Down Among the Weeds

by Harry Beaves

  I was left to enjoy the rest of the party alone, but boredom for me in those days was a dangerous thing. Around that time I was the Assistant Adjutant of 19 Regiment, working with the Adjutant who was responsible for the administration and discipline of the Regiment. My job brought me into regular contact with the local Royal Military Police (RMP) Detachment and I had got to know a number of their members quite well.

  These were the days when the breathalyser had only recently been introduced in Germany and everyone was very wary of the threat it posed. We were all cautious, but we had not become used to living sensibly within the constraints involved and some took no notice at all. I wondered what might happen if a Military Policeman was to hover near the Officers’ Mess car park that night.

  I rang the RMP Det and to my delight discovered that the Duty Corporal was a person with whom I had worked regularly. I explained my plan then strolled down to the Duty Room and borrowed a few bits and pieces of RMP uniform, in particular, an RMP armband, a battered RMP Red Cap and a ‘lollipop torch’ with a red light inside a plastic circle which read ‘HALT POLIZEI’.

  I put on my Gunner officer’s uniform and, armed with my RMP accoutrements, took my position in front of the Mess, at the entry to the car park, and waited. A few minutes later someone came out and stood in the doorway, taking the air. He noticed the waiting RMP and rushed back inside, returning a few minutes later with several others who held an animated conversation before going back in. I stayed in place looking down the road so that my face could not be seen.

  But nothing happened, all was quiet and I began to get bored, so I went to the back door of the Mess and bought myself a beer. The staff were happy to serve me and seemed to think nothing of my unusual get up. Still nothing happened in the car park so I got another beer, then another. Unknown to me, inside the Mess the party was breaking up in chaos. Husbands and wives were arguing about just who had agreed to drive and how much each had drunk. ‘How dare the RMP…’

  As I was returning after refilling my glass yet again, two people got into a parked car and drove out of the car park at breakneck speed. Would that have attracted the suspicion of a real RMP? Shortly after a taxi drew up and took four of the ‘good guys’ home. By now I was leaning drunkenly in my RMP garb against the gate post of the car park wishing that I could stop someone and call an end to the prank.

  Then a green VW that I recognised as belonging to my boss, Stuart the Adjutant, cautiously approached. This was my chance. I approached the car and waved it down with my ‘HALT POLIZEI’ torch. Angela, the Adjutant’s wife who I knew well, was driving. She wound down the window and I stood as close to it as possible so that my face could not be seen.

  ‘Is this your car, ma’am?’ I asked in my best policeman’s voice.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, meekly.

  ‘Have you been at the party, ma’am?’ Policemen always ask silly questions, I thought.

  ‘Yes’.

  ‘And have you been drinking, ma’am?’

  ‘Well,’ replied Angela, ‘I only had a glass of wine with my meal.’

  ‘That’s OK then, Angela. See you tomorrow, Stuart!’

  Stuart jumped out of the car and when he realised he had been caught he saw the funny side of it (I think).

  By now it was approaching 1am and time for me to stagger back into the Mess where reaction was mixed, to say the least. Several of the remaining car owners would probably have liked to lynch me, but the bachelors, who lived in the Mess and had continued to enjoy the evening, thought it was all a terrific joke so I lived to tell the tale.

  * * *

  Our interest in those days revolved around three main activities: playing rugby, drinking beer and chasing the girls who taught at the BFES schools, some of whom were notoriously slow runners!

  One cold January we were due to play the Welsh Guards in the first round of the Army Rugby Cup. It was our home fixture and on the touch line were our three supporters, Major Robin McQuoid (our chairman of rugby), his wife and BSM ‘Crash’ Self, a loyal old player. The Welsh Guards XV was littered with legends who had played regularly for the Army and they arrived with three coaches of supporters. I feared the worst and was not disappointed. There is little to say of the game other than we lost by three points to eighty-three, but I do remember that very few of the Welsh Guards players had Christian names. Most of them seemed to be known by their last two Army numbers as there were so many Joneses or Evans etc in the battalion. My opposite number in the front row that afternoon was Forty Morgan, the Regimental recalcitrant who was only released from the Guard Room on match days.

  After the match we celebrated our loss heartily, played lots of silly games and were well beaten for a second time by the Guards, this time at singing. At about 8.30 I returned to the Mess and met a friend who was going up to Hamm where there was a services folk club. At the time we both had girlfriends who were teachers at Windsor Girls School, a boarding school in Hamm run by BFES for service children, so I scrounged a lift. We picked up the girls and moved on to the club. I was at my sartorial best with my bottom lip split by Forty Morgan and a stylish Hepworth’s corduroy sports jacket that the Guards had generously soaked in beer.

  On the stage four Fair Isle sweaters, normally employed by the Queen as Ordnance Corps store men, mournfully sang ‘The Streets of London’ with the typical seriousness and sincerity of the amateur folk performer. We all sang along, including me, my voice hoarse from the recent singing defeat by the Welsh. Embarrassed, my soon-to-be ‘ex-girlfriend’ suggested we leave for coffee long before the club closed.

  Windsor Girls School was similar to a normal German barracks. It was surrounded by a high wall and you entered past a sort of civilian Guard Room. The girls’ accommodation was in dormitories similar to barrack blocks with each teacher having a flat at one end of a floor so that they could supervise or give pastoral care as necessary. I was not in the flat long before I decided to leave; at least, I think it was my decision. My girlfriend, aware of the risk of waking the sleeping school, resisted the urge to slam the door behind me.

  I stood outside the block and slowly realised that I was locked inside a girls’ boarding school and was seriously out of bounds. I scurried round, found a dark corner and scaled the wall. So far so good, but next problem – how do I get home? Dortmund was a twenty-minute drive away and my ‘lift’ was now otherwise engaged. I remembered there had been a number of bicycles outside the folk club so I found my way back. The club was closed and empty, but one bicycle remained, my sole chance of getting home. So began the second incident in my life involving riding a bicycle when drunk.

  I jumped on and pedalled away. I had been riding along the hard shoulder for a while when I think I wobbled and fell down a shallow bank. It was bitterly cold and frosty when I awoke and took stock. It was 6am and I was on my way home. The only route I knew to Dortmund was via the autobahn and I was about to join it at a well-known junction called Kamener Kreuz. There was no traffic and I had only gone about half a mile when I heard ‘Halt Polizei’ and a German police transit van cut off my progress. My bike was thrown in the back and I was pinned between two very large German policemen, quite unlike the pleasant country Bobbies that my father worked with.

  In the police station I shivered before the front desk, only too aware of the reek of stale beer that surrounded me. I gave my details and was asked what I was doing cycling on the autobahn.

  ‘Trying to get home to Dortmund,’ I replied meekly.

  ‘Cycling on the autobahn is against the law. Have you been drinking?’ asked the German policeman, confirming that silly questions were an international police convention.

  I fortunately resisted the temptation to give a silly answer. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Then you must take an alcotest’. I was handed a German breathalyser, the old style with the bag attached to a glass tube.

  I was very worried and, wondering where all this was leading, blew into the bag. To my considerable relief and amaz
ement the reading was below the limit. The freezing January air and my exertions must have burnt off the huge amount of alcohol I had drunk. The negative test seemed to change the attitude of the German Police. To cycle on the autobahn sober was the eccentric behaviour of a ‘stupid Englander’, to have done so drunk would have been a serious offence.

  ‘What happens to me now?’ I enquired nervously.

  ‘You may go. We will find someone to take you home.’ Another policeman was making a phone call. He handed the telephone to me.

  ‘Is that Lieutenant Beaves?’ an English voice said.

  ‘Yes. Who’s speaking?’

  ‘This is the RMP Duty Room in Dortmund.’

  ‘Do you know what they want to do with me?’

  ‘Well, sir, they say you were cycling on the autobahn,’ the voice said incredulously.

  ‘That sounds about right. What happens now?’

  ‘There are no charges so they have asked us to send a vehicle to pick you up. It will be about forty minutes.’

  My relief was tinged with apprehension. I was out of the German frying pan, but I didn’t know if the RMP might be the fire.

  In due course I heard an English voice down the corridor then into the room came the Duty Driver, a Gunner from my own Battery – of all people. He looked at me and laughed, unable to believe his eyes. I scowled and he continued laughing.

  ‘Come on, sir. You’re with me.’

  I followed him out of the police station. The bike was returned to me and I threw it into the back of the parked Land Rover. ‘OK, let’s go to Hamm.’ The driver was puzzled, but asked no questions.

  We returned to the folk club and I stood the bicycle, muddy, but undamaged, against the wall. Half an hour later I was dropped at the Mess and, as I caught up with my sleep, the jungle drums passed the story round the Regiment.

  On Monday morning I kept a low profile, but it seemed that everyone knew. At lunchtime the CO, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Stanford took me to one side and pointed out how foolish I had been. Colonel Bill was an excellent man and did so in an avuncular manner which hit home hard and made me feel very embarrassed and ashamed. Today, I would probably have faced formal disciplinary proceedings and the probable end of my military career. It was a very salutary lesson.

  I suspect there are very few people who can claim to have been breathalysed for riding a bicycle on an autobahn.

  * * *

  Nick arrived in the Regiment about two years after me and was given the room opposite mine, which meant we shared a bathroom and toilet. He was tall and a very good sportsman, but was a product of one of Britain’s finest public schools and was absolutely, unbearably, indescribably… pompous. He was aged twenty-one, going on forty-one, and despite having been sent for more ‘long weights’ than anyone I have ever known, steadfastly refused to change.

  His pride and joy was a rather boring Peugeot saloon car and for weeks he regaled us about the set of fine new tyres that he was going to buy for it. One evening he went out to his car and found two of his fellow officers lurking guiltily around the rear.

  He had actually caught them in the act of attaching a coloured smoke grenade to the underside of his car. Their plan had been to fix the smoke grenade to the car’s suspension with masking tape, then to attach the pin of the grenade with fishing line to a drain cover. When the car drove off the pin would be pulled out on the fishing line, the grenade would detonate and the car would drive on in clouds of blue smoke. Terrifically funny!

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ demanded Nick.

  The senior miscreant thrust the smoke grenade into his coat pocket and thought quickly. ‘Oh, just admiring your new tyres, Nick.’

  ‘What about them?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘Oh nothing, very nice, yes very nice, but have you noticed they’re on back to front?’

  ‘Really, what do you mean?’

  ‘Come over here and look. Put your hand on the top of the wheel. There, see. The tread is pointing backwards. No need to worry though. It’s easily put right.’

  ‘Oh, yes, OK. Thank you.’ Nick drove off with a confused look on his face while his two friends collapsed with helpless laughter.

  The following afternoon Sgt ‘Yorky’ Quinn, the Battery MT Sergeant, found the senior miscreant. ‘Excuse me, sir. Have you got a minute? What have you been telling Mr X about his car?’

  ‘Nothing. What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he came up to me and asked me what I thought of his tyres. “Pirellis, very good,” I said.’

  ‘They are on OK aren’t they? They’re not on backwards?’

  ‘On backwards, sir. Whatever gave you that idea…’

  * * *

  Nick’s girlfriend was Rosemary, a languages teacher from Windsor Girls School and a very sweet person. One evening, dressed to go out, he came into my room. Something was obviously troubling him and he looked at the floor with embarrassment as he asked.

  ‘Uh, Harry… uh, you wouldn’t have a… uh necessary you could lend me. Have you?’

  ‘A what, Nick?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘You know. A err… necessary…’ He couldn’t quite get his stiff upper lip round the word we used at that time which was ‘contraceptive’.

  I got the message. ‘No Nick. Sorry, can’t help.’

  The following day was a Friday and the HQ elements of the Regiment were deploying on a major exercise which involved every unit in BAOR. The Command Post (CP) vehicles would be set up in the German countryside and we would fight a paper war by radio with no actual troops on the ground. The cell I worked in was commanded by Major Bertie Whitmore, the Regimental Second–in-Command (2i/c), who also happened to be the senior bachelor living in the Mess.

  The vehicles were camouflaged, the maps were set up and marked and the radios were tuned in. We were ready to go and were chatting idly in the CP vehicle. Inevitably the subject got round to Nick and the latest silly thing that he had done.

  ‘Well, whatever you may say, he must be getting on OK with Rosemary these days.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well the other evening, before he went out, he came into my room and asked me to lend him “A err… necessary”.’ I mocked his voice.

  ‘A what?’ Amid peals of laughter Bertie reached into his pocket and took out his wallet.

  ‘Well you’d better give him this then.’

  He handed me an empty envelope that had once contained a German condom and in that moment an idea struck me. I rummaged in the Command Post box and found a large thick Stationery Office elastic band. I wrote the words ‘Ever been had!’ on a piece of card and cut it to fit the condom envelope. Then I slipped the card and the elastic band inside, sealed the envelope with a dab of Stationery Office glue and carefully placed the new ‘necessary’ in my wallet ready for my next meeting with Nick.

  Having set up the CP on the Friday, the exercise-proper did not start until Sunday night so we left a skeleton crew and returned to Dortmund for the weekend. Nick was preparing for a Friday night out with Rosemary and an overwhelming aroma of masculine fragrance wafted from his room. I tapped the door.

  ‘Nick, you know you asked me the other day to lend you a “necessary”.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well I’ve found this, if you still need one.’ Big wink.

  ‘Gosh! Thanks, mate. You’re a real pal.’

  I certainly was. I left the room biting my lip to suppress the laughter.

  I didn’t see Nick again until Sunday lunchtime. ‘Good night last Friday?’ I asked, giving him a knowing look.

  ‘Oh, uh… yes,’ said Nick with a knowing smile. ‘Great night.’

  I knew better, but said no more and pretty much forgot about it.

  We returned to the exercise the same afternoon and, on completion the following Friday, came back to camp. On the Saturday I played rugby for the Regiment and, in the early hours, was laying, partly clothed, semi-conscious and well-oiled, on top of my bed. Sud
denly the door crashed open and the lights flashed on. Nick stood there, face purple with rage, eyes blazing, fists clenched. ‘You bastard! Ever been had? Ever been had? I’ve never been so…’

  He grabbed me by the front of my beer-stained shirt and was pounding me up and down on the mattress. Eventually he stormed out of the room leaving me wondering quite what had hit me and marvelling at my escape.

  Imagine the scene: two people in Rosemary’s room, romantic setting, a pleasant meal, a few glasses of wine, lights dimmed, soft music. ‘Shall we?’ ‘Should we?’ ‘Well I’ve got a “necessary”. ‘Well, OK then.’

  Fumble. Fumble. ‘What the hell…!’

  Well, how was I to know what a ‘necessary’ was? After all, I was only trying to help a friend.

  * * *

  We aren’t no thin red ’eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,

  But single men in barracks, most remarkable like you;

  An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,

  Why, single men in barracks don’t grow into plaster saints.

  So wrote Kipling. Mischief or trouble, childish behaviour or wasting valuable military time and money? You decide, but it passed the time and I know it was darned good fun!

  * * *

  *Always in the pooh, only the depth varies.

  Chapter 6

  Preparing for Ireland

  The Troubles in Northern Ireland began to resurface in 1968 and were centred round the well-justified dissatisfaction of the Roman Catholic minority over the way the ruling Protestant majority treated them. Elements who had always wanted union with the Republic of Ireland latched on to the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), and the Irish Republican Army, which had been dormant for many years, reformed, ostensibly to protect the Catholic communities from Unionist oppression.

  The history is well documented. Suffice it to say that by 1971 a huge British military force was engaged in attempting to maintain law and order in the province. Troop levels could only be maintained by taking units from BAOR and deploying them to Northern Ireland on four-month emergency tours of duty. This meant that Artillery units, for example, were trained and temporarily re-roled to perform as infantry, a task that would sooner or later fall to 19 Regiment. I was due to be posted from the Regiment to the Army Outward Bound School at Tywyn in North Wales in early 1972. Several of us in similar positions were told that our time in the Regiment had been extended to allow us to go to Ireland and that we would be posted in January 1973.