Dear Ms O'Hara, 

I am now 80 years old and was an 18 year old national serviceman in the winter of 1946/7 at Stainton Camp. As you probably are aware, that was one of the worst winters in living memory, made worse by a national coal shortage. Most Army units had been sent home on indefinite leave by February '47 as there was no fuel to keep the sleeping huts warm. Stainton was kept open because we youngsters were being deployed to dig out the roads and keep the trains moving. There was no fuel anywhere in the camp - except for the cookhouse and the Church Army Hut. Fire buckets froze solid overnight and our wet denims were stiff with ice in the morning.

I was detailed, just once, to guard the local P.O.W. camp. This was a four hour night shift and I was unarmed, but issued with a long wooden stick as my symbol of authority. After I had been left standing, frozen, at the gate for half an hour a German came out of a hut, and sympathising with me, invited me in to warm up. To my great surprise he had a key to the gate and I gratefully followed him to stand in front of a roasting stove. The irony was that it was mandatory that the POWs, under the Geneva Convention, be kept warm in captivity. We squaddies had to tough it out! Like a number of others, I eventually succumbed to the cold and wound up in Catterick Hospital with pneumonia.  The happy ending was to be posted from the hospital to the RAC Gunnery School at Lulworth Cove in Dorset, to convalesce through a divine summer by the sea.

Yours, 

Ray Smith

Dear Eileen

Thanks for your interest and speedy reply. As you seem interested I will tell you how I got to Catterick Hospital. Because of poor nourishment, no heating, and the freezing temperatures, lots of troopers became ill. In those days, if one did feel ill, it meant attending a sick parade at 7 a.m. on the Barrack Square. (It was supposed to weed out the malingerers). One was then marched to the M.I. room - an uphill distance of about a quarter of a mile - and waited for the Medical Officer to arrive. This, I did, and the last thing I can remember is someone shouting Ambulance!

I woke up in bed in the hospital, warm and cosy, which was one of the most glorious feelings of my young life...

Out of interest, one of the other N/S youngsters in the camp was the son of General Montgomery - so the old boy evidently believed in making sure his son suffered along with the plebs.

Of course it's OK to use this material as you think fit

Ray

P.S. I didn't even know until now that the camp where I did guard duty was Blackbeck!!