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Mémoire – Ian REA

 

(ATS Arborfield 1939)

 

(Ian was recalled to H.Q. on the 14th July 2011).     ‘In Memoriam’.

 

 

Army Technical School, Arborfield.

 

When I joined on 5th July 1938 at 5 Section RAOC Bramley (near Basingstoke) with about twenty others, before going on to the ATS in 1939, we new mob compared notes on where we came from etc, and quite a number came from the British Military School at Sinar (Saunar), India, as well as the Duke of York’s School. I remember Spud PULESON, Pete CHITTAL, and Joe ROWE (Indian Joe, who lived at 21a Kimarni Mansions, Park Street, Calcutta, India), all from the Military School at Sinar; they all had advanced knowledge of military dress and behaviour, having arrived in uniform and highly polished boots, an art form we others had yet to learn.

 

From the sound of things, in later years life at AAS was harsh and a lot of things completely unfamiliar to our time.  No such animal as a "Jeep", no A/T NCOs above the rank of Corporal, and then only a very few, Senior Boys were just that, senior boys. We were separated in the spider blocks, i.e. all senior Bramley mob in ‘D’ Company ‘J’ Block, Jersey in ‘H’ block etc. Needless to say juniors did not venture into seniors’ domain (on the fear of death), but there was almost no bullying. No A/T bands, pipe or drum, no weapons or drill with them, and as for A/T NCOs exacting military punishments, they would have been lynched. Their job was to occupy the 'bunk', call the room to attention on inspection and report anyone going ape.

 

Attention was given to workshops training, sport and normal parade ground galloping about and of course Sunday Church Parade. In the NAAFI we lined up, with no one demanding right of passage, we all knew who was senior and were expected to behave as such.

 

Of course we were under black-out restrictions, and cognizant of the war situation, which was not very bright, even had the odd ME109 strafe the place, so the main purpose of AAS was to get us civilised and trained as soldiers and tradesmen, and posted.

 

Members of the Permanent Staff were returned line regiment Senior NCOs. Corporals and Lance Corporals were in the main GD (General Duties) wallahs. Workshops staff all civilians.

 

In ‘D’ Company two Sergeants were Jock AULD (King’s Own Scottish Borderers) and Turkey COOPER, I think in one of the County Regiments. He had returned from the Narvic raid in Norway, held by us in awe because he had a great big scar on his fore arm which, in action, had been first sewn up with a boot lace. Jock was a little bloke who never got excited, but Turkey would go scarlet in the face before exploding. I saw a perfect example of this colour change one night, the swill bloke's horse had been unhitched from its cart back of the cookhouse, and was galloped around the corridors of ‘H’ Block with some brave A/T bareback riding. When Turkey came down from ‘J’ Block to see what all the clattering was about, he walked into the horse’s backside.

 

We had lots of laughs during our time at Arborfield, and as such I enjoyed it all, wound up in the hospital with a twisted knee for some months. I was in the school hockey team and having challenged the school football team to hockey, and crippling nearly all of them, in the return match of football our side was carried off on stretchers, me with a (twisted) right knee.

 

As an aside, when I came out of dock (hospital), I was made to ride an army bike, which would have defied the attention of a tank, every weekend to Fleet to strengthen it, my knee I mean. My family had a house in Fleet, and as my old man was a RAF officer he suggested to our MO it would be a good idea. First time out through the main gates the Provost Sergeant slung me off the sports light-weight bike I had borrowed and stuck me on the Boer War heap - I was knackered when I got home, could hardly reach the pedals!.

 

Another incident occurred while I was in dock; the hospital was as you know, right through the camp past the Commandant's office and workshops, we heard a chanting coming up the road towards the hospital and saw a bloke face down on a barrack room table being carried by a load of A/Ts, the reason he was face down was that he had a drum stick sticking out of his backside. This mob was I believe from ‘B’ Company, and the story goes that the casualty had been warned a couple of times, that if he did not cease playing drums on the barrack room upturned bucket while bods wanted to snooze, he would get the drum stick stuck up his arse. He didn’t, and they did!.  All the blokes who had carried him on the table, and us, wanted to watch the MO extract same, miserable sod refused.

 

We did not queue up for the cookhouse, two members of each hut took turns at being mess orderlies, they collected the grub from the serving hatch and dished it out to the room table, and if the blokes who were orderlies that week didn’t like you, you got short rations!

 

It sounds as if those joining later had a hard time working their way up through the hierarchy of the AAS, a very tough system indeed. I can't judge but I'm thinking we had a better time.

 

Incidentally, the only reason I joined the Army at fourteen was to go to India and didn’t make it, I had read a lot of Rudyard Kipling at school.

 

Man Service.

 

Pete CHITTAL and Joe ROWE were with me later on when we joined “man service” at 2 Anti-Aircraft Workshops, Northampton in early 1942, and as so often happened during World War II we did not meet again. As a Gun Fitter I eventually joined 71 Light Anti-Aircraft Workshops formed in Northampton, and after galloping around Romney Marshes and Clacton offering violence to German aircraft with our 40 mm Bofors guns, all fifty-four of them, went on the Normandy Landings in 1944. By this time three other ex-Boys were with the Workshops, Bert WIGGLESWORTH (Arborfield 1940s), Fred BLEWDEN (Bramley 1938) with me, Arthur OSBORNE (Arborfield 1941), and Fred COX, Armourer (Hilsea 1936). There was another, n/k VALENTINE, Instrument Mechanic (Chepstow 1940), a crazy but likeable character who decided to wake the HQ camped in a wood outside Ashford, Kent, in 1943, at 0500 hours by blasting all the mess tins, hanging from trees and glinting in the sunlight, with his .303 rifle. This the CO,  Lieutenant Colonel BRODY R.A. found bad for his nerves and got him discharged as unsound, and as Val said “unfit to fight Germans”. He became a bus conductor in Croydon.

 

How many ex-Boys were lost during the war? There must have been a lot because they went out into the thick of it, saw one who I can't recall his name, coming back from the Orne River near the beachhead in Normandy, he recognised me and yelled “Curly!”; he'd transferred to the Infantry and looked as if he regretted it. Another, Bill SHAW, ex-Bramley, yelled at me from an American convoy around there also; what he was doing with the Yanks I would not know.

 

As I have discussed many times with Pete HUMPSTON (Jersey 1938) who lives in Perth, Western Australia, I found it weird that I met so few ex-Boys during or after the war. I have a pretty good memory for names so that is not at fault. They were all “family” at Bramley and Arborfield, but all dispersed in the early days, some did out of the ordinary things like Doug DRAKE, Electrician (1942), he chucked in his trade rating as Electrician Class III, just when Northampton were given our new REME cap badge and a new title of Craftsman in lieu of Private.

 

The new REME cap badge mentioned above.

 

Doug wanted to be a Glider Pilot in the new Regiment - and did - and strutted around with Staff Sergeant tapes and a girl-attracting powder-blue beret, with tales of his first Royal Artillery volunteer troop he took up in his ‘Horsa’ glider, landed a bit heavy, glider made un-airworthy, and the R.A. troop unharmed but alarmed ‘fell in’ in three ranks under the BSM and marched out through the main gates heading for the railway station. Doug was posted to Burma, but wound up in India in hospital with “infected ingrowing toenails”, Japs never saw him! Later in 1963 I met him again, I was in 221 BVD Workshops in Malaya, he was Superintendent Clerk at 40 Base Workshops in Singapore.

 

Bert WIGGLESWORTH and I had many interesting times in France and Germany, we captured a German paymaster motor cyclist in Normandy complete with lots of money, and Bert opened a German bank account later on which I believe raised the ire of the Control Commission etc. We met again in Donnington in 1970, both rather staid officers by then and had many a laugh, wouldn’t tell me what was said to him about opening a bank account with “the enemy’s money” at HQ Hamburg Standard House when he was called there in 1946. The German mark (Reich mark) was changed overnight to BAFSV (British Armed Forces Special Vouchers) soon after so all that loot was worth nowt!

 

Just thinking over those early days when we ex-Boys left AAS for our first ‘postings’ to units, we were rich, with nothing being saved to ‘credits’ by compulsion, and drawing 27 shillings and 9 pence instead of 3 shillings per week. No ban on smoking and not having to smoke our ‘dog ends’ down to zero with the help of a pin, a packet of twenty ‘Players’ or ‘Capstan’ in our pockets costing about a shilling. Cigarette lighters also, as opposed to the rather dangerous practice of getting a light from the light switch in the ‘spider’ huts by arcing two pencils. ‘D’ Company hut J1 switch must have been BLR’d (Beyond Local Repair) by the time we left.

 

I soon switched to smoking a curly-shaped pipe, which I thought at the time made me look a bit older and more interesting to the fair sex, coughed quite a lot!. Cinema price for good seats cost one shilling and three pence, lots of ‘Sally Anns’ (Salvation Army) and YMCAs plenty of tea and wads and, open all night.

 

Our battle dress soon had two service stripes sewn on the left sleeve (the first one for two years, and the second for a further three years) and Division formation signs with the blue/red/white strips on each arm below the epaulets indicating newly formed REME, our 2nd AA Command sign was a red witch on a blue background. Being very fit, well versed in Army ways, very quickly qualified as 1st Class in our trades, we rather shone amongst the unit’s non-regulars who, being older and although more experienced in their trades, took a while in getting used to Army Regulations and equipment.

 

Being younger than the rest we were viewed as Apprentices and with suspicion, but senior as we were classified as Class 1 in our trades and soon organised ourselves with the task of taking over the joint, particularly driving, and the prospect of driving a 3-tonner on our own!

 

I was made up to Lance Corporal and having attended a course on anti-aircraft guns at Gainsborough, came back to Northampton 2 Anti-Aircraft Workshops, with some six RAF aerodromes to visit the gun defences, (Ack Ack Command then came under the RAF) and I was the only Gun Fitter in the Workshop! So I was out driving around Bedford Cambridge and Hertfordshire most of the time, my title was NCO i/c Fitter Circuit Inspections Air Defence of Great Britain, so when I was challenged by some Home Guard armed with a double-barrelled shotgun in the middle of the night I convinced them that I was not German by stating that I was a NCO i/c FCI ADGB - it worked. There were no road signs anywhere, taken down to prevent the enemy knowing where they were, and as these gun sites were scattered all over, I didn’t either. Driving at night down country lanes looking for a camouflaged airfield in my Austin Utility with light-masks on the headlamps was always interesting.

 

‘Tiffy on gun site’ meant the gun crew could ‘stand down’, so I was always welcomed, must have drunk thousands of gallons of tea, and later the gun crews had ATS girls on the predictors and searchlights, so what with the Land Army girls, life was interesting.

 

Volunteers were being called for to join newly formed Regiments, such as the Paras, Commandos, Airborne, Glider Pilots, Ski Troops etc, these were posted up in Part 1 Orders in the Workshops, with the rider that ‘no ex-Boys need to apply’, “they” deemed us too valuable to the Corps with all our training, or perhaps “they” considered letting us lot loose was a risk to both sides.  The Workshop carried out repairs to vehicles and searchlight 15 Kva generators, mainly Listers and Paxton, a newly formed section took care of predictors and early radar sets, while all guns, 3.7 inch anti-aircraft guns and 40mm guns were dealt with on-site.

 

Northampton itself did not come under German bombing but towns around did, as did the airfields such as Fowlmere, Duxford, Henlow and Witton which were my concern.  Lots of girls there, as Barratts shoe factories were working day and night, so life was pretty good while it lasted.

 

So postings were very selective involving us at this time, and we were now a force of ex-Boys to be reckoned with in numbers at Northampton Workshops, which had been a vehicle repair garage before the war, the pre-war manager of which was now the OC Major. Names were self (Ian REA), Fred BLEWDON, Arthur OSBOURNE, Pete CHITTAL, Joe ROWE, Jigger LEES (Bramley 1938), Pete HUMPSTON, Lofty HOWES, Doug DRAKE, and Mauler MELVILLE (Jersey). We all left around the end of 1943, only know of Fred and Arthur who I joined up with, being the last to leave on a battle course in Radnor Wales with 71 AA Workshops (which I stayed with for the remainder of the war, finishing up at Hamburg in 1945), and Pete HUMPSTON who was posted back to Arborfield - to an Anti-Aircraft Regiment there, the rest I never saw again.

 

Gaiters were issued and weird berets in lieu of side hats (Glengarries), these took a lot of battering before becoming comfortable, boot dubbin was ‘in’, blanco ‘out’, and we saw the last of Bluebell or Duraglit, dress became a personal standard of wearing, and ‘string vests’ were ‘in’. Gas masks were carried at all times with a steel helmet strapped to it (I put mine to the test in Normandy, a .303 round went straight through it, so like most others over there we chucked them away, especially as we were informed on the LST’s “don’t jump overboard with the strap under your chin, it will break your neck”), ties were worn when going out, and hair was plastered with Brylcream, and as long as you could peer through your length of hair, nobody would say a thing. Field dressings were issued and worn in the BD (Battledress) pocket, new ‘”anti gas” BD’s were also issued, these were a grey-coloured powder-impregnated, very uncomfortable hard material, so we made friends with the Canadians who had a super well cut battle dress, and their QM’s were most generous. We were issued with No 4 .303 Enfield rifles which meant more to lug around when posted, but no ammunition - very wise. 

 

48-hour passes were dished out now and then, but mostly meant travel on blacked-out crowded trains, standing all the way etc, and usually you only went on leave due to compassionate reasons, us lot were not married in any case, but news of the family home being blown up or whatever was a reason. And about this time we were issued with sleeveless leather ‘jerkins’, which were warm, thick leather and we only took them off to go to bed.

 

When we moved up in the ranks of promotion and adapted to customs and practice of the company we had entered, never failed to proclaim with pride that we were 'ex-Boys', it was and is a badge of honour. Those who did not know of the brotherhood, we were often viewed with a sense of suspicion at first, but soon were more than accepted.

 

I have clear memories early on in the war of often presenting to a blacked-out guard room some place or other at night, dragging a kitbag and full kit, and being told to “Find the second Nissan hut on the left, and find a bed space there”, enter through darkened doors, standing in the doorway facing a sea of faces, not always friendly at that time of night, and me shouting out "Any ex-Boys in here?"; and hearing a voice answer "Over here Curly mate, here’s a space for you.” What better welcome could anybody have? That warmth of feeling carried me through the 34 years I was with REME, and still does.

 

Continues with ‘My War’ by Ian Rea.

 

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30th July 2011.

 

Army Apprentice National Memorial,

at the

National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire.

 

At the Drum Head Service, which was part of the

48th. Arborfield Old Boys Association Reunion,

a Cross of Remembrance was laid for

Ian Curly Rea, Arborfield A.T.S. Intake 39.

 

 

 

 

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Editor’s Notes: 

 

Ian’s Photo Album can be accessed by clicking  HERE.

 

Ian has also contributed a ‘D’ Company 1941 photo.

 

Ian has contributed information to, and actually appears in, some photos recently contributed by George Bill Humphrey of the first intakes to the Arborfield Army Technical School in 1939. George’s Photo Album can be accessed by clicking  HERE

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First Published: 1st May 2006.

Layout Revised & Latest Update: 1st February 2015.