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Battle Of Britain - 1974

Free Will

Patron with Honors
This was the sort of Space Opera I joined the SO for, one of the most exciting parts of my time in Scientology and, now I look back at it, an early sign of the madness to come.
In January 1974 the UK government announced an international fuel crisis and ordered (I think) all citizens and businesses to only use electricity 3 days a week (with penalties for violation of this order). To me it was like something out of '1984' but I've always lived my life in some kind of fantasy so I enjoyed it - like I enjoyed the long hot laid back summer of 1993, working in the Solarium with views of the swimming pool and the beautiful grounds, with lots of lovely chicks (paying public) strolling, laying and posing in the sunshine wearing see-through tops and hotpants, occasionally topless. Since my post allowed me to go in and out of the Manor, I felt myself involved in some real-life James Bond training centre, with Star Trek overtones!
Anyway, the night the Battle of Britain started I was on Night Watch. As Dir Income for AOSHUK/GOWW I had already done a furious day's scribbling, adding and subtracting at the maximum speed possible for a chainsmoking coffee-loaded ex-hippy of 22.
Brendan Sharkey and I were sitting in the FOLO main area, in the building by Ext. Comm and the Chapel. We had toured the whole grounds hourly with our lanterns and pick-axe handles, checking no-one was hijacking our various tanks of paraffin and oil - concealed around the ground for non-electric heating and light. It was wet fog, so our parkas got wet. As we were checking the doors and windows at the back of the Manor we both noted what seemed a terribly loud humming coming from the basement. Influenced no doubt by all the Asimov and Lensman we had all been reading lately, I/we got to speculating whether Ron was, in fact, a massive Computer! Yeah, I know....you can believe whatever you want to. At that time all the local SO and OTs were having encounters with ghosts and spacecraft on the dark nights walking back to East Grinstead or Stonelands! There was also lots of talking case - especially Inter-Galactic whole track stuff. It was commonly believed that Ron knew us all from the Whole Track, even if we didn't remember ourselves! Truth is, apart from a few sadistic nutters, we were all very beautiful people who really did want to do the best for ourselves, each other and humanity, even to the point of deprivation, injustice and self-sacrifice!
So there's me and Brendan sitting in the FOLO having very funny acid flashbacks together in the dark. Both of us have been totally held up case wise since joining the SO due to being tagged PTS. Somehow this meant you just dropped off auditing lines and made your case gain through hatting or doing conditions formulas on post. Anyway, discussing case, me and Brendan come to speculating that we used to be up there as part of the Commodore's whole track Cosmic Command, but we committed disgraceful acts of Treason, like the ones on all these super-heavy Ethics Orders that we see coming down from Flag. Such great overts that we had lost all our whole track recall and OT telekinetic abilities as a result. Well I'm getting these withholds missed every time I pass the LRH self-portrait on every wall. I'm just wording an honest little petition to the Old Man to pop in the SO#1 box, basically asking him to tell me with his Total Recall what my overts were so I can put them right - and go and re-assume my rightful place as Deputy Source.....lol:happydance:
By this time we were near the end of our stint on watch - that stage of dosing off with your head propped up - when CLATTER! The double glass doors of the Lower Hall were thrown wide open against the walls. Before we could even grab our clubs and lanterns for 'Who goes there?' there's this American voice like a ship's horn braying 'Get these fucking lights on!'
Brendan and I located the switches and put on the lights for the Management Corridor - knowing this was breaking the Law!
Yeah! The SO was going to start running the Fourth Dynamic Engram and beat all governments - take them over!
Past us strode a huge fair-haired blue-eyed Aryan in immaculate Naval uniform with whites, greatcoat and enormous peaked hat reminiscent of the very best in Nazi German paraphernalia - probably even a metal-capped stick!
He turns to roar at Kathy - the cheerful redhaired Telex Operator manning External Comm - I can't remember her name though she may have been Robin Scott's first wife, but I really secretly fancied her and her cheerful smile - that she's to go down to the Stables and get the CO FOLO (Ron Hopkins?), Flag Rep UK (Art Webb?) and Supercargo FOLO (Linda
Parselle?)
The missionaires were Lt. Cmdr Alex Sibersky (rumoured, probably by himself, to win lots of money by using his OT powers to force horses to win races) and his equally vociferous wife Maggie. The mission was called Battle Of Britain (OR LRHED 13UK), They said there were no written Mission Orders, they had been personally briefed by Ron who was operating the mission himself by daily telex. They had carte blanche to do anything they wanted.
I hope I can continue this later...storytelling takes so much longer than I thought.
Lots of fun with the Evening Musters where the skulls and crossbones or union jacks were pinned on upstats/downstats when we marched up front to be booed or clapped. I think John Harvey got slapped straight into Treason for yawning heavily at one point. It was Sibersky who intoduced the experimentation with how far could you push people. He could order the whole crew wakened out of their beds at 2 am - having got home at 1-30 - to be bussed back in to work all night or meet an impossible letters target. Soon, local execs began ordering such unpopular all-hands actions themselves before they found their heads on the chopping line. Lucky were the few SO members actually on OT levels since they had to be sessionable every day. 'Sessionable' came to mean maybe 7 hours sleep - I averaged about 5 to 6 hours between January and May. But hey, the 'altered states' you get into with sleep deprivation - especially when assisted by an idea I think was suggested by Herbie Parkhouse but quickly taken up by Battle Command. We are at War! Those with downstats no longer need to go for meals. Huge pots of beans and rice were wheeled down from Stables to be ladled out by the sheds and eaten at our desks! Conditions assignments were flying around like nobody's business, tremendously exciting goldenrod hitting our in-baskets hourly, people shifting from post to post like rabbits.
Sibersky got the letters out stat up and tried to get publicity for the Battle by having all staff (and paying public roped in as FSMS) write letters to the editors of national newspapers from a long list supplied, pointing out how much Scientology could help relieve current social, political or personal problems. We were told to individualise it, in our own words, so it was not a form letter, include some of our personal wins and gains. I mentioned quite honestly that it seemed to me Scientology was leading me to experience high states of awareness and happiness previously experienced only on psychedelics LSD and Cannabis (Marijuana) but without the roller-coaster effects and confusion produced by the latter. I honestly thought "this is what got me into Scientology, the guy's teaching me how to be an all-powerful being who can create his own universes by postulate". Anyway Sibersky's seen it before posting. Even though I've met all my Exec Series 7 quotas and sub-quotas, my Letters Out target's been met and my in-basket is empty, whump, I'm in TREASON. To the very best most valuable group in the universe, the only chance for all these suffering billions in the wog world - who we despise but contradictorily want to save! So, for amends, instead of even the usual short sleep, I'm out in the rain, wind and mud, helping to erect this enormous Marquee in the centre of the field that is now occupied by the Castle. It was like a Nazi production. We're all running around groggy, working as hard as we can, suffering indigestion and office pollution from the farty beans, self-flagellating with this guilt that we're still just not good enough - reinforced at the nightly screaming Chinese School on
LRH ED 13 UK - as I recall "WE'RE GOING UP WHILE THE WORLD'S GOING DOWN. YOU TURN THIS GOVERNMENT ACTION INTO A BOOM FOR US. UTILISE THE PUBLIC'S FREE TIME BY DRIVING THEM IN FOR TRAINING. BOOKS MAKE BOOMS. LOVE=RON" I don't know if I was alone, but this constant repetition of the phrase "Love equals Ron" conjured up an image of The Founder as some vast infinite all-knowing Supreme Being = the Source of all LOVE in this Universe. I thought Scientology was a way to uncover the enormously superhuman being that lay within each of us but that as we got more and more OT we would eventually lose individuality and splash into the great one being, the God of Love....which I thought fitted the then definition of OT8 : Total Cause over Life, Thought, Matter, Energy and Space on all Dynamics. So I imagined a snowball acceleration of this group of beings who could live, operate and affect worldly events without a body, all I suppose ultimately sharing the same soul or mind.
All that stuff just poured out.(Nonsense isn't it?) I got into Scientology because it promised to help me overcome my terrible shyness of women!
Hey, soon as I finally got some real auditing wins, on Grade Zero with Trudy Chamberlin, after I had to get off the withhold that I masturbated with the assistance of two photo magazines, which I found under a hedge as I was jogging on the first Purification Rundown (LSD, Years After They Have Come Off), wearing dustbin liners under my clothes since we hadn't any access to sweatsuits on the RPF. Retrospectively I see it was the first time in my life I ever told a woman, even in a roundabout way, that I found her sexually attractive, and I got masses of gain from it! Had to get off the earlier similar that one day when I was new to the Sea Org and Trudy was a gorgeous big-hipped sex-bomb who used to run excitedly up and down the drive with FSM Commission forms, I got off the Stonelands bus one night desperate for a pee. I run into the little loo beside the dining room and there's Trudy in fully exposed disarray having a pee herself. Not really my O/W, I see now, as the lock was on the inside of the door.
Just one more tidbit: later on in the Battle the Book Brigade were trying to force the Boom by forcing the booksales stat up by any means. Wealthy Scientologists were made to pay for full sets of LRH works in Public Libraries - while FSMs were going round libraries making requests for them! Disaffected old-timers with unused advance payments in their accounts, were encouraged to give up on ideas of ever being repaid and instead convert the credit into books. When staff pay was at it's lowest nearly the whole crew was cruising around seeing who they could sell books to - since that 2% bonus was never cut off FP. Anyway some bright spark organised an event at London's Rainbow Theatre (same place Bob Marley was launched a few years later) with Scientology musicians Chick Corea, the remnants of David Bowie's band and the popular Incredible String Band (who had helped lead myself and brother Alistair into Scn). The bright idea was that everyone who attended would find a free paperback copy of Dianetics under their seats, the Booksales stats would look great (even if it was just millionaire Lillian Collins who paid for them). Then these happy music fans, all the more happy since the gig was free, would go off and share the irresistible mysteries of DMSMH with friends, family and flatmates and there you go...crowds of folk rushing in to fill up our courserooms!
The event in the tent was great, like the Nuremberg Rally on a small scale. We're under strict orders with extreme consequences for non-compliance : "No-one gets out of this tent till they've seen the Registrar, the Bookstore Officer and the Recruiter."
It was Sibersky's mission - and I don't know whether it really was run by Ron - that brought the unreasonableness into Saint Hill, so we could allow ourselves to be abused in the name of getting stats up. After he had taught it to us the first night hammering his fist into his palm and banging the desk, he would ask us "Take a lump of coal and apply a lot of heat and pressure, HEAT AND PRESSURE! What do you get?"
We'd chant back "A Diamond!" then we'd all go running to apply heat and pressure to our immediate juniors. Truth is, I believe, if you apply a lot of heat and pressure to a lump of coal you get a pile of coal dust!
More anon, maybe.:coolwink:
 
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Free to shine

Shiny & Free
Thanks Free Will - what an excellent description of those times. Luckily I was public at the time, (though I never wore hotpants - only skimpy minis). :coolwink: I will never forget that tent, the mud, the insanity. I remember looking at this bloke in the Nazi like uniform and thinking he couldn't be for real. I remember some people escaped the tent through an open flap or something and there was a lot of angry people. And a lot of resigned faces as well....

You reminded me of something. I could never look an LRH portrait in the face. It kinda made me shudder and this was a giant guilty secret of course. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye and think that he was laughing at me down here from his point on the wall. Or maybe that if I REALLY looked him full in the face then I would not be able to deny my true feelings any longer. It's only hindsight that allows me to voice those true feelings too. Like you, I thought it must be my whole track overts, something terrible I had done that only he knew about.

Now I understand it was more about knowing there was something terribly, terribly wrong in what HE was projecting. I wish it hadn't taken me a few more decades to understand that.
 

DartSmohen

Silver Meritorious Patron
Ah!, Those were the days!

Interesting how things like that stay with you.

One of the great things about this board is it gives us the chance to discharge what we have carried for so long.

It is like an "incredible", if we tried to tell the public in general what we actually went through and the things we got up to, they simply would not believe us.

Glad to see you are alive and well. How are your brothers doing?
 

lionheart

Gold Meritorious Patron
Oh the memories!

Hilariously, if you tell these stories to the Anons (the pub after the pickets is a great place!) they do actually believe you. Yes, Dart they think of the stories as almost "incredibles" but they are bright enough to recognise truth.

Dear deluded Alex Sibersky! Everyone I have talked to about the Battle of Britain had those thoughts of Nazis and Nuremberg rallies! If only he'd known our secret thoughts! :roflmao:
 

Cat's Squirrel

Gold Meritorious Patron
Yeah, and coal dust seems to be what you have in the CofS these days. Have to say I agree with Jon Atack in "A Piece Of Blue Sky" when he says it's remarkable even to many ex-Scientologists how well tolerated the Ethics Conditions were.

What happened to Sibersky in the end? I googled for him and the latest info I could find was about 1986, it seems he made it to Class 12 and then got declared. Can't say I'm sorry never to have made his acquaintance from what I know of him so far.
 

La La Lou Lou

Crusader
Those were the days, yes I can racall it like it was yesterday.
I was at London org but we had the same fun, but better because we couldnt eat, no wages, all the money had to go on the fucking tent. I hallucinated from lack of sleep and food. Sometimes I sneaked out in the middle of the night and begged for money to buy bruised fruit and veg from Greek st, or a stale loaf from Schmidts delikatessen. I recall trying to cook a tin of lentils when Id managed to get some money, on a addressograph plate over a parafin stove by the light of candlewax in an old baccy tin using chalk as a wick. We were certainly going up while the world went down.

That Nazi mental projection thing is interresting my parents got dragged there, totally raw meat and that was exactly what he said.

It was Kathy Ootenbogart, in External comm, she was later on the RPF, as was I, liked her too, but not in that way. I might indeed have been the camp co-auditor you mentioned, in the Stonelands basement. I cerainly went down drains to pull out missing jewlery. I also went down a drain in stonelands, all the liquified cow shit from the farm next door had filled the drain and it was my pleasure to get in there and help the liquids flow into the pond, by the boat house. The RPF was housed at the bathouse when I arrived, earlier some blond guy I didnt know had died in the RPF or was dying and his still living body was dropped outside the infirmary with instructions to say there was no connections with $cientology. Yep they were fun days.
It was after the worst of the nightmare that I started the RPF, as a class four staff member, my recollection of the time was patchy to say the least as I was still vastly underweight and having to dig the foundations of the castle, I remember that Kathy and i found it funny that we were both starting to walk like men, from all the digging and barrow pushing.

I rememeber Nev Chamberlain, and tried to bullbait him about his Mrs when I was there. He was decidedly flat on it though, most disapointing.
 
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michaelangelo

Gold Meritorious Patron
Battle of Britain

At that time I was on the EPF on the Athena in Copenhagen. I remember seeing the flyers about the Battle of Britain in FOLO Copenhagen (glad I wasn't involved). It was quite exciting on the Athena. I remember one time I was on nightwatch and about 1 AM I saw a man from another ship jump into the sea. I saw him looking very despondent befor he jumped and felt he would do something like that.I had to wake everyone up and go and fish him out. He survived but he was pretty drunk. A week later I was having diinner in the galley when a huge container ship accidentally rammed us. All hell broke loose and water was slowley trickling through the bulkhead of the courseroom. Some of the S O members abandoned ship before having permission from the Captain and were later put in lower ethics conditions. The Athena was put into drydock and we were all transfered to a fairly comfortable hotel. As I remember we took over one floor and used some rooms as courserooms. We were two to a bedroom with comfortable beds and the food was pretty good also. After the EPF I went to FOLO where I was on staff for a few weeks before being sent back to England to handle a P T S situation. That PTS course I did in the hotel was heavy going and convinced me that my dad was an S P. Which was not true. I never returned to Copenhagen but later rejoined the Sea Org at AOSH UK. I cannot remember most of the names at FOLO and on the Athena. Sabina Roost, Doug Larson and Angel Garcia Lopes are the only names I remember as my time there was short. I remember that the only time off (liberty)they had at FOLO was a Saturday evening every other week, depending on what watch you were on. The pay was just enough to buy a bar of chocolate and a beer.
 
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Terril park

Sponsor
All that stuff just poured out.(Nonsense isn't it?) I got into Scientology because it promised to help me overcome my terrible shyness of women!
Hey, soon as I finally got some real auditing wins, on Grade Zero with Trudy Chamberlin, after I had to get off the withhold that I masturbated with the assistance of two photo magazines from her earlier career as a nude model, which I found under a hedge as I was jogging on the first Purification Rundown (LSD, Years After They Have Come Off), wearing dustbin liners under my clothes since we hadn't any access to sweatsuits on the RPF. Retrospectively I see it was the first time in my life I ever told a woman, even in a roundabout way, that I found her sexually attractive, and I got masses of gain from it! Had to get off the earlier similar that one day when I was new to the Sea Org and Trudy was a gorgeous big-hipped sex-bomb ....

I've always had a charmed life. Missed the battle of Britain, but didn't miss Trudy. As a newbie I spent an afternoon with her when I believe she alledgedly had case problems. She said she knew me in a past life and so
blew my mind. She was wonderful. :) Wish I could meet her again.
 

La La Lou Lou

Crusader
I went to a Sea Org recuitment party once at the Hill, Trudy Chamberlain was there in a leotard!

The sea org wasnt prudish then!

Perhaps being a little older and wiser she's no longer the pin up girl she was then, she was then used as the main carot for recruiting straight guys! I bet they dont have party's like that anymore! They were fun and the next day everyone had a slap up breakfast, that must have been 72 or 73. At the stables I think.
 

lionheart

Gold Meritorious Patron
Am I the only one who feels a bit queezy about a real person's name being used to recount adolescent masturbation fantasies from decades ago?

Isn't naming the person and talking about their former life pre-scn still using them as a sex object?

She was a lively lovely person. Maybe she is on the Internet, her family certainly are. Is it fair that ESMB references to her could be found on Google?

This has happened a few times with this person on ESMB. She could be referred to without naming her, posters could edit her name out.

Am I being prudish? Anyway just my opinion.
 

DartSmohen

Silver Meritorious Patron
I've always had a charmed life. Missed the battle of Britain, but didn't miss Trudy. As a newbie I spent an afternoon with her when I believe she alledgedly had case problems. She said she knew me in a past life and so
blew my mind. She was wonderful. :) Wish I could meet her again.

I remember her.

Dart
 

Terril park

Sponsor
Am I the only one who feels a bit queezy about a real person's name being used to recount adolescent masturbation fantasies from decades ago?

Still making wrong!

Using Sibersky's and Miscavedges name also applies? Yes?

La Lou Lou said very positive things about Trudy. Auditing wise. Me? I was
talking romantic fantasies/realities.

Isn't naming the person and talking about their former life pre-scn still using them as a sex object?

What!!!!!

She was a lively lovely person. Maybe she is on the Internet, her family certainly are. Is it fair that ESMB references to her could be found on Google?

This has happened a few times with this person on ESMB. She could be referred to without naming her, posters could edit her name out.

Am I being prudish? Anyway just my opinion.

La La Lou put matters very delicately, but for those in the know, indicating Trudy was no prude but a free spirit.

Me? I spent an afternoon with her. She was enormously charismatic, georgeous and had a rare talent for granting beingness. These are beautiful memories. I'm sure she's still the same. :)

I guess she may be very happy that the net has some track of her wonder. :)
 

Lawrence

Patron
I was at london Org in 1975 and although I missed the battle of Britain, I was always hearing about the craziness of it all. Ron Hopkins was the CO, what happened to him, I think he was declared. Apperently at staff meetings, Sibersky would order that underperformers should be arrested and then they would be locked up for a period of time. A guy called John Harry was the CO of London Day, Lesley Farrow was around, David Allington was the CS.
 

La La Lou Lou

Crusader
Hoppy Hopkins is still running some management comapny with Jay Hurwitz I believe from East Grinstead. Both declared. I wanst locked up, that I recall, but I was hallucinating much of the time from 8 hours a week sleep and a loaf of stale bread once a week if I could beg the money off someone, happy days they were, no idea about John Harry Watson, really liked him, he had a company in Saudi for a while then no trace. Lesley remarried John Simons, then someone else, no idea where she is, and Dave Allington went to work in Saudi for a bit then no idea, nice chap though.

La La Lou Lou
 

DartSmohen

Silver Meritorious Patron
I was at london Org in 1975 and although I missed the battle of Britain, I was always hearing about the craziness of it all. Ron Hopkins was the CO, what happened to him, I think he was declared. Apperently at staff meetings, Sibersky would order that underperformers should be arrested and then they would be locked up for a period of time. A guy called John Harry was the CO of London Day, Lesley Farrow was around, David Allington was the CS.

Hullo,

Not quite like you were told.

Ron Hopkins got declared and is now happily remarried, living in S. London and is a NLP practitioner and management consultant, working with Jay Hurwitz.

Alex Sibersky was nicknamed " Beserksy" by London org staff. At the end of work at St Hill there was a muster. Everyone had to produce their stats graph. If your stats were up, you could go home and sleep. If they were down, you got mest work all night.

The solution was simple; you lied about your stats being up. At the end of the week, if the graph was down you got mest work, but at least you got some sleep.

Dart
 

Mick Wenlock

Admin Emeritus (retired)
I got into Scientology in HAPI in 1976 so I happily missed the BoB but I heard all about it from Rae Mathieson and the guys in HAPI and then when I got down to FOLO UK I heard about it all over again.

In 1977 I was on a Flag MIssion at AOSH UK with David McCarthy putting Hank Laarhuis on post as CO and there was a power outage one evening. Someone said "Hey! This reminds me of when Sibersky was here for the Battle of Britain".

I swear that in 10 minutes the word had gone round the entire place that Sibersky was back and it took about 2 hours for the stats to crash...

We actually had to hold a staff brefing to tell everyone that Alex had NOT come back.

I didn't meet Alex until I was at Flag in 1978 - decent enough guy I thought and his wife Maggie was a stunner.
 
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La La Lou Lou

Crusader
Oh Mick you missed a treat it was great fun, all those scull and cross bone badges if your stats were down, I remeber one briefing we were getting, about 2am, the usualy glaring, finger pointing, he would point at someone and say, you are dissmissed, theyde leave the room in confusion, should they just go home and forgot it or wait outside for the mystery punishment?

But anyway in the middle of one of these sessions it came to my notice that a waterpipe had burst in the bogs by the accademy, in the basement in London. So a small but happy group of us waded around trying to fix it exstatic we wern't in the room, mimeo papers swimming around us.

Some people just stood up at these things and just walked out. I also seem to remember one of those if you dont like it you can just go type speaches, I hated myself for not having the trouser equipment to just trot out with a finger in the air. That was my biggest overt, staying in my history.

But it wasnt all him, the execs generally joined in the fun. I do remeber Jay, though, looking like he was covertly on our side. Im not fat now, but I was literally half the weight then. Some of the staff had a litttle money and would let you have a joghurt every now and then. Some people went home but there were many that slept for the odd hour in the org.

I think Siberski was banned from ever going to UK again by Ron. Who knew he was going and briefed him personnally, acording to one source, then according to others he was really pissed when he found out that he'd gone to the UK.

It sounds though it was just a rehersal what happens now.
 

La La Lou Lou

Crusader
Further to my rantings above, dont forget this was a class four org and quite a few of the staff at these briefings were raw meat off the street, what the hell would they have thought? They didnt usually hang around for long.


La La Lou Lou
 
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