Memories of A Veteran Part The 6th
Kia Ora, from New Zealand Friends and Colleagues
Welcome to part the 6th in my continuing story of a young soldier who on his journey punctuated with adventure will come to the point of being an old soldier. Yes I offer you more memories of a veteran
Goodbye Germany... For Now
After 2 years of waiting for the Warsaw Pact to attack, mercifully, they never did, I learned my trade as a young officer. These two years included a lot of fun as well, as soldiering, such as travel all over Western Europe, skiing, kayaking, free fall parachuting, climbing, abseiling, volksmarching, lots of parties learning the German language and German food and beer!
It was time to move on but I would be back.....
The Depot Regiment
It was very common after a field tour to either go to the UK Defence University at Shrivenham, Swindon in the UK, or go to one of the training regiments (we had 4 of them) to train new recruits coming into the Army from civilian life. I was fortunate enough to do the latter.So everything was packed into the tangerine orange Fiat 127 Sport and I set off on the 400km drive back to the channel ports arriving this time at Hull on the North East Coast and then a relatively shorter drive to Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors
There I met my training cadre, a Sergeant and four Corporals and I got into the swing of
training recruits. For the first year I would go through a cycle of taking thirty-two, fresh-faced civilians, through a 12-week basic recruit training course where they would learn how to look after themselves in the field, make field shelters, cook, shoot, patrol, basic section tactics map reading and navigation as well as defend themselves in a hazardous nuclear or biological, chemical environment in all weathers at all times of day.Each 12 weeks there would be a pass off parade when proud parents would come and support their transformed young men turned soldiers as they marched off the parade square in a beautifully choreographed parade sequence to become fully fledged class 3 soldiers from where they would go on to be trained in the various Royal Corps of Signals Trades. My staff and trained hundreds of young men over those two years.
Two Special Highlights
Belize Central America
I had two other highlights in this tour of duty. One of these was going off to Belize in Central America for 3 weeks, as an umpire for their annual test exercise. The Parachute Regiment, which only two years previously had been in the Falklands campaign were attacking through jungle to retake the town of Punta Gorda (notionally under occupation by Guatemalan insurgents).On the night before the final attack we marched in
under cover of darkness to the location and got into our bivouac bags to get an hours rest and wait for first light, when I rolled mine up this scurried out from below it and I screamed like a girl!The Manx Parliament
The other big event that has stayed with me forever was being given the honour and privilege of commanding a
96 man Guard for the opening of the Tynwald Ceremony in the Isle of Man of the West coast off England in the Irish Sea.This Parliament claims to be the oldest continuously sitting legislature anywhere in the world tracing its history back to the beginning of the 10th century. It is an open air earthwork structure at one end with a more modern christian church structure at the opposite end.
We spent two weeks on the island training the drill movements every day in preparation for the parade its elf and the opening ceremony which was most memorable.
Next Adventure
The next adventure would take me
back to Germany, this time to West Berlin 200km inside the then communist East Germany, behind the Berlin Wall, where I would spend the next 4 years and experience one of the most exciting and most dangerous periods of the Cold War period and of my military career to that point. I would get close to Tina Turner, Rudolf Hess and Ronald Reagan, though not all at the same time...............I hope that you have enjoyed this latest episode of my trip through life's adventures If there is enough interest I will be back with Part the 7th and the story of West Berlin.
Until then, from New Zealand, friends and colleagues, good night.
KIa Koa
Kia Kaha
YOU CAN FIND PART THE 7th HERE
YOU CAN READ HERE FROM THE BEGINNING PART THE 1ST
Recent Comments
64
Keep going H(otel) A(lpha) M(ike) I(ndia) S(ierra) H(otel) - do you read me, over?
Training in Oz would be harder with both snakes (Australia has 21 of the world's 26 most venomous), spiders & crocs 'cuddling' up to you overnight! ....another reason I prefer NZ. :)
I visited Berlin both before glasnost/perestroika & after. Interesting contrast where you can still see bullet holes in buildings occupied by the SS/Gestapo and later the Soviets.
Are those all your medals? Pretty impressive, my friend. My son is serving national service as a combat medic.
Hamish, thank you for sharing. Great to follow. I can feel a TV series perhaps.
Have a great day.
Stephen
Love it! Damned spell check though; I'm assuming you had a bivvie bag in Belize as opposed to a biggie bag.
I certainly never had a biggie bag in the field and to the best of my knowledge even the RAF weren't issued biggie bags!
Cheers
Rick
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Aye a varied an interesting life to say the least!!
Life has to be full otherwise what is the point so many people trained and helped along the way so many places seen and screaming like a girl is no surprise w9ith that bugger!! ha ha
Spice of life is the magic that keeps it all turning round and interesting on that there is no doubt!!
R.
Why thank you McTavish
Try this one: Memories of A Veteran Part The 7th