My memoirs
Chapter 7
LUDLOW
From Brighton as I have said, we should normally have gone straight to I.T.W. (Initial Training Wing) but for reasons we shall never know we were posted to LUDLOW. What a strange posting that was! I recall a very long march from Ludlow Station to the Camp, which was exactly that. A tented camp in wide open country. Fortunately the weather was not too bad but the nights were cold. This posting has always been shrouded in mystery. It would appear that the land was owned by a very rich landowner, a Major Critchley. We called ourselves Critchley's Army. Our best blue was put away in our tents on arrival and we never used it again until we were posted out. This caused me a great problem which I will explain later.
On our first parade clad in tatty denims, we were asked if there were any construction specialists among us. There were some, but Chas and I thought it prudent to keep quiet, that proved to be an error, because we immediately became labourers working for the specialists. In fact we became manual concrete mixers. The plan seemed to be to set up a large camp having roads and concrete walled buildings with tented roofs. I say seemed to be, because we never saw a plan and because of the lack of supervision nothing seemed orderly. There was a mass of material, sand, cement, concrete bricks, pipes for drainage and for water, tools, etc, etc.
The following day when specialists were called for, Chas and I stepped smartly out and claimed to be 'Steel Constructors' that seemed a nice safe bet, but low and behold we were welcomed with open arms. There was a very large Nissan Hut to be erected and we were the first ‘Experts’ in this business. Of course we couldn't back out having volunteered our expertise. I must say we had a lot of fun building this monster. We had no plans so it really was the blind leading the blind. We did succeed in erecting most of it before we left. Not though without having had some nasty incidents due to our own inexperience.
As I said the nights were cold and there were quite a few chaps going down with Dysentery due to the poor water supply. One such was a chap named Duck I recall one morning early, he said to all in the tent “I’m very sorry chaps I had an accident in the night and when I tried to get out of the tent in a hurry the door had iced up I lost control...but I will clean it up"
Ah yes my big error!! When we arrived I wrote my letters to Mum and the girl friend and being a nice sort of chap I went round to everyone asking if they had letters to post I would take them. Of course what did I do? I put my letters in my best blue jacket pocket and forgot them but posted all the others. Naturally, I got no replies to my letters because the family did not know my new address. But I was cussed enough not to send any more letters until they had replied to mine. This went on until I was posted to Paignton and changed into best Blue, when I found the letters in my pocket. Well... I had to explain that I had been on a secret mission didn't I!!!!