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Mémoire – Ian REA (ATS Arborfield 1939) (Ian was
recalled to H.Q. on the 14th July 2011).
‘In
Memoriam’. |
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Army Technical School,
Arborfield. |
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When I joined on 5th July
1938 at 5 Section RAOC Bramley (near Basingstoke) with about twenty others,
before going on to the ATS in 1939, we new mob compared notes on where we
came from etc, and quite a number came from the British Military School at
Sinar (Saunar), India, as well as
the Duke of York’s School. I remember Spud
PULESON, Pete CHITTAL, and Joe ROWE (Indian
Joe, who lived at 21a Kimarni Mansions, Park Street, Calcutta, India),
all from the Military School at Sinar; they all had advanced knowledge of
military dress and behaviour, having arrived in uniform and highly polished
boots, an art form we others had yet to learn. From the sound of things, in later years life at AAS was harsh
and a lot of things completely unfamiliar to our time. No such animal
as a "Jeep", no A/T NCOs above the rank of Corporal, and then
only a very few, Senior Boys were just that, senior boys. We were separated
in the spider blocks, i.e. all senior Bramley mob in ‘D’ Company ‘J’ Block, Attention was given to workshops training, sport and normal
parade ground galloping about and of course Sunday Church Parade. In the NAAFI
we lined up, with no one demanding right of passage, we all knew who was
senior and were expected to behave as such. Of course we were under black-out restrictions, and cognizant
of the war situation, which was not very bright, even had the odd ME109
strafe the place, so the main purpose of AAS was to get us civilised and
trained as soldiers and tradesmen, and posted. Members of the Permanent Staff were returned line regiment
Senior NCOs. Corporals and Lance Corporals were in the main GD (General Duties) wallahs. Workshops
staff all civilians. In ‘D’ Company two Sergeants were Jock AULD (King’s Own Scottish
Borderers) and We had lots of laughs during our time at Arborfield, and as
such I enjoyed it all, wound up in the hospital with a twisted knee for some
months. I was in the school hockey team and having challenged the school
football team to hockey, and crippling nearly all of them, in the return
match of football our side was carried off on stretchers, me with a (twisted) right knee. As an aside, when I came out of dock (hospital), I was made to ride an army bike, which would have
defied the attention of a tank, every weekend to Fleet to strengthen it, my
knee I mean. My family had a house in Fleet, and as my old man was a RAF
officer he suggested to our MO it would be a good idea. First time out
through the main gates the Provost Sergeant slung me off the sports
light-weight bike I had borrowed and stuck me on the Boer War heap - I was
knackered when I got home, could hardly reach the pedals!. Another incident occurred while I was in dock; the hospital
was as you know, right through the camp past the Commandant's office and
workshops, we heard a chanting coming up the road towards the hospital and
saw a bloke face down on a barrack room table being carried by a load of
A/Ts, the reason he was face down was that he had a drum stick sticking out
of his backside. This mob was I believe from ‘B’ Company, and the story goes
that the casualty had been warned a couple of times, that if he did not cease
playing drums on the barrack room upturned bucket while bods wanted to
snooze, he would get the drum stick stuck up his arse. He didn’t, and they
did!. All the blokes who had carried him on the table, and us, wanted
to watch the MO extract same, miserable sod refused. We did not queue up for the cookhouse, two members
of each hut took turns at being mess orderlies, they collected the grub from
the serving hatch and dished it out to the room table, and if the blokes who
were orderlies that week didn’t like you, you got short rations! It sounds as if those joining later had a hard time working
their way up through the hierarchy of the AAS, a very tough system indeed. I
can't judge but I'm thinking we had a better time. Incidentally, the only reason I
joined the Army at fourteen was to go to |
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Man Service. |
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Pete CHITTAL and Joe ROWE were with
me later on when we joined “man service” at 2 Anti-Aircraft Workshops, How many ex-Boys were lost during the war? There must have
been a lot because they went out into the thick of it, saw one who I can't
recall his name, coming back from the Orne River near the beachhead in
Normandy, he recognised me and yelled “Curly!”; he'd transferred to the
Infantry and looked as if he regretted it. Another, Bill SHAW, ex-Bramley,
yelled at me from an American convoy around there also; what he was doing
with the Yanks I would not know. As I have discussed many times with Pete
HUMPSTON (Jersey 1938) who lives in |
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The new
REME cap badge mentioned above. |
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Doug wanted to be a Glider Pilot in
the new Regiment - and did - and strutted around with Staff Sergeant tapes
and a girl-attracting powder-blue beret, with tales of his first Royal
Artillery volunteer troop he took up in his ‘Horsa’ glider, landed a bit heavy,
glider made un-airworthy, and the R.A. troop unharmed but alarmed ‘fell in’
in three ranks under the BSM and marched out through the main gates heading
for the railway station. Doug was posted to Bert WIGGLESWORTH and I had many
interesting times in Just thinking over those early days when we ex-Boys left AAS
for our first ‘postings’ to units, we were rich, with nothing being saved to
‘credits’ by compulsion, and drawing 27 shillings and 9 pence instead of 3
shillings per week. No ban on smoking and not having to smoke our ‘dog ends’
down to zero with the help of a pin, a packet of twenty ‘Players’ or
‘Capstan’ in our pockets costing about a shilling. Cigarette lighters also,
as opposed to the rather dangerous practice of getting a light from the light
switch in the ‘spider’ huts by arcing two pencils. ‘D’ Company hut J1 switch
must have been BLR’d (Beyond Local
Repair) by the time we left. I soon switched to smoking a curly-shaped pipe, which I
thought at the time made me look a bit older and more interesting to the fair
sex, coughed quite a lot!. Cinema price for good seats cost one shilling and
three pence, lots of ‘Sally Anns’ (Salvation
Army) and YMCAs plenty of tea and wads and, open all night. Our battle dress soon had two service stripes sewn on the left
sleeve (the first one for two years, and the second for a further three
years) and Division formation signs with the blue/red/white strips on each
arm below the epaulets indicating newly formed REME, our 2nd AA
Command sign was a red witch on a blue background. Being very fit, well
versed in Army ways, very quickly qualified as 1st Class in our
trades, we rather shone amongst the unit’s non-regulars who, being older and
although more experienced in their trades, took a while in getting used to
Army Regulations and equipment. Being younger than the rest we were viewed as Apprentices and
with suspicion, but senior as we were classified as Class 1 in our trades and
soon organised ourselves with the task of taking over the joint, particularly
driving, and the prospect of driving a 3-tonner on our own! I was made up to Lance Corporal and having attended a course on
anti-aircraft guns at Gainsborough, came back to Northampton 2 Anti-Aircraft
Workshops, with some six RAF aerodromes to visit the gun defences, (Ack Ack
Command then came under the RAF) and I was the only Gun Fitter in the
Workshop! So I was out driving around Bedford Cambridge and Hertfordshire
most of the time, my title was NCO i/c Fitter Circuit Inspections Air Defence
of Great Britain, so when I was challenged by some Home Guard armed with a
double-barrelled shotgun in the middle of the night I convinced them that I
was not German by stating that I was a NCO i/c FCI ADGB - it worked. There
were no road signs anywhere, taken down to prevent the enemy knowing where
they were, and as these gun sites were scattered all over, I didn’t either.
Driving at night down country lanes looking for a camouflaged airfield in my
Austin Utility with light-masks on the headlamps was always interesting. ‘Tiffy on gun site’ meant the gun crew could ‘stand down’, so
I was always welcomed, must have drunk thousands of gallons of tea, and later
the gun crews had ATS girls on the predictors and searchlights, so what with
the Land Army girls, life was interesting. Volunteers were being called for to join newly formed Regiments,
such as the Paras, Commandos, Airborne, Glider Pilots, Ski Troops etc, these
were posted up in Part 1 Orders in the Workshops, with the rider that
‘no ex-Boys need to apply’, “they” deemed us too valuable to the Corps with
all our training, or perhaps “they” considered letting us lot loose was a
risk to both sides. The Workshop carried out repairs to vehicles and
searchlight 15 Kva generators, mainly Listers and Paxton, a newly formed
section took care of predictors and early radar sets, while all guns, 3.7
inch anti-aircraft guns and 40mm guns were dealt with on-site. So postings were very selective involving us at this time, and
we were now a force of ex-Boys to be reckoned with in numbers at Northampton
Workshops, which had been a vehicle repair garage before the war, the pre-war
manager of which was now the OC Major. Names were self (Ian REA), Fred BLEWDON, Arthur OSBOURNE, Pete CHITTAL, Joe ROWE,
Jigger LEES (Bramley 1938), Pete
HUMPSTON, Lofty HOWES, Doug DRAKE, and Mauler MELVILLE (Jersey). We all left
around the end of 1943, only know of Fred and Arthur who I joined up with,
being the last to leave on a battle course in Radnor Wales with 71 AA
Workshops (which I stayed with for the remainder of the war, finishing up at
Hamburg in 1945), and Pete HUMPSTON who was posted back to Arborfield -
to an Anti-Aircraft Regiment there, the rest I never saw again. Gaiters were issued and weird berets in lieu of side hats
(Glengarries), these took a lot of battering before becoming comfortable,
boot dubbin was ‘in’, blanco ‘out’, and we saw the last of Bluebell or
Duraglit, dress became a personal standard of wearing, and ‘string vests’
were ‘in’. Gas masks were carried at all times with a steel helmet strapped
to it (I put mine to the test in Normandy, a .303 round went straight through
it, so like most others over there we chucked them away, especially as we
were informed on the LST’s “don’t jump overboard with the strap under your
chin, it will break your neck”), ties were worn when going out, and hair was
plastered with Brylcream, and as long as you could peer through your length
of hair, nobody would say a thing. Field dressings were issued and worn in
the BD (Battledress) pocket, new
‘”anti gas” BD’s were also issued, these were a grey-coloured
powder-impregnated, very uncomfortable hard material, so we made friends with
the Canadians who had a super well cut battle dress, and their QM’s were most
generous. We were issued with No 4 .303 48-hour passes were dished out now and then, but mostly meant
travel on blacked-out crowded trains, standing all the way etc, and usually
you only went on leave due to compassionate reasons, us lot were not married
in any case, but news of the family home being blown up or whatever was a
reason. And about this time we were issued with sleeveless leather ‘jerkins’,
which were warm, thick leather and we only took them off to go to bed. When we moved up in the ranks of promotion and adapted to
customs and practice of the company we had entered, never failed to proclaim
with pride that we were 'ex-Boys', it was and is a badge of honour. Those who
did not know of the brotherhood, we were often viewed with a sense of
suspicion at first, but soon were more than accepted. I have clear memories early on in the war of often presenting
to a blacked-out guard room some place or other at night, dragging a kitbag
and full kit, and being told to “Find the second Nissan hut on the left, and
find a bed space there”, enter through darkened doors, standing in the
doorway facing a sea of faces, not always friendly at that time of night, and
me shouting out "Any ex-Boys in here?"; and hearing a voice answer "Over
here Curly mate, here’s a space for you.” What better welcome could anybody
have? That warmth of feeling carried me through the 34 years I was with REME,
and still does. |
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Continues with ‘My War’ by Ian Rea. |
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Editor’s Notes: Ian’s Photo Album can be accessed by clicking HERE. Ian has also contributed a ‘D’ Company 1941
photo. Ian has contributed information to, and actually appears in,
some photos recently contributed by George Bill Humphrey of the first intakes to the __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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First Published: 1st May 2006. Layout Revised & Latest Update: 1st February 2015. |
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