Daft Laddie tales of North Tyne & Rede: Warming up a Korean winter

Daft Laddies, humour, military service, history, 1950s

By Donald Clegg

Caad wintors in Korea
Korean winters can be severe, and even in September, the ground round our camp was frozen hard as iron. Our Field Telephone Exchange (FTE) was housed in a sandbagged bunker with a canvas roof. There was a set of steps cut in the bank leading to the entrance. Inside was a table with logbook, the Exchange with its multitude of jack plugs and leads, a bed and the duty operator’s kit and rifle.

Our Signal Troop was attached to the 14th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery and, though we had our own officers and routine, the RA regarded us as rather inferior hangers-on, especially by their Sergeant Major – a fiery Scot. He never missed an opportunity to find fault with us.

He used to refer to our 6-man luxury ‘basha’ (sand-bag and canvas home) as the Glass Mountain on account of the heaps of empty beer bottles surrounding it! One morning, while mounting the steps to the FTE, he slipped on the ice and landed on his backside and dented his dignity. His already short temper was not improved when he saw that his downfall had been witnessed by half the Signals Troop.

And get your blank blank hair cut!
For the next few minutes the air was blue and we all learned several hitherto unheard of expletives. The Telephone Operator (Tele Op) was told in no uncertain terms and in a voice like a Farne Islands fog horn to “Get rid of this b…… ice and snow, cut some new b……. steps, tidy your b…… self up, man and get your b….. hair cut!!”

Somewhat upset by this uncalled for outburst the Tele Op decided he would start by melting the snow and ice by the simple expedient of pouring petrol right down the steps. When, after five minutes, the ice seemed as hard and solid as ever, he decided, in his wisdom, to set fire to the petrol and help things along a bit.

A good Daft Laddie idea
This was not a wise move, although it provided us with a glorious and spectacular display. With a tremendous WHOOSH! The orange flames roared up the steps like a lava flow in reverse. The fire melted the ice alright, and turned the steps into a mud slide. Unfortunately it continued on its merry way and burned down the entire FTE, lock stock and rifle barrel.

I should think the whole of the Commonwealth Forces in North Korea would hear what the RSM thought of the Tele Op’s brilliant solution. It certainly gave the rest of us a topic of conversation for weeks after. As far as I know, poor old Tele Op is still paying for the damage out of his 28/- (£1.50) per week Army pay.

Daft Laddie tales from North Tyne & Rede: The King wants a hand

Northumberland, farming, humour, dialect, military service, morse code, Korea, history, 1950s

By Donald Cleggg

The King wants a Daft Laddie
For two years I was a guest of His Majesty King George VI, followed by Her Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse and spent much of my National Service in Korea as a Wireless Operator in the Royal Corps of Signals – an “Operator Wireless and Line BII”, to be exact.

Dot Dot Dash
In this role I was required to read and send Morse Code at 18 words per minute where a ‘word’ in this context was a group of five characters. A BII operator must achieve 25 words per minute, or over two characters per second. Not that Morse code was used all that much – only for sending Secret or Restricted messages to HQ in Seoul or Tokyo. I was never expected to send messages back to friends and family to Rochester or Kielder!

We operators worked a 13 hour night shift, using old acid-battery operated radios called “19 sets”, chock-a-block with valves and covered in dials, knobs and switches – just like Captain Scarlet or Dan Dare would have had. We were housed, initially, in an army truck known affectionately, but obscurely, as a Gin Palace. Our Gin Palace was perched near the top of a hill above the main tented camp, on a broad ledge carved from the hillside.

Because we were on Active Service we had to be in constant readiness to move out in the event of a ‘push’ by the Chinese-backed forces. This readiness also applied to the vehicles, of course, and every morning the driver of the Gin Palace climbed the track to conduct his regular checks of oil, fuel, water and air pressures. The last wheel to be checked was always the spare which stood on its edge tucked into a narrow space between the truck’s cab and the body.

Kick her in the guts - Oops
Each morning the driver rolled the wheel out of its cubbyhole, bounced it on to the ground, then used his foot to kick it flat back to the floor. On this occasion the kick misfired and the wheel set off down the hill towards the camp, accelerating as it went according to the laws of physics.

We soon worked out that these things have both momentum and centrifugal force!

We all watched in fascination, then horror, as the heavy projectile hurtled onwards, heading for the Field Hospital, directly in its path. It seemed inevitable that the Hospital tent and its occupants would be flattened but, at the very last second, the wheel struck one of the metal stakes securing the tent’s guy ropes and sailed into the air, clearing the tent’s ridge by a mere twelve inches.

It then bounced mightily on the other side, jinked neatly to the right and disappeared into a deep gully by the roadside. Suddenly, everyone came back to life and rushed down to see where it had ended up. In fact, although it had miraculously avoided crashing into the Field Hospital, it had scored a direct hit on the campfire of a group of local Koreans who had been quietly cooking their breakfast and chatting amongst themselves.

Imagine their surprise when their “flied lice” was suddenly splattered across the countryside by a huge, black rotating missile! It took three men the rest of the morning to heave, haul and roll the recalcitrant wheel back to its cage on the Gin Palace and, in the end, it was found it didn’t need inflating after all.