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I would like to put down my thoughts about Barton Stacey, the transit camp for the Royal Engineers, wrote George Larbey. I would also love to hear other Engineers' thoughts about this camp, as there can hardly be an Engineer that didn't at some time visit this camp.
I was there no less than 4 occasions in my 3 years and 4 months service, from May 1953 when I joined at Malvern to December 1956 when they finally demobbed me at Barton Stalag as it was always known.
The first time I ever went there was about April 1954, I had finished my training at Cove in Hampshire and also I had completed a Sawyers course at Chatham. In those days a Sapper not only had to do his basic training, i.e. Square bashing, shooting, field engineer, they then went on to do some sort of trade training.
I was working in a market garden before joining up and they thought for some unknown reason I would make a good sawyer. I suppose they were under the impression that if I could wield a spade I would have no trouble whatsoever managing a huge band saw, a dirty great circular saw, or if it comes to that any other of the terrifying machines in our workshop.
Anyway they (They being the powers to be) must have decided a sawyer was urgently needed in Korea, so I ended up on draft at Barton Stacey.
I well remember that trip after picking up my travel pass at the R S M's office in Bromton Barracks, Chatham via Waterloo and Andover. I was not what you might have called travel wise in those days, no one was, and didn't really have much idea where Barton Stacey was. Yet my home was only at Farnham, some 30 miles away.
By this time I had been joined by several other chaps, all converging on Andover station from all 4 points of the compass, bound presumably for Korea. I remember thinking, 'If Barton Stalag's a long way off, where the hells Korea?'
We climbed into the back of an awaiting lorry and headed into the unknown, just down the road to the camp. A series of near condemned huts were on either side of the biggest square one had ever seen. That square is still there to this day.
A. Squadron to the left, B. Squadron to the right. Never the twain shall meet. A. Squadron was for those going out of the country. B. for those coming in, mainly for demob, so it was not an ideal mixture.
I, of course, was put in the former. Our Sergeant Major was a huge but really quite friendly man, the only thing he really had going for him was his voice, which was more like a fog-horn, and you could hear it in Andover I would think.
For some unknown reason we rarely paraded on the square, always on the narrow paths that went between the huts, outside his own married quarters, where his wife and what seemed to be an endless number of kids were in the garden whenever it was time for a parade. From time to time she would have a go at her husband for shouting at us poor squadies.
He would always carry a large stick with a knob on one end, which he used to reminding us all of what would happen to our pure bodies if by chance we encountered some of the, (Shall we say, Women of the night) by placing the stick between his legs and then smartly standing at ease, to the roars of laughter from us squadies.
On another occasion we were all called out on parade unexpectedly to explain why a pair of his wife's knickers, removed from their clothes line the evening before, mysteriously found their way up the flag staff outside the Squadron Office.
Needless to say there was no explanation, so everyone was confined to camp for one evening. I think the Sergeant Major was as amused as the rest of us but of course was unable to show it.
I think we were generally a pretty happy bunch of chaps given the fact we were all on draught for Korea. There must have been a couple of hundred of us from all parts of the country and all walks of life. Apart from a few disagreeable characters, who always seem to want to pick a fight with someone, we got on pretty good.
I recall quite a few drinking sessions at the pub in the village.
Guard duty was fairly easy, for no-one seemed to expect too much of us, in fact some of them turned out quite funny. I remember calling the guard out in the middle of the night while on sentry duty inside the main gate in the pouring rain.
The orderly officer, whose job it was to keep the guard on their toes by calling them outside and inspecting them, couldn't be bothered to get out of his bed to do it when the guard in charge of early calls woke him at 2 am, so both him and I thought it might be quite fun to get them outside anyway. It did not go down too good.
We went on embarkation leave prior to joining our ship, the Empire Fowey, for the 30 day, 12,000 mile journey to the orient. The next time we saw Barton Stalag was 2 years later on my return to this country for demob.
Nothing had changed, except the side of the square our huts were on. We could still hear the same Sergeant Major shouting over the other side of the square, cracking the same old jokes, giving the same demonstrations with his stick on those (Women of the night) and we could hear the roars of laughter as we had been doing 2 years before.
'Good old Barton Stacey,' we thought, thinking we would never see it again. How wrong could I be? Three months later I was there again. The Suez Canal crisis hit and I was one of the first to be recalled. Where did I have to report? Yes Barton Stacey.
A. Squadron and the dreaded Sergeant Major. I think I was only there for 5 days before being transferred to Marchwood to do a course on Stevedoring, but returned four months later for demob (Second time around).
I go past that camp regularly now nearly 50 years on, the camp is long gone, but the square is still there. Hark! Do I hear that Sergeant Major's voice bellowing across the square? No he's long gone.
22956973 (George Larbey) A retired Sapper.
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