AS a National Service posting in the 1950s, the island of British Guyana in the West Indies had some merit. So long as you didn’t tread on anything, get stung by anything or catch anything.

The weather was warm, if occasionally rather wet, and the locals were friendly. There was no fighting to speak of, apart from some minor excitability in downtown Georgetown at election time. But that was to be expected and hardly amounted to the Boston Tea Party. So for the most part the officers and men of the 1st Battalion the Worcestershire Regiment had to find something useful to do with their time.

That’s when someone had the bright idea to be the first British army unit to march through the rainforest to Kaieteur Falls, the island’s spectacular waterfall.

Twice the height of Niagara, it is usually reached by plane, which lands on a plateau above the drop, or by boat up the Potaro River.

However, C Company was detailed to walk it, there and back.

“I think we were told we were going to be the first people to do it,”

said Chris Brewer. “But I always had my doubts.”

A suspicion was given weight when a local porknocker by the name of Simon Halley offered to lead the way. A porknocker earned his living by washing the riverbeds for gold and diamonds in remote areas and it stood to reason Halley had travelled this route before. If he hadn’t, his usefulness to the British Army was going to be severely limited and his brass neck would be soon exposed.

But Simon Halley was no con man. He did indeed take C Company along the right path and wow, what a sight met their eyes at the end of it.

“I’d never seen anything as breathtaking before in my life,”

Chris exclaimed.

He didn’t know then, but it was going to be half a century before he saw the falls again. Only this time he was sitting at home in Wychbold, near Droitwich, watching the television.

The recent BBC 1 series Lost Land of the Jaguar was filmed on what is now just Guyana and covered much of the landscape traversed by that group of virgin soldiers all those years ago.

And they were virgin soldiers too.

Only six months into their National Service, in the days when the only way to see the world was to join the forces. Should National Service be introduced now, most of the intake would already be familiar with foreign beaches, not through charging up them with bayonets fixed, but through sun and sangria holidays.

However, in the 1950s, family holidays meant a caravan in a sloping field in Wales or Butlins or Pontins.

Most young people only left the country in the service of the Queen.

On April 10, 1958, apprentice mechanic Chris Brewer reported at Norton Barracks for his two years with the Worcestershire Regiment.

He was joined 12 days later by machine operator Brian Poulton and after eight weeks initial training, the pair were detailed to C Company of the regiment’s 1st Battalion, which was half way through a three-year tour of duty in British Guyana. “I’d never been abroad before,” said Chris. “I’d no idea what to expect.”

On July 19, 1958, the young soldiers were flown first to Jamaica and then transferred to Guyana to the Worcestershire Regiment’s base at Atkinson Field, which lay beside the island’s airport. “We were doing internal security,” Brian said. “But there wasn’t much going on. There was a bit of a fuss around election time in Georgetown when we had to stand by to help the local police, but nothing really happened.”

So to enliven the soldiers’ lives and to put C Company’s teamwork to the test, the trek to the falls was organised. Whose idea it was has been lost in the mists of time, but a splendidly detailed log of the adventure and its organisation was compiled by one of the officers, a young major, TJ Bowen by name, who later went on to become colonel of both the Worcestershire Regiment and the amalgamated Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters.

Maj Bowen recorded: “The march was to take place between March 13, and April 5, 1959. All ranks wore bush hat, flannel shirt, drill shorts, boots, hosetops and putties. Basic equipment and large pack were worn, with person arms, including Bren guns, but platoon weapons such as mortar and rocket launchers were not taken.”

Each soldier’s pack weighed 28lbs.

A total of 93 officers and men took part and for the first part of the journey they embarked on a large timber barge at Georgetown.

This was pulled by a tug up the Essequibo River to Winiperu where the serious footwork began.

The initial 90 miles up to Kangaruma, which took seven days, was fairly straightforward along a sandy road through the jungle. But that was where civilisation ended and porknocker Simon Halley took over to guide the soldiers for three days along the old and overgrown trail up to Tukeit and the base of the falls.

“Sometimes it was fairly open, at others it was a machete job,”” said Chris. “Seeing that jungle on television again brought it all back.

“One of the sounds I will always remember was the roar of the howler monkeys at night. From a distance they sounded like tractors.”

According to Maj Bowen’s log only two “administrative blows befell the Company” throughout the trip. The first was when the bread ration went mouldy – “but this did not prevent the redoubtable cooks from making some excellent chappaties”

– and the second was when the meat ration went bad.

“A quick consultation with the DO (District Officer) indicated the best thing to do was to buy a live pig,”

recorded the major. “Within 20 minutes 105lbs of very reluctant porker joined us, protesting shrilly.

Porker continued to protest until he fell victim to the sergeant major’s machete at Makouria.”

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