, English Literature, Art and Geography, all oddly enough the only lessons I enjoyed. I felt fairly chuffed though as I’d only achieved three in the mocks. Still, it wasn’t enough to save me.

The school motto was ‘Aut Disce, Aut Discede’

translating as ‘either learn or leave’, something I’d been blissfully unaware of until years later, so it was no surprise to anyone but me when the Headmaster cut his losses and refused to take me back for even one more year.

I was now in the jobs market but opportunities for a well spoken, well read, painter and decorator who

knew his way around were few and far between and so I applied for a job at a well known steak house as a washer up.

The ‘interview’ with the manager took place on the stairs. I had a haircut reminiscent of Slade’s Noddy Holder and was wearing stack heels, a penny round purple fake Ben Sherman shirt, fake Prince of Wales check 22 inch parallels and a real Wrangler denim jacket with Slade lyrics written on the back in felt tip pen. I left ten minutes later having been told to report back at 2pm to the ‘Steak Bar’, ask for ‘Ross’ and to tell him I was his trainee chef for the night.

I spent an interesting late afternoon and evening helping Ross cook steaks, chips and mushrooms for dozens of customers. A trainee manager, he showed me the card system they used that basically taught anyone how to cook the meals in each ‘bar’. There were even pictures to show you how to dress the plates with watercress, lemon (if fish was served), tomato halves and the food itself.

I can confirm that this was a marvellous system which worked a charm because the following evening I was on my own as head chef of the Plaice Bar, upstairs

cooking Rump steak, Gammon and eggs and a nice bit of fish (plaice of course) all served with delicious chips and an appropriate garnish.

I survived for a week before another trainee manager, who was actually the resident chef, returned from his hols and resumed his position. Apparently the actual company rules said I should be supervised for a few weeks before being let loose on the public but there had been some sort of dispute the morning of my interview; the relief chef telling them all where they could stuff it and storming out, hence my instant promotion based entirely on needs must and my gullible face.

Barry, my new mate, look like Oliver Hardy without the moustache. He seemed to know what he was doing, generally speaking, but had a tendency to slosh the chip oil all over the place and to ignore the containers collecting fat from steaks cooking in the open grill, resulting in the contents spilling on the floor where, mixed with the chip oil, they formed a fat based version of an ice rink. If you walked in as a normal human being you were flat on your arse. I suppose comedy was just in Barry’s blood.

I made a few suggestions, most of which he dismissed as being impractical for some reason or other, so we ended up using flattened cardboard boxes to give us something to safely stand on. Had we known we’d almost invented the skateboard how different our lives might have been.

The kitchen was open plan; customers could see the chefs from the waist up. I’m fairly certain Michael Jackson was a customer one night and left with a great idea after seeing Barry and I gliding effortlessly from one end to the other.

Within a few weeks I was again on my own. I’d learned a lot in that time. Gone was the greasy floor, cardboard and overflowing fat containers. I’d learnt the system and had a routine, the floor was dry, the walls clean and you could lean on the counter, affecting an air of superiority, without having to wring your sleeves out. Some nights were quiet, but by midweek it was warming up. Friday and Saturday were hideously busy; parties of 25 or more were not unknown, all wanting to be fed at the same time. I’d become the culinary world equivalent of a plate spinner. I was nearly 17 years of age.

REVELATION

The impetus for my joining the Army had been the fact that my then girlfriend was pregnant and I knew from my meagre wages that I could never afford a place of our own. I also knew, from being an ‘Army brat’, a child of a soldier, that the Army supplied everything needed for a happy home life.

The year was 1975, long hair and ridiculous pants were the fashion, and I’d just handed in my notice as the Delicatessen Manager at the flagship Lancastrian Co-op shop in Chapel Street, Southport.

I hadn’t always been the counter supervisor. I started my retail career as a trainee manager but seeing as the Co-op’s policy seemed to be ‘sack the store manager at least every 4 months’ my terms of employment had become lost in the fog of battle. This was only discovered when the new boss politely asked me what the fuck I was doing signing till receipts, and other such managerial tasks, between trips to the internal warehouse for more cold meats and cheese.

Our discussion led to the discovery they didn’t actually have a contract of employment for me but seeing as I’d been working there for over 12 months,

and they admitted they’d been paying me, he offered me the full time post on the finest delicatessen counter in the Northwest of England. Neither he nor I were boasting. Several other retailers had told me and him apparently. He was not only impressed with my counter displays (the result of an ‘O’ Level in Art, I like to think) but also the fact that, since the last bloke had left, the profits had gone up under my ‘temporary’

stewardship. I put it down to my wonderful displays; he bluntly told me, with a look of disbelief and suspicion, it was down to my not stealing the takings.

My position was later sealed when I regularly achieved takings of £1000 or more per week, something that had, he told me, never been achieved before.

I can recall a number of things of note from my days at the Co-op.

The sugar shortage. This was the closest I’d come to unbridled violence until the Toxteth riots of 1981 and 1985. It was impossible to get a trolley of sugar out of the warehouse to the display stand without attracting the attention of hordes of middle aged and elderly women who made the wrestlers Giant Haystacks and Mick McManus look like a couple of wusses. It was

even worse than the previous year’s toilet roll debacle.

Me and Rob, the warehouse guy, took to just pushing the wheeled pallet through the plastic hanging ‘doors’

and watching the ‘piranha’ devour it from the safety of the dark.

Rob. A nice guy who’d applied for a shop floor post but was persuaded his future lay in the internal warehouse mainly due to the fact that he looked and dressed like Alice Cooper. He’d introduced me to some of the album’s, which nearly led to my future wife deserting me when I used a record voucher she’d been given for her 21st birthday to buy Billion Dollar Babies and played ‘I love the Dead’ more often than I should’ve.

The security personnel were from the headquarters in Preston and were led by a thin woman with a jet black beehive, almost like a miniature bearskin. She looked like a Dr Who villain and would sweep into the store flanked by a couple of male flunkies which always created a sudden exit of the heads of various counters dashing to fill the lift to the first floor where their personal lockers were stashed. My last manager

was particularly fond of her. He once told me, “I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.”

Christmas. It was always a good time. Together with the lad off the fruit and veg and the butchers I would resort to a local hostelry and have a swift lunchtime drink. Unfortunately none of us appeared to know the meaning of the word ‘swift’ and I discovered I couldn’t drink the amounts they did. They seemed impervious to the alcohol. I, on the other hand, wasn’t and so I was found two Christmas’s running sat on a till dispensing huge amounts of dividend stamps from the auto dispensers, for the merest of purchases. No one got me on M.O. because we’d had three different managers since the last time.

So, back to the Queen’s shilling. I don’t recall ever being given this item but the nice man at the recruiting office must have given us a banknote or two because I and my newly found, although brief, friends decamped to the nearest pub, after saying some magic words, and got pissed. Only one of those who were sworn in that day didn’t come with us but it was probably because he was quite decrepit. He was 28. We were 18.

My father, the ex-soldier, gave me some advice.

Good; “Don’t let them talk you into going in the Infantry” and not so good; “Here. Use this for your boots” as he handed me a tin of cherry blossom. As every soldier knows, this is not what will get you a good shine, or ‘bull’, on your boots. When I asked him years later why he’d done it, he simply said, “Well, we didn’t have any Kiwi in the cupboard.”

After an introduction to Army life and the discovery their barber knew only one style of haircut, which last reached its height of popularity during the summer of 1910, I bid the Selection Centre in Sutton Coldfield farewell, fresh faced and eager but somewhat nervous.

I was on my way to the Depot of the Royal Military Police.

Why them? I blame Dixon of Dock Green, John Thaw in Redcap and the stories in ‘Commando’ and

‘War Picture Library’ comics. Originally, I’d been accepted for Lancashire Constabulary’s Cadets but had bottled out about a week before I was due to turn up.

That’s how I ended up in ‘retail’ as we shop workers like to call it. Now, I was in desperate need of some cutlery and a plate or two that came with a free roof.

Dad was right. They tried to tell me I wasn’t the sort the RMP were looking for. I wasn’t so sure because none of them were actually Military Police themselves.

They were very keen though that I was the right material for ... the Infantry. After signing a form to leave the Army my only thought was, ‘Fuck and I’ve got this stupid haircut.’ I was privy, however, to the following conversation a Sergeant had with an unseen Officer.

“What? He’s signed the chit?”

“Yes, Sir?”

“Why did you let him do that?”

“I couldn’t stop him, Sir. He was most insistent.”

“Bloody hell! Well, let him go to the RMP. We’ll pick him up when they get rid of him.”

It was a plan, I suppose, but fatally flawed. The RMP never did get rid of me.

The five month training period at the Depot in Chichester was a bit of a blur to be honest. The longest 6 weeks of my life were spent on basic military training. Shouting was very popular amongst the staff.

Some were nice shouters; Staff Sergeant (SSgt) Mick Conoboy, a man who looked like the archetypal

scary Military Policeman but who was in fact a good mentor and fine example and SSgt Mick Berger, drill with him was always hard work but always a pleasure because he had a sense of humour and possessed amazing God like abilities (he once threw his pace stick into the grass, behind him, where it stood rigid for a few moments then slowly started to fall. Without being able to see it, he shouted “stand still!” and it did).

Then there was Sgt Frank Quigley, who took us for weapons training which included intervals where he would have us doing all manner of odd things because

“I can’t do this myself but I’ve seen it done on the telly.” He introduced us to the word ‘Pucking’. He used it a lot. Finally, there was Cpl Bert Johnson, our beloved squad Corporal whose hero was Battery Sergeant Major Williams from the then popular comedy series, ‘It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum.’ He’d perfected the accent and technique and loved to whisper in our ears, “Oh, dear! How sad! Never mind,”

whenever he thought it would cheer us up, which was often.

The not so nice shouters? Any Military Policeman from this period will know who they were. It wasn’t

the manner in which they shouted. Everyone did it the same. It was just some did it with malice.

There was one chap I thought I’d made my mind up about but, now, I’m not absolutely sure. He was the training Company Sergeant Major (CSM) and it’s fair to say he had a pretty fearsome reputation. Even the VTs (Voluntary Transfers: soldiers of experience who were trying to transfer from one branch of the Army to another) were, at the very least, wary of him. A Northern Irish accent added to the level of menace.

If he took a dislike to you then that was it. To pack your bags and leave was about the only option unless you were on a ‘mission from God’ or mentally deranged.

Certainly,

all

the

DEs

(Direct

Entries: straight from Civvy Street) were terrified of him. The mere sight of him approaching would bring the less firm to a state of panic bordering on incontinence.

I was once part of a number of soldiers walking from the NAAFI block towards the main entrance. We weren’t in the same squad, just spread out along the road, marching in groups of two or three, all with a

different end task in mind. Suddenly, people were calling his name back to the others.

There he was, on the far side of the main sports field having just left his married quarter. If the unmistakable huge golf umbrella wasn’t a dead giveaway, the voice that followed was. Before he’d even spoken, the panic had set in. The marching, that had been going so well, briskly fell apart because people were trying too hard not to. He’d found displeasure in someone but no one had a clue who.

Like something from a comedy film, it all started to fragment as some detoured down a convenient side road and others turned round and began to swiftly march in the opposite direction. There was at least one guy who couldn’t make his mind up and so ended up going round in circles. I could hear whimpering.

Luckily, my colleagues and I were quick to reverse our course and set off to go round the back of the accommodation blocks from where we could use another road which would bypass him, we hoped. I’d never marched so fast.

It worked. We were able to sneak past whilst he strode across the field to berate several individuals

who’d been captured by their own indecision.

I only ever had three personal ‘meetings’ with the CSM. The first when I was given a ‘show parade’

because my boots were considered not to be of the right standard by a Corporal who had the power to think such a thing, another when I was entertaining the lads in our block with my pretty accurate impression of him and the last time was when I formally ‘passed out’

of training which resulted in him putting me on a charge of being on parade with a ‘dirty’ white belt.

The Corporal (Cpl) who stuck me on the show parade took great delight in telling me the CSM would be officiating that night. I knew where he was coming from, so stood outside the block with my best boots in hand almost wetting myself. Next to me was a bloke I knew only from having seen on the morning parades when all the squads would be present. I knew the CSM

didn’t like him because I’d noticed, several times, my

‘friend’s’ own squad marching over his boots whilst he watched in his socks and the CSM, pace stick rammed under his arm, looking like a cat with a bowl of cream.

The bloke gave me a friendly smile. He was a South African or New Zealander but it was hard to tell from a

smile, friendly or not. His boots were immaculate. Like shiny black glass. I looked down at mine. A decent effort for someone just about to reach the end of their second week but I hadn’t yet got the knack or the passion. I was fucked. I was going to jail!

The CSM arrived and walked down the long path.

He was an awesome and terrifying spectacle. It was all I could do to stop myself farting. To cut a long story short, his dislike of this individual was so strong he bawled him out and cited my boots a shining example.

Apparently, the logic was I’d only been there two weeks and was producing boots of ‘considerable’

quality but he’d been there much, much longer and could only produce “this shite!” the CSM hissed, flinging them onto the manicured grass.

One day, having perfected my impression of him, I thought it would be a wizard wheeze to prank everyone on our side of the accommodation block.

“Stand by yur beds!” I called in my best Northern Irish/Belfast accent then followed it with a number of carefully chosen expressions littered with expletives, to good effect. In I went and oh how we laughed as I strutted up and down. I was enjoying myself so much it

took me a while to recognise the change in mood and the fact they were all now staring steadfastly into infinity. Someone desperately caught my eye. I fell silent.

He approached from behind, and slowly, menacingly, whispered in my ear. “So, yuh think yur a funny mahn, nigh?” I was chilled to the bone; my head empty apart from a high pitched little voice repeatedly sobbing, ‘Fuck!’

After a stroll around the room, occasionally poking something with his golf umbrella, he returned. I’m sure he could see the fear in my eyes; the muscles in my anus were working overtime.

A sinister little smile and he leaned in, “Very good.

Carry on, why don’t yuh?” and then sauntered away. It was several minutes before we felt brave enough to make sure he’d gone.

My last encounter was the fateful passing out

‘parade’. At some stage of my training someone must have shown my squad how to whiten the webbing belts we were required to wear over our blue best service dress (known as No1 Dress). I don’t remember being there and can only surmise it must have been on one of

the many nights I fell asleep in the bath, waking up in the dark, shivering. How hard could it be anyway? All I had to do was wipe the belt over with Meltonian shoe white and let it dry. Little did I know, there was a fine art to getting the water to shoe whitener ratio correct and to how it was applied.

Although I was lucky enough to be in one of the first squads who were allowed to wear the easy clean plastic white belts for everyday parades, because this was the Army, the sensible course of being able to wear these almost always pristine items on a important occasion was forbidden. That morning, armed with the single stripe of a British Lance Corporal (Lcpl -

commonly referred to as a lance jack), I put my belt on and the shoe whitener promptly cracked. It was too late for running repairs so I, together with two immaculate VTs, went to be inspected by the CSM before we were presented to the Commanding Officer (CO) who would give us all a little certificate. The CSM seemed a tadge on edge and, leaning close, sprayed me in a fine mist of spittle as he hissed his favourite phrase into my face:

“You dozy fockin’ mahn, you!”

I’d expected more, to be honest, but time seemed to be running on so he had the two VTs tidy me up as best they could. I wasn’t a shambles but I wasn’t immaculate and only immaculate was good enough.

The only thing I remember about the charge I faced was that, quite rightly, I was found guilty by the American exchange Captain who told me my failure to keep my belt nice and white would cost the lives of my colleagues... or something reasonably similar. I’ve no recollection how much it cost me. When I came back out the CSM simply looked at me, shook his head and said, “Get along nigh an’ get outta mey sight.” It must have been the sad gormless look on my face or maybe he needed a bigger challenge that day, maybe I touched a chord somewhere deep inside or perhaps it was just wind.

I went back to the block, changed and dragged my kit down to the train station to go home on leave. It was all a bit of an anti-climax.

My career as a Military Policeman started well.

Posted to what was called the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), a place the rest of the world knew

better as West Germany, I misread the dates on my plane ticket and travel docs and arrived a day late.

I found myself in Osnabruck on a sweltering day and my fashionable shirt stuck to me like the proverbial shit on a wet blanket. I had chosen to dress in a wide-lapelled brown jacket which was part of my best going out togs. It was great for the colder months but I discovered that in that summer of ’75 it was like wearing a carpet remnant. To make matters worse, I complemented it with a pair of itchy flares that I hadn’t realised had such a high woollen content. My new pair of stack-heeled shoes were already rubbing my feet.

To make matters worse, not only was I carrying a bulky kitbag and toting an Army suitcase but I got off at the wrong gate to the Barracks and had to ‘walk miles’ to find the MP’s entrance. Being in mainland Europe, where they measure things in ‘kilometres’, it was even further!

Considering I was late, everyone seemed fairly pleasant, maybe because I told them it was all down to a misprint on the forms. When asked for them, I said the RAF had taken them off me.

A quick interview with the Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) and a swift beer in the Corporals Mess then the barman ferried me in a little Land Rover to a halfway stop-off point on my way to Münster, the company’s detachment that policed the 4 Guards Armoured Brigade garrison. En route, he told me about some ominous thing called ‘the Boot’. As most of my new unit were away on exercise, he advised I was best to get out of the way before they returned. He said it would be more ‘civilised’ that way.

At the drop-off, I was collected by a chap who introduced himself as ‘Andy Aird’. He was the first person from Münster I met and it was to be he who ferried me back the other way when I left the Unit two and a half years later. A nice guy, he earned himself the sobriquet of ‘the smiling assassin’ because of the little look and smile he would give his policing partners to signify his patience with a squaddie was exhausted and an arrest was imminent.

I was greeted at the Duty Room with the news I was supposed to have been on the exercise but because I hadn’t turned up one of the others had to go in my place. He’d been looking forward to some down time

doing garrison duties with no bosses around to complicate things and was, apparently, not very happy but they told me when they last saw him he was looking forward to meeting me when the exercise was over. The CSM was also itching to meet me. What nice people!

I was rostered for duty the following morning. It would be a 24-hour duty with one day off afterwards, then back for another 24. This would be life for the next two or three-week duration of Exercise ‘let’s thrash the Russians’ or whatever it was called. I took advantage of the evening off by going to the Mess where I found myself alone with the barman until two of the blokes from the single men’s accommodation strolled over and advised me to get the initiation ceremony of ‘the Boot’ out of the way. Seemingly, it could get quite ‘messy’ if I waited for the rest of the detachment to return. The barman solemnly agreed. It was only some time later I realised that whilst it was indeed sound advice, the barman’s enthusiasm for the event was coloured by the fact that he was due to hand over his responsibilities after the Exercise and thought

it best that he benefit from my Deutsch marks instead of the next guy.

Enthusiastically, he poured a sample of every beer he had into a large boot-shaped glass. I’ve no idea how much it held but it was probably around the three-litre mark. To follow this I was told I would have to chase it down with a half-pint glass of every short behind the bar. All of this, of course, I had to pay for. In addition, they said it was also traditional for the initiate to buy the whole Mess a drink as well. I looked at the company, and although I already had two pints under my belt, the savings were more than apparent. I wildly declared to the three of them the drinks were on me.

A stool was drawn away from the bar counter and an empty fire bucket placed upon it. I would need it, they said. The rules were simple. Drink the beer without taking the glass from my lips, then down the shorts in one go. To the accompaniment of a cheery chant about a Zulu chief, I began.

It started well. Surprisingly, I’d quickly figured out the toe of the boot should face upwards or else I’d be wearing a lot of the contents (it must have been because I was half pissed already). It quickly proved

harder than I had thought but I soldiered on. Half way down, an explosive burp produced a fizzy facial but I was on a mission of manhood and eventually the last of the beer had been swallowed. At this point, I felt madly pissed. I handed the boot back to the barman, involuntarily belched twice then threw up in the bucket, declared I was finished then threw up again ...

and again. I’m not sure how I felt at this point but good wasn’t a word I would have used to describe it. Now for the shorts. Down in one go. I waited to puke again but no, I actually felt great and promptly ordered a double Bacardi and coke. I necked it down and ordered another. The last thing I remember was the barman placing it on the counter and then, I was told later, I fell off my stool and had to be carried across to my room.

The thing was they didn’t do it straight away, in case I made a recovery and wanted another drink. So, I lay on the floor for another two hours while several others drank around me. The following morning I was woken by the night shift at 7 am. I felt surprisingly good and later attributed it to the extra two hours kip I’d had on the floor of the Mess.

Luckily, I’d pressed my kit before I went to the Mess but my best boots were now stuck to the plastic bag I’d put them in for transport purposes. Prior to leaving the UK, I’d tried a little trick I’d been told and painted them with Dulux polyurethane black gloss paint. They’d looked superb but I hadn’t understood how long they would take to dry properly (set would be a better word actually!). Evidently, two days wasn’t enough.

My ability to bull boots had been honed during many a late night at Roussillon Barracks in Chi. The result of my efforts on my spare pair was passable and so I started my first day as a real live Military Policeman.

I was paired with a full Corporal for a mobile patrol.

I was a bit anxious. Not only did it involve driving on the wrong side of the road but, after passing my driving test, I’d only ever turned left in anything I’d driven. It was the same for most of the chaps in my squad who were direct entries. The only driving experience we got was doing security duties at the Barrack’s Duty Room when we were required to do a mobile perimeter check to counter supposed IRA threats. Everyone I knew

would turn left out of the gate then do multiple left turns until returning back through the camp gate. That was a left turn as well! Trying to turn right was considered far too complicated. I was coping though, until we approached the British Military Hospital.

Jim, my Corporal, told me I would soon be taking a right turn into the entrance. What he failed to tell me was the entrance wasn’t marked with a large obvious sign but with a small military tac sign and that the entrance didn’t look as grand as I was imagining because it was a simple narrow roadway that disappeared behind a wall 50 metres away. I steamed on up the main road. Jim suddenly called, “Slow down!

It’s this one!” By the time I’d recognised it, it should have been too late. Anyone else would’ve probably driven on to turn safely around further up. Not me. A quick but largely ineffective stamp on the brakes and I swung us into the entrance, catching and mounting the high kerb and demolishing the speed sign. When he’d recovered his composure, Jim was very good about it but for some reason insisted on being the driver from that point on.

Back at Winterbourne Barracks, a former Third Reich supply depot, discussions were held. The options were: the matter be reported formally and the offender (me) put on a charge or, as the damage resulting from the sign post was a simple re-paint and the kerb damage could be hammered out by a suitably skilled person, the wheel could be taken to a local garage and I’d pay for the repair after I’d painted the bumper bar.

Happily, they chose the second option because it eliminated a huge amount of paperwork and negated an issue over some sort of ‘tick test’ to do with local road signs that I should have taken before being allowed to drive in the first place. Personally, I was reasonably sure I’d already done that at Chi but thought it best not to say anything.

To say, at 19 years of age, I was fairly naive and somewhat immature is probably an understatement.

The problem was, as with many of the same age, I didn’t think I was. I think, to many people, I appeared as a ‘pleasant idiot’. It’s been said in another book of this nature that there was a tendency for there to be no mentoring ability in the British Army at this time and I would have to agree. You passed through basic training

and the Army considered you a soldier, so you were (even if you didn’t feel like one). You were expected to know all manner of things of which you had no real experience because ‘you did it in training’. Yes, you did, but probably only the once. You were also expected to know all the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and local garrison orders. No one explained them to you. You were given a huge book, told to read it and the only thing that was explained was that not knowing its contents was no defence to a contravention and was, in itself, an offence which would find you ‘tapping the boards’ in front of the Officer Commanding (OC). More money down a bottomless drain.

It would be wrong of me to give the impression that everyone in the unit left me to my own devices. Some people did try to take me under their wing, particularly during the first few weeks; invites to one or two of the married men’s quarters for tea with the families but I didn’t seem able to socialise properly and it wasn’t just the immaturity.

I had a strange spatial awareness thing going on.

Not all the time, just in certain situations that I still find

difficult to quantify. The nearest I can get to describing it for you is to say, think of a photograph of someone that has a ‘double exposure’; one person slightly off centre of the other but they are the same person. Often, I would know I was in a place physically but wasn’t quite there mentally, almost as if I was standing to the side watching. Also, I hadn’t yet developed a conversationalist ability, although I found alcohol helped, surprisingly! It was only some 40 years later I discovered a set of ‘symptoms’ that fitted me like a well loved hat. Asperger's syndrome or, as it’s known today, mild autism spectrum disorder. Knowing this, now, certainly helps explain a lot of things to me about myself.

All this was compounded by the fact I basically knew fuck all and had a bit of a job disguising it. This carried on for about 9 months until one morning, I remember it distinctly, I woke up and a light bulb flickered in my head. By the time I’d dressed for duty and walked around the corner to the Duty Room (I was now living in a married quarter with a new wife and a beautiful baby daughter) the bulb was glowing brightly and I knew exactly what to do.

No longer did I arrive back from a job to be questioned by a Duty Sergeant who would discover I had omitted to obtain some pertinent important detail or complete a relevant form. I wandered out that day and completed my first solo job without a single mistake and I knew I’d done it. It was only a traffic accident involving a civilian teacher working in one of the British schools but I knew it. I suddenly understood what it was all about and where I fitted in the big plan.

Granted, it didn’t stop me buying a metallic bronze Volkswagen beetle (air cooled) and trying to find somewhere to put the antifreeze I’d also purchased but cars were never my forte. In later life I would be taught to drive them well, as a Police pursuit driver, but somehow the mechanical side never quite sank in. First parading a vehicle? Not a problem ... if I could get the bonnet up.

By the end of the following year I’d established myself as the member of the Unit with the highest number of Police case files completed, and completed well (for the most part). I’d usurped the holder of the previous two years. He took it well and we retired to the Mess that night and celebrated hard until, in the

early hours, drunk as skunks, we drank each other’s urine from tumblers then supped more double Bacardi cokes until the barman begged us to leave.

Passing the morning shift standing on parade, several of whom chuckled whilst others shook their heads in what we thought was admiration, we declared our undying love for one another, for we were now

‘piss brothers’ a bond much closer than blood. The next day we decided never to mention the subject again. The temptation not to do the same was to prove too much for some people for a good while to come.

REALISATION

There I was lying on my pit. One bed in a room big enough for at least three. Just me, a half read book, a half drunk bottle of Glayva, the silence and the smell of the drains in the showers opposite. I decided I needed some sounds.

I remembered Marshall, from training. A blond haired lad with slightly prominent teeth and a friendly disposition. When I first arrived he had a four man room to himself which contained one bed with matching cupboard etc. Two large speakers flanked a flashy music centre; green and red lights danced wildly in the dark.

It turned out he’d been at Depot for 18 months and never got round to passing out of basic military training. He’d got close a few times but kept getting injuries, the odd broken arm or leg, and once even managed to get some exotic disease that saw him quarantined. He’d become a bit of a fixture, apparently.

At one point they’d made him the barracks driver, tasked to carry out all manner of things too tedious for others to do. He even had sole use of an Army box van.

He told me it was great, in the summer, because he

would tootle down to Bognor Regis, Worthing or Brighton for the day and do some sunbathing. It had been going really well, he said, but then some nosey newly posted boss had noticed him and he was now on his last chance.

I asked him if we all got rooms like his. Sadly, he told me we didn’t and we would all be moving to new accommodation soon where life would become more hectic. So, for the next three days, I and the other recruits lay in our beds, of a night, listening to him play the only album he seemed to have: Tubular Bells.

Basic training. I’d never ached so much and so comprehensively before or since. There were days when we negotiated the stairs to go on parade with tears in our eyes, the pain was so great. Ok, I’d been a couch potato but I was, at least, managing not to be last and somehow had become the ‘grey man’ before I even knew what that meant.

Somewhere in a pile of old wall trophies, taken from the gym in Chichester following the barracks closure a few years back, lies one which bears multiple small shields, amongst which is the one dedicated to my

being the most physically improved recruit in Squad 7502.

I’m fairly certain this achievement was mainly due to someone miscounting my pulse recovery rate which appeared phenomenal resulting in my only having to complete ridiculously low repetitions of various physical activities: push ups, chins, squat thrusts etc.

What could I do? Of course, I pushed the boat out and did 5 of each which, on the final results board, made me look like Daley Thompson.

We marched until our legs ached. We ran until our legs and lungs ached. We crawled through mud and bushes until our knees and elbows ached and dived over the assault course until anything that didn’t ache was scratched and torn. Then we did it all over again.

And when we were finished for the day sometimes Corporals we hadn’t seen before invented an assault course competition between us and another squad of gullible idiots where the prize was a crate of beer.

What they failed to tell us was the winning Corporal got the beer, not us.

Somehow, Marshall made it through this time but not before he managed to injure his leg playing in a

basketball game organised by SSgt Conoboy, who’d thought we could do with a pleasant distraction.

On the day, we marched up and down in our khaki No2 dress uniforms, white belts, service dress (SD) caps, boots gleaming, pride puffing out our chests.

Marshall, wearing the same, stood on crutches on the sideline, one foot in a shiny boot and the other in a shiny plaster cast. He made it out of basic but didn’t make it all the way and the last I knew of him he’d transferred, still smiling, to the Veterinary Corps.

Neither I nor my new mate, Alan Wilson, were ever back squadded at Depot and we were the only two DEs to survive Squad 7502. You would never have placed a bet on that but nevertheless, somehow, we did it. I knew Alan as ‘Jock’ because I didn’t have enough experience to realise I should have called him ‘Tug’.

To be honest, I’m not sure he knew either because he never said anything! He later went on to be a leading light in Close Protection.

Back in my pit I stared at the ceiling. Decision made. It was the way forward. I would nip down the NAAFI at Gremmendorf and get myself some sounds and something to play them on. Apparently, according

to the blokes everything in the NAAFI was dirt cheap.

They were practically giving it away.

On arrival, I discovered it was not only adolescent boys that distorted the truth and exaggerated.

Evidently, I had a warped idea of the price of dirt.

Nevertheless, I managed to buy a silver, slimline music centre and one album before the money ran out. The album? Elton John’s ‘Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy’ the title track of which I played so many times that someone suggested a whip round to buy me another album. I tactfully declined the offer and bought Derek and the Dominoes ‘Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs’ the following payday.

I only spent about 6 months living in the single men’s accommodation but it became apparent, even to me, that although being single has its advantages, being so close to hand had its disadvantages; stand in duties for a Pad (married soldier) or a special duty somewhere. You were too easy to find if you didn’t have a car. There was a tendency when someone wanted or needed to swap duties, for a family event for instance, for the single accommodation to be seen as an easy hunting ground. Which, to be honest, it generally

was, provided you got there early enough. As someone said, “There’s not much you can do. It’s a Pads’

Army.”

Speaking of cars, a new arrival who became a good friend of mine, and still is to this day, bought one. He was really pleased he’d got a bargain and showed it off, proudly and boastfully. It was a Lada, in a shade of maroon specially formulated by the Russians to make rust invisible and after three days of driving it up and down the cobblestones, the length and back in the barracks, whilst he waited for his British Forces driving licence, the passenger door fell off. The previous owner had been trying to offload it onto someone for months.

I was given a married quarter in Nerzweg, just across the rail track from the camp. Flat 4, 21 Nerzweg to be exact. A tidy little thing, from the kitchen window there was a nice view of the seagulls on the Stadt rubbish tip and, particularly in the summer, an enhanced aerial 'flavour' to enjoy. Initially, moneywise, things were tight. I’m not sure why, probably some cock-up with my pay rates or local overseas allowance (LOA).

A magical thing the LOA. Free extra money just for the joy of being in a foreign country. It was designed to offset the local cost of living and once it had kicked in, and I’d gained a promotion, we could afford the things that most squaddies had: the Mensing paintings, a schrank, a set of Caxton encyclopaedias, our own fancy chairs and a boss top of the range Technics deck, amplifier and speakers. Obviously, we couldn’t afford a top of the range camper van or BMW and a caravan because you had to be in one of those Regiments spending its life in West Germany: Light Air Defence or some Recce Unit, I think. Their only nuisance was being posted, every now and then, from one end of BAOR to the other.

Meanwhile, before the heydays, we were surviving the last week of each month on potato soup from the local Spar. This was basically liquid mashed potato. I was disappointed the first time because I couldn’t find the corn kernel that featured heavily at the centre of the picture on the tin. I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t expect to get the sprig of green stuff pictured as well. What am I?

An idiot? The corn kernel was possible but I never found it. Damn those marketing executives.

By now, I’d well met the CSM, Harry Whitehurst, a scary man with a scar, who did a magnificent job of hiding his inner tenderness but I found, in due course, he was a fair man.

One of my first meetings started well but deteriorated somewhat. I was to be introduced to the OC, Captain John Smith, and given a welcome pep talk. Standing outside his office the CSM quickly informed me how this was to be done. Unfortunately, I was still in my ‘head full of seagulls phase’ and didn’t quite catch what he said. Still, I was a trained soldier, what could go wrong?

He opened the door and I marched in, came to a halt and saluted. It was going swell. Then the CSM

informed me, in a shouty manner, that he hadn’t actually told me to enter and I should march back out.

This is where it fell apart. I swung up another salute and promptly marched out backwards, as if someone had reversed the film. Judging by the look on his face, the OC had never seen this particular drill movement before and the CSM was unable to explain its origins because of the fit he appeared to be having. I think he recognised he was dealing with a simpleton and had an

inner struggle going on. It was better second time around.

The ‘Stickman’ was called the ‘Stickman’ because of the pace stick ranks of his seniority would carry.

Without putting too much effort in, he could cause consternation in my colleagues which sometimes bordered on hysteria. Despite the fact many of them had 12 or more years service it didn’t seem to be of much help. The following might give you a flavour of what I mean.

When not actually on police duties or enjoying a sparse day off we were permanently drawn to

‘availables’. These were days where we would have to do all the many routine admin tasks, sometimes twice or more depending on who the senior rank in charge was. The basic aim of this game was not to leave you with any time to think of things like days off or holidays. Thinking of things like that was considered bad for morale.

When there was something to be done it generally got done but there was no point in finishing it in a timely fashion because it wouldn’t get you home

earlier and would probably get you the job that everyone had been avoiding for months.

On the days when our only real purpose in being on

‘available’ duty was to stop us being somewhere else we would march over to the Motor Transport (MT) garages and one of the senior Cpls would post a 'guard', usually a VT lance jack or a Class 2 Cpl because recent events had taught them that sprogs like me and the other bloke weren’t up to the job. The object was, apparently, to make it to Naafi break without doing a tap. Everyone sat around swinging the light and smoking (I just smoked, having no light to swing).

Mild discomfort followed any sighting of the Stickman, usually seen walking from the Duty Room to the HQ/SIB Block, but panic set in if he suddenly veered off and approached the MT. In retrospect it was amusing to see grown ‘Senior Cpls’ tussling one another for possession of a broom or spanner etc (usually the one someone had taken off me or the other sprog). Some would dash out, hoping to make the sanctuary of one of the other garages, where they tried to feign useful employment, but Harry was much too clever for that. If you weren't actually doing something

constructive you were doomed. Standing to attention with your mouth open and randomly flapping about was not a good idea either, as I found out. It took me a while to ‘switch on’ but eventually I did. Generally though, as a detachment, things were fairly mellow.

Harry, occasionally, would show his inner cuddliness by sternly ordering someone into his office and questioning them as to whether they liked tomatoes. If they hinted they did they were allowed to take a bagful from the boxes that would appear behind his door from time to time. Nobody ever said they didn’t like tomatoes so we never did find out what the alternative was. It was too risky.

Once, I fucked up a drink driving case. Well, it wasn’t so much my fault as the Army doctor who, for some reason, wrote the suspect’s details on one sample of blood and his last patient’s name on the other. Either way, I had to offer the soldier his choice and he, it turned out, got the one with his details on it. I got the booby prize. If it had happened the other way round it would have made no difference in the hands of a half decent brief but we possibly might have just ‘got away’

with it. I hadn’t been watching and it cost me the job. I

only discovered the mistake when I took the Police sample to be analysed. As a result, the Stickman called me into his office in his usual gruff manner declaring he wanted to speak to me about the ‘job you cocked up’. I feared the worse. Once out of earshot of the others, he told me he’d arranged for me to go on a drink drive course in Osnabruck and, with a smile, declared, “I know it wasn’t entirely your fault and, hopefully, you won’t fuck up again.”

From time to time, war kit would be packed in trailers in preparation for a thing called Active Edge (also known by some as Quick Train). The idea of this was to test our readiness for war and see how long it took us to be ready for deployment. It was meant to be a surprise but I don’t ever recall it working. We always seemed to know it was coming and would be told to pack everything in advance. The only surprise would be ‘will it be tonight or tomorrow night’.

For me, the most annoying part of this process was having to follow the rigid list issued by the SSgt’s with regard to what kit you packed in your 58 pattern webbing (what they refer to these days as a modular based personal equipment system). With the small back

pack removed what was left was called CEFO (Combat Equipment Fighting Order). The kidney pouches contents I found particularly interesting because it usually consisted of stuff like two pairs of spare underpants (Army speak- shreddies), a PT vest, kiwi polish and Army issue brushes the size of a small boat.

I just couldn’t see myself bothering to change my shreddies, wanting to do star jumps or polishing my boots under enemy fire. A yellow squeaky duck and a small cuddly toy I’d have found more useful, at least I’d have been able to make myself laugh and cuddle a loved one before snuffing it. Perhaps if they’d renamed it CEHO, Combat Equipment Holiday Order, I might have seen the point. I think BAOR measured its ‘life expectancy’ against the Russian hordes in days. I measured mine in minutes. Ten to be exact, maybe fifteen if I was lucky.

Periodically, an Active Edge would result in us actually being deployed out into ‘the field’. Our particular ‘field’ was always a place called

‘Potenhausen’ wood which we would have to approach in the dark, lights off, watching the dim little convoy light that shone onto the white painted rear axle of the

vehicle in front. To this day, I’ve no idea where the hell this wood is. I only ever went there in the dark and left it in daylight when my interest lay mainly in sleep.

All too soon our existence as a cosy little detachment of 112 Provost Company came to an end and we confounded Russian intelligence by becoming the headquarters of 113 Provost Company.The Stickman had retired, shortly before, becoming a families officer looking after the welfare of soldiers’

families in another garrison somewhere. Although we lost him, we gained a pocket sized Major as the OC, a Captain as 2i/c, who was a growing legend in the Corps (a parachutist reputed to have more metal in his body than Barry Sheene), and an RSM. Oh, and a load of people I didn’t know. During the same period new recruits came in as replacements for people posted out.

For the main part they were young direct entries. It was nice to feel like an ‘old arse’ but life carried on much as normal, only there was shouting now and a huge increase in the ‘let’s bugger them about’ factor.

During this time, we had a nice ‘twinning’

ceremony with the local Bundeswehr Feldjäger (German Military Police) where we out-marched them

in good style. Our marching wasn’t better, it was just the British military stride must be a bit longer than the German one because they had to keep breaking into a trot to keep up with us. After speeches by the bigwigs, the riff raff retired to the Cpl’s Mess where we all got pissed. I came away with a full Feldjäger uniform and it only cost me 400 fags (a bargain, I thought).

Two days later, a procession of embarrassed German MPs came round and asked for their kit back.

Apparently, their Bosses were threatening them all with a board tapping session if they failed. For the price we paid from the Naafi, we did the exchange; they got to keep their clothes and some cut price booze and fags and we got our money back. Everyone was happy. I’ve no idea what I thought I was going to do with that uniform. It’s not as if I could wear it anywhere.

Around the same time, we had a visit from Major General Frank Kitson, author of ‘Gangs and Counter gangs’, a book about the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya and one I had read with great interest. As usual on these occasions, we had to turn out with all sorts of

kit, all spruced up, so he could ask us questions and see if he liked the ‘cut of our jibs’.

With two other Cpls, I stood trying to feign a workable knowledge of the No 2 (single burner) and No3 (double burners) portable cooking stoves (portable if you had a Land Rover). After us, his next port of call was the Sgt’s Mess for lunchtime drinkies and nibbles.

Anyway, it was going swell until he asked us to fire up the No 3.

A rightly nervous RSM quickly stepped in with a,

“It’ll take them a little while, Sir, because they’ll need to fill them up with fuel and we’ve got to move onto the Mess.” He nodded agreement, sagely, and to our disappointment replied, “Well, you do that and I’ll watch you from that window, over there, in the Mess.”

He smiled. He looked so keen on the idea we didn’t like to refuse.

As far as I can remember, these type of burners used petrol but you had to pre-warm the bits where the flames eventually came out with some of the same fuel or kerosene in order to turn the main fuel into a vapour.

Well, I’m not sure what the hell we did but it wasn’t working. In desperation we filled the pre-warming

containers to the top, lit them and pumped the thing like billy oh, forgetting to close off the feeds. The result was a sheet of flame 6 feet high and three dancing MPs, beating each other with their berets, after which we stood there, singed, watching until the pressure and the flames died down. I was told, Kitson commented, “Very amusing” and returned to the drinks party.

Not long after the new company moved in, the RSM, a rank known in Guards units as God but who we just called ‘the Razman’, spotted a huge flaw in my personal make up; a tendency to be late. I’m being kind to myself using the word tendency because it makes it sound as if now and then I could be late whereas the truth is that now and then I could be on time. Once, I was even early. Why he put up with this for so long, I’ve no idea? Maybe he had more important people on his target list. I suspect I may be the only person in the Military Police, if not the Army, who earned his promotion to Corporal by simply being on time for one whole week.

The truth of the matter is, in the MPs, after being a Lcpl for a year, you’re eligible for promotion to class 2

Cpl. The word to concentrate on here is ‘eligible’. It wasn’t a certainty and both the Razman and I knew he could delay it for many months, if he so wished. He approached me one day, told me his thoughts and declared that if I was early on parade for seven days in a row he’d let me be promoted. I didn’t let him down.

Several days after I got my second stripe up, I wandered in to work and found the parade in full swing. There he was, brazenly inspecting the day shift.

I could see it through the slatted fence. Immediately, I swung round and ran to the fence alongside the rear of the duty block, slung my brief case over and followed it. Entering through the kitchen and scuttling past the startled cooks, I managed to dump my brief case and cap in the Duty Room so it looked as if I’d been there earlier then disappeared into the toilets to re-emerge spraying air freshener back through the door and holding my stomach just as he re-entered the building,.

He approached me several times that day to ask if I was feeling any better.

As a kid, I’d been an avid fan of the comic character

‘Rodger the Dodger’ and had a wide selection of excuses and ruses available to me. Every now and then,

I found it useful to throw in the truth, well, part of it at least, as it gave the honesty of my responses in the face of doubt more credence. One day, I decided such an event was called for but my timing was out and, patience exhausted, he put me on a charge. I was rightly found guilty and fined something like £75, a fairly hefty sum in those days, but even then I realised I’d led a somewhat charmed life and spread out over my previous infractions and escapes the fine was almost peanuts.

Police work: This consisted mainly of dealing with traffic accidents, assaults, drunks, thefts and taking reports of burglaries concerning the cellar storage in the married quarter areas. I don’t recall dealing with many thefts from various units’ barrack rooms. They seemed to want to keep that sort of thing to themselves.

I think it was because once the RMP went in the

‘management’ had no real control over what they would become interested in; best not stir the still waters.

If an incident was serious, such as murder, rape, robbery, grievous bodily harm etc, then the Special Investigation Branch (SIB), the Army’s detectives,

dealt with it. Some RMP seem to have had a tenuous relationship with SIB members but maybe it’s just a case of ‘who was where and when’. I never had an issue and aspired to be a member of ‘the Branch’. It was only years later that I managed it, as a member of the TA’s 83 Section. The regular Army always used to look down on the TA. It was the same in SIB. The funny thing was that most of 83 Sect were ex RMP or SIB anyway.

A couple of jobs I dealt with come to mind. One concerned a report one night that a group of off duty soldiers had stolen two bikes. Turned out the bikes had been padlocked but not around a lamp post, no that would have been too sensible, but around a post from which they could be easily lifted off. Much too enticing for a drunken squaddie who basically looks at it as if you’ve demanded he steal it. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out where you might find the offenders so we bimbled off towards Buller Barracks, as a first port of call. Just before we got to the gates we saw six of them enter. We slammed on the brakes and did a quick search of the undergrowth and there we found the two bikes, still chained together. Unrideable,

they’d been carried back to the camp. They knew they wouldn’t get in with them so dumped them. What was the point, you might say? Exactly.

We nipped in to see the Guard Commander, explained the situation as the ‘lads’ were booking in.

“Two of them do?” he asked. We nodded. He then took two of them hostage and locked them up for the night.

Exactly what for, I still don’t know, probably for being

‘drunk’. We were happy, justice served and no more paperwork.

On another occasion, around the area of the two most popular squaddie bars (the Manhattan 77 and the MSC) whilst searching for the soldiers responsible for a fight, we came across a little guy about to enter the MSC. We checked him out and saw he had grazes on his knuckles. I asked him how he’d come by them and he replied, in an Edinburgh accent, “Somebody tapped me on the shoulder, so ah hit him.” I pointed out the person may have just been about to ask for the time. He wobbled to and fro then announced. “Yer dinnae de that tae a Royal Scot.” We talked a bit more and he was quiet amusing. My partner and I decided we’d just give him a lift back to the barracks; we didn’t have a

complainant for any assault so it was either lock him up for being drunk or dispense with the paperwork.

He had a pair of white pants on and a check shirt.

We had an airportable half ton Land Rover with an oil spillage between the seats in the back and knowledge of a ramp at a roadworks en route.

We dropped him off about 250 metres from the camp gate and sat, in the little gravel lay-by on the bend, watching him stagger towards Oxford Bks, the back of his pants covered in oil from where he’d somersaulted off his seat when we hit the roadworks at speed. He’d been very grateful to us for not locking him up and insisted on coming to both windows to shake our hands. We now felt bad about ruining his trousers and were concerned that he didn’t stagger into the road on the way ‘home’. At this particular point the main road continued on with a slip road on the right which led into the camp. Additionally, to the right of the slip road was a rough grassed area then the barrack wall.

Although he looked as if he might (quite a few times), he never actually stumbled into the main road, much preferring to bounce off the barrack wall and

scramble through the undergrowth. As he was halfway there we saw the duty gate guard in the floodlights, peering down the road at him. After a short while the guard disappeared but then returned with another uniformed soldier. When our friend reached them, it became obvious he was going to spend the night in the cells. I don’t think our briefly turning on the blue light helped him any.

Most squaddies aren’t criminal masterminds but that doesn’t mean that they don’t sometimes get the better of you.

Having become competent at policework I badgered the Police Office Sgt, Robbie Kemp, until he and the RSM got fed up and let me join the Unit Investigation Element (UIE). I’d meet Robbie again, when he was a regular Captain posted to oversee my TA Unit, 116.

The Police Office was where the report files were vetted and checked. The UIE, however, was a select band of three or four Cpls whose job it was to investigate the ‘not so complicated that the SIB had to deal but a bit too time consuming for the guys on shift’

type jobs. Whoopee and I got to work in civvies. We were a mini SIB (or so I thought). It didn’t last long. I

might be the only MP to have been ‘sacked’. The 2i/c didn’t say he was returning me to shifts or use any other similar words. He just said, “You’re sacked!”

The job that brought about my downfall was the fault of the CO of one of the units, I’m not sure which, perhaps the Irish or the Scots Guards, it matters not. If he hadn’t reported that his car had been stolen then returned I might have lasted a bit longer.

My investigations showed that his private car had been removed from his drive way, one evening whilst he and his wife were attending a Mess function, then, before they returned, it was put back. The tyre tracks in the snow were the first clue and the extra 50 kms on his mileage, the second. His only set of keys were on a hook in the house. There was no evidence of a break in and the only person who had been at home had been his batman, who claimed to have sat in the cellar all night polishing the CO’s boots. Who would you suspect? Exactly.

I had him in and he wasn’t having it. The second time he coughed he’d given the keys to someone but refused to say who. He claimed it had just been a jape to confound the CO. I was sure I was close to a full

disclosure so had him come back into the Duty Room for a third and final interview. I was right. It was the final interview.

The little git didn’t tell me he was supposed to be waiting on at an Officer’s mess function that evening until we received a phone call demanding I hand him back. Apparently, his being there was pivotal, I’ve no idea why because he didn’t look that impressive to me.

The CO complained about me, withdrew the complaint about his car and I got the sack. Well, it was good while it lasted.

Back in uniform, I dealt with my ‘last big case’.

Again a vehicle was involved. This time it was definitely the Irish Guards.

I was sent, one night, to investigate a call from the German Civil Police (GCP) to the effect that a British military vehicle had been involved in a traffic accident (TA) with a German registered car, about a mile down the road from Buller Bks.

The TA was boxed off pretty quick. The German had got off lightly considering he’d been hit by a Land Rover (L/R), an offside to offside glancing blow, and

although the Brits hadn’t stopped he had taken the registration number. First port of call, the nearest camp.

I don’t know why but the Irish Guards’ gate wasn’t being used for vehicles that night but the Scots Guards gate was. Both Units shared an old Luftwaffe airfield, with 2nd Royal Tank Regiment (2RTR) sitting in between them. I can’t remember how but 2RTR’s unit lines weren’t accessible to either of the Guards units.

So, through the Jocks was how I, and any other Guards traffic, had to come and go.

At the Scots Guards, I discussed the access situation with the bloke on the gate. He checked the log and discovered that only two Irish Guards’ vehicles had been in and out that night. The L/R I had the number of was one of them. Casually, he mentioned it had some minor damage to the front offside bumper, nothing drastic, but he’d commented on it and the driver told him it was old damage and had already been reported.

The other vehicle I later found out was the duty driver nipping out to get the Guard some bratwurst and chips.

At the Irish Guards Guardroom I found a picket patrol had just discovered a window in the Motor

Transport office had been smashed. I went round there with the bloke and the Picket Sgt.

In best Sherlock Holmes fashion I studied the broken, unlatched window, from several angles, shone a torch in and noted that, other than a set of keys lying on the nearby desk, everything looked ok. When we accessed the office the keys on the desk belonged to the offending L/R. Off we went to the garages and there it was, complete with damage as noted by the Scots gate guard.

Now, this is where the senior ranks knowledge of the troops comes in handy. The Picket Sgt told me who he reckoned it would have been, based on their past exploits and their shady behaviour when he’d seen them earlier on in the Naafi. He gave me a list of five names.

Four of them were our offenders. When the bar had closed they’d wanted to continue drinking so had taken the L/R and nipped to a bar a couple of miles down the road, had a few more beers and bought some to bring back.

The fifth guy, I was told later, hadn’t got off scot free. Although not involved in the vehicle taking he’d

been told by the RSM there would be consequences should he be caught drinking again. The Picket Sgt seeing him in the Naafi was good enough evidence as far as the RSM was concerned so he took his jumper off, rolled up his sleeves and said, “My punishment or the CO’s?” There wasn’t a choice in reality.

It sounds extreme but this is how things were done in some units. I took a drunken Sgt into a Guardroom once. Returning home from an exciting night, finding himself locked out and desperate for a crap, he’d shit on a German neighbour’s doorstep thinking it was his own; it was a block of flats and he’d got the wrong landing. The Duty Warrant officer arrived just after we’d booked him in. I was trying to give him the details but some tiresome squaddie was continuously screaming and shouting from the cells. He was gobbing off about various people in the unit and just wouldn’t shut up when asked politely by the Guard Commander (probably on his best behaviour).

The Duty WO, dressed in his splendid mess dress complete with red jacket, said eventually, “Excuse me, Corporal. I won’t be a minute.” Keys handed over, he walked to the cells where he told the soldier to be

quiet. The soldier told him to fuck off. The sound of someone being thumped several times was followed by whimpering. My partner and I inspected our note books whilst the Guard Commander whistled then asked us some inconsequential questions about being a military policeman. The Duty WO returned and said, “Right, what were you saying, Corporal.”

The bloke we’d arrested was bedded down for the night. His neighbours didn’t want to make a formal complaint. The Duty WO said he’d make sure the Sgt, seemingly an otherwise decent and respected senior rank, would make amends by lavishing some gifts and sincere apologies on the Germans concerned. I’m sure it turned out reasonably expensive for the Sgt because sometimes the Army has people you just don’t fuck with.

One time, the Irish Guards RSM had the Guard lock up a British civilian worker and his dog for insubordination. The Guard Commander phoned to tell us he had an issue he wasn’t happy with and thought illegal but wasn’t in a position to discuss it with the RSM who was in full God mode. The bloke arrested was working for a German firm of gardeners, working

within the camp, and had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the British military. Neither did his dog. It turned out he’d been strolling around on his lunch break and the dog had crapped on the grass. The perambulating RSM told him to clean it up and he said he’d do it later. That’s when the conversation went downhill rapidly.

The Guard were summoned and unceremoniously frogmarched the ‘offender’ to the Guard Room.

Whatever their thoughts they weren’t going to argue with ‘God’, unlike the civilian. The dog happily trotted into captivity behind the ‘parade’. The Guard Commander almost shat himself but couldn’t do anything about the situation until the RSM had finished a little impromptu inspection and had his fill of fucking people about (I could have said ‘got bored’ but no one in the Army ever gets bored fucking people about).

Anyway, that’s where we came into play. The blame for the early release would be firmly placed on our shoulders and the Guard Commander would claim a passing MP patrol made him do it.

We explained to the civvy all about the RSM’s local status as ‘God’ and ‘dusted’ the guy down. He was ok

about it, especially as he’d been given a free dinner while he was waiting for us to turn up and the dog had a saucer of tea and jam toast. We all had a little chuckle and the dog, who’d caused the whole thing in the first place, had a satisfying yawn and a stretch then trotted out with what I’d swear was a grin.

Exercises: these came and went, each much like any others. We started one with a very nice bloke in charge.

He had people skills and was much respected. After almost a week he received notice that he’d been posted and was to be replaced by another CSM. He realised the hours we were working were somewhat ridiculous and told us he’d been successful in obtaining a couple more guys, from company, to ease the situation. We felt good. The extras appeared, the future looked rosy, ish, but not for long, for the replacement was a man who cared not a jot about those beneath him. We were there, it seemed, simply to satisfy his need to fuck someone about.

Immediately, we were working more hours than we had before. Gone was four hours sleep, we were down to less than two, if you could find somewhere to hide long enough. He took to sneaking around our bed

spaces, finding things he would later use as an excuse to discipline us. This resulted in a number of incidents.

One was his taking of a Sterling Sub Machine Gun (SMG) when the ‘owner’ laid it on his webbing outside his tent and nipped quickly in to get something. He came out to see the CSM walking off with it. That was him given extra duties and a charge to face when we returned to camp. He shouldn’t have let go of the damned thing, all squaddies know that, we even sleep with them, but he was new and, in the circumstances, a shouting at would have sufficed.

Next, he went on a little bag search when people were occupied elsewhere. As a result he found a bottle of Doornkaat schnapps in someone’s 58 pattern webbing back pack. As the idle bastard that owned it (me) hadn’t written their details on their kit he asked around and bullied someone who told him it was Addy’s.

Now, Brian Richard Addicott was a good lad and was generally called ‘Addie’ by the rest of us. He was dragged before the CSM, accused, grilled then given a

‘field punishment’ of extra duties. He knew whose schnapps it was, we’d sat and drank some of it, on

occasions, but he wasn’t going to grass on me because we all had a little bit of liquid comfort stashed away somewhere. The CSM (I won’t even give him the respect of the title ‘Stickman’) subsequently declared a dry exercise which resulted in everyone having to bury their chosen tipple in the ground, covering the treasure with leaves, whenever we became seriously static or, if mobile, it was stashed in tool boxes or in the camouflage nets bungeed on top of the vehicles.

Perhaps, somewhere, there actually was such a thing as a dry exercise but in the mid 1970s, in West Germany, no one had ever heard or seen it.

We were providing policing support to 1 British Corps HQ. Their locations were divided up into segments called ‘diamonds’. Diamonds 1 and 2 (as I recall) were the secure locations where security was highest. These two were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by members of the Mixed Service Organisation, known informally as ‘mozo’s’. They were regular faces and I got to know a couple of them fairly well, ex members of the Latvian and Lithuanian SS; naturally, they couldn’t go home.

The signals cookhouse, where we ate because the food was better, was Diamond 9 and it also supplied the booze and chockies for everyone from the back of a well known and much loved 4 ton lorry. Sitting on the security entrance to Diamonds 1 or 2 of a night, it was commonplace to see soldiers returning with yellow handbags (six packs of Herforder pils in yellow packaging). I even saw Officers doing it.

Well, no one was really happy in the first place because we were too tired to smile but the level of joy sank even lower on receipt of the CSM’s declaration.

We took to planning some retribution. One night two people waited in the woods, along a route he was often known to take. He didn’t show up so I decided to loosen the front right hand wheel nuts of his Land Rover instead knowing he was due to go out in it the following morning. Several hours later, I had to return to tighten them back up on learning he’d given the job to one of the senior Cpls.

At Endex, I was given the task of being the last to leave, remaining to carry out traffic control for the mass breakout from the woods. On the way home, both I and my partner in crime could hear a weird noise

coming from somewhere in our vehicle. Even though we gave it a quick inspection, nothing could be found.

Back at the Duty Room, we tried to report it but the female Duty Sgt said it was best not to draw unwanted attention and we should park it over at the MT garages and get in early to speak to the ‘Tiffy’(a nickname RMP give their mechanics; I believe it comes from Artificer).

A great plan which went wrong when the RMP MT

Sgt, for the first time in his life, decided to get in early, even earlier than the ‘Tiff’. Next minute, I’m tapping the boards charged with criminal damage to the value of £5000. The vehicle was the same bloody vehicle I’d loosened the wheel nuts on. It seems, in the dark, after several beers, my nut tightening ability had been a tadge lax. Karma, no doubt.

I refused to plead guilty, even after I’d been removed from the OC’s office for strong advice to be administered. On the spot, I decided to carry out my own defence in the guise of ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’

aided by my brief, ‘Rodger the Dodger’. We were inspired. Noting a certain CSM wasn't present at the proceedings, I mentioned he'd been driving the damned

thing for, possibly, quite a considerable distance and then added the name of the Cpl I heavily suspected of caving in to pressure in the ‘Doornkaat Affair’.

Desperate times needed desperate measures. I summoned the MT Sgt as my first witness. Well, the only witness, actually. He confirmed my suspicions by producing the vehicle 'work ticket’ (log book) and, in response to my question, confirmed that the damage to the Land Rover could have occurred over several hundred miles, much further than I had driven it.

Furthermore, inspection of the work ticket showed there were gaps in the entries which corresponded with the days I'd recalled the CSM (my nemesis) driving the vehicle. There should have been an entry for each usage stating amongst other things the details of the actual driver. He hadn't filled it in as per military instructions. Additionally, as the senior on the exercise, he was supposed to have checked all the work tickets for the vehicles we used and signed them off as correct.

He hadn't done that either. Consternation and embarrassment for those involved in my 'prosecution'!

I was sent out of the room whilst the situation was discussed at length. Brought back in, I was found guilty

of “Failing to report I had heard a funny noise coming from the vehicle.” The exact words of the OC. I was fined £5. All things considered, it was a pleasing outcome.

The female Sgt had to deny we’d reported the matter to her or else face a charge herself in respect of failing to make a Daily Occurrence Book entry. The MT Sgt only took the action he did because he was under managerial scrutiny and thought he was being tested.

My colleague initially tried to back me up but we agreed, when they began to press him, that he should deny everything and claim loss of memory due to sleep deprivation.

I accepted the ad hoc finding of guilt and the fine, it would have been silly not to really. I considered it a moral victory. The Company avoided the possibility of an embarrassing Court Martial and, once again, I avoided sampling the delights of someone else’s Guardroom. Cracking result all round, I thought.

REVOLUTION

There’s an old joke:

Officer: “Are the men happy, Sergeant Major?”

CSM: “Oh yes, Sir. They’re very happy, Sir.”

Officer:”Well, fuck them about a bit, will you?”

The fact is there is a lot of truth in that joke. There were times when none of us could work out why we were doing some of the things we were told to do. It seemed as if they had been invented for the sole purpose of denying us time off. Often a senior rank would wander up, give us a task, then wander off again not to be seen for hours. In between times, another senior rank may have wandered up, given us a conflicting task and wandered off again. What we did know was we never saw this type of senior rank with any sweat on their brow.

An example: once, we had to move lockers from the top of the Duty Room building to the cellar and then back up the stairs again to the loft. No one gave us the keys to empty the damn things and when we asked, they went off saying they would find them and never came back. We eventually figured out we were caught in the middle of a dispute between two SSgts.

After we’d been up and down at least three times, someone came up with the only sensible option; stay on the stairs halfway up and play one off against the other. We managed to screw two Naafi breaks out of it that day. Naafi breaks are important events in a soldier’s life, even if you didn’t have a Naafi. In our case, we’d usually go to the unit dining room for tea, coffee, biscuits, cake and the inevitable smoke.

A colleague of mine was once, as a punishment, ordered to paint a crime prevention Land Rover white.

He asked if he was to paint all of it. Due to the answer he received, and the manner it was given, he then painted the vehicle white; inside and out. Windows, wheels, seats. The senior rank went puce and put him on a charge which had to be withdrawn when witnesses agreed that he had in fact told the Cpl to paint all of the Land Rover white. The Cpl spent the next week scraping paint off various things and making good the

‘damage’ but as he merrily declared, “whilst I’m doing this at my pace, I can’t be doing other shit at theirs.”

It was little moments like this which gave many of us the will to carry on. Well, that and the Corporals’

Mess where, no matter how bad your day had been,

you could always go and relax by getting pissed.

Unless, of course, certain individuals were seated at the bar. Quick witted and sarcastic, they could reduce you to a stuttering wreck if you’d cocked something up that week or had expressed an opinion on anything they saw the opportunity to destroy just for the entertainment. Often they would start a discussion by expressing views, that in private they didn’t personally hold, in order to generate a heated dialogue from which they would slip away and watch from the other end of the bar. They were experts at it.

One of the chief practitioners, who became a great friend, had always given me a hard time in my early days but I came to realise that if he hadn’t, I would’ve still been bimbling around pretty clueless. I credit him with putting me on the right track and developing a character in me I wouldn’t have had otherwise. What I mean is, he helped me to function in an atmosphere which I probably wouldn’t have survived if he hadn’t, initially, been such a twat.

But it wasn’t all about rapier wit for me. I became adept at reading his and his colleagues mannerisms, the glances that passed between them so, in a crowded and