Down Among the Weeds

by Harry Beaves

  Two years at Woolwich was more than long enough and I was eager to escape. Lt Col Bob Redford, who had been my CO during my early days in 148 Battery, was at the time serving in the MoD branch responsible for adventurous training. I rang him one day and nervously asked him if there were any jobs in that field that might suit me. To my delight the Chief Instructor’s job at JSMTC (W) was falling vacant at about the time I was due to leave Woolwich and, with my Mountaineering Instructor’s Certificate, I would be a strong candidate, so he was prepared to run me for the appointment. Some weeks later the Postings Officer rang to tell me that I had been accepted, but also to warn me that I was stepping outside the normal employment pattern, so the job would effectively be a ‘career foul’.

  I wasn’t concerned, as the prospect of being CI and two years by the sea in North Wales was just too good to be true, so we packed the little tent and spent several weekends looking round the Tywyn area. We eventually found a new two-bedroomed bungalow on a development fifty yards from the sea and made an almost instant decision to buy it and face the crippling prospect of a £10,000 mortgage!

  Chapter 29

  The Sublime and the Ridiculous

  At Tywyn I was back in my element and we both absolutely loved living in the area. We bought a beautiful English Setter puppy, called Hudson, and enjoyed long walks with him along the coast. The local education system required all primary teachers to be fluent in Welsh which meant that Barbara could not get a teaching job, but this did not matter as she became pregnant a few months after we settled in.

  It was Sunday evening and I was watching Jim Watt fighting in a fifteen-round lightweight championship bout on TV. Barbara sat quietly on the settee. She was long ‘overdue’ and was being admitted to Aberystwyth Maternity Unit the following day. ‘I don’t like to say this, but I just felt a pain and I think I’ve had several now.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, still wanting to watch the end of the round. ‘You phone the ambulance and I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  We found the bag that she had packed ready for her admission, tidied up and came back to the settee to watch the rest of the fight. By the time the ambulance arrived the contractions were coming about every third round. I waved the ambulance off, rang my in-laws in Folkestone, did a bit more tidying in preparation for my mother-in-law’s arrival, then loaded the dog into the car and set off, without seeing the last round! I drove slowly to Bronglais Hospital, Aberystwyth expecting to have wasted enough time for the baby to have arrived by the time I got there… naive new father. The drama lasted long past midnight and on to breakfast time. At about 8am I was feeling tired from all that pushing and went outside for a breath of air and to walk the dog, who had been in the car all night and by then had all four of his legs firmly crossed. When I returned I was the proud father of a healthy baby boy. John decided to be born just at the time I chose to go out! He weighed in at a little over seven pounds, so we announced in the Gunner magazine:

  Beaves. Born to Harry and Barbara Beaves at Bronglais Hospital, Aberystwyth on the 9th of June 1980, a son, John. Nine stones under the lightweight limit.

  The incredibly big brown bird relaxing, with Hudson the English Setter guarding John some weeks before he was born in 1980.

  About four weeks after John was born, I led an expedition from the Army Mountaineering Association to the Stauning Alps of East Greenland. Barbara took John back to Folkestone and enjoyed being spoilt for the duration by the proud grandparents. East Greenland was relatively easy to get to by military transport as RAF C130 aircraft flew regular training flights to Northern Canada that could be persuaded to stop off at Mestersvig in Greenland. Mestersvig airstrip was about 1,800 metres long on an area of tundra that had been cleared of boulders, and was originally built alongside a small harbour to support the export of lead and zinc from a mine, now long since closed, about fifteen miles inshore. In 1980 there were about forty people there in a small group of buildings on the airstrip, which was run by the Danish Government, ostensibly as a weather station.

  Three generations at John’s Christening at Morfa Camp, Tywyn.

  There were eight of us on the expedition drawn from throughout the British Army. The plan was to establish a dump of spare rations and materiel on the edge of the airstrip, then using Gemini inflatable boats we would ferry as much as possible north, to Alpefjord, where we would set up base camp from which to explore the Stauning Alps. The duration of our stay was governed by the RAF flight programme and in the event we flew out earlier than we wanted and returned a little later. This was significant because of the meteorological conditions; in particular, when we arrived on 3rd July the sea around Mestersvig was still frozen so we had to delay the boat journey north. This proved to be no bad thing as it gave us a chance to use the low mountains around Mestersvig to get used to operating in twenty-four hours of daylight.

  Continuous daylight made life safer in one respect, as there was no pressure to find a suitable campsite before nightfall, nor was there a danger from lower night-time temperatures, but, without darkness to prompt us, life became very disoriented, with a tendency to lose track of time and keep walking long past the normal meal breaks etc as there was no difference between midday and midnight. Rest became difficult because our lightweight nylon tents were either pale yellow or pale orange so didn’t provide darkness to help us sleep. For much of the early period we used the abandoned buildings at the lead mines as a base. When you entered a building, after a few minutes of the relative darkness you inevitably began to feel drowsy. An illustration of how disorientated we became occurred at seven o’clock one day when I watched two members of the expedition pass each other, one with a mess tin of cornflakes, the other with his evening meal. In the space of a week they had become a full twelve hours out of phase with each other.

  When the sea ice finally melted we loaded the Geminis and set off north. Normally the speed through the water causes the bow of the boat to rise on the plane, but we were so heavily laden with our supplies that we chugged along flat on the water. Around midday we beached at the fangshytte at Kap Petersen for a break. Greenland is dotted with picturesque fangshyttes, small wooden sheds, for use by hunters as they cross the harsh terrain in winter, which are just big enough to contain bunk beds, a stove and rations.

  From Kap Petersen we entered Alpefjord where the blocks of ice (they were too small to be termed icebergs) floating in the water began to get larger and larger. We fended them off as best we could with a boat hook, but the threat of the ice puncturing the inflatable was a constant worry.

  About eight hours from Mestersvig we found an open space at the end of a glacier on the south shore of Alpefjord and set up our base camp. We spent twenty-four hours shaking out, then split into groups of two and four and climbed and explored the area. The scenery was truly stunning and I was in my element, fitter, stronger and, most importantly, as confident as I have ever been in the mountains. The weather was generally very stable and still, except on some evenings when a katabatic wind came down from the ice cap. With clear blue skies for most of the early weeks and a steady temperature of around fifty-five degrees it was a very pleasant climate in which to climb.

  If the weather conditions were benign, the remoteness of the area made mountaineering, even on easy routes, a very serious undertaking. One of the last routes I climbed on that expedition was an elegant snow-capped ridge which ran along the north side of Alpefjord. It rose from sea level to a height of about 1800 metres, didn’t involve any roped rock climbing and, we estimated, would take us about fourteen hours.

  Our tents by the hunters’ cabin at Kap Peterson, Greenland. 1980

  Camping on the Skel Glacier in Greenland – every bit as cold as it looks.

  In the evening my climbing partner Maurice Hassall and I, together with Tony Holmes, crossed Alpejord in two Geminis. We beached the first Gemini where we expected to finish the route and secured it to a huge rock which would also act as a land mark when we were searching for it at the en
d of our climb. Tony then dropped Maurice and me, with our basic climbing kit, at the start of the route and returned to base camp in the second Gemini.

  Maurice and I spent a cold but comfortable night sleeping in our spare clothes in Gore-Tex bivvy bags, then began the walk at about 8am. It was a magnificent day and conditions were perfect, with clear skies and a superb panorama of the Greenland ice cap. Around 7.30pm we came down to the coast and, after a few anxious minutes searching for the boat, dragged it to the sea and set off home. It was one of the most memorable and spectacular days I have spent in the mountains, but it was also one of the most risky. Even a minor mishap, like a turned ankle, would have made it impossible to reach the boat. We had an emergency ‘no-show’ plan, but we had no radio and it was years before the invention of the mobile phone. If we were not back by 8am (twenty-four hours after the start time) those at base camp would have come across and followed our route, but they would have had to find us, evacuate us from the mountain, return across the fjord to base camp, then, finally undertake an eight-hour sea journey back to the medical facilities at Mestersvig.

  John Beaves soon after I had returned from Greenland.

  After nine weeks in Greenland and with the midnight sun now setting, I returned home to my new family. My son Philip was born on 9th June 1981, twelve months to the day after his brother, further confirmation that the unusual happens to my family!

  * * *

  Back in Tywyn I answered the phone one morning to a woman who introduced herself as Margot Green of Trans World International (TWI), makers of TV programmes like Superstars and Britain’s Strongest Man. She said that the company were planning to make a series of programmes called Survival of the Fittest using the Superstars formula with challenge activities in the mountains. She asked if she could visit us and whether JSMTC (W) could help or advise in any way. At that time the services often helped with TV programmes as it was generally reckoned that they provided good PR, so Colonel Tim Winterton, the Commandant, was happy to agree to the visit.

  It transpired that Tywyn was too far away from central Snowdonia for us to be able to provide the support TWI were looking for, but I got on well with Margot and John Forster, her colleague, and I offered to advise, informally, in my own time, if I could. Over the weeks we discussed possible events and areas where they could be staged. I took a couple of days’ leave and with the TWI staff and Jim Hargreaves, a professional canoeing instructor from Capel Curig in Snowdonia, we began to put the programme together. Jim Hargreaves had been a fellow instructor at Tywyn in 1973 (Chapter 22).

  I enjoyed designing the competition events, but I also had other reasons for wanting to be involved. I had been in touch with the postings branch about my next job and knew I was not going to like what was in prospect. My two years at Tywyn with our young family by the sea were amongst the happiest of my military career, but if I wanted a full career in the Army I had, somehow, to get back into the mainstream again. There was still time to catch up after the ‘career foul’, but I would have to pay penance. Not only was I first choice for the job that no one wanted, but I would subsequently be lined up for a second-rate appointment when it came my turn to command a battery. I wanted to be ready to leave the Army if circumstances didn’t suit me and, like many enthusiastic sportsmen, I thought a job with the sports media would be fun. Working with TWI and HTV, who would broadcast the event, would give me an insight and might help open doors if the need arose.

  I became more and more involved with the Survival of the Fittest and eventually I obtained military permission to assist with the production so took a week’s leave to do so. I was appointed ‘Referee’, wrote the rules and was responsible for running for each event. Jim Hargreaves was responsible for setting and building each of the courses. Making the programme was fascinating and great fun and eventually produced a series of six very good (I think) programmes.

  I got on well with the TWI staff and they must have thought I was OK, as I was asked if I would like to help with the production of Britain’s Strongest Man later in the year. I took more leave and headed south to Brighton for a week of hilarious incidents which seemed always to surround such a group of unusual, dare I say ‘freakish’, individuals. Competitors and staff for Britain’s Strongest Man were accommodated in a four-star hotel on Brighton seafront. In the same hotel that week was the Northern Ireland soccer team, on a training camp for the approaching European Championships, and the Harlem Globetrotters who were playing basketball at the nearby Brighton Centre. In the hotel dining room at breakfast on the first day one area was filled with gorillas, about five feet across the shoulders, with calves like tree stumps, each one frowning aggressively under a single eyebrow, all emptying plate after plate of eggs, sausages and anything else on offer. In another area was a group of smiling, loose-limbed black giants, many of them close to seven-feet tall and each one plugged in to the ‘must-have’ gadget of the day, a Sony Walkman. Scampering between them all were fit little (i.e. normal-sized) men all dressed in emerald green like a hyperactive version of Ken Dodd’s Diddymen. I could fill several chapters with tales from that week!

  I went on to do four more series of Survival of the Fittest, but I had quite quickly realised that TV work was probably not for me. Some may have said my face was more suited to radio! I wanted to work with my gritty sporting heroes in a sort of TV version of being ‘among the weeds’. Instead I found that while most of the organisers knew a lot of sportsmen, they often knew and cared little about sport. Many came from an arty background which engendered an attitude far different from the down-to-earth approach that I preferred. I was also used to the focussed military way of getting things done and became intensely annoyed by folk like the cameraman who was too hungover to be bothered to get to the position that would give him the shot of the panorama that we had deliberately intended as the backdrop for one particular event. Whilst the programmes were great fun to be involved with I took away no ambitions of pursuing a second career in that direction.

  If I had feared a gloomy posting next time round, I was not disappointed. After two glorious years we packed our bags and I took our young family to Chester where I began probably the most dismal period of our (note the pronoun) military life.

  * * *

  At Chester I joined 23 Artillery Brigade (23 Arty Bde), the headquarters that commanded the TA Air Defence units of the Royal Artillery. I was responsible for non-artillery training within the Brigade, primarily recruit training and promotion courses. Within the Royal Artillery at that time there was a distinct pecking order that set regiments with guns above regiments that fired into the sky and so on. Working with TA Air Defence units came close to the end of the line so I struggled to raise enthusiasm for the task. As much to the point, the job was about as far removed from ‘the weeds’ as it could be.

  However, the phone call from the postings branch telling me of the Chester job had not all been bad as at the pill was sugared by the news that I had been selected as BC of 148 Battery following my time at Chester, so would eventually be returning to Poole. However around that time the government was conducting a defence review which would inevitably lead to a reduction in the size of the Armed Forces. The primary role of the Army and Air Force remained to counter the threat posed by the Communist Bloc, while the Royal Navy’s primary role would be to escort ship movements to and from Europe, in particular, protecting them from threats from aircraft and submarines. To this end the latest batch of frigates had been designed without a gun capable of firing at shore targets. With few or no guns on the ships, there would be no requirement for the specialist skills of 148 Battery to direct Naval Gunfire. 148 Battery would be vulnerable for disbandment, so, when my time came to become BC, there was serious doubt whether the Battery would still exist at all.

  A number of factors go to make up a happy posting; foremost, I believe, is job satisfaction which is almost equalled by family happiness. Other factors like the job location and the quality of the married quarters also h
ave an important bearing. 23 Arty Bde ticked almost all of the wrong boxes. Although Chester is an elegant city the part we lived in was dull, dark and gloomy with quarters that were in need of considerable modernisation. I had spent no time in the North of England and always imagined it to be full of cheery, neighbourly types as seen in Coronation Street. What I hadn’t expected was the level of crime compared with the areas of the ‘soft south’ in which I had lived most of my life. In leafy middle-class towns like Chester burglary was endemic, with the criminals coming out of the northern cities to commit their crimes, so that, if you lived in a pleasant detached house, it was only a matter of time before you were robbed.

  One of my friends at the HQ gave his neighbour the key to his quarter and asked him to watch it while he and his family were away on leave. On the first morning the neighbour’s wife thought it strange that the downstairs toilet window was ajar so she cautiously went round to check. As she touched the front door it swung open and revealed all of the electrical appliances, each one with the flex neatly coiled and tied, in a pile in the hallway. The burglar had forced the toilet window and carefully collected everything he wanted and stacked it neatly before letting himself out through the front door and leaving the Yale lock on the latch. A white van would have attracted little attention when it pulled up later the same day and loaded the items into the back.

  I remember on one occasion a Sgt instructor from the Regular Army, who was working with one of our TA units, being asked by a visiting senior officer how he liked the job. The Sgt replied that it was very good, but he got a bit tired of working weekends, to which the senior officer replied, ‘Oh yes but you must take days off in lieu during the week.’ ‘I do,’ replied the Sgt, ‘but I have a season ticket for Bolton Wanderers and they play on Saturdays.’ I became a member of Chester Rugby Club, but because of my work with the TA, I was not regularly available so I resigned myself to just running out in their lower teams.