Chapter 4

The start of the week at Bad Fallingbostel was pretty much a repeat of the previous week. Lots of interviews trying to understand what had happened. The tankers were part of the 7^th Armoured Brigade, and the only formation within the British Army Of the Rhine that had the new Challengers. Now that they were at the garrison with the right equipment at least they might get to the bottom of it. But two days of talking at the command level had produced nothing, or at least nothing that suggested there was a problem. Most of the team were now sure that there was no issue. Lester had confirmed that the 7^th Brigade was not missing any panels. They walked up and down all 57 tanks and the detachable panels were all there. Walking back from another pointless interview Andrew finally started talking to Vestie about whether this was a REME issue.

“When did you think all this through?”

“Sunday after lunch, before we came back.”

They talked some more and the whole issue of the spooks insisting there was a problem versus nothing missing here hung over the conversation.

“Do you mind if I talk to some of the Sappers and REME guys. I want you to be there but I have seen an exercise out on Salisbury Plain where there was a lot of umpire directed damage, you know the attrition of battle they want to model, but also there was a ton of just mechanical breakdowns, especially on the old Chieftains.”

Vestie looked at Andrew closely.

“Okay, I see what you are saying. Just shoot the shit with them and see what they talk about.”

“It is worth a try. Nothing else seems to be working.”

They found out the assigned Engineers to the Brigade were half way back to Minden so Taff, Vestie and Andrew headed over to Nienburg. Taff had been there on Saturday as part of his drive round the West German countryside and this time they found the garrison without too much trouble. Taff stayed with the LandRover while Vestie and Andrew went to talk to the Sappers.

It is always amazing how defensive everyone gets when the Police turn up. There is that presumption that they have done something wrong, and even when they were squeaky, there was still a reserve. It was also amazing when they realised it was not them on the hook how helpful they would be. Vestie did the talking and explained they were just trying to understand how everything worked back and forth between the divisions and the different garrisons, when everyone is scattered as opposed to the exercises on Salisbury Plain. They got directed to a new lieutenant and a wizened old sergeant. Guess who was looking out for who? It was slow going at first but gradually they got them talking. Andrew explained he had been at Salisbury Plain twice now with the Sappers, watching them on exercise the first time and planning the exercise the second. The questions just flowed from there.

“We landed at Bruggen and have been at Rheindahlen, Minden, Paderborn, Bad Fallingbostel and now here. You are the assigned Engineering Regiment for the 7^th Armoured, but are an hour away from them. How does fixing stuff work? We are going to talk to the REME guys next but if you are on exercise and something gets broken where is it dealt with. I saw some of the old AVRE’s crap out when I was at Perham Down. Do you leave them with the REME or do you haul them back and get them fixed here?”

The answer was even more complicated. The tracked combat engineering vehicles stayed with the tanks, as the Army did not want to have to load them onto transporters and drive them back there, and the Germans did not want them wrecking the roads. The wheeled vehicles were there but the tracked vehicles stayed with the tanks. There was an attached REME unit with the tanks and they dealt with all the tracked vehicles at the garrison in Bad Fallingbostel. The Sergeant had been around the block enough to know that there was more to this than Vestie and Andrew were letting on and he and Vestie had a word before they left. They drove up the road back to Bad Fallingbostel but pulled off the road to chat before going on.

“From what we have been told it looks like they keep all the tracked vehicles together, which would make us suppose that the spares are there also. I doubt the REME have a central store site as it would be too vulnerable. There is a REME workshop here at Fallingbostel so we need to check there next.”

Taff spoke up.

“Brodie sent the other two there yesterday and they were going back today. We should have an idea if anything is missing from them.”

Vestie sat quietly thinking and Taff and Andrew sat patiently waiting for him to organise his thoughts.

“The point Jock made yesterday still doesn’t make sense. Why did the fucking spooks have us go to Colchester? The Fusiliers were nowhere near here. We checked. The 4^th never were within 50 miles of the 1^st. There is something not right about this.”

They drove back in utter silence as Vestie sat and mulled everything over. Brodie had called everyone together to let them know that there was a side panel missing from the REME stores. Splash had discovered this while watching the REME quartermaster do a check for him. That it had taken this long to confirm was also making a lot of people very nervous. They had dedicated repair vehicles in support of the tanks and the support vehicle carried two panels as part of its regular load to enable speedy repairs. Brodie explained.

“They had the exercise and as part of the plan the REME had to switch a panel on a Challenger. That went fine but a cable on the crane got caught on the Challenger and when it took off it wrecked the crane and damn near pulled the recovery truck over. The crane was unusable and they had a panel lying on the ground in the German countryside. This is where no one can find out answers. The Alvis was able to drive back under its own power. Troops were left to guard the panel and they wrote out a report confirming it was collected by a REME unit but no one knows where the panel went. The second REME unit did not have an Alvis so it took a whole squad of guys to load it onto the back of a four tonner and then they took off. This we know from the report. The report was from a TA unit in Newcastle and as you can imagine they are being asked a lot of urgent questions. Someone from Catterick is going up there to try and get the details of the unit that collected the panel and where the hell they took it. Everyone assumed it was the 7^th Workshop of the REME based here but it is not. So we know that a panel is missing. Definitely. We have a report that the panel was collected and loaded onto an Army truck by a REME unit but we don’t know which one. It was not the 7^th.

“Vestergaard, Drinkwater you two find out where the other REME units in this division are based. Jock, Taff go and get the LandRovers ready and out front. Wright” This was the third Sergeant. “Find out where Lester is and let HQ we need to speak to him urgently. Move it.”

As Andrew ran to get the LandRover the whole investigation seemed to have taken a more serious turn. Which did make him wonder what the fuck he was still doing here. There seemed to be no computer angle it just needed trained policemen, not an engineering student who was supposed to be helping with the filing. By the time he had the LandRover out the front Vestie was waiting.

“There is a third location and Brodie and Wright are going to deal with that. Get out of here before he changes his mind and makes us do something else.”

Where were they going? Osnabruck. Which was as far south as Minden but even further west. It was more than two hours away and Taff had got lost coming the other way on Saturday. They drove in silence for a long time before Vestie started talking.

“They are sending more men out. It is still a fucking nightmare with everyone sticking their oar in but now that we have evidence that something is really missing they are throwing resources at it. We are all likely to have to stay but you should be okay to get home on Friday as scheduled. You have done well but there is no AIMS component now, just missing equipment.”

Andrew pondered what Vestie had said. The thought of being stuck in Germany and missing another weekend had not occurred to him. He was clearly out of his depth and as Vestie had said there did not appear to be any AIMS or computer aspect to this. They arrived late in Osnabruck but the second in command of the REME workshop was waiting for them. He listened as Vestie told him the situation. Had any of their REME vehicles come back with a panel from the 7^th Armoured’s new Challengers? He was half way through immediately saying no when he checked himself.

“I was going to say no instinctively but that won’t cut it.”

And so he called the whole unit out and they did a thorough search. Every REME vehicle was checked, the stores were checked and they checked the lorries that had been used as well. Nothing. Nobody from the 22^nd had stopped to offer assistance to anyone from the 7^th. They had been miles apart.

Vestie and Andrew were the last to check in and Brodie did not react well to the news that they too had not found the missing panel. After a quick dinner it was straight back to Bad Fallingbostel for them. Vestie was even quieter than before. They barely spoke the whole journey. When they got back to the investigation room Andrew was told he wasn’t needed that night and sent off. Saturday in Hamburg seemed a long time ago.

Things were no better in the morning. Additional men were flying into RAF Gutersloh, further east than Bruggen, slap bang in the middle of the concentration of British forces in the triangle between Osnabruck, Minden and Paderborn. They would not get there until after lunch. And Andrew was to all intents and purpose now surplus and off the investigation. So he sat at the computer reviewing the files they had copied from the 4^th Division at Paderborn and Minden. He was killing time comparing the AIMS files to copies of the source records. There were errors galore and Andrew was noting them trying to see if there was any kind of pattern. He sat reviewing what he had noted when he noticed that there was a second error. The AIMS printout mostly matched the source computer files but there were errors aplenty with the corresponding paper entries. But there were also some differences between the AIMS printout and the computer file. Andrew sat there wondering which one was right when it occurred to him that they were taking the paper records as correct and the computer files as rubbish. And although that was nearly always true what about the chance that the paper records were wrong. Never mind if AIMS was right or wrong. The 7th Armoured Workshop of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers thought they had all the armoured panels when they did not. Could the converse be true? Was the panel sitting in the back of a lorry somewhere in a motor transport pool? Each panel weighed a third of a ton and was bulky and an awkward shape. Unless you had a crane or a squad of men, there was no way to move it.