Ian Henden served as a tipper driver with Plant Troop

I enlisted at the tender age of 16, into the corps of Royal Engineers. I signed on at ... Army recruiting Office as a Junior Tradesman. ....
After pass-off parade following a period of several months additional sapper training at No1 Training Regiment R.E. Southwood Camp, Cove, Farnborough in Hants, I eventually found my name on Orders as being “POSTED - 37 Field Squadron”.
I was advised that this squadron was based in what was then known as B.A.O.R. This was an acronym for “British Army of The Rhine”. In short they were stationed in the ancient Lower Saxon city of Osnabrück, in West Germany. I also learnt that 37 Field Squadron was part of 25 Engineer Regiment.
Never having been out of the country before, and having been raised on a constant diet of British valour and Derrring-do. When the whole nation, had answered the call and with a few remnants of some European armies, whom Hitler’s Wehrmacht had crushed as a preamble to tackling Tommy, we had then spent 6 years pluckily and almost single-handedly “taken care of the nazi menace”, Admittedly the yanks did finally arrive, (late as usual), by which time all the hard work and real fighting had been done by the British and the few odds and sods we’d given sanctuary to.
Typical of the yanks, isn’t it. They were late for the first one as well.
Anyway, I was a worried young man. After-all this was 1965 and the Second World War had finished a mere 20 years beforehand. Who knows who or what was lurking out there in the German countryside. Besides, we were now deeply involved in the “Cold War. Anything could happen to Mrs Henden’s little lad, couldn’t it.
In my defence, I will admit to being a wide-eyed and very impressionable eighteen-year-old rookie. However, I was soon to discover that my fears were, for the most-part at least, unfounded.
On arriving at R.A.F station Gütersloh, I and a number of other sprogs were to be embussed to Osnabrück. I soon found myself crammed into the back of a three-ton Bedford RL truck, and heading for god knows where.

 off to join my new Squadron who were at Hameln Bridge Camp. 37 Field Squadron, 2 Troop….. what had I let myself in for?. I found myself chucked in at the deep end (almost literally, in the Weser….), but was soon made welcome.

On return to Osnabrück, the Troop Commander put me in charge of the Troop G1098.

A few months later, he realised his mistake and seconded me to REME, to the LAD, where I was appointed to the lofty position of Battery Shop Boss.  I Got through a pair of denims every week, (acid fumes). At the same time, whilst looking after the Unit’s vehicle batteries, I was also fitting Blinkzeichen to various trucks, it having been decided that Army lorries really ought to have flashing indicators to indicate that they planned to turn.
Previously, most British Army lorries in B.A. O.R had the legend “Keine Blinkzeichen”, stencilled on the tailgates. This was intended as some sort of warning to following German motorists.  Those signs remained until someone with pot full of Olive Drab Paint, and a trowel, decided to do something about it.

Obviously, my work needed Road Testing, a task which I enthusiastically undertook around Roberts Barracks, notwithstanding the total lack of an army driving licence on my part, any form of previous experience in this field, or indeed my lack of driver training of any description.
Then one day, my name appeared on Squadron Part I Orders …. “Duty Driver - Spr Henden”.   Oh dear, there was no way I could possibly drive on civilian roads, especially down the Panzerstraße, (Tank Road), to Belm-Powe, to pick up the “pads”.  So, a confession to SSM Mowatt elicited two things: 1)an AB252 , and 2) an  Army Permit to Drive. Despite my best efforts, I STILL found myself driving down the Panzerstraße to Belm.

Out of the REME LAD, they next posted me to Plant Troop. That’s us enjoying one of our notable and monumental Plant Troop piss-ups in the Gasthaus Hindenburg, (I’m the good looking galoot with glasses, second from the right). Troopy Duncan. our boss, gave me my very own truck. This was a Commer Q4 Tipper, with a crash gearbox, and bearing the registration number 88 BP 48.  This vehicle entered the squadron hall of fame by becoming the only Front Wheel Drive 4x2 truck in the British Army. This was readily achieved by our gallant leader, “Troopy Duncan” guiding me into some woods on an exercise. After “de-camming” in order to move out of this tactical location, a few days later, we found we were bogged into the soft ground.
Winching out the vehicle under Troopy’s tutelage resulted in the rear propshaft being broken due entirely to a badly bent sparewheel carrier being caught on a tree stump. So we unbolted the rear propshaft and spent the rest of the exercise in permanent 4WD, but with power being delivered to the front wheels only.

I remember we successfully sunk both an Amphicar and a Michigan Light wheeled Tractor…  the Amphicar was on loan to 37, and arrived whilst we were on exersize. Capt Timmins, 2I/C, decided to try it out on the only available stretch of water, the local farmers’ duck pond. The car went into the water OK. It drove around on the water OK. But getting it out proved problematical… the front climbed the bank, the car stalled, and rolled backwards into the pond. And kept going, filling the back, and then the whole car, with water.  There was a photograph taken at the time, of Capt Timmins standing on the bonnet saluting as the car sank….. where is that photograph now?

The sunken Michigan was out Reine way, towards the Dutch border, when we built an ImprovisedBridge over a river,  using 12” x 12” timbers, very large staples, some RSJs, and a number of Bailey Bridge planks (“chesses”?).

Our new Troop Commander decided to try the new bridge out, by driving the Michigan across it. Unfortunately, he obeyed the continental rule of the road and “Kept Right” when he really would have been wiser staying in the centre of the improvised roadway over the bridge. The inevitable happened, and the roadway, and Michigan, tipped over into the drink.   We never saw him again after they took him away to hospital (he wasn’t badly hurt..)

Why is it always the minor disasters that get remembered? Like the time on Achmer, cookhouse marquee had a drainage ditch running round it, with a hydroburner merrily blazing away on a big metal tub for the DRO’s tinbashing, near the bottom end of the ditch… when a passing threetonner knocked over a jerrycan of fuel by the top end of the ditch… shortly followed by a Scottish cooksergeant charging across Achmer plain thumping seven shades of hell out of the Fire Triangle, shouting “Fire!!!” as his cookhouse burnt down…

There were many trips to Silberhutte in the Harz Mountains for dry skiing – on gravel!!! With metal-soled skis…. This operation tended to wear out jungle greens at an alarming rate…

Then there was the Trip to Amsterdam on a weekend pass… in the fog. Four of us in a 1959 Merc 190, we had borrowed a bivvy from the G10, and were proudly flying a Union Flag from the car. In the fog, at night, somewhere in Holland, we found a likely looking flat patch of grass to pitch the bivvy and get some kip, two in the car, two in the tent. Woke up next morning to be greeted by hordes of little Dutch children who wanted to know why these British idiots were camping in the middle of the school playing field…

Highlight of one Hameln Bridge Camp was when one of the senior NCOs drove through the gate at the bottom of the tented camp, when his car brakes failed.  The barrier had been put *down* by the sapper on guard duty who had seen an out-of-control Ford Taunus hurtling down the road towards him, and thought lowering the barrier would be a good way of stopping it.  It was. Luckily the NCO at the wheel ducked in time….

Interspersed with all these interesting events were another series of events – schemes, exercises, training sessions etc.  Looking back on it, this was probably the most enjoyable period of my time in the Engineers, even if it did not seem so at the time!  Those cold two-hour sessions in a wooden watchtower near Munster, on the perimeter of a nuclear bunker operated by the US…… those mad dashes from the AKC back to barracks, get all kit loaded onto trucks and off out to Achmer….and the September exercise, off towards the East German Border. Except for Troopy Duncan and Hector Langley, his driver, neither of whom could read a map particularly well…. When the OC called them on the radio and asked for their position,  Troopy duly obliged with a grid reference, and, after a lengthy silence,  the message went out “Suggest you turn round and come back. According to our reckoning, you are two kilometres inside Eastern Germany”….

Happy days!