Aachener Strasse, Monchen Gladbach.

brum wrote:

My son is a Hong Kong resident, his wife speaks English, what a blessing !

Not many with that ability round here at the moment ........

brum wrote:

My son is a Hong Kong resident, his wife speaks English, what a blessing !

A Hong Kong resident eh, he has my sympathy. The place has gone to the dogs since it was handed back. My wife speaks english also but hey I have to live without translation all the time and thus learned the language.

cartav wrote:

brum wrote:

My son is a Hong Kong resident, his wife speaks English, what a blessing !

Not many with that ability round here at the moment ........

Tell us about it.

Eric England wrote:

[quote

A Hong Kong resident eh, he has my sympathy. The place has gone to the dogs since it was handed back. My wife speaks english also but hey I have to live without translation all the time and thus learned the language.

How do you go on with the writing ? Must be embarrassing if you go through the wrong door !

cartav wrote:

Eric England wrote:

[quote

A Hong Kong resident eh, he has my sympathy. The place has gone to the dogs since it was handed back. My wife speaks english also but hey I have to live without translation all the time and thus learned the language.

How do you go on with the writing ?  Must be embarrassing if you go through the  wrong door !

I cannot read and write the characters in their language but I quickly learned to read the basic characters like ladies and gents, but not before a slight embarrassment or two.

cartav wrote:

brum wrote:

My son is a Hong Kong resident, his wife speaks English, what a blessing !

Not many with that ability round here at the moment ........

Ayup !

Do'st tha' mean Sheffield, owd lad ?

[quote="brum"]

cartav wrote:

brum wrote:

Not many with that ability round here at the moment ........

Ayup !

Do'st tha' mean Sheffield, owd lad ?

Sheff I can gerron wi' ! And with exposure to this sun we're getting I blend in well.

Keep getting bumph from the council which advises me I can have it repeated in any of about 15 different languages........ Doesn't mention English. But like Eric with useful relatives, I have one living in Leicester & another works in Bradford if I need an interpreter.

cartav wrote:

brum wrote:

cartav wrote:

brum wrote:

Not many with that ability round here at the moment ........

Ayup !

Do'st tha' mean Sheffield, owd lad ?

Sheff  I can gerron wi' ! And with exposure to this sun we're getting I blend in well.

Keep getting bumph from the council which advises me I can have it repeated in any of about 15 different languages........  Doesn't mention English. But like Eric with useful relatives, I have one living in Leicester & another works in Bradford if I need an interpreter.

I was born in Bradford, but I still can not speak Pakistani. 

Gladstone Primary school in Peterborough does not have any pupils who speak English as a first language. I went to a school like that in Glasgow.  

Shelldrake wrote:

Gladstone Primary school in Peterborough does not have any pupils who speak English as a first language.   I went to a school like that in Glasgow.  

Eiffel Tower . . .



Englishman, American, Frenchman and a Pakistani on top of the Eiffel Tower.

The American throws a load of money off the top.

"Why did you do that"? ask the others.

"We have so much money in the States I can afford to do it" says the American.

"Ok" says the Frenchman and throws a bottle of champagne off the top, saying "we have so much champagne in France I can afford to do it".


The Paki looks at the Englishman and says " Don't you bloody dare . . . !"

[quote="steve1226"]Hi,

...............The girl running the bar in my hotel said all the residents of MG are very upset that the army is leaving and she seemed to think very soon. Things must have changed since my days in Osnabruck (mid to late 60's) as they couldn't wait to get rid of us......... [quote]


Just pulled down your mention of Osnabruck again,Steve. If you thought the locals hated you you should have been there in the '50s. I'm told it had been a town devoted to the Nazi cause and, certainly, in 1945 they took some stick. It began when the Brits moved in to formally take over, I read somewhere. The fighting was finished, the army headed by an armoured unit, drove in from the west, the tankies CO was exposed, upright in the turret. Some keen citizen took a shot at him and killed him.

I suppose if something similar had happened in a conquered UK, the locals would have been delighted . Then the SS would have moved in, shot the lot and run riot with demolition charges. We weren't quite as vindictive, but the troops were allowed three days of uncontrolled mayhem, rape excepted. So I'm told......... some said it was a Commando unit, others laid it at the door of the Canucks. Who ever it was, the locals weren't chuffed and in my time in the mid-50's, it was comparatively recent.

I had a PM from Tony Burgess who was at Roberts Barracks even closer to the end of the war. Still a flourishing black market in fags, free tram rides for squaddies and respectful German males who were quite likely to step in the gutter and raise a hat to an approaching sapper. In the late Fifties, six years later, that never happened but you weren't welcome in many pubs. When Jock Cairney & I popped into the Zum Grunen Jager, which is still there, not far from the Heger Tor, we got out quick after the first half. "Boy soldiers !" they sneered, wondering how the might of the Wehrmacht could have been laid low by the spotty faced 18 year olds who wore khaki.

With half a dozen old mates, I went back in 2000, looked round our old billet in Quebec Bks and bought bratties in the town from a vendor who had a grill strapped from his shoulders, an apparatus under a small, striped canvas roof and fed from a gas bottle by his feet. Much better ! The locals were matey, the town was spotless, a picture after some of the tat back home.

This time, of course, we were tourists not part of an army of occupation.

I'm glad to see some of us are bringing up how, in the 50s and later, we didn't like the Bundeskrauts and they reciprocated.
Looking at the postings on this forum I was beginning to think Specsavers were doing a special offer on rose tinted specs.
Credit where it's due though, in the 70s we were on friendly terms with the inhabitants of Hemer. I suspect though, that may have been something to do with our predecessors, the Canadians.

BAOR in the early 50's was in a different time warp from todays situation - you have to understand why we were there - we were an army of occupation and at times things were very strained between us young squaddies and the returning German war veterans and lads of our own age.
My home town of Southampton was heavily bombed with many civilian casualties including school kids. Many of us, like me, had family members killed fighting the Germans so we were in no mood for BS from them.
It irked us to see pro Nazi's still in positions of power and many of the local civilian workers we employed were also still 'fighting' their own war with us, belligerent and uncooperative to say the least.
But we were instructed to be 'good boys' or else, so we tended to stay in barracks or only go where there was enough of us to be reckoned with. Time heals as they say, but my memory of my time spent in BAOR is so different from many of the posts I have read on this site over the years.
So its 'back to our billets we crawl' - or until they start another one.

Len (Ciphers)

To put things into perspective I had a few good German friends in Osnabruck and used to frequent the local dance hall and a few bars. Things were beginning to change by 1965 when I arrived but the older generation definitely didn't really want us there. What we all have to remember is that the youth were taught very little about the war unlike now when it is taught at all German schools.
I loved my time in Menden and Hemer in the early seventies and had some great German friends, a couple of who I am still in contact with. We used to frequent a country place called the Winterhof the owner of which is still a friend to this day and is living in Dortmund.
Having said that, and to contradict myself I only ever had one German girlfriend and that was in Osnabruck and I went out with her for two and a half years!

We heard all the stories about what happened at the end of the war, one version being that the Canadians shelled the town from the high ground of the Rotehar wald.

In 1964/5 we had a brilliant time in BAOR stationed in Buende. We were very welcome by towns, villages and farmers. There was a considerable shortage of young German men and provided we had been formally  introduced to the girl they would regard us as attractive and high grade marriage material. Several of my mates married there ... I was too young...Minden had a lot of problems between some young men and the Black Watch, mostly about girls. I met some ex SS men but had no problems...I and an ex matelot TC got into a high status club in Bad Oeynhausen after protecting a local SS man. Free booze and the stripper joined us at our table. We were the only Brits there. I was surprised at the apparent wealth of the patrons.. 

ciphers wrote:

BAOR in the early 50's was in a different time warp from todays situation -

So its 'back to our billets we crawl'  -  or until they start another one.

Len (Ciphers)

Sounds pretty much like my own experiences, Len. The was little direct contact with the locals, most of the Germans we spoke with were employed in camp, sometimes ones like the type who insisted that so-and-so down the road had been in the Gestapo, or another had been a high official in the Party. And strange........ anyone who admitted to being in the army had been on the Russian front, none had seen action in the West.

When Germany was allowed to form an army again in the mid-50's, young lads of military age might seek us out, tell how much they wanted to join.
"We took on the whole world for 5 years ! " they said, "No one else could do this !". Then, we said, you must have been bloody stupid. And when we reminded that we were conscripts and had little liking for a military life, they thought we were crazy too. There was no grafitti saying "Tommy go Home!", but there were similar feelings expressed in occasional conversations. Tommy, at least the NS element, wanted to go home, but the put down to the locals was "Wenn Tommy nach Hause geht, kommt Ivan !" That shut them up, maybe the Brits weren't so bad..

Without any personal transport it was difficult to get away from the garrison towns, but two of us took a Saturday evening train to Bramsche, ten miles or so from Osnabruck. There was a Feste at a local pub. With soldiers being infrequent visitors we were made welcome, so much so that we missed the last train back and started to walk. A Kraut with a motorcycle, a 125cc DKW, overtook us & insisted on giving us a lift. Well oiled, we accepted. Rider on the tank, me on the seat and Jock on the pillion. Jock had never been on a bike, he didn't know there were footrests and swore never to go near the things again. So, residents well away from daily contact with squaddies were matey enough. That was the same in UK. When we were posted back in March '56, we found the residents of Salisbury were just as wary of soldiers.

We also found that the locals away from the towns were a much friendlier toward us, especially the kids for obvious reasons, Tommy was always a soft touch for handouts, farmers were generous with field vegetables for the cookhouse on exercise and there was always the barter trade, cigarettes for just about anything.
6 Armoured Div Signals were the first inhabitants of newly constructed Birdwood Barracks, Bunde having moved from temp accommodations in Wentworth Barracks, Herford, we saw little of the locals and can only recall going to the local pub once during my tenure there.
Bad Oyenhausen was OK, I guess the number of squaddies there had a lot to do with the populace being a little 'subdued' .... and Munster where I did most of my time in BAOR began to come around to us in around 1954, prior to that we were a necessary evil keeping Ivan away.

Len (Ciphers)

The shutzenfest. I had some ding dong nights out at those. I remember one in Hemer where a rather large , well endowed Hausfrau insisted on dancing with me all night. I was only slightly built in those days and all my mates were in fits of laughter as she kept dragging me off once more. "Tanzen. noch tanzen.' It wasn't until the next day that I found out my mates had joined forces with her husband and all their friends and they were all rolling about. Great night though. I suppose it was true at all fests but in Menden they used to sell the beer cheaper and cheaper on the last night to get rid of it. I have never found anything to match the fests in the UK. They were fantastic with most of the town out letting their hair down and a really great atmosphere. You are right Cartav, the country ones were the best.

Just found this under another post.
http://bfbs.com/news/bfg-long-goodbye-almost-over-64077.html

steve1226 wrote:

Just found this under another post.
http://bfbs.com/news/bfg-long-goodbye-almost-over-64077.html

I hope the wives & families of these lads are better catered for than those of 16 LAA RA when they moved back to UK in '56. Married pads in the Bulford area, then, compared unfavourably with more up-to-date accommodation in Osnabruck . Rioting wives, screaming and wailing, so much harder to deal with than their disciplined husbands, paraded en masse at the advance party offices. I was lucky, one of the few housed in a spider, well away from the SNCOs' quarters where the occupants were beseiged.

Always a touchy subject Cartav, how many times have we heard "The one I handed over was 100% cleaner than this one"?  

I always got a bill for cleaning the cooker, in almost every quarter I had, and the last one was a brand spanking new cooker. We had no kids and ate out most of the time, at home we had salads and other foods that did not need the use of a cooker but hey I still got a bill for cleaning the cooker.

Now I live in China and I only have a wok, woe is me no dammed cooker to clean hahaha.

Shelldrake wrote:

Always a touchy subject Cartav, how many times have we heard "The one I handed over was 100% cleaner than this one"?  

I can believe that ! I think the main reasons for discontent in our case were buildings themselves which compared unfavourably with the more modern accommodation the girls had left behind. Just like the barracks, in Germany the army was housed much better than we were in UK in some of the basic stuff which had been thrown up in WW2.

I think I might have enjoyed a regular army life, but no way would I have expected a wife to put up with the inconvenience. It must have been a special sort of female who could take it.

Am I the only one here who has never lived in Aachener Str MG ?

I felt pity for some, posted in, families when I was in Woolwich. While in BAOR they'd purchased a schrank and other items of the comparatively massive German furniture. The UK quarters were so dinky the stuff just wouldn't fit in.

I think most of the girls put up with the inconvenience of Army life, (when their men were away ?), because,
1. They usually had kids to take care of, which took up most of their time.
2. The standard of living in BAOR was much higher than in UK
and 3. The girls were part of a little community and were surrounded by women in the same circumstances as themselves and they had the support of their friends.

Yes, cartav, they were special.

brum wrote:

.................... While in BAOR they'd purchased a schrank........

I guess with all of that aggro of counting spoons, etc. they might have need of a psychiatrist............ !

We didn't have much contact with the wives but what little there was could be irritating when they seemed have a rank structure themselves, one based on their own husband's status.  Of course we were duly respectful, or most of us were.  We might offer to tote the groceries from  the NAAFI shop to the regimental transport, but some expected us to be personal servants when on
bus conductor duty.