I know that some people with only half a brain, join up because they have dreams of pointing the business end of a rifle at a foreign counterpart, but no soldier dies for God, Queen and country. They die because some semi educated gibbon of a politician gives the word to the secretary for war, who then gives the word to the top brass, who then gives the word to the Generals, who then give the word to the Colonels, who then pass the word down the line until the cannon fodder is ordered into battle, and if the cannon fodder does well enough, the semi educated gibbon scores enough brownie points to be re-elected. All this, as nervous parents, wives, children, etc, are fed on bullshit while waiting for the body count. I, on the other hand, joined up, A... because, I could leave home at the age of fifteen. B....I wouldn’t be stuck in a factory for fifty years waiting for a gold watch, and as the Royal Engineers had the trade I wanted, that’s where I went. The fact that my father was a Royal Engineer did not influence me one iota, but it did have a bearing on my attitude. You see ,he was pretty well known, by most of the training staff, and as I was the son of the father, I was expected to excel in all departments. Things didn’t quite work out like that. Anyway, back to the sprogs in uniform. We were also, in the first few weeks, used as pin cushions by the M.O. as vaccinations, against everything from yellow fever to cholera, were pumped into us, in case we had to go and do battle in some of the more exotic places of the world, like Bradford or the Isle of White.

Now the first thing a soldier needs to know, whatever the Corps or Regiment, is how to be an infantry man and, much time was spent learning things like. Tactics. Map reading, or, how to get lost without trying. Digging trenches. Crawling in the mud. Attacking and defending positions. Arcs of fire. The art of camouflage, or how to crawl in the mud without being seen. Radio communications, otherwise known as how to call for reinforcements that never come. How to shoot accurately or in my case, how to waste ammunition as I couldn’t shoot worth a damn. Accuracy may well have been improved if we’d had semi educated gibbons to shoot at instead of cardboard cut outs of German soldiers. Weren’t the Germans on our side now? As this was before the fall of the Berlin wall surely we should have been killing cardboard cutouts in Russian uniforms. Old habits die hard, eh. It would be some time before we started doing what the R. E.’s are famous for. That is the laying of mines, hoping you wouldn’t be the one that has to dig them up. Planting booby traps, hoping you wouldn’t be the one that has to make them safe again. Building bridges and blowing them up. Building roads and airfields for somebody else to blow up. How to drive bulldozers and the best way to clean and paint them. Not forgetting other useful things like, how to keep away from front line activities while the incoming is still incoming. Until that time came, however, we still had a lot of mud to crawl through. Other activities included sport, and I played basket ball for my squadron, raced a bicycle for the Regiment and was also a member of the rock climbing club. Many a happy hour I spent dangling on the end of a rope, wishing that the next handhold was a little more obvious. Great importance was placed on education and in fifteen months of study I passed my A.C.E.(Army Certificate of Education) 3d class with high enough results to be exempt from taking A.C.E. 2nd class, thereby winning plenty of time to study for, and pass, A.C.E. 1st class in six subjects, which in theory, if not in practise, was enough education to take me to Field Marshall. I turned down the invitation, though I did win a book for my efforts. No, the highest I ever climbed, except for the time I climbed Mount Snowdon, was Junior Lance Corporal. The powers that be only gave me that first stripe because they thought it might make me a more responsible representative of the Queens uniform. Even the brass can make mistakes when they lose all presence of mind.

I should take a little time here to mention some of the boys who shared the good and bad times with me at Old Park Barracks. Guys such as Geoff Bowler, who used to faint at the sight of a needle and had to be vaccinated in the horizontal position. Butch Hammond from the Isle of Sheppey, Howard ’Sam’ Weller, who passed his driving test on the same day as me, Alan Martin from Nottingham, Chris Isaac with whom I shared time later in our service, Vic Grecky who later joined the bomb disposal unit (I hope he survived the experience), Rodger Anstey, Tim Thoragood, and Mick Harney, who came all the way from Rhodesia, as Zimbadwe was named back then. Fancy coming all that way to be pushed about by a bunch of power crazy kids with stripes or crowns on their arms. More on one or two of them later. The mates I mean. Not the power crazy junior N.C.O.,s. At the end of every term we got the same amount of vacation as civilian schools, so at least we could forget the army for a few weeks, and, as my parents moved to Aden shortly after I joined up, I had some pretty good holidays, especially as my sister did not go with them. She got pregnant, stayed in Nottingham, married Tony, and had two kids. Not necessarily in that order. Aden was situated at the bottom left hand corner of Saudi Arabia where the Red Sea meets the Indian Ocean and it was hot, hot, hot. Sun, sea, sand and not a lot to do except drink gallons of coca cola, swim (I’d had to learn to swim in the first three months at Dover) drink gallons of coca cola, go bowling in what must have been the worlds smallest bowling alley, drink gallons of coca cola, go fishing, and finally drink gallons of coca cola. Share prices in Coca Cola must have gone through the roof that year. During the first of the three times I went there my father got me a ride on an army Beaver. That did not mean that I sat on the back of a nervous brown animal with a flat tail while it was launched into the air. No. This Beaver was a single engined, five seater, spotter plane, that was rather nervous in a cross wind, giving the pilot a twitchy time getting it back on the ground. As this was only the second aeroplane I’d ever been in, the first being the V.C. 10, aboard which I’d arrived, you can be sure I twitched more than the pilot. Still, I’d had fun.

There was also a ride in a Scout helicopter, during which the pilot, insisted on showing me how low he could fly and we went through Happy Valley with the skids almost on the tarmac. Why it was called Happy Valley I’ve no idea as the only thing there was the Military Cemetary and the only residents were past caring what it was called. Still, I’d had fun. On another occasion when I went to Aden I had a real surprise waiting for me. My parents had booked a two week holiday in Kenya. We flew to Nairobi, where we stayed in the famous Norfolk hotel. Luxury.Visits included the Tsavo, Amboseli and Nairobi National game reserves. Lake Naivasha and the Menengai crater. I took numerous photos of any thing that stayed still long enough, while hopefully, staying out of biting range. There is so much more that I could say about those two weeks in Kenya, but I’ll save it for another time, and another book. All the other vacations I had during my time at Dover were spent with granddad Harry and the wicked witch of the north/south, and not really worth wasting time over so I’ll get right back to what’s left of my time at Dover. The best term of all, consisted of three months adventure training. Camping in the wilds, long walks over wild country side, climbing in Snowdonia, canoeing. The canoeing was akin to something out of a Carry On film. We built several two man canoes to cross the English channel, most of which failed the swimming pool test, the remainder never even making it out of Dover harbour, let alone give us the chance to storm the coast of France. Cockleshell heroes we weren’t. The highlights of this term were, however, learning to do cross country skiing in Norway and downhill skiing in the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland, both activities which I enjoyed immensely, though I much preferred the downhill version. Top to bottom very quickly. All you had to was stay upright, and follow your ski tips. Easy? The bruises I collected showed otherwise. Still, I’d had fun. The last two terms were spent Engineer training including bridging, and being taught how to blow things up, learning to drive and pass my driving test in a 3 ton Bedford R.L.army truck.

We also went before a trade selection board to find out what trade we would be allocated and it wasn’t always the trade one wanted. I wished to be a Refrigeration Mechanic but I must have upset someone, (What else was news) because I was to become a Plant Operator Mechanic. That’s just a posh name for a bulldozer jockey. Also, there were the examinations that we had to pass, or we wouldn’t be going to a training regiment to finish becoming Sappers. A Sapper is as low as you can get in the Royal Engineers, and I would spend the next five years, staying low, but not, unfortunately, staying unnoticed. At last the great day arrived. The day of the passing out parade. For those of you not familiar with things military, passing out did not mean a lot of soldiers falling down in a collective fainting ceremony. It just meant that we were passing from boys service to men’s service, but had to march around a lot first, to the beat of the band of the Junior Leaders Regiment, Royal Engineers, and listen to insincere speeches, for the benefit of proud parents, before we could walk out of Old Park Barracks for the last time. There were very proud parents, from all over the country, very proudly, and in some cases very tearfully, spouting rubbish like, "There’s my (blub, blub)Tom,(blub, blub) Dick or (blub, blub)Harry." "Doesn’t he look (blub,blub) smart." or in my case, "Where’s our Martin?" "There?" "Where?" "There. The one in the middle ,who couldn’t give a monkeys, and whose arms aren’t swinging as high as the others." HOW COULD THEY HAVE MISSED THE BIGGEST "UP YOURS" SMILE IN THE WORLD.