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by
(Published by Leo Cooper and REME, 1996)
723 pp, maps and illustrations
Available from Regimental Headquarters REME
Isaac Newton Road, Arborfield, Reading, RG2 9NJ, United Kingdom
Order through the REME Association Shop
In 1970 I had the pleasure of reviewing the first volume of the REME Corps history, which told the Corps' story from its birth in 1942, 'in the blackest days of the Second World War', to 1968. The present volume takes that story on from 1969 to 1992, and lives up to the high standard set by its predecessor.
This is an exhaustively-researched work which proceeds logically from a review of the higher management of the Corps, through a description of the work of the equipment branches, and goes on to deal with REME's achievements in training and on operations world-wide. It concludes by considering regimental and sporting activities. Tables, wisely concentrated at the end of chapters, list such things as the evolution of the Corps' organisation, casualties, honours and awards, and the senior hierarchy. The book is illustrated with a mixture of photographs and line drawings. It is unusually well-produced and offers good value for money.
As part of a Corps official history this can hardly be other than military history of the more formal sort. However, it is commendably well written and the authors are successful in enlivening what could so easily be stodgy fare with judicious sprinklings of anecdote. A workshop commander organised a wives' visit to his unit during a BAOR exercise, only to discover that: ‘Several couples set off into deep cover. One telecommunications technician took his wife to show her his box bodied repair vehicle. While inside, the door unaccountably jammed'. On another exercise, when a padre gave communion to soldiers in full NBC protective kit, ‘his communion wafers were contained in a small Tupperware box placed inside a green metal case'. On a third, recovery crews had to deal with 21 armoured vehicles bogged down within an area of 16 square kilometres. Even parades did not always go exactly as planned. When the Corps celebrated its freedom of entry into Minden in 1973 an injudiciously-parked civilian vehicle was nudged by a passing REME truck, whose driver was fined DM 10 by a policeman-spectator: the fine was promptly refunded. The parade celebrating REME's fiftieth anniversary coincided with an unseasonable downpour which drenched but did not dispirit participants and observers alike. In short, if the book traces the detailed evolution of the British army's equipment support structure, it also celebrates the life of a Corps.
Although Craftsmen of the Army will appeal primarily to serving and former members of REME, it is not merely a piece of parochial introspection, for it provides military historians with an invaluable source, of reference. For instance, the account of the run-up to Operation GRANBY (the Gulf War of 1990-91) shows how sending a light armoured division to the Gulf lacerated the equipment resources of 1 British Corps. By early January a single base workshop in Germany had inspected, repaired and dispatched to the Gulf 2,238 major assemblies. The process of equipment cannibalization required is described graphically. 'Giving units in 7th Armoured Brigade exactly what they asked for had lots of knock-on effects', recalled one officer, 'depriving others and rendering them non-operational: increased costs when we were not sure who would pay....'. Once in theatre, vehicles and equipment had to be prepared for and maintained in desert conditions. General Sir Peter de la Billière declared that: ‘no praise is too high for the efforts of the REME'.
This book is a model of how this sort of history ought to be written: how delighted I am to have it sitting on my bookshelf alongside its distinguished predecessor.
Richard Holmes
Craftsmen of the Army - Volume I
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