Army children's birthplaces can speak volumes about their families' peripatetic lifestyles, as well as the times in which they grew up. Looking at a page of the 1891 national census for England and Wales listing families living in the 20th Hussars' cavalry barracks in Aldershot, for example, reveals that the daughters of one family, respectively aged three and two, were born in Cairo, Egypt, and Norwich, England, places to which their sergeant father had been deployed, accompanied by their 'on-the-strength' mother. The birthplaces of army children born between the wars, if not in India and other sunny stations, are likely to be those camps and garrisons where the British Army retained permanent bases (and still do), such as Catterick, Aldershot, Colchester, Tidworth and Bulford. Following World War II, locations further afield joined the list of likely places of birth, including Malta, Cyprus, West Germany and Northern Ireland.
Various aspects of Bulford Camp pictured in a postcard dating from the World War I era.If the civilian aspects of life outside barracks, camps and garrisons (such as the climate, the language or dialect spoken and the currency used) can change with bewildering frequency (often within a matter of months, but more usually within the space of a year or two) the touchstones of army children's immediate environment 'within the wire' typically remain reassuringly constant. Over the centuries, the ways in which the British Army has catered for the families of its serving soldiers have gradually expanded from being limited to providing accommodation and schooling to supplying spiritual, community, practical and personal support and advice, courtesy of the chaplains, what is today known as the Army Welfare Service (AWS) and affiliated charitable bodies like the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) Forces Help. And when abroad, the challenge of living in an alien culture may additionally be cushioned by, for instance, the availability of certain familiar British products and foods stocked by the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI); medical and dental treatment and care; and, thanks to the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), British television and radio programmes.
PICTURES: THE CONTRASTING FORTUNES OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY ARMY FAMILIES PRIOR TO OVERSEAS POSTINGS ("TOMMY ATKINS" MARRIED – PAST AND PRESENT, 1884)
The two images below illustrate the contrasting fortunes of those nineteenth-century army families that, on the one hand, were accorded 'on-the-strength' status and were therefore allowed to accompany their soldier husbands and fathers on overseas postings, and, on the other, were not recognised as being in any way the army's responsibility and were consequently left behind to fend for themselves. While the first image shows a line-up of army wives and children presenting themselves for a medical inspection (and, by the look of it, a dose of some sort of 'tonic') before setting sail – probably for India – the second depicts a wife whose marriage had taken place without the army's permission standing bereft with her two children on the quayside as the troopship carrying her husband and their father sails away. Both of these scenes are taken from "Tommy Atkins" Married – Past and Present, a composite print that was first published in The Graphic on 12 January 1884 (click here to see it).
PICTURE: NEWCASTLE MILITARY CANTONMENT, JAMAICA
A picture-postcard view (below) of 'Newcastle Military Cantonment', Jamaica, once home to generations of army children. Newcastle Barracks was established on the instigation of Major General William Gomm in Jamaica's Blue Mountains in 1841, mainly because, at around 1,128 metres (3,700 feet) above sea level, its hillside location was considered healthier than that of Kingston, where the British were prone to succumbing to yellow fever.
In her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857), Mary Seacole (1805-81), née Mary Jane Grant, the Kingston-born nurse and healer, wrote that by 1843, she had 'gained a reputation as a skilful nurse and doctress, and my house was always full of invalid officers and their wives from Newcastle, or the adjacent Up-Park Camp.' A decade later, Mary's services were in even greater demand, 'for the yellow fever never made a more determined effort to exterminate the English in Jamaica than it did in that dreadful year. . . . My house was full of sufferers - officers, their wives and children. . . . It was a terrible thing to see young people in the youth and bloom of life suddenly stricken down, not in battle with an enemy that threatened their country, but in vain contest with a climate that refused to adopt them. Indeed, the mother country pays a dear price for the possession of her colonies.'
PERSONAL STORY: 'IT WAS A MAGICAL PLACE, WITH PALM TREES AND COFFEE PLANTATIONS', JAMAICA, 1928–30
With her father serving with the 2nd Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Mairi Paterson's army childhood began and ended in Stirling, Scotland, where she lived from 1921 to 1922, and again from 1934 to 1938. The years in between saw her family posted to Aldershot, Hampshire, between 1922 and 1924; the Isle of Wight (1924–28); Jamaica (1928–30); Wei-Hai-Wei (today called Weihai), north-eastern China (1930–32, and click here for Mairi's memories of travelling there in 1930, and here for her description of living in Wei-Hai-Wei); and Hong Kong (1932–34). In the account that follows, Mairi outlines the early years of her life as an army child, before recalling in evocative detail the two years that she and her family spent in Jamaica.
'My father, Hugh Campbell, from Lochgilphead, Argyll, joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders at Fort George. He became an instructor and was a good shot, competing at Bisley [Surrey]. When World War I broke out, he was seconded to the King's West African Rifles in Nigeria as an instructor. He was wounded in what was then German East Africa. He returned to the Argylls and was stationed at the depot, Stirling Castle, when I was born. We moved to Aldershot, and then to the Isle of Wight, where I started school.
The 2nd Battalion was then assigned a "tour of overseas duty" and was posted to Jamaica. My mother, brother and I did not travel then, as my grandfather was ill, but followed in May 1928, travelling from Liverpool in the SS Orduna. The camp was just outside Kingston, and during the hot season, it was almost too much to bear. Every so often, we were sent up to Newcastle, a hill station in the Blue Mountains. The steep road, with its hairpin bends, ended in the square formed by the church, the school, the orderly room and the NAAFI. There were steep paths up to the bungalows, and we had a donkey to help us get up and down them. When we went to the shop, my mother led the donkey, I sat on its back, my little brother (aged three) was in one pannier and the other was for the shopping. It was a magical place, with palm trees and coffee plantations. There were hummingbirds and mongooses, and it was so steep that one looked down on the roof of the house below. We would catch some fireflies, put them in a glass jar and eat our evening meal on the verandah by their light; then we would release them into the warm night again. On one visit, we were struck by a hurricane. Sent home from school early, I helped put the shutters up on the windows, take in everything possible, tie down everything else – and then watched as my party dress was whipped off the line and disappeared!
Kingston was very different. Our house was in quite a large garden, with four banana trees, a mango tree, a calabash tree and masses of plants. There were beautiful blue and green lizards and many birds. But there were also the terrifying large land crabs, which came out in the dusk, as well as scorpions, which were liable to hide in your slippers. I once watched as a piece of bread that I had put down moved swiftly over the floor, carried away by the ants. The legs of all our pieces of furniture stood in tins of paraffin. At night, you had to get under the mosquito net as quickly as possible and let in as few of the pests as you could.
I attended the army school nearby, and achieved the distinction of being expelled at the age of eight. The teacher must have forgotten that the troops there were not only Scots, but Highland. She gave us a lesson about the Jacobite rising of 1745 and described the clans as ignorant, illiterate savages who rebelled against their rightful king and, fortunately, were defeated by his brilliant son, the Duke of Cumberland, at Culloden [in 1746]. I was an early reader and had just finished D K Broster's trilogy about the '45, so stood up in a fury and said that she was a liar: the clans had an old culture, and Cumberland was remembered as "Butcher" Cumberland for his cruelty. I was immediately sent home. Two days later, my father was told that the school would overlook my behaviour and allow me back. I refused to go, saying that I would never learn anything from someone so stupid. It was eventually settled by a visit from the colonel. He was MacLaine of Lochbuie, a clan chief. He agreed with me, but said that I had also to learn things like arithmetic, and that I would have a different teacher. When I think of it now, I am amazed at everyone's patience. But I went back.
One great worry was becoming ill. Dengue fever was very prevalent. However, we had a "quinine cup": this was roughly made from a piece of a branch of the cinchona tree, and water put in it turned to quinine. The doses were: ten minutes for my brother, twenty for me and thirty for my parents. (I still have it, though it takes much longer now.) As a result of a bad outbreak, nurses from Kingston came to help, and we met a family, also called Campbell, whose members had been among the early settlers in Jamaica. Many years later, I met a black medical student, also a Campbell, who told me that his great-grandfather had been a slave on that plantation, and that on gaining his freedom, he had taken the name as his surname.
After two years in Jamaica, the battalion got its next posting – to northern China. We were to go through the Panama Canal and over the Pacific on a troopship!'
Mairi Paterson (née Campbell, b.1921).
PERSONAL STORY: LIFE IN THE BARRACKS, DORCHESTER, DORSET, 1925-35
Bob Manning (b. c.1925) contributed his memories of growing up in the Dorsetshire Regiment's Depot Barracks, in Dorchester, Dorset, between 1925 and 1935 to The Keep Military Museum there. His story, as told by Helen Jones, first appeared on the museum's website (http://www.keepmilitarymuseum.org, which is well worth visiting for those with an interest in the regiments of Devon and Dorset, as well as in what life in a regimental depot was like for army children), and TACA is grateful to her, and to the museum, for permission to reproduce it.
'Local resident Bob Manning grew up in the Depot Barracks between 1925 and 1935. He remembers that much of the area of the barracks was out of bounds to the children. They were not allowed to enter the site through "The Keep" itself, but had to use the steps up to the site, situated on the Poundbury Road, opposite the cavalry barracks. They were not allowed near the soldiers' quarters either.
Above: The Dorchester Depot Barracks pictured in around 1900.
Bob lived in the "Little Keep" itself towards the end of his father's posting. Before that, the family was billeted in the married quarters. These have long been demolished, but were behind the "Little Keep" building. The married quarters were two stories high, with four or five quarters in each. There was an iron stairway at each end and a walkway between them. "Playing chase up one stairway, along the walkway and down the other staircase was strictly forbidden - not, that is, to say that the prohibition was always heeded. It was too good a chance for the boys to miss", recalls Bob. Bob remembers that the family did its grocery shopping in the NAAFI [Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes] stores on the barracks site, and that the children were often sent there on their own. Soldiers used the NAAFI to buy cigarettes and polish.
It was fun living in the barracks as a child as there were lots of places to play. There was a grass bank between the barracks and the railway. The grass was allowed to grow long before it was cut with scythes. The boys were given the clippings to make forts. The old soldiers who had fought on the North West Frontier of India taught them the word sanger, meaning "fort". Of course, the forts in India were made of stone, but the boys played out imaginary wars in their grass forts. The girls played ball games and skipping games in a grassy area near the "school" room.
The boys also liked leaving the barracks site to play on the earthworks at Poundbury. There was no industrial site there in those days, and they had to climb over a fence and cross the railway line near the railway tunnel to reach the earthworks. They would show off by "bravely" setting foot in the tunnel. At weekends, whole families would go to the earthworks, taking picnics with them. They could bathe in the river from the lower slopes. The boys also enjoyed playing along Poundbury Road itself, amongst "a rather scrubby line of trees and bushes which we called Sherwood Forest".
There were many places where the children were not allowed to go. They had to keep away from the "school" room during exams. This was not a school for children, but for soldiers. They were not allowed near the stores and offices, the officers' quarters, the officers' mess or the stables where the officers kept their horses. They were not even allowed to walk anywhere near "The Square" (the parade ground).
Bob recalls that in front of the officers' mess was a small, grassy area, and that other regiments would sometimes visit for training exercises. They would set up bivouac tents on this area. Bob can remember the Green Howards coming. The boys would try to persuade the visiting soldiers to give them cap badges, but they were not usually successful.
THE MARABOUT BARRACKS
On the other side of the road from the Depot Barracks were the old cavalry and Royal Artillery barracks known as the Marabout Barracks. Bob recalls that there was a sports field there, and that on Saturday afternoons families from the Depot Barracks would gather there to watch football and hockey matches.
There was a drill hall, too, where the children would watch the TA [Territorial Army] band practising marching and countermarching. There were workshops run by civilian staff, under the charge of a Mr Nicholls, as well. Children were not allowed to go there unless Mr Nicholls himself invited them in. They were allowed to visit the pigsties, however. The pigs were looked after by a Mr Frampton, and he was always happy to chat to the children.
There was a hospital on the Marabout Barracks site that served the families of the Depot Barracks. Colonel Sidgewick was in charge here, assisted by an NCO [non-commissioned officer] named Sergeant Lemon. All of their ailments were treated by Colonel Sidgewick, and he also gave them their inoculations.
The depot's commanding officer was Major De La Bere. He lived just outside the perimeter of the depot, but used to enter through a door in the walls. The lads were expected to raise their caps to him, should he pass them.
Bob was only about 10 years old when he left the depot, but is pleased to share his memories of growing up in Dorchester's Depot Barracks.'
PERSONAL STORY: MEMORIES OF WOOLWICH, BY AN RAF OFFICER
This piece was first published in the May 2007 issue (No. 147) of Pennant, the journal of the Forces Pension Society (see http://www.forpen.org for further details). TACA is grateful to both Squadron Leader Peacock and Pennant for permission to reproduce it.
'I am not of the army, although I come from an army family, as did my grandparents on both sides. My brothers went into the army: one to the Scots Guards and the other to the West Kents. There is always one, though . . . and I went into the Royal Air Force. This sin was never forgiven, Bomber Command notwithstanding.
My father was a Royal Engineer and an instructor at the "Shop". Our lives revolved around that noble edifice, with its highest of standards.
I well recall the last tattoo I was taken to on Woolwich Common. It was "The Storming of the Kashmir Gate" and in those days they really knew how to put on a big production.
Most Sundays after church parade at the garrison church, we (my parents, two brothers and many others) would assemble on the edge of that wonderful parade ground, usually not too far from that menacing lump of gun in the foreground of the picture (see below). There we waited breathlessly for the crash of drums and the blare of brass as what was a superb military band marched out through that archway and began a magnificent display. It really prickled the skin, as it does now, just to think of it.
To the right of that long line of buildings was situated the garrison theatre. Many times did we enjoy the productions put on by the staff and others. A great treat, especially when they put on something about the "war to end all wars". It was all so exciting, so thrilling. No one thought about Hitler in that year or the repeat performance to come.
I recall several visits to the Rotunda, that sombre place, with its memorabilia of the First World War. Probably the seed of an allergy to trenches, ditches and mud was planted there.
But to remember the "Shop" and the cadets in their pillbox hats and playing bicycle hockey gives so much pleasure. My Scots Guards brother and myself were choirboys in the splendid church and I well recall singing at the funeral of General Wagstaff. Very military it was, too. I can still hear the sound of clinking medals and spurs.'
Squadron Leader Trevor Peacock.
PERSONAL STORY: EXPERIENCING TERROR AND THRILLS AT CATTERICK CAMP AND WAR'S OUTBREAK AT ALDERSHOT
TACA has sadly proved something of a letdown for this former army child, who writes: 'I have looked at the TACA website with interest, but was rather disappointed not to find accounts by army children concerned with the effects of being the child of a soldier . . . I do not propose now to give you my biography, but I thought that an example or two of my own banal experiences as an army child might encourage other army children to follow suit. I hope that these few memories of mine, as an army child, will encourage other army children to share some of their experiences with the rest of us.' We should, perhaps, say in response, firstly, that those with an interest in history would not agree that the following recollections are in any way banal, and, secondly, that similar memories would indeed be very welcome.
'I was born in Catterick Camp, in the army hospital there - a wooden building, as it was then. My father was posted to Aldershot when I was about four or five, so until then I lived in a completely military environment. I can remember very little of that time, but I do still recall being terrified of pipe bands, which often marched past our quarter. If I shut my eyes, I can see the serried ranks of white spats worn by the bandsmen. Another source of terror for me was tanks. They really scared me, rumbling by. I think it was the clatter of the tracks and the (to me) enormous size of these unwieldy vehicles. These frights, and many similar ones, were probably not everyday experiences, but, in Catterick Camp, pretty frequent.
On a brighter note, I can remember being very impressed by a display by the Royal Signals, as I now know them to have been. This was the thrilling sight of the dispatch riders mounted on their motorcycles, leaping over horse-drawn cable wagons as they circled the arena in the opposite direction. Of course, military dispatch riders and cable wagons were an everyday sight in Catterick Camp in those days, and, to an army-child infant, perfectly normal; I only remember them because of the leaping motorcycles.
Aldershot was a very different environment. It was a large town, and the army garrison was mainly on the outskirts. My father had bought a house near the railway station, so we did not live directly in an exclusively army environment. However, as an army child, one regarded civilians as "different", and I felt quite at home when going through the barracks, gazing at the horses in their stables and cadging army biscuits from the various regimental cookhouses. We attended an army doctor's surgery and an army dentist's surgery, an army church and, when necessary, an army hospital - a separate one for wives and children. We bought our food rations from the NAAFI shop.
Above: Aldershot Camp, Hampshire, as it looked during the early decades of the twentieth century.
Two events remain particularly in my memory. The war (I heard the declaration on the radio), of course, was probably more noticeable in a large military garrison, especially as we lived near the station, but was brought home to me particularly vividly when, one day, I found the town absolutely swamped by exhausted soldiers fast asleep on the pavements, in all manner of dress, and without their equipment. These were the survivors of Dunkirk, who had been packed into trains on the coast and sent to Aldershot. My mother and many other ladies carried around tea and sandwiches for them. They were soon housed in the barracks, of course, but it was a shock to a small boy to experience the less glamorous aspects of war.
One more Aldershot memory: one Sunday, on going to church (the Roman Catholic one), we found it packed full of French Canadian soldiers, a church parade. That was a bit of a shock, but a pleasant one, since it brought home to me that our country was not alone. I am surprised that I can still remember it so well, but this is probably because it was a very personal experience.'
JRG (b.1929).
PERSONAL STORY: MEMORIES OF POST-WAR BERLIN
When, a few years after the end of World War II, Mrs Elizabeth Robertson, the daughter of Major General Geoffrey Kemp Bourne (later General the Lord Bourne, GCB, KBE, CMG), moved to Berlin with her family, the former and future capital of Germany was divided, with the Soviet Union occupying East Berlin and the American, British and French sectors constituting West Berlin. Although the Berlin Wall had yet to be constructed, relations between the Soviet Union and the Western powers were becoming increasingly hostile, contributing to the Soviet-imposed economic blockade of West Berlin. This lasted from June 1948 until May 1949, and was circumvented by the Berlin Airlift that Mrs Robertson recalls below. Mrs Robertson's reminiscences originally appeared in the May 2008 issue (No. 149) of Pennant, the journal of the Forces Pension Society (see http://www.forpen.org for more information), and TACA thanks Mrs Robertson and Pennant for permission to reproduce them.
'My father took over the job of British Commandant in Berlin from General Herbert, when the airlift was already in train, and it then continued for some months. The planes flew constantly non-stop over our house and, together with the French and Americans, kept the city alive.
I offer some memories of that time: the lovely house and garden on the outskirts of the city, sloping to the edge of Lake Havel, and which I think belongs to a German industrialist; summer parties on the terrace; a garden party for displaced persons from the Russian Sector; sailing on Lake Havel; and on the opposite side the woods and beach enjoyed by Berliners; the grey grimness of much rubble still; and no entry to the Russian Sector except by strict permits, some for permission to go to the opera. Hitler's Bunker and Spandau Jail, and, of course, the famous Olympic Stadium; overnight journeys by train from Berlin to the British Zone and vice versa, and sometimes by car down the autobahn through the Russian Zone without stopping.
Above: A postcard, dating from the 1950s, showing the Soviet War Memorial on the Straße des 17. Juni, in West Berlin's Tiergarten district (in the British Sector), and the ruined Reichstag.
The British way of life had to be separate, with its own currency, bus transport etc. The only leeway I had was once or twice to visit the home of my music teacher in the American Sector (she had two harpsichords, which took up most of the room) and to go with her to a carol concert in a large church in the Kurfürstendamm, which was unforgettable.
An erstwhile ADC of my father's went back in recent years to the house we lived in and found little had changed and received a warm welcome. My mother took great care and delight in the garden, and the large greenhouse was full of cyclamen plants in the winter, which could either be piled into the house or even picked, there were so many. I often think the German gardeners must have been consoled by such enthusiasm, the results of which contrasted so greatly with the surrounding circumstances of hardship and deprivation and such destruction in the city. Although I learnt German, it is my regret that I was unable to go around freely except on an occasional bus.
Plainly my father did his very best for the people of Berlin, and they were immensely grateful. Although I did not know it at the time, he resurrected the Tiergarten with seeds specially chosen for the soil and collected in Britain, and he also built a church for the British community.
I am sure that some of you reading this will have other and completely different reminiscences, and will remember far more than I have written here.'
Elizabeth Robertson (née Bourne).
PERSONAL STORY: BERLIN, 1948 TO 1951
In the following account, Tim Sanders describes the excitement of travelling from England to Berlin in 1948, and of settling into a war-devastated city that had been divided into four sectors controlled by the four occupying powers. He continues by describing the life that he led as an army child in West Berlin – then a frontline city on the very edge of the Iron Curtain – at the start of the Cold War era, until his father was posted away.
'I was born in Hertfordshire in 1944, was evacuated to Wales and then lived with other family members in Kent and Guernsey after the war ended, our house in Finchley, north London, having been destroyed by bombing. Indeed, my first flight ever was at the age of three, when I flew in a De Havilland Rapide biplane from the then Croydon Airport to Guernsey, to live with my maternal aunt for several months; the eventual return to the mainland by boat to Weymouth was a distinct anti-climax. All this time my father was still serving abroad in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, transferring in 1947 to the Royal Tank Regiment. We were living in Farnham, Surrey, when he was posted to Berlin, and we were to follow.
The route was from Farnham to London Waterloo Station, and then to Liverpool Street Station for the boat train to Harwich Parkeston Quay. After that, it was by overnight boat to the Hook of Holland for one of three military trains taking military forces and their families to selected areas of BAOR (British Army of the Rhine). For those going to Berlin, it would take all day, from 0700 to 1730, to reach the border between the British Zone and the Russian Zone at Bad Oeynhausen. A change of trains here, with a short stay in a local hotel, would be followed by a journey on the sealed and guarded overnight sleeper train through the Russian Zone, reaching Berlin at around 0600. The train consisted of only a few coaches, guarded by an officer and several men, all armed, and with live ammunition. So it was to be a long journey, and it was very exciting for me to be going abroad for the first time.
I have a range of particular memories of this journey. They start with the dark and dingy recesses of Liverpool Street Station: smoke and the smell of hot engines, steam and bustle, hot metal, whistles blowing, doors slamming and the dimly lit compartment booked for my mother, my younger brother of only a few months of age, and me. Then the dingy cabin, somewhere in the depths of the ship, allocated to the three of us, followed by the bitter cold of the Dutch morning air as we walked 200 yards from the ship to the waiting train, through military police and immigration checkpoints. I think that the "Berlin" train was Train A. We had our own six-seat compartment, and for me the big attraction was the huge picture window so that I could see everything much more easily than from British carriages.
The seemingly endless journey, at never more than slow-to-medium speed, took us across flat Holland into Germany. We passed tens of miles upon tens of miles of wrecked rolling stock, some already rusting, with bullet holes plain to see, some semi-burned out, all seemingly parked to await their eventual fate, and all clearly looking to me, even at that young age, wrecked beyond further use. I was very glad to have my big window to look out of because the corridor down the other side of the carriage was always full of soldiers in their khaki battledress uniform. They came from various organisations, many of them with white-lettered-on-red-background shoulder flashes giving the titles of their units or service. They were all smoking, so it was very stuffy walking down the train for the meals that we had in the open-spaced dining car.
By the time we reached the evening pause point at Bad Oeynhausen, I was thoroughly exhausted, and I can just remember tumbling into the bed in the sleeper train – again, a first for me. The blinds were supposed to be kept down all the time that we travelled through the Russian Zone, but I remember that the jolt of the train stopping woke me up in the middle of the night and that I then decided to have a peek out of the window. However, all that I could see was a poorly lit platform with nobody there – and the next thing I recall was arriving in Berlin to drive some distance to the requisitioned family house in Charlottenburg, a well-to-do residential suburb in the British Sector of the city. Number 10, Warnen Weg, had escaped the bombing – and is still there as I write today (in 2008). Even at that early hour of the day, I remember that many of the buildings that we passed were in ruins, and that in some streets it was necessary for our vehicle to drive in a series of "S" bends in order to keep moving forward. It was a day or so before I had recovered from what was, for me, a very exciting journey, but some 60 years later, I still love travelling internationally.
SETTLING INTO A PARTITIONED CITY
Warnen Weg, in Charlottenburg, was only about 10 minutes' walk from the British Officers' Club, and also from the NAAFI Families' Shop. That was on a big roundabout, then called the Reichskanzlerplatz (literally "Reichs Chancellor Place" in English), but since renamed in order to be politically correct in the post-war era. Warnen Weg itself was seemingly a long road in my memory, but I was then a small boy, and it is, in fact, only about 100 yards long. The houses at each end of the road had been completely or partially destroyed, and as a small boy, you could wander in and out of them at will. One bungalow had housed an architect's business and contained hundreds of building plans, as well as all of the normal household contents. Several other army families lived in Warnen Weg, most of the fathers being captains or majors.
Our four-bedroomed house in Warnen Weg is still there today; it would be some 25 years later, in the second half of the 1980s, that I would revisit it. We had a large staff as a contribution towards raising employment levels amongst the Berliner population and getting the economy back on its feet. I don’t know what they were paid, but the fact of a job was an obvious morale-booster. We shared our boilerman with No 6 and No 8, the coal-stoked boiler being vital in winter. I suppose that he slept in one or all three of the houses – he didn't have his own room in the basement. We had a live-in cook/housekeeper, a kindly lady called Herta, whose family had all been killed. Herta had one day off a week and she lived in the attic level of the house. We also had a cleaning lady who would come in some days a week – and all of this for my father's rank as a junior captain. But these were very unusual times, of course. I remember vividly the huge double radiators under the very large, double picture windows that kept the house airy, yet warm, in the winter. The window handles were too heavy for me to operate. I started my stamp collection in Berlin. German stamps with face values of millions of marks from the 1930s' period, when a suitcase of banknotes was needed to buy a loaf of bread, were still very easily obtainable from the few stamp dealers in business then. I would walk to the NAAFI shop to buy my latest stamp collectors' magazine, much of it above my head, but you had to start somewhere; then I would sit at home by the big radiators in the winter sunshine to read up on the latest news.
Winter in Berlin could be very cold indeed; it is easy to underestimate how far east Berlin lies, and its relative proximity to Siberia. One day, I was outside in brilliant sunshine for over two hours, without any protective hat, and the wind-chill factor must have been very high. I got second-degree frostbite on the edges of my ears, and every summer for at least 20 years after that my ears would blister and peel in the summer sun.
My father was a captain, the second-in-command of the Royal Tank Regiment's "Independent" tank squadron, a token presence in Berlin of some 15 to 20 tanks, surrounded as the city was by the Russian Zone, then containing thousands of Russian troops and, no doubt, hundreds of tanks in numerous tank divisions and mechanised infantry divisions. I expect that the Americans and the French had some tanks, too, in their respective sectors of Berlin, but I never saw them. The British Sector contained Spandau Prison, where the British forces had the rotational task, shared with the other Allies, of guarding Rudolf Hess. I suppose the token British tank squadron was an early forerunner of tripwire diplomacy as it wouldn't have lasted five minutes against the Russians. There was a real concern amongst the adults regarding what the Russians could do if they chose to, but like many other such very real threats, we lived so close to it every day that we tended to ignore it in favour of getting on with day-to-day events. This was so even in 1950, when memories of the Berlin Airlift of the previous year [June 1948 to May 1949] were still crystal clear.
These were pre-Wall days, and you could visit the Russian Sector of Berlin out of sheer curiosity. The reader should remember that the Russian "Zone" that surrounded Berlin was the region that began once you reached the "outward boundary" of each of the four "sectors", i.e., the British, American, French and Russian Sector respectively. The Russian Sector's border with the other three sectors was also the border between West Germany and East Germany, so in order to buy anything in the Russian Sector, you had to obtain East German Deutschmarks. The rate of exchange was 4 East marks to 1 West mark, but the point was that only three items were really worth buying. Firstly, there were the carved Russian dolls in wooden, brightly painted "nests", probably three or four dolls to a nest, which would be about 6 inches high at the most. Secondly, 33 rpm long-playing records by Polydor of classical music were popular with the adults, for those that had record players (we didn't have one). Thirdly, tickets for the East German opera house were popular for monthly visits by the British (my parents went occasionally). I saw my first Russian soldiers at the daily guard-changing ceremony at the Soviet Army War Memorial (pictured at left in 2007) in the Russian Sector.
You could also pass through the Russian Sector by taking the S-Bahn (the "S" stands for both Stadt, or "city", and Schell, or "fast", in German, an English aide-mémoire being "S" for "surface") suburban train, or a U-Bahn ("U’ standing for Untergrund, or "underground") train. The various routes for these trains crisscrossed between the fringes of the Russian Sector, on the one hand, and the other three Allied sectors, on the other hand. You had to be very careful indeed not to alight from these trains within the Russian Sector because to do so as a family unit without a uniformed Allied forces member present was strictly forbidden, and would have caused a local incident of considerable proportions. It always felt a bit worrying when transiting these bits of the Russian Sector, but nothing ever went wrong for us.
I have a strong recollection of the pungent smell of cigars that was always present in public places, especially on buses, trams and trains. ("No smoking" carriages hadn’t been thought of yet.) The same smell was ever present in the concrete fortifications that still lay everywhere, wide open to inquisitive investigation by a small boy such as me. (I had experienced this before on Guernsey, in the massive towers and bunkers built there by the Germans.) It was as if the smokers had left only yesterday.
My father obtained for virtually nothing a former Mercedes-Benz four-seater staff car as a family car. It had a brown fabric roof that folded right back and rested on the rear of the back seat. It was coloured medium green, had very big headlights, a big wooden steering wheel and looked very grand. There was a Union-flag metal badge on the front and back bumper, as required by Allied occupation rules. It would be a classic car if it was around today in 2008, and was exactly the model that senior German Army officers had used in Hitler's army. Petrol was rationed somehow, and as most places that one needed to reach were within walking distance, the car was normally used at weekends only.
We used to go sailing at the British Officers' Yacht Club at RAF Gatow, on the river Havel, in the forested area called the Grunewald. This is one of the "green" areas of Berlin and is still there today. The river widens out to some 984 feet or more, and there was plenty of space in which to sail. I learned to sail in Berlin, mainly in a four-berth Bermudan sloop about 35 feet long, known as a "One Hundred Square" because that was the area of its mainsail. There were two or three of these large yachts and a further dozen or so half-decked racing yachts, known as the "Star" class, all requisitioned from German sources.
There was an island that we used to circumnavigate about 30 minutes from the moorings; such a sail took most of the day because the wind direction required many changes of course rather than a simple, straight-line approach and return. The Pfauen Insel (Peacock Island) lay beneath a rocky promontory on the river bank, which had a Greek Orthodox church on top of it. At midday daily, the bells of the church tolled out the melody "Now Thank We All Our God". You had to be careful when going around the island to keep well inside a line of yellow buoys marking the line of the Russian Zone (not the Russian Sector) across the river Havel. Once one of the "One Hundred Squares" caused an international incident in daylight by crossing the line and continuing onwards. It was rewarded with a burst of machine-gun fire through the mainsail, albeit well above the heads of the crew. It was only then that the yacht went about and returned to the right side of the border.
The back of the sailing-club building was on the Russian Sector's border, I think. On occasions, cases of vodka would be handed through a back window by a Russian in exchange for cases of whisky handed back by a sailing-club member.
I drank my first ever Coca-Cola at the US Officers' Club, which seemed to me to be a very grand building in comparison to the single-storey British Officers' Club. I will never forget the look and taste of this fizzy, dark-brown, sweet liquid, chilled to a very suitable coolness and very delicious. It was a great change from the usual fizzy ginger ale that was the only special drink available as a treat for a small boy at the British Officers' Club.
Our chief food supply was the daily ration truck; it being 1948, rationing applied here just as it did in England. A cardboard box provided our staple food for 24 hours. There was always greengage jam – no other flavours. (In later life, I became a marmalade gourmet in retaliation!) Buying food in the few food shops that were open in the city was subject to very strict rules, not to mention the intermittent availability of the food itself. Dairy produce of any kind was strictly forbidden as the hygiene system was still being re-established. Vegetables could only be bought at certain open street markets or shops, all listed officially. In any case, you needed West German Deutschmarks to buy anything in the city; the army issued you with British Armed Forces Vouchers (BAFVs), which were paper money. There was even a 3-penny paper note as the smallest-denomination paper money within the BAFV range; it was about the same size as today's 5-euro note and it was coloured a sort of orange brown. My pocket money was 1 shilling a week, so the 3-penny note was important to me as a quarter of my weekly income.
Above: A £1 British Armed Forces Special Voucher (2nd series, issued in 1948).
If my mother took me to the shops other than the NAAFI, we used to get a snack consisting of a Bockwurst (a boiled sausage) and a bread roll with mustard. These were available from a multitude of little stalls on wheels that were very much a part of the street scene then, standing on many of the corners of main street intersections in the city centre. Heaven knows what was in the sausages, but they never did us any harm and they were a huge relief after the British rations – especially the dreaded greengage jam!
When shopping, we used to visit the well-known department store called KaDeWe (pronounced "KarDayVay") quite a lot. The name is an abbreviation of the words Kaufhaus des Westens ("Department Store of the West" in literal English translation). I don't know how much of the bombing it escaped, but it certainly must have been one of the first shops to be reinstated as it had always been a focal point on the Tauentzienstraße, adjoining the main shopping street, the Kurfürstendamm – rather like Selfridge's position on Oxford Street, London. In my day, it had four floors; today, in 2008, there are six or seven. The presence, and reasonable stocking, of the shop was very much one of the key demonstrations by the Berliners of their determination to get back on their feet after the war, and I know from comments made by our house staff of Berliners that they were proud of the fact. It was only 100 yards or so from the famous Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche, the bombed church whose remains stand today in the centre of the Kurfürstendamm as a memorial to the destruction of World War II. On the top floor of the KaDeWe (pictured at right in 2007)
My primary school in Berlin was a former three-storied Schloß (castle, or fortified mansion) in its own substantial grounds on rising land. It had been converted for its new task by the BFES (British Families Education Service), the British forces' educational authority, which also ran secondary education at two boarding schools in the British Zone of Germany, as well as a range of other primary schools at the British garrisons there. The BFES was not to be confused with the BFBS, or British Forces Broadcasting Service, the British forces' own radio-broadcasting service. The Americans had AFN, the American Forces Network. I expect the French had an equivalent, though I never heard it. The BFBS was an important link and morale-sustainer for the British and their families, surrounded as we were by Russians who might invade and roll over the city at any time, as it seemed. My classroom was on the first floor and had a good view over the surrounding city. When it snowed, we tobogganed down the lawned slope at the front of the school. This was the first of three such BFES schools that I attended in BAOR before going to boarding school in 1955 at Dulwich College, London. I must be one of a number of young people who, in history lessons, learned three times about the Romans, without ever getting past Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain in AD 44. Personally speaking, I am sure that the BFES teachers were very earnest, but I am not sure that they were very good.
I learned to swim properly in Berlin, having started to do so before leaving Farnham. In Berlin, the swimming club had the use of the 1936 Olympic Games pool, indoor in winter and complete with 10-metre diving-boards' structure. I and some of my chums soon learned to jump off the 10-metre board, but I was the first to dive off it. Years later, I was to become a trained military parachutist with ease, having no fear of heights. The British Officers' Club in Charlottenburg had a small outdoor pool, and for two years running I was the first to swim in it after Easter and the annual snow-melting.
The reconstruction of Berlin was a massive task, of course, and when I lived there, virtually every other building was in ruins and was spread halfway across the street, or so it seemed. Every day at noon, sirens wailed across the city and everything came to a halt. Then explosions began and continued over the next hour as structures were "blown down" to be cleared. Huge mounds of debris grew up in designated areas of the city; as boys, we called them "dubble rumps" (i.e., "rubble dumps"). It was these mounds that became the small hills and raised areas that constitute the little parks with grass and trees that you can see around Berlin today. In winter, we used these newly-formed hills as toboggan runs; they were very dangerous because we had no knowledge of how deep the snow cover really was, and you had to steer around all of the mangled bits of reinforcing metal rods sticking up all over the place.
LEAVING BERLIN
It eventually became time to leave Berlin as my father was posted to a Royal Tank Regiment base at Fallingbostel, one of the big garrisons in north-western Germany. It would take all day to drive there in our grand old Mercedes-Benz staff car. The first stage was to drive down the British Sector part of the autobahn to the Russian Zone border; this included driving along one side of the autobahn that had been the famous AVUS motor-racing circuit during the 1930s. The Russian Zone transit would take up to three hours, depending on how long any inspections at border checkpoints might take. This would include crossing the river Elbe on the still "temporary" wooden bridge built by the Russians after the Germans blew up the original structure on their final retreat to Berlin in 1945. It was still relatively unusual for British families to drive out of Berlin rather than take the train, but under the right circumstances I think that these road transits were encouraged as a demonstration of the Allied right to do so. We had a large envelope of instructions, some written in Russian, but we were warned that most of the guards could not read and that we were not to laugh if they studied the papers obviously upside down. No stops were permitted, driving was to be at a certain steady speed so that the Russians could estimate where one should be on the route at any time, and so on.
We had been warned about the "duty nail-hitter" who would hold up progress at the river Elbe bridge, which was about 200 yards long and built of huge balks of timber, with a planked surface to drive on, in a one-way-only traffic system. True to form, as our car, with its prominent Union-flag metal badge, approached the bridge threshold, a character in overalls, carrying a large carpenter's cloth bag, appeared from nowhere some 50 yards in front of us, on the bridge, and raised his hand to stop us. He then took five minutes to select a good spot for the longest nail that I have seen to this day, and then slowly, and deliberately, banged it home into the decking. Every few strokes of the hammer, he would look up and grin, as if to say, "We control this road, you don't". Eventually, he decided that he was ready and waved us forward with much ceremony. The rest of the Russian Zone crossing was uneventful; it was in daylight, of course, and you couldn’t see much from the autobahn. I so clearly recollect that everywhere was totally deserted – there was not even an animal in a field – and, of course, there were no service stations. There were no other vehicles on the other carriageway either, just miles and miles of autobahn in indifferent states of repair; we could almost have been on the moon, and my mother said that it gave her the shivers.
"THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!"
I have kept until last a story of the terror that I experienced one night. I awoke in my bed to find the sky filled with flashing lights accompanied by a cacophony of bangs, crashes, whizzes, whooshes and so on – non-stop. Huge flashes of light were penetrating the curtains – surely this was the long-awaited Russian attack on Berlin that the adults had talked about. I knew exactly where my father kept his emergency bag that he would take on the crash-move exercise that they practised against such an event. I also knew that Herta, the housekeeper, was staying with friends, so I ran downstairs shouting, in the hope of finding my parents. It took the very surprised babysitter several minutes to calm me down, explaining that this was my first New Year's Eve in Berlin, complete with the customary fireworks that I had never experienced before!’
Tim Sanders (b.1944).
PERSONAL STORY: LIFE IN MARRIED QUARTERS IN EARLY POST-WAR BRITAIN
The combination of his father's army duties and his mother's illness resulted in a fractured family life for the young Peter Crump, who was born in Kent in 1944. Stability was at last established in early 1951, when the Crump family moved into brand-new married quarters at Manorbier, in Pembrokeshire, Wales.
'I was born in the last year of World War II (April '44), the first-born son of Ronald and Dawn Crump. At the time, my father was serving in the Royal Artillery in the London area. He was a sergeant major instructor in gunnery (SMIG) in the anti-aircraft branch of artillery. As far as I am aware, there were no married quarters in the area in those days, and so, like many young families, if they were fortunate, accommodation was found with relatives. The first couple of months of my life were spent with my maternal grandparents in their house in Welling, Kent. That is, until the V-1 bombs started dropping short of London in July – one exploded close enough to blow out all the windows of our home, so my mother took me off to stay with her maiden aunt near Bristol.
The next couple of years must have been a succession of long visits to relatives as my father continued his army duties around southern England and occupied Germany. As far as I can gather, the gunnery staff carried out much of their instruction in units, which is perhaps why I was christened in St Agnes, Cornwall. I understand that it coincided with a regimental ack-ack [anti-aircraft] firing camp.
It was during the awful winter of 1947, at the age of two years and ten months, that I had my first memory. By now, my father was on the staff at the School of Ack-Ack [School of Anti-Aircraft Artillery] at Manorbier, in west Wales, and we had been quartered in Lannion Barracks, Pembroke Dock. I can recall the troop-carrying vehicles (TCVs) bringing the soldiers back from work struggling to make it up the snow-covered hill at Lannion. Displaced Poles drove the TCVs. At an early age, I became aware of different modes of military transport. At a later age, when trolleys became all the rage, our trolleys would represent our favourite type of military lorry!
Over the next three years, there was a succession of memories associated with living once again with relatives, as my father's army duties must have taken him back to the London area. To make matters more difficult for my father, my mother contracted tuberculosis (TB) after the birth of my brother in March 1947. My mother spent many months in a sanatorium near Orpington [in Kent]. I stayed with my grandmother, and my brother, with an aunt, for a while. At some point, I was also deemed to be at risk from TB and was hospitalised in Brighton [in East Sussex] – a ghastly experience, made worse by falling out of bed and breaking my ankle, thereby prolonging my stay in the hospital. My father spent his spare time visiting his wife and two sons, all separately located and all done by public transport! At some point, my brother and I spent time in Dr Barnado's Homes – again in different locations. I guess that my mother was still in hospital, and that there was simply no one to look after us. I do remember a short interlude when we were accommodated in the brand-new NAAFI hostel built at Chatham [in Kent]. This was the first time that the family had been together since those few months in Pembroke Dock. The hostel provided food, as well as accommodation. The restaurant was cafeteria style, and I was mesmerised by having a choice of food. Up until then, I had found that food was something to be endured – strange to think that NAAFI food introduced me to the delights of eating.
MOVING TO MANORBIER
The turbulence and uncertainty came to an end in the winter of 1950. My father was posted back to the School of Ack-Ack, Manorbier, and by early spring, the first batch of newly built quarters was ready for occupation. We moved into number 31 Gray Avenue, a semi-detached, two-bedroomed house complete with coke boiler and coal fire in the sitting room. The additional heating was in the form of single-bar electric heaters placed on the wall of the bedrooms. Shortly after moving in, the house numbers were changed, and our house became number 7. I never understood the reason for this, but it stuck in my memory. Life gradually took on a sense of normality. A month or so after moving in, my brother, of whose existence I was not conscious up until that time, rejoined the family.
Life in quarters at Manorbier became fun. Other families had moved into the quarters, and they had children, so there were friends to be made, games to be played and places to explore. There was also regular school to attend. The nearest – in fact, only – school available was the CE [Church of England] primary school on the other side of Manorbier village. This was a typical mid-Victorian school, built of stone to last and made up of no more than three classrooms. The privy was an afterthought, and of the hole-in-the-ground type. The school kitchen was an asbestos hut with a large, coke-heated oven. The chimney from this oven gave off a very peculiar and unpleasant smell – a kind of mixture of burnt gravy intermingled with coke gasses. The school had to cope with a considerable influx of new pupils, for which it was never properly equipped. The headmaster was a Mr Morgan: a tall, angular gentleman, who was always immaculately dressed in a pinstriped suit. All of the children were in complete awe of him, if not downright fearful! The headmaster took the senior (grammar-school) class, and Mr Morse took the next age group down, followed by Mrs Thomas and Miss Lewis, who taught the infant class. I must say that they were brilliant and very professional teachers. Despite having only three classrooms and four teachers, no hard-standing play area and very little equipment, the staff of that school provided us with a very solid grounding in the three Rs.
Travelling to school presented a problem: there was no school bus, so the army had to take on the task. If you needed to move troops around, the army used TCVs. Children were no different, so for quite a while our school bus was a TCV. The TCV delivered us to, and collected us from, school. Some drivers were more accommodating than others. We loved travelling in the back of the truck on our own, and, on occasions, we were able to persuade the driver to take a non-standard route, thereby prolonging the journey, or even to take the vehicle cross-country for a short while to increase the bumpiness of the ride. After a year or so, the local bus company was persuaded to provide a school bus. The school day in the early 1950s was from 0830 to 1600 hours. The school kitchen provided school dinners at 6 pence per day, the half-crown dinner money being collected on Monday mornings.
Manorbier Camp was a source of interest to us children. We became expert at recognising the various vehicles and other equipment. Exercises in those days were called "schemes", and from time to time the road running alongside the quarters would rumble with the noise of heavy vehicles and massive radar trailers going on a scheme.
We supported the school (of artillery) football and cricket teams, of course, and by copying our elders we learnt the "shouts" and many of the names of the soldiers in the teams. Although the camp had a barrier and guard hut on the road into it, it was open to all foot-borne traffic. This, of course, meant that we could explore, and we came to know where the MT [military transport] compound was, the camp NAAFI, various messes, the cookhouse and so on. There was a small and permanently manned MI [medical inspection] room. Mr Rolfe was the civilian medic – he was a kind, and gentle, man. Sometimes he dealt with our cuts and grazes, and occasionally he stitched us up, but we were always welcome to drop into his hut for a chat. This was special because grown-ups were not inclined to chatter idly with small boys. From time to time, we were invited by Mr Rolfe to travel in the Austin ambulance when it had to take a soldier for an appointment at the nearest main hospital at Haverfordwest. To ride in the ambulance with its canvas doors, preferably rolled back, was a real treat.
The weather always seemed to be good to tolerable. Occasionally, all-day rain curtailed activities and one was confined indoors, but my overall memory tells me that most of our spare time was spent out of doors. There never seemed to be any shortage of things to do: there were the wonderful cliff paths to explore, particularly the walk to the Lydstep Caverns and the path down to Skrinkle beach. The summertime meant organised visits to the beach and swimming. In reality, the swimming wasn't very good, but the body-surfing was what we really enjoyed. The routes to and from Skrinkle beach and Manorbier beach were via public rights of way. Derelict pillboxes, haystacks and apple trees all had to be explored. Hedges and fences were no bar to us: we went where our fancy took us – no one seemed to mind.
The local farms specialised in dairy herds and early new potatoes. The farmers were tolerant, and we were invited in to watch the cows being milked and even try our hand at it. Milking by hand was not unusual; delivery of bottled milk had still to reach west Wales. Mr Johns, our local dairyman from Manorbier, delivered the milk around the quarters. The milk was unpasteurised and had come straight from the cow that morning. The wives came to the van with their jugs, with the milk being doled out from the churn with a pint scoop! The early potato crop was very important to the farmers. Both food and labour were still in short supply, and much of their labour came from the camp: in the early evening, the farmers would visit the camp to pick up those soldiers – mostly national servicemen – who were looking to earn some extra money. They would be taken off, sitting on the back of a flat-bed trailer, to the field to pick potatoes until last light. The farmers would even take us young boys on Saturdays – I was aged no more than nine, but a day's work in the fields could, and did, produce 30 shillings' payment. A handsome sum indeed! I can remember that eggs had to be laid down in isinglass, because eggs, like everything else in those days, were strictly seasonal. Turkeys were almost unknown, and chicken was reserved for Christmas. Everyone had a vegetable garden, and any surplus was salted and bottled for later use. Rabbits were a welcome source of meat. We even saw the Breton onion-sellers, complete with berets and bicycles, at the appropriate time of the year.
SOME SIGNIFICANT DATES AND SUNDAY SCHOOL
Dates, as such, were not important to us kids except at Christmas and on birthdays. However, 1951 sticks in my mind because of the Festival of Britain. I didn't get to go to London, but several of the children from the quarters did. Then, of course, the next key date was in 1952, and the death of King George VI. There was a subdued tone amongst the grown-ups. The normal wireless programmes were dispensed with and sombre music was the order of the day. There was an atmosphere that we children didn't understand. June 1953 brought the Coronation and television. There were one or two families that had television, including good friends of my parents, Vi and Johnny Johnson, who were without children, but did have television. They kindly invited a host of neighbours with children to watch the Coronation on television. It was a marvellous day, culminating in a mammoth open-air tea party and fireworks under the castle at Manorbier beach. This was a combined party of locals from the village and people from the quarters.
The wireless played an increasingly important part in our lives. When we first moved into the quarters, we didn't own one. Then, one Saturday, I can remember my father coming back from Tenby with a very large box, which turned out to be a wireless. My mother introduced me to listening to the wireless, and I became an avid fan of Mrs Dale's Diary and Housewives' Choice, as well as Jennings Goes to School. The wireless proved a great source of entertainment, and, unsurprisingly, given a choice even today, I prefer the radio to the television!
I shouldn't finish without mentioning Sunday school. Sunday school was the norm for many of us. Not in my case, I think, because my parents were particularly religious, but more because it freed most of Sunday afternoon up for them! The local village church was near Manorbier beach, and on the opposite side of the valley to the castle. It was always a drag to walk to the church, but if we were lucky, the Reverend Davis gave us a lift home in his Morris Minor. These were some of the very few occasions on which we travelled in a motor car, and it more than made up for going to Sunday school. Normal travel (and even that was occasional) was by bus or train.
Above: A pre-World War II view of Manorbier Castle and village.
Looking back, I find it difficult to comprehend how much freedom we were allowed. There seemed to be very few restrictions placed upon us. We came and went as we pleased, and provided that we were present for meals, no one seemed to mind. A high proportion of our increasing knowledge came from our peer group: the facts of life were passed on by those a couple of years older who had moved on to Tenby Grammar School, who were given them in their first year at school. (At the time, I thought the whole thing highly improbable.) Grown-ups didn't figure largely in our lives, except, perhaps, at school. There were obvious shortages of money, choice and food were strictly seasonal, but we knew no different, so it did not affect us in any way. Sweets were still rationed, but again, we knew no other system. In retrospect, I think that I was very fortunate to have had such an interesting, carefree and enjoyable time between the ages of six and ten at Manorbier. I suspect that few children today could be so fortunate as we were.'
Peter Crump (b.1944).
PERSONAL STORY: AN EAST AFRICAN ADVENTURE
Penelope Ann Perry was three when, in 1949, she and her mother travelled to Kenya to join her father – himself once an army child – who had been assigned to the 5th Battalion, King's African Rifles. In the course of her tale, Penelope describes the long journey from England to Kenya, and the dilapidated corrugated-iron farmhouse near Nakuru, the 'married quarter' that became her family's home. She also conveys the excitement of living in East Africa, and the dreariness of an interim posting to Staffordshire before the family's subsequent return, this time to Jinja, Uganda. In conclusion, she reflects that their experiences as an army family in Africa from the late 1940s to the 1960s had a lasting effect on their lives.
'I grew up the child of a British Army soldier and recognise that my sister and I are fortunate in that Dad always made it home. He, too, had been an army child. I had lived in Lancashire, Cheshire and Hertfordshire by the time I was three. Prior to my birth in 1946, my father had spent six years in India and Kashmir; my bedtime stories were often Rudyard Kipling's intertwined with tales of the many cities that Dad had been to and the experiences that he had had in these places.
In 1949, my mother and I travelled by troopship from England to Kenya to join my father, who had been stationed, unaccompanied, in Egypt. He had left England when I was one month old, and had now arrived in East Africa, having been assigned to the 5th Battalion, King's African Rifles, at Nakuru. I recall being held up to the railings on HMT Empire Ken to see Mount Vesuvius light up the night sky as we travelled off the coast of Italy. I explored the bazaars of Port Suez with my mother, who was grateful to get off the ship, having spent the entire journey confined to our cabin trying to overcome seasickness. A young woman in the cabin next door, en route to join her husband in Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe], kindly took me to the dining room for meals. My mother must have been relieved to finally arrive in Mombasa, Kenya. I could not remember my father at that point, but he was very happy to see my mother and me. Dad took us to stay in the town and promised to bring us back to the beautiful beaches, a promise that he kept, as we were to make many more trips there.
Below: My mother and me on the beach at Mombasa (left). Dad (he's the one with the pipe) with Samburu tribesman at Archers Post, Kenya, in 1949, just prior to our arrival (right).
Our "married quarter" near Nakuru was a corrugated-iron farmhouse, set on 3 acres of uncultivated land at the end of a dirt road. It was known locally as Rubens Farm. It was so awful that Mother cried when she first saw it. The house was built up on stilts, supposedly to stop rats and snakes from entering the house. Whoever thought that this would deter them knew nothing of either species as the house had been taken over by both! The inside of the house was very spacious, with large rooms that had wooden-plank mahogany floors that had been very well polished and maintained at one time, but were uncared for and filthy when we first arrived.
At the side of the house was an enormous water tank. Situated under mature oak trees, it was made of corrugated iron and measured about 6 feet across and 12 to 15 feet high. It was our only water supply, providing rainwater, and had a sieve-like cover on the top to stop leaves and debris from ending up in the bathtub. Dad had to climb a tree periodically to get to the top of the tank to keep the sieve relatively clean. I liked it when he did this as he would help me up into the tree with him, and from the top we could see giraffes, zebras and other types of wildlife in the distance. We had no electricity, so I cannot fathom how water got from the tank to the house without some type of pump. Water then had to be heated on the stove and poured into the tub. At the age of five I thought that this was great fun, but I would not feel the same way today!
Left: My father and me making 'mud pies' – I would rather have made sandcastles on the beach, but army children and their parents are adept at improvising!
Lighting at night came from paraffin-filled lamps that we Brits call "Tilley lamps". Without electricity, Mother did all the laundry by hand, including bed linen and towels, and, after my sister was born, nappies (there was no such thing as "disposable" then). All linens had to be washed in the bathtub as the kitchen sink was too small. The kitchen had only a wood-burning stove, which was similar in design to what in England is known as an Aga, but it would have to be fed with logs from early in the morning in order to get it hot enough to cook an evening meal. I will forgive the reader for thinking that this was the American Wild West of the 1850s, but it was not – it was British East Africa in the 1950s!
The army furnished the house, and Mother made curtains from fabric that she had bought at an Indian store in Nakuru. She polished the floors and decorated them with her hand-hooked rugs. Her embroidery, and her mother's bone china, which she had brought with her, was displayed on the dresser. She planted a flower and herb garden around the house, which became her little corner of England. She made it into a lovely home and cried when she had to leave it.
My school holidays were spent exploring new places, which often included the beaches of Mombasa and the surrounding countryside. We often took the train to the coast, and, through the compartment windows, could view an abundance of wildlife: elephants, zebras, giraffes and wildebeests, all in their natural habitat.
When my mother was pregnant with my sister, she would have to travel to Nairobi for her regular check-ups, and I would accompany her. We made one such trip in the company of several other pregnant military wives. We were seated in the back of a 3-ton army lorry for the hot, dusty and bone-shaking trip. There was often heavy rain, and if the roads were muddy, we would get stuck in the mud and the driver would have to elicit help from local tribesmen to push us out. One day, we were escorted by a single armed soldier who was about eighteen years old, whose first assigned mission was to accompany and help these pregnant women in and out of the back of the lorry, once they had got the tailboard down. He was made fun of for the entire trip, and I often wondered if his family heard the true story of his first mission in darkest Africa!
SENT TO STAFFORDSHIRE AND THEN BACK TO AFRICA!
My sister was about two when we were sent to cold and dreary Staffordshire. We all hated it: it was boring by comparison. Then, a year later, we were off again, back to Africa. We were all so excited when Dad told us. We had been given three weeks to pack, but mother could have done it in three days. This time, Dad was joining the 4th Battalion, King's African Rifles, at Jinja, Uganda, which was a new place to explore, but close enough for us to get back to Kenya when we wanted to. Things had progressed since 1949, and this time we arrived at Nairobi Airport by military charter and took the train through Kenya to Uganda.
In Jinja, my sister and I went to the local school, where we met children from all over, whose parents, if not in the British Army, were either missionaries or employed by the railways. We were driven to school by a soldier in whatever vehicle he could obtain from the MT [military transport] department that day. Sometimes it was a 3-ton lorry, and at other times it was an army ambulance or Land Rover. Each morning, I would walk with my sister down to where the school-bound vehicle would pick us up. It was a short walk of a few minutes from our home, and each day we would pass the same African soldier, or "askari". He was a heavy-set man, well over 6 feet tall, and he would always say "Hello" in Swahili as we passed. His name was Idi, and we saw him frequently. Years later, in 1971, when I was living in the United States, in Los Angeles, working, as it happened, for East African Airways, a message came over the Teletype one morning announcing that there had been a military coup in Uganda. The person who had taken charge of the government was Idi Amin, the very same Idi whom we had passed on our way to school each day! Strange, the turns that life takes, isn’t it? In 1959, we met Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother on a state visit to Uganda. A photograph taken of the four of us meeting her is one that I treasure.
During the 1960s, we were sent back to England, to Chester [in Cheshire]. It took a while, but we finally settled into English life there – well, almost. Seeking more excitement in my life, I joined the Royal Navy (sorry, Dad!) Even after my father retired from the army, he could not rid himself of the travel bug. And, as with many "old soldiers", he could never get used to being a civilian. My mother, too, had become accustomed to being uprooted every so often, and to being sent to some distant land where life was not always easy, but was ever so interesting. For many years, my parents would visit my husband and me here in the United States, or we would visit them in England, and the conversation invariably turned to reminiscences of the army and of our life in Africa.
My sister now lives in Spain, and I live in Miami. The life that we experienced as army children instilled in us both a sense of independence and a love of new places. We were exposed to people from other cultures and exotic food, and it gave us a first-hand education that we could not possibly have had in a classroom in England. I most certainly think that we are the better for it.'
© Penelope Ann Perry (b.1946).
PERSONAL STORY: THE CAMP AT HOHNE, GERMANY
The Friend family lived in Hohne, (West) Germany, from 1951 to 1961, and Terry Friend, whose father was in the Royal Horse Artillery, describes his memories of its camp below. (For his recollections of the family's married quarters in Hohne, see the 'ACCOMMODATION' page; for his memories of attending school in Hohne and Wilhelmshaven, see 'SCHOOLING'; for his childhood view of the repercussions of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, click here; for his reflections on Remembrance Day, click here; for his account of Christmases in Germany, click here; and for more about Terry himself, visit his website: http://www.another countrysong.com.)
'I've lived in many places, but very few of them have had the impact upon me, or impressed me as much, as Hohne did. The camp, which was established in the early 1930s, was huge, with wide areas of countryside between various areas of buildings. In fact, the camp itself was off the beaten track, being situated deep in the German countryside.
The wireless was the thing for us in 1951, that and the cinema. Yes, the camp boasted a cinema, with an excellent choice of films all week. There was always a "family" film scheduled for the weekend, and during our time there, the almost weekly family outing to the cinema became a much loved and longed-for treat. We always sat upstairs, which was reserved for married families; downstairs was for the soldiers. The stairway was made of stone slabs; these had been worn away. Every time I ascended those stairs, I thought about all the countless army boots (British and German) that had passed up and down to wear them out so much. There was a sort of Saturday Cinema Club, which Chris and I went to a couple of times, but we didn't like it all that much. There were no parents present, and it used to get quite unruly. Bored kids would throw things around and clamber through all of the seats, which were made of wood, and as you squeezed through, they would close behind you with a bang. The noise could be horrendous. I didn't envy the manager his job one bit. Often, he would stop the film, then we would all protest by stamping our feet and chanting "We want the film, we want the film". I bet Saturday was his worst day of the week.
There were two outdoor swimming pools, and we were to get to know these very well. In summertime, especially during the six-week school holiday, the pool area would almost become our second home. Mother would take us there every day when the weather was fine. She would sit on the grass and read her magazines, or knit, whilst we swam and splashed about for hours. At the beginning of the season (the pools were closed during the winter months), we would suffer agonies in the cold water.
The Roundhouse was, as the name suggests, a circular building – quite large, and quite unique, from an architectural point of view. During the war, it was the garrison officers' mess for the German forces stationed there. In our day, it was used for many things. In the middle was a large hall that was used like a community centre. Dances and sporting events were held there. I myself remember going to some of Pop's regimental boxing tournaments. Mother used to do fencing there at one stage, and I clearly recall being in tow on several occasions. SSAFA [Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Family Association] fêtes were held at the back every summer. There were horse and pony rides, swings and roundabouts and stalls of all kinds, much like a village fête at home. Once – probably the very first time that I ever sat on a horse – I promptly fell off the second the beast moved. It was a huge animal, and I was a very small boy. It was a long way down to the ground, and I almost knocked myself unconscious. That put paid to my afternoon's activities! On entering the main entrance, there was a lobby. A corridor led left to the NAAFI [Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes] shop, which was a local supermarket really. Turning right, down the other corridor, there was a small newsagent's and bookshop. Next door to that was the YMCA shop that sold all sorts of things: toys, gifts, sweets, watches, clocks – you name it, they sold it. At the far end of the corridor was the Other Ranks' (ORs') Club, which was strictly out of bounds to we children. The last point that I would like to make about the Roundhouse, which always struck me as odd, was that every building in the camp, including the married quarters, all had red or orange slates on the roof. For some reason, the slates on the roof of the Roundhouse were blue-grey in colour. The cinema was likewise adorned. I found it very strange that these two buildings alone had to be different from all the rest!
A grey van became part of the institution of life as we knew it in Germany. An enterprising shopkeeper from the nearby village of Bergen, a Mr Shomberg, had a grey van, and every Wednesday he would peddle his wares in the camp. Mother used his mobile shop every week. His grey van would pull up outside our house, and he would ring a hand bell to attract his customers. The side of the van would open up, and he would stand behind the counter and serve us. Mother would always buy us some sweets, and these I soon developed a passion for. They were, of course, German sweets, completely different in taste and texture from anything that we English were used to. I will always remember with fond affection the "chains" of pink, chewy "boys and girls" that I eagerly used to consume. His gingerbread men (and gingerbread ladies, too) had to be tasted to be believed. His liquorice also was a firm favourite. He sold all kinds of things, and I seem to remember us getting sausages, eggs and bacon from him. When we moved to England, the old grey van and its assortment of German sweets was one of the things that I sorely missed.'
Terry Friend (b.1947).
PERSONAL STORY: LIVING AND LEARNING IN AUSTRIA, 1953 TO 1955
John Leggett's father was in the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC), and John consequently lived in England (Catterick), Austria (Vienna, Graz and Klagenfurt) and West Germany (West Berlin, Bad Oeynhausen, Düsseldorf, Hildesheim, Wuppertal, Bad Harzburg, Goslar, Braunschweig [Brunswick], Herford, Osnabrück and Bielefeld) as a child. He went to school in many of these places, too, also attending Prince Rupert School (PRS) Wilhelmshaven, in West Germany, for over three years. John shares his memories of living in Austria below, adding that he has never met anyone who was at his BFES schools in Vienna, Graz (where he attended two schools) and Klagenfurt at the same time as him. Others are also keen to learn more about these schools (see, for example, 'TACA CORRESPONDENCE: INFORMATION SOUGHT ON ARMY SCHOOLS IN AUSTRIA'), so if you can help fill in the gaps, please do contact TACA.
'I was eight in 1952, when we travelled to Austria from Catterick Camp: Mum and I, my twin sisters and my baby sister. It seemed to take forever, starting with a train to King's Cross, in London, a troopship from Harwich to the Hook of Holland and then the dreaded military train. I can't remember exactly, but I think it took a day on the train to reach Vienna, arriving late on Christmas Eve, with all of us kids in panic mode: "How is Santa going to find us?" Dad met us, and Santa provided the goods the next day.
In Vienna, we lived in a small married-quarters' patch alongside the barracks at Schönbrunn. The school was very small, and was just inside a side gate to the barracks. It was only open at school start and finish times, so if we wanted to get into the barracks at any other time, we had a long walk round; some of us always managed to find a hole in the fence for a short cut, though. This school in Vienna was my seventh school in four years, so my early school memories are a bit blurred, and the only part of my schooling that I recall here is extra-curricular. Once, for example, during term time, a few of us were taken to a recording studio, which we were told was Hungarian, to make a voice-over, in German, for a film. Apparently, we British kids were used because our German sounded "posher" than that of the locals. Other memories of Vienna include:
- being sent to the baker's for bread and wandering further down the road to watch the Russian soldiers marching up and down;
- regular visits to the Schönbrunn Palace grounds and the zoo, unaccompanied by adults (I'm fairly certain that we used the hole-in-the-fence method of entry to the zoo, too);
- visiting the large Prater funfair, with its huge Ferris wheel;
- the regular parade involving British, Russian, French and US troops;
- the regular supply of American DC Comics that Dad acquired from his American mates at their NCOs' club; and
- regular deliveries of huge blocks of ice for use in meat safes as we didn't have fridges.
We stayed in Vienna for about a year before moving to Graz. Initially, we lived in a big apartment in the town. My school was not far from the famous Graz clock tower, and I'm sure that I walked to school. Later, we moved to married quarters near the barracks, and I changed schools to the one there. The school must have been for quite young children as, after a while, I didn't have any lessons and spent my time in the headmaster's office, messing about with the typewriter and doing odd chores. I was nine, and this was my ninth school.
As in Vienna, we were in Graz for about a year before moving to Klagenfurt. On arrival in Klagenfurt, we lived in a transit hotel, which was an Austrian guesthouse on the Wörthersee; I think that all of the occupants were British service families. We eventually moved to a married quarter beside the British military hospital at Lendorf, just outside Klagenfurt.
The school was in the centre of Klagenfurt: a large building, with a big concrete playground. The dining room was in a small building outside the main school site. I can remember that the headmaster was a Mr Watson. He drove a huge American car, but was really short and had cushions on the seat and blocks on the pedals so that he could reach them. I came across him some years later when I was at PRS Wilhelmshaven, and he was headmaster of the school at Jever. (I think he still had the big car then.) We were transported to school in the back of 3-ton trucks. These had folding seats down each side and a double row in the middle; there was a small set of steps permanently attached to the back for us to climb in on. We had an Austrian lady as an "escort" and used to drive her mad: as she counted us on to the bus, we'd climb out via the canvas sides of the truck and then join the queue to be recounted. Other memories of Klagenfurt are:
- the large fence around the barracks and the married quarters, as in Vienna, so that getting to the small local shops a few yards away involved either a long walk via the main gate or a climb under the fence – usually the latter;
- finding a disused wartime bunker built into a quarry. It was supposed to be locked, but we kids found a way in; and
- building a raft on the Wörthersee, which, surprisingly enough, actually floated.
We left Austria in 1955, when the Allied occupation ended, and whilst I have since met people who served there, mainly as conscripts, I've never come across anyone else like me who went to school there. I'd be delighted to hear of any others who were in Austria at the same time.'
John Leggett (b.1944).
PERSONAL STORY: HAPPY DAYS IN HONG KONG, 1953
A year in Hong Kong, when he was four years old, preceded Richard Hall's stint as an army child in Münster, Germany (see 'PERSONAL STORY: MEMORIES OF MÜNSTER, 1958–60' below). Here, he recalls the highlights of that year.
'We travelled out from Southampton on the troopship Empire Orwell. My mother was constantly suffering with seasickness; I seemed to be able to run about the entire ship, which appeared to be enormous. Families were meant to stay in the stern part of the ship, the forward area being reserved for single soldiers, but I got up to the bow one day and was dragged back by one of these soldiers before I fell overboard! The voyage took about a month, and as the sun had not yet set on the British Empire in 1953, we stopped at Port Said, Suez, Aden, Colombo and Singapore before arriving in Hong Kong.
We had a Chinese amah who looked after me once we got to Kowloon, and I was spoilt by this girl as I had white-blond hair (the local Chinese liked to touch my hair – it was meant to be lucky). I often went with her to visit her family. Another little adventure was when I got lost at the library at Whitfield Barracks in Nathan Road. I was playing on the swings while my mother was choosing some books. I went in to find her and, being very small, could not see her. Instead of waiting to see if she would turn up, I went out on to the street and got on the No 7 bus to our home in Boundary Street. Of course, when I got there, Ah Gee (the amah) asked me where my mother was, and I said that she had left me there at the library! Half an hour later, my mother turned up in a police car telling me that half of the Hong Kong police force was looking for me!
Above: The harbour at West Point, Hong Kong, in the early twentieth century.
The rest of my memory of Hong Kong is of countless days spent swimming at the various beaches around the area – it appeared to have been just one big holiday. Sadly, we came home after a year because my mother had not enjoyed the first few weeks in Hong Kong and we had to make a decision whether we wanted the posting to last for one or three years. I celebrated my fifth birthday on the Indian Ocean on our way home.'
Richard Hall (b.1948).
TACA CORRESPONDENCE: HELP SOUGHT REGARDING SEK KONG ARMY QUARTERS AND JUNIOR SCHOOL, HONG KONG
TACA has received the following message from William Ritson, who was born in 1945 and whose father was in the 1st King’s Regiment (Liverpool):
'I was brought up with the army until 1960. We lived all over the world and recently I have been trying to show my grandkids where we lived, with the help of Google Maps. I have found most places (Berlin, Kowloon, Osnabrück, Brentwood, Bury St Edmunds and Maghull), but I am drawing a blank with Sek Kong army quarters [in Hong Kong]. We moved there from Kowloon in 1953, after sailing out on the Empire Halladale – a great trip, with Christmas at sea. I have found RAF Sek Kong on the map, where we went swimming and to the cinema, sat on hard benches and watched mostly black-and-white films. My problem is tracing the army quarters, which were only ten minutes' walk from the RAF base and on the same road. I really can't find any landmarks at all. I would be grateful if anyone could help me with my search, with road names, map references, photographs or anything to do with Sek Kong army quarters. Thanks in anticipation.'
If you think that you can help William with his search for information about Sek Kong (now Shek Kong) during the 1950s, he can be e-mailed at the following address: writson@btinternet.com; alternatively, he can be contacted through TACA.
PICTURES: WEST RIDING BARRACKS, DORTMUND, (WEST) GERMANY, 1954–56
TACA has received the following letter and photographs from Alan Robson, or rather, from 22947259 Gunner Alan Robson, BHQ Battery, 45th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, BAOR 14, for his letter concerns his posting to West Riding Barracks in Dortmund, (West) Germany, from 1954 to 1956. (If you're interested in reading more about Alan's time at West Riding Barracks, click on: http://baor-locations.co.uk/westridingbarracksrobson. aspx.) Should you recognise any of the girls in Gunner Robson's photographs, Alan (and TACA) would be delighted to hear more.
'Having read, with great interest, many of the tales as told within the TACA archives, I, for some reason, could not shake the feeling, I was becoming ever more drawn into its pages. It truly was a strange feeling, finding oneself so deeply immersed within these stories, really strange. So much so, I began drifting back to a time when I had been a soldier, and had shared similar experiences of those times. I was a national service soldier, and conscripts at that time had very little in the way of wages. I clearly recall stepping up to the mark with an officer on parade, thrusting, as it were, the left hand forward, palm outstretched, while bringing the right hand smartly up and saluting that officer before stepping firmly back, holding tightly on to the 15 shillings sterling he had placed within my grasp. It would get a little better as time went by, but not a lot. Having finished your basic training, which was usually about eight weeks, you would then be dispersed to wherever, with my own posting taking me to Colchester, Essex. It had been rumoured that our intake was bound for the Far East, but with hostilities now at an end, mercifully we were spared this ordeal. On going overseas, however, we then became the advance party in preparation for the redeployment of the 45th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, to Dortmund, Germany, and the West Riding Barracks.
My reading of the stories within TACA brought many memories flooding back, so I thought that I would send some pictures from that time. The two young girls in one of them may well have been the children of military personnel, whose families would have lived within the confines of the married quarters. This section was situated at the bottom of the road, as seen in the picture of the little girl playing on a big girl's bike. Also at this point was the "Stonk Club", or YMCA. This building was a firm favourite of the soldier, and likewise of the married personnel, for it was their corner shop. One could go into this building, have a coffee, or perhaps a meal, do a spot of shopping or buy your gifts, your postcards and suchlike. I do believe that you could also make a phone call home from within this place – if you had the monies, that is.
Above: Two young ladies at the entrance to West Riding Barracks. They may well have been the children of army personnel, for it was not unusual to see children waiting around outside the gates for one or other of their parents.
Below: The YMCA, or 'Stonk Club', at West Riding Barracks.
My pictures were taken in random fashion, and with no purpose other than to record a time or a place, whereon one day he or she might look back and say, "Yes, I remember that". They were all taken in the years 1954 to 1956. The pictures are but frozen images, images of buildings, of places, and of people. People who just happened to be around at that time. Individuals like myself, who had little choice and were obliged to "follow the drum". No person ever having done his or her time would ever be likely to forget it.'
Alan Robson.
PERSONAL STORY: MEMORIES OF MÜNSTER, 1958–60
After their father was posted to Münster (in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany) in 1958, Roger Hall attended Prince Rupert School (PRS), then based in Wilhelmshaven (see under 'Links' on TACA'S 'SCHOOLING' page), while Richard, his younger brother, went to the primary school in Münster's Oxford Barracks. Richard (whose memories of Hong Kong, 'PERSONAL STORY: HAPPY DAYS IN HONG KONG, 1953', appear above) recalls his time in Münster below, and in contacting TACA, concluded: '. . . it would be interesting to hear if any other pupils have memories of this period of time in Münster'.
'Between 1958 and 1960, I attended Oxford Barracks Primary in Münster, with a battalion of Seaforth Highlanders based alongside. This was the first time that I had been transported to school by an army bus, having previously attended the local primary school at our last posting attached to 56 HAA [Heavy Anti-Aircraft] Regiment, Royal Artillery, based at High Legh near Knutsford in Cheshire.
My fears of living in Germany during this early post-war period were completely unfounded, and living in Münster was a very pleasant experience. This university city had been completely rebuilt in the thirteen years since the end of World War II, with lots of the shops with covered walkways having been rebuilt exactly as they had been before the war, and a big open market beside the cathedral. The married quarters seemed so luxurious, with their central heating, double glazing and a large cellar for storage – such a contrast from post-war England.
We arrived in Münster in February 1958, when Germany was having a very harsh winter. I can remember very clearly sitting on the engine cover of the school bus to keep warm, and the German bus driver, with his jodhpurs, leather jacket and peaked cap, ordering us to "sit on your sits" in his best broken English! In addition, we had some poor national serviceman to protect us in case some local decided to attack this valuable cargo! (Today's Health and Safety Executive would have a field day regarding the seating arrangements!) At the school, there was a local cook providing school dinners, which usually kept rigidly to a British menu, but occasionally we had a more exotic dessert, such as Salzburger Nockerln, which consisted of fresh fruit with cream and meringue. The teachers at Oxford School who I remember from this period were Mr Wood, the headmaster, Miss Sellars and Mr Bowen, who went on to be headmaster when Mr Wood retired. In retrospect, I am amazed that we were not taught German during this period, although we all picked up enough to go shopping, travel around town by bus and so on.
We lived in married quarters near Portsmouth Barracks (the home of the 40th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery), which was close to the Dortmund–Ems Canal. I and my friends would go and watch the barges travelling up and down this waterway, which had the added bonus of a set of locks, along with the main railway line to Osnabrück and to northern Germany, which was an added entertainment (simple pleasures seemed occupy us, especially during the school holidays). Other entertainments in Münster were visiting the Aasee, which was the local lake and beauty spot, which had pedalos and sailing dinghies for hire, and the city zoo was also close by. Another memory is belonging to the 1st Münster Cub Pack (we would meet at Winterbourne Barracks). Other regular visits included going to the NAAFI for food and pop records of the period, but Roger and I would additionally visit the local record shops in town as you had to wait so long when ordering records through the NAAFI. (There was only German TV for entertainment, so the BFN [British Forces Network] was a real lifeline for the current popular records, with the latest top twenty being broadcast on Sunday nights.) There was an AKC [Army Kinema Corporation] cinema next door to the NAAFI, where we spent many happy hours watching the latest British and American films. If my parents took me out in the car, the Möhne-Damm was fairly close by, and we would enjoy a picnic there quite often.
My father retired from the army in 1961, and we left Münster in October 1960, so all of my secondary education took place at a comprehensive school in Croydon. I think that I spent the first year feeling very miserable, having lost all of my friends and missing Germany! (The joys of being an army brat!)
In 2002, Roger and I flew to Düsseldorf, where we hired a car and visited Münster and Wilhelmshaven, staying in both and visiting all of the places that I mentioned earlier. Although the centre of Münster had hardly changed in forty years, the biggest shock was visiting where we had lived, which was still in the countryside in 1960: since then, all of the fields around the married quarters had been built on, and the old camp had been converted into luxury flats!'
Richard Hall (b.1948).
PERSONAL STORY: GREAT DAYS IN SEREMBAN, MALAYA
His father's career in the Army Catering Corps (ACC) meant that Seremban, Malaya (now Malaysia), was home to Stuart Lloyd between 1968 and 1969. In his message to TACA, Stuart recalls Christmas 1968, and 'Santa arriving in a Scout helicopter', continuing, 'I can still remember the taste of the rambutans I picked straight from the tree whilst out playing'. Stuart also has fond memories of an eventful Kettcar race.
'My dad was a cook in the army and was posted to Seremban. I was about five at the time and have vivid memories of my adventurous life. My best mate at the time was Peter Burns, and I remember all of the parents bought the kids Kettcars one Christmas and we had a race from the top of the hill, where the swimming pool was, to the bottom of the hill, which curved round to the left, towards our school. I remember falling off at the curve and being attacked by red ants. Great days!'
PERSONAL STORY: HOLIDAYS IN GIBRALTAR
'My clearest early memories of life abroad are of Gibraltar in the mid-1970s. The small peninsula (about 5 square miles) was cut off at the border from mainland Spain at the time and all transport to and from the "Rock" was by air or across the straits to Morocco. At the weekend local Spanish families used to congregate at the border fence and shout greetings and news to one another across the 100 yards or so to the Spanish side. The Union Jack was lowered every night to the sound of the Last Post.
Above: A view of Rosia and the barracks dating from the first half of the twentieth century.
The travel limitations were no great hardship to a 10-year-old, and most of the school holidays were spent at the Rosia Bay swimming club or, at the weekends, at one of the beaches on the western coast. Travel to Gibraltar by air from boarding school was as an "unaccompanied minor", which guaranteed VIP status to the garrison children as they were whisked to the front of all customs and passport queues.
As an important naval base, we could see from our balcony a succession of the UK's leading battleships and submarines, mooring on the "cobs" or artificial breakwaters in the harbour. The navy also treated the local army children to tours of the ships and submarines or short trips in the Med. Most of the major cruise ships also stopped off, so in spite of the isolation, the little garrison community and local native Gibraltarians were regularly swelled by the comings and goings in the harbour, with the tourists streaming up Main Street in search of cheap Parker pens, which, alongside the clay model apes, seemed to dominate trade for the Moroccan shopkeepers.
I recall on one occasion the local radio decided to liven up the sporting calendar by instigating a race down Main Street for children. Sadly for the organisers only two boys turned up: I and my older brother. However, the race went ahead and we both won impressive trophies: for first and second place in the boys' race.
I returned to Gibraltar about five years ago and surprisingly little had changed. Spain has modernised impressively, but Gibraltar's years of isolation seem to have left it behind, and in need of a lick of paint.'
SW (b.1963).
LINKS
The following links relating to the places where army children have lived may be of interest.
- The British Army's close connection with Gibraltar (a British overseas territory) has lasted for around three hundred years, and plenty of army children have called it home during those three centuries. Since 1991, the connection has been maintained by the Gibraltar Regiment, under the umbrella of British Forces Gibraltar. If you are interested in Gibraltar, visit the Discover Gibraltar website (http://www.discovergibraltar.com), where you'll find more than three hundred fascinating pages covering Gibraltar's history, heritage and attractions, illustrated with over a thousand photographs, maps and diagrams.
- Michael Longyear, a former army child, has written and published a 40pp, limited-print-run booklet entitled Malta, 1937-1942: Some Childhood Memories. This tells of his experiences as an army child during the World War II siege of Malta (for further details, click here). Copies (which cost £4, including post and packing for the UK; overseas p&p by arrangement) can be obtained by e-mailing MLPRS@aol.com
- The Memories of Singapore website displays a wide selection of photographs and images of Singapore contributed by people (many of them former pupils of BFES schools) who lived there during the 1960s and 1970s. To view them, visit: http://www.singas.co.uk
- The BAOR Locations website (http://baor-locations.co.uk) is an information-packed work in progress for those interested in key locations associated with the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). Here, you'll find a history of BAOR; historical facts, memories and photographs relating to BAOR locations in Germany, including barracks, British military hospitals and schools; along with a forum, guides to BFPO numbers and regiments stationed in BAOR and much more.
TACA POSTINGS ALBUM: ENGLAND
TACA POSTINGS ALBUM: INDIA
TACA POSTINGS ALBUM: GERMANY
