Two Rooms And A View: 71 - The Company Camp
...It was often joked in the Company, that an essential prerequisite for the annual campsite was that the local farmer who owned the field had to have an attractive daughter of eligible age. It was amazing how often this turned out to be true. The result was a queue of volunteers who wanted to collect the milk from the farm each morning...
Robert Owen tells of Boys' Brigade summer camps.
To read earlier chapters in Robert's life story please click on Two Rooms And A View in the menu on this page.
The driving force behind the Boys' Brigade in South Shields, including the annual camp, was a Scotsman named John Chalmers. He was president of the Battalion and also a member of the Brigade's National Executive, a man of enormous energy with an extrovert personality and great leadership skills.
He had a dental practice in Dean Road, but how he found time for this on top of his B B work will never be known. John Chalmers was also a local JP, a member of the town's Education Committee and the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for the town at five General Elections between 1950 and 1964.
Out of curiosity, I went to one of the early election campaign meetings he held in St Paul's Church Hall. I was surprised how well spoken and knowledgeable he was when addressing and answering questions from a large crowd.
He enthused my interest in politics.
Much of the day-to-day work of running the South Shields Battalion fell into the very capable hands of its voluntary secretary, Russell Gidney. He carried out all the detailed, unseen work associated with all the battalion meetings, parades, events and competitions etc. Few organisations were fortunate enough to have such a good leadership team as Chalmers and Gidney.
John Chalmer's mechanistic leadership however, did not go down well with some officers at the 1947 Battalion Camp. To quote one incident, our Minister, Rev Rodgers, did not appreciate being detailed for military-like duties such as patrolling the perimeter of the camp in the middle of the night.
He vowed to organise our own Company Camp the following year. With the help of Bill Barron and Norman Graham he did this and was mainly responsible for some very successful annual camps. During the following years, we visited Rothbury, Scots Gap, Hexham, Alston, Stanhope and Kirkwhelpington. For many youngsters this one week camp was their first and only holiday.
Several had never been past Newcastle. The camp, with three officers and about eighteen boys was much less formal than the larger battalion event. We took turns at cooking and fatigue duties, enjoyed the country environment, played the locals at cricket and football and visited the local towns and villages. On Wednesday afternoon, a bus load of parents and friends invaded the camp and on Friday evening, the week ended with an impromptu concert.
It was often joked in the Company, that an essential prerequisite for the annual campsite was that the local farmer who owned the field had to have an attractive daughter of eligible age. It was amazing how often this turned out to be true. The result was a queue of volunteers who wanted to collect the milk from the farm each morning.
We were also one of the first B B Companies to use Calor Gas for cooking, which was quite an innovation in 1948. Bill Barron was very proud of his ability in this department and used to make a variety of suspicious-looking bread and butter puddings!
We used to sarcastically sing to a well-known Scottish tune:-
Do ye ken Bill Barron
The wee lad from Shields?
The best pudding maker,
The camp's ever seen,
If he doesn't make it good
We'll hit him with his pud
And send him back to Shields in the morning!
In later years I enjoyed going on the Advance Party. This was a group of four older boys who, with the Rev, went to the campsite two days in advance. Our job was to put the marquee and tents up, dig the latrines and have a meal ready when the main party arrived. It was hard work, good fun and sometimes dangerous.
We usually travelled on the back of a loaded lorry and this was great if the weather was dry and bright. One year, it absolutely poured with rain. If we wanted to remain dry, we had no option but to lie down between the bell tents and be covered by a massive tarpaulin that was then lashed to the lorry. We could hardly move for over two hours. It was extremely claustrophobic and I thought Ken Foster who was next to me, had died! Fortunately, he was only asleep. I dread to think what would have happened had there been a crash!
Empty jam jars were, amazingly, an important commodity during the austere post-war years and at least one cinema accepted them as means of admission to their children's matinees. Many organisations collected them as a means of saving towards a stated objective.
In the Boys' Brigade, the objective was a new battalion headquarters. We collected thousands of jam jars at St Andrew's and used to store them in various containers on the stairhead, en-route to the upstairs ante-room. That was until one evening a container fell over, broke numerous jam jars and caused complete chaos.
Church Youth Clubs were extremely popular during the post-war years and St Andrew's was no exception The Fellowship of Youth or FOY, as it was called, catered for 14-18-year-olds in the Junior Section and over 18's in the Senior Section. I got involved via the B.B.
The Junior FOY met once a week and provided an ideal opportunity for my older friends to mix with the opposite sex. I appear to have been more interested in organising club competitions. Scrapbook records indicate that we had 24 entrants for a table tennis competition and 18 for a similar billiards event. Seven females entered the former, but only one ventured into the male-dominated billiards competition.
