Chapter II

CHAPTER III

Work

In case anyone reading the ensuing chapters thinks that we never did any work, I had better include a chapter on the subject.

Many may think that 40 was a very small staff to run a technical township of 3000 inhabitants. The truth is that in 1955 there were extensive changes in the staff but since then we have succeeded in keeping them comparatively rare and infrequent. The result, of course, has been that, once building was complete, the whole machinery of the ranges began to run with less and less effort, and overtime became decreasingly necessary. Once everything is running smoothly extra hands tend to create extra work. But of course fresh amenities and activities became correspondingly more important for off-duty hours.

Out task was at that time threefold. First, to coordinate all shooting and ensure safety with four major units at a time. Secondly, to administer the Camp, both visitors and permanent staff. And lastly, to assist the Sappers to finish building the whole original project and to plan any additions required. To achieve the first two, books of technical and administrative regulations had to be drawn up and translated into many different languages. The third involved the conversion of one major and costly item into twenty lesser ones, which put the finishing touches to the whole camp.

Some idea of the problems involved may be gained from the following brief facts. Regiments and visitors have come to Todendorf from America, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Iraq, Norway, Spain, Turkey and (uninvited) Russia. Units change at least every three weeks and sometimes as frequently as every four days and the handover of a regimental barracks has then to be completed in 24 hours, in two different languages. Again, in the Control Tower, a Frenchman could be on duty controlling (say) British, American, Dutch and French Units, advised by a German Naval officer.

The keynote of our work here has in fact been cooperation – cooperation between ourselves and our visitors; cooperation among themselves between visiting regiments and battalions; cooperation between ourselves and the RAF in Schleswig who towed our targets – their contribution has been beyond all praise; cooperation with the American permanent staff next door – this even managed to survive the stresses of Suez which is saying a lot!; cooperation with our German naval advisers, and cooperation with the local German inhabitants in which we always received the willing help of J.S.L.O.; and more recently cooperation with the German forces who are taking over from us. The story of cooperation is not complete without also mentioning the Polish (M.S.O.) Watchmen who have done our guard duties and the German (G.S.O.) drivers who have fetched and returned our civil employees daily from their distant homes – such was our isolation.

Our little staff has been divided into four departments – the “A” Branch, the “Q” Branch, the Gunnery Wing, and the Pilotless Target Aircraft Wing. At the Appendix may be seen the names of those who have served at Todendorf during the last three years.

A mere recital of the duties of each branch – self-evident from the names – would be deadly boring, most of all to those involved. Enough to pinpoint a few facts.

On the “A” side, the leading characters have been named elsewhere, but special mention should be made here of the work of RSM Harry Flowers who firmly established so many of the standards our visitors have admired.

On the “Q” side, it is as well to pause a minute and think what is involved in providing and maintaining beds, mattresses, cutlery and crockery etc. for more than 2,000 men whose one aim seems to be to destroy or lose everything! Our two QM’s, at first Captain John Smith and then Major Tony Palmer, and RQMS Harry Cranfield and his team have had a hard slog at times.

The main problem of the Gunnery Wing has been to satisfy four different Lt. Colonels (and often their formation commanders as well), each of whom thinks his is the only unit that counts, and at the same time preserve the safety of the airman in the sky and everyone else on land. Major Bob Dingwall and then Major Eric Donnelly, both assisted the BSM (AIG) ‘Mac” McCartney, have proved a formidable team that has so far succeeded, with infinite tact and charm, in routing any transgressors of the rules, however senior!

The Target Wing, with its radio-controlled aircraft, has to all intents and purposes been built up into a small aircraft factory. It was founded by Captain Dickie Westmacott and S/Sgt Tom Wheeler (REME) who, faced always with an out-of-date aircraft and a chronic shortage of spares, built up a workshop which rebuilt all but the worst wreckage to fly again. The “boffins” having departed, Major “Mac” McLoughlin and a virtually new team then brought new ideas of organisation and gadgetry sufficient to keep the dwindling stock flying to the last.

This chapter will be far more digestible if the remainder of it is devoted to haphazard recollections of the high-lights in our work over the last three years – the disastrous, the hilarious and the unusual.

The “disastrous” is really entirely concerned with traffic accidents, in which time and again we were saddened to see young visiting soldiers killed and maimed. But the worst disaster of all struck the Permanent Staff when our doctor, Captain Ron Conroy, was killed and our Troop Commander Lieutenant Dennis O’Grady, was so seriously injured that he was invalided out of the Army after a long illness. Both officers were extremely well-liked in the unit and their going left a yawning gap.

And so let us pass on to the unusual and even hilarious. The “A” Branch is perhaps the least romantic of all and startling memories are few – at least, those that are printable. But some may be worth quoting.

There was the case of the Dutch sentry and the French invasion. The former, with a loaded rifle, suddenly observed in the darkness a horde of unidentified figures trying to storm the “unclimbable” fence surrounding the camp. The sentry, a man of action, finding his challenge in Dutch unanswered, fired over the invaders’ heads. Immediately all was yelping chaos and eventually the Dutchman extracted from a very wet ditch a frightened and inebriated young French soldier, who was exclaiming repeatedly, “J’ai peur! J’ai peur!”

More recently, a German soldier learnt his lesson the hard way. Returning from an illegal and obvious mission in the village of Todendorf, he slipped when climbing the same fence, and remained suspended by the calf of his leg from the barbed-wire on top of the fence, until rescued (quite seriously injured) by a member of the Polish guard.

There have been visitors from many lands – mostly authorised. But there was no explanation for a party of Spanish officers who were no doubt studying the advantages of belonging to NATO, and we have twice had good clean fun with a heavily forbidden visit from our Russian friends – in uniform.

Nothing on this side of the house, however, can rival the story of a certain British officer who visited the Russian Zone, taking a gun with him, when on his way to this Camp. The whole story properly belongs to the unit concerned, but I cannot refrain from quoting the classic incident accredited to the sergeant who accompanied him. It appears that the Russian interrogator listened with interest to the sergeant repeatedly saying “Yes, Sir” and “No, Sir” to his subaltern, and then finally asked “Why do you keep calling him “Sir”? Has he been knighted?” To which the sergeant is said to have replied, “No, but when he gets back he will be flipping well crowned!”

At the end of 1955 we lost our laconic and popular Adjutant, Captain Dick Smith. To this day he refuses to believe that the total collapse of his bed in the wee small hours after his final guest night, was entirely accidental. He was succeeded by Capt (later Major) Harry Rogers whose movements could always be traced by a trail of half-smoked pipes. Both were supported by the Chief Clerk, Sgt Joe Jackson, whose military enthusiasm has been known to extend to midnight marching-drill!

The Target Wing, with its radio-controlled aircraft, was certainly more dramatic in its incidents. Transcending all, of course, was the rich moment when the pilot and “boffin-in-charge”, Captain Dickie Westmacott, achieved immortal fame by landing an aircraft (by parachute) on himself and having to receive medical treatment. He also achieved a number of memorable and uncharted voyages along the Todendorf coast in strange vessels.

He and his successors have had other happy landings – near misses on the CO’s private car and a bull’s-eye on the CIG’s office – but our American friends next door outshone our marksmanship when one of their faster pilotless aircraft attacked a neighbouring farm house. The story runs that it entered the building through the first floor wall, thereby stripping off the wings, and that the engine then zoomed round the upstairs rooms like an angry hornet, plunged down the stairs and chased the horrified farmer’s wife out of the house. But I cannot vouch for the details.

The Gunnery Wing, which controls all the shooting, has many tales to tell – and few which can be told. As stated elsewhere, they mostly concern the choleric senior officers who have insisted in flagrantly transgressing all the rules! But the process of agreeing with everything the customer says, and doing the opposite, has generally restored peace. And in fairness it must be stressed that the vast majority of our visitors have cooperated splendidly.

The “Q” Branch, coping with a turnover of anything from one to two thousand men in 24 hours, had many tales of woe in the early days – but today, when the customers have largely learnt and accepted the rules, little but the lighter side remains as a memory. Typical fleeting memories:- the Dutch method of barrack damages, by which a man who broke a window had paid cash down before the glass stopped tinkling; the two French “ammunition” columns – one for wine, one for shells, and the former allegedly longer than the latter; or the British unit which possessed a pornographic artist of great skill and debased mind, who illustrated (life-size) some 100 latrine cubicles before being detected (or at least exposed) by authority. The sequel was almost as good – the entire permanent staff trying to find excuses to visit that particular building before the masterpieces were erased.

In April 1956 we were joined by our ever-lively Second-in-Command, Major Gerry Pinder. He quickly became the great panjandrum of finance, the farm and civilian labour, and has been a tower of strength in the unit ever since. Any laughable episodes about finance are probably best hushed-up, but the farm has not only given very real benefit to all families and Messes (and the funds) but has also been the cause of many a smile, such as when a whole litter of pigs were prematurely destroyed by gun-fire, if I may put it that way. As for Civil Labour, right to the end the German civilian staff never twigged that when their officer had a hangover he invariably “raided” their civil hostel and equally invariably caught a number of them drinking out of hours!

But I seem to have wandered far from work and it’s time we hurried on to the lighter side of life.