Part 6 –
Trouble and Strife
Our arrival at the flatlet in
Whitchurch was greeted with much oohing and aahing from the two sisters who
owned the house; we eventually got the keys from them and started to move
ourselves into the place. We had scarcely found the kettle and started the
makings of a nice cuppa when there was a knock on our door, which opened
into the main hallway. The two ladies were there again and wanted to talk to
me about some problems they were apparently having with the Champions, the
other Army couple renting a flatlet from them. They had a real tale of woe to
relate and had seemingly been subjected to some bullyboy tactics by Craftsman
Champion. I explained to them that unless I actually witnessed any unsavoury
behaviour, I could do very little about it and that there was a proper
procedure through which they could seek to have any problem resolved. The two
old dears seemed to be quite disappointed and kept remarking that they had
told Mr Champion that once I had arrived I would soon put a stop to his
shenanigans. I reiterated that complaints would have to go through the proper
channel and promised to get them the details for them when I reported back in
to Camp. They seemed satisfied with that and I was pleased to
finally have some peace and quiet so that Maggie and I could get
organised. The peace and quiet didn't last very long! Suddenly there was a
very loud hammering of knuckles on our door and I hastened to open it
and find out what was wrong. A skinny bloke of about 19 confronted me as soon
as I opened the door and next thing there was a finger prodding me in the
chest and this character was saying: "Who the hell do you think you are
to come here and start trying to sort me out, mind your own bloody business
or it will be the worst for you!” I could hear Maggie’s worried voice
behind me and I could see the two old ducks further down the corridor
watching the scene with their eyes sticking out like organ stops. I shot
forward and jabbed my own forefinger right on to the end of Champion’s nose.
"Listen carefully to me." I said, "I have just got married and
I don't need any of this crap in my life right now, all I want is to be left
alone and in peace. If you do anything at all to interfere with that, either
to me and my wife or to the two old ladies, I shall make life very unpleasant
for you. Further to that, should you ever repeat your mistake of touching my
person again you will be wearing that silly grin all over your 'arris and
will be known thereafter as the EX Champion, now get out of my sight!” He
stormed off into his own door on the opposite side of the corridor with a few
muttered whinges and the two old ladies came scuttling up the hallway and
into our flat with mumbled comments about how I could now see for myself what
they had to put up with. I said to the pair of them that what I needed from
them was two things - first of all an eyewitness account of all that they had
just seen and heard and then an account of the type of harassment that they
had been subjected to. They listened and promised to have this organised for
me later that night, they were as good as their word and came up with a very
well written five pages of foolscap which covered everything, up to and
including how relieved they were that there was a man in the house who
would now stop them from being terrorised in their own home. I had a feeling
that I was going to need this letter and I was deadset right! On the Monday, a few minutes after NAAFI break I was summonsed to the adjutant’s office and there I was carpeted for striking a soldier and asked if I had anything to say about the matter before any disciplinary measures were considered? I said that indeed I did! "Before I do say anything though sir, perhaps you would like to read the statements from two eyewitnesses to the incident you refer to?” He took the paper from me and quietly read what the two old dears had written, as he handed it back to me I asked permission to speak, which he granted with a nod. "I have no knowledge of what sort of allegations Craftsman Champion has made sir, I do know that the incident that took place was not of my making or choosing, further to that, it was dealt with in a manner well within the normal bounds of an NCO dealing with a truculent lower rank! My peace and quiet within my home was disturbed, my person manhandled and my wife upset by a perfect stranger. I consider that under the circumstances I acted with commendable discipline and remarkable restraint." The Adjutant sat and looked at me for a moment and then said: "Thank you Corporal, consider the matter closed". Later that day I was visited by no less than Champion, who came up to me and apologised for his behaviour, saying that the two old girls had given his Missus a hard time and that he had no hard feelings towards me. I just looked at him and said: “Find yourself somewhere else to live, very quickly!" "Oh, that's OK" he said. "The Adjutant is arranging for me to get a married quarter!” So there was this ratbag, being rewarded for bullying old dears, then slandering a fellow soldier. Thank goodness my instincts for survival had been honed in the old School of hard knocks at AAS or I would have been dropped right in the plid by the cunning little devil. For the two
weeks or so that they remained in the flat across the corridor from us the
Champions gave me a wide berth. The flatlet that Maggie and I had was small
but very cosy for a couple of newly weds, one drawback was that we were not
allowed pets and Maggie wanted a dog. I pointed out to her that a dog would
be a problem when and if I was posted overseas but she said that her folks
would take it in until we came back so there would be no problem. To that end
I started to look out for a bigger place that would suit us better and allow
Maggie a pet to keep her company while I was away at camp during the day.
After a few weeks I was put on to a place in a small village called Redenham,
hard by the Hampshire/Wiltshire border. Ginger Davis, who I had been on the
conversion course with was living out there and reckoned his landlord had
another bungalow a short distance from his. The Landlord, a farmer called
Burgess, a very gipsylike character to look at, was anxious to have another
property tenanted out to the Army as the rental income was guaranteed and the
Army made good for any damage to the property. A quick visit out to view the
place and we were hooked. It was a wooden bungalow with a rendering of
concrete and gravel. There were just three bungalows in a row, all detached
and each standing in about a quarter of an acre of ground, the next house was
about half a mile down the road and was owned by a bloke who ran a
grocery van around the outlying villages. This was very handy as he and his
Missus were apparently quite happy to serve your needs from their big storage
shed at any reasonable hour, we were to be very glad we had such a neighbour
not that long after we moved in there. All around the side and back of the
three houses were cow paddocks, chockerblock full of mushrooms and rabbits.
How could we resist it! We informed the two old dears that we would be moving
and made arrangements to have the bungalow checked out for suitability as a
WD Hiring as agreed with Mr Burgess, this was done and the Army gave its
approval. Quite upset at our imminent departure the two old girls offered us
the Champion’s old three-roomed flatlet at a lesser rent if we would stay
with them but Maggie had her heart set on that bungalow and so the move was
duly made and we were ‘marched in’ to our new residence. Salad SummerWithin a matter of days of settling in to our new home we got
ourselves a terrier-cross puppy and a kitten, the two animals fast became the
best of pals and Maggie tried her best to instil some discipline into the
unruly little dog, to no avail at all unfortunately. The oddest thing though
was that the silly cat did whatever she wanted it to do and was incredibly
obedient. Trixie the pup was cut from a different bolt of cloth. Every
evening when I got home from Camp, I would go out into the paddock for a walk
with Maggie and the two pets, the dog dashed hither and thither while the cat
strolled along next to us as though on a leash! Occasionally the dog would
take time out to bowl the cat over as it shot past us. I well recall one
occasion when we were well into the large paddock behind the house and the
resident herd of cows suddenly came charging over the crest of the rise with
their tails up and their heads down. "Don't panic" I called out as
the herd veered towards us, "They will turn aside before they reach
us." Did they heck as like! I turned to usher Maggie out of danger and
found that I was on my own! Maggie was already clambering up a small tree in
the hedgerow at the edge of the paddock. Casting dignity and discretion to
the winds, I ran helter skelter to join her and as I swung into the tree
there was suddenly a milling mass of agitated cows stomping around where I
had stood but a moment or so earlier. The cows gathered under the tree we
were in and regarded us with intense interest for some minutes, the pup
ignored them and carried on as before while the cat was back at our rear
fence already. So much for leadership on the one hand and loyalty on the
other! As soon as the cows lost interest in us and scattered about their business
we slipped out of the tree and went home for tea. The paddock was full of
rabbit trails and a couple of snares worked instantly, trouble was they had
myxomatosis and were consequently uneatable. There were plenty of mushrooms
to be had for the picking though so we were well pleased and the grocery van
bloke across the next paddock was very handy for our modest requirements as
to rations. He did not seem to be very partial to our landlord, Mr Burgess.
Referring to him and his progeny as the rural Mafia of Redenham! A week or two after moving in to Redenham, we had a letter from
Maggie’s Dad to say that Vera had suffered some sort of nervous breakdown and
would we be able to help out by having Maggie’s eight-year-old brother Peter
stay with us until she was able to cope again? We agreed of course and drove
up to One early autumn evening we went to the little pub in Redenham
for a drink, it had very low oak beamed ceilings and was very snug, we sat
nursing our drinks and chatting away while the only other patrons, two elderly
gentlemen, kept staring across at us. Eventually, one turned to the other and
asked, in a loud voice: "Arr, who be that then Jarge?” His offsider
shook his head and responded: "'at's them furriners from the Army Tom,
they'm living up in they cottages by the Ludgershall turning." Not a
smile or a greeting, rude pair of old prats they were. On the other side of
the coin, we were standing in the front garden that October, just before the
onset of the worst winter since the shocker of 1947, when an old boy driving
a tractor and trailer came thundering down the road. He roared out something
undecipherable due to his dialect and the thundering diesel engine, so being
a born diplomat I winked, nodded and waved, shouting: "Good
afternoon" as I did so. Next thing he reaches behind him and throws
something at me, I leapt back a yard or so and two brace of plump wood
pigeons smacked into the ground at my feet. I waved and called out:
"Thanks" as he smiled and drove on towards the village. Maggie was very
dubious about these birds but agreed to let me loose on them, a swift dunk in
hot water and I stripped the feathers off of them to expose grotesquely
swollen throats, Maggie wondered if they too had myxomatosis but I assured
her that it was just food in their crops. As I removed the innards and
slit open the crops, the lumps expanded and soccer ball sized lumps of Kale
came away from each bird, we were staggered at the amount each bird had
stowed away, small wonder the farmers shot them! We ate the first two that evening
and although hardly any meat was to be found on the legs, the breast meat
was more than plentiful and extremely good eating. Ginger Davis and I had in the meantime had a falling out of
sorts. Although not on my Flight, he and I went in to work at the same time
and via Amport every day. Living as he did just next door but one, he
suggested to me that we do turn and turn about each week so that only one car
was used. I agreed to this and that was fine, then he informed me that he was
selling his car and that he would chip in to the cost of petrol every week
thereafter, we agreed on a fair and equitable price and that was that. Except
that three weeks later, despite some pointed hints, his dues remained unpaid.
I was always a tad old fashioned in my ways and believed that a
word, when once given, is a bond. So at the end of week three, I caught hold
of his arm as he went to stride off home and told him that if he was empty
handed on the Monday he would have a hell of a walk on his hands. He paid on
time thereafter! In the middle cottage, there lived another young couple
about my age, he was a farm labourer for Mr Burgess and lived in the cottage
as part of his terms of employment. Tall, fair-haired and thickset he
seemed somehow familiar to me and I said as much to him. He admitted to
feeling exactly the same way about me so we tried to work out where we had
met before, turned out that we had been in the same class together at
Challney School for some eight months before I had been ‘upstreamed’ into ‘B’
grade (finally ‘A’) at the end of my first year of English schooling after
Australia; coincidence yet again putting in an appearance. Two events of significance
occurred in our little home at around this time, firstly was the loss of our
unruly little dog, killed by one of the very few cars that used our road,
this after scaling the closed gate to get out on to the road, I swear the cat
had taught her how to climb, she was impossible to keep in! We immediately
got another dog, different as chalk from cheese, gentle and obedient to a
fault, this one was jet black and again we called her ‘Trixie’. The other
event concerned the bungalow itself. Since moving in we had been puzzling
over little ‘dust’ piles, conical in shape, that would appear overnight in certain
places around the floors and such, I was totally puzzled and so was Maggie,
then I noticed that in every instance there was a tiny hole adjacent to where
these piles were appearing. It had to be woodworm! The harder we looked, the
more holes we found, the place was riddled with borers and I quickly informed
the Hirings people about the problem. Within 48 hours they had sent someone
to inspect the place and our fears were confirmed, later that same week,
Maggie went into the pantry and the floorboards gave way under her. Mr
Burgess and the Hirings people had to come in and inspect this prior to the
floorboards being replaced. Burgess was positively scowling at Maggie and I
as if we had done it on purpose. We later learnt that his anger was due to
the fact that he had been told that as soon as a married quarter or another
hiring became available we would be moved out and the Army would relinquish
the tenancy. Oddly enough, this information was not passed on to us by the
Hirings people though! We only learnt these things through Alan next door, in
whom Mr Burgess confided. At Wallop, things were going well and I was being organised to go
on a ‘Scout’ Helicopter course, this to be followed by my First Class Trade
Test, things were looking good, the only cloud on my horizon being the foot
problem. This had settled into a permanent limp and all I could do was to
wear these ring-shaped foam rubber inserts in my shoes to keep the discomfort
to a minimum, I was now permanently excused boots and the MO was pressuring
me to see a specialist. The lads used to refer to me as ‘Hopalong Placidly’
but I managed quite well as far as my duties went and apart from having a
very sore foot every night there was nothing worrying me too much about it.
Then, as I went in to the MO for my next month’s ‘excused boots’ chitty and a
squizzo at my foot, he dropped the bombshell that an appointment had been
made for me to see an Army Orthopod at Woolwich Military Hospital, while none
too chuffed I was philosophical about it, perhaps a wee nip and tuck would
sort my problem out? What’s Afoot?
As it turned out, my medical appointment in Woolwich was set for
just ten days prior to my Scout Chopper course, so things were moving along
on all fronts. I duly made my way to the Hospital for my appointment and the
specialist did all sorts of weird and wonderful things to the soles of both
of my feet, with of course particular emphasis on my right foot. As he sat
there scribbling away after the scrutiny was concluded I was emboldened to
ask him what course of treatment he would be recommending? To my horror, he
replied that he was recommending me for a discharge from the Army! I went
ballistic! I stood up and leant over his desk and told him in no uncertain
terms that this was not the way that my Army career was going to end. He
stood up and for a couple of minutes we went at it hammer and tongs. Then he
told me to sit down while he had a moment to think. I did so, hoping that he
would opt for something that would permit me to retain my place in the Army.
He spoke to someone on his office intercom and a WO2 Clerk came in with some
bumpf and said: "Here you are Colonel" and walked back out.
Thinking back on the very frank speaking of but a few moments before, I
winced and thought to myself that I had done my dash for sure! After reading
for some moments, he looked up and said: "I find your keen attitude to
the Army very commendable and I will do what I can to help you". He went
on to explain that as I had a combination of Metatarsalgia and Pes Planus I
was really an L8 on my pulheems and therefore an automatic discharge was
really the order of the day. However, he did have the leeway, in exceptional
circumstances or very worthy cases, to alter that to P3L7BE, which, because
of my obviously keen desire to continue as long as I could as a soldier, he
was prepared to exercise in my instance. I expressed my gratitude for this
and apologised for my earlier histrionics, he smiled and said that it went
with his job, he then told me to wait in the Orderly Room for my
documentation and wished me good luck! I took the opportunity to quiz the
Orderly Room Corporal while I was waiting and learnt that an L7BE was as low
as I could be categorised and still be retained at my CO's discretion. The BE
meant Base Everywhere and he explained that in fact as it meant Depot only it
would mean I would not be able to serve abroad again. He was kind enough to
go into a lot of detail for me and did mention that certain Extra Regimental
employments were permitted to personnel thus categorised. Before he could
elaborate further I was called for my documents and on my way back to Wallop,
I was determined to learn what I could about this extra Regimental employment
though just in case I ever needed it! A word with the Clerk’s counterpart in
the Wallop Orderly Room as I returned my documents and I was aware of such
things as recruitment as a possible venue if all else went pear shaped. This
in fact eventuated within 48 hours, when it was published on orders that my
course and First Class Trade test were both cancelled. The Workshop Officer
sent me for and he sat me down and explained that I could no longer continue
to function as a mechanic but that as I was keen to continue as a soldier, a
position in Tech Control that had become vacant would be reserved for me and
how did I feel about that? I was not too enthralled but after he assured me
that for the time being I would continue to be mustered as an Aircraft
Technician and paid as such, I figured that it was much better than the
alternative. While we were chatting I mentioned to him about the recruiting
angle and he promised to check up on that for me. Having accepted the lesser
of two evils, from that day on I became Technical Control NCO for all
rotary-wing aircraft run from Wallop. Winter was meantime about to make its presence felt and the
fabulous days of summer and autumn were about to come to an abrupt end. The
winter of 1962/63 was a shocker, certainly out by the borders of Hampshire
and Wiltshire. All the big elm trees that had bordered the road where we
lived had been felled and sawn into huge logs, this was because of some
killer disease that had afflicted them, ‘Dutch Elm Disease’ it was called I
believe. Because of the consequent damage to the hedgerows flanking the road,
there was no protection against drifting snow and we were about to be hit
with weather so severe that we would not see the actual ground at all from
the end of November, when the first blizzard struck, until the end of April
when the thaw finally did its blessed work. This first blizzard left snow
about three feet deep in places and I was very grateful for the fact that the
big grocery van from down the road had left some useable tracks through the
snow so my little van could make it to Wallop and back. Because of the
extreme cold, I had to place a lit Bullseye lantern under the bonnet of the
Morris every night so that the cylinder block and radiator were not damaged
by the coolant freezing; I didn't even trust anti-freeze in those conditions.
Because of the cold I started the van every day with the starting handle
rather than with the starter motor, a six-volt battery didn't provide much
punch for cold starts and I preferred to have a big juicy spark at the plugs!
I had a shovel in the van against the contingency of having to shovel my way
through drifts getting in or out. My worst nightmare was the thought of
Maggie out there and me at Wallop, unable to get back to her. That almost
eventuated in the February, we had another bad blizzard, and this started to
get up about four thirty in the afternoon; by the time that I crossed the
main Andover to Salisbury road the other side of Amport it was getting very
hairy. The road through from the village to the cottages was already getting
drifts on it deep enough that I had to stop and shovel some snow out of the
way four times in the mile and a half length of road I had to traverse.
Maggie was very relieved to see me get home that day. In the morning, the
snow, which had fallen ceaselessly throughout the night, had formed drifts
higher than a double-decker bus and was nowhere less than three feet deep. We
were well and truly socked in! In and Out
As a result of the blizzard we cottage
dwellers were completely cut off from civilisation and all its
amenities, a state of affairs that was to last for some eleven days. The very
first thing I did, after a check of the food stakes, was to beat a path
across the side paddock to the neighbouring Grocery shed so that we had
access to tucker as and when we needed it. By picking the way that avoided
the worst of the drifting, I was able to minimise the amount of digging
through that I had to do, this meant a rather tortuous passage but at least a
way through was established. The neighbours likewise beat and dug a path
through to our gate so that they too could walk across the paddock to get
supplies. We were very fortunate in that we had no electricity failures
during the periods that we had in which to prepare hot meals, less
fortunately, we had no other means of heating than the lounge room’s
pot-bellied, mica-windowed stove. The Coal Merchant from Ludgershall was due
to call with four bags of coke on the Monday after we were snowed in so we
were in strife there. Our neighbours having barely enough for their own
needs, we could not expect help from them. What I had to do once the coke we
had in was all used up, was to attack the huge Elm logs that had been trimmed
down ready for pick up from the roadside, all I had with which to do this was
a cleaver type axe with a rivetted wooden handle. This kept the fire going
all day, as long as I kept going out and refilling the fire hod every couple
of hours; it would not burn overnight though. All that would be left each
morning was a pile of ash with a few glowing embers that were just enough to start
another fire if you were careful. So I had to start my wood chipping very
early in the morning in order to catch those few embers buried in amongst the
ash. There were huge icicles hanging from the eaves and there was a sort of
frozen crust on the top surface of the snow, we had lagged every bit of
copper piping we could see in the hope of avoiding burst pipes. With no fresh
milk coming in we had to make do with tinned stuff laboriously fetched from
the Grocer’s place along with such other vittles as and when we needed them.
Our little black and white TV would show us the terrible conditions around us
by way of the news, and our choppers were being used to take relief to many
people stranded in their homes and unable to access supplies of any sort. Wallop
knew of the situation we were in, I had ‘phoned them from the Grocer’s place
and they were fine with my absence as long as I returned to duty as soon as
the roads were cleared. On the first day of deliverance I was out chipping
away furiously at an elm log when I heard the drone of a big diesel motor.
The sound appeared to be coming from the crossroads about three hundred yards
away, so I dashed into the porchway to get my shovel, trudged along the
beaten path towards my neighbours’ places and called their attention to what
I could hear, we soon had a formation digging team going and because of the
relatively shallow drifts we came across, we were soon able to see a snow
plough type vehicle at the side of the road, its driver scoffing his lunch in
the cabin, engine and heater chugging away! We greeted him with great
pleasure, only to have our hopes dashed when in answer to our pleas to
quickly rip a passage through to our cottages, he said: "Oi'm Zorry
lads, but that be 'ampzheer and this be a Wiltzheer plough, I can't 'elp 'e
at all". With that he pointed to the County boundary signs at the
crossroads, wound up his window and drove back up the Ludgershall road that
he had cleared. Without further ado the three of us formed line abreast and
as quickly as we could, dug a wide enough track through the snow to take a
vehicle. It was gone three in the afternoon when we had finished and I shot
in to the house, told Maggie to wrap up warm and tried my luck with the van,
it started with no major dramas and we set off down the narrow channel to the
crossroads. The snow we passed through along that first stretch only went to
about five feet deep but as we made our way along the Ludgershall road, it
was like driving in a canyon of snow, in some places the drifts had to have
been higher than a double-decker bus and we would have been in dire straights
had we have met another vehicle, because the truckie had only made one place
where passing was possible. At the several cottages that we passed, folk were
shovelling passages for their own vehicles, or had already done so. We got up
onto the main road from Ludgershall to One thing that the foul winter had done was to expose
the shortcomings of our little van, which although it never let us down, was
as drafty as a seaside pier. The heater, such as it was, did little to counter
the icy blasts that seemed to knife through it as you drove along in that
shocking winter. We had to get something a tad more comfortable before we
froze to death as we barrelled along the highways and byways of rural
Hampshire! The final straw came the night that we ventured out to visit Mitch
and his bride, who had moved into a thatched cottage in a small hamlet not
far from Whitchurch. On the way back we drove down into the valley for a
shortcut to Redenham, because of all the snow and slush about, there was a
really thick fog on the lower ground and you could not see more than a few
feet. The useless wipers, being vacuum operated, could not keep the
windscreen from misting over, so I had to drive with my head out of the side
window. After about five minutes of crawling along like this I was relieved
to see the red glow of tail lights to my front, stationing myself a few feet
behind them, I settled back and let him do the pathfinding, after another ten
minutes or so, the vehicle stopped, as did I of course. Then I heard a car
door slam, shortly after which a bloke loomed up by the side window and
asked if he could help us? "I'll be right mate" I replied,
"I'm just following your tail lights back to Redenham".
"Actually, you've just followed me down my driveway" he said. So it
was back to the old drawing board and down with the side window! Next weekend
we drove down to Munro’s Garage in When we returned to Redenham
the first signs of a major thaw were starting to show, we opened up the house
to discover that the pipes, despite our best efforts at lagging, had burst,
fortunately above the bath, so that there was no water damage. We had left
our velvet-covered hot water bottles in our bed and they were frozen solid! I
contacted the Hirings people and they arranged for a plumber to come out to
us and fix the pipe, they also gave me the news that we would be marching
into a married quarter on the camp in about four weeks and said that Burgess
had been informed. The weather was improving with every passing day and
Maggie got into the spring cleaning with a vengeance, she even took the rugs
outside and scrubbed them, she had them on the line drying out beautifully
when old Burgess turned up and marched into the house, he berated her and
said that we had wrecked his cottage and no doubt she was scrubbing carpets
because of pet damage! Our pets were well housetrained and were in and out as
they wanted, so that really upset Maggie. When I came home and was told of
the visit I became very annoyed, this was in direct violation of the tenancy
agreement with the Army, all contact with the landlord was to be between him
and them, not us and he had no right of entry until we were marched out. We
drove along to his farm and I knocked on his door, he answered my knock and
as soon as he saw me he leapt out and grabbed me by the lapels, roaring out
that I was a troublemaker that had cost him a heap of money! I removed his
hands by grabbing his wrists and twisting them, he called out:
"Lads!" and next instant half a dozen blokes come storming out of
the door and I was surrounded. They were very hostile to say the least
and from the family resemblance I knew I had met the Redenham Mafia in full
force. Still having hold of the old man’s wrists I decided there was nothing
to be gained by reticence so I said: "While I have your complete
attention gentlemen, this visit is to tell you that you will not come up to
the bungalow and browbeat my wife, any problems you feel you have must be
dealt with through the Army hirings people." The threats and such that
this wild and uncouth mob were making would have made a wharfie swoon,
figuring I was on to a hiding anyway, I shoved the old man out of my way and
prepared to go down kicking and gouging, I was waiting for the first man
to move towards me when this agitated little man in a bowler hat shot out of
the door and squealed: "You must not assault this man, I strongly advise
you to desist at once". It was only the Burgess's solicitor and he was
fit to be tied. I stood there, not yet sure if one of them was game to have a
go anyway, the old man broke the tension though by saying that I wasn't worth
the trouble it would cause them. I said: "I have said what I came to
say, stay away from my wife." To a chorus of sullen threats and cursing
I got back into the car and drove off. Maggie, bless her, said that she would
have got straight out and helped me if those horrible men had started hitting
me, how good was that? Oddly enough, a fortnight after we had marched out, a
flawless handover by the way, we called on our erstwhile neighbours and he
said that Burgess had left a message for us. This to the effect that he was
very pleased with the way that we had left the cottage and wished us to know that
he owed Maggie an apology, that really chuffed us up no end! We moved into the end quarter near the water tower,
facing towards the Fever PitchOur time in the Pads at Wallop was to be of very short duration.
The Workshop Officer had intimated that there was the prospect of a
reasonably quick posting, less than four or five months he thought. He
informed me too that my third stripe was in the pipeline, so that was
something to look forward to, especially as some of the married pads assumed
that the husband’s rank covered everything from wives to goldfish! I had a
short sharp run in with the Sergeant who lived next door to the Champions
because of this extension of rank. He was newly posted in and he, like many
of the others, got himself a dog from somewhere, a big dozy black Working as the Tech Control NCO was not a bad sort of job as far
as things went, all one had to do really was to keep the base copy of the F
700 Aircraft logbooks up to date on a daily basis and make sure that all servicings
and lifed components were correlated, so that down-time could be minimised by
the simple expedient of bringing a requirement forward or applying for a
small extension in hours. Thus avoiding the chaos of a Chopper being lost
from service for a scheduled inspection on a Tuesday for instance, and then
again perhaps on the Thursday to have a life-expired tail rotor gearbox
replaced. All of the major components that made up a working Helicopter had a
finite life of so many flying hours, after which they were removed and sent
back to the manufacturers for checking and possible refurbishment. In those
days the whole show was conducted by way of a Cardex system and it was simple
and efficient to use. My counterpart on the fixed-wing Tech Control was Corporal
"Gasper" Denman, he was a tall good natured bloke who loved his
fags. He had a car that was a cut above the average and was always bragging
about how he had gunned it here and flashed past this and so forth. One
morning he was in full flight, relating how he had been late in starting out
but that he had absolutely "flown" through Andover and had made up
the twenty-minute late start by the time he hit Wallop. I slipped quietly out
and copied out his number plate, then shot into the other room and rang his
extension number. When he answered I asked to speak to Corporal Denman. He
identified himself as being him and asked how he could help me. In a real
Hampshire drawl I claimed that I was Inspector Gray of the Andover
Constabulary and that our records showed him to be the registered owner of
vehicle, License number such and such. In a subdued tone of voice he
confirmed that indeed he was. I then went on to say that this vehicle had
been seen passing through With unexpected
suddenness, I was summoned to the Orderly Room and told that I was to attend
an interview with a Major P.F. Kielly MC at the Army Information Office in |
