South East Kent Branch Report

The Longest two year posting ever 1980 – 1986

1980 and 1 RGJ had returned from just over two years in Hong Kong and relocated to Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London. I had been stationed there before when we were fire-fighting in 1977 and it hadn’t improved since then. It was originally one of 40 barracks established around the country in the wake of the French Revolution to guard against the dual threats of foreign invasion and domestic sedition and the best way to describe it would be to call it a slum. I cannot think of one thing that it had going for it except the main gate out of the place. I was at least fortunate to have married quarters inside the barracks – a tiny little two bedroom flat the size of a postage stamp but at least I could walk to work and go home for lunch. Those quartered in Windsor had to pay to travel in and out each day. By now I was one of the clerks working in Battalion HQ under chief clerk WO2 Barrie Gilmore. He called me into his office one morning and asked me if I would like a posting for a couple of years as the Depot photographer. I was therefore promoted to Lcpl as I had passed my JNCOs cadre in Hong Kong. I attended the Darkroom Technicians course at RAF Cosford before being posted to the Depot to join the Regimental Information Team (RIT) under Capt Mac Arnold. I remained a clerk and as such I worked as the assistant RIT clerk to Cpl Dougie Day doing the photography as and when required. Basic stuff like passing out parades, ID cards, six weeks skiing in Aviemore – that was awful honest Guv! And a couple of weeks in Brecon photographing one of the training platoons. However the bulk of my work was for the RIT, the Light Division Information Team and the Parachute Display Team (PDT). Life was pretty varied in a clerical sort of way. Dougie Day, when not pushing a typewriter (do you remember them?), was also the driver/commentator for the PDT, and I became ground crew. Dougie’s claim to fame was that he had never had an RTC in his life but had seen plenty in his rear-view mirror – read into that what you will… Strangely, although we had both a car and a minibus as team vehicles supplied by our sponsors Radio Rentals, nobody ever wanted to travel in the car with Dougie more than once!

My first ever job with the PDT was to climb one of the football lighting stanchions at Birmingham City’s ground, to light the ground flare giving the jumpers an indication which way the wind was blowing. Those things look pretty stable but in reality they sway quite a bit and I was quite glad to finally arrive back down on the ground again. I did meet Jaspar Carrott the comedian though. He was a director of BCFC. Of the celebrities I met over the years, my favourite was Grot Bags my least favourite being Jim Bowen.

When Dougie was promoted to Sgt and posted off to a recruiting office somewhere, Major John Read who had now taken over as RIO suggested I might like to move to x-platoon and take over from Dougie as the RIT Clerk. It would extend my posting indefinitely but would mean that I would drop from the nominal roll of 1 RGJ which might later have a detrimental affect on any career I thought I might have. I took the plunge and took over as the RIT clerk. 1983 and I was single again and now had a small room in the old RIT offices down the slope by Short Block. I was still the depot photographer though. The parachute team had changed quite a bit. Sgt Bob Dowling left in 1981 and for a period the team was led by Cpl Lionel Hitchcock who was my section commander in November 72. 1982 saw in Sgt Gary Douglas and also various team members who had been through Netheravon where they completed their freefall course and had joined the team, while others had returned there to train as instructors or returned to their respective Battalions. We were completing maybe 50-60 parachute displays a season and I was now the commentator. It was a real off the cuff commentary and apart from the basics of who they were etc. it was based on what I could see the jumpers were doing in the sky. It worked well and several letters of commendation arrived in the RIO’s post bag including one from a Lord. I know it sounds like I am blowing my own trumpet and yes I am – I had found my vocation! I would like to point out however I was never a display parachutist although for a short period after I left the army I did try parachuting in civvy street but found it really wasn’t for me. I did do a few jumps training under Cpl Dave Chadwick while with the team but purely so that I could have some sense of what it felt like to fall out an aircraft which I could put into my commentary. In reality I was no more than the driver/commentator/fixer of accommodation/talker to ATC/CAA and show organisers and maker of tea and coffee. Raymond Brookes-Ward probably the best known of the commentators on the horsey circuit alongside Tom Hudson and Mike Tucker all of whom I got to know really well would refer to me as the team Road Manager. Dogs-body I think would be a better expression. After each display, if it was a Radio Rentals (RR) sponsored jump and we did about 20-25 of these each year, we would gather at the RR stand on the showground and give out badges and leaflets to the children while the RR staff tried to flog mum and dad a TV. We were asked some strange questions: “The parachutists we saw in the sky a few minutes ago, are they the same ones who landed in the arena?” “Nope, those you saw landed elsewhere, these were in the back of the van”. There were several versions of this reply depending on who asked, with at least one involving a gruesome death and the grabbing of the grass to prevent bouncing. There was one display I didn’t do in the Plymouth area however, I think I might have been doing a course elsewhere but about a fortnight later I was called to the RSMs office to be told that two members of the RMP wished to speak with me regarding a stolen leather jacket. I hadn’t a clue what they were on about but the RSM had authorised a search of my room so off we went. Searching was going well, no leather jacket of course, not even that messy a search until they discovered some film and a slide projector, an army side projector. The older of the two stood back and let his apprentice, a very young Lcpl (he looked about 12yrs old) interrogate me. “Whose is this then son” he said. SON? I was at least six years older than him. This very young military Piglet now stepped up the pressure. Did I know it was an offence to have this in my room, theft of army property was a very serious offence etc. he was going to nick me for stealing it. What about the rolls of film? He was off on one big time. Courts Martial and a firing squad here I come. Up until this point I had tolerated the nonsense because they had at least told me that this jacket was stolen from Plymouth and I knew that I had not been on that gig – not that they gave me any time to tell them that! I refused to answer any more of their questions and requested the presence of an officer, Major Read. They actually wanted to double me back over to the RSMs office minus my beret! Well good luck with that it was never going to happen. Major Read arrived and verified that I had not been on the Plymouth job, something the RMP should have checked. They then moved on to the projector. He asked them if they knew I was the depot photographer and as such was entitled to use this equipment and film where and when needed? That hadn’t been checked either. I will not go into the full details but leaving some disco, the team had collected up all their jackets as a bundle, chucked them in the back of the team mini-bus, and in doing so, had inadvertently also picked up this tatty old leather jacket as well. On arriving back in Winchester they had realized the mistake and set about putting it right by returning the jacket and the wallet therein to its owner with an apology written in green ink on green paper. The owner of the jacket obviously saw an opportunity to get a new jacket out of it so complained that the jacket had not been returned, only his wallet. It was soon all sorted out, the RMP went off in their mobile sty and a cheque for the “missing” jacket was sent to the complainant. John Read was the most supportive boss any of us could have hoped to have. He had come up through the ranks which was no mean achievement and was nobodies fool. Sadly I attended his funeral last year together with two other former team members who had travelled a fair distance to pay their last respects. The messages on The ‘In Memoriam’

board tell their own story. I never once heard him raise his voice yet he got everything done. If you had a problem you knew you could speak with him and he would listen, discuss and assist you in sorting it out. He wouldn’t do a commentary no matter how hard I tried to get him to. He said it was not the job of an officer… I pointed out that other display teams had an officer doing it but he replied: “Yes but they aren’t Green Jackets though.” I couldn’t think of an answer to that. He did do panels and flares for me a couple of times though. He was of course ably supported by Sue his wife who just about became an honorary team member. We even had a couple of little ‘do’s’ at his quarter down St Cross. This business of an officer doing the commentary was however brought home to me at a display we did in Brentwood. I was at the pre-show briefing on the showground together with the commentator of some military horse and motorcycle team, possibly RMP I cannot now remember. As we walked away he asked me when I had been at Sandhurst, I replied in 1983 when we did a display there. Had I not trained there then, perhaps Mons? “No” I said “I am not an officer.” He was taken aback he couldn’t understand how we as a regiment allowed anyone who wasn’t an officer to do the commentary. Telling him we were Green Jackets was probably not the most diplomatic way of replying maybe… I have to say that the majority of the teams we met on the display circuit were excellent, especially the White Helmets Motorcycle Display Team who did have an officer in charge who was pretty laid back. One team we never worked with stated in their contract that they were so good they didn’t need a supporting act. Those in the team will know who I am talking about. We were asked to do a display in Brighton or rather over Brighton beach where as part of some new TV show the contestants would have to guess if our jumper, in this case Keith Skelley, would land on this small raft tethered off the beach or land in the water. The whole display was a comedy of errors. The message to Keith should have been land on the raft but somewhere along the line it changed and he got a dunking when I know he would have made the raft with ease. The rest of the team, for some reason, jumped out downwind of the landing zone instead of upwind which meant they struggled to get anywhere near the area and to top it off completely, Dave Chadwick’s main parachute failed and he had to jettison it and use his reserve. He landed on the top of a block of flats. None of it was my fault, well maybe just one tiny little part but I blame the TV personality I was working with for that. In 1985 we were rebranded the Trail Blazers Parachute Display Team based in Winchester when we completed the merger with the tumbling trumpets from Shrewsbury. They were actually the LI PDT but to us the tumbling trumpets, and we were apparently the dustbin lids. In 1984 we had operated as two teams the Lt Div PDT (N) Shrewsbury (LI) and us as the LT Div (S) in Winchester (RGJ). With the merger complete Sgt Ray Ellis LI became team commander and Sgt Dave Muir RGJ already with us as 2ic. This also meant that we were often entertained by Dave singing the only song he knew ‘Flower of Scotland’. Now you don’t get many in the Green Jackets from Scotland but Dave had come to us via the AAC oddly enough where he had been my younger brother’s boss. Ray had come to us vis the Commandos and RE if memory serves me correctly. There are a few ‘memories’ worth mentioning, In no particular order Steve Wilson breaking his pelvis at the Royal Show when he came in too hot and too high, buried a toggle and span into the ground. I don’t know what it means either! He walked around for 24hrs before finally deciding there might be something amiss and was taken off to the local hospital. Scouse Lewis did something similar into water at Nottingham but didn’t break anything. Bernie Parker scoring four faults for taking out a jump at the Shrewsbury Flower show, a RR show that one. Geordie Best cutting away over the Lincoln Show and spending what seemed like hours hunting for his main. Scouse Lewis again opening really, and I mean really late at a show in Wales. We watched him disappearing behind a local hill. We basically just wrote him off and Dougie got on with the commentary, Melons (Melonie), an officer who jumped with the LI team landing on the roof of a stand at the Royal Bath and West show. Spectators couldn’t wait to speak with her, she was an instant heroine and finally my personal favourite. Having the minibus kicked by a horse at the Royal Welsh Show at Builth Wells making a rather nice dent in the side of the vehicle. It was fortunate that at the time there were also a couple of RR people in the minibus on break as otherwise it might have been a little difficult to explain. After John Read retired, we had a succession of officers, Capt (later Maj) Dave Nicholson who went on to lead 16CTT in Bicester and who I bumped into again in 1988 when I was an adult Csgt instructor with the ACF. Capt Tom Wright who went off to get married honeymooning in India and getting Delhi Belly, and finally (in my time) Maj Nigel Jackson who I previously served under in NI in 1977 and HK 1978 when I was his Coy Clk. In early Sept 1986 I was moved to the Families Office and in the October I PVRd.

Strangely the first and last officer to command me in the army were both called Jackson but not related, how weird is that?

I will finish with one final memory. We take computers for granted nowadays but in the 80s they were still very new and expensive. I owned a Sinclair ZX Spectrum games console with an amazing 48k of memory. In the quiet months, November and March I would bring it in with my little black and white telly and play games on it at lunch time in the office. This sometimes extended into the afternoon if I had completed all my work for the day. The two months were always the quietest. Major Read came in one day to find me still playing. Rather than giving me a speaking to he asked if I could use it to do letters etc. in place of the typewriter, yes I could with the right printer so he then arranged for a proper dot matrix printer and the necessary software to be bought and the office became computerized – well ahead of the PAMPAS system the army were trialling. Fast forward to early 1986. By now we had purchased an Apricot PC which worked exclusively from floppy disks, no hard drives in those days. This particular morning I had been in the office since about 6am busy typing up the annual report for the RIT/Lt Div Team and the PDT which had been finalized the previous evening and was ready for typing. It was a report on the previous year and a summary of the expectations for the current year. This report could run to 20 or 30 pages. I had been hammering away for about 3hrs when the cleaner came in. She promptly pulled out the plug in the wall and pushed in the one for her vacuum cleaner. My screen went very dark and it was at that point I wondered if I had enabled auto-save. I soon realized I hadn’t. With 3hrs wasted there was only one thing to do. I picked up my beret, looked at Ray Ellis who said not a word and I walked out of the office. I returned an hour or so later, nothing was said again as I sat down behind my desk, fired up the pc and started over – this time enabling autosave every two minutes.