CH and the Armed Services

Anything that doesn't fit anywhere else, but that's still CH related.

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postwarblue
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

Post by postwarblue »

Back one page and Bawtree was in my list.

London Gazette has Colonel J. St. J. GREY, A.D.C., to be Major General 19th Feb 1984 & Major General J. St. J. GREY, C.B., to Retired List 3rd Oct. 1988. The 'ADC' is dropped on retirement I believe. Sorry about the Lt Gen!
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

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AKAP wrote:Roger did have a younger brother (Rupert) and an older brother who's name I can't remember. But Roger wasn't in Barnes B. I will try to get the brain cells activated and try to remember more details.
The following update is written to the sound of me eating a hat.

I have looked back at John's phot of Barnes B, and Roger Lane is in the photo (Standing two places away from me). But I don't remember him still being there in 68 the year before we went up to senior houses.
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

Post by michael scuffil »

postwarblue wrote:Back one page and Bawtree was in my list.

London Gazette has Colonel J. St. J. GREY, A.D.C., to be Major General 19th Feb 1984 & Major General J. St. J. GREY, C.B., to Retired List 3rd Oct. 1988. The 'ADC' is dropped on retirement I believe. Sorry about the Lt Gen!
Is this the Grey who left ThB in 1956? He was known as 'Singe' on account of his middle name St John.
Th.B. 27 1955-63
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postwarblue
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

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Who's Blue 1997 has Grey as Lamb A 1945-52.

Not to be confusded with Lt Gen Sir Michael Gray Prep A/maine B 1942-50.

My list left out Cdr PJ McGregor OBE Maine B 1949-53.
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

Post by Kit Bartlett »

Those who do not appear to have been mentioned are Colin S, (Paddy) Drake, Sandhurst and a distinguished editor of The Blue,
Lt. Colonel John Robin Stephenson, later MCC Secretary Lt. Colonel Keith R Burnett Intelligence Corp,s Lt. Col, Alan Whipp all Coleridge A. Also Lt. Colonel R,M.A.Wade Maine A.
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

Post by Fitzsadou »

postwarblue wrote:Some OBs who went into the Services about my time, roughly in order of leaving although I may have got some out of step:
............
My apologies to anyone left out, mis-spelled or libelled. Leaves out of account National Service.
Thanks for this list. Does postwarblue (or anyone else) have information about the career of Peter Knight (Ba A, about 1948-55), who became a Fleet Air Arm Helicopter Pilot in the 60s and was not on the list?
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

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Sorry, no bid.
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

Post by John Saunders »

I think that John Coggins,Mid B c 1955, moved from the merchant navy (he went from CH to the Merchant Navy training college at Southampto]thence to the RN and became the Commander of one of the diving support vessels. Some 20 years ago his ship moored at Newcastle and there was an open day which,sadly,I was not able to attend. He was a stalwart of the swimming team and lived at Shorncliffe where he took me to tea at the family cafe during Corps camp. I have no further news.
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

Post by viejoazul »

If we include the Merchant Navy (and why not, for weren’t there armed Q Ships, about which I know very little?), then there were
- Michael Morris
- Peter Haines
at CH in the early 1950s and both in Barnes A.
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

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Coggins, if I recall correctly, was awarded an MBE(Mil) for defuzing explosive devices planted in Hong Kong by the Red Chinese. he had become a Clearance Diver who were the RN's explosive disposal experts.
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

Post by John Saunders »

We should not forget Mike Peary. Not only a distinguished sailor but also a fine scrum half and President of the RFU.
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

Post by tub »

In my Lamb A June 1952 house photo there are: (* denotes already mentioned)

Me - (retired as Sqn Ldr 1984), and my exact LA contemporaries:
D P Thomas*
D J Cornwell*

From the year ahead:
J D Chappell - RAF navigator
J H Rosier - Army

From 2-4 years ahead:
R N Tillard*

Leaving in 1952:
M D Porter - RAF pilot
J st J Grey*
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

Post by tub »

Postby postwarblue » Mon Feb 04, 2013 11:56 pm

That's my Tiger Moth, if you don't mind. Pongo Littlefield put me up for a Flying Scholarship (the first for CH) which paid for thirty hours on a Tiger Moth leading to a Private Pilot's Licence (which, afterwards, I couldn't afford to keep up). The 'wings', which I still have, were twofold - a PPL badge and a Flying Scholarship badge.
First solo was after 9 hours dual and the crash was at Bembridge ...
I did my Flying Scholarship at Burnaston in the 1957 Easter holidays, on the Miles Magister. On an early solo flight, my final approach was through the western boundary hedge, and the subsequent landing was more than the starboard undercarriage could bear. The local aviators were not pleased; the aircraft had just emerged from a year in the hangar following the ministrations of one of the previous year's flying scholars.

The wonders of Google Earth have just allowed me pinpoint the exact location of my mishap (including a drive along that very hedge - I remember it well) in preparation for emailing this little war story to my grandson. A dip into Google for that last bit of colour on Burnaston then revealed that it is now a Toyota factory, and I had be looking at the re-located airfield.

Moral of this story? You should not necessarily believe everything yo ol' Pappy tells you.
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

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Postby Avon » Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:52 pm
As a Navy flyer he wrote:
... I made the mistake of making a jibe at the present day RAF ...
I generally enjoyed the years 1957-84 that I spent in the RAF. I was never in a job that involved working alongside any of the other services, and I am in no position to make any comment on the points that Avon makes.

However, while I was a Sqn Ldr at RAF Lossiemouth I was thrown unwillingly (nothing personal, as you will see) into the august presence of four Navy flyers. The experience made me suspect that the fish’eads might have the odd point in the views that I found that they held of the crabs.

These four guys had had a mishap while they were piloting an RAF Lossie staff car through the Scottish countryside. Their mission is immaterial to this tale, but I think it involved travelling to a simulator to get in some mandatory hours.

The trip had been properly authorised and their mishap was of the ‘could happen to anyone’ variety. I know there was no alcohol or reckless speed involved, but beyond that I am hazy. None of the four had any significant injury, and there was no third party personal or property damage – they had just hit the bank alongside the road and nothing else. I am hazy again about the damage to the car – I’m pretty certain the car hadn’t rolled – BUT it had sustained damage the repair cost of which put the incident into the category that demanded a Unit Inquiry.

And guess who was lumbered with doing the Unit Inquiry? It had to be done in accordance with Queen’s Regulations, the Manual of Air Force Law, whatever the rules were for unit inquiries, and multitudinous other rules and regs. Evidence had to be taken from the all and sundry witnesses – all in accordance with the RAF version of the Rules of Evidence.

The whole process had to be supported by exhibits, each of which had to be introduced by a duly identified witness (eg, the MT Flight Sergeant had to produce Form whatever on which the trip had been authorised: 'I am Flt Sgt Bloggs. I am in charge of … . On [date] I was … and so on – and I hereby produce Form whatever on which … and so on'. All taken down in my immaculate longhand, no tape recorders).

The findings had to identify all causes of the accident, primary and contributing, and allocate blame and identify whether any person or persons had been negligent in their duty. I’m pretty sure I would have had to make recommendations about preventing further such occurrences, but I can’t be sure. There were no shortcuts to be had. I had to read up all the rules and regs and follow them to the letter, and I did. To have done otherwise would have just meant that the thing would have come back to me from one of the several levels it passed through after it left me.

The Navy guys just could not comprehend what they had sailed into. They belonged to an outfit that, when appropriate, pushed anything from its multi-million-dollar Phantoms downwards over the side.

I can’t remember if the guys had to travel to Lossie for any of the proceedings. I know we all had to revisit the scene of the crime and that I had to travel at least once to the east coast to see them. I can’t remember what the car was - an Austin Maxi, maybe, anyway something like that. As far as I know, it would have been pretty much a bog-standard production vehicle, but with a camouflage paint job. You could have bought an unpainted one downtown Elgin for not all that much.

The Unit Inquiry must have taken me at least a month. What time the powers that be spent on it after it left me, I have no idea, but it would have been a while. Your guess is as good as mine as to what it all cost.

I remember being absolutely at one with my temporary Navy associates in what they had to say about RAF procedures, and I thought what they told me of the way the Navy would have handled it made some sense.
Its a bloated and very PC construct that's really struggled with the practicalities of warfighting as opposed to worrying about station-level diversity programmes
'Station-level diversity programmes' must post-date me. However, it sounds as if the concept might be related to an aspect of RAF life that I did not enjoy, which was the emphasis placed on ‘secondary’ duties – Officer i/c This, Officer i/c That, etc. Wherever I went I immediately volunteered to be Officer i/c Squash – at least I spent some time doing what I liked and organising squash ladders and fixtures that benefitted others with my interest. I think it was around my time at Lossie that this broadened to include more community involvement and some cash-raising projects.

I was an engineer, with a hangar full of guys and a fleet of aircraft to keep serviceable. I remember someone in the admin area - not an officer – getting substantial cudos and publicity for something to do with a band and the local community, and wondering about the relative benefit to the defence of the realm of his contribution and the contribution of, say, one of my unrecognised salt-of-the earth scruffy engine fitters who, night after night, would be up a jet pipe at 3 am fixing something so the aircraft would be on the line first thing in the morning.

The first cash-raising project I encountered involved stocking the ponds in the Lossie bomb dump with fish that cost a bit, feeding them with whatever (that was also going to cost a bit), and then selling the fattened-up fish around the base for a bit more. It got as far as the bit where they tipped the costly fish in, and they probably gave them an initial feed of some whatever. However, while the project’s author might have been a whizz on bombs, he hadn’t done much study on the dietary preferences of some of the larger birds around the Moray Firth.
... they are just talking baggage ...
I’ve wandered so far off thread now that I don’t see that it will matter much if I take one final step into the unauthorised – and I’m quite enjoying this and no one else seems to be needing that much posting space at the moment.

During my last posting in the UK, we had a little Topper (sailing dinghy) that we used to put on the car and take some 40 mins away to the grotty disused gravel pit that was the home of a small sailing club – and we loved it. We came direct from the RAF to here in Perth. After a couple of years, one day when I was walking the dog alongside Melville Water when I thought: ‘We enjoyed that gravel pit; I should really buy a dinghy and have a go here’. For those of you who don’t know Melville Water, it’s a 10 km stretch of the Swan between Perth and Fremantle where the river widens to some 3 km; the sun shines quite a bit here, there’s generally a bit of a breeze and, all-in-all, it’s not a bad place for a sail.

I know nothing about boats. I came by the Topper because Jack in the office on the previous tour in Germany did some sailing and said his neighbour was going back to the UK and didn’t want to take his Topper with him, and why didn’t I buy it. Jack gave me an hour or so on the lakes near Roermond, and that was all I knew and all the family needed for the bit of fun we had.

I set about finding a dingy here by looking in the paper, with price as my sole criterion. Young Robin was about to set sail into matrimony and was selling his dinghy dirt cheap, complete with trailer, because he needed the money and wife-to-be didn’t like sailing. And so I became the proud owner of a 420; for those of you who also don’t know much about boats, I soon found out that in anything beyond a puff of wind, it goes like sh*t off a shovel. Nevertheless I had great fun just pottering around within my limitations. On the very odd occasion, I managed to tempt aboard my lady wife, who hates boats with a passion; which, you’ll be surprised to hear, brings me to the quote I lifted from Avon’s little piece.

I was recounting one of these rare appearances to my best mate at a party; he’s a keen sailor and has all the lingo, and I mentioned – unwittingly in my wife’s hearing - that I had taken the talking ballast along with me. The TB happened to be close by – about 10 yards away, deep in animated conversation with several friends, so of course she heard what I said. And she’s never forgiven me.

(About 7 years later, I had developed a pair of knackered knees; the 420 sat on the front lawn, and I had twinges of conscience because I knew someone ought to be out on Melville Water getting some fun from it. I arrived home one day to find an unrecognised business card tucked behind the front door lock, with the message: 'Do you want to sell your dingy'. It turned out to be Robin, and I very happily sold it back to him for what I'd paid, with a little outboard thrown in. I'm not a nosey parker ('stickybeak', they say here), so I didn't ask about 7-year itches or the like.)
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postwarblue
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Re: CH and the Armed Services

Post by postwarblue »

Oh yippee, a crab-bashing thread on Chforum! Brian is right, the RN does see things differently.

Robin Tillard (above) and David Kruger joined the Army via the same set of Civil Service Commissioners exams in the summer of 1954 that I took for the RN (but the Army had the simpler Maths paper B and didn't have to do the Physics paper).

Has John Morgan got a mention? He went into the RAF from Col B about a year I went into the RN and was I think a navigator on PR Canberras.
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