BEWARE - BOUNCING BULLETS

Things were getting back to normal again when I was stationed at the depot of my regiment in Cardiff in 1947. The place had been occupied by American forces during the war, but two years after hostilities ended a basic recruit training centre for national servicemen was set up.
I remember feeling very honoured when asked if I would like to be a member of the team in the new '41st Primary Training Centre'. I had recently attended a small arms course at Hythe and I felt confident I could handle the job of weapons training officer. I might have come away from Hythe with a reasonable grading, but I soon learnt that I knew very little about musketry compared with my two sergeant instructors.
Sergeant 'Dai' George of the Welch Regiment was the senior NCO and he patiently listened to the new theories I propounded about marksmanship. But when it came to shooting, it was he who could group consistently at four inches over 100 yards. Sergeant 'Nick' Rees of the Royal Welch Fusiliers was my other sergeant instructor. He used to travel from Brecon every day on a motor bike with side car. At least once a week, during winter months, he would bring me a pheasant which, he said, he had been unable to avoid as he drove over the Beacons. During the summer months he would occasionally remove a salmon from the inner depths of his side car. Each story of their procurement was more implausible than the last. When he left my team at the end of 1947, I lost contact with him. I did not see him until fourteen years later when I bumped into him on the bank of the River Usk at Brecon. Like so many of his kind, he had crossed the divide and become a water bailiff. Knowing all the tricks of the trade he was always one step ahead of the poachers.
Maindy Barracks in 1947 was not so well equipped with training aids as it is today, but at least we had a 30 yards range. I can well remember standing on the firing point and giving the first post-war order to fire: "Load with seven rounds. Two rounds into the bank (to warm the barrel) and five rounds grouping. Carry on when you're ready."
We had been shooting in this fashion for half an hour when a head appeared around the wall of the stop-butts. "Stop!" I yelled. "Open your breech and stand by your weapon." When it was safe to proceed, I went forward to speak to the fellow who still had his head sticking around the corner of the wall. "Do you realise you could have been killed if I hadn't seen you? We are firing live ammunition." "I know," he replied. "They're landing on my bowling green and if you don't stop it, there's going to be trouble." It sounded preposterous that rounds should ricochet out of the butts and I told him I should need some proof. He provided this in an instant when he took from his pocket half a dozen 'sharp ends' of .303 rounds. "There you are," he said, "there's plenty more where they came from."
Someone at officer training school told me never to admit anything to a civilian if it might cost the Army money, so I just reminded him never to stick his head around the side of the butts again and left it at that. We had come to the end of shooting practice, which was just as well, so I gave the order: "Boil out rifles" and "Fall out."
Over tea in the officers' mess, I had a word with my company commander who was horrified to hear that bullets had landed on the bowling green. He was all for putting the range 'out of bounds' until I explained my plan for making it safe.
The following day, Sergeants 'Dai' George and "Nick' Rees accompanied me to Curran's Engineering Works in Cardiff docks where we collected a pile of railway sleepers. We took them back to Maindy Barracks and spent the rest of the day making them into a box which, when strongly constructed of sleepers and sand bags, would surely catch any ricochet rounds. I felt so confident that my contraption of wood and sand would be the answer to the problem that I decided to try it out the following day; and at what better time than when the local bowling team were playing a league game at home.
We fired about a hundred rounds into the 'box' before I peeped around the corner of the butts to see if there had been any reaction. Woods were rolling gently down the green towards the jack with nothing to disturb their progress other that an occasional butterfly. The company commander was delighted with my simple solution of the problem but a few weeks later a team of experts from the Small Arms School at Hythe paid a visit to the depot. They nearly had a fit when they saw my 'box' in the butts. I explained the reason why it was there but it made no impression upon them and I was ordered to remove it. Instead, they gave me advice about raking the sand, sieving it for lead and making sure that the sand was at a certain angle to the trajectory of the bullets.
A considerable number of national servicemen were diverted from potato peeling fatigues to the 30 yards range where an immense amount of sand was given the full cleansing treatment. By the end of the week, I was satisfied that every piece of lead had been removed and that the angle of sand conformed to the regulations contained in the Small Arms School manual.
The next Monday afternoon, another batch of national servicemen were lined up to shoot on the range. I gave the usual orders and the crackle of rifle fire disturbed what was otherwise, a quiet summer afternoon. Suddenly, a familiar voice boomed out from the butts: "Eh, mister - your bullets are landing on my bowling green again." "Cease fire," I yelled, shattered to find that all our hard work had been to no avail. I went forward to impress the groundsman, once again, that his regard for his bowling green, although commendable, was highly dangerous.
It was obvious to me that my solution worked, while the one from Hythe did not. I stalked off to the company office, rang up the chief instructor at the school and told him so. Within a few days, one of the warrant officers of the touring team came to Cardiff to see for himself what was wrong. Without firing a shot, he pronounced that we were using the wrong sort of sand. The range was out of action for two weeks while fleets of vehicles removed the old sand and brought in pure 'Severn' sand. Once again, tape measures were used to ensure that the angle of the surface was correct to the last degree.
I stood on the firing point as half a dozen recruits were brought forward to shoot for the first time in their lives - an experience they would never forget, but for a reason quite unconnected with their introduction to gunfire.
"Eh, mister - now you've really gone and done it!" said the voice which had become a familiar accompaniment to shooting practice. "Cease fire!" I shouted, and then went forward to find out what had gone wrong this time.
The groundsman had with him a young lady who was holding a spent .303 round. "That's him," he said, pointing at me. "He's the one who's been shooting all them bullets on the bowling green." The young lady was not concerned about the bowling green; she had other things on her mind and she let me know she was going to sue me for every penny I possessed. I gathered from her invective that her small daughter, who had been gurgling happily in her pram alongside the bowling green, had suddenly let out a yell. When her mother investigated the cause of her baby's discomfort, she found a hot spent round in the child's nappy. The thing had become trapped in a fold of the towelling and had branded the child's stomach as effectively as a cowboy would brand a steer.

Whether or not she took the matter further, I do not know. If officialdom had only allowed me to use my 'box' of sleepers and sand, there would have been no trouble, but the so-called experts knew best and I had to conform to their instructions. Nevertheless, I still have a guilty feeling and that is why I pay attention during the summer months to bare midriffs of 42 year old (or thereabouts) ladies wearing bikinis speaking with a Cardiff accent. Perhaps, one day, I will see the brand mark of a .303 round - then, maybe, I'll introduce myself.




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