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Thread: Would History Have Been Changed

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    Default Would History Have Been Changed

    About 1974 I was working for John I Jacobs and whilst at home in between two clean products carriers, got shanghaied to do an Inert gas course at a motel outside Southampton. This was a course purely for to sell the apparatus to the shipowner and lasted about 3 days. It was supposedly for the owners and should have been attended by the superintendant, however ours was busy and I was told to attend and write out a thesis for him about the course and send to the office on completion. I learned a couple of things on this course apart from Flu gasses and water chambers. The first one was that the bloke running the course was an ex army Captain and had the DFC. I pondered this and couldn't savvy how an Army officer could have the Distinguished Flying Cross , in the bar in the evening after 2 or 4 pints I plucked up the courage to ask him, and was quite obvious when he told me. He was in the Artillery and was a gunnery range and spotter for the big weapons, and during the Korean war used to do this from small aircraft hence the DFC. The second night in the motel after the usual 4 or 6 pints I was phoning home from the vestibule phone in the lobby, and whilst in there noticed a small notebook lying beside the phone so I idly flicked through the pages whilst talking, it took some time to register what I was reading must have been that 5th pint. However it was notes from a phone conversation and was discussing money being transferred from a Saudi bank to a British bank with the relevant account numbers, the cost of the hire of a bombardier, and the purchase of a ground to ground/air missile. If remember correctly the Morning Cloud was mentioned. After finishing my phone call to the wife, I dialled 999 or whatever it was for the police at that time, went back into the bar for the finish of the sixth pint and went to bed in a happy state more or less pushing the note book to the back of my mind. About 0300 in the morning my bedroom door came crashing open and in tumbled about 5 of the heavy squad. Demanded the notebook took one shufty at, thanked me and apologised for waking so rudely went out and put the light out, and I went back to Noddy land. The next morning at breakfast you should of heard all the complaints about all these guests being disturbed and being interrogated during the night, I just kept mum as didn't want to get the blame for keeping them up. Went home the next day and never heard anymore about it. There was a report later in the paper quite some time after this about an IRA cell and bomb factory discovered in Southampton, whether the two incidents were intertwined I don't know. As regards the Supts. written report on the course I just picked up half a dozen glossy adverts about it and sent them to him, I wasn't his secretary. Probably why he didn't take me as his assistant on some new buildings they had in South Korea, these never materialized anyway as JIJ went to the wall the same as all the others. Cheers JWS PS It wasn't between the 2 tankers as went from one straight to the other, but after came off both and must have joined the Rosewood. May have been in that case 1973. Memory is getting worse. Cheers JS
    Last edited by j.sabourn; 20th April 2017 at 03:59 AM.

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