大象传媒

MIKE'S first encounter with Army rum is something he can still recall -- just about!
It was just after the regiment had been on a four-day exercise in Cushendall, during which they had been exposed to torrential rain.
A rum issue was ordered, but by the time it arrived the rain was over and the exasperated soldiers were packing up to return to Kilkeel.
The colonel, however, came up with the idea of bringing the rum back to Kilkeel and splitting-it between each of his men, so that the next time a rum issue was ordered every man would have his own and the replacement could be used to replenish stocks.
So, at around eight o'clock one night the Lieutenant Quartermaster and a few men, including Mike, sat down to divide the rum four ways -- a container each for the three sub-units and regimental headquarters.
As this was being done, the LQM happened to ask if any of the men had ever tried the stuff before, and the answer was obviously no because they were all relatively new to the Army.
After explaining that it was "extremely powerful stuff," a suitable number of glasses were acquired and each man had his fair share.
The LQM left the room to get another container to decant the remaining rum into and take some out of the others.
'SLUG'
Mike takes up the story: "He disappeared and I know in hindsight that he knew darn well we would take another slug -- and we did!
'We took quite a good slug each, and when he came back he took a look at us but said nothing.
"We got on with-thejob, corked up all the containers and that was it.
"One of the fellows who had some rum was the quartermaster's clerk, a very, very quiet fellow who wouldn't have said boo to a goose.
"He was typing away at a letter when he suddenly stopped and, with a very rude word, said 'I've had enough of this tonight, I'm going home.'
"He was billeted down above the Post Office with the storemen and the LQM said to me, 'Just in case, you better go down with him and make sure that he gets home all right.'
"So, we went out and, of course, as soon as we got in the fresh air we were all over the place.
"We had bikes which we used to go down there, but we kept falling off them. We got down there and that was it as far as we were concerned.

"Another fellow who was billeted in the Square got on his bike too and he ended up somewhere near the Moor Road before he realised where he was!"
The next morning the young soldiers we more aware of just how strong the Army issue rum really was -- especially an unfortunate technical sergeant who passed out after the drinking spree and had half his moustache shaved off by his men!
The commander and the clown!
"
ANOTHER of the more light-hearted stories Mike recalled from his days in Kilkeel was the time when one of the soldiers who was a former clown got one over on his battery commander, who was a major.
The Major dreamed up an "initiative exercise" in which he sought six volunteers to find their way from Kilkeel to Londonderry.
The first to get there was to report to a friend of the major's at a specific address and collect a 拢10 winning prize.
Looking back, Mike said it was "a dodgy thing to do" -- such a dodgy thing in fact, that the colonel wasn't informed and the six volunteers were not allowed to carry their papers!
Well, one of the adventurous six was a former clown from the Bertram Mills circus -- and he was the only one who made it.
The others fell by the wayside -- including one who was arrested for stealing a bike in Portadown -- but the clown, knowing it was an unofficial 'exercise' decided to take advantage by having some time to . himself.
When he 'didn't appear back in Kilkeel after a week, Mike recalls the major starting to "sweat."
Going AWOL (absent without leave) was viewed as a very serious offence, but after 21 days it was viewed as desertion, punishable by court martial.
If this had happened, the whole 'exercise' would be blown and the major himself would have faced a severe telling off from the colonel.
The clown, of course, knew this, so he kept the major sweating right up until the last moment.

"One the 20th day, the clown fellow appeared on the scene and walked in as though he'd only been around the corner to buy a loaf of bread," Mike recalled.
He was immediately sent for by the furious major, who demanded to know what he had been up to after making it to Londonderry inside four days.
His reply to the stunned major was: "You told us to make Derry as quick as we could; but you didn't say we had to get back as quick as we could, Sir. But I'm back here now, is that all right?!"
As Mike put it: "He was so cheeky about it, there was little the major could say or do."
IMPROMPTU
On another of the major's impromptu exercises he assembled his entire battery of men and made them run from Kilkeel to the top of Slieve Donard.
The exhausted men were then trucked back to Kilkeel. But being the good major that he was, he led from the front and waited at the summit until all his men had completed the exercise.
Mike recalled how the major was very independent and never got on too well with the colonel.
"His name escapes me now, but he had friends in the RAF and it was nothing for him to catch a lift to Canada at the weekends to see some friends he had there, leaving on a Friday night and getting back on Sunday as though he was on a bus," Mike explained.
"This didn't really endear him to the colonel," he pointed out. "It was a bit if one-upmanship, I think."
'Hitching' lifts from the RAF proved his downfall, however, as he was killed in England in an air crash before he ever went into action.
Mike recalls him as a forward-thinking officer, who was not only "a hard man," but also "a very good man and a very good major ."

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