The Army is made up of 'characters'. Whats a character?, well it depends on your point of view. I met a character when I was attached to 1 RTR. The intervening years have done nothing to diminish the impact that he made on me. I was happy in C Squadron and just going with the flow when all of a sudden it was decided that I was off to D Squadron. I never found out why but it was there in D that I met Trev. Even now the name is enough to start off a mixture of nostalgia and queasiness (in equal measure!)
First time I saw Trev he filled my doorway, literally filled it (and doors in German Barracks were HUGE) the first thing to strike you about Trev was his size, that was followed by his sheer presence, not to be confused with size. Trev gave off a 'feeling', a don't mess with me feeling. I've met bigger guys. Colin Brookes at 6 feet 8 was a second row in the REME Rugby Team. He was enormous but was approachable and you picked up on that straight away. Trev....well he made you think as you walked up to him "Do I REALLY need to speak to him? and is what I've got to say something he wants to hear?"
Stories soon started to circulate about Trev. He was spoken of in hushed tones. Apparently he'd 'lost' a total of 7 tapes while he was in the Army. That meant he'd been busted from LCpl to craftsman a few times (3 as it turned out) and from Cpl to Cfn a couple of times too!. I found out that the LAST time he'd been bust from Cpl it was for beating his Artificer (a S/Sgt) to a pulp in full view of the rest of his unit. Who else saw him do this? well, only his Officer Commanding and his ASM!! He was, as they say, caught red handed. That resulted in his demotion to Craftsman. Of course now in the Army that would result in jail time and probably headlines in the national papers but then it was more 'acceptable'
It soon became clear that Trev was NOT a person to take liberties with.....and by liberties I mean speak to, look at in a funny way, be in the same room as, etc etc. One particular memory springs to mind. We were sat in the squadron fitter section office it was morning break and the guys were finishing their tea. Dion, our 'ece' was doing something technical, Dave our gunfitter was doing ....whatever gunfitters do, I was finishing my brew before getting back to work on the hydro start system of a Chieftain and Trev was being quiet. Oh how we should have known!. Trev was like a volcano, he couldn't be quiet. He was either 'active' or 'dormant'. He suddenly looked over at Dave who was sat down and said "Move I want to work there", Dave replied "Sod off Trev I need to finish this" Like a bear Trev moved forward and the next thing we saw was Dave flying through the air ending up on the floor with Trev glaring at him. Like everyone else in the room I suddenly realised I had a deep and abiding need to be somewhere else.
Another time we were on exercise in Soltau, it had been a busy exercise for the mechanics as ANY exercise involving Chieftains tended to be. We had been working non stop for days, grabbing the odd cat knap whenever there was a chance. I had less chance to sleep than others because I was driving the 434, a REME repair vehicle. It was tracked and our role was to follow the tanks and repair them on the (frequent) occasions they needed repair. One particular tank was being a bit of a 'problem child' it would start and run for a few minutes then cut out for no good reason. As a result we would pull in next to it, within an inch or so because Trev wanted the vehicles close. Trev would fiddle with something, the tank would drive off, we'd follow it and then it would happen again. Each time the tank drove off I'd turn round and look at Trev to make sure he wanted me to follow. There was a good reason for this, armoured vehicles take no prisoners. If you do something silly a person could end up dead. So, each time the tank drove off I'd turn to Trev and say "OK to go?" and each time he'd say "go!"....after a few times I was still asking, but by now he was saying "for f*&^'s sake drive the $%^&&%ing wagon you !""£$%%" The next time I reasoned that as Trev was getting annoyed with the delay, it would be best if i just watched him back on to the wagon and then followed........MISTAKE!!!!!!
I was told by Dion what happened next as I didn't see it. Apparently Trev stepped back on to the 434 and instead of getting back into his hatch, he decided to grab a brew from Dion. I, of course' didn't see this. I just went. The result was that Trev nearly fell over. With unexpected balance for a big man Trev spun round and kicked me in the head. I lost conciousness at that point. Trev then shouted at me to follow the tank. Being unconscious I didn't comply. Trev then bent over, grabbed me by the shoulders and in one movement lifted me out of the drivers position and threw me into the back of the 434. He then turned to Dion and said "you drive!" The fact that he didn't have a license and didn't know how to drive never crossed Dions mind....he decided that if Trev wanted it, best he gets it. I regained conciousness some time later. Still, at least I didn't have to drive for a while!
Next
Trev, the murder plot and Canada
Sunday, 11 September 2011
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Then : Tanks, the most fun you can have with your clothes on
Tanks, every boy loves 'em whether he admits it or not.
I was just starting my technical training at SEME when everything changed for me. I had to sign in to the 'heavy A' hanger and there I saw my first tank close up. It was a Chieftain, it had a 19 litre stroke diesel engine and it SHRIEKED when it was revved up. I ought to explain, a big 4 stroke diesel engine roars, its all bass. A 2 stroke Diesel shrieks, the noise is unworldly. I was hooked. The following day I went in to the chief instructor and told him I wanted to be an 'A' Mech. He wasn't happy, told me it would be the end of my career. Oh well. I did it anyway.
After waiting for an 'A' mech course to come through I was in. Mostly they did the same curriculum as 'B' mech courses like my original one but where a B mech course restricted themselves to 'little' armoured vehicles like the 432, 'A' mech courses worked on Chieftain. I can still remember the thrill of my first day with Chieftain, standing on the engine. It weighed 3 tons and was 5 feet long! the gearbox alone weighed 2 tons. Everything about tanks was big. The cooling fans were made of metal and were heavy enough to slice and dice anything that got near them. The blower was 3 feet long and required 100 hp just to drive it!!. All this paled into insignificance when we were told about ......"CRITICAL SPEED"!!
Critical Speed
It even sounded dangerous!. There were a few things we learned about the L60 tank engine. We learned its idle speed, we learned its maximum governed speed....and finally in hushed tones we were told all about critical speed. So, what happens at critical speed? in short everything!. Remember those cooling fans I told you about? the big heavy ones?. Well they're made up of individual fan blades all bolted to a common hub. They are VERY heavy, each individual blade weighs at least a kilo and there are 10. They are held on by 2 bolts each. Problem is, when the fan is going round REALLY fast, faster than its design speed, centrifugal force acts on it to make it even heavier. It makes it so heavy that the 2 bolts there to hold it on aren't really up to it. Whats worse than that is it only takes one blade to shear, then the fan is out of balance and a chain reaction occurs. All the blades then come off and bounce round inside the armoured engine bay of the tank. They rip off all the exposed pipes, they sever cables and generally destroy whatever gets in their way. In my years since training I have seen the results of a few engines reaching 'critical speed'. While I was attached to 1 RTR, all of the tanks in our squadron were named after battle honours held by the regiment. All except 1. That one was called Vesuvius. It got its name because when it reached critical speed there was a bang and a fireball 30 feet high flew out of the engine bay. It took months to complete repairs and when the tank came back to us some wag at base workshops had written Vesuvius on it in chalk. The name stuck and it was soon rechristened.
I was just starting my technical training at SEME when everything changed for me. I had to sign in to the 'heavy A' hanger and there I saw my first tank close up. It was a Chieftain, it had a 19 litre stroke diesel engine and it SHRIEKED when it was revved up. I ought to explain, a big 4 stroke diesel engine roars, its all bass. A 2 stroke Diesel shrieks, the noise is unworldly. I was hooked. The following day I went in to the chief instructor and told him I wanted to be an 'A' Mech. He wasn't happy, told me it would be the end of my career. Oh well. I did it anyway.
After waiting for an 'A' mech course to come through I was in. Mostly they did the same curriculum as 'B' mech courses like my original one but where a B mech course restricted themselves to 'little' armoured vehicles like the 432, 'A' mech courses worked on Chieftain. I can still remember the thrill of my first day with Chieftain, standing on the engine. It weighed 3 tons and was 5 feet long! the gearbox alone weighed 2 tons. Everything about tanks was big. The cooling fans were made of metal and were heavy enough to slice and dice anything that got near them. The blower was 3 feet long and required 100 hp just to drive it!!. All this paled into insignificance when we were told about ......"CRITICAL SPEED"!!
Critical Speed
It even sounded dangerous!. There were a few things we learned about the L60 tank engine. We learned its idle speed, we learned its maximum governed speed....and finally in hushed tones we were told all about critical speed. So, what happens at critical speed? in short everything!. Remember those cooling fans I told you about? the big heavy ones?. Well they're made up of individual fan blades all bolted to a common hub. They are VERY heavy, each individual blade weighs at least a kilo and there are 10. They are held on by 2 bolts each. Problem is, when the fan is going round REALLY fast, faster than its design speed, centrifugal force acts on it to make it even heavier. It makes it so heavy that the 2 bolts there to hold it on aren't really up to it. Whats worse than that is it only takes one blade to shear, then the fan is out of balance and a chain reaction occurs. All the blades then come off and bounce round inside the armoured engine bay of the tank. They rip off all the exposed pipes, they sever cables and generally destroy whatever gets in their way. In my years since training I have seen the results of a few engines reaching 'critical speed'. While I was attached to 1 RTR, all of the tanks in our squadron were named after battle honours held by the regiment. All except 1. That one was called Vesuvius. It got its name because when it reached critical speed there was a bang and a fireball 30 feet high flew out of the engine bay. It took months to complete repairs and when the tank came back to us some wag at base workshops had written Vesuvius on it in chalk. The name stuck and it was soon rechristened.
Thursday, 31 March 2011
Now:Me and the Transit
I now work for a 'leading repair/recovery' firm. Suffice to say, winter was a wee bit cold. The company had anticipated this and being the switched on peeps that they were they gave us snowchains to fit to our vans. OK the vans were still heavily loaded and they were only 2 wheel drive but it was a start!
Me, the Transit and the hill
One particular day the snow had REALLY arrived. Everywhere was thickly carpeted. The main roads were more or less passable, minor roads were a lottery and seldom used roads....well probably best not to bother!. None of this of course mattered to the people in puzzle palace (our dispatch office) who just worked on the principle that the day was the same as any other.
Alarm bells should have started ringing for me when the first job came in: A BMW X5 (4 WD) parked outside the house on a common down an unmade road 20 miles away. Oh boy. I told the office that with the weather as was it would take me about 3 hours to get there.......the girl I spoke to was not convinced. I could almost imagine her drinking a coffee, turning the heating up and sat in front of her PC while she told me "It shouldn't take you that long to get there" Counting to 10 didn't work, neither did counting to 20 in Nepalese. Ho hum.
After 3 hours, numerous slides, several near misses and 2 digging myself out of drifts I was finally within about 400 yards of the car. I could actually see the house!. It was at THAT point I was deassigned from the job and sent to one 8 miles further away. As going to the second one would entail driving PAST the house of the first one I decided that a bit of independent action was required. I fixed the first one. Dug the van out a couple more times and decided to fit my snow chains. Have YOU ever fitted snow chains?. After about 20 minutes I could no longer feel my fingers, after another 20 I could feel them but wished I couldn't. The chains were finally attached and I made my jolly way to my next job, a Ford Fiesta stuck in a snow drift. The address of the job was vaguely familiar but I couldn't figure why, the important thing was the guy was stuck and the job was 4 hours old so obviously he was bloody cold. Off I set.
I was going up a steep hill of tightly packed snow and ice when one of my snowchains started making a noise, to be on the safe side I stopped for a quick look. As I was checking the chains were taut I noticed a flatbed Ford Transit pull up behind me. Next minute I'm joined by a jolly rather large gentleman wearing baggy jeans and a sweatshirt. "Any probs?" he said, "Nope, just checking my chains" I replied. "Pah, chains! my Trannys great in the snow it doesn't need gaylord chains" he replied.....It was at this point that he and I watched his Transit slowly start to slide down the hill. My companion moving with great speed (but precious little thought) said "Oh shit!" and started to run down the hill....as we all know, stopping a fully laden Transit which has its handbrake on and is sliding down the hill is dead easy! He may even have got close enough to do himself some damage but at that point several things happened:
He had taken only a few paces before his jeans gave up the unequal struggle and fell down, but showing great determination he carried on trying to run after his truck. At this point I realised two things: 1. as he had decided to dress 'commando' , there was no holster there to look after his "gentleman parts" 2. 20 stone plus individuals are not good at running when their ankles are hobbled together by their jeans. Showing rather more bravery than sense he tried to continue after his van which was now sliding slowly and gracefully towards a drainage ditch, at this point the laws of inertia and gravity decided to get in on the act, he pitched forward landing face first in the snow and then slid about 30 feet down the hill. I'll leave it to the reader to imagine how deep frozen his meat and two veg by the time he came to a halt!. As he finally slowed enough to find his feet he jumped up removing ice and snow from a delicate area and looked at me his face stricken "Please tell me you didn't video that!" I assured him that while I didn't have a video, his suffering was now etched indelibly into my conciousness. Together we walked (considerably more carefully) down to his Truck which by now had come to a halt with one rear wheel just entering a ditch. I'll draw a veil over how we got it out but he did get back on the road and I continued on my way to find the poor (by now deep frozen) chap in his Fiesta.
90 minutes later I got there. It was at this point I realised why I knew the road name. His car was stuck on a patch of snow....outside a pub!. No he wasn't cold. No he wasn't starving. Actually he was pleasantly warm, fed and watered....yep, inside the pub!. Fixing a grin with some difficulty to my face I found him. I then pushed his car off the snow he was stuck on....apparently the 10 people in the pub with him couldn't do that, and he drove off. I managed one more job that day. My figures were: Time on shift 11 hours, time 'under bonnet' (fixing things) 30 minutes total. Distance driven 50 miles.Time driving 10 hours. Another glorious day in the company!
Me, the Transit and the hill
One particular day the snow had REALLY arrived. Everywhere was thickly carpeted. The main roads were more or less passable, minor roads were a lottery and seldom used roads....well probably best not to bother!. None of this of course mattered to the people in puzzle palace (our dispatch office) who just worked on the principle that the day was the same as any other.
Alarm bells should have started ringing for me when the first job came in: A BMW X5 (4 WD) parked outside the house on a common down an unmade road 20 miles away. Oh boy. I told the office that with the weather as was it would take me about 3 hours to get there.......the girl I spoke to was not convinced. I could almost imagine her drinking a coffee, turning the heating up and sat in front of her PC while she told me "It shouldn't take you that long to get there" Counting to 10 didn't work, neither did counting to 20 in Nepalese. Ho hum.
After 3 hours, numerous slides, several near misses and 2 digging myself out of drifts I was finally within about 400 yards of the car. I could actually see the house!. It was at THAT point I was deassigned from the job and sent to one 8 miles further away. As going to the second one would entail driving PAST the house of the first one I decided that a bit of independent action was required. I fixed the first one. Dug the van out a couple more times and decided to fit my snow chains. Have YOU ever fitted snow chains?. After about 20 minutes I could no longer feel my fingers, after another 20 I could feel them but wished I couldn't. The chains were finally attached and I made my jolly way to my next job, a Ford Fiesta stuck in a snow drift. The address of the job was vaguely familiar but I couldn't figure why, the important thing was the guy was stuck and the job was 4 hours old so obviously he was bloody cold. Off I set.
I was going up a steep hill of tightly packed snow and ice when one of my snowchains started making a noise, to be on the safe side I stopped for a quick look. As I was checking the chains were taut I noticed a flatbed Ford Transit pull up behind me. Next minute I'm joined by a jolly rather large gentleman wearing baggy jeans and a sweatshirt. "Any probs?" he said, "Nope, just checking my chains" I replied. "Pah, chains! my Trannys great in the snow it doesn't need gaylord chains" he replied.....It was at this point that he and I watched his Transit slowly start to slide down the hill. My companion moving with great speed (but precious little thought) said "Oh shit!" and started to run down the hill....as we all know, stopping a fully laden Transit which has its handbrake on and is sliding down the hill is dead easy! He may even have got close enough to do himself some damage but at that point several things happened:
He had taken only a few paces before his jeans gave up the unequal struggle and fell down, but showing great determination he carried on trying to run after his truck. At this point I realised two things: 1. as he had decided to dress 'commando' , there was no holster there to look after his "gentleman parts" 2. 20 stone plus individuals are not good at running when their ankles are hobbled together by their jeans. Showing rather more bravery than sense he tried to continue after his van which was now sliding slowly and gracefully towards a drainage ditch, at this point the laws of inertia and gravity decided to get in on the act, he pitched forward landing face first in the snow and then slid about 30 feet down the hill. I'll leave it to the reader to imagine how deep frozen his meat and two veg by the time he came to a halt!. As he finally slowed enough to find his feet he jumped up removing ice and snow from a delicate area and looked at me his face stricken "Please tell me you didn't video that!" I assured him that while I didn't have a video, his suffering was now etched indelibly into my conciousness. Together we walked (considerably more carefully) down to his Truck which by now had come to a halt with one rear wheel just entering a ditch. I'll draw a veil over how we got it out but he did get back on the road and I continued on my way to find the poor (by now deep frozen) chap in his Fiesta.
90 minutes later I got there. It was at this point I realised why I knew the road name. His car was stuck on a patch of snow....outside a pub!. No he wasn't cold. No he wasn't starving. Actually he was pleasantly warm, fed and watered....yep, inside the pub!. Fixing a grin with some difficulty to my face I found him. I then pushed his car off the snow he was stuck on....apparently the 10 people in the pub with him couldn't do that, and he drove off. I managed one more job that day. My figures were: Time on shift 11 hours, time 'under bonnet' (fixing things) 30 minutes total. Distance driven 50 miles.Time driving 10 hours. Another glorious day in the company!
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