by Harry Beaves
If Woolwich was the home and headquarters of the Royal Artillery, during my service the centre of gravity for the Regiment was always at RSA Larkhill. In the Sixties the barracks at Woolwich had been in serious need of repair and modernisation and, if it was to be worthwhile spending the huge sums of money required, the barracks had to be properly used. The location, far away from the larger military training areas was not suitable for a modern Artillery regiment, but it might be used for training recruits. Park Hall Camp, the home of 17 Training Regiment in Oswestry, was set in rural Shropshire and also needed a great deal of investment to replace the wooden spiders where I had done my recruit training, but it had all the necessary infrastructure and facilities for training recruits on hand and was in an altogether healthier part of the country than inner-city Woolwich. Sadly, the decision was made to safeguard the Regimental history at the price of the quality of recruit training and to move 17 Training Regiment from Oswestry to Woolwich.
I became BK of 59 (Asten) Battery and, smartly dressed in brown shoes, I began life as a ‘shiny arse’. I was told this was a job that would give me excellent opportunities to study for my forthcoming Promotion Examination, a necessary evil for which I had absolutely no enthusiasm. My feet would be firmly nailed to the floor and I would be about as far removed from the weeds as possible. The gloom was increased by living in the RA Mess, which was somewhere between a museum and a mausoleum where I was surrounded by valuable historic artefacts and a large, far-less valuable ageing membership of retired officers who seemed to be stuck in a time warp with Kipling. I suppose provocative behaviour, like taking chips with my roast beef at dinner time then deliberately sitting opposite an ‘old and crusty’ and waiting for steam to start coming from his ears, hardly helped. More particularly, among the bachelor officers the mischief level was close to zero. In addition, of course, I was very much missing the big brown bird. But she had problems of her own. At that time there were few vacancies in the teaching profession and she was finding it impossible to find a permanent appointment either in south-east London or back home in Folkestone. Most weekends we would escape to the mountains of Wales and I introduced her to climbing and hill walking, not in the comfort of a caravan or family tent, but in the little mountain tent that I had bought in my time as an instructor at Tywyn. For a person who had previously suffered vertigo in thick wool socks she did remarkably well and seemed to enjoy the mountains, which was fortunate as I had an ulterior motive. I intended to go forward for selection for the SAS that winter and many of the routes that we gently walked in the Brecon Beacons were used on the SAS selection course.
By now we realised that our time in Malta was obviously more than just a holiday romance, but as long as I was in Woolwich and Barbara was at home in Folkestone our relationship was stalled. We could not afford rented accommodation in south-east London unless Barbara had a job and there was little chance of that.
We had enjoyed a great day tramping the Beacons, the sky was clear and blue and we were sitting in front of my little tent looking up at Sugar Loaf, a beautiful hill outside Crickhowell. The moment seemed right so I asked the tall, slim, not quite so brown bird to marry me. Fortunately she said ‘Yes’, so we strolled down to the local pub where we drank rather a lot of the local cider and as we saw no point in a long engagement set our wedding date for 26th November.
Autumn 1977 was a busy time for me with four major projects. I was supposed to be studying hard for my Captain-to-Major promotion exam, a critical point in my career. I wanted to be training for SAS selection, and I needed to be planning my wedding. The first completed project was the promotion exam that I somehow scraped through. In the meantime the Fire Brigades Union had gone on strike and the Armed Forces had been called in to provide cover. This became the fourth major project as recruit training was suspended and 17 Training Regiment became responsible for a number of emergency fire stations around East London.
With the mountain tent in Brecon Beacons about the time we got engaged.
The day after I sat the promotion exam Lt Col David Evans, the CO, called me in to ask me how I had got on. Then he gave me the good news, I was not returning to be BK; I was being sent to a Troop as a fire-station commander, very much more to my liking.
Most fire stations were run by an officer and about thirty men, with three Bedford ‘Green Goddess’ fire engines. In addition we had five Metropolitan Police motorcyclists to guide us to the fires and clear a route. There was something strangely familiar about the Police Sergeant in charge of the motorcycle detachment at Bexleyheath fire station, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. When he spoke he had a West Country accent that made me even more curious, so when he left the room one of the other policemen told me that his name was Larry Cope. It all became very clear and when he returned I had a great deal of fun stringing him along until I finally introduced myself.
As sixteen-year-olds Larry Cope and I had travelled on the same school bus, me to Bishop Wordsworth’s for ‘A’ levels, him to Salisbury Technical College, where he was studying for his GCE ‘O’ Levels. We had similar sporting interests and always sat together chatting about them. After ‘O’ Levels he went straight into the Met Police, while I joined the Army. It was amazing to meet in such unusual circumstances fifteen years later and we often chewed the fat about good old days back home in Wiltshire. It was very interesting that, having studied ‘A’ Levels and spent two years training at Sandhurst, my salary was almost the same as Larry’s basic pay. He had joined the Metropolitan Police with just ‘O’ Levels, but his basic pay was almost doubled with overtime and allowances.
26th November was fast approaching and, despite the strenuous efforts of the Fire Brigades Union, arrangements for the wedding were just about in place. At 4pm on 25th November I handed over my duties at the fire station at Whipps Cross and rushed back to Woolwich, then on to Eltham High Street to meet the tall, slim, no longer brown bird off the Royal Blue Coach from Folkestone. We moved on to Blackheath to buy wedding rings before returning to Woolwich.
The following afternoon we were married at the Garrison Church in Woolwich and, with many friends and family, enjoyed a superb reception in the splendid surroundings of the RA Mess. My best man was Don MacLaren, a person who probably got me into more mischief in Germany and out of more trouble in Belfast than anyone else. The CO lent us his staff car and we were escorted by police motorcyclists from the Woolwich fire station on the journey to the railway station to travel off on our seven-day honeymoon on the Isle of Skye. May that serve as a warning to those who drink Harvey Walbangers!
In 2002 we chose to celebrate our Silver Wedding with a holiday in Malta revisiting many of our old haunts. As the date for our departure approached, our travel arrangements were thrown into confusion because of the threat of industrial action by the Fire Brigades Union who chose to strike again exactly twenty-five years after they had helped us to celebrate our wedding. How very sentimental of them.
Not surprisingly there were huge changes since we left. St Andrew’s and St George’s Barracks had been developed largely for the new Institute of Tourism Studies. At the seaward end were two brand new five-star hotels, one of which incorporated the old services beach club we had so enjoyed. The historic Officers’ Mess had been converted to flats for social housing, probably a two-fingered gesture from the government of 1977. One of the few buildings that remained empty and unchanged was the old Troop Office block in St George’s. I would love to have bought it as a holiday home, but, fortunately, common sense prevailed.
The Garrison Church, Woolwich 26th November 1977. Best man Don MacLaren. The horseshoe in the bouquet was made by my grandfather, Albert Williams.
But I digress. Now married, we were on the waiting list for a service married quarter, but, when we returned from honeymoon, none were available. I went back to living in the Mess and working shifts at the various fire stations and Barbara went back to supply teaching in Folkestone, just as if nothing had changed. I was now trying to conce
ntrate on SAS selection so at the end of each shift I would run back to Woolwich carrying a fifty-five pound load in a bergan rucksack in an effort to maintain some sort of fitness.
Major Brian Moore, the second-in-command of 17 Training Regiment, had a long-standing booking for a family holiday over Christmas so he and his wife Eileen kindly offered us the use of their private house on Shooters Hill over the holiday period, so that we could spend more time together. I continued to work shifts at the fire stations all through Christmas, and although I managed to spend Christmas Day with Barbara’s parents in Folkestone I was back on duty at the fire station at the Honourable Artillery Company in City Road early on Boxing Day.
In the first week of January 1978 Barbara returned to Folkestone and I left Woolwich and the fire strike for Hereford and SAS selection. The tests involved long marches with heavy loads over the Brecon Beacons. Each day the route was longer and the load was heavier, all the time navigating alone over wild country in very harsh weather. Marching alone through the hills gives a person plenty of time to think long and hard about what he is undertaking and just why he is doing it. In my case, I had always wanted to serve with the SAS and looked forward eagerly to the excitement and adventure it would provide, but since meeting Barbara my life had changed radically. Life in 148 Battery had been tough and dangerous, but nothing like as challenging as life with the SAS would be. Add to that the sensitivity of the events in which the SAS are involved and I wondered about the worry and uncertainty that Barbara would have to endure because of me. SAS selection is so demanding that you will only succeed if you are totally focussed and determined. That niggling doubt, coupled with the difficulty that I’d had preparing physically because of the demands of the fire strike, probably meant that I was never likely to make it. Had I been made of the right stuff I would have trained harder and returned to try again at the next opportunity, but I chose not to.
* * *
Back from Hereford we were at last allocated a married quarter and Barbara was able to get a job teaching at a school in Plumstead while I rejoined Arnhem Troop and set about training Gunner recruits.
Pippingford Park, in the heart of Kent near Tonbridge Wells, was one of the small training areas that we used for teaching fieldcraft. The recruits would live for the week in a patrol base, set in a beautiful spot where a stream ran through woodland, and sleep under ‘bashas’ that they made using their waterproof ponchos.
They had been given the explanation and demonstration and were left on their own to set up. We were about a hundred yards away in the staff admin area when two of the recruits approached us with a third, who was holding his right arm across his chest. The casualty was Gnr Nesbitt from Manchester, a typical recruit, tall and skinny with greasy fair hair, a pasty complexion and terminal acne.
‘Yes?’ growled Charlie Lawson, the Troop Staff Sergeant.
‘Excuse me, Staff, Nesbitt’s bin bit.’
‘What by?’
‘We were clearing some twigs and stuff and there was a snake lying underneath so Nesbitt picked it up to look at it and the snake bit him.’ Nesbitt looked at the ground sheepishly.
Resisting the temptation to ask how the snake was, Lawson replied, ‘What? Form a posse and hunt down that snake. I want it dead or alive. On second thoughts, I want it dead.’ Outside Britain it is sometimes useful to take the dead snake with the casualty so that the doctors can be certain to administer the correct medicine. Since the adder is the only venomous snake in Britain this is not normally necessary, nor is it usual to form a posse in Kent.
The two recruits ran back to the patrol base while S/Sgt Lawson went to find a Land Rover and I looked at Nesbitt’s hand. His right thumb was swelling and two clear puncture marks from the venomous fangs were reddening. He had obviously been bitten by an adder and needed to go to hospital quickly. Adder bites are rarely fatal and, since some years previously my father had been bitten on the foot when picking blackberries on the downs above Warminster and survived, I was not unduly concerned. We were getting Nesbitt into the Land Rover when his two mates came running back, this time carrying a small cardboard box that had previously contained a twenty-four-hour compo ration. ‘We got the snake, Staff.’
‘You what? Let’s have a look.’ He replied, making sure he wasn’t standing too close.
Inside the box was a lovely little adder, about fourteen inches long, plump, beautifully coloured and dead… seriously dead.
I have always maintained that a soldier can repair anything in the world if he has two basic essentials, a roll of black masking tape and some Don Ten signals cable. When they found the snake, because ‘it bit Nesbitt’ they attacked it with ‘shovels infantry’ and, so that it couldn’t bite anyone else, they continued hitting it until it was cut in two. In this instance, to make the repair they needed only the first of the two essentials. So, in order for the snake to look its best for the hospital staff, they had joined its two halves with two-inch-wide black masking tape.
* * *
I remember some years previously reacting in a similar manner myself when we found a snake near our basha during a Jungle Warfare course in Brunei. My ‘buddy’ quickly grabbed a large stick and repeatedly clubbed the elusive snake and in so doing, destroyed our basha and wrecked the camouflage of the whole area. He then cautiously picked up the dead reptile and carried it at arm’s length to our instructor, convinced that it was the most deadly snake in the world. Our instructor didn’t recognise it so he got on the radio to ask HQ for advice. HQ found a snake expert.
‘Yes, what’s the problem?’
‘We’ve just found a snake at our location. I don’t recognise it, but I’d like to know if it’s dangerous in case there are others in the area.’
‘OK, how big is it and what colour?’
‘It’s about twelve inches long and three quarters of an inch in diameter, grey-green with a pale belly.’
‘Roger. How big and what shape is the head?’ This was an important question as most venomous snakes have a distinct diamond shaped head with a snub nose.
‘It’s about two inches in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick.’
‘Not understood. What SIZE and shape is the HEAD?’
‘It’s about two inches in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick. They kept beating it with a stick until it stopped moving!’
But I digress – again.
* * *
Charlie Lawson took the box and drove Nesbitt to the casualty department of the local hospital. Two smiling nurses called them into a treatment cubicle. ‘Right, now what’s the problem?’
‘He’s been bitten by a poisonous snake.’
‘And how do YOU know it was poisonous?’ was the slightly pompous reply.
‘Because I’ve got it here.’ He opened the box and tipped the dead adder, resplendent in its two inches of masking tape, on to the floor. It was some time before the two nurses could be coaxed down from their perch on top of a steel locker and treat Nesbitt’s wound.
Nesbitt needed to be kept under observation and was led away to one of the wards. About an hour later Lawson was taken in to see him. Nesbitt lay propped up on pillows trying hard not to appear smug at the prospect of a night in a warm hospital rather than out under the stars. ‘Right, lad, I’ll bring in your washing and shaving kit and, while I’m at it, I’ll fetch your poncho and poles so that you can make a basha over there in the corner of the ward.’ Nesbitt smiled weakly as a recruit is never too sure when an instructor is joking.
* * *
Recruit training was considerably better than being BK and we were happy at Woolwich just settling in to married life. I probably played my best rugby at that time, captaining the Royal Artillery rugby team for two seasons, which was a great honour.
17 Regiment’s regular local rivals were Queen Elizabeth’s Military Hospital (the QE), where my opposite number was always a little round Welshman. For some reason we always managed to get under each other’s skin and invariably had some sort
of a set-to before the end of the match.
On one occasion I found myself, at the QE, waiting in a long line of people who were due to get vaccinations updated. A little round Staff Sergeant came strolling by. ‘Hello, sir, what brings you here?’ he asked in a lilting Welsh voice. ‘Oh hello, Staff, just popped up to get my jabs up to date.’ It was my rugby playing nemesis and I watched with trepidation as he disappeared into the surgery. My turn came and he stepped forward brandishing a hypodermic, with a look in his eye like Sweeney Todd. I was convinced he had selected the needle specially and had been scraping it on a house brick so that it was good and blunt just for me. ‘Now, sir, this won’t hurt a bit…’
Wherever I served I always joined the local civilian rugby club as it provided a break from military life and a point of contact with the local community. Askeans RFC was walking distance from our married quarter on Shooters Hill and at that time combined a high standard of play with some of the best rugby mischief I have ever been involved in. The club was ‘open’, but at that time still recruited largely from Haberdashers Aske’s School and each December the club 2nd XV would play a match against the School 1st XV as a sort of recruiting event. On one occasion when I played in that game, George Martin, captain of the 2nd XV, played scrum half against his seventeen-year-old son who was captain and fly half for the school side. Father and son became the 2nd XV half-back pairing in the New Year, providing a fitting finale for George to hang up his boots at the end of the season. Still fairly-newly married I pointed out this fine example to Barbara, little knowing how prophetic it might be.