An
eDiary of
Some of the
Key
Things in
Don's
Life
As some of
my
memories are starting to slip away in my 70's, I've set up these eDiary pages for some key threads that meant more to me than any others…
they may well get "tweaked" as I recall others and/or get replaced!
I started these eDiaries in the mid-80's, organizing into decade-based pages…
each are sorted by year and months, showing from Jan to Dec;
click on any of these sections to visit that decade?
Main page |
2010's |
2000's |
90's |
80's |
70's ( this page ) |
50's-60's
You should also consider visiting my family tree profile
page
that shares info about me,
or see the list of my
Global Places
I've visited?
For a more "historical" perspective, you could start your visit at
the very end
of my eDiaries & then scroll up to read them backwards in time?
Also, the embedded content of the textualized events reflects the time of the events vs. current time—view the pages full-screen?
I updated my eDiaries regularly until the creation of FaceBook's
2011 "eHistory"
feature, whereupon I stopped… sadly, my account then crashed out in 2019
( while I was updating my profile )
and I had to redrill some of the "lost years" to get them back!
Have fun, regardless ;)
My Early 1970's at Harrogate
Moving on from
my childhood
years, as I was reaching the age of 15½ in mid-December of 1970
( also, view my earlier September school eviction? )
my
Dad
took me across town to the Army Recruitment Office at
244 Holdenhurst Rd
and made me sign-up for the Army—not an actual life disaster
( my actual major catastrophic life event and others are here )
but is certainly a very active memory!
This all happened after my
Dad's
many futile attempts to try & keep me off the road of "becoming a criminal" with a set of
events
( scroll down to '69 for details? )
being his final choice:
"Let's have someone else give it a try as I clearly can't influence him enough"…
While this was not *actually* spoken directly to me, it was surely true!
I left
my
childhood home on a train to Harrogate around 9am on Monday, January 19th, 1971
( with quiet tears from my
Mum
at the station )
for that "involuntary" Army stint that had been forced on me by my
Dad…
I traveled from Bournemouth to the Waterloo station in London & via the
Tube
to the Kings Cross station & on to Harrogate
I was hauling a small suitcase of my clothes, a toothbrush, etc, etc off to my new "home" at the Army Apprentices College(+)in
Harrogate, Yorkshire, England(+)…
I arrived there as a very young Army rookie & spent the next 2+ years of my life in the Bradley Squadron
You can view my Army time
here—scroll down a couple pages?
I learned to be a soldier, shooting guns and rifles, camping out in the field, marching around as well as becoming a Telegraphist ( a communications op ),
with so very many additional memorial things, such as some local girlfriends!
I had changed my childhood family name ( "Jamie" ) to "Don" as I met new friends,
traveling home by train at each end-of-term break in April, August & December & to a few other places
( sometimes with some of my new friends )…
details are shared below
Upon
my
arrival at the Harrogate train station, I was taken to the
AAC
( this is the current view—see my direct perspective here? )
which was out-of-town up on Penny Pot Lane(+)
by some very large
( and **very** loud! )
Sergeants who had my hair trimmed with a military haircut upon arrival & provisioned me with my uniform:
a pair of rubber-soled
DMS
.jpg "Army DMS boots")
boots
( that I had to learn to shine; I didn't get my pair of
hob-nail
boots until later, in
Soltau ),
a beret
with a Jimmy ( one of which I still have ),
two battle-dress shirts / a jumper / some underwear / trousers & a
belt ( that I still have one of )
and some
ankle putties
as well my full-dress uniform, a dress hat & belt
( all of which I was wearing at my graduation ),
along with a field water-bottle, a mug & KFS,
all of which were loaded on top of my blankets / sheets / pillows etc
to haul up to the locker in my 2nd-floor room in Troop B of the Bradley Squadron
where a more senior student, Paul Higginbottom was in charge…
In the summer of that year, my GrandDad suddenly died at the age of 70 unexpectedly from a Myocardial Infarction with Coronary Artery disease. It was on Thursday, July 29th ( just 4 days after my 16th birthday ) in his Parkstone, Bournemouth home. The Army then sadly refused to release me from the AAC for a few days to be on leave to attend his funeral, as I was "not immediate family"… sure sucked
These events
( and many others )
were all pretty scary to me during
my
early days there—I can recall tears on occasion as I tried to get to sleep and once with an attempt to "end the world" with several aspirins
( that failed unsuccessfully, thank heavens! )…
On the plus side, those youthful feelings of
"latent homosexuality"
vanished as I grew into a leader there!!
Shortly after my arrival,
I
learned the required length of a military marching pace ( 30" )
and how to differentiate my right from my left
( which is needed to be marching correctly ),
swinging each arm to shoulder height
( as shown in the AAC link, above )
with a group—those "Quick March!" shouts meant "right-foot-forward!!"
Early in 1973, I can recall issuing such marching orders to the troop as the Apprentice Corporal of my troop…
I also learned to march in a parade & I ( later ) was the guy who hit the big bass-drum in the marching band where I once slowed the march down, infuriating the band-master sergeant!
I learned to respect the RSM & to salute the Ruperts!
I loved learning how to correctly load & shoot ( and respect ) the weapons:
a standard issue
7.62mm SLR rifle
( accurately & consistently hitting the distant target! ),
a 9mm SMG
a 9mm pistol
& the heavy machine gun
which sure was fun to fire!!
Many, many remembrances of
my
time at the AAC…
After I was there for a while,
Mum
& I established a protocol for our Saturday calls around September, 1971.
At a specific phone
( of the 3 phone booths that were by the churches ),
I'd ring up 70 Elmes around lunchtime & hang up after letting it ring 3 times…
it never failed ( to my recollection ) to get a call-back, reducing my expenses!
I got to do the CQ thing
( "dah-dit-dah-dit dah-dah-dit-dah" )…
went out to the field many times with the Ecce troop—on a Cornwall trip in '72, I was the person on guard, expecting the para's as the active enemy
( who were chasing after our D-10 site & managed to capture me! )…
I learned to type messages into that 50-cycles/second teleprinter ( I became faster than it was! )…
got to play on the rugby team as the tight-head prop…
somehow managed to get a
whitlow
in my 1st finger ( on my right hand ) that caused me to be delayed by a term…
did that (aaargh!) 48-hour Lyke-Wake-walk across the Yorkshire Moors ( once! )…
frequently had to take those horrible agonizing cross-country runs…
I also recall having those massive PT sergeants screaming in my ear that I
"wasn't trying hard enough with those damned reverse curls!!!"…
<eSigh> so many memories from the early days of my life!
I was a highly capable leader & a very successful student of military skills,
bringing my promotion in October, 1972 to Apprentice Lance-corporal in the A-Troop of Bradley Sqn
& in January of 1973 to a full Corporal ( shown in the picture below )—I had the one-person Corporal's bunk for my final term
I became famous ( for 15 minutes or so!! ) at my graduation in April of 1973, receiving
High Honors,
recognized in a Bournemouth Echo newspaper article as receiving four scholarly achievement awards…
something not done before or since!
Return to the top or visit my Home Page
My Mid-70's Soltau Time
I was posted to the
Catterick barracks
in Yorkshire after my
Harrogate
graduation, where I stayed for a month or so;
I managed to sustain some damage to my left ankle when moving a heavy cabinet with 3 others on a trolley down a hill when it slid off!
The Army then flew me
( my 1st flight! )
in May from the Stansted Airport near London out to Soltau ( via Hanover ) in the
Bournemouth barracks
on
Winsener Straße, 29614 Soltau, West Germany
showing today as a German
immigration
support center business ( and others ) with many rooms to stay, offices, facilities, etc, etc…
it became my Army station for over 3 years where I had also signed away 18+ years of my life to the Army
While this may all seem sort of small, my assigned station was to help *ensure* that the
207th Squadron
of the
Royal Corps of Signals,
tasked to lead the comms for the
7th Armoured brigade
in the
1st Armoured Division
( a critical part of the
BAOR forces )
allowed
NATO
to keep Russian attacks under control…
pretty hard to believe, looking back, but that was what it was!
I was also blessed by **so many** events & adventures there…
out with the lads drinking in the pubs in town;
watching porn in the Copacabana Club
( replaced today by a restaurant, the Diner 66 )
with very active semi-naked hookers (!);
eating breakfast, lunch & dinner in the
NAAFI
canteen;
out with the squadron on many field maneuvers…
one event of note was in August of 1974 where we were out near Kiel in Eckernförde, Germany
( a couple hours north of Soltau )
where I managed to step on something sharp whilst swimming back in to shore—a nerve in the 4th toe of my right foot was cut, permanently preventing any movement of those toes;
marching around the camp ( swinging my arms ) alone, or in a squad, etc…
I also actually learned to drive whilst there
( my 1st time driving! )
in an Army
Landrover,
as well as
( compliments of a friend, Lofty Nevols, sadly now RIP )
learning to "pull the sticks" in an
APC439;
also see it
here
as well as the
FV432's?
I recall many irritating moments with the 'effing military
Ruperts—1st
was just a few weeks after my arrival ( in my leg injury-based office assignment ) working with the Sgt. ( who's name is forgotten )
and calling him by his name where a Rupert then barked at him;
another was when I was out on an exercise with Scouse Groves, where we had fallen asleep at night before hanging camo on the rebro station up on a hill;
a 3rd was a twat who told me one morning ( out in the field ) to "take your ablutions behind the tent," likely offended by my muscular torso;
others may arrive…
I can also remember ( probably in early '74 ) spotting a posting on the squadron bulletin board to be stationed abroad for a couple years in
Belize,
an island in the Persian Gulf…
after thinking about it for a day or two, went back to apply but it sadly was already gone :(
I met
Jane Eleanor Wood
for the 1st time when I was home on leave from Soltau, Christmas '73…
Dad
had gotten us together—Jane had been his nurse when he was in Boscombe Hospital for a few days
( I'm not sure why )
& he had asked her for her address and sent it to me—we wrote a couple of letters prior to our 1st date
That date was almost a disaster as I wasn't very good at being social…
Jane was living in an upstairs flat in Boscombe—the owners were foster parents for babies—there sure were a lot of baby things at the house as I arrived!
I knew that she had inadvertantly became pregnant—she had written to tell me about that before agreeing to get together for an evening when I got my leave.
She came down the stairs in a knee-length blue dress to the hall where I was waiting, really decked out ( I thought )!
We took a bus to the Bournemouth center & met there with my friends Dino, Dave Worthy and their girlfriends;
we all slurped cider and rum&blacks in a bar—I guess I didn't talk to Jane too much at all as she was the "outsider" in our group, & she was shy, etc…
At maybe 10 or 11, we left & walked back to the bus-stops by the gardens. Jane and I got a little amorous in a shop doorway; she was quite enthusiastic with her kisses, & had just huge boobs from the pregnancy…
so my evening didn't crash after all!
Jane birthed her daughter, Rachel in February of 1974 and gave her up for adoption.
I was out in Soltau, and she had asked that I not come home—that was something that she wanted to deal with "by herself"…
I came home again in August '74 & we got engaged.
She was living at that time in a ladies nursing school in Winchester; "no boys allowed…"
I think I snuck in once, though!
I do remember our picnic on a hill nearby, with the big sausage… fun in the sun!
One of my many field maneuvers was at
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany…
On February 17th, 1974, we loaded everything onto a train & headed South for a week or so
Marching up & down those mountains ( chasing out our early morning hangovers ) was pretty chilly & quite challenging!
The snap to the left
 Rankin, DJS & Ray Spence at 5,000 feet in Bavaria (Early Summer 1974).jpg)
is Kevin Rankin ( "Jock" ), me & Ray Spence up at 5,000 feet
.jpg)
Snapped in Sep-74 at Soltau—a part of the training that we were providing for my upcoming tour, acting as IRA suspects!
I'm on the left, next is Frank Jackson, then Dave Cooke, then ???, Kim Nott, Johnno & Ginge ( from "dahn sarf" )
Muchas gracias for Dave's advice!
In December, 1974 I had my only military combat-based time: 4 months in Northern Ireland, serving as a
comms guy
( scroll down to view details? )
with the
Kings Own Royal Border Regiment,
who were assigned to patrol & help control attacks by the very active
IRA;
we were stationed at the RUC barracks on Hasting Street in Belfast
Some pretty scary times for me during that tour, with frequent nights out front on guard duty & doing the escort-duty, riding shotgun
( yeah, the guy they'd shoot 1st… )
on the Landrover with dispatches up to the Belfast HQ—just lucky, I guess…
A couple of weeks after my N. Ireland tour,
Jane
&
I
were married
( w/Simon Stone as my best man )
at 2pm on Saturday, April 19th 1975 at the
Baptist Church
in Eastleigh, Hampshire…
Our family & friends all gathered outside of the church
view some of the key names
here…
Note: the person to the right named “Mike Peters” is Mike Wilson, a friend of my Dad
We went to her parents house after the wedding, staying for the weekend & took a train on Monday, April 21st from Eastleigh out to the Isle of Wight for our week-long honeymoon… We had a room at a B&B in Ventnor ( a touristy place ) on the East end of the island 1st, & then stayed at a nice little hotel in Totland, walking for miles on the headlands and along the beaches. And across a field, on a hill, where the cows were…
A few weeks later the Army flew us from the Stansted Airport
( near London )
to Soltau
( again, via Hanover )
where we stayed w/Paul & Judy Ellis for a few days while our MQ was assigned;
we then moved into our Soltau home, a 4th-floor flat at Amselweg 4, 29614 Soltau, W. Germany(+)
where we lived happily for a few years…
Nearby us was Karen's bar, where we enjoyably ate steak w/mushrooms & onions with beers many times!
It was also a 20-minute
walk
to the barracks every day ( we rode our bikes too )…
I was promoted to Lance-Corporal in May of 1975 and was placed in charge of a 3-man independent detachment reporting to a Brigade-level Officer
I purchased our 1st
car
there in May of 1976, a
Hillman Husky Imp;
Jane's
income at the barracks made it available…
it stayed with me until July of 1980 when I departed for America
Return to the top or visit my Home Page
The Most Disastrous Event in My Life hit in September of 1976…
My 2 other major life events: the 2nd was my move to the US of A in 1980 & the 3rd was my brain tumor in 1998
Sadly, my wonderful life in the Army ( as shared above ) came to an abrupt end in September of 1976…
We were out in the field on the annual military Summer Sales exercise, playing as international "at war" soldiers…
I was driving an APC432
( see one above? this one was the petrol version )
with Sgt. Gary Coude as the commander, operating as a
rebro station
out in the Stadtverwaltung woods, near
Bad Salzdetfurth,
about 50km SE of Hanover
We had stopped for an overheating engine and when I tried to fix the problem by opening the radiator to allow it to cool a little,
I ended up taking an inadvertent swan-dive from the top of our APC that trashed both of my arms—breaking both elbows & wrists.
This catastrophe changed the rest of my natural-born life…
After I was returned to Soltau, the local doc at the camp didn't do the right things for my arms & I ended up sitting around for several weeks before heading to the
BMH Hanover
hospital for treatment
My family also visited us around
Christmas
for support
Return to the top or visit my Home Page
The Major Transitions in My Life were in 1977…
After my January, '77 BMH Hanover surgery,
Jane
& I left Soltau in March, staying at her parent's house in Eastleigh, Hampshire for 2+ months;
I drove up & back to
BMH Greenwich,
the military hospital in Greenwich, London, which today is the Royal Herbert Hospital
In March of 1977 I was reassigned to our 1st MQ on the Balham High Road in London
a 5th-floor flat
( the building )
I was then moved from BMH Greenwich ( above ) to the
JSMRU
( Joint Services Military Rehabilitation Unit )
in Chessington.
This move was for some in-depth physiotherapy of my damaged elbows & wrists
( which are today getting more & more ouchy!! ),
including building a table & trying to stretch my elbows by pushing my arms in and out on floaters in the pool, etc…
On October 10th, 1977 I received my medical discharge at the Catterick Garrison after the Army had spent 18+ months attempting to repair my elbows…
I was also tagged as 30% disabled with their failure!
Later that month ( on Monday, October 24th ),
Jane
& I were blessed to go and see the band "Yes"
playing
at the
Wembley Stadium…
the playlist we heard was ( I think! )
As the show ended, our travel back to Balham was annoyingly difficult: the Tube ended at the Clapham Junction Station ( late! ), causing us to walk home for 2 miles!!
We moved out of our military MQ flat in Balham later in the year to our middle-floor flat at 103 Central Hill, West ( Upper ) Norwood, London SE19…
The Army granted me my **most significant** life-changing event: a 6-month period of Government-funded re-training upon my discharge…
thus began my life with computers that lasted for multiple decades in & around London, in America & around the world!!
This started out with me attending the Control Data Institute's Computer HW/SW Training School
( at 77 Wells St. in London )
on September 26th, 1977, where I learned to become a mainframe-computer field engineer.
I graduated on March 31st of 1978 with honours…
.jpg)
click the image to view?
Those "innate intuitive technical skills" allowed me to graduate with a certificate that shows all aspects of the learning as straight-A's, at the top of my class…
While the school departed a number of years ago, there were several occasions that I recall where lunch was held at a nearby bar on Oxford Street, as well as learning all sorts of new things!
Return to the top or visit my Home Page
1978… My 1st Full Year Outside of the Army
In March of 1978, I had graduated from the CDI ( above ) & was hired into the
Burroughs Corporation
( where they held physically enormous machines in the basement of the Midland Bank HQ in North London )
after an interview with Tim Bowler & others…
These machines did "batch processing" for banking & financial transactions, requiring many square feet of controlled & conditioned space with dozens of 6-foot tall cabinets & hundreds of connecting cables!
Jane
&
I
moved our of our middle-floor flat at 103 Central Hill, West ( Upper ) Norwood to an upstairs flat at 89 Fairfax Road in Haringey, London N8…
this move facilitated my drive to work for the rest of the year at the Midland Bank HQ in Staples Corner, London
In August we brought & moved into our 1st house, an end-row terrace at 19 Albany Road, Upper Edmonton, London N18
( a street view shows it today as destroyed )
and we had fun with the garden shed and kitchen "bat-wing" doors!
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1979 Was Both a Really Interesting and a Very Sad Year!
After my enjoyable day- & night-shifts working at Burroughs, I was lucky enough to have been sent across the pond mid-October after
Jane's
24th birthday on the 6th for a 6-week training session at their HQ near Philly…
I then managed to run into
Ms. T
with whom I inadvertently caused the saddest event that changed my entire life in the evening of Monday, November 19th, 1979…
After returning from the training session, my surprise December discovery
( on one of our phone calls at the office )
was of the unintended & quite unexpected pregnancy that brought to me the resultant fiasco,
forcing me to move out from
Jane
before Christmas to a flat at 33a Goldsmith Road in Friern Barnet, London N11…
After negotiating with Burroughs in the spring of 1980, I received permission to move internationally ( self-funded ) to the Washington, DC area on
July 30th, 1980
where I continued to do **exactly** the same things with the same large computers at the World Bank HQ as I had been doing in London, yet with a 1/3rd pay hike!
As of my 2024 update, I do continue to think of the enormous negatives I caused for Jane **but** the last 30+years of such immense happiness in my life simply would never have happened!!
Return to the top or visit my Home Page
The End of My 70's Decade…
Well, that's pretty much the end of the events in the decade of my70's…
visit the more recent decades here?
You could also go to
my Bio summary page,
the personal profile that I created a few years ago,
a page that shares my many years of work,
my family tree page or
visit my FaceBook
where you can scroll down to view my events year-by-year
As I expect that parts of my eDiary will improve and/or change as I tag some more year-by-year info, or clarify some of the threads… watch this space!
Please also visit my
privacy page
to be aware of some legal stuff?
As a final thought, view some snaps of me & my family in my
older album? Enjoy!! ;)