Thread: Bored on Ops Stag - Books to read

Legionnaire by Simon Murray is a good time killer

I am an ex-Royal Engineers (1965 - 1989) and had to give up work in August of 2007 to become a full time carer for my wife who suffers from acute bi-Polar disorder. For many years my family friends and colleagues have tried to persuade me to put pen to paper to down some of the many 'stories' I would tell at social and family occasions. They likened my to Unc in only fools and horses! I remember when . . . . Eyes would roll and at least one would say, "Pull up a Sandbag" or "Swing the Lights". However the stories were always funny and I would usually have them rolling in the aisle.




http://sites.google.com/site/ourladricky/

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The Continuing Story of Our Lad Ricky by

Michael A Ruston



Ricky – The Early Years




I have attempted in my books to give a feel of what life was really like for a military family living below the poverty line in the 1950s and early 1960s. In this, the first of the four books, I detail my life from my earliest memories, through my school days, until I eventually joined the Army in the mid 1960s. You are able to follow the numerous scrapes, incidents and often funny, sometimes tragic situations in which I found myself. Arrested by the RMP three times before reaching the tender age of 7!



Our Lad Ricky



In Our Lad Ricky I write about the several abortive attempts I made to join the Army, always failing due to my apparent weakness and ill health. And how, in desperation, I persuaded my best friend and school chum Ben to travel with me to Queen Street, Wolverhampton and take my entrance medical there on my behalf. The book highlights my hesitant, precarious and often hilarious attempts at turning from boy to man, by learning to be a soldier and how, not just once, but twice, I was almost discharged from the Army as 'Services No Longer required'!




Ricky – Green Beret

In Ricky – Green Beret, I cover the period from my arrival in Germany, through a host of mishaps and personal catastrophes. Ricky, having been betrayed by a friend, which almost resulted in a Court Martial was close to eviction from the Army. Meeting and falling madly in love with a country girl, but was it to be?
And then, quite accidentally, Ricky found himself posted to a Commando Unit forming up in Singapore. Although NOT a volunteer ‘Ricky’ struggled through weeks of ‘Beat Up’ and following Commando Training at the Commando Training Centre in Lympstone, Devon, to successfully succeed in winning the much coveted Green Beret. Much to his own surprise and the astonishment of comrades, friends and family!

Any Sven Hassel book!

Originally Posted by Cuddles

Start reading the bible on stag. It isn't a brilliant read - too much begetting without graphic details for my taste - but boy will it make your stag-mates edgy...especially if you then start to ask "The Lord" for interpretations of passages, out loud.

I started reading The Phone Book on stag. There is no plot and the cast list is HUGE.

Anyone ever complaining of the cold should read "We Die Alone" by David Howarth about Jan Baalsrud (sp?). Be thankful you have never spent a week delirious buried in a snowhole, or when pulled out left in a snow hut and cut your own toes off with a blunt penknife etc etc. All pretty much corroborated though which is more than you can say for Rawicz et al.
Le Carré writes some good ones (and was VERY well-educated, I should point out).

Originally Posted by Cuddles

Start reading the bible on stag. It isn't a brilliant read - too much begetting without graphic details for my taste - but boy will it make your stag-mates edgy...especially if you then start to ask "The Lord" for interpretations of passages, out loud.

Ha ha will have to get a copy for when I go back out soon (R and R being nearly over) will have our duty signaller getting very nervous, unless it is the duty mong. I would appreciate any recommendations for something to pass the crappy flight, as tried to read some foriegn book on way back, had to ditch it in the middle east for a Leslie Thomas...

Originally Posted by CanteenCowboy

Ha ha will have to get a copy for when I go back out soon (R and R being nearly over) will have our duty signaller getting very nervous, unless it is the duty mong. I would appreciate any recommendations for something to pass the crappy flight, as tried to read some foriegn book on way back, had to ditch it in the middle east for a Leslie Thomas...

My brother recommended to me to buy a book with a picture of a plane crash on the front to keep the staff focused. flying back from Gib in 1980, I bought "The Ghost of Flight 409" (iirc), a true story about the (then) only Tristar to crash.

There were I think 5 of us and I found myself sat next to a couple of sailors (the fleet came in that morning and they were all off on leave). I leaned across the companionway and read an excerpt aloud from a survivor about a waterfall of jet fuel pouring out in the stillness of the aftermath. It freaked out the sailors who asked me (not politely) not to read and more as he didn't like flying.

We were in the back row of the 727 and the galley was right behind my head. I have to say the trolley dollies looked after me well.

Sad thing was that the following week the same Dan Air flight from Gib to Gatwick disappeared without trace. I have often wondered about those trolley dollies.

Dead Ground by Raymond Gilmour is one of my favourite books, I read it first when I was about 12 (picked it up at a car boot sale for a pittance), it's his autobiographical account of his undercover investigation of INLA and the PIRA during the troubles - he's still on the run today.
Well worth a read.

George RR Martin - Game of Thrones - now on HBO. Plus three follow up novels - Fantasy but based on the War of the Roses.