A BRIEF HISTORY OF LIFE IN REME
A Craftsman’s Story 1948 to I953 Contributed by: Phil KEMPSTER Chapter
Fifteen. It
Was Not All Work And No Play. 1950 – 1952
My
time spent in
He
was a Driver Mechanic at Base Workshops and was the R.S.M’s driver for a
while, then he went on to the big trucks and the last time I saw him he was
driving an American Mack Transporter, a bloody huge truck with an open
cab. He came up to 221Bn R.A.O.C in it
and came to look me up. I had not seen
him for ages so we arranged to meet up one weekend. I said I would try and get a weekend pass
and stay at Rowcroft Lines. I got permission from Capt
Balsam my C/O to take my truck and I stayed in Pete’s billet at Base
Workshops. I met quite a few lads that
I knew and we had a good old chinwag about the old days, me and Pete went
into town for a night out and what a night that was. I think we started off in the New World,
this was one of many pleasure centres in I
must mention about the days we used to have out to Changi was situated about 10 to15 miles from Base
W/shops but a lot further from Johore, about 50 miles or so. You had to cross the causeway from Malaya
to The beach at Changi was lovely, miles of sandy beaches
and quite shallow in places, ideal for non swimmers
like myself. The lads always enjoyed
themselves and always brought a few bottles of beer with them, there were
shaded areas to park and plenty of bushes to change under.
I shall always remember one occasion when I was there,
this was before I learned how to swim, it must have been in 1950. It was a group of the lads from 42 Base
Workshops that I had driven down to Changi and one of the lads had a sister
who was stationed at Tanglin, this was where all the H/Q offices for
F.A.R.E.L.F. were situated. He
arranged for us to pick her and a friend up and take them with us to
Changi. I knew where this place was I
had often been there to our H/Q office and had been the driver for our big
boss Lt Col Trewby for a short period. The staff car then was a Standard
Vanguard. Anyway to continue my story, we picked up the two girls
and off we went to Changi beach, during our time there after swimming and
showing off to our new friends with me with my feet firmly touching the
bottom pretending I was swimming in
the shallow water, not telling any one I could not
swim a stroke. I had taken a bit of a
fancy to one of the girls and I think she liked me too, her name was
Olga. Anyway she asked me if I would
like to go out in one of the small rowing boats that were for hire further
down the beach. I thought, great you
are in with a chance here. Off we went
hand in hand and hired one of these boats, we started rowing away from the
shore with swimmers giving us a push to help us on our way. This is when things started to go wrong for
me, the tide was coming in and the sea began to get a bit choppy to say the
least. The boat started to fill with water and Olga thought this was great
fun until she saw the look on my face she said “Blondie you can swim cant you?” I said
“No, not a stroke.” She did no more
but carefully got into the water and started to push us towards the beach and
shallow water, by this time the boat was starting to sink and I was clinging
on for dear life scared out of my skin.
She managed to get us in to shallow water as the boat sank from under
me, we got to the beach and she said “You bloody fool, why didn’t you say you
couldn’t swim, you could have drowned.”
We walked back to where the rest of the party were on the beach
without a word being spoken and Olga never told anyone what had happened, I
was pleased about that. I would have
never lived it down so I vowed then that I would learn to swim. I decided to visit the swimming pool that
was a short distance from Rowcroft Lines, this was
situated in Gillman Barracks, we used to visit the N.A.A.F.I club there
sometimes. I went to the pool every
evening and after a few weeks I taught myself to swim, what a difference this
made on my trips to Another place I used to take the lads from Johore to
was the
There was a small village quite close to the gardens
but I cannot remember the name of it.
There was an open-air cinema there that we used to go to some
evenings, it was quite amusing watching films in the open air, small lizards
would run across the screen and the air was full of insects, mostly
mosquitoes. The time was drawing near for me to return home to dear
old Blighty and regular visits to our admin office
to look at Part One Orders on the notice board soon put a smile on my face,
there was my name on the list for drafting back to the U.K and guess what
ship I was going back on. Yes, the Dunera, just my luck.
I remember thinking I hope the voyage home is better than the voyage
out here on that ship, anyway I was going home that was the main thing. I said my goodbyes to all my pals and sent
a telegram to my girlfriend Jean to say I would be home in about four weeks
all being well. I was going to stay
with her parents for a while until we were married. I think that I was the only one from
R.E.M.E. at the workshops at 221 Battalion Majeede
Barracks, Johore Baru, that was going home at this
time, it must have been late October or early November.
Published: 1st November 2007 |
