Down Among the Weeds

by Harry Beaves

  For us there was no such treatment. Breakfast was behind the high-wire protection of Casement Park and dinner was in the benign surroundings of West Riding Barracks, Dortmund. At times during the journey I had to keep taking a deep breath, just to convince myself there was no longer a need to stay alert and on my guard. In the weeks to come we would talk about the things that happened in Ireland and laugh and joke about them with glass in hand, but never would anyone mention the difficult or unpleasant events. I, like many others in the Battery, had shut these behind a heavy door in my mind and locked it, I hoped, for ever.

  The Regiment was stood down until first thing Monday morning when we could begin to unpack all of our kit. Servicemen are entitled to a period of leave after an operational tour, so in the weeks that followed most people went home for a while. I and the six other officers due to be posted from the Regiment in the New Year remained in camp, choosing to combine our post-Ireland leave with our Christmas leave in one large block.

  This was ‘down time’ for the Regiment until New Year when we became a fully operational part of BAOR again. While departmental heads concentrated on writing reports on the previous four months, the rest of us cleaned and maintained the equipment we had taken to Ireland and began the task of taking the guns and other equipment out of the light care and preservation that they had been kept in since our departure.

  The workload was light which was just as well as it seemed to be a period of non-stop partying for everyone and, freed from the tensions of Ireland, we were all really determined to let our hair down. I played a couple of games of rugby for the Regiment and despite the fact that I was woefully unfit I got a call from my old friend, Pat Thurgood, inviting me to play for the Royal Artillery (Germany) against the RAF (Germany) side. I got a lift with another team mate from Dortmund to RAF Gütersloh, where the match was being played.

  That day, it seemed that every member of the RAF side was considerably larger than his opposite number in our team and we took a severe beating, but, despite the loss, we celebrated with all the usual enthusiasm. Inter-service rivalry is hard for the civilian to understand; suffice it to say that my experience is that the Army and Navy will happily knock lumps off each other and then drink beer together all night long, but neither the Army nor the Navy have much time at all for the RAF. Very often behaviour becomes worse and worse until it becomes so outrageous that an RAF victim takes offence and then the chorus goes up: ‘There you are, always said so, typical Crabs (RAF), can’t take a joke.’ So it was on this occasion and I can’t remember the exact straw that broke the RAF camel’s back, but I think I was involved and I believe more than one fire extinguisher was used.

  At about 9.30 I found myself sitting on the white painted stones waiting for a taxi outside the guardroom of RAF Gütersloh. My lift back to Dortmund had long gone and my left eye was colouring nicely after a jab from an elbow during the match. A sentry challenged me and fortunately led me into the guardroom when he discovered that I was an officer. The Guard Commander then rang the Orderly Officer of the local Army unit, 40 Regiment RA.

  40 Regiment’s Orderly Officer was Lt Howard Rees, a friend who had been playing in the same match as me. When he returned after the match to resume his duty, one of his fellow officers decided that he was in no fit state to do so, put him to bed and did the duty for him. That friend was Lt Roddy Shaw-Brown, an old Sandhurst chum of mine who took the call to pick me up. Roddy drove me back to 40 Regiment, found me a bed and left me to it. When he woke me the following morning the room smelt like the elephant house at London Zoo.

  I’ve a head like a concertina; I’ve a tongue like a button stick:

  I’ve a mouth like an old potato, and I’m more than a little sick…

  My conduct the night before had not been quite as bad as Kipling’s soldier, but I was very lucky to have been rescued. At breakfast Roddy explained that he had rung 19 Regiment the night before, saying that I had been concussed during the match and, as a precaution, I had stayed over in 40 Regiment. What a mate, and, of course, my half-closed eye would lend credibility to the tale. His BC had given him permission to drive me back that morning and we arrived in Dortmund as the officers of 19 Regiment were drinking coffee. Richard Craven took one look at me and exclaimed, ‘My dear chap, we heard you’d been concussed. Just look at your eye, you’d better go straight to bed until you’ve recovered. We can do without you today.’ Roddy was pouring his coffee and struggled to suppress a smile.

  ‘Thank you, Richard,’ I mumbled, then turned to Roddy and said, ‘Thanks, mate. I owe you a big favour for this.’ I certainly did, a very big favour! Then I shuffled pathetically off to my room, hoping that the odour of stale beer coming from my clothes hadn’t given too much away.

  The swansong for the six of us leaving 19 Regiment was the Christmas Party at the Garrison Civilian Officers’ Mess. All of the single officers managed to get invitations except one, the most junior officer in the Regiment who had such a demanding time in Belfast that he had managed to meet a lovely Irish girl and had fallen madly in love. Since our return he had moped around like a lovesick puppy so he was happy to stay behind and do the Orderly Officer’s duty while we all went to the party. My partner was a primary schoolteacher who had arrived in the September while we were away. She had blue eyes and lovely, long blonde hair, but for some reason the other officers in the Regiment had given her the nickname ‘Angel Boobs’.

  Afternote: Angel Boobs subsequently married a chap who went on to become a Brigadier so in the later years of my service I had to be very cautious how I referred to her!

  Angel Boobs and I had enjoyed a very pleasant meal and I was feeling quite mellow as we drank coffee and waited for the music and dancing to begin. Then two of my chums from 19 Regiment entered the room carrying a cushion, walked rather sheepishly across to the dance area and opened the windows. When they laid the cushion on the floor in the corner of the room, the close observer would have noticed a stick-like object protruding from the hem.

  As they walked away the cushion appeared to be burning. Seconds later there was a flash of flame, a huge muffled explosion and the air was filled with clouds of little white downy feathers. A thunderflash had exploded in the feather cushion. We blinked wide-eyed at what had happened as a thunderflash is like a giant firework and consists of a black powder charge in a hard cardboard tube. It is a military pyrotechnic used to simulate a hand grenade and normally explodes with deafening noise and enormous force, but with no shrapnel effect so only causes harm in very close proximity.

  The effect on the party was dramatic. As the cloud of feathers drifted out of the dance area there was general coughing and spluttering and one person was led out with an asthma attack. Demands to know who was responsible were met with smiles from all of the military members present. A very serious male teacher ventured on to the dance floor to investigate and added to the sense of the ridiculous when he returned with his dinner jacket covered in little white downy feathers like a Home Pride Flour Sifter.

  But someone had chosen to report the matter and suddenly two large pairs of very shiny black boots appeared in the doorway. ‘Turn the lights on. Turn the music off. Don’t anyone leave the room. This is the Royal Military Police (RMP). We have reason to believe a device has been exploded in the building.’ The ‘reason to believe’ was confirmed as the little white downy feathers began to stick to the jerseys-wool-heavy that the RMP Staff Sergeant and Corporal were wearing. RMP S/Sgt quickly began to confirm my long-held suspicion that in order to achieve such a rank in his corps it was necessary to undergo a total charisma bypass.

  There was then a dramatic intervention by a former girlfriend of mine, a charming young lady from south-east London who was known to the officers of 19 Regiment as ‘Runny Linda’. Runny Linda strode purposefully across the room and, seizing the Agatha Christie moment, pointed at me and announced, ‘Look no further, officer. It was him!’ Angel Boobs and I sat in wide-eyed disbelief while the military guests guffawe
d with laughter which, of course, made the whole situation considerably worse.

  The two RMPs moved around the room asking questions and collecting evidence, meanwhile the officers of 19 Regiment, realising the party was over, discreetly set about finishing the port. The finger of suspicion was pointing very directly at us.

  Eventually we were questioned and, with all but two of us honestly knowing nothing about it, we were told to remain seated round the table as we were under arrest. The S/Sgt then rang the lovesick Orderly Officer who had spent the evening miserably consoling himself with a glass or two or three… He picked up the phone and slurred the words, ‘Orderly Officer.’

  ‘Hello, sir, this is S/Sgt… of the RMP detachment. I’m afraid that several of your officers…’

  At that point the Orderly Officer drunkenly dropped the phone and the line went dead. He replaced the receiver on the cradle and immediately it rang again.

  ‘You didn’t hang up on me, did you, sir?’

  ‘No, no, of course not.’

  ‘Right, sir. I am afraid there’s been an incident at the Garrison Civilian Mess and several of your officers have been arrested. I’d like you to come and take them into custody.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why is that sir?’

  ‘Because they are senior to me.’

  ‘But I haven’t said who they are yet. How do you know they are senior to you?’

  ‘Because everyone is senior to me,’ was the pathetic response.

  ‘That’s OK, sir, under the powers vested in you as Regimental Orderly Officer in accordance with the Army Act of 1955 you are authorised to…’

  ‘But I still can’t take them into custody.’

  ‘Why’s that, sir?’

  ‘Because they’re my friends.’

  ‘Sir, I think you had better get down here straight away.’

  Framed in the doorway was the lovesick Orderly Officer, hat skewed like Benny Hill and distinctly unsteady on his feet. ‘Our Orderly Orf’cer’s hokee-mut…’ said Kipling. The lovesick Orderly Officer was so hokee-mut he could hardly stand! We were passed into his custody on a ‘live body receipt’ and, still laughing, we piled into the waiting minibus.

  The following morning at 8.30 the local Head Master rang the CO to tell him about the events of the night before and to complain about the state of his Mess. Ringing a CO that early on a Sunday morning is a bit like poking a sleeping bear in his cave with a sharp stick. Fortunately Colonel Bill reacted with his customary good humour and rang the Adjutant. The Adjutant was far less amenable to the sharp stick treatment and rang the lovesick Orderly Officer and told him to have us all in his office at 9.30. We were told to get down to the Civilian Mess and do everything necessary to clean and repair the place and be back in his office at 1pm.

  Overnight the feathers had settled and deposited a gentle snow-like carpet over all of the furniture and furnishings. We set about the task with several vacuum cleaners, but it seemed to take forever as each time the vacuum cleaner moved it put almost as many feathers up in the air as it took away, so every surface had to be cleaned again and again.

  As always it was collective justice, despite the fact that only two people had actually been responsible for the explosion. We all paraded as commanded by the Adjutant and he left us in no doubt as to the pathetic little creatures that we were, ending with the words. ‘… and you will do fourteen extra duties each.’ Since the six of us were leaving in ten days’ time it would be impossible for us all to do fourteen duties, so in a way, we still had the last laugh. When the official RMP report came through its serious factual account made hilarious reading for all of us except the lovesick Orderly Officer, the Commanding Officer’s representative, whose conversation, demeanour and appearance were all described graphically. For this he, the only officer not present at the time of the crime, was doing extra duties well into the New Year, long after we had gone!

  I drove away from 19 Regiment shortly before Christmas without a backward glance. I had many fond memories, but soldiering in BAOR was far too comfortable and had not given me the level of job satisfaction that I wanted. I was disappointed and hankered after something that was far more exciting, something that demanded fitness, toughness, determination, self-reliance and tactical awareness and I wanted to work with people who were similarly inclined. I wanted realistic exercises with proper equipment that I carried on my back. I wanted dirt under my nails and camouflage cream on my face, to sleep in a basha and live down among the weeds where the adrenalin flowed.

  BAOR had delivered none of this, but my time in Northern Ireland had been exciting and could not have been more ‘real’, though the unremitting tension and the level of stress were to have a lasting effect. Now, all that was behind me and I was looking forward immensely to my next job in the outdoors. I had closed the door on all my experiences in Belfast, or so I thought, but my mind was like an ocean. In its depths lay a submarine, a threat that circled silently and unseen. At times in future its periscope would disturb the surface and I would be uncomfortably aware of it, then one day the whole boat would crash to the surface with devastating effect. The events that I had experienced in Ireland were that submarine.

  Chapter 22

  Life in Wales

  The winter wind blows wildly across the Irish Sea with nothing to interrupt its progress until it reaches the coast of North Wales and little towns like Tywyn. Morfa Camp, Tywyn was fifty metres from the beach and took the full force of the gales.

  In an off-duty moment in Casement Park I had been talking to Sgt Moore about my next posting by the sea and of buying a new car to go with it. Without too much thought I said that I fancied zooming round North Wales in a Beach Buggy, all white teeth and California smiles, but I couldn’t afford the real thing as the insurance would be too high. ‘Really? My brother can sort that out,’ he said, as always. True to his word his brother negotiated the purchase of the electric blue Beach Buggy (together with suitably worded insurance cover) in which I roared through the gates of Morfa Camp on a howling January day in 1973.

  The Beach Buggy.

  The Buggy was a standard VW Beetle chassis, but the body had been replaced with a low-slung fibreglass shell with fat tyres, sporty bucket seats and a tiny twelve-inch steering wheel. The exhaust system had been stripped off and replaced with two motorcycle mufflers which gave it a wonderfully throaty roar. The downside to this sporty sound was that Beetle engines are air-cooled and the part of the exhaust system that had been removed was integral to the cooling system, so if I cruised at more than 50mph the engine overheated and squirted the oil all over the road. In the twelve months that I owned the car I had three new engines; not actually new, as they cost about £50 each from the scrapyard and were so simple to fit that even I could change one. The Buggy had no heater and a flimsy hood that pop-fastened to the windscreen in a way that allowed the wind to whistle straight through. I had somehow failed to appreciate that the weather in North Wales was totally different from California for most of the year, except for a few brief weeks in summer when the Beach Buggy became a prize babe magnet. Everyone wanted to ride in it, but, sadly, usually only once. It also had a problem with the starter that I never quite got to grips with, mainly because it was very easy to bump start. Consequently, I spent much of my time looking for a girlfriend who was fit and strong enough to push my car in high heels. Unfortunately those in North Wales who fitted the bill could usually carry a sheep under each arm and fell short in several other important criteria.

  My Posting Order read ‘Army Outward Bound School’, but on the day I arrived the title of the unit was changed to the ‘Joint Services Mountain Training Centre (Wales), abbreviated to JSMTC (W), though the roles remained the same. JSMTC (W) ran two types of courses: leadership courses for potential officers and junior soldiers that were based on the principles of Outward Bound (similar to the course I had attended in 1965), and skills courses training servicemen as leaders in trekking, rock climbing and canoeing
activities.

  The staff at JSMTCW) proudly wearing our new centre sweaters. Front Row. 2 left John Andre, 3 left Brig (Retd) Jack Marchant, 3 right Bryan Martindale. Second Row. 6 right Jim Hargreaves, 5 right Peter Page, 3 right Tom Rose. Net. 3 left me, 3 right Eric Woolley.

  There was a period between the Aden campaign of 1967 and the Falklands War of 1982 when Britain was not actively involved in war (other than the Northern Ireland Troubles) in any part of the world. The defence effort focussed on the threat posed by the Communist Bloc, but there were two perceived problems. Firstly, soldiers who have not been to war lack the hard edge developed by combat and are likely to be less effective, and secondly, a garrison life, as in BAOR, allows soldiers to become bored and lazy. A solution which went some way towards solving these two problems was adventurous training. Done properly, the benefits of adventurous activities are obvious. It promotes fitness, leadership, team spirit, courage, determination and a host of other personal qualities that are essential for the soldier. I was fortunate to have been involved with service adventurous training at a time when it was considered extremely important and effective.

  The MoD approved adventurous activities including climbing, canoeing, sailing, cross-country skiing, diving, caving, parachuting and a number of other activities. Adventurous training exercises and expeditions were run by individual units while the instructors and leaders were trained at a joint services centre appropriate to each activity. There were five centres primarily responsible for mountain training: JSMTC (W), JSMTC (Scotland), the British Mountain Training Centre (Norway), the Army Mountain Training Centre (Silberhütte) and the Joint Services Adventure Training Centre (Ripon).

  The staff at JSMTC (W) was drawn from junior officers and senior NCOs of the three services. We all taught on the Outward Bound and trekking courses and, though I could canoe, I taught mainly the rock-climbing courses. Because of the nature of our job, discipline and forms of address were very relaxed and we wore civilian clothes appropriate to the activity with which we were involved.