FIREMAN SAM, From my book “The Unnamed Soldiers.”
The Firemen decided to go on strike bless them, Christmas was cancelled for us. The strike began on 14 November 1977 and lasted for nine weeks, running through to the New Year. At the time Fire Fighters worked a basic 48-hour week, for which they were paid an average of £71.10, which amounted to £3,700 a year.
After about 6 hours fire fighting training at some barracks in Aldershot, we were now Firemen! Brilliant. A few days later I was posted to Norwich!!
Our squads first call out was to a fire on an old fashioned housing estate, we jumped in our wooden Green goddess and off we went, ringing our bell like Fireman Sam down the road, map reading as we went along. Sometimes we got lost on the way, tell a lie we got lost all the time, there were no satnav’s in those days, it was all by map and the Commander we ended up with couldn’t read a map if it was tattooed to his f*****g eyelids. In the end someone had the amazing idea of just looking for the smoke trail, unless it was at night then we were totally f****d, eventually we arrived at the fire.
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