Down Among the Weeds

by Harry Beaves

  The other three members of my stick were OK; pretty shocked, but OK. We looked up at the sky and could no longer see the Hercules. ‘Where are the rest of the Battery?’ I asked. The DZSO was by the ambulance looking flustered and, I thought, worried. ‘Oh, I’ve aborted the mission and the aircraft is going to land at Newcastle. Winds are above limits now.’ Then he hastily added. ‘They were OK when you jumped, though.’

  ‘Oh yeh,’ I thought. Meanwhile the remaining members of 148 Battery heaved mighty sighs of relief and sat back as the Hercules rumbled on to the airport, not caring one bit that the BC and his team had bragging rights over them because they had made the jump in full NBC kit.

  Fortunately, my ankle was badly sprained, but not actually broken. Two nights later the officers of 29 Commando Regiment held a Dinner Night at which I and several others who were about to be posted were ‘dined out’. It was a brilliant evening with plenty of mischief and, as I recall, a little bit of trouble which, for a pleasant change, did not involve me!

  There was no more appropriate way to leave such a Regiment – on one leg. You couldn’t beat it.

  Life would never again be quite so much fun.

  Chapter 31

  The Family in Germany

  The town of Soest stands on the flat fertile plain about 50km east of Dortmund, but although it was the postal address of HQ 3rd Armoured Division (3 Div), the camp itself stood on the high hills, about 10km to the south, that mark the beginning of the beautiful wooded region known as the Sauerland. Our married quarter was in the pretty little village of Körbecke right by the side of the Möhnesee and close to the Möhne Dam that was one of the targets of the Dambusters’ Raid during the Second World War.

  I had gone to Germany with reservations about the job, but determined to make the most of opportunities for my growing family. In fact it turned out to be a very happy posting for us all. Barbara took charge of the Garrison Kindergarten and the boys were settled in to the local Services School. The area was great for dog-walking and bike rides and, with the boys growing up, I was able to take them camping (in the same little old mountain tent) and start to do adventurous things with them. In particular they learnt to ski. In the mid-Eighties most regiments in BAOR rented ski lodges in Bavaria and ran courses for their soldiers as a measure to maintain morale and break the boredom of garrison life. Over Christmas we attended a course run for families at the HQ 3 Div ski hut in Oberstdorf. Aged five and six the boys loved it and Barbara quickly realised that if she didn’t also learn to ski she was going to be left out of everything. We had a wonderful holiday which ended with a visit to the New Year’s Day International Ski-Jumping Competition in Oberstdorf. Here we were privileged to witness Britain’s Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards, who later became famous for his inept performances at the Calgary Winter Olympics, take off from the ski jump and land on the sort of flower bed picked out in the snow to mark the start of the ‘safe’ landing zone.

  Back in Körbecke we had skiing on our doorstep in the resorts around Willingen in the Sauerland, which was about an hour away from us – on services duty-free petrol! The hills were about 800m high, just high enough and cold enough to hold sufficient snow for skiing. The runs were very short and not particularly challenging for experienced skiers, but for my three novices they were ideal.

  The old mountain tent again, this time, camping with the boys in Germany.

  The Sauerland resorts were particularly popular with Dutch and Belgian skiers, for whom it was an easy drive, and later in the day the runs became unbearably crowded with endless queues for the lifts. Our response was to arrive as the lifts were starting at about 8am and ski until about 11am, by which time the Dutch hordes would have arrived, so we would have a huge mug of hot chocolate and head home for lunch. I skied almost every weekend, usually taking one son on Saturday and the other on Sunday. My idea of heaven was to get up early and ski the morning at Willingen with the family. Then veg out in the afternoon and watch a Five Nations (as it was then) rugby international on Services TV with a few foaming glasses of duty-free Grolsch Beer.

  Teaching the boys to ski was great fun, but not without its challenges, particularly with Philip. You reached the top of the runs at Willingen by T-bar drag lifts which were old-fashioned even in those days. The ‘Ts’ were about a metre by a metre and hung from a cable above your head. Normally two skiers at a time would place the arm of the T under their buttocks and it would drag them up the slope, side by side. This was fine for people of similar size, but the height of my small sons’ buttocks put the bar behind my knees and made it very difficult to for me to control.

  On one occasion I was sharing a T-bar with John while Philip was on his own about two T-bars ahead of us. He was zig-zagging from side to side and generally doing most of the things that he knew he shouldn’t. As he reached the top and got off, the loop on his right ski pole hooked on the ‘T’ with his right arm still through it. He was dragged on up the lift on his side towards a huge ten-foot-high protective bank of snow at the end. John and I watched in horror, unable to do anything as he was dragged up over the mound out of sight. He was then hanging from the ‘T’ by his right wrist, feet in skis about two feet off the ground, as the cable moved closer to the gantry at the top, around which it passed before starting the descent. Fortunately someone punched an emergency ‘stop’ button and Philip bounced a couple of times on the cable before falling into the snow. Unharmed and unconcerned, he shook himself off and got ready to descend whilst his mother moved her terrified eyes from behind her gloved hands and I chased up to him to administer an almighty rocket.

  A few years later we were skiing at Kvitfjell in Norway on one of the runs used for the Lillehammer Olympics which, in hindsight, was not bad for a ten-year-old and a nine-year-old. The resort was magnificent with everything new in preparation for the games, including giant eight-seater chair lifts which were suspended from the cable by a single bar at the centre. Unfortunately, if a single person sat on an outside seat, the bench pivoted, so that the opposite outside seat was quite high off the ground.

  There were few people around and John and I were ready to get on. Philip as usual was hanging back for some reason. As the giant chair came round it caught me and John and we found ourselves in the two outside seats on the left. Philip, only half ready, was in line for the outside seat on the right, but our weight on the left had lifted the right side so high that he couldn’t get on. We watched in horror as the heavy chair struck Philip on the head and knocked him over. The attendant punched the stop button. John and I, in the chair, were now fifty metres further on, high above the snow, unable to do anything. The attendant picked Philip up and we watched as he took off his skis, threw them in the snow and stomped off to his mother who was drinking chocolate in the café, oblivious to the unfolding drama. The lift took John and me on up to the top in silence, all the time hoping that he was OK. We got back to the café and found him none the worse for wear. Fortunately he had been wearing a helmet and goggles so whilst the goggles were broken he was unharmed. I think that was the day when Murphy recognised Philip as a potential new recruit.

  I was still playing rugby in Germany whenever I could. On my thirtieth birthday I had played in an unsuccessful trial for the Army side and on my fortieth birthday played for the HQ 3 Div side in an Army Cup match against 27 Regiment RA. A fresh-faced young officer from 27 Regiment, playing in the second row, seemed to be particularly focussed on bundling me around in the rucks and mauls. I paid little attention to it, then after the match he came up to me in the bar and very politely said, ‘Excuse me, sir. I believe you used to play with my father.’ It was Justin Barber, whose father Robin was a very mean prop forward with whom I had played many years before and who had been the BC of 145 Battery in Turkey in Chapter 26. I suddenly felt my forty years.

  The work proved to be far more interesting than I had expected because I found myself directly involved with things that greatly affected me and my family, like the quality and mainte
nance of service accommodation, the service provided by the NAAFI and the British Forces Broadcasting Service, medical support and overseas allowances. Mine and similar posts in the other divisions were new jobs, created because of the belated realisation of the importance of maintaining the morale of the married soldier and his family as well as the single soldier. Welfare support had become very much the ‘in thing’ at that time.

  The job was also made more pleasant because I got on particularly well with those for whom I worked. My boss was Colonel John MacDonald, the Deputy Chief of Staff (DCOS), a former Scottish International prop forward who had served with Airborne Forces in his time and seemed to understand the culture shock that the new job represented for me. Despite this, he was a hard task master, time and again returning my work covered in red ink for correction. Eventually my finished brief would go forward to the General with no more than Colonel John’s initials and a tick by the side to endorse it. The GOC of 3 Div was General David Ramsbotham (now Baron Ramsbotham), another man whom I greatly admired. ‘Rambo’, as he was known, would return the brief covered in action points, but with a pat on the back for my work, little knowing (I hope) how many times it had been in for correction.

  Many of the posts in a Divisional Headquarters, like ours, were high profile and were invariably filled by bright young ‘thrusters’, officers who were marked out for great things. These people had their eyes constantly focussed upwards at the source of sunshine and were acutely aware of the necessity always to make an impression, whether professionally or socially, that would guarantee their progress on the road to stardom. They were the sort of people that you would love to tie between the dog and the lamp post. Mere mortals like me and most of my friends were content to do the job satisfactorily in the hope that, after two years, the box would be ticked that allowed us to continue to serve on happily.

  A copy of every letter that left the branch was put in a float file that was circulated each week, so that we could all keep abreast of everything that was going on. On a fly sheet inside the cover was a list of our appointments which we would initial after we had read the contents. Colonel John always signed his initials against ‘DCOS’ in red ink, the only person permitted to use that colour.

  It particularly annoyed Colonel John if he spotted a letter in the float file that contained spelling or grammatical errors and he would correct them with his red pen. He mentioned this forcefully at one of his weekly staff meetings and said that in future he would fine anyone a bottle of champagne for every error he found on the float file. We all smiled nervously.

  I was browsing through the float file one day when I noticed a letter written by one of the bright young thrusters about improvements to a number of the local barracks. Two names in the letter caught my eye, Peninsular Barracks and Barrossa Barracks. Now, I don’t know a great deal about Wellington’s campaigns, but had visited those particular barracks and remembered the large signs at the gates spelling the names ‘Peninsula’ and ‘Barossa’. I pointed this out to Frank Ramsey, who shared an office with me.

  Every May we celebrated Albuhera Day with Frank who was a proud Fusilier and did know a bit about Wellington’s campaigns. We marvelled that the words Peninsula and Barossa had been spelt wrongly fourteen times in a two-page letter so we looked forward to a pretty good glug of champagne when Colonel John saw it, but, to our surprise his red initials were already on the fly sheet and he had obviously not spotted anything.

  The bright young thruster was a welcome target and this was too good an opportunity to miss, so we found a red pen similar to Colonel John’s and put a small, neat red line through each mistake. We then entered our own initials as normal on the fly sheet, put the file in the ‘Out’ tray and waited for it to reach our victim who had not yet seen it.

  The following afternoon I met the man in a corridor and noticed he was very subdued and nothing like his normal irritatingly boisterous self. Over the next few days he became even worse as Frank and I watched, amused and fascinated. Something was obviously on his mind and we knew just what it was. Colonel John, of course, knew nothing about this and carried on perfectly normally which piled even more pressure on the bright young thruster, as he was expecting at any time to be invited to ‘come into the office and close the door’.

  So we let him stew. As the days went by he realised that probably nothing would be said and he gloomily resigned himself to the fact that his career was forever down the tubes and, in the process, briefly became quite a pleasant person. ‘Briefly’ because about nine months later Colonel John was posted and, as is customary, wrote reports on all of us, including the ‘Outstanding’ report that all bright young thrusters so desperately needed. Frank and I eventually told Colonel John the story at his farewell party and we all laughed heartily, including the bright young thruster who somehow managed to do so through gritted teeth. But the tale didn’t have a happy ending as, safe again, he sadly reverted to type and Frank and I resigned ourselves to never getting the champagne. Even more sadly, the bright young thruster had a heart attack in his forties so never achieved the stardom he so desperately sought.

  My time in 3 Div was over. I had satisfactorily completed two office jobs, or staff appointments, as they are more correctly known, which provided ‘on the job training’ for those of us in the slow stream who had not been bright enough to win a place at the Staff College. I learnt an enormous amount in my time in 3 Div, I had to, or I wouldn’t have lasted, and it contrasted completely my time in 23 Arty Bde in Chester, which had been a waste. My confidential reports were surprisingly good and I was back in the mainstream, qualified for promotion to Lt Col and assured of a job in the Army until the age of fifty-five, provided I didn’t blot my copybook. I could breathe a sigh of relief and look forward to the rest of my service untroubled. I had my eyes set on a number of jobs that would be great fun, if I could engineer them, though it was unlikely that I would have to foot the bill for any promotion parties! It would all begin with my next posting as Commandant of the British Mountain Training Centre (BMTC) in Norway.

  Chapter 32

  Norway

  BMTC (Norway) was founded after the Second World War to provide an opportunity for the poorly-paid British National Servicemen to escape bomb-damaged Germany and enjoy life in the wonderful Norwegian countryside. Courses were run on the principles of Outward Bound and were extremely rugged, famously involving activities like jumping off a twenty-foot-high cliff into the fjord at a time when there was snow on the ground! These courses had long since been phased out and, although most students still came from Germany and the centre was administered from BAOR, BMTC now trained leaders in adventurous activities with a similar charter to JSMTC (Wales) at Tywyn.

  In addition to the normal courses in climbing, canoeing and trekking BMTC also ran ice-climbing courses, cross country ski-race training and Nordic ski expeditions. We also provided advice and equipment for units from BAOR to mount their own trekking, skiing, canoeing, sailing and diving expeditions in Norway. The centre operated from two locations: the headquarters at Isefjaer was set in a stunningly beautiful location at the head of a small fjord on the south coast, close to Kristiansand; and the base for most of the courses was at Gautestad, an old farm complex about fifty miles north in the hills of the Setesdal.

  The position of BMTC in Norway was governed by a unique memorandum of understanding between the two governments as the Norwegian constitution did not permit foreign troops to be permanently based in the country. Although we were all servicemen our role was entirely non-military and to this end neither staff nor students wore any military uniform or insignia, nor did the unit hold any weapons or warlike stores. The courses moved in civilian minibuses and the few military vehicles that we had were sprayed blue. Norway still had National Service and the locals could not understand why the British Government should want to let its troops play in the Norwegian countryside. We got on very well with the Norwegians, but many wanted to imagine that midget submarines crept up the f
jord at dead of night for all sorts of nefarious reasons; perhaps the Russians thought so as well.

  The staff of BMTC was about forty strong. There were no married quarters so families were accommodated in houses rented in the local community. Ours was a lovely house (though very ordinary by local standards) with panoramic views over the little town of Lillesand. Not only was Norway a very beautiful country but the Norwegians enjoyed a very comfortable, laid-back lifestyle. Rarely were there two identical houses in a street, and each house was built with a view to enjoy and with a terrace or area on which to sit out. All Norwegians love the outdoors and most families, as well as their main home, have a country cabin, which would either be by the sea for the summer or in the hills for skiing or shooting. The main drawback, however, was the cost of living which, compared with most of Europe, was extremely high. One of our instructors told the story of how he and his family arrived and found their rented accommodation then went to the local supermarket. The husband stayed in the car with the children while the wife, a ‘parsimonious Scot’, went in to do the weekly shop. A few minutes later she came out and sat down in the car with a mighty ‘Hrmphh!’ ‘Have you finished? Where’s the shopping?’ She only had a loaf of bread.

  The Staff of BMTC (Norway). Bob Kinnaird on my left.

  ‘You should see the prices! I’m not paying that much, £2 for a cauliflower the size of a teacup!’