Happy days at scout camp
THIS is a photo of the 1st Dudley Grammar School Scout Troop in school year 1948/49.
I am second from left, back row, aged 12. I was probably placed there because money was tight and I didn’t yet have a full uniform.
Many faces are familiar but I can only identify those on the front row for certain:right to left – Gerry Wastall (Patrol Leader, his mother kept the sweet shop in Southall’s Lane, Dudley), Paul Alexander (PL, went on to Sandhurst and rose to be a high ranking officer), Mike Trapp (PL), Geoff Edwards. (Troop Leader), Bernard Davies. (Teacher and Scout Master), Arnold Reed (PL), Fred Corbett (PL), end scout a Patrol Leader, name unknown.
Later that year, in July 1949, the summer camp was held in Scotland. The Troop left Wolverhampton High Level station on the evening of 27th July for an overnight journey via Gleneagles to Comrie in Perthshire. The camp site was some three miles from Comrie on the banks of the River Earn, which was to be our only source of fresh water. Our tents were pitched in The Sawmill Field on the Duniera Estate, with our field kitchen across a gully some 10 feet wide by two feet deep. Unknown to us, this was the mill-race and after a few days the sawmill started up and we found ourselves separated from the field kitchens, and our food, by a 10 feet wide by one foot deep millstream. We had to paddle or walk along to the sawmill to get across for several days.
The camp lasted for 17 days and it rained at some time each day. On ‘free’ afternoons we walked the three miles into Comrie where there was a little sweet shop. Sweets were, of course, still rationed but the kindly shopkeeper allowed us the odd 6d Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bar. At the end of the camp we hiked into Comrie and spent the night on the floor of the village hall in order to catch the early train home. This was the first time I had been away without my parents and I was a little homesick.
Three years later in 1952 the summer camp was near Betws-y Coed. On the banks of the Conway River. The weather was glorious and we all had a wonderful 10 days camping, wide games, swimming and cricket. Ray Stokes Kinver