Army Catering Corps
St. Omer => Do you remember => Topic started by: rubberguts on February 02, 2011, 05:36:33 PM
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Do not know if the Catering Annex was still being used for training cooks after National Service was discontinued (forget the name of the bloody place). Took around twelve minutes marching time four times daily.
The place was supervised by a Civvy attached bloke who ponced around in a morning suit. Think his name was Williams or Wilson? He had a mindfix that anyone who had not attended W.T.I, (Westminster Tech) had no business being a special cook and took every opportunity to remind us of it. Fair enough. I had no quarrel with that. The Army thought otherwise.
Served outside The morning hot cocoa break was this jokers pet forte,
He was insistent there be one level serving spoon of sugar to be stirred into the hay box container full of watery hot cocoa that tasted bloody revolting. Bollocks to that. Whenever I got on the end of the spoon, sugar was shovelled in as soon as his back was turned.
An instructor who took over near the end of our training stint at the annexe (think his name was Dutton? 'Had the interesting habit of pronouncing the word Roux as Rux).
End of week interior economy. Everything was clean, even the grotty aluminium pudding basins.
He produced a pile of wire wool, pointing to the pudding basins said, "Those are going to shine. It won't take much."
Muttering under our National Service Breaths, we told each other what part of the human anatomy we thought he most closely represented and reluctantly set about the task. What a transformation. Highly polished basins were displayed neatly in a pyramid. Over the next week, a trail of catering hierarchy appeared to view the display. After that all the classrooms in St Omer began displaying polished pudding basins
Over the years grotty aluminium pots got to me and during a spare moment were polished. Thankfully that urge has now subsided.
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The Annexe could well have been what us boys knew as The Garages ;D ;D
I wonder if that Instructor was Dickie Dutton?
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Ian , I think you are correct. Mind you my recollection of the garages is that they were more like aircraft hangers.
Dickie Dutton would be correct too. When i was an App the garages were used for drill parades,later they were used for tech training.
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Ah Yes,
"The Garages"!
The NAAFI break whistle the rush for the raspberry buns and tea before the whistle went again to return to training. How could anyone forget those days? ;D
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I remember the building was of Aldershot colour brick construction rather like a village hall or school with Gothic windows at one end.
To get there we marched out of St. Omer. Turned right, on past Blenheim Barracks, further along on the right were some married quarters where resided of all that was holy, the consummate archetypal Regimental Sergeant Major Britton. The detail ran foul of him one time but that is another story.
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John, Are you getting mixed up between St Omer & Tournai Barracks by any chance? ;)
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The Garages, the centre of all things gastronomical! ;D
I remember a young lad who had put his glazed baton carrots on the stove just before NAAFI break. When the whistle went, he shot out and forgot about the carrots, he returned to find them burnt to a cinder....literally!
Ray Jenner was a very understanding instructor, he took the young lad down to the office, accompanied by the cindered carrots in the smoking pan. Put the smoking pan in front of him and said...............................EAT em!
Then to add insult to injury he told the lad to clean the pan!
I was that lad, I never burnt anything for years after that and whenever I recall the story the taste of those damn carrots is in my mouth!
As for the pan..............it was passed cleaning. The bloody carrots were that burnt in it was impossible to get them out, a pneumatic drill wouldn't have budged them.
I loved Big Ray Jenner, no nonesense and straight to the point, he ended up as a Major.
I like to think my carrots helped in his promotion! ;)
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Hi Ian, I probably am a little confused. At 77 years of age time has probably warped the gray matter a little. I have never given my Army service much thought over the years until I came across this site. So if my utterances are a little mixed up, I crave your indulgence.
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Not a problem John, I enjoy reading your little stories....keep em coming!
What you doing up at 5 in the morning, are you on the breakfast shift?
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No it's nineteen degrees here and I got up at two thirty and retrieved the newspaper to do the code cracker puzzle.
Ah, the good old breakfast shift in Egypt, The duty cook would bring round a mug of tea at 5 am. for us off duty Wallahs first thing when the billie boiled. I tell you, there was no finer way to commence the day.
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I should have thought that joker could have taken a more diplomatic approach to your cooking dilemma. He would have gone down in my book under the chapter of "Complete Bastards I Have Known" Along with Sgt. Cyril Bardsley and CSM. Paddy O'dowd, (Don't like to get personal but those two were exceptions to the rule) who reigned by sheer terror when I was in training.
This fella Jenner interests me. Wondering if it was the same bloke I cooked with, a cpl. Busty Jenner in MELF. Had a small crescent shaped scar above his mouth to one side. He got demobbed while I was there but I suppose he could have signed on for another stint. He too was a good sort, Organized the Officers camp TCV one time and took a few of us up to Tek (Tel el kabir) one evening to see a show put one by an ACC. Csm. who did a great ventriloquists act.
Tek was the magical mystery posting in the Middle East Zone us lessor mortals lived in awe of and would have volunteered for any day because along with that posting came the ultimate shoulder flashes to sport for bragging rights. No one did it harder than those boys The hottest temps. and nothing but sand and flies. It was little else than a British version of the French Foreign Legion.
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The very same John!
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You can call them what you want, garages-hangers or the annex´s, that was St. Omer tech training
kitchens. Depot to the left Boy´s to the right facing the entrance, with the field kitchens at the rear, with S/Sgt Bobby Bloxum, who also taught Scottish Country Dancing in the churchhall, to the dilema of us Scots lads who always had to find an excuse not to accept his ordered invitation to attend.
Yes Ian, it was always a rush to the Sally Army wagon for a spam roll, tea and a fag all in a 10 min. break. It seems the older we´re getting the irrelevant things of the past become more vivid - pyramid stacked pudding basins indeed - it brought back a memory and a smile just reading it.
I´m glad we boys had a cleaner who did most of the pots and the stacking.
Do you remember when we used to collect the prepared food from the class rooms and take them up to K4 on a big trolley, one lad pulling and two pushing over the rails an up the small incline to the main kitchen.
Pleasant memories indeed, keep them coming.
Jim
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Your memories of CSM.Dowd differ a little from the RSM Dowd I knew at St Omer as an app.Boy in 64. During rehearsals for our Passing in / Passing out Parade, I was on the recieving and of his irish sence of humor.
Earlier that morning I had been on sick parade to get a boil lanced on my neck, to keep the wound clean the nurse put a bandage around it. Marching on to the drill square to the tapping of the drum we eventually reached our designated position. After telling us what a shambles the march-on had been, the RSM lifted his pacestick and pointing in the direction of C-Company, shouted " Sergeant Major, what´s the bloody Padre doing on my drill square, get him out of my sight!" A somewhat disturbed CSM Fletcher turned and surveyed the company and on spotting my white bandage spoke to Sgt. Scott, our platoon NCO, who in turn with curled up lips and bared teeth told me to disappear. With a backward shuffle this was accomplished. Needless to say that bandage disappeared for the rest of the week and I stayed out of sight in the rear rank.
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It seems I might have opened a can of worms James, I hope your memories aren't too painful.
Here are a couple that come to mind. On guard one night. CSM O' Dowd was on duty He was particually agitated and white as a sheet. He us told to stand to and surround and subdue a Scottish Joker who was out after Last Post if he decided to cut up rough.
Ginger Kelly was a legend. Huge and powerfully built, His size made Peter Deakin a PTI who held the current Mr South of Britain title look like a Charles Atlas before advert. He was around six, six, easily the largest in the Barracks, a re enlistment and, it seemed, well known to Paddy. The word was passed in from outside that Ginger was coming up the road, he was only around fifteen minutes late.
Paddy was fair sh*tt*ng himself. Into the Guard House staggered Ginger, We all lamely said 'Sorry Ginge' as we surrounded him. God knows what we could have done if he decided to cut up rough. I think we were all as scared of him as Paddy was. "That's all right lads" he said. Walked straight into the cell, lay down and slept it off.
Paddy was out of that bloody Guard Room like a shot. He didn't show face in the morning either.
Another time we were in the hut laying on our beds after lunch. the beds looked a bit ruffled. Well more like Sh*t heaps actually. The new C O. accompanied by the hut nco's and O'dowd called us 'too' after parade.
He was a fair joker and said it wasn't good enough. He personally gave us a demonstration of how he wanted the beds to look in the future. Oh and by the way, he had progressed up from the coal face, none of your hoity toity, Public School "Educated Idiot" type about him.
We had to box the blankets, wrap the green mattress cover with the red centre line around the outside, Remove the pallyass (mattress) cover and fold it on top off the mattress which was folded in three and placed at the back of the bed. The boxed blankets sat on top. He gave us half an hour to complete the task. O Dowd told our Corporal to check the room before final inspection.
The Officer wasn't very thrilled with what he saw until he singled out my bed as being the only one that hit the mark required. Then he bollocked me naked for not helping the others and told me we work as a team in the army. A point well taken and, I might add, digested.
O' dowd was in his element. Seizing the opportunity to look good in front of the CO he ripped into the Corporal. The CO didn't seem impressed and turned away as O'Dowd carried on asking if he had heard what the officer required. The poor bloke muttered he had carried out an inspection. "Well report sick with your eyes and ears" ordered O' Dowd trailing the Officer out of the room. Next morning, the Corporal was outside the medical room reporting for sick parade. I felt sorry for the Corporal until a few days later the ratbag had to go home and the bastard hit on me for a loan of my best beret. We were posted on to St.Omer before he returned and I lost one best beret. What a pisser!
The dormitory bedding was perfected with string lining up everything end to end and crosswise, blankets were boxed to satisfaction. Oh the joys of being a sprog.
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In 62-63 Jim we didn't have the luxury of a cleaner. One of the squad had to don denims for the day and do all the washing up and cleaning......and woe betide any plonker who made a mess or burnt anything!
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The good old fatigue detail. One time us civvy cooks were put on spud peeling in St Omer for the bulk kitchen prep. We got through the spuds pretty smartly and were all cleaned up. The civvy head wallah at St. Omer A real slight little joker with windows who used to drive an antique 1947 Austin Seven. Pleasant type, think his name might have been Owens, came along and was so impressed at how efficiently we worked rewarded us with another load to do.
One of the chefs I worked under in civvy street used to tell how when he was in the RAF in the desert during the war it was his turn on Kitchen fatigue. He had the mutton cloths used for cleaning boiling in a pot on the stove when a group of visiting officers came to inspect the kitchen. "This looks interesting" said one bloke "What kind of soup is it?" and grabbed a ladle and drank a mouthful. Charlie piped up "That's not soup sir, that's my cleaning cloths being washed. :-[
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I may have misled you Ian, we still had to do pots and pans but there was a cleaner there, who took on most of the work. As for the stove cleaning on a friday with a mop and caustic soda you can ask Andy Senneck what can happen when lads start messing around when the instructors back is turned. It wasn´t his fault but he was on the receiving end. Say hallo to him and Chippy Woods when you next see them. Saw Chippy´s photo in the last edition of the Assoc.Info.Link. He hasn´t changed since I last saw him in 1972 before he left the 1st. L I . There again it might be better for others to recognise us if we all wore berets when we send in photos.
Jim
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There was over a decade between your meetings with Paddy Dowd and ours, although he frightened us to death at the time, I can still see the twinkle of humor in his eyes when he was dressing us down. They do say that Grandparents are more caring and understanding then the parents and maybe that was the case with Paddy Dowd. He was now dealing with boy regulars and not with grown up National sevicemen.
By the way, he didn´t have an o´ in his surname. He left us at the end of 1964 and was replaced by RSM Reg.Farmer. He returned to the regiment in 1965 after a short period at the Depot & Training Battalion as Lieutenant Dowd ACC.
Bedbox building was still a big thing in our day, and it was all part and parcel of the discipline to ransack a couple of them during the Thursday OC.s inspection by Captain Frost. Fortunateley we hat a good J/NCO App.L/Cpl. Wally Torrington. Who eventually got our room working so well that we managed to stay out of trouble for most of the 4 month sprog training.
PS: Maybe you could give us a first name to correspond with? Rubberguts is quite impersonal, even Kiwi would sound better.
Jim
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Will do Jim, but currently this year I've no plans to go to any ACC events, possibly will make this years Cenotaph parade though and see them both there. ::)
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Always thought the name was O'Dowd, Never actually saw it in writing, only heard of it by word of mouth. Could there have been two? Good to learn he a showed a little compassion later in life.
"Mr Paddy" left a bitter taste in my mouth and also a lot of fellow recruits.
It is important to realize the National Serviceman was not there by choice. However we knuckled down and accepted the situation. We were raw recruits, not much older than boy soldiers.
Naturally mistakes were made during the learning process. it is not as if it was intentional and a pat on the head now and again would have not have been remiss. There were Instructors who realized this and without exception were held in high regard. Whichever approach Instructors took to get us there, constructive or waving a rod of iron, little by little we were changed into soldiers. All credit to each and every one of them. We gained a fierce Esprit de Corps from the experience.
My name is John Everitt. The Rubber guts thing was the name I used to register on the site believing it would be a password. It was humorously bestowed upon me by my son at an early age.
Would I like to be known as "Kiwi?" Thank you but no! I have resided here for almost forty five years now, I don't think I will ever be accepted here as any other than a "Pommie Bastard."
The boss takes great delight in informing people of that when they inquire of her where I came from.
Probably already has a headstone inscribed with it. ;)
Whatever the military situation. Ranks will always swell or decline. The Catering Corps by any other name will always be a mainstay. What other calling is known by whether it's product is conceived to be good or revolting based solely on how mum used to make it?