A Centurion Story (Revenge, extracted in full) - by Peter Laidler

[Peter Laidler]

REVENGE, EXTRACTED IN FULL
(by Peter Laidler)

A SHORT BUT TRUE STORY OF THE ARMOURERS, THE GUN FITTERS AND THE MYSTERY OF THE ‘MISSING’ BROWNING MACHINE GUN

Picture the scene if you will. The mid-summer sun was beating down on Castlemartin tank ranges. The thick spring mud had turned to equally deep summer bull-dust. The REME fitters, including a handful of reccy-mechs, Control Equipment Techs, Gun Fitters and Armourers were enjoying a well-deserved kip. Quite how we managed to kip while the tanks were firing on the firing point some 30 metres from our vehicles remains a bit of a mystery. But once the canopies of the old trusty Bedford QL machinery truck, the RL fitters’ truck and Centurion ARV (the Armoured recovery vehicle) had been loosened, they formed natural hammocks. I was sound asleep when I heard a voice from below shouting back to the firing point, ‘…but he’s a kip’. I stirred a little more when another voice I recognised as that of Sergeant Brian Gibbs, one of the Centurion tank commanders, hollered back in a raised voice, ‘KIP, I’ll give him fuc$ing kip!. The little rascal’s dozed off when we’re here practicing for war in order to save the nation from invasion and destruction. I appreciate that the tired rake needs his sleep, but there are instances, rare in today’s Army I agree, when you’ve got to be cruel to be kind, so might I suggest that you wake the naughty little wag up and tell him to get himself and his little bag of tools over here’ Or words to that effect. In fact rousing from my sleep deprived nightmare with thoughts of Britt Ekland firmly etched on the receptive parts of my brain, it sounded a bit like …. I’ll give him kip. Wake the bastard up then …..’

Of course we deserved our kip. The Centurions didn’t stop firing until after about 20.30 hours the previous day. And once they’d got back into the camp the crews buggered off and left the REME to get on with the job of fixing them. Quite HOW these cack-handed clowns broke the Centurions is likely to remain another of life’s little mysteries …… like how they built the pyramids. The difference being that it’s easier to build the pyramids than break a Centurion. But break them they did with monotonous regularity. The REME ground crews would slave away all through the bloody night while the crews pi$$ed it up in the NAAFI then hit their comfy beds. No such luxuries for the REME. We were up all night, hit our sacks at about 04.00 hours then up again at 06.30 with the tank crews out on the ranges with their shiny newly repaired Centurions. So, as politely requested, off I trundled towards Centurion 13 BA 39, tool-kit in hand and my don’t-give-a-sh##-o’meter registering zero. The Centurion Mk12 number 13 BA 39 and all it represented will haunt me for the rest of my life.

But back to the story, the cause of their grief was a jamming-up co-axial Browning machine gun. We had two sorts fitted to our tired but magnificent Centurions, so beloved by many. The original US type called the GUN, Machine, Browning, 300” M1919-A4 and A6. Designed in the USA by a mechanical arch-genius called John Moses Browning in 1917 and simplified in 1919. And never given trouble since. Well generally nothing that a squirt of oil from the can couldn’t fix but these cack-handed clowns from The Royal Hussars weren’t something that genius John Browning had catered for! These magnificent air-cooled bullet squirters would fire belt upon belt at ten rounds a second, all day and night at the thousands of man sized fire 11 targets placed out for them. Hosing the targets down as they would massed Chinese Infantry. They would even hose down the derelict target tank hulks hundreds of yards away that had supposedly been swamped by advancing enemy troops. But the American Browning fired from a closed breech. And in some of the other tanks we had a similar gun that some bright spark decided would be better if it fired from an OPEN breach. Similar, but …… This gun was re-designed by a Biffo the Bear headed committee from Abbey Wood and converted at Enfield in the mid 60’s. This was the GUN, machine 300” L3A3 or A4. This was in the mid to late 60’s and before the days of ‘K-I-S-S or Keep it Simple Stupid’. If they couldn’t keep the simple Browning simple, then the other proverb, that of …if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ was simply hieroglyphics. True to form, the offending gun in 13 BA 39 was one of the modern L3A3s. It was to be a testing day. The inside of the turret was like a furnace. The gun would fire a few bursts or one or two rounds, then another short burst and…. And…., then stop and so it went on and on and on – or not. The crews had done all of the usual drills such as kick the tyres, empty the ashtrays, have a glug from a can of coke, rack the cocking handle a few times just to exasperate the situation and wind the windows up and down ….. Sergeant Brian Gibb, the tank commander was desperately jumping up and down like a frog on fire while the rest of the crew stood around looking like tarts on a day trip to the Vatican while the Armourer strutted his stuff. Something had broken big time. In the confines of the cramped furnace of the turret where headspace was something you only dreamed about, I decided to slide the complete Browning out of the cradle to the rear, then lift it out of the commanders cupola hatch and repair it while sat on the engine deck at the rear. After all they didn’t really need the bloody Browning when they had a bloody big 105 mm tank gun. Anyway, if they really needed to knock seven bells out of the figure 11 targets, they could unleash a few rounds of canister (a fearsome 105mm shot cartridge). The crew could carry on firing the main armament while I sat there in the sun instead of the oven of the turret that stunk like a shithouse in a heat-wave, a mix of sweat, cordite and hot OX-52 oil all mixed together with the beery gas of last night’s NAAFI p$ss-up and the mix-it-all curry sloshed up by the cooks. While the cooks preferred to be called ‘chefs’, we affectionately called them ‘fitters and turners’ due to the way they delicately prepared our range rations ……. by fitting it into pots and turning it into sh$t. So hot was it in the turrets that the crews worked wearing cover-alls undone to the waist, top pulled down with the arms tied round the middle. Deary me, there was no health and safety regime then…………..

The problem was found to be (if my memory serves me right…) a ruptured cartridge case stuck in the breech plus a broken extractor tooth. It might NOT have been of course but I had to have an answer and bull-sh$t does baffle brains. I fixed the gun within about 25 minutes when I decided that it was ready to earn its keep once more. To test the gun I set it up on the ground tripod that I had dragged from the turret stowage bin after removing the general crap that covered it. Crap such as machetes, webbing, old compo ration packs, grease and oil cans, girlie magazines, paint tins and other paraphernalia that the tankies seem to take great delight in collecting for the good of the crews. The tripod and gun were set-up on a bit of spare ground at the end of the concrete firing point, 250 round belt at the ready. I was ready to go when up went the 1” flare from the range controllers’ position indicating the firing was to cease for lunch. I returned to the relative sanity, sanctuary and shade of the penthouse canopy on the rear of the big homely Centurion ARV. Lunch had been prepared at about 08.30 and true to form, being about 13.30, the sandwiches were curled up and looked like slabs of corrugated cardboard, tasting slightly worse. The tea was luke-warm, the chocolate biscuits had melted and the oil was running out of the crisps! The cooks had done us proud once again. All of this on 2.4 pence per-day, per-man, per-haps. How do they manage so little on so much money? In the tanks of course the water heaters were making fresh tea and their lunches had been stored on the tracks, but UNDER the protective bazooka plates of the massive bulk of the steer 50-ton monsters, where they remained relatively cool. But I digress.

Following our lunch firing commenced and I returned to where the Browning and tripod had been left, 30 metres or so from and slightly to the right of where the fitters’ trucks and Centurion ARV were parked. It wasn’t there. Nothing to worry about though as vehicles had moved during the lunch break and may be I had lost my bearings a bit. But look as I might the Browning did not appear. Now this wasn’t the Arizona desert, just a tank firing point in Wales, but after twenty minutes of looking panic was beginning to set in to the extent that I could feel a trip to the toilet might soon be necessary. My bottom was feeling decidedly twitchy. After 30 minutes I decided to seek help and maybe a certain amount of spiritual guidance from the Armourer Sergeant Gerry Young. Gerry was supposedly of a religious bent as he is often to be heard scowling under his breath, in his Bermondsey accent, …’God, if you’re up there, please ‘elp me…’ Could he help I asked. No, but in a few of us lost REME souls were to get off our sleepy arses, we’d find it within a minute or so. After all, it won’t have grown legs and walked (oh no). It won’t have sunk into the mud or dust and the long grass won’t have grown longer and hidden it. We looked and looked and looked and it still did not turn up. Was someone playing a cruel joke I asked forlornly. The tank crew didn’t have it either, but Brian Gibb most definitely DID want it back, preferably today and, if possible, in working order. All that was left in its place was a bloody great tank footprint.

As if on a suicide mission, Gerry Young took the bull by the horns and began his slow walk to what might as well be Valhalla, in the direction of the firing point rang controller and explained the situation. I could imagine him saying softly, ‘Houston, we have a problem…’ I don’t know exactly what he said but I did see several of the senior Officers looking over at me. I heard one of them say in a heated and agitated voice ‘he can’t have just LOST the f------- thing, get those REME shitheads to look properly this time’. Which they duly did. Only this time, following veiled radio messages between the ranges, the range controller and the observation Officer, firing ceased and now EVERYBODY was looking for the fu#king Browning. And pretty pi$$ed off they were too! It has to be said that the Ministry of Defence are not keen on the thought of one of its lowly Lance Corporals losing a machine gun, especially one that’s got a belt of 250 rounds of ammo hanging from it. Within about 15 minutes of this large scale search certain bits of what looked suspiciously like a Browning machine gun and tripod were beginning to surface as though given up by the deep. If my memory serves me right, that LARGEST part found during the following hour was the rear sight bracket and sight that had previously been welded to the side plates of the massive gun since it was made in about 1944. Several springs and bits of perforated barrel jacket were recovered too, as was the sadly mangled traverse and elevating mechanism from the tripod. Then the truth dawned ……………..

What had happened was that during the lunch hour, during a changeover on the firing point, several of the big Centurions had changed places, some had gone to the battle run area and others had trundled off to heaven only knows where to knock seven bells out of other target hulks. One of these kindly, gentle 50 ton beloved Centurions crewed by one Sergeant Harry Garlick and his happy band, known to all as Garlicks Galloping Goons, had apparently reversed over the Browning, picked it up on its giant manganese tracks and spat the broken bits out like a kid with a lolly-pop all over the dusty track off the ranges, dispersed to all points north, east and west. Once could not travel much further south as that was the Bristol Channel and beyond that the Atlantic and thereafter America. America … yes, as during our forlorn search, Gerry Young did mention to me that if we/I could not find the fuc$ing Browning, that is the direction I ought to start walking, wading and eventually swimming! What we were finding were the bits of that very lolly-pop. Once it was established that this is what had happened, although the pot was still boiling flesh and blood, my flesh and blood incidentally, the immediate flap had died down. The proverbial shite was still hitting the fan of course, but at least I had not actually LOST the bloody gun. Well, I had LOST it, but it was semi-accountable. The matter was raised a few more times, but while the OC had the shredded remains of the gun, it was not uppermost in our minds. Indeed, our newly promoted ‘eme-let’ the naïve Captain Hodgson had even placated me with words to the effect of ‘…well it’s just one of those unfortunate events that occur from time to time when you’re doing your job in difficult circumstances. I’ll write it off when we get back’. By the end of the fortnight that particular Browning was a dim and distant memory. However, when we returned to Tidworth the matter reared its ugly head again. Not with a formal announcement of a pending enquiry, but when Sergeant Ted Hurdle from the Orderly room casually walked into the Armourers shop asking ‘who is in the sh$t for losing the Browning at Castlemartin?’ It was decided to convene a Board of Enquiry. Captain Hodgson placated me once more telling me that it was just a formality when dealing with missing stores that are deemed to be ‘valuable and attractive’. Good God, what planet was he on? The big Browning was neither valuable nor attractive’ Now, for the uninitiated, whatever views you previously held about the Army criminal judicial system, in reality the usual democratic rights, such as the right to remain silent or any notion of innocence until proven guilty or even innocence per-se just don’t wash. Even worse is the Board of Enquiry. The Board of Enquiry is convened to achieve one aim. That being to pin the blame on somebody. The blame then steadily trickles downwards like a bucket of diarrhoea until it lands on – well anyone will do, but preferably a hapless Lance Corporal. As for Harry Garlick and his galloping goons who really ‘lost’ the fuc$ing gun, there was no sign or come-back. They were INNOCENT. After all, they belonged to the same Royal Hussars who were convening the Board of Enquiry….. Get the picture? It is better if the blame, whilst cascading downwards, is directed at another Regiment or Corps too. So it was that the REME got the lot, by the bucketful.

The Board duly convened and by way of a surprise I was the one who it was ordained should be held to blame. Not JUST me you understand …… And after a day of too-ing and fro-ing, plus subsequent Company Orders, I was fined the hefty sum of £25 plus 7 extra soul-destroying duties as the tank park guard commander. Sergeant Gerry Young was also fined £25, presumably for being Gerry Young and supporting Leeds United while the other Armourer, Pete Smallwood, a Brighton and Hove Albion supporter was fined £20 plus 7 extra duties – just for being there we eventually presumed. £25 was a LOT of money in 1970 and even more so considering that we hadn’t lost the bloody gun, it was still available, albeit in chip sized parts. As First Class skilled Armourers we were only earning about £18 per week I seem to recall. To make matters even worse, as if to rub salt into the wound, we hadn’t really LOST any guns, because stripping all the crap away we had 6 SPARE Browning machine guns tucked under our work-benches! But I think you’ll agree that 6 extra guns at Tidworth are not good if you have one missing at Castlemartin. Let me explain......

Every so often, supposedly tired and worn out tanks are taken out of service and used on the ranges as hard targets where the even more tired, worn out and unserviceable front line tanks pound seven bells out of them. But due to ordnance logic, some of those destined as hard targets were in better condition that those equipping the Squadrons of the Royal Hussars. This was the case here. To our surprise, 12 ’worn-out’ but eminently serviceable Mk 7 Centurions arrived on the tank-park, including a dozer tank (one equipped with a bull-dozer blade) painted gloss desert sand colour, some with only 300 road miles on the clock. We think that they had been shipped back from Sharjah (or was it Aden?) The 12 superb Centurions came from the tank storage depot at nearby Ludgershall complete with all of the kit, complete to CES (and rumour had it that the crew-served personal weapons were originally inside too, but where they went remains a mystery). To our surprise 6 of them came with the co-axial Browning guns fitted into the turrets. We immediately stripped out the Brownings, refurbished them and left them under the Armourers work benches. We painted the top belt feed covers yellow to identify them. The reason for this was that if and when a gun went wrong in a tank, instead of repairing it in the cramped, stinking turret, we would simply remove it, replace it with a ‘yellow cover’ gun then repair the original in the comfort of our workshop. Simple REME log isn’t it? Back at Tidworth of course, we could have suddenly FOUND the ‘missing’ gun as if by dint of white-man’s-magic.

Unbeknown to us, while we had removed the Brownings, the gun fitters had other ideas for the soon-to-be-a-pile-of-scrap Centurions. ‘Mac’ McCreedy had removed one of the phosphor bronze elevating gearboxes with its pure bronze gears and casing and had it stashed in the fitters workshop. As scrap, the box was worth many hundreds of pounds, but in the interest of economy, with thoughts for the nation’s purse uppermost in his mind, our ‘Mac’ had removed it from a ‘scrap’ Centurion in order to use it for spares later. This most noble gesture by ‘Mac’, in turn saving the government many hundreds of pounds is suffice to fill one with REME pride and bring tears welling up in the eyes. This is indeed what happened. But not to put too fine a point on it, ‘Mac’s’ joined up mathematics were not good. His lack of scholastic achievement in the sums department resulted in a minor mis-count. He hadn’t just removed ONE of the valuable elevating gearboxes, but several more ……. in fact ELEVEN more, making twelve in all!

Big hearted ‘Mac’s’ generosity and sympathy to the perilous financial state of the nation knew no bounds – except to his wallet and our outrageous fines totalling a princely £70 of course. He could have been a social worker because what he suggested next was a sheer stroke of pure genius. Right was on our side he pontificated over a beer and we should be reimbursed our fine money by the sale of one of the scrap gearboxes to a marine scrap merchant on the south coast dealing with the said extremely valuable phosphor bronze. What a noble suggestion from ‘Mac’ whose generosity indeed knew no bounds. Naturally I tried to dissuade him but while the spirit was strong, the wallet was weak. The day duly arrived and ‘Mac’ assisted by one other scoundrel by the name of Alex Stewart, loaded one now steam-cleaned scrap, but almost mint gearbox into the rear of a locally hired Transit van that groaned and creaked under the weight. The scrap man was ecstatic. Not only that, he was soon doubly ecstatic, but by the end of the week he was TWELVERLY ecstatic. All of his Christmases had come at once. Big ‘Mac’s’ generosity was boundless. Eventually, for the pain, distress and humiliation that we had endures, Me, Pete Smallwood and Gerry Young proportionally shared the proceeds of three gearboxes while ‘Mac’ paid off a substantial part of the mortgage on his new house on the proceeds of the other nine. Our vengeance had been extracted fairly, but in full.

Postscript:

While the names have been changed to protect the innocent – and the guilty, all of the REME NCOs featured here went on to reach greater heights. The author went on to be Commissioned while big-hearted ‘Mac’ turned aside a worthwhile career in economic social work and was also Commissioned later, both reached high provincial Masonic rank too. Pete Smallwood achieved staff-rank in the Metropolitan Police and another gun-fitter helper whose name escapes me also achieved high rank in a shire counties Police Force. The hapless but totally innocent Sergeant Gerry Young, who was deemed guilty by association, is the Deputy Chairman of a multi-national PLC engineering conglomerate, still an avid Leeds United Supporter. We talk about this sad episode when we meet, along with the tale of the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit and the mysteriously vanishing bottle of shampoo. But that’s another story for another day.

There was an even further heart-warming sequel to the sad and unhappy tale. Even the 7 extra duties as the tank park guard commander had a silver lining as my girlfriend at the time, the delicious, stunningly rich and lovely auburn haired Jennifer, who owned an equally stunning brand-new red and black Mini Cooper found it in her heart to sneak in to grace and brighten up the long autumn evenings with her presence. One Friday evening during the course of my extra duties, after the regulation visit by Lt James Herdman, the Orderly Officer (I wonder where he is now, although unlike Jennifer, my heart does not miss a beat whenever I think of him), we daringly shared a bottle of wine together while sat on the grassy bank at the rear of the tank hangars as the sun set over Salisbury Plain. Later that evening I delighted in showing Jennifer the intricacies of the inside of a Centurion turret. I would like to think that the Centurion we ‘blessed or otherwise consecrated’ with our presence that evening was 13 BA 39.

Jenny and I are still in touch and have remained so over the past 40 years. Centurions have that effect on people

A debt, paid and revenge extracted in full. All’s well that ends well!

If you enjoyed this little story of real life on the shop floor, please feel free to add your thanks. And thanks Badger for allowing me to take up so much space!

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