Category Defence

May 26 2020

Tales from the Gunshed 2 Cold War Warriors 1


18 Sqn Wessex on ex in the north German Plain, 6 weeks of the old Eternal Triangle exercises. Rocks running all matter of crap duties with the old tricks – fill the Elsans up with neat racasan so the first aircrew who deposits never goes near an Elsan ever again because the splashback seared his jewels – kept stuff down to manageable proportions. We have a new Chief Magician in charge of the techies who thought he was the dogs…… Told us one morning that from now on his men would burn the wet pit every day. Suits us said the Hooligan whilst telling me and Mac to keep our eyes on them. So early in the morn, after getting the birds off for the days tasking, Chief and his gang of flightless birds trogged down to the pit. It was roughly 5 feet by 8ft by about 6 foot deep, in the wood. Two jerry cans of paraffin went dutifully onto the pit and the burning taper thrown in….result nowt…not even a sizzle to the great disappointment of the chief. We shall have to try some more quoth the great technician and another 10 gallons of paraffin went in with still nowt so he decides he will use some petrol, but not a lot so it remained manageable. Unbeknownst to him Mac and I had been watching and had each appropriated 2 jerry cans of aircraft fuel. None of your mamby pamby Avtur, this the Avtag the old Wessex flew on – white spirit based.
So we slung the 20 gallons in when the guins were searching for a chit to get petrol. Down they came with 5 gallons of petrol, dropped it in and tossed in the lighted taper. Slight difference…. Apocalypse now, from out of the pit rose a huge fireball rapidly ascending into the sky, complete with a mushroom cloud…blowing trees with three feet trunks aside like saplings in the wind…and leaving all the high paid technoprats with fricasseed eyebrows and black faces…to which the Hooligan remarked dryly “obviously far too technical for the rocks to do it best you guys keep on trying.”

Jan 13 2016

My Soul


My Bergan

A Bergan is a name for a military rucksack, I have had mine for over 35 years. It sits in the shed full of kit that will never be used again; relics and reminders of my military past. It has iconic lettering on the hidden spaces like Blood Gp O Neg Zap No 020 and OC B. It smells of damp nights in forests and amongst eucalyptus tree’ s in Germany, Canada, Cyprus and Northern Ireland. It is heavy duty Special Forces type of covering – completely waterproof, containing a goretex bivvy bag and arctic sleeping bag. Each has a completely different feel so necessary because the only time it would be unloaded would be at night. It reminds me of many places,
some good: – the Amphitheatre at Curium in Cyprus, on a balmy night with a sky overhead that would have been familiar to a roman centurion – sipping chilled St Emelion wine from the cool box whilst wearing a Union Jack Bowler hat and draped in a 10 ft square Union Flag listening to the Last Night at the Proms show
some bad: – the aftermath of another atrocity in Ireland and the troubles.
It is my formative life – that which made me and that which reminds me, I only have to move it after a chiding from my wife and a different memory comes winging back. It is a cornucopia of happenings and values and more importantly, it is a scrapbook of people those I knew and worked with, liked and hated, laughed and cried with. I suppose you could say its my soul.

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


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.

Dec 22 2011

An Irish Interlude – part 1 contd


The Clones Porker 

Pig What Pig?

Christmas Eve and we were getting tooled up to carry out the nights patrol activity.  We were officially  “Interdicting and disrupting the supply of terrorist material from the Republic”.  In reality, we would be harassing the Taigs as the Catholics were disparagingly called, coming back from midnight mass. Int  reminded us of the long standing smuggling rings in the area.  Operational Areas and Vehicle Check Point locations were suggested as were routes in and out of the areas.  Radio frequencies issued, however, as we all knew the patrol areas were so far away from base and the range of the steam driven radios we had was so limited that contact would intermittent at best and usually like being on the dark side the moon, in other words you were on your own.  Then came the big surprise of the night, we were deploying two teams in conjunction with the RUC B Specials.  And for once I would not make take my place as the Flight Sergeants driver, I was to command the second element of the patrol.  We operated with a 4 man team of ours and a 4 man police team at a specific location.  With me I had Dennis the purve, Brummy Frank as Sigs and another lad who could have been young Bill the plumber but may not have.  This was our usual team except for FS BBB.  He was not to be trifled  with as he stood over 6th 3ins tall in his socks and had served in all three of Her Majesties Services.  As a Royal Marine commando, he had been the Home Fleet heavyweight boxing champion in 1944 and the Home Fleet was a very big organisation then.  He was a pathfinder with the Guards Independent Para Company and had served 18 years in the RAF Regiment with a BEM to prove it.  One of the best men I ever served under.  He would shepherd the other 4 man team, some miles detached from us, with another group of B Specials.  This team we could contact by radio if anything went pear shaped.  At the end of our int brief we got another warning about smugglers not gun runners which didn’t surprise us at all seeing as what little intelligence we had from the area was supplied by the RUC and was very crime orientated with any terrorist int being years out of date.

Enforced rest from 3 to 5:30 was the order of the day and we duly had a quick ziz on the bunk beds we lived in for 6 weeks at a time.  My luck was to have a bottom bunk with Dennis the purve was above me where I could keep my eye on him.  I also found out that the troops get more sleep that the commander with all the admin stuff to do.  After a luscious mean of pork chop pasties and chips (don’t ask it casts aspersions on the skills of RAF cooks, but where else have you seen a whole pork chop including the bone encased in a pasty case and served, and the cook wondering why he had to move beds every night in case the guy who had bent his knife and lost a tooth trying to eat this, found him), we headed south east the 25 miles for Newtonbutler and then on towards the Cavan road.  The main area if interest was the concession road that ran from Clones through Northern Ireland and then back into the Republic.  The trick here was that duty on taxable items was not levied as the goods were deemed to be in transit between two locations in the Republic and technically not in Northern Ireland at all.  Well, even us intellectually challenged Rocks could spot the flaw in that one.  How do you know it goes south again if you don’t check it all the way?  Of course this was the smugglers route and they smuggled everything especially farm produce and diesel.  To us intrepid sons of Albion, this was a mere bagatelle, a distraction of getting to grips with the main task, the IRA.  Our B Special comrades agreed wholeheartedly and followed us eagerly in their small ford estate car. Now despite what was written about the B Specials in later years they did their stuff to the best of their training and capabilities.  The problem was the training started with the mantra “shoot first and then ask for their ID” and then degenerated swiftly – not the way we did it. 

So back to the start and the cold moonlit night west of Clones at around 23:30 hours.  Our Land-rover was parked in the on coming lane for vehicles coming across the border and the police vehicle behind it on the opposite side of the road creating a chicane of sorts which would not allow a speeder to race through the check point.  We had the two red faced farmer’s lads of the B Specials lying in the ditches on either side as a last resort if someone actually did crash the road block.  I and the sub Inspector occupied the middle of the road block with responsibility for stopping and searching cars, Frank was in the back of the rover on Sigs and Dennis was roving around looking for anything that took his fancy.  The Sub Inspector carried a Mark 5 Sten gun, seen in wartime films but not since then, with his lads with old single shot rifles.  He also carried a very small lamp who’s glass was almost completely blacked out with tape only allowing a pinprick of light to emerge.  When I asked him about this he stated that it was there so when (not if but when) the Papists didn’t stop they could open fire with justification.  This fed a faint twinge of alarm to my nervous system as I recall and all the memories of my Jesuit teachers and their lurid tales of Black and Tans flooded back in spades.  I told him we would use our super sexy 3 colour traffic torches which seemed to dampen his morale a little.  Nevertheless from around 12:30 onwards we started to get a steady stream of traffic coming from Clones after Mass.  The guys did the stuff and we logged them in and took names etc classic example of fighting men doing policeman’s duties and the Specials seemed to know everybody.  “Don’t bother searching that one Sor”, would be the word. “He’s one of us” and one didn’t have to be a PhD to deduce what that meant as they all strangely had Christian names like William, and Ian, not a Padraig or Declan to be seen. 

 Around 2AM things closed down completely and I got to thinking that we were probably the only people in Northern Ireland up at that time and was on the verge of calling it a day when another set of headlights lit up the hill in the distance.  “One more guys then we’ll call it a night”. This cheered everyone up.  The car approached on a weaving trajectory that could have taken it to Dublin one minute or into the front of the Police car the next.  Making sure we could get out of the way quickly we flagged it down and surprise surprise it stopped.  A very old Ford Popular (immediate post war equivalent of today’s Focus) with  a single occupant, a thin badly shaven individual of indeterminable age in somewhat tatty clothing.  The patois for this sort of meeting is standard

 “Good evening sir this is a British Military Roadblock can I see your driving license please?

pause 

Is this your car sir?

pause

What’s the registration number ?

pause

Would you mind getting out of the car so I can look in the boot?”

Simple really except when I looked at him I saw that the driver’s door was held on by a piece of string.  One of the characteristics of the Popular was the fact that their doors all hung from the central pillar.  This is the same as the rear doors of modern cars but their front door opened backwards unlike today. This meant he had a length of string stretching across the front of the windscreen hooked onto both doors.  It was also apparent that this guy was unimaginably drunk, pissed as a fiddlers bitch, 3 sheets to the mind, gassed to the wide, call it what you will, if he had breathed into a breathalyser he would have set it on fire. 

On the back seat of the car, as I looked in to its gloomy interior, were about 40 pint bottles of Porter, bottled Guinness.  This was looking decidedly dodgy and not according to the script.  So I tried again to get him out of the car and again he shook his head and dribbled.  Well, it was always hammered into us that the quality of the fighting man is determined by what he does when it doesn’t go according to the script, and our friend had committed the fatal error in opening the window slightly to hear me better.  Despite the alcoholic fug that was pure Bushmills wafting out of the window, I managed to get my hand inside the car and asked him once more if he would get out.  Another incomprehensible diatribe as he attempted to shut the window.

Well by this time I was becoming a pretty peed off teddy and the old Celtic blood was beginning to rise.  I pulled off the string that was keeping the door shut and opened it intending to extract the drunken leprechaun from the vehicle when I got another shock.  The string was there not just to keep the door closed, but as the hinges of that door had completely rusted through, it was there to keep the door on.  As soon as I opened it, it fell off, and onto the toe of the sub Inspector who promptly howled with pain and danced around like a whirling dervish in the middle of the road (to be honest he was a better actor than some preening Spanish midfield player). So there I was in the middle of this road freezing my nuts off, a broken car door in one hand and an RUC sub Inspector sounding like a gut shot water buffalo.  Logically I should have taken a deep breath in and counted to ten but it never goes like that and our friend, the fume breathing dwarf, found himself grasped and seized by the lapels and lifted out of the car where I said to him quite gently, “show me your f*****g driving license sunshine or I will break your arms and legs ….slowly and with malice”.  Reasonable in the circumstances I thought.  He managed to find a dog eared license from somewhere and he produced it with a giant burp that produced enough vaporized Alcohol to have poisoned half the population of County Cavan.  It transpired he was a local from Clones. And further questioning revealed he was on his was to his mother’s house in the Republic to spend Christmas Day with her. 

I now wanted shot of this comedian as soon as I could rid myself of him, so did the last part of the ritual, the look in the boot.  His face became a mask of fear when I asked him to open the boot.  “ Can’t do that, can’t open the boot”  Reasonably again I asked him what was in the boot, beginning to think we might have a live one here to which I got a shake of the head and some more Gaelic mumbling , or at least I think it was Gaelic.  So I did what any well trained military man would do – I growled at him.  I have a decent growl and it has frightened more than its fair share since that day but on its first operational deployment the growl produced some results.  “There’s a pig in the boot and you canna open it.”  A pig, I thought is just the sort of lunacy that would fit here and that’s why it doesn’t fit, how the hell he could get a pig in that small boot. 

This went on for some minutes with me asking “ What’s in the boot?” and him answering “ A Pig”  So I committed another cardinal error, I opened the boot lid myself.  The good book says you should always let the punter open their own boot, something to do with chain of evidence. Tiredness was getting to me, however, and I opened up the slanting boot lid.  Lo and behold, sitting in a cardboard box in the boot, was a small, round, pink pig.  Only it wasn’t there for long, sensing a way out of what must have been a very smelly boot, it made its dash for freedom and was away through the hedge into the field adjoining the road.  You might then have thought I had inflicted some form of horrendous torture on the driver as the wailing and whooping suddenly increased in volume and tempo to the top of the Beaufort scale. All that could be heard for probably 5 miles around was “ Ma Pig, Ma Pig, Ma Pig”.  Discretion is the better part of valour and I gave the hand signals to the troops to lift the VCP only to run into the nationalistic solidarity of the Sub Inspector who politely informed me that unless the vehicle and its cargo were restored to its previous condition, he would be forced to make a complaint against the squadron and me in particular.  At the same time, the drunken linty refused to sign the indemnity form.  It became obvious that we would have to apprehend said pig and stuff it back into the boot.  So Dennis the purve, myself and Frank the Brummy went into the field to catch the pig.  Simple job, I thought, just corner it, there are three of us, and close it down.  Have you ever tried to catch a small pig in a large field when its aroused?  Not one of life’s easier tasks, herding cats would be simpler.  After an hour of useless effort, the FS’s vehicle pulled up and he cast a sage eye over things.  A large grin on his face as was on the face of his driver, my best mate Rick.  He remarked that he was pleased I had everything under control and he would make sure that soup and a sandwich would be ready for us when we got back to base.  With that he leapt into the vehicle and away they went, accompanied by roars of laughter.  I was then more determined than ever to catch this pig, but after another 30 minutes of trying and having made no greater impression, I decided that drastic actions were justified and that if we could not catch the pig alive then a bacon joint it would become. 

The driver and the sub Inspector had been getting along famously whilst we had been slaving away in the field, primarily because the punter had broken open the porter and was sharing it with the Specials whilst sitting on the running board of the car watching us lot cavort around the field like the back markers in the National on the second circuit of Aintree.  I told the guys to get back to the truck and walked towards the pig.  As I did so I jacked a round into the breech of my rifle and I guess the pig and its owner saw the writing on the wall.  As I raised the rifle to aim, the old geezer reeled off some strange noises and whistles and the pig legged it, through the gap under the hedge next to the gate, to the back of the car and leapt into the boot and into its box whereupon it promptly lay down.

Nonplussed is a way to describe my feelings at that moment, I didn’t know whether to breath a sigh of relief or shoot the pig and its owner on the spot.  The Sub Inspector closed the boot and got the old git back into the vehicle and on its way, having a signed indemnity form.  As he drove away, the old fella left us 4 bottles of porter and his heartfelt thanks for the cabaret.  I gave it up and closed things down.  I would like to say we all recovered to base in good order but no – the police car would not start and we had to tow it back with the only tow rope available – our jointed rifle slings.  So ended the tale of the Clones Porker on a cold Christmas morning .   

Well not actually, some years later whilst engaged in waiting to down to Belfast during the Ulster Workers Strike we were passing the time murdering a bottle of Highland Park in the Royal Military Police Barracks at Aldergrove, Alexander Barracks or Ally Pally as it was known, and we got to talking about experiences with some of the Special Branch guys and the RMP SIB.  We talked about Enniskillen and how it had changed and one of the guys asked if we had not come across Mr W ****** on our ops there. He and his family had run a successful smuggling racket for years and that his main trick was to distract everyone from his cargo of contraband butter and fags by using his tame pig.  I would be lying if I said I didn’t change the subject very very quickly.

 

 …to be continued  Christmas in the Garage and jock Steels amazing mechanical Sausage

Dec 20 2011

An Irish Interlude – Part 1


The Clones Porker, Christmas in the Garage and Jock Steels Amazing Mechanical Sausage

Clear cold and brightly moonlit – the crossroads just over the border to Clones, glistened with a thick layer of hoar frost.  This was the first Christmas of the latest batch of troubles that Ireland had had to endure.  The early part of the troubles as they are known have not been documented in any great detail but bore little resemblance to the ensuing bloodshed in Belfast and Derry, in fact they bore a greater resemblance to Ballkissangel but always with an edge to the comedy.  The trip to the border lands of Fermanagh was the second of the excursions to the Emerald Isle that year.  The first was a relatively benign trip that had encompassed Derry and then Aldergrove.  The first bit was only remarkable by the fact that when we drove into the city with our blue coloured land rovers the crowds of rioters who had been bashing the exhausted contingent of RUC men to their knees would cease and desist, part their ranks to allow us passage to the small air sea rescue station that was one of our assets, wait patiently until we checked that the place was secure and then returned to our base at the top of the hill.  Once those rituals had been observed, like a Hanna Barbara cartoon, they immediately clashed together in titanic terminal struggle again.  The Aldergrove end was only remarkable because of the two hangers on the airfield which could have given any terrorist organization drooling mouths as they contained a high value target indeed -124 F4 Phantoms straight out of the McDonnell Douglas factory destined to be deployed with the RAF and RN, once their engines had been up rated and a new avionics suite had been fitted.  The task was to stand on the door of these two enormous concrete upside down dustbin lid type hangers with a loaded rifle and 20 rounds of ammunition and defend these aero planes to the last man and the last round.  The highlight of this was one unfortunate soul, being new and young and inexperienced, managing to put 3 rounds through a bank of self flushing public urinals located behind the open door where he had been sheltering from the wind off Lough Neagh. He told me later, once the shock of his two weeks wages fine for discharging his weapon in a dangerous manner had worn off ( how can you not discharge a weapon dangerously, they are supposed to be dangerous, otherwise why have them), that all the while he was pulling the trigger his brain was saying to him “No don’t do this you should not be doing this” but his trigger finger just kept working.  He could have made some form of case for demonic  possession but in truth he was a bit overly blessed in the stupid department. 

 

We returned to the Province some two and a half months later after completing that four months there.  This time it was to be the good stuff, the first time a complete wing of the RAF Regiment had deployed as a wing since the big 6 year exercise in 1939.  Because we were Strategic Reserve we would deploy onto the border between The Irish republic (The 26 Counties) and Ulster (The 6 Counties). We would have squadrons at Enniskillen, Armagh,Tyrone and Londonderry, with our HQ in Omagh in one of the few existing army bases.  I suppose in need to put in some explanations here about the organisation and it’s structures.  So for all of you who know what the RAF Regiment is, tune out for a paragraph or two while I fill in some blanks.

 

The RAF Regiment is a separate corps within the RAF, created in 1942 to seize and defend RAF assets.  Wel,l we didn’t get much seizing these days so we get to defend lots.  We have also acted as infantry in support of the Army or the Local Government wherever we happen to be.  This means we tend to get around a lot more than your average pongo or to some extent marine.  We seldom operate in groupings of bigger than squadron size (about 160 strong).  These are slightly larger than your average army or marine company and much more heavily armed and equipped. Additionally, the longer than usual infantry training means that the skill levels of the individual tends to be higher than the basic level grunt

It also meant that we could cover more ground than the average infantry unit and so, faced with a huge manpower deficit, the Army asked for and got the Wing to seal the border.

Early October saw us sailing into Belfast Lough and splitting up our various sub units from there. Our squadron,16 deployed to Fermanagh based at Enniskillen, 37, went to Tyrone, the Iron Triangle, based at Dungannon and Pomeroy and our attached army unit deployed to Armagh based in Armagh itself.  The wing was based in Omagh with the HQ squadron, 48 minus it’s SAM launchers.  They were linked with the resident army unit  17/21st Lancers the death or glory boys giving us some armoured car support.  This mixed bunch looked after County Londonderry right up to the outskirts of Derry itself.  Also at Omagh we had the Wing reserve, composed of one flight (about 30 guys) from each of the forward squadrons.  This was done on a rotational basis 2 weeks at Omagh and 6 weeks on the Border.  It was supposed to be Rest and Recuperation for the tempo we were working at 24 hours on camp guard, 36 hours on patrol duties and 12 hours off then start again was killing.

Things did not get off to an auspicious start.  On each of the squadrons there was always a pecking order of flights.  We were organized into HQ, 3 rifle or field flights and a support weapons flight.  Support Weapons was always the flight to be on as it was composed of the squadrons crème de la crème whether that was as a professional mortar man, heavy machine gunner, all round basic infantryman, criminal or blagger. If you were good then you would be “encouraged” to apply.  I got chosen because I was recognised as a good trooper and bright, as well as being a fairly useful centre half.  The first unit from 16 to go into reserve was SW Flt.  The fly in the ointment was I did not travel with the rest of the flight directly to Omagh as I had to drop some clerk off at Enniskillen.  The drop off was of no moment and I needed an escort to take me back to Omagh.  This was organised because a junior officer was detached to the Wing as a watch keeper and he would travel in a separate vehicle with his driver.  Problem was they didn’t have a map, I did and, trusting soul, handed it over to them.  It took all of 2 miles for them to lose me as we exited the county town of Enniskillen.  So I was lost with only the vaguest idea of direction of travel.  Why don’t you come across signposts that say if you go here you will be on your way to Omagh?  As I plodded on, ricocheting across the map of Ulster like a demented pinball, it grew darker and the petrol gauge of the land rover began to slip towards the empty.  This would be a problem, I could always stop at a local police station except that a) there were none and b) we had been warned that on no account were we trust the locals as we, as a Regiment, had a stigma attached from the previous troubles in the fifties.  All this was a problem but not show-stopper for a man of my calibre.  What was show stopping was the 4 x 81mm mortars I was carrying in the back of long wheelbases land rover.  And if that was a problem it was nothing compared to the 164 rounds of high explosive ammunition for those mortars in the trailer. considering that a medium mortar like the 81mm can lob a round with very credible accuracy for some 4 and a half miles.  They would have been Christmas come early to those republican groups on the border.  Well as you guessed, because I am writing about this, I survived and eventually rolled into the main gate at Lisanelly Barracks in Omagh at around 7:30 PM that night , having been missing for some 6 hours to find that the entire Province searching for me, and of course my mortar cargo. All I was interested was if any of my gang had thought to order me a late dinner as I was starving not having eaten for some 13 hours.  Instead I got the grand inquisition in a process that would have done Torquemada proud.  All sizes and manner of loonies went as far as to personally accuse me of trying to bring down the government because of my thoughtless actions.  The young officer who was going there as well had not told anyone he had lost me and disappeared into his room at the mess.  When he was rootled out and grilled he stuck to his story like a good patsy completely unknowing that his driver was one of my best mates, hated the little turd and could not wait to tell the truth and show them my map with my name plastered all over it.  Ah my another fine military career nipped in the bud – off he went the next day with a little sticker on his forehead – ” send back to civvie street not wanted on this or any other voyage”

There were more adventures in Omagh; the great flood where we assisted the population and brought food and drink to them whilst they blithely urinated on us from top floor windows – “Nothing personal you see lads but you’re  British Soldiers” called one especially productive dwarf.  I learned a valuable lesson that day and that was if you go fast enough down a street flooded up to waist level in a land rover the bow wave then created was strong enough to smash in said dwarfs front door and on the second pass liberate his colour TV, last seen surfing the wave into the river.  The next day was clean up and we got assigned to cleaning up a pair of apartments, personal friends of the Mayor we were told so “Do a good job lads and it will be good for the squadron”. We were nothing If not dutiful and diligent, armed with brooms and shovels we set to to clean up these very smart flats.  Well all except Denis, the squadron perv.  Everywhere has one and Dennis was ours.  I suppose he just had an overly imaginative mind coupled with a hypersonic sex drive but Dennis could be relied upon to see the hidden perversion in any situation.  It, therefore, came as no surprise when he came out of one of the flats bedrooms twirling a leather harness around his head for all the world, the image of one of Ghengis Khans Golden Horde after the sack of Samarkand. The sound that accompanied it was, however, pure Northumberland triumph.  Having told us all that he had known all along we were mere pawns in some capitalist game and that we were clearing up a knocking shop so the Mayor could………well you catch my drift.  

There was also the minor frisson when the aforesaid donkey wallopers (Cavalry) 17 / 21st lost their prized battle flag.  Some evil git had misappropriated this in the dead of night.  I am sure it was pure circumstances that it went missing the day we deployed back to Enniskillen.  As our counterpart Support Weapons flight from 37 San were also off to Dungannon that day, I remain convinced that it went with them – evils swine to man best suited to a Caribbean privateer of the 15th Century.  However, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but cannot for the life of me understand why OC 37 should have given it to our CO to hang in his office, I sometimes wondered about our officers!

Well Enniskillen was crowded and uncomfortable and fun.  We did lots of patrols of which one day I shall write more.  It was also tiring and mind-numbingly boring – a state of affairs I was, in later years, to appreciate as the norm and the safest.  The weeks rolled by with little respite.  We went to the furthest reaches of County Fermanagh even to the edges of the Atlantic, well almost map reading being what it was then.  Before one knew it we were into December and watched in silent glowering jealousy as the inhabitants of Fermanagh, never ones to shirk a party,  began getting down and dirty and enjoy themselves. The last few days in the run up to the big day were spent on patrols for us but with a small deviation from the norm.  A squadron Christmas party had been organised at a hotel just outside the town.  A posh hotel but no one had told the Sqn officers that as well as booze and a good dinner what the troops needed at a party like this was women.  Sadly, none were provided and of course the inevitable happened, they had no where to let off steam and tried to agitate the locals into a punch up.  Not even Enniskillen’s locals were that daft and so it degenerated into amass brawl the likes I have not seen since and which would have been entirely in place in a John Wayne western.  Trouble was, as we were on patrol duties on Christmas Eve, the next night, I along with the Wolf had been nominated as bouncers or security in today’s parlance.  We had completed the most of the night with nothing untoward at all.  The manager of the hotel invited us into the staff pantry just before midnight and had some cakes and sandwiches and coffee there.  Barely had we got in then one of the staff came in and said there was some trouble in the hallway.  Up we went and opened the door into the main corridor through the hotel and it was absolute carnage people were thumping people for fun, for revenge, to prove they weren’t that drunk yet and a million other reasons.  The manager had called the riot squad from our stand ins for the evening 37 Sqn and the boys managed to divest them of shields rifles helmets and flak jackets in a shorter time than it has taken me to type this.  

Most of the rest of the morning was spent conveying slightly and in one or two cases moderately battered bodies to the local infirmary.  if the IRA had wanted to attack that would have been the day and the time……to be continued