National Service

By David Russell

Among the countries we served in during our National Service time were the United Kingdom, Europe, West Africa and the Far East. Only Kevin OSullivan saw active service. He describes the shock and the violence of ambushing terrorists while on patrol in Malaya. Michael Crowe in the navy visited more places than anyone and Barry Brown spent eighteen months in multi-cultural and vibrant West Africa travelling in Nigeria and the Gold Coast (Ghana). We all describe varying frustrations with the Services, which we responded to with cynicism and humour. But we all agree that it was an interesting and enjoyable experience and David Russell speaks for all of us when he writes that his understanding of the human condition was broadened enormously.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Oct 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514440568

David Russell

David Russell is a long-time member of the arts community in Vancouver. He has worked on stage and television, including performing as a company member with the Vancouver TheatreSports League for more than 15 years. Russell has written freelance for a number of publications, including Maclean's, Vancouver's Sun and Province, the award-winning online news site The Tyee, and others. He lives in Coquitlam, British Columbia.

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Copyright © 2015 by David Russell.

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Rev. date: 10/15/2015

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CONTRIBUTORS

Peter H. U. Maguire, RAF, 1947-49

Barry Brown: Royal Army Dental Corps 1951-53

Michael Lowery: RAF 1952-55

Geoffrey Adams : RAF 1953-55

David Russell RA: Military Service 1954-56

Michael G. F. Crowe: Royal Navy 1954-56

Kevin O’Sullivan: Loyal Regiment 1956-58

INTRODUCTION

Among the countries we served in during our National Service time were the United Kingdom, Europe, West Africa and the Far East. Only Kevin O’Sullivan saw active service. He describes the shock and the violence of ambushing terrorists while on patrol in Malaya. Michael Crowe in the navy visited more places than anyone and Barry Brown spent eighteen months in multi-cultural and vibrant West Africa travelling in Nigeria and the Gold Coast (Ghana). We all describe varying frustrations with the Services, which we responded to with cynicism and humour. But we all agree that it was an interesting and enjoyable experience and David Russell speaks for all of us when he writes that his understanding of the human condition was broadened enormously.

Barry Brown and David Russell

UK and Thailand

1947-49

by

Peter H.U. Maguire

Towards the middle of the war schools were ordered to enlist older boys in some sort of quasi-military formation. My father had been a bomber navigator in WW1 so it was inevitable that I would choose the Air Training Corps and joined Squadron 11F. This considered itself a cut above the average as, apart from being a foundation squadron, it was based on Brooklands airfield where Vickers built and flight-tested Wellington bombers. The airfield lay within the perimeter of the concrete racetrack with its steeply banked curves now sprouting grass after several years of disuse. We used it for occasional runs.

One of the officers had been responsible for building the Napier Railton which held the world land speed record at over 400mph. Pep-talks from racing drivers such as Whitney Straight created an exiting atmosphere enhanced by the occasional appearance of hush-hush aircraft such as a test-bed Wellington with one of Frank Whittle’s early jet engines mounted in the tail. This was well before any public disclosure of jet propulsion and we were firmly enjoined to keep our mouths shut.

At 16, having obtained sufficient Upper School Certificates, I moved on to Imperial College in Kensington to study electronics. My attempts to join the University Air Squadron on arrival were rebuffed – the RAF already had enough pilots in training by 1944. Three years later having obtained my degree I was interviewed by two friendly officers from the Air Ministry who explained that I would shortly be called up and earnestly made out a case for my volunteering to join the Airfield Construction Service (ACS). To me this seemed a curious idea, as I did not see any way in which my professional skills as an electronic engineer could usefully be placed at the King’s disposal by building airfields. But the official mind, having a gearbox that did not include reverse, engaged forward gear and I was called up and told that I was to do join the ACS. The RAF clearly appreciated the value of graduates in a way that was then uncommon in industry and the ACS was going to have me regardless of my views. In any event I later learnt that it was inadvisable in the services to volunteer for anything at all, but that strategy failed to prevent my being ‘volunteered’.

The next event in the call-up process was a medical at the Air Ministry in Kingsway. I recall little of it beyond a number of wartime posters that covered most of the office walls. One remains in my memory with a graphic drawing of a seaside resort being reduced to ruins by an RAF bomber flying low overhead. The caption read Margate skipper! I thought you said Target! Anyway bombs gone! Underneath was the message Use correct RT procedure. Unfortunately this poster is missing from the RAF museum’s collection.

Then in August 1947 came my call-up letter which included a demob number which was somewhere in the region of 215. This compared unfavourably with the low numbers held by men currently being demobilised and I realised that I was in for more than two years. I was to be Aircraftman 2nd class No.3108419 with no hint that I was to expect any improvement in my situation. The letter included a travel warrant to the reception centre at RAF Padgate near Warrington. This dismal establishment had clearly been designed to condition recruits to expect the worst. There were no signs of any officers, and hardly any of NCOs. Most of the camp’s resident staff walked about shouting, wearing blue-grey boiler suits with not a single button done up. They reminded me of noxious creatures about to shed their skins.

Rumour had it that the camp was built on ‘condemned land’ whatever that was, but it seemed an adequate description. The billets were Nissen huts heated at one end by a coke-burning stove for which there was no fuel. Over a period of three days various pieces of kit were issued to each of us. The only items that made any impression on me were two identity discs intended to be hung on a cord around one’s neck – one red, proof against fire – the other grey, proof against seawater. On day four we were given our marching orders. All the recruits in my billet appeared to be graduates and were to be despatched to the OCTU at RAF Cosford and labelled ‘Officer Cadets’. We all greeted this news with a mixture of elation and anxiety. Alarming stories of assault courses and rigorous discipline in the OCTU reached us. We finally entrained for Cosford.

Here an altogether different atmosphere prevailed. The buildings had been constructed to a high architectural standard in the 1930s as part of Trenchard’s long-term pursuit of excellence for his new Air Force. We slept in large dormitories with polished teak floors and Georgian sliding-sash windows. The course would last eight weeks, the first half devoted to lectures and square-bashing; the second to assault courses, infantry training and firing on the range. Most of the other cadets were either engineering or science graduates or men who had been selected as ‘officer material’ and were destined for General Duties which for some obscure reason was coded language for Aircrew.

We were joined by three older men who already had their ‘Wings’ including a Master Pilot Thomas with a splendid handlebar moustache and a rich vocabulary. It was from him that I first heard the word ‘ginormous’. He had several thousand flying hours in his logbook and claimed to hold the RAF distance record for ‘Flight without Aircraft’ having attempted to put his damaged Blenheim down on a desert airstrip. It descended with unusual speed and disintegrated on touch-down. He personally continued for nearly 100 yards before landing. When he recovered consciousness he was lying on the sand and could see no sign of the Blenheim.

Course 213 at the OCTU was run with estimable smartness and efficiency by a team of three officers and three NCOs who included an archetypal Warrant Officer moulded in the likeness of RSM Britain whose voice, it was alleged, could be heard on the platforms of Victoria Station when in charge of Trooping the Colour on Horse Guards off Whitehall. We learned about such matters as RAF stores procedure which was a paperwork system originally designed for a big retailer but found to be too expensive to run. It was absolutely watertight – nothing could go astray – everything was accounted for – it even satisfied the Treasury. I was later to learn that some of this was not strictly true, and in addition that RAF storekeepers interpreted their role literally. Maintaining stocks in exact correspondence with these watertight records was the storekeeper’s raison d’être. Any stores issue brought with it an attendant risk of a paperwork mismatch. It was therefore safer not to issue anything unless absolutely and completely necessary. I came across this same phenomenon later when dealing with the American airforce.

We all looked forward to the second four weeks of training with some disquiet. Tales circulated of men being shot, drowned, or killed falling off cliff-faces. We now had to wear khaki battle dress, tin hats and packs, and carry old Lee-Enfield rifles wherever we went. Blank ammunition was issued and we were warned that if fired point-blank at someone it could do them serious damage. When firing rifles on the range we used live ammunition and I found it easy enough to get a good score. However killing cardboard storm troopers with a revolver when they suddenly sprang up in front of one was another matter and I seldom managed to get a single round into the Nazi. Sten guns usually jammed, had a lethal range of no more than 50 yards and appeared to have much the same function as a modern stun gun. Bayonet practise was bizarre. It involved tearing about, shouting, and plunging the sharp end of the rifle into a sandbag that lay helpless and immobile on the ground. Towards the end of this macabre exercise we were ordered to put back the scabbards on our 6" bayonets and attack a sandbag hauled around on the end of a pole wielded by an NCO. The theory was that the scabbard provided some protection in the event of a wild lunge ending up with the bayonet in the NCO rather than the sandbag. Unfortunately this precaution did not allow for the fact that the scabbard was not designed to be plunged into sandbags and could become detached. This it duly did with disastrous results for the NCO who was carried off the field of battle dripping blood.

The assault courses were comparatively easy for us young chaps used to regular games of rugger and cross-country runs but the older men found it hard going. The most difficult and dangerous hazard involved climbing up rope nets suspended from horizontal telegraph poles mounted high in the air, negotiating the pole and climbing down the other side. We practised standard army section-in-attack procedures in fields and old quarries with much firing of rifles and more shouting. We learnt standard army descriptive phrases for features such as ‘lone bushy-topped tree’ and how to move extremely slowly so as not to attract the attentions of enemy snipers. It was all good fun and at the end we were well equipped to fight the Boer War. Assessment of our abilities and of that mysterious quality ‘officer material’ was continuous but unobtrusive. It was only when an NCO approached and said What is your name, Sir that you realised you had attracted attention, a dangerous thing to do, but at the time it was never clear why.

The passing-out parade was done with much ceremony and for the first and last time in my life I marched behind a military band feeling quite elated. After that we were measured up for our uniforms by tailors sent up from Gieves, told to open a bank account, given a First Class rail warrant for the troop-train to Harwich en route to West Germany and a series of nasty injections including TAB for those destined overseas. For this we were lined up in a row and jabbed. I sat down to do up my cuff-links and passed out. I awoke to find my head resting on an electric cooking plate, which was fortunately switched off. I crossed the room and sat down again to deal with the cuff-links and passed out again. This time I felt the most appalling pains in my head - I was gyrating in a swirling mixture of dark red and black clouds. I thought I was dying. It was probably the horse serum in the TAB and I was told that if I had another dose I would indeed die.

My overall impression of those 8 weeks in the OCTU was of a well-organised and searching process. Nothing was demanded that was liable to overtax the entrants, but a great deal was learned about them by the staff. Morale was high among us and I personally felt none of the resistance that might have been expected in a young graduate sent back to ‘boarding school’ and inspected daily for the degree of shine on his boots or the precision with which he had made his bed. Somehow it all seemed part of the reasonable idea that as a future officer one had to understand and experience what it was like to be at the bottom of the pile. At the end of the course I confidently looked forward to joining a well-run and competent Air Force and in the main I was not disappointed.

After a week’s home leave and at the age of 19 I set off for Harwich in uniform, running very late. I reached Waterloo and to my horror found a long queue for taxis and took my place at the tail end. And then a strange thing happened – a taxi driver, ignoring the queue walked straight up to me and said Lime Street Sir ? I can only imagine he assumed that I was a Battle-of-Britain veteran and this was his way of paying tribute. He must have had good eyesight to read my luggage label. I missed the troop train but boarded the Pullman for Harwich. The ticket collector raised no objection. At Harwich I found my way onto a troopship sailing overnight for Hook-of-Holland filled almost entirely with men from Rhine Army. I was directed to a cabin designed for two, which I shared with three army officers. It was a tight squeeze. Early next morning we docked and after a number of Tannoy announcements were told that disembarkation had to be done in strict order with ‘Women and RAF officers first’. I started off down the gangway watched by a huge army contingent lining the decks and expecting to see some interesting talent, but there were no ladies on board.

The next problem was to select the right troop-train out of the three waiting in the station. By now I had met three more of my OCTU intake all headed for ACS Headquarters at St. Hubertus near Lübeck. Nobody seemed to know which train we should board and we settled for Hannover. After passing the Dutch frontier we had our first sight of devastated Germany. Each town we travelled through was a mass of rubble, twisted steel beams poking into the air and gutted buildings. What remained of the town centres consisted mainly of the roads, which had been cleared, and the railway on which we were travelling. Occasionally one could see a church or an office block still intact, but little else. It was a profound shock. None of us had anticipated the scale of the destruction.

Reaching Hannover the army RTO was bemused by our arrival, as we should have been on a train to Hamburg. He asked if we had a ‘Nominal Role’ for our party. I was puzzled by the word ‘nominal’ as I had always imagined that a list of names had to be exact. Perhaps this attribute was developed to deal with casualties or desertions occurring en passage which meant that there was no point in defining with precision the number of those who had started, as this would inevitably be inexact by the time the party arrived. Only later did I realise the meaning of the term.

The RTO decided that nothing could be done with us that day and organised RAF transport to take us to HQ British Air Force of Occupation (BAFO) in Schloss Bückeburg near Hannover. The mess in this establishment was on a vast scale and had the largest bar of any RAF station in Germany. At the time I was unaware that a recent BAFO order had been promulgated to the effect that bars in messes were forbidden, and that all drinks had to be served by mess stewards. But this one was in full swing. It was from this Schloss that in 1945 a certain very senior officer had liberated various antiques, paintings, harps etc and despatched them to Calais in a convoy en route to his home address. Unfortunately for him the irate owner Prinz zu Schaumburg-Lippe telephoned Buckingham Palace. The convoy was turned round at Calais and sent back to Schloss Bückeburg and the very senior officer sent back to England.

The next morning we entrained for Hamburg and arrived in the evening after passing through even more appalling devastation. We were quartered in the Reichshof Hotel, which served as the officer’s transit camp. Everything within the hotel seemed to be in excellent working order, with helpful German staff, good food, and clean sheets. The next morning transport took us to RAF St. Hubertus. This had been one of Herman Göring’s Luftwaffe bases, built at considerable expense, and included an underground skittle alley, which provided much entertainment. The only minor drawback was its proximity to the East German border. It was nearer than any other military installation in the British zone and one could see the border guards just up the road. The cold war was very much on one’s mind with a feeling that if the balloon went up one’s chances of getting out were nil and a Siberian gulag a certainty.

The wartime role of the ACS had been to create airstrips behind the frontline to enable the 2nd Tactical Air Force to provide a quick response to requests for air support from ground forces. It was thus equipped with earthmoving machinery to level the ground prior to laying temporary runways of pieced steel planking. It had been a dirty job and the ACS then wore khaki army uniform. We were briefed on the various new peacetime roles assigned to us and on the various units to which we were to be posted. Weekends were spent shooting with shotguns and cartridges provided by the service for our amusement. We bagged several brace of rabbits and tried our hand at pigeon with unfortunate results. Despite the fact that we missed every single bird that was unwise enough to fly within range, we later received an aggrieved delegation from the local village who pointed out that far from being wild pigeons they were the highly respected residents of the village square. After that we went back to shooting rabbits, this time with service rifles. Taking careful aim at a range of about 200 yards the bullet would put up a puff of earth some distance from the rabbit, which would ignore the matter and continue munching the grass.

It was not long before I was posted to No. 5 Motor Transport Base Depot (5MTBD) to be responsible for its infrastructure. The depot was a large factory in Langenhorn about 15km North of Hamburg, covering about 5 hectares, and consisted of a motley collection of buildings originally making steel cartridge cases for 20mm guns during the war. It now employed a mixed labour force of hundreds of airmen and German civilians turning out reconditioned RAF trucks. The word ‘truck’ meant anything that moved on four or more wheels and was not an aircraft. My remit included power supplies, bulk fuel tanks, steam cleaning plant, paint shops, heat treatment furnaces, buildings, civil engineering plant and all new construction. I knew absolutely nothing about any of these. The Flight Lieutenant to whom I reported was based at St Hubertus and spent most of his time out of his office rendering him unavailable for advice, but I did have the assistance of an English-speaking German Clerk of Works and an Irish sergeant well versed in ‘working the system’. Between us we made it work. I discovered after a few weeks that my predecessor had been Cliff Michelmore who was now working for the British Forces Network in Hamburg and subsequently moved to the BBC.

My first challenge was to organise the repair of an excavator whose bucket lid refused to click shut. This meant that earthworks on the site were at a standstill as no replacement excavator was to be had for miles. Fortunately I had acquired some limited mechanical engineering skills as a result of working on my motorcycle and these were put to use. The plain bearings supporting the bucket lid were worn out and it was a simple matter to measure one up and sketch replacements. These were made on a lathe in one of the 5MTBD workshops and we were back in business.

My fellow junior officers were a mixture of young graduates in the ACS like myself and older men running the Depot. The latter included hardened warriors sporting DFCs and other war-time decorations. Several lived in married quarters. The single men who lived in the mess were distinctive personalities – there was the man-about-town who’s leave seemed to be spent at least in part with his Saville Row tailor – another who secretly consorted with Germans of the Arthur Daley second-hand car dealer genotype – one man had a drink problem and suffered from the DTs by 1100 hours. Few of them talked about their wartime experiences. One who did had been in Pathfinders and flown with Group Captain Cheshire in his early days in Lancasters. He regaled us with tales of Cheshire’s prowess and the alarming way that he had put the plane into a near vertical dive to escape searchlights. Some had memories of the pre-war RAF, which extended to service in Iraq. In that era part of our imperial duties included the bombing and gassing of the locals. ‘I’ve got those Shaibah blues’ was a common song in the mess towards the end of dining-in nights. It was explained to us that the Persian Gulf was the fundamental orifice of the Middle East and the RAF base in Shaibah was 500 miles up it.

Many of these older men were scathing about the attitude of the Treasury in vetoing the award of permanent commissions to men who had joined during the war, for which their excuse was the lack of agreement on the future size of the post-war air force. They complained bitterly at the devastating loss of first class talent. The malign influence of this power-obsessed department intent on interfering in areas of which they had no understanding, or competence, continues unabated to this day.

My earliest official contact with one of 5MTBDs older officers came one morning when their Senior Administrative Officer rang asking for help. He first wanted me to confirm that I was one of those graduates which I did, wondering what technical bombshell he was about to lob in my direction. He then read me a letter from HQ asking some simple administrative question. Baffled as to where the difficulty lay, I rattled off a suitable reply and he appeared grateful. Two minutes later the phone rang and he asked me to repeat my reply. Again he seemed satisfied, but not for long. Ten minutes later he was on the phone again. He had now mastered the first half, but the second was troubling him – would I mind repeating it yet again. It was then that I realised why he was known throughout the mess as ‘Pinhead’. During an alcoholic dining-in night I remember standing at the bar with him while he explained a clothing deficiency in the stores that had come to his attention. It concerned some ‘leather gherkins’ – I sensed that there was something odd about this item description but was unable to pin it down and asked him if loss of gherkins was a recurring problem and he agreed that it was.

It was interesting to hear the older men describing their experience of the pre-war RAF. It was then a much smaller and more cohesive service. Discipline was strong and was considered to be a major factor in the high morale of the aircraftmen and NCOs. Among the officers it was considered to be a superior Flying Club.

Any problems arising from the vast range of technologies at which I was supposed to be expert could usually be resolved by reference to ‘Air Force Instructions’ which laid down standard procedures for nearly everything. One day I was informed that the depot’s underground petrol tanks were due to be cleaned. This had last been done during the war under German owners and no-one in the depot had any idea what was involved. So I dug out the Instructions, which called for the tank lids to be opened and ventilated with a forced air supply. After the petrol fumes had been driven out trained men would enter the tanks with cleaning gear. A telephone call established that trained RAF men were in short supply and that I would have to call in German contractors. They duly appeared and I outlined what was required. This produced looks of consternation – the RAF procedure was dangerous and against German regulations. Their procedure called for the tanks to be kept virtually closed so that little or no air was admitted. Cleaning would be done by men wearing breathing apparatus. Here was a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. I decided that the RAF was to move and gave the contract to the irresistible force.

Because the unit used German labour it was deemed politic to meet German labour legislation, which required the employment of a fixed percentage of apprentices. One morning I was rung up by one of the older Flight Lieutenants in charge of a section doing engine overhaul and asked if I would help one of his German apprentices with a maths problem. I walked over and was introduced to a young man of about seventeen who spoke good English and who was having problems with a differential equation. I had never had much enthusiasm for maths and among my mathematical bêtes noir was the differential equation. I was horrified - I could not solve it. Selective memory deletion has since occurred and I am unable to relate how I extracted myself from this painful encounter.

On arrival at 5MTBD I had been informed that a team of German technicians was erecting a standby generator housed in a new brick- built power station on a corner of the site and that this was my responsibility. The generator was driven by an American marine diesel