 I was posted here after having served both in Hongkong and Malaya, it was totally diferent from any other training camps I had been to,we were a holding unit for the T.A. when they did their 14 days training, usually during July and August. The NAAFI was a fair distance away and we stayed in wooden billets, we had always to check that both doors were properly closed at night otherwise the sheep would be lying beside your bed in the morning.after each T.A. unit went back Home, we had the task of checking on the equipment that had been out on loan to them,as the T.A. units did not have enough trucks and guns at their disposal, so we normally were given a list of the eqipment that was missing, and our Job was to search for it. on one occasion we spotted what at the time we thought was a PINT POT [the ones we got for our morning cuppa ] well it turned out to be a 9 TON 5.5 Medium Gun that this particular unit had abandoned and what we thought was a PINT POT turned out to be the Muzzle of the gun, fortunately for me I was'nt involved in the recovery. we even ' found ' a Brand New Austin Champ these were brought out to replace the Willy's Jeep, which we had been using since WW2. the only thing wrong with the Champ was it had run out of petrol, I drove that Champ until one of the Officers confiscated it for his own use. When 58 Medium Regt R,A. moved from Redesdale Camp, and the Main Depot at the Barnard Castle Camp they had to hand over all of the equipment, this meant delivering all the transport and Guns to mainly an Airfield I think it was near Manchester but I could be wrong [after all it was 50 years ago and the memory is'nt as good as it used to be ]a lot of the smaller items went via the railway of which there was a siding just off the A68, and we shuttled back and forth filling all the wagons alloted to us, on one occasion one of our drivers decided that his Leyland truck was'nt going fast enough for him [ itwas governed at either 10 or 12 miles an hour ] and down to the siding was a hill, so he put it out of gear unfortunately he could not control it enough before he hit the Hump Back Bridge,just before the siding, and there must have been a helluva clatter in the back as he was carrying a load of 38 Sets, which in modern jargon is or was wireless communicators. so fearing the worst,we checked the contents of the Lorry and sure enough it was a MESS, we then had to figure out what do next,as there was no way we were getting the driver into trouble, him being a National Serviceman and not having long to serve, so we moved boxes round about so that the 38 sets were at the backs of the wagons, as far as I know they are probably still their there. Delivering the Trucks to Mancheste did'nt go by without incidents as it was Winter with all that WHITE STUFF scattered around and at one time we went via the Yorkshire Moors [bad mistake] and got stuck for 7 hours in the tail back, our trucks being 4x4's we did'nt get stuck, the problem was that we could'nt get by the other traffic. I do remember there being a Transport Cafe on the left hand side of the road that was doing a roaring trade, I cannot tell you how much the sight of that Cafe meant to us and the many times we were back and forth in the queue, there seemed to be a lot of writing in the Snow at that time. It took us a couple of months to dispose of all the equipment and then we went to Lippstadt in Germany |
