Most Hated Postings.

Discussion in 'General' started by wowtank, Jan 6, 2012.

  1. wowtank

    wowtank Very Senior Member

    I guess it is a cliche' but true that Germans soldiers lived in fear of being sent to the Russia front. This got me thinking (dangerous I know:)) what was considered the worst posting for Allied soldiers?
     
  2. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Very Senior Member

    The Aleutians/Kuriles for the Americans...Iceland for the British (for 18months)? Akyeuri in the north of Iceland comes to mind....there was also a terrible positing in the east of the island, a camp that was cut off from the world except by boat (occasionally!) in winter...!
     
  3. Rich Payne

    Rich Payne Rivet Counter Patron 1940 Obsessive

    Catterick Camp for the British, I think.:)

    Most British troops who finished the war in NW Europe will say that they spent the next few months dreading a posting to the Far East (which of course would have happened to many had the war not ended quickly).
     
  4. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    I wonder how high the Falklands were up the ladder? Its still a posting to be avoided in the Signals I believe, unless you want to save some money-Fortunately for me I was always asked where I wanted to go rather than told where I was going :)
     
  5. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Catterick Camp for the British, I think.:)

    Most British troops who finished the war in NW Europe will say that they spent the next few months dreading a posting to the Far East (which of course would have happened to many had the war not ended quickly).

    Cough....Its was the home of the 'Royal Corps' during WW2 !
     
  6. wtid45

    wtid45 Very Senior Member

    Cough....Its was the home of the 'Royal Corps' during WW2 !
    Exactly! :lol:
     
  7. kiwigeordie

    kiwigeordie Senior Member

    For the RAF I'd have to nominate Gan, in the middle of the Indian Ocean (if we're not restricting ourselves to WW2).
     
  8. Rich Payne

    Rich Payne Rivet Counter Patron 1940 Obsessive

    Cough....Its was the home of the 'Royal Corps' during WW2 !

    I know. Dad was in No.5 Squad of 49 Junior Leader's course there during the winter of 1943 - 44. If you don't believe that he hated the place, you can phone him up and ask him !:p
     
  9. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    I know. Dad was in No.5 Squad of 49 Junior Leader's course there during the winter of 1943 - 44. If you don't believe that he hated the place, you can phone him up and ask him !:p

    :lol: My only whinge about the place was it always rained when I went there which then coined the phrase 'It ain't training unless its raining'
     
  10. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Hi all

    This thread seems trending to equating boring places with hated places to serve.

    I wouldn't put the Aleutians in that category during WWII. The Battle of Attu had one of the highest casualty ratios of all the actions that the US took part in.

    Dave

    (Wouldn't call Attu boring, I mean)
     
  11. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Very Senior Member

    Oh, the Aleutians weren't boring at all - but very bad; I've read a few brief reviews of the air war there. Week- and month-long fogs, and the islands covered in air crash sites....
     
  12. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Old Hickory Recon

    My wife's grandfather was stationed in the Aleutian Islands. He hated it with a passion. A good bit of the time, it was either cold and snowing or so foggy that he could not see more than 10 feet. FOr a boy raised in south Alabama, it was pure, unadulterated hell.
     
  13. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    For most of the volunteer Canadians, not being posted overseas was the worst fate. They didn't join up to stay at home.
     
  14. Wills

    Wills Very Senior Member

  15. Peter Clare

    Peter Clare Very Senior Member

    RAF Reykjavik, Iceland. 120 Squadron quarters March 1944. A bit chilly me thinks.
     

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  16. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Just glad I was never posted to the Far East !

    Ron
     
  17. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    Apropos joke:

    An Air Force cargo plane was preparing for departure from Thule Air Base in Greenland. They were waiting for the truck to arrive to pump out the aircraft's sewage holding tank. The Aircraft Commander was in a hurry, the truck was late in arriving, and the Airman performing the job was extremely slow in getting the tank pumped out.

    When the commander berated the Airman for his slowness and promised punishment, the Airman responded: "Sir, I have no stripes, it is 20 below zero, I'm stationed in Greenland, and I am pumping shit out of airplanes. Just what are you going to do to punish me?"
     
  18. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    My impression is that nobody in the US armed forces wanted to be sent to the Pacific at any time. Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia were popular because they were civilized and had plenty of girls and booze, but most places forward of those places were considered hellholes of varying degrees. Eric Bergerud's excellent books on the South Pacific go into this in some detail. Living conditions were not merely primitive but very unhealthy, and the boredom & isolation were so severe that the Pacific had a much higher rate of psychoneurosis than the MTO or ETO. (On the boredom, see Thomas Heggen's Mister Roberts.) The wretchedness ran from the tropical extreme (New Guinea, arguably the foulest place God ever made) to the arctic extreme (the Aleutians, where more aircraft were lost to the weather than to the Japanese).

    Americans quickly came to loathe the CBI, too. The weather, food, and living conditions were often as bad as in the Pacific, and the troops disliked both the Indians and the Chinese. I don't think the general opinion among British troops in the theater was much better, though some like George Macdonald Fraser and John Masters came to love India.
     
  19. Hebridean Chindit

    Hebridean Chindit Lost in review... Patron

    Anywhere behind the lines in Burma during '43 and '44...
     
  20. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    Apropos joke:

    A classic.
     

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