Sep 27 2015

An Irish Interlude – Part 1 cont’d again

Christmas in the Garage and Jock’s Amazing Mechanical Sausage

Christmas when you are away on ops is a very difficult thing to describe to the outsider. You have to experience it to know what it is like and those who have spent time away from home at Christmas may think they know what it is like but really don’t. To start with you are alone, with 120 guys in elbow distance. there is no privacy but you don’t need any, it gets locked up until you return to normality. And at Christmas thats even more testing, like being with 120 members of your family but knowing them closer even than the family did and yet at the same time missing your own family. Confused? Didn’t say it was easy did I, well Christmas on the Border was like that. We had failed in the attempt to tempt the male population of Enniskillen to engage in a little urban wrestling and to tempt the female half to engage in some horizontal PT so the head shed decided to keep the enlisted shower under control they would fall back on the old remedies: duty and entertaining ourselves in the time honoured fashion of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and have a review to follow our Christmas pud.

To me this would be a welcome distraction, my exploits with the pig had severely tugged at my strings of self confidence and I needed to have a quiet day on Christmas day as it was almost 4 am when we had eventually crawled into bed after weapons had been cleaned patrol reports written and vehicles refuelled and checked. As around 90 of us lived in a drill hall, the only lights would be the centre lights and navigating to your bed space could be a bruising experience. This wasn’t helped by Dennis the Purve having acquired, from God knows where, a life size cut out of a bunny girl. This had various positions dependant on where and what Dennis wanted her to do and, to be truthful, she had more than one kicking after unsolicited collisions in the dead of night before now, but this Christmas morning he had left her in the alleyway between our bed space and Rick and Franks.When I crawled in after doing all the reports and weapons checks an hour after he was in dreamland, I got a wallop across the shins from her as she was laid across the entrance to the space we had. This was followed immediately by me putting the head on her and a major fracas. There can be few more unedifying sights in the eerie half dark of that smelly pit, than Dennis sans his front teeth spewing forth all manner of North Northumberland curses in idiomatic “pityakker”, clad in a skanky German grey vest and underpants of similar lineage. I guess I was in such a fettle that even Dennis was slightly taken aback and struck silent by the sheer venom of the look I gave him as I tumbled, fully clothed into my bed, pulling a brown blanket over me and becoming immediately unconscious.

The alarm clock only showed 8:30 when I was dragged back to the world by a cheery “Merry Christmas Support Weapons, its a bright clear day and what would you like young Espie, Rum of Brandy?” It was a dream right? Sqn Commander, dressed up in Santa Clause kit, with a big mug and two bottles serving gunfire? That was the myth wasn’t it – Ofiicers and Seniors serving you tea laced with some kind of strong drink on Christmas morning? Well yes actually – we had coffee. Coffee and Brandy in such a liberal quantity that I was sleep deprived , exhausted and fuzzy one moment and after the tin lip of my water bottle cup had been shoved against my lips and a decent draught taken, I was awake, alert and buzzing. My thoughts went along the lines of “Jeez what did they put in that?” I learned years later that its not just tea/coffee and spirit but the secret has to be earned so you lot will not be told.

What can one do after such an awakening? Normally, after a late patrol, breakfast would either be skipped or the unlucky LAC dispatched to the cook house for a pile of bacon sarnies, but today we decided we would have breakfast because it was obvious that the REMF’s on HQ were so taken by their do happy things ganja that they would continue their incessant good humour until we found a way to pee them off big time. The mess was in the old vehicle garages and pipe range across the yard from the main block. The cookhouse was folding flat tables, long benches and an ever full tea urn. The cooks actually did a brilliant job of delivering us good plain fare. None of your Italian rubbish it was meat and two veg and Chinese wedding cake for afters. Fill em up with bread and gravy these Stirling sons of Albion – or something like that. The greatest value of the mess was that it was the word centre for rumour control, stoked usually by the rocks on Sqn HQ. These were the senior or most damaged guys on the squadron, with either the nous to get themselves out of the long dangerous and boring patrol tasking or those teetering on the edge of being sectioned as a danger to the public. One of the number was Jock, a massive pock marked monster from the Gorbals. Although he was never the sharpest knife in the box, he was blessed with such a store of low animal cunning that one was always wary. His accent was music hall Glaswegian full of “see yu” and ” Hey Jimmeh”. Jock could always be relied on a scheme or two to lift the spirit, not cos it would work but because you knew the loon would try it.

Christmas morning appearance by patrol flight was greeted with some of the usual ribald comments from the orangoutangs on the field flights, who were obviously unable to conduct themselves in the presence of a technically superior race and insult flew back and forth when I was confronted by Big Bill our FS. (the same one who had deserted us in the confrontation with the pig earlier that morning) “Esp we have to put on something for the review after xmas dinner. The CO has invited the Lady Mayoress and her husband to the show and we need an act. The plan is that you, Big Ralph, Dennis and Jock will become a ballet troupe and traipse around the stage doing pirouettes and stuff to the tune of the Sugar Plum Fairy, harmless fun 3 minutes and your done….and Esp…….there is no refusing this one – you take one for the team.” The look on his face told me I was going to take one, one way or another and this was probably the least painful. So I get the condemned 4 together and hand over to Ralpie who is a Sgt and gets to give the Orders. We spend about 2 hours familiarising ourselves with the music and with prancing about with a combined weight of around 60 stone. We break for a brew and get our tutus fitted by the stores Sergeant ( no comment here as there is no statute of limitations on libel”. and return to our bunks to get the Xmas mail delivered.

As we saunter across to the mess hall for the lunch, Jock sidles up to Dennis and I and in pantomime scots, tells us his master stroke. From out of his combat jacket pocket, he pulls out a huge sausage, stuck through with a length of wire, to which there are two lengths of string attached, one at each end. The plan is to do the routine and at the end when Jock is carried forward in a diving pose by the three of us, he will slowly pull on one of the bits of string and the sausage would emerge from his tutu like the Shuttle Endeavour having a good morning, in the full view of the Lady Mayoress. “Ah ken she fancies me, have took her hame a couple of time frae seeing the CO and she always remembers ma name – Jock and smiles at me’. The response he got from us – away you go, you get us the jail. Throughout the meal he continued but eventually stopped and we assumed that it was done with. After Dinner and a Sterling speech from herself and the CO, the mess was rearranged and the show was on. I warned Ralph that Jock had been on the laughing gas and to watch him.

We were last on, with attendant leers and jeers from the unwashed on the field flights, we took to the stage. Well it was smaller than rehearsal and Jock had not been drinking coffee in the mean time, still the sight of 4 big lads in tutus and combat boots was obviously entertaining to all, especially the Lady Mayoress. The crescendo approached and we swooped to pick Jock of and I notice he is frantically fiddling in his jacket pocket. The struggling suddenly ceased with a beatific beam and we moved forward to the edge of the stage where we were supposed to lower him to the ground and he would roll over like the dying swan. Trouble was his hand was in his pocket pulling frantically at the string controlling the “Mechanical Sausage”. and he failed to arrest his forward momentum. As he shot off the edge of the stage, almost onto herself’s lap he grabbed Dennis with his free hand and pulled him after him. Dennis, in turn, did the same to Ralph. I was lucky or too quick and stood gazing down on the debris of all good relations between us and the political hierarchy of Enniskillen. The Mayoress’s chair has disintegrated under the assault by Jock and she had fallen to the floor, almost onto his chest, Dennis had taken out her husband completely and Ralph was picking himself out of the CO’s lap. Lady Mayoress was shocked but pleased that she had been saved by a member of her Majesty’s Forces and smiled at Jock until she felt some movement on her leg. Looking down she was astounded, shocked, disgusted to see the mechanical sausage jerking up and down for all the world like the money shot of a porn movie. The shriek was Jock’s confirmation that he would be on his way home the next day to his beloved Sadie in their split level rancho in Catterick Village. It took some time to calm the Mayoress down and a trip to the A&E for something calming to be prescribed and for the inevitable food fight to subdue. Strangely enough it restored the street cred I thought I had lost the previous night. It was rumoured that the Lady Mayoress had lobbied for years with the GOC to get a Regiment Squadron returned to Enniskillen.

Sep 19 2015

Recruits 2

There were 3 Regiment Cpls on our intake at Swinderlitz and the name of the game was to make sure they left Swinderby terrified of the Regiment. First day in we used to man the JNCO’s office on the top floor and watch the pond life arriving. There was always sone smart arse who wanted to make a name for himself – popping into the office, can we put our kit away Cpl – The scotsman who runs a Museum in Hartlepool latterly would do his best shrug and say “please yourself” to which the slimer would tell his room Its ok you can put your kit away in the lockers. 20 mins later and into the room would be another rock Cpl, charming, urbane and handsome, runs a small heritage centre near Honington, and looks about and asks “who told you you could put your filthy civilian clothes in our lockers?” Back come the answer”the other Cpl Cpl” the point is then made “don’t do anything until you are specifically told to do so and ( a choice phrase I learned from George Burdon) don’t you flare your horselike nostrils at me bonny lad – Get that kit packed away NOW! Stalk out leaving confusion and chaos, go down stairs and half an hour later Wally would wander upstairs and …you guessed it, wanders in and sees all the newly packed kit and goes off the deep end “I thought I told you to get your kit squared away” . Only takes a couple of them to drive the most well educated and balanced airman to the edge of insanity. Naturally on the first night, the Sarge would brief them and Wal and I and occasionally Hendry and Ginge used to be in the other room throwing lockers around and making strange aggressive sounds, at a certain key word during Toms speech, he would beseech the recruits not to upset the Rocks. what he didn’t tell them was that we had unscrewed the hinges to the room door and when he got to this bit we would race down the corridor and hit the loosened door about 2 feet up from the bottom and causing the Hanna Barbera scene where the door smashes flat and we were left standing on the door growling at the recruits. After a day 1 like that – never had any bother with them – psychological warfare

Sep 19 2015

Recruits

Swinderby 1970 Dekka and I are JNCO’s on n Flt and the intake is three flights …..and is cr*p. Bull night and inspection was so bad the Flt Commander threw their kit out of the window. Another bull night and guess who gets d**ked for the duty? Yep you live in. Trolls across at 1900 and its carnage. Absolute no hopers so I give them close direction and some muscular counselling for the next hour before our intake Sgt turns up to inspect. He is GD – old school – throws a wobbly of volcanic proportions and on they go again. He says to me Esp they are on GDT in the morning will you pick them up at 0800 and march them there. NP says I head back to the delights of the Perm Staff bar. Easy night and next morning a bit of a saunter across to the block to find no flight. Strange says I and wanders to the door of the block with “ooooonnnn Parade and a few other tender words of encouragement. Nothing, nil, nada not a stir. I was by this time getting a bit leery so upstairs I went and around the barrack rooms. It was like the Marie Celeste – boots with yellow dusters lay on beds, small tins full of water bumpers in the middle of the room and a thin veil of polish on the floor. I was starting to consider that the Truth was really out there when I heard a whimper from one of the old tall lockers we used then. Esp the investigator quickly ascertained that there was a recruit in said locker and it had been locked from the outside, Fire extinguisher was more than a match for that lock and soon I had the story. Sarge was not happy with the block and kept giving them an hour to get it up to scratch, spending the in-between to consume a copious quantity of his favourite brown coloured sherbet water in the mess. About midnight he really lost his rag and ordered the room leaders to lock them in their lockers and then the senior man lacked the room leaders in their lockers and then he locked him in his locker and sauntered off back to the Mess. He only intended to leave them there for an hour but well got as missed as a fiddlers bitch and went home to his married quarter at around 2:30 knowing he hand the morning off. As a consequence 60 recruits spent their night in their lockers causing untreatable mental injury to most but not as much as to Sarge – yet another severe dig and fine, but as he said to me afterwards if you have not had at least 2 severe digs back in the day the real hard men DS would make you eat with the pigs

Sep 19 2015

The Worlds Biggest Turd

Up Country Malaya – Kotta Tinggi, Jungle Warfare School out at Lombong Waterfall. My friend Yorky, with the google eye, has the bright idea of increasing the number of beer chits we get by volunteering us for the poo pit duty. 2 shillings and 11p a day for “objectionable duties” is not to be sneezed at, quoth he. So, every morning before we went off on training, we had the signal honour of emptying the squadrons poo buckets, known as elsans, into a large pit, slinging some lime on it and depositing the correct amount of that blue poison Racasan into the new useable elsan. It could have been the heat or the lack of a copious amount of Tiger ( every time 15 organised the airdrop the palette with the beer on creamed in) but after a while Yorky started to take, what I thought was, an unhealthy interest, in the contents of said elsans. So I was not surprised when he appears at my side in the queue for breakfast (another advantage of the poo pit team, you went to the front)

“quick Geordie come and look at this, I found the worlds biggest turd(WBT)”.

Faced with a mess tine full of powdered egg, swimming in some form of liquid grease, I joined him and, sure enough, he had indeed snagged a monster. My little inner voice of caution started to murmur when he started to measure it and then using his gobbling rods(knife fork and spoon – KFS, in the parlance of the blanket stackers) carefully lifted it out for close examination. The only flat surface we had was the bonnet of OC 15 Sqns rover, all very spruce with a lovely white canvas cover for the spare wheel on the bonnet. Yorky then tastefully arranged the WBT into an arrangement like an upside-down ice cream cone on the white tyre cover. At that moment, Mick, our sergeant, grabbed me to go and draw the A43 ground to air radio set for the days training so I left Google Eye gloating over his prize. Perhaps my inner voice was turned down too far, anyway after a hard days training, standing in the cookhouse tent queue that night minding my business, the Sqn WO comes up and looks at me and Yorky and says “you two CO’s Tent NOW!” One didn’t argue with Big John and so we paraded at the CO’s tent. Piggy the CO came to the point quickly “what sort of insult did you intend when you left that turd on OC 15’s vehicle”. I was starting to hear the inner voice hitting the loud pedal and listening to the gibbering loon going on about how long we had been on the crap house gang and imagining the end of a promising military career. The loon dribbles on further about how we had taken time to make sure there was no one suffering from any foreign disease and inspected the output every day. Piggy was having a good day so we got a lecture about taking mundane duties too seriously and we could get out back to our meal

Result – the inner voice shouted and I got as far as the tent flap before the CO asked Yorky which pit it came from – quick as a flash, the crafty one says “Officers toilets Sir” to which Piggy had a wee smile “out ,the pair of you”. I actually got my hand on the tent flap before the loon asks “Any idea what caused it sir?”

“For your information it was babies heads ( Ration packs steak and kidney pudding)
and Bacardi and coke” thus confirming it was his – so somewhere in the ulu north of Lombong waterfall lies the last resting place of the Worlds Biggest Turd where the dawn comes up like thunder – outer China – “crost the bay (with apologies to Kipling)

Sep 19 2015

Up the Jungle 2

As a surprise consequence of the Worlds Biggest Turd, Yorky and I were removed from the chain gang by the CO on the grounds that he didn’t want to see 2 of his potential NCO’s ruined because they were keen. Returned to the Flight with a status of Rockstars, we got deeper and deeper into our training. People will talk about the hot countries and all that, but there is no shorter nor more efficient way of learning your trade as the jungle. Everything carried on your back, chlorined water, p*ss wet through all the time -sweat or rain, putting one foot in front of the other, next hill, next tin of Tom Piper Stew, next harbour. Our Flt Cmdr at the time shall remain nameless, not because he was a total dung head – he wasn’t, but because he turned out a great officer although on the Rapier side of the house and has remained a mate over almost 50 years. Well anyway, back to the plot – jungle harbouring drill were an essential for any field fight to master. Contrary to what I saw subsequently in Belize – nobody moved in the Malayan Jungle after dark. You went firm, sorted the harbour and comms out and waited for daylight, perfectly able to scramble the sh1t of anybody who strayed into your locale. Nothing difficult about the set up, 3 sections in a straight lines in a triangle – Gimpy at each apex, Flt HQ in the middle. Comms were always line pulls for silent stand to and a vine would be secured at chest height along the perimeter to indicate no further forward movement. Sections sorted out there own stags and hey presto not a problem. We all made basha’s, ground sheet and some sticks for the night. My problem this night was that I was on the HQ brick carrying the A41, rear link back to Sqn. Of course it would never work, it never worked at Feldom so there was no chance of it working in the ulu. Anyway we get set and I share the basha’s with the Flt Cmdr and the lines come in from the sections, just the usual green twine. One tug stand down, series of tugs stand to etc. All tested, we fed hard routine – no fires, water and tom piper stew cold – essence, eat your heart out Jamie Oliver. Settle down for the night and problem number 1 emerges, the Flt Com had cut the cord to length about 3 feet too short and they could only come to the radio op just outside the basha. By moving around I could get all three on my hand if my arm was outstretched. Still a minor discomfort – we settle down until about an hour after stand down, I hear a very light southern Irish accent saying Halt who goes there and a reply along the lines of friend, followed by a very pregnant pause and about 50 rounds from Ted Flints gun. No need for stand to the world had woken up. False alarm – one of the lemons had wandered outside the vine, been spotted by Paddy C and challenged. As Paddy explained later “For the life of me Sor, I couldn’t remember the password so I shot the bastard to be on the safe side” Rocks made sturdier choices in them days. Anyway it merely served to unnerve our young boss and throughout the night the flight was up and down, on stand to like a Penang Island hookers knickers. Problem Number 2 – because the cords were a little short, when himself whispered “Stand em to Esp” he leapt out of the basha and with unerring accuracy put his right foot in exactly the same spot every time – on my hand that was holding the comm cords. Reflex to pain – open your hand – cord shoots away in the dark and you spend the next half an hour finding it again. By the time you have found it its stand down, back in the Basha. After this had happened three times, I decided to mod the comms system, cut the cords about a yard long and tie the ends to the basha structure and the other end to the hand, which was now inside the basha and not getting used as a hog roast by every mossie in Malaya. Peace perfect peace for almost 5 hours until a couple of loud cries woke me and looking up I saw a large black shape obscuring the lightening sky. “he’s in the basha Esp Stop him!” Well you have to don’t you, young fit lad – boxer and quick, everything went into that right hook, connected wonderfully, like a four off the meat of the bat. Follow up – some nice rib shots, get the boot in and pin it to the floor yelling like a demented budgie “Got him Boss, got the evil bastard here” punctuated by another knee somewhere painful. Hands in the dark took over and Mick Roberts secured him as I panted, ” He got in the basha Sarge, Boss alerted me” to which Mick gently soothed me by saying “Esp, that is the Boss”. Oops a major specsavers moment, that earned me a night ambush with the Ghurkas. But that’s another story, to be continued.