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Union Jack, Right Way Up


ukelele lady

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These are handmade rugs seen at the Sheffield Steam Rally yesterday.

I didn't buy one, wouldn't have matched the decor but they are the

right way round, right side up, inside out, whatever. lol

Sheffield Steam Rally hey!

If you took any pictures of steam engines please post them in the Sheffield Steam topic so that i can have a look and see if their was anything new or if it was just the same old team.

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I've a cousin who did the same. He was a trainee draughtsman and got his service deferred until he finished then joined the RAF. He enjoyed it so much he signed on and finished up making a career of it, partly persuaded by an early spell in Cyprus when he seemed to spend most of his time skin diving!

So National Service wasn't all that bad then, some people actually enjoyed it.

Although, as stated previously this was not my fathers experience in the Army.

He was "called up" in 1947 and although he was a painter by trade the army wanted him as an HGV driver.

At the time the new state of Israel was being formed for the Jewish people and the "Holy Land" was a hotbed of trouble with Palestinianians complaining of being pushed off their own land.

Dad was sent out there, although National Servicemen were not normally dispatched to war zones as a first choice.

He passed his "driving test" in a 15 ton lorry on a strip of desert in the Sinai peninsula with no other vehicles in sight and was given a "chit" for a UK civilian driving licence when he was demobbed, so never had to take a proper driving test! :o (having said that, he wasn't a bad driver.

His job was peacekeeping and transporting good across the whole area Egypt, Gaza, Palestine (Israel) and the rest of the Biblical lands. He met King Farouk of Egypt and King Hussain of Jordan (who had been educated and trained in Britain.

That was the good bit, on the other hand his lorry convoys frequently came under attack from thieves and rebels, most of which were after stealing guns, ammunition and fuel.

He remembered well 2 shocking incidents which had clearly upset him.

In one he was "riding shotgun" in the back of a lorry carrying guns and weapons making sure that no one sneaked in the back and stole stuff. He was armed with orders to shoot anyone that did force their way on board. At a depot stop dad noticed a hand come over the tailgate of his lorry and could see the top of someones head clearly wearing Arab headgear. Rather than go for his gun he picked up a truncheon (used for "peacekeeping and preventing civil unrest) and brought it down as hard as he could on the offenders hand which was over the edge of the tailgate. The offender quickly let go and ran off, but dad noticed that 3 of his finger ends had been sliced off on the corner of the tailgate and had fallen inside the lorry.

In another their convey stopped a local bus which was acting suspiciously. His commanding officer went to investigate but as he was about to step onto the bus a hand grenade was thrown from behind a wall, landed at his feet and exploded killing him. Immediately gunfire came from behind the same wall at the convoy who had to take retaliatory action. After a short gun battle 3 Arab rebels were killed for no further losses from dads group. What particularly upset my dad about this was that he had always got on well with his commanding officer and one of his jobs was to retrieve his body. He retrieved it in pieces "an arm here, a leg there...."

So, I don't know what the regulations were on where National Servicemen could be deployed or if there were any at all.

I have another relative, a few years younger who didn't want to do N/S because some of his friends had been sent to Korea during the Korean war.

May have been fun for some, but for others it certainly wasn't.

Either way it would have been an experince, I don't think I would have moaned and whinged too much had I been called up.

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The bit about your Dad's driving test reminds me of my Dad's. He was in the RASC for the duration of the war. He learned to drive before the test was introduced, and once in the army drove mainly tank transporters in the UK and HGV's in Gibraltar.

With the war coming to an end some bright spark in the ministry decided that before demob all drivers who hadn't passed the civilian test would have to do so. Dad was ferrying tanks from training grounds to the south coast when he was given an appointment to take his test in Nottingham on his way south.

So he turned up with his transporter, complete with tank on the back and reported for his test. As he drove out of the test centre with the examiner in the little morris van they were using, the examiner saw the transporter parked outside the gate, and said words to the effect 'who parked that there?' Dad admitted it was his, and the examiner exploded with something along the lines of 'why are you wasting my valuable time, clear off'' but with more colourful adjectives here and there. So he never did get to take the test!

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The bit about your Dad's driving test reminds me of my Dad's. He was in the RASC for the duration of the war. He learned to drive before the test was introduced, and once in the army drove mainly tank transporters in the UK and HGV's in Gibraltar.

With the war coming to an end some bright spark in the ministry decided that before demob all drivers who hadn't passed the civilian test would have to do so. Dad was ferrying tanks from training grounds to the south coast when he was given an appointment to take his test in Nottingham on his way south.

So he turned up with his transporter, complete with tank on the back and reported for his test. As he drove out of the test centre with the examiner in the little morris van they were using, the examiner saw the transporter parked outside the gate, and said words to the effect 'who parked that there?' Dad admitted it was his, and the examiner exploded with something along the lines of 'why are you wasting my valuable time, clear off'' but with more colourful adjectives here and there. So he never did get to take the test!

I wonder how many National servicemen gained a civilian driving licence in this way?

I wonder how many of them actually turned out to be good drivers?

There is just a bit of difference between driving a Churchill tank across a large empty expanse of desert and just driving straight over anything in the way to driving an Austin 7 down a busy high street with pedestrians, roundabouts, traffic lights, crossings etc.

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My brother drove for years in the army in Germany [ on the wrong side]

but once he came home the only thing he drove [rode ] here was a push bike. :)

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My brother drove for years in the army in Germany [ on the wrong side]

but once he came home the only thing he drove [rode ] here was a push bike. :)

Again I suppose there is a bit of difference between HAVING to drive under military orders and CHOOSING to drive because you want to.

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It's nice to see that the articles being made for the forth coming Royal wedding have got our

flag the right way. That's the British made articles of course.

You can always tell the imports because they have the same width for the red strip as they

have for the white.

I have this thing about our flag, maybe it's because we had to draw and colour it so many times

at school. I suppose there were plenty of Royal occasions to celabrate in the past.

Our last Street Party was for the SilverJubilee and we had a real good day.

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