My Friend Ray.
The most eventful things in life can happen by chance.
It must have been early 1967, I’d walked up to Brogborough from the M1 after hitching a lift from work in Dunstable. I’d passed the first few houses on Highfield Crescent when someone shouted, ‘Bernard’. I looked around, Ray Papworth was on the step of his parents’ house. I hadn’t seen Ray since 1962 when he’d left Grammar school, at fifteen and a half, and joined the British Army as a Junior Leader. We’d known each other since we were kids, often up to no good with his cousin Roger. I was a few years younger than them, and I tagged along because I didn’t know any better. They tolerated me because I was gullible, little, and could get into places they couldn’t, like small windows in Army Cadet huts.
One of Ray’s greatest exploits was riding his foot steered plank and pram-wheel trolley down the north face of old Brogborough hill, an incline so steep that lorries had to be in first gear to get up it. The trolley was deficient in four of the five design features necessary for the prevention of wheel wobble -Tyres, Wheel Area, Axles and Brakes, (Engine: not applicable). Consequently, halfway down the hill, the machine went out of control and overturned. The bent six-inch nail holding the driver’s plank seat to the steering plank ripped into him, and he was left bleeding to death on the side of the road. After numerous stitches in his knee, he was released from hospital lucky not to have lost his leg.
He was fortunate, at the time there was a concrete block directly at the bottom of the hill where the road split left to Bedford and right to Lidlington. The block supported a tower for the overhead cable buckets that carried clay from the pits to the brick factory before a truck line was put in. If he’d hit that block, he’d probably have been killed, and I wouldn’t be writing this story.
But Ray wasn’t all gung-ho, he taught me to play chess on the front step of my house shortly before he left for Harrogate and the army.
I went back, and we sat talking on the wall in the evening sun. He told me he finished his training in 1965 and was posted to Germany, but wasn’t doing the type of soldiering he’d joined the army for. A friend told him about a unit that he might be interested in joining. He wrote out an application, but his Officer in Command rejected it. The next application he posted direct. This got him into trouble because the army likes things to go through the right channels. Never-the-less, in April 1966 he was posted to 22 SAS Signals Troop Hereford on 3 months probation.
Since that chance meeting, we’ve been the best of friends, to the extent that we’re godparents to each other’s children.
To tell the truth, at that time I’d never heard of the SAS, not many civilians had. All that changed on 5 May 1980 when on live TV, the SAS spectacularly emerged from the shadows to break the Iranian Embassy siege in South Kensington. By then, I’d been enlightened.
I’ve had the privilege of having a beer in the Sergeants’ Mess Bradbury Lines before it changed to Sterling Lines and moved to its new location. That’s where I saw a USA Delta Force plaque behind the bar thanking 22 SAS for their training. Another time Sandy and I had New Year’s Eve Dinner on the base.
Having a friend in the SAS, I wondered, what if I were on my travels in some foreign part and out of the blue I unexpectedly bump into him in civis. Should I acknowledge him or ignore him in case he was on some covert mission. That never happened, however, in March or April 1981, I was in Hvidovre, Denmark at Scanray UK’s parent company. We had failures with Sulfur Hexafluoride gas-insulated X-Ray systems. A solution had been implemented, and I was on my way home. I left Copenhagen at 08.30 and drove across Zealand to Korsør for the Nyborg ferry. I Arrived in Esbjerg, parked up and went up to the departure lounge. While looking down on the DFDS Dana Regina Harwich ferry, two mat-olive Bedford trucks and five land rovers drove up and parked. The troops’ uniforms were a bit eclectic, and I thought they must be Territorial Army. One soldier, in a bright red padded survival jacket, was reading a porno mag with his feet up on the dash of a Land Rover. Another was entertaining two kids in the cab of a truck which grated as they tried to put it into gear.
A soldier came upstairs, and I noticed he wore a light blue winged parachute badge on his right arm, but showed no indication he was in the Parachute Regiment. He bought a beer from the machine, acknowledged my interest and went back to the dock. Once on the ferry, I found my cabin and had a walkabout to orientate myself, an old Merchant Navy habit. The first thing you do on a ship is find the route out incase it sinks, or there’s a fire.
While I was in the reception area, there was a public announcement.
“Would the Commander of British forces please go to reception”.
This sounded interesting, so I sidled over to the reception desk and became absorbed with the notice board. A very well-spoken, young officer arrived and introduced himself to the receptionist who said with a Danish accent:
“Could you ask your men to take their boots off?”.
The officer looked quizzical and replied.
“You’re asking me to go back and ask my men to take their boots off and walk around the ship in their socks?”
“Yes”.
“But why would I do that?”
“Because we have had 30,000 British troops through the ship this year and they are ruining the carpets.”
“Young lady, I really don’t think I can ask my men to do that. But don’t worry, when the ship sails they will be in civilian clothes” then he left. I was intrigued.
Once at sea I went to the bar. Four of the soldiers came in behind me. One came up next to me, and while he was waiting, I struck up a conversation. I asked what regiment he was in, and he replied he was in the British Army. He was reluctant to continue with that dialogue, so I dropped the subject. We carried on chatting, but I was curious about the regiment. Then, inexplicably, I had an idea who they might be. I thought, the next thing I say will either have no effect, or it will cause a reaction. As he was in mid-sentence, I simply asked.
“Do you know Ray Papworth?” I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
He stopped talking and took me by the front of my shirt.
“You bastards from A4. We’re off exercise now. You just can’t leave us alone, can you!”.
I thought he was going to hit me, so I started talking fast.
“No no, I’m not from A4” whoever they were “He’s a friend of mine”.
A rapid interrogation ensued.
“So where does he come from?”.
“Brogborough”.
“What school did he go to?”.
“Kingsbury Dunstable”.
“What’s his wife’s name?”
“Pat”
“Yes. But what does he call her?”.
“Trish”.
Then the coup de grâce.
“What’s the first thing you see when you go through the front door of his house?”
I hesitated, his eyes narrowed, and his grip tightened.
“No wait,” I said “It’s a painting. It’s a painting of a battle” – – – “It’s a painting of – – – the Battle of Mirbat”.
His grip loosened and he let go of my shirt. With a wry smile, he said.
“That’s right. I put the frame on that”.
He looked over to his mates and said.
“Oi. This guy knows Old Chrome Dome” an irreverent reference to Seargent Papworth’s bald head.
By chance, these soldiers had served under Ray. In the vernacular of the British Army, he was their ‘Boss’, but recently he had a new posting; otherwise, we might have met on that ship. And, that’s how I ended up on the beer with the SAS on the Harwich ferry.
I was told that the meeting on the ferry had been reported and I had ended up on a list, understandable really, me being a first-generation Irish electronics engineer.
My friend Ray Papworth from Brogborough retired from the army as a Major, quite an achievement by any standard if you ask me. There’s a reason they call them Special.
And A4? I guess they’re guys like Cato Fong who occasionally jump out of a wardrobe to attack Inspector Clouseau to sharpen his combat and vigilance skills.