AMONG MY SOUVENIRS...

Digging around in a box of old photos I came across this one which was taken in February 1960 - 61 years ago.  It was the depths of winter in the bleakness of Catterick in North Yorkshire and it shows the `intake` of regular and National Servicemen who were lumped together in Bourlon Barracks smiling for the camera with gritted teeth.  Not to have done so would have amounted to the breach of Queen`s Regulations concerning `good order and military discipline.`

We had been thrown together a few weeks before the photo was taken and were getting to grips with the rigours of `basic training` which, as you can see, involved the application of a large quantity of Brasso.  We were a pretty random bunch - four of those shown in the photo had signed on as regular soldiers;  the rest, myself included, had been conscripted to do our 730 days of national service.

Looking back now it has brought back memories of those times, those companions and made me wonder what might have become of them.  

The two standing at the back are myself on the left and Alan Muntz.  He came from Hounslow in what used to be Middlesex.  He didn`t take too well to army life but he did have a Hillman Husky.  On the very few occasions we were granted leave long enough to make the journey back down south, Alan used to pick me up at Victoria Station around 10.00pm and we would drive through the night back up to Catterick, sharing the driving and arriving just in time for reveille the next morning.

The four in the middle - left to right John Newton from Normanton; Louis Yankey from Manchester; Dave Fry from Battersea and Brian Mincher from West Hartlepool.  John was one of army life`s unfortunates in that he found almost every aspect of army life difficult;  the rest of us helped him through it as best we could.  Louis was very `keen` - a good man to have around and I heard just the other day on a Facebook site devoted to `old comrades` that he is still around and doing OK - good to know.  Dave Fry was a bit of a rebel - most mornings he was reluctant to get out of bed, resulting in him and his bedding being thrown across the barrack room by the visiting drill corporal.  But it was Brian Mincher who introduced me to the world of heroic blasphemy;  every other word was less than  polite and some left me with no clue at all as to their meaning. It reached the point whereby the constant stream of expletives ceased to have any meaning at all.

The three at the front - Billy Kirkham, another from Manchester, had signed on and was destined to be a regular soldier - one who could do anything the army demanded and it was right that he won the `best recruit` accolade at the end of our basic training.   Dave Proctor in the middle was from Sheffield and we became good mates - we seemed to get on and enjoyed each other`s company.  Last but not least Jimmy McGoldrick, on the right, came from Paisley - another who had signed on for an army career and another who was cut out for the life. 

(There is one person missing - Mick Watkins from Tewkesbury, who took the photo  -he was the only one with a camera.)

After our basic training, we then went our separate ways into `trade training` and eventually to our individual regiments.  I was despatched to the 10th Royal Hussars stationed at Paderborn in what was then West Germany but the rest of our `intake` were scattered to the  military winds across the globe and so we lost touch with each other, have never seen or heard from each other ever since.  But the slings and arrows of those first outrageous weeks spent together live long in the memory, some for good reason, some not so good.  Whatever might have befallen those companions over all those years, I hope the world has been as kind to them as it has been to me.