Amendments to BAOR locations website

The "new" BAOR locations website is under reconstruction by Mike Royal Signals and it will be some time before editor access will be available so please understand updates and correction of errors will be delayed we must all be very grateful to Mike for putting this "new" website together and saving the content that would have otherwise could have been lost forever...

I'll second that!

Hear, hear.
BobG

Scaley`s to the rescue ...............................

Good show that man

Steve (another former Scaley) is too modest to mention is his own tremendous efforts in saving this site.

Bravo to Mike!!!

There is truly a wealth of information here and to have it lost in cyberspace would be tragic. One of the downsides of digital information....it's only as accessible as the technology designed to access it and not as 'stable' as actual physical records....

steve wrote:

The "new" BAOR locations website is under reconstruction by Mike Royal Signals and it will be some time before editor access will be available so please understand updates and correction of errors will be delayed we must all be very grateful to Mike for putting this "new" website together and saving the content that would have otherwise could have been lost forever...

Re Scarborough Brks in Osnabruck, on the location webb site you have 15 Sqn RCT time there totally wrong, please amend , the Sqn was in the camp from 1965 (when the RCT was formed ) to 1983

Sorry if I am repeating myself but I am just fathoming out how this site works.

SO again, re Scarborough Brks (Kaprevi Kassern) Osnatraz please amend this site to show that 15 Sqn RCT was there from 1965 to 1983.
Also "Dirty Den" was never there,  the Camp was used in the back drops to the Colditz film not the later 1970s TV drama.
It is also said that Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front) spent time in the then WW1 Cavalry Brks.

further to this 122 tipper Coy RASC were in residence at the Camp prior to the formation of the RCT in 1966 so Scarborough Brks has had a long Association with Tpt Sqn of the RASC and RCT.

As per the first message Fri Aug 10, 2012 1:02 am the website is locked however your notes are most welcome

There is a small team working on BAOR history and can confirm that Caprivi Kaserne was first occupied by 20th Anti-Tank Regiment RA of 3rd Infantry Division post VE day 8 May 45...the rest is history!

The team hope to be able to update very soon...history is a mystery and only as good as those who wrote it down!

T'iss good to hear. This is to good a site to lose it.

ed pz

Welcome

Every littl helps in adding to the data base which will enable the team mentioned produce an accurate picture of the fast disappearing British Army in Germany over the past seventy years

The BAOR locations website asks "did you serve here", with one location being the Leave Centre at Bad Harzburg. I can confirm that my uncle, Ronald (Ron) Malcolm Brooking, 7662282 who was with REME was there for a few days shortly before being demobbed in March 1946. At that time he was stationed at Varrel with 674 Inf Tps Rec Unit REME

During my National Service I served as a Clerk Tech with HQ CRAOC, 1 Corps, from 1952 to 1954, and we seem to be missing from your website! Our small unit (Lieut-Col, Major and, I think, Captain, Sergeant and Corporal together with some four or five other ranks and four or five German civilians) was stationed above a draper's shop in Bad Salzuflen. Like all HQ CRAOC's, we were a clearing centre for units all over BAOR. Remember, the then RAOC provided the Army with all their requirements, apart from food, petrol and oil, which was the prerogative of the RASC, Units would indent for their requirements and we would forward them to the appropriate depots. Our working day was from around eight o'clock in the morning till four or five in the afternoon, when we would change into civvies and head for town. However, there was always a duty driver and we could book him for a trip to the, then, HQ at Bad Oeynhausen to attend either an education course or a visit to the garrison theatre. Our unit transport was the Colonel's Opel Kapitan, a Volkswagen and we also had a Willys Jeep on charge - possibly one of the last in the British Army! Oh, and our Captain had his own personal, rather racy, white Horch. Later on we moved from Bad Salzuflen to a location, next to the Military Corrective Establishment at Bielefeld, where our quarters were a classic Nissen hut. I remember, as a Londoner, writing to London Transport and, because Nissen huts had the curved characteristic of an Underground tunnel, asking if they could send us some posters. A couple of weeks later they arrived, and so we decorated the interior of our billet with advertising posters and the classic London Transport roundel signs for Piccadilly Circus when, at the next GOC's inspection, we were congratulated on our morale-lifting exercise! Perhaps more memories to follow!

Maurice Kanareck: ex-22712626.

Maurice, welcome to the site.

Alan

Maurice Kanareck wrote:

During my National Service I served as a Clerk Tech with HQ CRAOC, 1 Corps, from 1952 to 1954, and we seem to be missing from your website!  Our small unit (Lieut-Col, Major and, I think, Captain, Sergeant and Corporal together with some four or five other ranks and four or five German civilians) was stationed above a draper's shop in Bad Salzuflen.  Like all HQ CRAOC's, we were a clearing centre for units all over BAOR.  Remember, the then RAOC provided the Army with all their requirements, apart from food, petrol and oil, which was the prerogative of the RASC,  Units would indent for their requirements and we would forward them to the appropriate depots.  Our working day was from around eight o'clock in the morning till four or five in the afternoon, when we would change into civvies and head for town.  However, there was always a duty driver and we could book him for a trip to the, then, HQ at Bad Oeynhausen to attend either an education course or a visit to the garrison theatre.  Our unit transport was the Colonel's Opel Kapitan, a Volkswagen and we also had a Willys Jeep on charge - possibly one of the last in the British Army!  Oh, and our Captain had his own personal, rather racy, white Horch.  Later on we moved from Bad Salzuflen to a location, next to the Military Corrective Establishment at Bielefeld, where our quarters were a classic Nissen hut.  I remember, as a Londoner, writing to London Transport and, because Nissen huts had the curved characteristic of an Underground tunnel, asking if they could send us some posters.  A couple of weeks later they arrived, and so we decorated the interior of our billet with advertising posters and the classic London Transport roundel signs for Piccadilly Circus when, at the next GOC's inspection, we were congratulated on our morale-lifting exercise!  Perhaps more memories to follow!

Maurice Kanareck: ex-22712626.

Hi Maurice,
Sounds like a good "real" job, not parades or schemes [up to your neck in muck and bullets]
Of interest you mentioned changing into civvies; I was in BAOR 1951-1952 in Osnabruck and we were not allowed outside the camp in civvies; only concession was shoes instead of boots [brown shoes you could get away with]
We had one German civilian as a clerk, plus a lot of women in the cookhouse
Your number 300,000 behind mine, a lot of NS in those days; our unit was about 95% NS, having been formed in November 1950
A lot of our era lads have now passed away; but lets hear more early BAOR stories

Sapper

I've just finished reading what I would call the definitive book on National Service, well worth a read:-

"National Service: A Generation in Uniform 1945 - 1963", by Richard Vinen. Available from Amazon (Other book providers are available)!

Re Sapper's response to my recent addition to the site ... I have many memories of those days in BAOR and, for the moment, I'll just share a few with you. When we were in Salzuflen we had a young German girl Ursula, working with us. It was a hot summer's day, but we were still sweltering in full BD ... I knew the German for "Are you tired?" was "Zind ze moorder." and so, trying to be polite, I asked her, in my best German, if she, too, was uncomfortable, "Zind ze heiss?". As a result, she blushed to the roots of her hair and stormed out of the office. "What did I say?" I asked the other German civvies, who were working with us. Doubled up with laughter they explained that I'ld just asked if she was on heat, like a lady dog! So much for a little knowledge ... the other occasion, when we were stationed in Bielefeld, was one Christmas. We were lounging in the Nissden hut billet one evening, when one of the lads walked in and casually remarked that Number One store house was on fire. When we ignored him he said "No, honestly ..." so we went outside and, sure enough, there was smoke pouring out, just as he'd said. I remembered that when one was duty clerk we could ring the British Army fire Brigade on 64, so I dialled the number, only to be greeted by a German voice asking "Bitte?" What I hadn't known was that at six o'clock every evening, the line was put through to the local German fire brigade so, in my less than fluent German stuttered "Er, Englische caserner hier ... grosse feuer ... comme schnell!" I then joined the others, only to discover that the "fire" had been some scrim camouflage netting that had been put away damp, and had spontaneously ignited, but which the lads had now put out. The next thing was that duty officer, who had been alerted, arrived to be followed almost immediately by a wailing of sirens and a black Mercedes car, followed by two huge Magirus-Deutsche fire engines that came screaming into the camp, and in no time the place was swarming with black, coal-scuttle steel helmeted firemen were unravelling hoses and yelling "Woh ist der feur?! Woh ist der feur?!" A puzzled duty officer asked "Who the **** sent for this lot?", to which I confessed that I had, only to be bollocked for my initiative as it was to cost the unit funds a considerable number of Deutschemarks for the call-out! Finally, one other memory, is of a demob party when we went down to the local Gasthouse to celebrate our mates impending departure, where we ordered numerous litres of beer, which we interspersed with shots from the whisky bottle that we'd smuggled in with us. I remember walking out into the night at one point, and that's it. The next thing I knew was waking up on my bunk, fully dressed, in the billet the next morning to discover, alongside me, a chimney pot that I'ld obviously liberated from some adjacent building site, though how I managed to get in past the guardroom I still don't know! Forgive the rather lengthy memoir, but I thought it might rekindle similar memories from other BAOR veterans ...

Maurice Kanareck: ex-22712626

I've just been reading about 49 Company RAOC and the formation of 1 (BR) Corps Combat Supplies Battalion RAOC. The author refers to "49 RP Company".
I was posted to 49 on 10 Jan 1967 as a newly-trained RAOC Staff Clerk leaving the Junior Tradesmens' Regt in Rhyl and the posting was to 49 Supply Company, RAOC, in Normandy Barracks, Sennelager. As far as I can remember, the unit remained as 49 Supply Company RAOC even after the formation of the Combat Supplies Battalion and the move to Paderborn where, if I remember correctly, we were in the same Barracks as the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars. I also remember that, between Jan 1967 and my leaving the unit in 1972, we also moved, at some stage to Munster, where we were in Portsmouth Barracks with an RCT Regiment.