Wars and ConflictsΜύ permalink
A uniformed safe haven
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Message 1.Μύ
Posted by Grand Falcon Railroad (U3267675) on Thursday, 16th April 2009
It might sounds daft but where would be a "safe haven" had been if you had to serve in any particular World War 2 army.
I'm not thinking really of the safest job, more the safest place.
For example I can't imagine being a signaller on the Falklands during 1944 the most demanding of all the positions one could be assigned to during the war. Or something totally mundane like Army field post? -
Message 2
Posted by MB (U177470) on Thursday, 16th April 2009
In Jon Pertwee's autobiography he describes missing out on a posting that would probably fit the description.
He had joined the RN and they asked if anyone could speak French, on the principle that you never volunteer in the forces Pertwee did not admit that he spoke fluent French. A friend with minimal schoolboy French was allocated the posting, Naval Attache on Tahiti I seem to remember. He regularly received letters from his friend during the war, he worked in Naval Intelligence whilst his friend was on a Pacific island surrounded by "dusky maidens". -
Message 3
Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Thursday, 16th April 2009
One of the military missions (or military staffs if a US national) based in Washington D.C.
Otherwise, an attache's post in Latin or South America. -
Message 4
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Friday, 17th April 2009
Apart from the tautology of the question, I know of two men who succeeded quite well. The first quite by accident spent two years chasing his ship because he missed the original draft and when he did catch it up in America the ship was ordered back to England for a refit which lasted three months. Then he was posted to the Naval Undersea Warfare Division and he spent the last few months of the war in school.
The second claimed that he spent most of the war in the Regimental Quartermaster's stores where he marched round with a clip-board and pencil in his hand and was never challenged.
My father didn't do too bad either. He was a driving instructor with the Royal Artillery ans spent his entire war in Wales(although that might be construed as a punishment dependent on your point of view). -
Message 5
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 17th April 2009
you really had to pull really a lot of strings to be assigned in these places! So many strings you could play Beethoven's 9th...
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Message 6
Posted by caveman1944 (U11305692) on Friday, 17th April 2009
The job and the place go together if my memory does not fail me.
How about the Royal Army Pay Corps ?
I could hardly have dreamed that up.
John -
Message 7
Posted by 2295wynberglad (U7761102) on Friday, 17th April 2009
How about this called into service mid 1942 a man I once knew lived in Wimbledon was posted to Kingston on Thames (East Surreys) and spent the whole of the war there or at Beaver Lane Hounslow his job stores clerk.
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Message 8
Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Friday, 17th April 2009
John
Royal Army Pay Corps? Fine if you are RAPC in a depot. But Regimental paymasters and their clerks were RAPC, and that takes you pretty close to the front line.
Service in the UK probably wouldn't serve the OPs purpose, given it was in range of the enemy. An American friend's father was mobilised with his National Guard unit, but got bored training in the States and answered a call for volunteers for the Military Police (he was a police officer in civilian life). His erstwhile comrades were eventually sent to the Pacific and encountered unfriendly Japanese and horrid diseases. He was sent to London to chase blackmarketeers. He seemed to have the better bargain. Then one day, a V2 came down in the street he was standing in, and he spent the rest of the war in hospital...
LW -
Message 9
Posted by caveman1944 (U11305692) on Friday, 17th April 2009
LW.
I bet there were non in Singapore/Malaya.
After making an allowance to a dependant relative I was on 10/6d a week.
Even that was more than the 4 Singapore dollars I was allowed...just to make sure I wasn't overpaid you know.
I made a grave misatake in not handing in a weeks notice.
John -
Message 10
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 17th April 2009
a friend of mine joined the R A F from the A T C in the early 60s. Like most young men he joined to see the world. His first posting (For two years) was R A F Haydock, 18 miles from his home in Bootle, supplying stuff to the A T C. Then they closed down Haydock, and he was posted to R A F Sealand. 18 miles the other way, where he was still tasked with supplying stuff to the A T C. Then they sent him out to Aden as we where pulling out, and he was (As an R A F marksman) invloved in Crater.
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Message 11
Posted by Grand Falcon Railroad (U3267675) on Saturday, 18th April 2009
Some good ones there - I think the one about John Pertwee is a gem - I could only imagine how nice it must have been to be a RN posted out to say jamaica as a "dock supervisor" or something like it.
However I think some people must have got shocks when they realised in 1941 that their safe posting to Hong Kong or Singapore could actually be tantamount to a death scentence. -
Message 12
Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Saturday, 18th April 2009
John
You may not have liked the RAPC (not my favourite people, either), but of course they were in Singapore and Malaya - Singapore was a large Command, quite apart from all the Paymasters and clerks in individual units.
I see from a quick Google that the RAPC even suffered fatal casualties in the Canal Zone, Aden and Northern Ireland post-war.
Still, they were swallowed into the AGC in 1992, so you can dance on the organisational grave if you still bear a grudge!
Trying to think of a Corps with no front line representation at all. Army Legal Services, Small Arms School Corps and Military Provost Staff Corps are probably it, and the last two are made up of SNCOs transferred from other branches of the Service.
Don't think there is a completely safe choice of Arm or Service, only safe places you can be lucky enough to end up.
LW -
Message 13
Posted by MB (U177470) on Sunday, 19th April 2009
It should be remembered that even the nice safe postings in the USA, Canada etc involved crossing the Atlantic which could be quite a risk unless they were lucky enough to do a fast crossing in one of the Queens.
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Message 14
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Sunday, 19th April 2009
And not one of the cruisers escorting them.
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Message 15
Posted by Palaisglide (U3102587) on Sunday, 19th April 2009
Now there is a thought "Uniformed safe havens"?).
When you joined the forces always at the back of your mind was "this could turn nasty" and then some.
You were not safe in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales. When we did our infantry training complete with live fire we had a few narrow squeaks.
Weapons on fixed lines can and do move Mortars do bed in and Artillery spotters are often only learning map reading, so yes, safe haven indeed!
I did eventually end up in REME much to mothers relief. She never knew you went where the tanks went and the Army had taken a note from the German book, "recover all armoured vehicles whilst the going was good", do not let the enemy take over the battlefield.
The first death in the 1990 Iraq assault was a REME craftsman.
So many died on Ack-Ack sites Balloon sites and Searchlight sites, women among them, they probably thought they were safe.
I do remember a gas cylinder explosion in a cook house miles inland from anywhere, so who knows what or where is safe.
Frank.
PS got to run my pans are boiling over and I have no shoes on. -
Message 16
Posted by MB (U177470) on Sunday, 19th April 2009
And not one of the cruisers escorting them.
Μύ
I am hoping to get to Muck this week to photograph the war grave of someone from the Curacao.
MB -
Message 17
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Sunday, 19th April 2009
Good luck. My late Mother in Law always regreted never visiting her brothers grave in North Africa.
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Message 18
Posted by MB (U177470) on Sunday, 19th April 2009
You might find a photograph on the WGPP website
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Message 19
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Sunday, 19th April 2009
Thanks for that. Peggy did have a photo of her brothers grave, but sadly never made the trip out there before she died.
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Message 20
Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Sunday, 19th April 2009
remefrankmee
You have a point; there are a number of British personnel buried in Arlington National Cemetery, who died in accidents while serving in Washington. Nowhere is completely safe.
A teacher who was a sapper in the war reckoned he and his men were more at risk on internal security duties (for which they had no training) in Calcutta during the bread riots in '44 than when actually in Burma, where they were doing their proper job, and had infantry around to help guard them from the Japanese.
LW -
Message 21
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Sunday, 19th April 2009
There is one of those legends of a soldier telling his officers that all he wanted to do was kill people. They decided that he was unsafe/unfit for combat as he could put his comrades in danger, and he spent the war in a depot miles away from the action.
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Message 22
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Monday, 20th April 2009
Remefrankmee,
How right you are. I knew a train announcer who got a sore throat. On the graves issue, most of my dearly departed relatives are just names at Thiepval. Apart from Uncle Bob (WW2) who's somewhere under the soil in Burma.
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