On being a military brat
The army called them pads brats, the air force called them scaley brats, and I'm sure the navy had a name for them as well. They (we, and I suppose, I) were the children of military personnel who lived of forces housing estates around the world, but in the 1970's and 80's (my era), that meant Germany, Cyprus, and various back of beyond godforsaken nowheres in the UK.
If you got the overseas deal, you were seriously quids in, but it came at a price that you probably didn't realise at the time. And at the time, I thought it was a great way to live, because let’s face it, as a forces child in Germany in the 1980’s, was that privileged or what! Moving from one garrison town to another was no big deal at all, any disruption was kept to an absolute minimum, it was heavily subsidised, the schools were uber well resourced, with the same examining board in every school for ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels. Well-resourced, that is, with everything except the transport. The bus in the picture is the ubiquitous 'tincan,' which took loads of unruly British schoolkids along early morning autobahns to their schools. They were freezing in the winter and like ovens in the summer, but I never remember them breaking down.
Mind you, when your parents got posted from one military post to another, so did you, with sickening regularity, usually every two to three years. And making friends from scratch every two to three years was quite damaging for your social skills. For me, that didn't become apparent until quite a few years later. On the plus side, it was complete social cocooning from everything that was happening in the UK (the miners' strike, NHS underfunding, poverty and unemployment). It was a fantastic, cushioned, sheltered, hugely well-resourced and protected lifestyle while it lasted, but in no way whatsoever did it prepare you for what you’d have to face when you eventually went back home to the real world.
It also gave me a stilted, romanticised view of what life was like in the forces. And boy, did I find that out the hard way. It's all there inside It's Not For Everyone if you wanted to know more.
Click the links below for my other books.
Comments
Post a Comment