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Mémoire – Ian REA (AAS Arborfield 1939) When I joined on 5th July
1938 at 5 Section RAOC Bramley (near Basingstoke) with about twenty others, before
going on to the AAS 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, 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 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 Man Service Pete CHITTAL and Joe ROWE were with me
later on when we joined “man service” at 2 Anti-Aircraft Workshops, 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
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 Bert WIGGLESWORTH and I had many
interesting times in 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. 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 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. Published:
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