Its easy to see you are very passionte about our armed forces, just wonderd if you have ever read a book called the Railway Man ?

True story about a bloke captured by the Japs and how he was treat and how he forgive

Heard it is a very good read Verb.

Can't say I have, I'll keep an eye open for it. A couple of years ago I had the honour of meeting Bill Griffiths. He was a taken prisoner by the Japs and by the time he was released he had lost both eyes and both hands.

It didn't hold him back though. What he achieved was astonishing.


On the general issue of the forces, I heard yesterday that the British Legion's main financial outlay these days is emergency food tokens for married soldiers. They can't afford to eat these days. It's no difference for single soldiers living in barracks either; since the introduction of 'pay as you dine' a sort of canteen affair, there are no end of servicemen who don't eat much towards the end of the month.

The conditions these days really are disgraceful.

Yes very good, Jon Gaunt kept on going on about it on talksport so i got a copy.
Bit slow to start off with but its a good read, i will dig the book out and you can have it

I always wondered why people called you a racist... if it's true, you're certainly painting a good picture

you've lost me there ginger

Six pound a meal, or 18 quid a day, for FS that's like Motorway Service Station prices. For cookhouse food. Don't get me wrong, there's little wrong with the grub, like.

This regime are really taking the piss, 'we're fighting terrorism with our heroic soldiers,' and when the generals stand up and say their piece about how the men get treated, fed, equipped, etc, they get booted off the promotion ladder.

Its fuc king shabby. I don't advocate or support it, but when we had six people court martialled for booting Iraqis all over, I did understand to a certain degree. The Iraqi family got 3 mill, the military widows get about 4 grand.

By the way, they removed the competition too.

There used to be a burger van outside CTCRM Lympstone called Dutchy's. It was a bit of an institution but was removed by the MoD.

When I was about 17/18 I got paid once a week on pay parade and was skint two days later. If that system was in place in those days I would have starved to death. I don't imagine todays 17/18 year olds are that different.

We paid food and accomodation which was about a third of your money after tax etc. Obviously no-one mentioned that in recruitment.

Now that's 126 quid a week if you want three square meals a day. I can feed a family of three, even today, in the UK for that.

And yet for ever serving member of the Armed Forces there's three Civil Servants, on much more money even at the basest level, the leeching bounders.

Errr.....Mr Offshore, I feel a Parliamentary question coming on..............

MrI, what are the Officers Mess charges like these days, you've got the connections??

Wow i forgot all about the mobile salmonella van and pay parade when did that end about 1979?.

I think pay parade is still in existance today but only in training.

Officers pay; 99p for breakfast and £9.60 for 'dinner'. By the way, long gone are the days when you could fill your boots at the counter, everything is pre plated and the servers have set portion for everything.

It is a chargeable offence to bring food into camp from an outside establishment.

Wow i forgot all about the mobile salmonella van and pay parade when did that end about 1979?.[/quote]


Aye but Dutchy was more than just a burger van. He was a shoulder to cry on for many a young nod, he was a bottomless pit of advice given that he'd been there and done it all - ex CSgt if memory serves.

On the other point, its generally known as PAYS (pay as you starve)

anyone ever read Devil's Guard

fook me what a book

what type of book is that katcha?

from wikithingy


Devil's Guard, by George Robert Elford published in 1971, is the story of a former German Waffen-SS officer's string of near-constant combat that begins on World War II's eastern front and continues into the book's focus--the First Indochina War, as an officer in the French Foreign Legion. The book is presented by the author as nonfiction but considered to be untrue by military historians, and usually sold as fiction.[1] In 2006 the online bookstore AbeBooks reported that it was among the 10 novels most frequently sold to American soldiers in Iraq (the only war fiction in the top 10, in fact).

he book's anti-communist overtone is set in the opening chapter and is evident in one of the opening statements referring to the communist Viet Minh, "we met the real subhumans in Indochina." The constant justification of SS atrocities, compared to those perpetrated by the Allied powers--as well as the almost-unbelievable fighting ability of the characters--has led some left-wing critics to denounce Devils Guard as Neo-Nazi propaganda. The book's tone is "savage and unapologetic," with the narrator using the threat of Communism to justify Nazi atrocities.[1] The story is told in the words of "Hans Josef Wagemueller," who fights as an officer in the Waffen-SS during the Second World War. The story begins with the capitulation of Germany in 1945, while Wagemueller is fighting the Red Army and partisans near Czechoslovakia. Wagemueller escapes the Allied powers in post-war Europe by fighting his way west and using underground connections to reach France, where he joins the Foreign Legion. Wagemueller reunites with two former sergeants from his former German unit, Bernard Eisner and Erich Schulze, and is sent to French Indochina. In Indochina, Wagemueller and his comrades are incorporated into mixed Legion units that included many French territorial troops. However, under the command of French Colonel Simon Houssong, Wagmueller is put in command of an all-German battalion (around 900 troops) composed of former Nazi troops who, like Wagemueller, fled to the Legion. Their mission is to disrupt the Viet Minh in their rear supply areas, far from cities and French-controlled zones. For more than three years, the battalion runs a highly-successful and brutal guerilla war against the insurgent Viet Minh across northern Indochina, Laos and southern China. In one such case, "the battalion of the Damned" escorts a supply column north through enemy-held territory by forcing Viet Minh prisoners and family members to ride in the column's trucks, tanks and jeeps to insure safe passage. In other situations, poison, torture and natural resources are used.

It is debatable as to whether or not the book is exaggerated fact, or outright fiction. The book is presented by Elford as the words of Wagemueller, who lived in Nepal at time of the book's publication. In the preamble, Elford claims to have met the man and arranged for him to dictate the events of his military life into a microphone over 18 days. It is documented that ex-SS soldiers both joined the French Foreign Legion and fought in the French Indochina War, although the book's claim that a unit was composed solely of Germans is unsupported by evidence presented by many Legion historians, records and books (such as Bernard Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place and Street Without Joy) on the French Indochina War. Skeptics have stated that the "Nazis in Indochina" myth came from communist bloc sources during the war. Elford claims his only contribution to the book is in the capacity of an editor, changing the names of soldiers and military verbiage. Critics however, point to the fact that much of the military power possessed by the characters is anachronistic, the SS seems to have almost superhuman-fighting ability and the heavy anti-communist dialogue (as well as supposed war crimes being committed by whosoever the protagonists kill en masse). The access to military records should also allow for the exact tracing of units in which Wagemueller and his comrades served, but only the name of Wagemueller's unit in eastern Europe, the 21st Special Partisanjaeger Commando, is mentioned in Devil's Guard. Supporters point to the fact that Elford is following Wagemueller's request that his details not be made traceable. Critics also point to the serialization of the book (it spawned two sequels, despite the fact the original ended towards the end of the war, 700 days from Dien Bien Phu in 1954 according to the narrator). Wagemueller ends up fighting for the US later in the series.[1]
In recent years, the demand for the book has far outstripped supply and a used copy would typically fetch EUR/USD100 (around £60) on eBay, Amazon.com or other auctioneer

forgot to say it is fookin great

Fook me that sounds a bit deep, is there any pictures in it

on the front

its a real story all the way thro - cant put it down - i lent it to shag a few year back and hadf to to get it back one night when he was out - didnt want to part with it. the old boy has it but cant find it - what a surprise

Is that shaggy you on about Katcha if so is he still living in the yown ive not seen him for years

aye - been back a year or so - been working in switz, eire, belgium and so on - lives just down the road from where his ma lived now- still local