by Harry Beaves
I staggered gingerly back to the command post. Bill looked up angrily. ‘You’ve been gone for ages. Where the hell have you been? Oh my God, look at your chin!’
I was led away to find a medic who, to my delight, decided that I needed to go to the Field Ambulance, which was deployed several miles away in a barn complex. Perhaps I might get off the exercise for a few hours. I cheered a little.
At the Field Ambulance I was taken to the treatment area, a clear space in the centre of the building where I noticed that a stretcher supported on straw bales was serving as the treatment table. All around, the medics had made themselves comfortable in the time-honoured manner of the British soldier and were relaxing on the bales chatting and playing cards as a Sergeant looked at my chin.
He cleaned the wound. ‘Ooh that’s a bit of a mess, sir. You’ll probably need a stitch or two. I’d better get the Colonel.’ It seemed Sergeants didn’t stitch officers, only officers stitched officers!
I waited patiently then, to my horror, who should arrive but the same jolly Irish Colonel who had been enjoying himself so energetically in the Mess at lunchtime. I nervously wondered what sort of hangover he was nursing after his earlier indulgence. Three stiches later I was told I would be monitored overnight for concussion then withdrawn from the exercise back to Dortmund in the morning. For me, the war was over – result!
Back in camp I was decidedly less cheerful. My mouth was a mess and my jaw was very bruised, so first stop was the dentist who removed two teeth that had shattered when my jaw came together. I was miserable and uncomfortable for several days, a high price to pay for an early end to an exercise.
There was, however, one small upside. Because tobacco was duty free, like most of my contemporaries in BAOR I smoked. I was finding it was harming my fitness on the rugby field, but try as I might I could not give up. With my damaged mouth, smoking was unpleasant so I was able to break the habit and have not smoked since.
But there was also another downside. The wound on my chin was like a large graze with a deep hole in the centre. The hungover Irish Colonel managed to pull three sides of a graze together and stitch them leaving me still with a ‘T’ shaped scar that reminds me of that exercise on the occasions when I nick it shaving, even now.
On one occasion I visited the Harz Mountains which were then split by the border between West and East Germany. There was a view point at Torfhaus with powerful telescopes and information boards describing the panorama a few miles in front of us in East Germany. The border was marked with ten-foot-high barbed wire fences, mine fields, guards with war dogs and sentry towers with machine guns. In the far distance was ‘The Brocken’, the highest mountain in the Harz, bristling with Communist radio masts and eavesdropping equipment, eager to pick up any of the Allied Forces’ radio transmissions. Our reason for being in Germany could not have been more clearly illustrated.
First impressions of life in BAOR suggested we were a well-focussed highly professional force, but I was unconvinced and often wondered how we would cope with the reality of nuclear war. The outline plan was that, initially, we would not be able to resist the vastly superior size of the Communist onslaught and would be forced to conduct a fighting withdrawal. The line of our withdrawal would eventually lure the enemy into an area of high hills which we would occupy. The enemy advance would lose momentum when they met the strength of our forces on the hills, they would be caught in the valleys and obliged to concentrate their forces. At that point we would fire tactical (low yield) nuclear weapons into what were called ‘nuclear killing zones’. The enemy would be destroyed and we would roll forward through the smoke and devastation and retake the ground we had lost. Our armoured vehicles would be battened down and equipped with Nuclear Biological and Chemical (NBC) air filters and our troops would be wearing respirators and NBC protective clothing.
I wondered how the enemy would respond to our use of tactical nuclear weapons. Presumably they would fire similar weapons at us. Would the situation escalate to full-scale nuclear war with each side capable of totally destroying the other?
My second question was more relevant to my own level of operation. Would we actually be able to fight in an NBC environment? We regularly practised the drills and on exercise wore our NBC suits for weeks, but we only ever wore our respirators for a few hours because they made the basics of soldiering so difficult. Also, many of us cheated with this training. I, for one, had an exercise NBC suit, worn over normal combat clothing, which I had washed many times. The important carbon lining that made the suit dirty and uncomfortable to wear was almost gone. I had two filter canisters for my respirator, one fully functional for gas chamber practices and one with the contents drilled out so that breathing was unobstructed.
Receiving the ‘all clear’ also posed an amusing problem. Picture the scene.
British troops, in full NBC kit, have been mopping up the enemy after a tactical nuclear strike and now the radiac monitoring equipment is reading ‘clear’.
The BC summons the Battery Sergeant Major (BSM). ‘Sergeant Major, HQ has said it’s all clear. Order one of the men to conduct a sniff test’
‘Right, sir.’ ‘Gunner Jones, come here.’
‘Yes, sir’.
‘The BC says we’re all OK now, so conduct a sniff test.’
‘What’s that, sir’?
‘You take your respirator off and sniff the air. If you keel over choking, we keep ours on. If you’re OK, then we take our respirators off.’
And Gunner Jones replied. ‘…’
So said the instruction pamphlet, though not quite in those words! I wondered whether we would ever reach that stage.
A bigger worry I had was whether we could actually survive to fight in a purely conventional war. Sandhurst had taught us to be self-reliant and it was a part of the training I had particularly enjoyed. By comparison, BAOR was soft. We were fat, dumb and happy living a dull, comfortable, duty-free existence.
We were also poorly equipped. The Infantry were wearing the current web equipment designed in 1958. The Royal Artillery and others were wearing the same 1937 pattern web equipment that my father had used in the Second World War. Because we moved in armoured vehicles we only ever wore a belt and ammunition pouches. Our other kit was thrown in the back of the vehicle in a holdall rather than the large pack that my father marched with. We simply could not have carried our kit on foot. For exercise, each officer was issued with four blankets and a canvas valise to contain them. When it was rolled round the camp bed this made a bedroll about three feet long and eighteen inches in diameter, not something you could easily put on your back. The soldiers were not issued with camp beds, so they bought sun loungers from the NAAFI and completed their sleeping kit with floral patterned Terylene (non flame-retardant) sleeping bags from the same source.
At Sandhurst we had learnt to live in ‘bashas’, individual shelters made with our ground sheets. In Germany each vehicle was equipped with a huge tarpaulin. Drape this from the side of the vehicle and raise the centre with a pole and you had a shelter under which the whole detachment could sleep – in their floral sleeping bags, on their sun loungers.
Locating Troop 19 Regiment on exercise. Good lads, good at their job, but seven men, four smokers, bivvying under the comfort of a 24 x 24 tarpaulin slung from a vehicle. Picture 19 Regt.
Sandhurst had taught us to cook on single burners. Most often in Germany our food was prepared from a central field kitchen. Sometimes we cooked by detachments, each vehicle having a large burner and set of cooking equipment. There were often ingenious variations. When were given the order ‘Prepare to move’ one of our Number Ones (the Sergeant who commanded a gun) would put two eight-ounce tins of soup on the exhaust pipe that ran high along the side of the Abbott. When he arrived at the next position he immediately had hot soup to warm his detachment!
The FTXs were quite demanding and usually different, as we did not often go to areas we had used before. By comparison, we quickly got to know the li
ve firing training area of Munsterlager ranges. The impact area was surrounded by about twenty-five Gun Areas, patches of ground from where we could fire live artillery ammunition into the impact area. The size and shape of the Gun Areas varied, but were usually around two kilometres by a kilometer, with a Gun Battery requiring an area about the size of a football pitch in which to deploy. Because of safety constraints, when firing live artillery there was usually only one place in each Gun Area that you could deploy, so getting the layout of the Battery correct was not much of a challenge.
Live firing is always testing, with no room for error. In order to fire safely and accurately each gun must have its location calculated to the nearest metre, known as ‘Theatre Grid’. In the days before GPS it was the job of the Battery Survey Sergeant to calculate this, using tables and simple survey equipment. Geordie Platt, our Survey Sergeant, had known Munsterlager ranges for many years. Over that time he had created his own personal survey list by burying an empty compo ration can, with just the top showing, in each of the Gun Areas and calculating its location to the required accuracy. When the order came for the Battery to move to a new firing position he would roar off, find his compo can and set up his survey equipment over it. In no time at all the guns were on theatre grid and we were ready to fire. Normally he would have used official known survey points that were much further away and would have taken much longer to calculate the data for the guns. With initiative like that it’s no wonder he made it to Regimental Sergeant Major!
Physical fitness was a low priority and I was surprised to find that, having been average at Sandhurst, I was one of the fittest in the Battery. The usual sports were played on a Wednesday afternoon, but there was almost no physical training included in the weekly programme. Once a year we were required to complete a fitness test which consisted of a ten-mile march in combat clothing with webbing and weapons, followed by three obstacles on the assault course. We then fired about twenty rounds at a target on the thirty-metre range. At Sandhurst this had been conducted to the letter of the regulations and it was a good test. In most regular units it was very loosely administered, not least because the web equipment we had was inappropriate. It was common for the no-hopers to escape by being sent out of camp on ‘important tasks’ when the tests were being run. Very few people failed, but very few completed the test as it was intended. I am pleased to say things have improved significantly today.
Despite the fact that we faced very obvious threat, the reality was that life in BAOR was as typically dull as garrison duties have ever been. We seemed to exist to administer ourselves with a seemingly endless routine of checking stores and auditing the many accounts that the unit Paymaster had under his supervision.
Soldiering in BAOR lacked the hard edged self-reliance that I was really looking for, but unfortunately I was there for the next three years. There was no option but to conform, so I happily adopted the lifestyle of the other junior officers in the Regiment. I remember from one of my rare excursions into literature, reading of certain characters in a Tom Sharpe novel described as ‘over-active under-achievers’. Several of us in 19 Regiment in those days fitted that description well. We lived life at ninety miles an hour working on the principle that to do things in moderation was to waste an opportunity. With no mobile phones, no satellite TV and only the British Forces Broadcasting Service for entertainment we made our own fun and, boy, did we enjoy ourselves.
We were rarely aware of the threat posed by the Communist bloc as we went about our daily routine not worrying too much about anything, but in 1971 that all began to change. It was in the autumn that the CO announced that in the summer of 1972 the Regiment would deploy to Belfast on Operation Banner, a task that for many of us would change our lives forever.
Chapter 5
Semper in Excremento Sed Altus Variat *
At Sandhurst, there was a sort of expectation that the Officer Cadets and junior officers should be lively and good fun, but unlike Sandhurst the ‘grown-ups’ of 19 Regiment frequently strayed over the line between mischief and trouble. If life in BAOR was mundane and boring then we had more than enough initiative to find fun. This chapter includes just a few of the many tales of mischief and trouble from that time in my service.
* * *
The young officer, fresh out of Sandhurst arriving in his first posting, has traditionally been the victim of some form of practical joke by his fellow officers. It often takes the form of junior officers dressing as senior officers and vice versa with everyone behaving badly. We all expect it, but we all fall for it. It is a sort of ‘rite of passage’, but I was not going to get caught out, so for my first few days in 19 Regiment I was very alert to anything unusual.
Nothing happened, so I began to lower my guard and it didn’t strike me as strange when, late in my first week, I got a phone call from a fellow officer telling me that we were all required at the Medical Centre for annual checks at 4.30 that afternoon. I went along at the appointed time and found most of my new ‘friends’ in the waiting room moaning about the inconvenience of Med Checks that late in the day.
The receptionist was the girlfriend of one of the subalterns and I had met her before. Had I taken more notice of our conversation at that time I would have remembered her telling me that she worked as a receptionist at the Dental Centre and had I looked more carefully at the documents from which she checked my details I might have noticed that they were actually my dental documents.
A door opened and one of my mates came out making great play of straightening his uniform as if he had just got dressed. In the doorway stood the most stunning blond-haired, blue-eyed German honey and what’s more she was wearing a white coat that suggested that she was the Doctor. ‘Lieutenant Beaves.’
I didn’t need a second invitation and followed the perfect figure through the door. ‘If you would just like to go into the next room and strip to your underwear and lay on the couch.’
I couldn’t get my clothes off fast enough. As I lay on the bed eagerly awaiting the German stunner I began to think that she was taking her time and all too late I realised what was happening. The door opened and in came the gang, laughing and pointing at me. I rushed for my clothes, but they grabbed my trousers and ran off.
I couldn’t believe that I had fallen for it, but I had and there was no escape. I had to take on the chin, so I got dressed, shirt, tie, jacket, socks, shoes-brown-officers and cap… no trousers. I went to the door of the building to see that the gang had been joined by the two girls and were driving round and round the car park, waving my trousers out of the window of a VW Beetle and beeping the horn. I waited in the vain hope that they would bring them back and we could all laugh together, but the car disappeared in the direction of the camp gates. I went back inside and waited for someone to return, but the building stayed quiet and I had to accept that I was on my own in camp without my trousers and somehow had to get to my room in the Officers’ Mess, outside the Main Gate.
Nothing for it, head up and stride out on the walk of shame. Fortunately the camp was fairly quiet and empty at that time, as most of the married men had gone home and the single men were in the cookhouse at their evening meal. No one paid any attention, but I was approaching the Main Gate where the guard was supposed to be alert and attentive. The sentry on the gate blinked in disbelief as he saw a trouserless officer approaching, but I tried to pretend there was nothing out of the ordinary and strode on, head high. As I passed the Guard Room the sentry snapped to attention and saluted my trouserless figure while the rest of the Guard stood at the window roaring with laughter.
The gang were waiting with the two girls in the Ladies Room of the Officers’ Mess. In those days Messes were highly chauvinistic establishments for men only. There was no bar, waiters served drinks in the Ante Room and women visitors were only permitted in the chintzy Ladies Room. My trouserless arrival was greeted with loud cheers and laughter. I discovered the stunning German ‘doctor’ was actually another clerk from the Dental Centre.
I was handed a glass of Amstel and slapped on the back, then another glass and another… I waited for the return of my trousers, but it never happened and eventually the group broke up and we changed for dinner. After dinner we continued where we had left off and I have no recollection how many Amstels later I went to bed, but I woke the next morning with a storming hangover.
The CO had been away all week so I had not had my ‘on arrival’ interview. He was now back and I was due to see him at 0930 that day, dressed in the uniform I had been wearing the previous day. Through the alcoholic haze I realised that I still had no trousers so I crashed from room to room waking my friends, demanding to know where they were. No one could remember and in their hungover state they didn’t really care. Eventually I discovered my best trousers screwed up behind a chintz covered cushion in the Ladies Room.
It was 0920 so with no time to spare I jumped into my crumpled uniform and ran for the CO’s office. The CO, Lt Col Eric Evans, greeted me and we sat down and talked amiably. Colonel Eric was aware of much of what had happened the day before and played it absolutely straight, revelling all the while in my discomfort, while I was acutely aware of my dishevelled, hungover appearance.
With a first impression like that I never looked back!
* * *
The one occasion when the chauvinistic rules of the Officers’ Mess were relaxed was the Ladies Guest Night, which happened only once a year. It took the form of drinks, a formal dinner and dancing. My partner on one occasion was a rather straight-laced infant teacher and, since the event took place midweek, she felt the need to leave well before the end so that she was in a fit state for her little charges the following day. I had no such qualms when working with soldiers so continued to give the boat a good push.