Do you know who you are? do you know your past or do you live a story, do you soak the bed in sweat every night?
This is a story about the conflict in Yugoslavia and forgein involvement, and the prices they paid, the invisible the deniable.
“and did you exchange, a walk on part in a war, for the lead role in a cage?”
(PINK FLOYD, Wish you were here.)
GERMANY
“and did you exchange, a walk on part in a war, for the lead role in a cage?”
(PINK FLOYD, Wish you were here.)
GERMANY
It all started for me on a morning in the gunnery simulator, I was doing my gunner mechanic course and was a few days into it when a runner from the squadron quartermaster came over asking for me. The message was simply that I was to go straight to the regimental Sergeant majors office. I didn’t know what it could be about I went in to see the regimental Sargent major he sat at his desk and asked me if I knew what this was all about? The closest guess I could give him was that the company who had towed my landrover home from Dover hadn’t got their money. He said, “No it’s not that, you see I don’t want to see you. They do!” Into the office came two suits, they introduced them selves as members of the Special Investigation Branch.
I stood there and had a basic frisk search and was taken outside to a car that took me over to my room at the barracks.
what followed was possibly the most thourgh but ineffective search I have ever seen.
after establishing that the area was my bed space the SIB started their search in earnest, one pulled apart my bed lifting the bedlinen, checking for any surprises he then sat on the bed clipboard in hand whilst his colleague dug through my lockers.
everything was checked! pockets were turned out and the fluff from the corners examined slowly bit by bit a large pile of uniform appeared on the floor, draws were emptied socks were unfolded everything came out, but nothing was found.
little did they know that they were sitting on what they were looking for! I had a little piece of solid blu tacked under the bed frame!
after their fruitless search we went over to the RMP station where I was taken to an interview room, the interview was rather simple the accusations had come from a private Paul Hassel of the Stafordshire regiment.
after their fruitless search we went over to the RMP station where I was taken to an interview room, the interview was rather simple the accusations had come from a private Paul Hassel of the Stafordshire regiment.
It seems that a friend of mine who I will call Irish sold Paul a small piece of cannabis and Paul had been caught with it!
why people do this I dont know, but for some people there is a belief that if they offer up other people to the authorities they will get let off. so Paul Hassel claimed that Irish had sold him the grass and that I and him regularly smoked in their barracks!
Madness! the expression is cruising for a bruising to walk into an Infantry barracks where you are not known, but that was his statement all totally false and all engineered to save his skin at the cost of our own.
The interview was stopped and I was escorted to the toilets to provide a urine sample, the test was a simple additive placed in the sample to check for irregularity's.
mine went blood red, the Sergeant looked at this with a degree of surprise. so far I had walked through this with no problems, but according to his test you could probably re roll my wee and get off on it!
we were then taken back to the colonel's office to receive our dressing down.
we were sentenced to report to the orderly corporal every hour till 10 p.m., we were not allowed to leave the base and as the colonel had said we definitely wouldn’t be getting our Christmas leave! Well tough, I had had enough; he had left us in no doubt that he was going to send us to jail and then have us kicked out the army.
we were sentenced to report to the orderly corporal every hour till 10 p.m., we were not allowed to leave the base and as the colonel had said we definitely wouldn’t be getting our Christmas leave! Well tough, I had had enough; he had left us in no doubt that he was going to send us to jail and then have us kicked out the army.
This meant a couple of months of humiliation followed by a prison sentence and no pay which in turn would mean loan repayments not being met and even more problems for me.
So what was the point in waiting? When I went back to the room that night I spoke to Stewart he was also fed up with the boredom of with the peacetime army. I asked him if he wanted to go down to Croatia with me to join their army. At first he was interested and started to pack his kit ready to go. Then he sat down and seriously thought about the whole thing.
We would be going into a foreign country and joining a foreign army who did not have a quarter of the resources of the British army and worse still they were loosing the war. It was a big decision and a hard one.
We would be going into a foreign country and joining a foreign army who did not have a quarter of the resources of the British army and worse still they were loosing the war. It was a big decision and a hard one.
He thought about it and decided that he didn’t want to go. However he said that it was still ok to take the car. He would not report it stolen until at least two days after I had gone. He had bought a ford escort XR3I after the gulf with his accumulated pay. It was a nice car but the insurance and service costs were crippling Stewart so it would be better that the car disappeared. He gave me the keys and asked me to make sure that it would never come back. Considering where I was going this was a promise I could easily keep. To be honest I wasn’t even sure if I would be coming back.
I really didn’t have enough money to make the trip and it was going to have to be a fast one. I knew that I had to get out of Germany as quickly as possible. I needed fuel and fast. The best place to get fuel in the army is from a fuel dump. I knew where one was but didn’t have the correct documentation to get any legally. On the other hand the tax payer had spent a small fortune paying for them to teach me to climb over walls and fences, so I wasn’t going to let 3 coils of razor wire and a little fence get in my way. Climbing into the fuel dump was easy; the problem is always that you’re over active imagination manufactured sounds that don’t exist. The last thing that I wanted was a confrontation with a guard or a roving patrol. Once in the compound I stayed low watching my surroundings for dozing guards or any other possible hazard. When I was sure of myself I started to throw the jerry cans over the fence. I threw over about seven (the equivalent of 140 litres of petrol). I then got them back into the car with my kit.
Driving out of the gate was worrying. My regiment was on guard duty so it was possible that someone would recognise me, remember that I had been confined to barracks and turn me back. I drove down to the main gate, said hello to the sentry and he passed me the sighing out book. I wrote my destination as town, which I suppose was true, only I neglected to mention which town or which country for that matter. Then I turned left and drove out to the autobahn.
My first impulse was to get as far away as possible from my base preferably out of Germany. With no speed limit on the autobahn this wasn’t going to be a problem. Hopefully Irish would tell the regimental police that I had spoken about going to the foreign legion and that they would be looking in the opposite direction.
I really didn’t have enough money to make the trip and it was going to have to be a fast one. I knew that I had to get out of Germany as quickly as possible. I needed fuel and fast. The best place to get fuel in the army is from a fuel dump. I knew where one was but didn’t have the correct documentation to get any legally. On the other hand the tax payer had spent a small fortune paying for them to teach me to climb over walls and fences, so I wasn’t going to let 3 coils of razor wire and a little fence get in my way. Climbing into the fuel dump was easy; the problem is always that you’re over active imagination manufactured sounds that don’t exist. The last thing that I wanted was a confrontation with a guard or a roving patrol. Once in the compound I stayed low watching my surroundings for dozing guards or any other possible hazard. When I was sure of myself I started to throw the jerry cans over the fence. I threw over about seven (the equivalent of 140 litres of petrol). I then got them back into the car with my kit.
Driving out of the gate was worrying. My regiment was on guard duty so it was possible that someone would recognise me, remember that I had been confined to barracks and turn me back. I drove down to the main gate, said hello to the sentry and he passed me the sighing out book. I wrote my destination as town, which I suppose was true, only I neglected to mention which town or which country for that matter. Then I turned left and drove out to the autobahn.
My first impulse was to get as far away as possible from my base preferably out of Germany. With no speed limit on the autobahn this wasn’t going to be a problem. Hopefully Irish would tell the regimental police that I had spoken about going to the foreign legion and that they would be looking in the opposite direction.
and so slowly it begins should I have a little following I will print more, I hope it gets interesting.
I met a man in a cafe once a small man of nervous disposition, always looking over his shoulder and smoking like a chimney, he said his name was cliff, there were others a stan and oliver, stan laurel, oliver hardy and cliff thorburn, what a joker but that was it, there was no joke they existed that wasnt there names that was the names they were given and the names they lived by.
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