I joined R.E.M.E. in July 1958 and during basic training at Blandford in Dorset I was told I had been selected for an education in electronics at 3 (Training) Battalion
based at Arborfield, Berkshire, arriving there in October. The barracks looked exactly like the ones you see in movies made in the nineteen-fifties about WWII, with
white-painted rocks lining the sidewalks and freshly painted red fire-buckets filled with sand hanging outside the wooden administrative buildings.
The group I was with arrived at 3 Bn just in time for the annual Admin Inspection, and spent the first two weeks cutting grass, shaking the last remaining leaves from
trees so they
wouldn't look untidy and painting everything. It was in this period that I learned the soldier's maxim for Admin Inspections when a lad from Swansea who had been a
bus conductor was given a bucket of bronze green paint. When he asked what it was he was supposed to paint he was told "If it doesn't move, paint it. If it does move, salute it!"
It was the first time I had heard the instruction; how I sometimes wished it was the last.
Some names I remember from 3 Bn are
Dave Jepson (Yorkshire),
Chris Hutchinson from the Midlands, a re-enlistment from the RAF,
Chris Ainsworth from Manchester, who wrote to my sister asking for a date,
Lou Cottington also from Manchester,
Lawson, who had worked at E.M.I. prior to joining the army,
Charlie Watts who had a 1937 Morris soft-top, but no driver's license,
Johnny Chapelle from London's East End; spent a lot of time in the guardhouse,
Mayhew from Liverpool.
An odd story I remember is about Ainsworth and Cottington; they lived in the same street and went to the same schools, but moved in different chosen social circles. A couple of years after they left school they met up and discovered not only had they both volunteered to join REME, but on the same day.
There were some real characters on the training courses. There was a Cpl Skinner who had already been in the army a number of years and had a service medal
from his period in Kenya when Britain was embroiled in the Mau-Mau insurgency. Skinner was an overweight, untidy individual with a healthy disrespect for authority.
He rarely polished his boots, preferring the dull finish of 'Dubbin' used by rugby players. His moment of fame came one Saturday morning just before a Regimental Parade, when we were lined up in pre-regimental Company formation. Just before we were due to march from the company ranks to the regimental ranks a young, hopelessly inexperienced, visiting officer spotted his medal, which invited a lot of curiosity since
at that time almost nobody in the ranks had one. When asked by the sprog Lieutenant what it was for, Skinner shouted out "First in the NAAFI queue for coffee, three days in
a row, Sir!"
When the CSM arrived to march the assembly onto the regimental parade ground he couldn't understand why it was so difficult to control a squad of eighty-odd giggling recruits.
Just before I got posted out of 3 Bn a new recruit arrived who caused quite a stir - 'Tiny' Hillman. He was a heavyweight competition weightlifter, and one of
the biggest men any of us had ever seen. The army purchased some training weights for him, and when they arrived he had to be called out of his technical classes to
help get them off the 3-tonner and into the gymnasium.
Some of the last National Service draftees were reminiscent of the eccentric characters in the 'Doctor' series of movies. One of them used to drive to the local pubs in
a 1920's 'Bull-Nose' Morris with a Dickey seat. He once hit a petrol pump with it.
I believe 'A' Company was filled with raw recruits like me who were to be taught the very basics of electronics, while 'B' Company I think ran courses in
telecommunications equipment for 'A' Company graduates. Discipline was very relaxed and we had a lot of free time unless you were picked for guard duty. Thursday
afternoons were allotted for sports activities - after lunch we paraded outside the 'A' Co. office dressed in sports gear, and the CSM (Damn! I wish I could remember
his name!) simply took a list of names and desired activities then dismissed us. Me and a blond guy who I can only remember by his self-appointed nickname of 'Yank' (but whose last name might have been Elvin) used to say we were going on cross-country runs, and trotted off down the lanes of Berkshire looking for apple orchards to go scrumping in, like young schoolboys.
Once, we got lost and found ourselves in the vast estate of the Merchant Seamens' School and it was dark before we found our way out. There were also regular
soccer and rugby games.
The first lessons in electronics were a complete and confusing mystery to me. The course Sgt started by making a comparison on a blackboard between voltage and water
pressure in a tank,
and between electrical current and flow in a pipeline, but since at the age of seventeen I had never been a plumber I didn't understand any of it. I've since found out that
this was a style of teaching basic electronics that was later abandoned once it was realised the beleagured student was having to learn everything twice.
I was one of the fortunate ones who joined REME at the very end of the period when England required 18-year-olds to do two years of National Service in the
military. At 3 Bn in 1958 there were a number of men in their twenties whose National Service had been deferred while they finished their university degrees. They were
the last of the draftees, and since the army didn't have a lot of use for them the technical ones were designated as lecturers for us sprogs. It was a very easy
assignment for them, as they were given the rank of Corporal for extra pay and allowed to develop their own curriculum based on their university courses. One class,
for example,
was given by a graduate who had specialised in transformers, and we were basically taught in four weeks a transformer theory and design synopsis based on his five
years at University.
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