Armed forces day

Its armed forces day this Saturday (25th June 2011).  I was in the TA for five years driving HGVs in the RCT.  That's the Royal wagoners for the really aged, or the Royal Logistics Corps if you're more up to date.  Royal Corps of Transport  when I was in it.
I'll say to start I've never seen any combat, about the most dangerous thing I did was testing a freshly built pontoon bridge over the river Weser.  The engineers had just finished it and we were the first unit of lorries to happen by - we were ordered to drive across it and back to make sure it worked.  The Weser is a pretty wide and fast flowing river so if we'd gone in it wouldn't have been good.  And of course it was night time, tactical so no lights - just tiny luminous dots on sticks on the edges of the bridge to guide us.  The bridge wasn't much wider than our lorries either.
It was 'wear your uniform to work' day for reservists yesterday, so to join in and show support I wore my soldier '95 shirt and veterans badge when I went out in the evening.   Doesn't seem anyone recognises the vets badge, but the camouflage shirt did cause comments!

Some memories -

End of a 15 day exercise, too tired to care, a group of us went into a quite posh restaurant filthy dirty, still in our combats.  The staff served us without complaint, the best rump steak and chips ever!

Should have been double manned, we were being volunteered by our CO for every job going.  After several days going practically non stop, an officer had to take over driving my Bedford.  Apparently I stayed asleep hanging in the passenger seatbelt as we drove across a ploughed field.

Using up the last of the year's ammunition allocation, blasting away with our light machine guns.

On basic training, on a field exercise I lined up my sights and pulled the trigger on an approaching figure.  The training staff had wound us up that we were about to be attacked.  It was fear and the desire to stop the enemy getting any closer that motivated the action.  Of course they'd arranged that this was our own patrol coming back in at an unexpected time and direction.  A very good lesson why you need to follow procedures and not go gung ho firing on anything that moves.  OK it was blank ammunition, but I really intended to stop the target - one of my friends.

Middle of an exercise - my lorry was out of service (OK I'd crashed it) and I'd been digging trenches.  Totally knackered I was about the only guy left at our location, stopping for a meal I ended up with a huge serving of sponge and chocolate custard.  With a wonderful disregard for fieldcraft I sat out in the sun and scoffed the lot.  Delicious.

Driving west to east through West Germany.  In the west signs in windows urging us impolitely to go home.  The further east you got the friendlier the natives became.  Right up near the east German border we were digging a trench practically in the front garden of one house.  The inhabitant came out, but rather than having a go at us about our activities, he offered a drink from his bottle of whisky.

Driver training.  A smart line up of all the vehicles on camp just prior to us all going out learning to drive our HGV's.  Ten minutes after we had left camp, a smart line up of all the vehicles outside the local transport cafe.

Down near Aldershot our unit were marshalling an army off road driving competition.  I was collecting scores riding round the course on a motorbike.  One of my colleagues reckoned he could ride the bike through a two foot deep swamp that was part of the competition course.  I let him try, the failure was spectacular, mud everywhere.  Next time I delivered the results to the officers I got a very strange look - my uniform pristine but the bike a large mobile blob of mud.

Driver training.  Not me, but one of the trainees proved the lorries could drive straight over a car, in this case a parked Porsche.  The guy passed his test two days later.

Coming back from Germany, driving one of our Bedfords through customs.  Nothing to declare?  Only two SLRs, high powered rifles, two LMG machine guns and the beer for half the squadron.  Presumably someone had done the paperwork, we were just waved through.


Good times, and just enough of an experience to appreciate what the real heroes who are in regular combat operations go through.