Yellow Handbags? A Magnum?
The social side of life in the Forces was an ongoing theme, if you weren’t working a shift, you were planning a gathering.
We lived in Married Quarters a short journey from camp, in an apartment block predominantly housing German residents but also a smattering of British servicemen and their families.
It was common practise to have a crate of beer (usually what we called “Wobbly Beer” - the actual brand is Warsteiner ) or a couple of “Herfy Handbags” (Herforder Pils Beer by the way) on standby. Servicemen and women are always at advanced readiness…especially where a bit of a Beerfest may pop up.
NOTE: This is NOT an actual Herfy Handbag from back then, they were literally a cardboard set up with a small carrying handle, but guess you get the idea.
Without any particular planning or forethought, we would more or less decide whose turn it was to host and gather people together. Anyone invited over would, by an unwritten law, bring at least a Herfy Handbag or a crate of Wobbly.
Part of the drinking culture also included the phrase " You've been crated.” This was used when someone messed up on something and meant it would be their turn to put the gathering together and not expect anyone to bring extra supplies.
I think, looking back, this may have been one of the service life things my wife didn’t particularly like especially when we brought the single guys and gals over to give them a taste of life outside the camp single service personnel quarters. Things often got a bit messy…it’s fair to say.
On the day-to-day front, Gulf deployment duties aside, you really never knew what would happen on any given shift.
One particular day shift, myself and my oppo were out and about, approximately 5km from the base, when a call came in from Control.
“Immediate response, shots fired, fenceline vicinity, possibly adjacent to the Threshold”
We confirmed we were en route and only minutes away.
Ditching our vehicle around 100m from the area where shots had been heard, we slowly…very slowly (yes slowly this was a live arms call lol)…made our way using hand signals to communicate.
Sure enough, several loud gun discharges were heard by us both. However, the thing with that particular area was that sound would bounce from the landscape making it hard to define actually where the gun was being fired from.
For about 15 to 20 minutes we scoured the area with every few minutes punctuated by more shots.
Eventually, we began to hear the gun blasts much closer. We crept forward to the top of a ridge, both with our Brownings at the ready.
Looking over the ridge we saw a male in civilian clothing, facing away from our location and pointing towards a gravel pile, into which he was firing his weapon.
We made our way towards the man, calling out from a distance so as not to startle him into a firefight.
He slowly turned and we could see he was holding a Magnum Desert Eagle pistol…gulp!
So, what next?
We called him in German and English…he responded in German. His hand with the weapon dropped to his side and he strolled over to us…you know, like, yeh just blasting my weapon into this gravel in the vicinity of a military base…normal no? lol
We found that he’d recently bought the gun, found this location which he felt was out of harm’s way and thought he would put it through its paces…
Advising him of where he actually was and that we were obviously “live armed” in the protection of the area, he looked worried, apologised and said he would be on his way…unfortunately for him, he would need to wait with us as the local German Police were on their way and would be checking his licence.
Our shift was coming to an end when we had a call to one of the Married Quarter areas about 10km from camp…
”Possible IED”.
YAY, never a dull moment eh?
On arrival, the person who had reported the “IED” pointed out a black hard-bodied briefcase in the car park area showing signs of white powder near the opening mechanisms. Classic potential IED delivery device and white powder added to the possibility.
Our first job was to create a cordon of at least 500m, ensuring people in the surrounding households were alerted and put at a distance as necessary.
EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) were on their way.
We started the paperwork, getting a statement from the person reporting the suspected IED and readied ourselves for a bit of a wait until the EOD peeps arrived.
As we hung around, a car arrived at the scene which had a very flustered-looking serviceman driving it. We advised him he could not access the area due to an ongoing possible IED incident.
His face flushed, his eyes scoured the car park and spotted the briefcase…
…yes, it was his!
He had set off for his duties in a rush, put the case down whilst he checked his vehicle for…IED’s got on his way and then realised he had left it.
The white powder?
Talc…his bathroom readiness for work was disjointed by panic and he had some on his hands as he closed the case before he set off…
Phew!
We still had to await EOD, the case had been left unattended in the car park and could still have been utilised for a device…they would scan it before releasing it. The serviceman would have a charge (paperwork) brought against him and be charged (money) for the call out of the EOD.
Thankfully both of the latter incidents had a tamer resolve than it felt like it was going to be at the time.
On the home front, i.e. my marital home life…well, things hadn’t been going well. Even before joining up we both knew we had married too early and had different takes on life. Enlisting to the RAF was an attempt to work it out for all of us, but my wife didn’t like service life and we had agreed to look at what to do from there.
The decision was made.
I would PVR (Premature Voluntary Release), basically paying to break my 22-year contract. Ship everything and all of us back to the UK and get my wife and two boys settled there.
There was a clause to PVRing, that you could return to duty with no penalties against service and pick up from where you left as long as it was within 6 months of leaving.
Naturally, that was my aim…
Until Next Time
Make sure you check out next week’s issue:
“Settling UK Side”
“Draw Down”
and
“Pivoting”
Some more of my Newsletters:
