Decades Ago

A Memory of Blandford Camp.

I was born in blandford in 1943 and lived there for the next 14 years,,, I remember my dad coming home from the war,,, my mother and I lived with my dads folks who were caretakers at the grammer school at blandford while my dad was serving his country in india,,, when he came home there was an acute shortage of housing,,, so all the local unhoused familys decided to move into a recently vacated army unit facility just outside of the town ,,, out towards milldown,,, there were about a dozen Nissan huts there ,, it must have been some small unit,,, I remember as a small child having to use the ablution block and having the choice of at least 20 toilets to choose from,,, for some reason I was terrified of all these loos so my mum used to have to take me every day,,, meanwhile the council / government started to build houses like crazy,,, huge council estates were built and we ended up with one of these,,, no6 barnes close,,, was situated on the hill overlooking the road from blandford to blandford camp,,, in those early days they still had national service in place so the to,ing and fro,ing along that road was awesome,,, we used to as kids roam all over the local countryside we used to go for miles and miles,,,, of course blandford camp was like a magnet to us kids we just went and nosed where ever we could get to within the camp area before some enormous nco would shout at us to "piss off" but of course we just used to laugh and give him the fingers and run like crazy,,,, some poor sqaddie probably got a load of rubbish for our cheek,,, but army camps used to hold a certain amount of mystery and fascination for me,,, that feeling used to draw us back time and again,,,little was I to know that I would one day serve in the british army myself,,,, not as a national serviceman,, and not at blandford camp,,, but in the 3rd battalion the parachute regiment,,, but that's just one of many stories that I could tell,,,, interested,,, contact me at jackiedusty@yrless.co.nz

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