IT’S HARD
TO EXPLAIN why and when things sometimes just exploded,
often literally. It could happen because it was
someone’s birthday, or somebody was being posted away or
leaving altogether, or sometimes just because the stars
aligned and it was that time. To put it into context, we
were young, single, fit and trained for something we all
hoped would never happen, that is confronting the vast
Soviet tank armies just across the border in East
Germany. We were also far from home with time on our
hands. To paraphrase another time, we were overpaid,
oversexed, and over there.
When all sense of decorum broke down the resultant
behaviour could be outrageous, inexcusably destructive,
and sometimes downright dangerous. On the plus side,
most of the times were, and are even more so with
hindsight, excruciatingly funny. Oh how we laughed.
Munster Mess 1981
Things
usually started to go astray at dinner. We had a
privileged and luxurious lifestyle in the Mess, and by
virtue of being overseas we were paid a local overseas
allowance (LOA) on top of our salaries. In addition to
this we had a certain tax-free status – a carton of 200
Benson & Hedges cigarettes cost £2, and a bottle of
Taittinger champagne, our favourite at the time, could
be had for less than £3 a bottle at one point. I
remember quite clearly one night when there were 25
young officers at dinner, and each of us had a bottle of
Taittinger in front of us. When we ran out of champagne
a 4 tonne truck was despatched with driver and the Mess
Steward to Reims across the border in France to get some
more. Happy days indeed.
An early sign of matters going further awry might be the
sight of officers returning to the Annexe carrying
crates of beer. The 4 RTR Officers’ Mess beer of choice
was Carlsberg, not the sort of rubbish in cans that you
get in the UK these days, but the real McCoy, in small
bottles, from the Carlsberg brewery in Denmark (accept
no substitute would be my advice). The empty bottles
lent themselves to a number of pastimes. The most
innocuous of these would be Carlsberg skittles, wherein
the lower corridor of the Annexe would constitute the
bowling alley, the bottles were the skittles, and the
balls were usually croquet balls liberated from the
croquet lawn. It was great fun, if a little noisy and
destructive (of the bottles). I liked to think of it as
recreational recycling, and it was very therapeutic.
More entertaining by far was the game known as “Jeux
Sans Frontieres Carlsberg”. Most of our bedrooms had two
or three windows, and the format was this; after a few
of the Carlsberg bottles had been emptied via the usual
means, each person present was in turn blindfolded and
handed an empty bottle. One of the windows was then
opened fully whilst the others remained closed. The
player was then spun around several times whilst still
blindfolded and then had to throw the bottle where he
best calculated the open window would be, with fairly
predictable results. It’s a great game, and may be
adopted entirely appropriately across the UK at this
current time of lockdown. Fun for all the family.
Pyrotechnics also played a large part in our after
dinner (and weekend) antics. When in the field on
exercise with our tanks we were liberally supplied with
various pyrotechnics to add realism to the training. We
were meant to hand all the unused ones back to the RQMS
at the end of the training period, but of course we
never did. The Annexe therefore became a veritable
arsenal of military grade pyrotechnic devices just
waiting to be put to alternative recreational use.
Three devices in particular were particularly popular,
the smoke grenade, the thunderflash, and the Schermuly.
Smoke grenades were jam jar sized devices where you
unscrewed the top and then yanked it firmly, whereupon
brightly coloured smoke gushed in abandon. They were
useful for smoking out friends who were being “boring”
by hiding in their rooms behind locked doors, or
entertaining “guests”. Knock a quick hole in the
skylight above the door, pop in a couple of smoke
grenades, and after 20 seconds or so the door would open
and half clothed guests would scurry away down the
corridor, their hair and bodies dyed deep red and orange
from the smoke. Or, more subtly, tie the grenade to the
underside of a friend’s car, unscrew the top and then
tie it to some unmoveable object. The victim would then
be followed by a plume of smoke billowing out behind
when they next drove their car. Top bantz!
Thunderflashes produced a loud bang and puff of white
smoke, ideal for waking up those who chose to sleep in
late or more generally for enhancing any sort of party.
They came with a 5 – 7 second delay once the fuse was
lit, and were pretty loud – 119dB at 12 metres (whatever
that means) – particularly within the confines of a
room. They also had the added benefit of occasionally
blowing out the windows, an early form of air
conditioning much in evidence in the Annexe.
The Schermuly, on the other hand, was a “single use
disposable parachute flare that produced an 80,000
candle power light (ie pretty bright, pictured that
burned for about 30 seconds at a height of 300 metres”
if launched vertically. Ideal for lighting up the scene,
and enhancing the mood, at any party when it got a bit
dark. Better than that, however, was that some genius
had worked out that you could tape three thunderflashes
to a Schermuly, light their fuses, then launch the flare
into the Heavens where it would go off with a humungous
bang at about 1,000 feet, rattling the windows for miles
around. It was like being in an air raid, as those of us
who experienced the Scud rocket attacks in Riyadh in
1991 will know, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself
here. This is for a later episode (or buy my book,
Sending My Laundry Forward: A Staff Officer’s Account of
the First Gulf War, Troubadour 2014, ISBN 9781 78306
4182. A real bargain at £16.99 from Amazon, if I say so
myself.)
I could go on for ever. You could be woken from your
slumbers by an officer on his trail bike (actually, it
was Nick Horne, no denying it I’m afraid) entering your
room, riding it over your bed, with you and anyone else
who happened to be in it at the time for that matter,
and then leaving again from whence he had come, not a
word being spoken. It wasn’t mentioned again, just as if
it had never happened. Or you, your bed and mattress,
with you in it, could be hoisted out of the window just
for fun at any time of the day or night. Thankfully this
latter activity was confined to those on the ground
floor, which made a top floor room very attractive.
I mentioned cars previously, saying that we weren’t
particularly into them except as bonfire fuel.
“Torching” a car didn’t happen that often, but when it
did it usually involved the vehicle of some brother
officer who was away on leave or on a course somewhere.
These “car-b-cues” usually involved old bangers, but you
had to be careful what you were doing; more than once
others’ newer cars were blistered by the resultant
infernos, including the senior member’s Porsche. Most
famous of all, and just before my time to be honest, was
the occasion when the brigadier’s wife, after a formal
function at which they were the senior guests,
commandeered the old mess banger, drove it round and
round the garden, and finally deposited it in the
ornamental pond. And then threw a lighted match in the
petrol tank. Good game, good game!
Getting cooler on the Mess verandah as the sun begins to
set? No problem, just pile up the garden furniture and
set it alight to keep you warm. To be fair, this was one
occasion the QM and the CO didn’t see the funny side,
and there was a bit of a downer on those involved
thereafter (so I’m told). Not that it excuses any of the
destructive behaviour, but the damage was always paid
for by the perpetrators, sometimes with a “voluntary
donation” to the RTR Benevolent Fund on top.
That’s probably enough of this, for I wouldn’t want the
casual reader to think that Britain’s defences on the
Iron Curtain were in any sort of jeopardy at such times,
or that the young officers of the #BARITWE were
dissolute, pampered and privileged rakes. Far from it, I
think, but it’s all a bit hazy to be honest.
In 4th Tonks, to paraphrase George Harrison, if you can
remember Munster you weren’t really there.
To come in Part 6, a jaunt through Regimental history
and some observations on our cavalry cousins.
© Stuart Crawford 2020
#BARITWE – Best Armoured Regiment In The World Ever |