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George Spenceley relives his army training days in the 1950's and the many friends and memories he recalls
Our twelve weeks at Walton on the Naze was at an end and on our return to Colchester we were told the holiday was over. Two weeks of intensive training then off on an exercise over three hundred miles away at the Dearborn ranges in Northumberland.
I was given a new vehicle to drive and as the exercise included the whole regiment the convoy would take four days to complete the journey. Our first stage was to get to Thetford in Suffolk and the following day as far as Sherwood Forest.
I took spells at dispatch riding and guiding the convoy along the chosen route. I had to keep a watchful eye for stragglers and if a vehicle happened to break down I would stay with it until the breakdown crew from REME arrived.
The journey was very slow travelling at 15 mph and less when going through a town for to stop the traffic to allow up to two hundred vehicles through was a major problem. It was 1953 before motorways came into existence.
On the third day I approached an Officer to ask if I could have the use of a motorbike to visit a farm that I had previously worked on. He was very reluctant at first but knowing that I'd had a very gruelling day he relented on condition that if I had the misfortune to be stopped by the Military Police I would say that I was looking for stragglers from the convoy.
I travelled the ten miles or so to the farm and exchanged the usual friendly greetings, I stayed and had my tea before setting off back. As I travelled along the twisting country lanes at a nice steady speed I noticed that the road had been recently resurfaced.
Disaster struck as I was negotiating one of the bends, I'd leaned the machine over to take the bend when the front wheel hit a mound of loose gravel, my footrest caught the surface of the road and it dug in sending the bike spinning across the road.
I hit the far bank then shot back across to the other side and shooting into the air it came to rest on my helmet tearing the metal from the inside webbing and digging into the back of my head.
Dazed, I felt my head. The blood was flowing pretty fast around my neck and round under my chin. A local farmer working in a field a few yards away saw the whole thing and climbed over the fence to help me.
I must have looked a ghastly sight sitting with my face covered in blood and with the inside webbing from my helmet still attached to my head. Bill the farmer said 'I'll go and phone the army at Catterick and tell them you've had an accident'.
I explained that by right I shouldn't have been there and that I'd been visiting friends. I looked at the damage on the machine. The handlebar had been forced up along with the footrest and the headlamp was dented and the
glass broken.
I forgot about my pain and bleeding head for I was so worried about how I would explain what had happened and the thought of a Court Martial. The regiment had set up camp in a field and having made it back I reported to the powers that be the following morning.
I was taken to Catterick military hospital to have four stitches in the wound on my head and was excused exercises for the following week. Fortunately the damage on the bike went unnoticed.
George Spenceley, 2002
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