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Now at - 91st.Battery - 63rd. HAA Regiment / Royal Regiment of Artillery
"FIRE!...AND FIRED!"
'FIRE!'
We had completed our Gun training, and were deemed good enough to fire live ammunition. We went for a few weeks to North Wales, to a place called Tonfanau (pronounced 'Tonfanner.') We were under canvas. (Tents) There were four of us in our tent. We had 'paliases' these are like sacks, which were filled with straw and fastened at one end. There were duckboards on the tent floor (duckboards are slats of wood.) The first morning we awoke at Tonfanau, I remember stretching my legs, and my feet were splashing in water! It had rained that much during the night. After breakfast, which was a fair walk to the cookhouse in our capes, we dug out the trenches around each tent.
We then went onto the guns. (3.7 Heavy anti aircraft Mark 4s.)... "FIRE!" I don’t know how we did it, but we managed to hit the sleeve! The sleeve was pulled along behind an aircraft on a very long wire. The aircraft came in low and dropped the sleeve over our guns. We all had a small piece of it, and I kept mine for years. Every day was the same at firing camp; we had tent inspections, paraded every morning, and we still had to blanco and polish our boots.
One evening after tea a few of us had a walk around the camp. We came across some empty tents, and we were told that Paratroopers had been training in Wales the week before, and these were the tents they used. Why I’m remarking about this, is that in white chalk on the tent wall, someone had written, “We came ...we went...F**K living in a tent!” It’s strange how little anecdotes come to memory when writing about places!
..."AND FIRED"
As we were beginning to leave Tonfanau, I had a letter from Pam, my girlfriend of three and a half years. It was truly a “Dear John” letter! ”
"...Dear John, I know this will come as a surprise, but I have met someone who has just finished in the Army. He has asked me to go out with him, and I said yes.” I stopped reading, as my eyes were blurred with tears. I couldn’t believe it. I ripped up the letter and binned it. Many National Servicemen got such letters. As I said earlier, she was to be married, and expecting twins before I left the Army. Although it was upsetting at the time, she actually did me a favour.
I left the Army in Jan. 1954, and in the August, I met Jessica, a lovely girl, and we’ve been married 50 years in December 2005.
Pam’s husband died in 1994. A couple of years later she re-married. Soon after receiving Pam’s letter all those years ago, I sent her a poem. She never replied. I must have been feeling sentimental at the time, however I kept the poem:
“You cried so much when I left you,
A soldier for to be.
The tears that were running down your face, are now in memory.
Two years was all you had to wait, it wasn’t too much to ask.
But in your mind, it was a long time, ,just too much of a task.
Memories are a wonderful thing, we all know that is true,
But I didn’t want the memories... I only wanted you."
