Another Tall Tale from the Barrackroom!

I promise you I am not going to make a habit of this but the reason for my trip back down memory lane to a long distant military past originally began with 'Clairwil',who lives in Glasgow, telling us all about her neighbour having a drunken fight with a wall, yes, you read that right, with a wall!  That produced an instant memory which I told her about in an effort to cheer her up, thus:

"Your man having the fight with a wall makes me wonder if this is not a Glaswegian trait. It takes me back several eons when I was in the army based in Bahrein (trouble in, guess where? - Iraq, natch!) One of my platoon was a Glaswegian, slightly older than most of us on account of having once served in the army, then, as a civilian, pulverising some unfortunate nigh unto death and being told by the magistrate that it was either jail or rejoining the army. Coming back one night I found him holding an aggressive, threatening conversation with the metal post that held up the veranda roof of our barrack!

Later, he was doing time in what passed for our 'nick', a tent surrounded by barbed wire. The Provost sergeant was organising a dog hunt to cull the huge population of dun coloured dogs that roamed loose. His merry men were throwing the dogs into the 'nick' pending collection and death. Jock, of course, was throwing them back out just as fast, and the sight and sound of the Provost sergeant staggering back with yet another dog under his arm complaining that, "All these fucking wog dogs look the same" reduced us all to mild hysterics.

Well, you had to of been there, I suppose!"

No more tales for a while, I promise.

Comments

[Hilary Wade]

Highly recommended (if you haven't read it already): George McDonald Fraser's "The Complete McAuslan," his farcical memoirs of National Service in 1946 serving with a Highland regiment featuring, among others, the irremediable Private McAuslan, aka "Private Piltdown", "the dirtiest soldier in the British Army." (I've been reading it aloud to my father.)

[David Duff]

Thanks, Hilary, that's a new one for me and Fraser is a favourite of mine, militarily, politically and literarily (if that's a word?)