Macca wrote:Haha a good interesting post there Artist (as usual
). Were you like that before training at all or did the fairly violent nature (wich i understand) come along after training?
Good grief no!
I was seriously considering a career in the church prior to joining the Corp.
As it happens me Pop was a PTI in the RAF and before that was briefly in the Corp but his eyesight was not up to scratch so he transferred to the Crabfats. Even so he was a member of the Malayan Scouts in the fifties, which in the end caused his death at the age of 55. Just six months after he left the RAF (He contracted Malaria whilst working in the Malayan Ulu (Jungle) and was always getting relapses which resulted in him having to have a major operation to remove one of his lungs about a year before he left the RAF, after that he was in his own words.........Bolloxed). But during my childhood he was as fit as a fiddle save for the odd attack so my childhood was interesting to say the least.
Pop would drag me up the Welsh Mountains around Llandovery in Carmarthenshire where he was born when I was no more than six or seven. Later he encouraged me to take up canoeing, abseiling, rugby union and loads of other stuff so I was kind of used to hardships few other boys of my age would tollerate. I was binned from the Wolf Cubs at the tender age of eight for wacking the Station Commanders ten year old son in the knackers because he was having a go at my mate. Later Pop sent me to a Roman Catholic Public School near Diss in Norfolk when I was 13 (used to get into trouble at my old Grammer School a fair bit).
The Head Master was a Priest whilst the teachers were all Monks (a right bunch of sadists they were an all!) But I was expelled from there at 14 because Pop gave me a book printed in the 1930's. I can't remember it's name but on the first page it had the words:
"For boys who crave adventure". The book contained one chapter all about how to make gunpowder...................
I spent quite a lot of my pocket money buying the stuff I needed and also had away quite a bit of the required ingredients from the Chemistry departments Store and finally made my first bomb.
I planted it in the Head Master's Vegetable Patch and lit the fuze one Sunday afternoon.................Took out his Cabbages, Carrots, Turnips the whole fecking lot!
So back home I went. Pop was less than impressed but had to grin and bear it. By this stage I'd really got the bomb making bug and once more started to accumulate the ingredients, but had to stash them away from the house as Pop was a tad worried about my facination with loud noises.
This time I went for broke and got my hands on a Catering sized NAAFI coffee tin from the dustbin behind the RAF Camps NAAFI. Once it was toppers I then had to make a fuze less inclined to go
FLASH! BANG! like the first one did (I was blown arse over tip by the first bomb but was uninjured) So I got a bootlace and soaked it in Saltpeter, tried it and LO! it worked. So I repeated the procedure on another bootlace.
Come one Saturday night I left me parents house telling them that I was off to the Camps Youth Club. Anyway I got to where I'd stashed the coffee tin full of my homemade gunpowder (It was behind the Gym where me Pop worked hidden amongst these bushes) in front of the Gym was the sports field with the Officers Married Quarters behind the field. Running along the entire length of the Sports Field were three Golf greens with bunkers around one of them. I decided to put the coffee tin in one of the bunkers about 40 foot from this 10 foot tall perimeter fence that ran all the way along the Officers Married Quarters.
The Tin was buried in one bunker, the fuze was lit and I legged it to this other bunker about thirty yards from the tin's resting place.........................
BANG! ........................
KINNEL!! I was covered from head to foot in sand, where the tin had been was now just a girt big crater in the ground with smoke coming from it, I'd nearly gone deaf, every dog in Norfolk was barking fit to bust, the Camps alarms were going full chaff and this RAF Police Land Rover was hairing it's way towards where I lay closely followed by an Airfield Firetruck dinging its bells for all it was worth.
It turned out that the Camps CO a Group Captain Herbert had had a Cocktail Party going on in his garden when my bomb went off so it was lucky that no one was hurt by the flying glass from all the windows it took out. The RAF Coppers pulled up in their Land Rover and had me in the back racing to the Guard Room as fast as the Land Rover could go. Thats when I sussed that maybe just maybe I was in the cack!
During the next few hours lots of things happened, I was dragged in front of Gp Captain Herbert because as I was a dependant of a serving member of the RAF I could be done by the RAF and even find myself in Prison. I really started to shit meself when I found that out! Herbert was as you can imagine less than happy. But I suppose that deep down he just may have seen the funny side because after about three hours I was escorted back to the Airmans Married Quarter where we Lived (number 27 AMQ, RAF West Raynham). Me mum was in tears, me younger sister was out bragging to her mates all about her loonatic brother. Of Pop there was no sign.
About four in the morning Pop returned home. Surprisingly he was in a fairly good mood. It turned out that Gp Captain Herbert had decided that Pop was getting the fastest Posting ever in RAF history! He was off to RAF Gan a small island in the middle of the Indian ocean for a year whilst Mum, me and my sister were going to be moved to this AMQ site in the middle of knowhere called Swanton Morely, about six miles from West Raynham. The place had closed down years before as an RAF camp and all that was still used by the RAF were the AMQ's. One week later we were in our new quarter whilst Pop was stuck on RAF GAN in the middle of the Indian ocean.
Years later Pop told me that he hated West Raynham with a vengenge. So he was chuffed to buggery to get his posting to GAN. Hence his good mood on the fateful night of the West Raynham Bomb Blast. As it was the RAF said the explosion was caused by a WW2 German unexploded bomb so it barely got a mention in any newspaper save for the local rag in this place called Fakenham which had it on the front page. I carried on going to School at Fakenham Grammer School and left at 16 with six O-levels and two A-Levels in Art. I was also awarded a Scholarship to the Slade College of Art in London as earlier I had come first in a national schools art competition with a painting I had done of the Harbour at Wells next to Sea on the North Norfolk Coast but alas my dear Pop said that there was no way I was going to an Art School because of all the Hippys and Drug taking that went on at them according to what he had read in the Daily Express.
Once Pop was back from GAN he was Posted to RAF Cosford and we moved to another old AMQ site just outside Bridgnorth in Shropshire which suited me Mum to a tee as she was a Cheshire lass so she was only a few miles from her parents and other relatives. I started at the College of Higher Education in Bridgnorth but soon got tired of yet more classrooms so applied to join the Royal Marines..............The rest is history and here I am fifty odd years old telling you lot the story of my bomb making period.
It would appear that I may have Hi-Jacked this thread......Sorry eagleeye. There are always other threads to start are there not gentlemen?
Artist
