RE 25 FIELD REGT - BINDON CAMP, MOASCAR

'PRICKER CABLE'

As Remembered By Richard (Dick) Carribine

September 1951. After 4 months training to be a Royal Engineer, including how to build a Bailey Bridge, how to make a dereck out of 3 planks of wood, how to lay a minefield and recognise different types of mine, and what angle to put your bayonet in the soil when you found one. Unarmed combat and how to stick a fixed bayonet into a swinging sand bag. This was all on top of the usual marching and drills and bulling your boots and how to use blanco.

After passing out from No. 1 Training Camp RE at Malvern early in 1952, I was posted to No. 11 SME at Chatham. There it was more training, 3 months this time and then I passed a course to be a Linesman power A3, so I could now repair underground cable with solder and moleskin glove as well as climb a pole with cramptons on my feet, and a big leather belt round my waist.

On the 8th September 1952 I was posted to MELF. We flew out with a stop in malta where, for the first time in my life, I saw a ceiling fan. We arrived in Fayid, then went by truck to Bindon Camp 25 Field Regt RE. This was a couple of miles from Ismailia and close to Moascar. The nearest camp was a MCU (Military Correction Unit) where, at the time, Acker Bilk (the famour musician) was serving a sentence.

Having settled into our tents, 4 men to a tent (the Officers had a tent to themselves and got ‘Hardship’ money) our first job was to install electric lights in the camp. This was done with an Onan generator, pricker wire and pricker lamp holders. The pricker wire was on a huge cable drum which took 2 men to push and 1 man to feed the 2 core cable out.

We started at the far end of the camp. We climbed up the tent with the cable over our shoulder and a bag of prickers. The pricker lamp holders were about 2” round and made of black bakalite. Once the top was unscrewed you could see a recessed channel with two sharp metal spikes sticking up opposite each other. You pressed the flat 2 core red and black cable down on the spikes in the channel, then screwed the top firmly back on. Then it was just a matter of feeding the pricker a few feet into the tent, secure the cable to the outside and then it was on to the next tent.

Altogether I think it took about a day and a half to do the whole camp and connect it to the big Onan generator near to the Guardroom.

A couple of the other sparks went round later and issued the bulbs.

As Duty Electrician it was your job, using the starter handle, to fire up the generator early morning, and what a noise it made. Then stop it later when it was light. Then at 6 pm when it went dark, start it up again.. I think that the Cookhouse had its own little generator. Then, at ‘lights out’ it was back to the generator shed to knock it off again. Then the lights went out!!

DAY TRIP TO CAIRO - 1954

ON LEAVE IN FAMAGUSTA, CYPRUS

RECALLED IN 1956 FOR THE SUEZ INVASION

FINALLY TRANSFERRED TO ARMY RESERVE & DISCHARGED 20th SEPTEMBER 1963

 

THOSE LITTLE WHITE CUBES

In the weeks following the Suez Invasion, 5th November 1956, we were billeted on the second floor of a Girls School in Port Said. I remember bare wooden floorboards but I can’t remember whether we had a blanket or a mattress to sleep on, and if we took our BD off or not. As water was still in very short supply, I think we were taken somewhere to have a shower once a week.

We were on compo rations and hard tack, and in with the compo pack were what looked like white sugar lumps; and what a god-send they were. We used to heat the tinned food or boil water for a brew. You put whatever you wanted heated in your mess tin, suspend it between two bricks then put a match to a couple of the cubes under the mess tin. A short time later the food was hot or the water was boiling – magic!

I wonder if the cubes are still in use or if they have been banned under the Health and Safety Act?

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