INSPIRED by ‘a very full life’ Redditch man Roger Henry Lippett has written a book on his life which began living on the Batchley Estate. He went on to serve in the Royal Navy and wants to share his story.
He was born on January 30, 1939, on the council estate, with his dad’s name Henry, being given to him as his middle name.
Here he sheds light on his life family and friends as a social record of sorts that may be of interest to his children, grandchildren and the people of Redditch.
Although he said he had never achieved great wealth or fame he felt his life had moments worth recounting.
In his words: “I now live in the beautiful city of Plymouth in Devon but I will always be a Batchley boy.
“Far have I traveled, and much have I seen and this is my story, serialised in the Redditch Standard.”
Part 5
Life in the dormitory was good after the first couple of terms and we bought a record player on which we played the few LPs we clubbed together to buy.
It was still early days for ‘pop’ music but we played a lot of jazz.
We took a great pride in our uniforms and although we had now been issued with doeskin suits which were a much finer material than the rough serge of our original issue suits, we often chose to go ashore and get our best suits made to measure.
Whilst at Caledonia I joined what was called the Mountain Club.
This was a club whereby a group of us would go away on alternate weekends when we weren’t required to work on Saturday mornings, up into the highlands and camp out over the weekend.
All classes could go and an RN bus would drive us up to some of the bleakest places such as Glencoe and Ben Nevis, the Trossachs and Lochearnhead. I thoroughly enjoyed it as I had always enjoyed being in the boy scouts and camping out.
Initially part of my reason for joining was to get away from the Caledonia environment which was not the happiest place for a junior but I always enjoyed the experience and stayed a member throughout my time at Caledonia.
We were woefully ill equipped having no specialist gear in terms of boots, clothing etc and we just managed with our normal boots and items of kit with which we just made do, plus any personal items we might own.
Tents and utensils were provided but just the basics and we carried our stuff in our kit bags. I well remember one time we got dropped off on the banks of Loch Earn at about 4pm and it was getting dark and beginning to snow.
We unpacked the tent only to find there were no tent pegs so we erected it and placed rocks around the edge of the tent to hold it out.
We then all legged it to the local but very isolated pub which involved wading across a shallow river in the dark.
During the night it snowed so hard that the tent collapsed on top of us under the weight of snow.
How we survived some of these outings so poorly equipped I do not know but we did and had some memorable times.
On another occasion Andy, Pop Brown and I were hiking in Glen Coe when we came across a clear wide stream we had to cross.
It was too deep to paddle across so we undressed, stuffed all our clothes in a bag and threw it across the stream.
It was a really hot summer’s day and having thrown our clothes across we dived in to swim across.
Well the stream was so cold that it came as a total shock when we hit the water, my heart almost stopped.
The water of course had flowed down from the snow topped mountains and was almost freezing.
When I regained my senses I swam faster than I had ever swum before to get to the other side, probably breaking several Olympic records.
Training at Caledonia continued on from Fisgard but more emphasis was put on our chosen specialisation,
mine being marine engineering.
The days would be divided up between classroom lessons, learning about ships engines and systems and workshops, interspersed with sport, parade drill, and training films.
