bigjohn

Chapter 4 .. Just a number.

After a restless night we were awakend by a voice coming from the ‘Tannoy’ system wishing us “good morning” and telling us that it was “ 06.30 hours”. We washed, and some of us even shaved, in a cold and damp building known as the ‘ablutions’ before shuffling off for a fairly decent breakfast, although we were only allowed about fifteen minutes to eat it, and from then on, just like that breakfast everything was ‘at the double’ for it seemed that as we had reported for duty on the Tuesday after a public holiday weekend we only had four days to be kitted out etc. instead of five which was the normal amount of time recruits spent at the reception unit.

The following days all seem a bit of a blur to me now, but I do remember that we were given another medical and that one or two lads were sent home. The only other thing that I recall was a hearing test where we stood facing a wall and airmen medics whispered words into our ears which we had to repeat … “Bollocks” whispered the medic … “Bollocks” I replied … “Big tits” whispered the medic … “Big tits” … I replied, and so it went, and although some boys were shocked, most of us fell about laughing.

The storemen who issued our kit had great fun, because each piece of clothing and equipment had to be stamped with our service number before it was handed to us to pack in our new kitbags, except that they never “handed it” to us. What happened was that an NCO shouted out something like .. “Shirt blue, airmen for the use of !” and the storeman in front of the man receiving the shirt stamped the tail with large numbers in black ink and tossed it over the recruits head as did all the other storemen standing behind the long bench. The line of recruits then had to turn around and guess which was their shirt amongst the pile laying on the floor behind them. This happened with every piece of kit and we spent ages sorting through it all to identify the items marked with our numbers. Right up to the end of my service I still had one or two items with someone else’s number stamped on them.

Around this time volunteer recruits in the RAF were being issued with smart new uniforms made of far better quality material than the ‘surplus’ ones issued to national service conscripts. Which meant that I was issued with two uniforms which had probably been in storage since World War 2. The buttons and cap badges were of the king’s crown design and King George VI had been dead for six years by this time and Queen Elizabeth was now on the throne. Other items of equipment, such as boots, were equally of an outdated design: and, as for the shirts. Well, they were of the detached collar type, which led to hours of struggling with back and front collar studs.

I staggered out of the stores dragging a large kitbag, into which I had stuffed as much as was possible. A small pack was slung over my shoulder containing other strange items which I had ‘swept up’ from the storeroom floor. Everything else was carried, as best as I could, in my arms.

On return to our barrack room we were told to dress in our ‘best blues’ as we were to have a group photograph taken  …..

(1st day in uniform .. I’m the one standing in the centre)

As we were now in uniform we had to learn who to salute, and how to raise your arm when this was required. It had to be ‘snappy’ and “the longest way up and the shortest way down”: and when was the best time to learn this action ?  .. The answer .. on the same day that  your arms were extremely stiff and painful after they had been punctured with inoculations !

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(to be continued)

Chapter 3 … About to “Get some in” !

It was not until my nineteenth birthday that I at last received another brown envelope containing an enlistment notice and travel warrant with instructions to report to RAF Cardington on the Tuesday immediately after the Easter Holiday. The travel warrant was made out for Bedford and was to be exchanged for a railway ticket at my local station. I didn’t have a clue where Bedford was, for like many Londoners I thought of anywhere outside of it’s boundaries to be ‘the sticks’.

Now I was rather proud of my hair which was styled in a sort of ‘Tony Curtis’, and I was not prepared to suffer the humiliation of having it chopped about by some service barber, so I visited Jimmy’s barber shop in Atlantic Road, Brixton and he gave me a rather smart, but very short, ‘crew cut’, so that when I stepped off the train at Bedford station I stood out from the crowd in my black and white ‘houndstooth’ tweed overcoat, bright red tie and new ‘brush-cut’. I was soon to realise that standing out in a crowd was not such a good idea.

A mud splattered blue RAF bus stood outside the station and I and a number of other young men boarded it under the gaze of a bored looking scruffy airman driver.

I sat next to a very small pale faced lad who looked nervously out of the window. “Look at that !” he suddenly exclaimed, for there in the distance were two massive aircraft hangers, and floating in front of them was a large barrage balloon of the type seen in the skies over London during World War II.

As we watched the silver grey balloon rose hundreds of feet into the sky at the end of it’s steel tether.

“I wonder what that’s for ?” said the lad.

“Oh, don’t you know ?” I replied “You have to climb up the cable before breakfast every morning”, and as soon as my joke left my mouth I regretted it, for the face of the pale youth suddenly got even more pale and he began to shake all over. Shit! I thought. Is this poor little sod is in for a rough time.

The bus came to a halt and we disembarked to be met by the staff of No. 2 Reception Unit, RAF Cardington, who much to my surprise were not the screaming foulmouthed sergeants and corporals whom I had expected. In fact they seemed very polite and almost friendly. After a brief rollcall we were asked to pick up our bags, line up in threes and to the sound of a gentle “left, right, left” marched, with much shuffling of feet, to our billets.

A grey haired rotund sergeant told us to leave our bags in the hut and marched us off to the airmen’s mess for a meal. We were issued with a knife, a fork and a spoon, which I learned were called “yer eating irons” and a white china mug, and were led into the mess hall where a group of cooks stood behind a long counter which was covered with large metal trays and steaming cauldrons. We formed a line and each picked up a plate from the stack at one end of the counter. When my turn came I approached the first cook, or at least I thought he was a cook as he held a ladle in his hand.

He was wearing a greasy beret and had a dirty vest on under a food splattered apron. I held out my plate and in a practiced manner the ladle was dipped into a large container, it was then held in front of my eyes and tipped forward so that a large dollop of shepherd’s pie hit my plate with a splash. The next unshaven member of the kitchen crew poured a helping of watery cabbage on top of the shepherd’s pie, and so it went on down the line. I got the feeling that this was all done for the amusement of the catering staff and I was soon to learn that other personnel at the reception unit also enjoyed a laugh at the expense of the latest intake of ‘sprogs’.

After our meal, which many did not eat, the kindly sergeant led us back to our hut and counted us to make sure that we were all still there. He looked along the line and his gaze fell on me.

“You there” he said “Yes you, the one with the red tie and Yankee haircut. Do you remember the way to the mess hall ?”

“I think so sergeant” I replied.

“Good” he said “ .. Because from now on you’re senior man in this hut and you can march the rest to meals”.

Now I was getting the message about “not standing out in a crowd”.

The billet to which we were allocated housed about twenty men, and was sparsely furnished with iron beds and wooden lockers. A blackened iron stove stood in the centre of the room, in front of which was a coal bucket, but no coal.

After we had each ‘grabbed’ a bed and shoved our bags in the lockers, cigarettes were lit and we started to get to know each other before being marched away to begin our indoctrination. This began with a haircut of the ‘short back and sides variety’ given by the camp barber who would have been just as much at ease with a herd of sheep. A sergeant strutted up and down in front of us as we lined up outside the barber’s hut. Surely, I thought he won’t expect me to undergo this humiliation, as I barely had a quarter of an inch of hair covering my head due to my recent visit to ‘Jimmy’s’. The sergeant spotted me and walked towards me. Once again I stood out amongst the crowd.

“So who’s a clever little bleeder then?” he said with a scowl “Thought you could get away without this bit did you? Well you was wrong sonny, so get in there and GET YOUR BLOODY HAIR CUT !!!”.

As I entered the hut the barber grinned and proceeded to run his clippers through what ever hair I had remaining. He must have got a kick out of his job for he burst out laughing as I got out of the seat and the next lad entered, for he was a bit of a ‘teddy boy’ from London and sported an immaculate ‘Elvis’ style hairstyle with long black sideburns and greased back ‘DA’. When he left the hut he could only be recognised by his outlandish clothes.

After the haircuts we were marched to a large shed where air force clerks sat behind rows of tables. Each of us sat in front of a clerk and he noted down our personal details with such questions as .. “What’s yer f****ing name ?” and “What f****ing date were you f****ing born on?”. Now I had not exactly led a sheltered life, but I was quite surprised at the frequent use of this now common expletive, although a few weeks later I had to be careful, when on leave, not to say “pass the f****ing salt” to my mother.

We were issued with our service number and photographed for our identity card, from then on always to be known as a “twelve fifty”. Every piece of paper in the RAF had a form number and this card was “Form No. 1250”.

Now the photograph on our twelve fifties had to show us in a uniform which had not as yet been issued to us, but never fear, for the RAF had a solution in the form of a false collar, tie and tunic top which was hung around our necks as we sat before the camera.

After being given various bits of information about the rest of our indoctrination period by a rather posh young pilot officer we were returned to our billets where I realised that it was now my turn to march ‘my recruits’ to tea.

“All right lads” I said “Stop mucking about, and get into three ranks”. So far so good, although the three ranks were a bit uneven. “Left turn” I called out in a rather squeaky voice. After some twisting and turning the lads all decided to face in the same direction, and after a mumbled “Quick march” from me we set off at what I can only describe as a hopping shuffle. My attempts at a “Left! Right! Left!” only made things worse. I just hoped that no one in charge was watching. Tea turned out to be baked beans on toast and bread and jam with a horrible tasting tea being dispensed from a large metal urn. I remembered the rumours about bromide being put in the tea to calm our sexual urges, and from then on I hardly ever touched the stuff for the rest of my two years’ service.

That evening some of us visited the NAAFI canteen for a pint or two and a game of darts before getting our heads down for the night, but this was far from a comfortable experience as the hut was freezing cold. Remember “a coal bucket, but no coal”. Now as ‘senior man’ I took my responsibilities seriously, and so I led a small search party to find fuel for the stove. This turned out to be anything wooden that was not nailed down. Shelves, towel rails, cupboard doors and even a loose plank off the side of a hut were consumed in our old stove, and one lad even returned from his foray with a small sack of coke which he had ‘borrowed’ from outside one of the ‘staff’ billets. The stove glowed in the dark after ‘lights out’ as we hid under our thin blankets and overcoats.

“Mum ! Is that you Mum ? … Where’s the dog ?” … What the hell was that ? I sat up and looked towards where this shouting was coming from. Other people stirred in their beds. The shouting went on for several minutes. I had heard of people talking in their sleep, but this was ridiculous. Suddenly from the other end of the room came a shout … “Shut the f***k up arsehole !” and a heavy shoe flew through the air towards the shouting sleeper and the noise ceased.

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(to be continued)

Chapter Two … “Fit in Mind and Body”

As I recall the medical centre was located somewhere between Catford and Eltham in South London. Anyway it was a bloody long bus ride from Brixton, and when I arrived I found the place crowded with young men of all shapes and sizes. This became even more apparent when we all removed our clothes, formed a queue and proceeded to move through the various examination cubicles. Most of these were just areas separated by portable canvas screens, so it was easy to hear what was being said by the lads in front and behind you. It was hard to keep a straight face as I listened to eighteen year olds who seemed ready for a retirement home. …

“Please read the third line on the card”. …. “What card is that doc ?”

“Please repeat after me” …. “Pardon doc, I didn’t quite get that”.

“Touch your toes .. No! .. bend down and do it”.

“Is your urine always that colour ?”

“How long have you been wearing a truss ?”

“No, I don’t think that you have one leg shorter than the other”.

“When did you first notice this pain ?”

…..  and so on … and so on.

After being prodded, pushed about, pissing in a jar, bending over, coughing and generally being made to feel like some kind of specimen I was free to leave, but not before being told that there was another part to this selection process which was to take place at an address in Pimlico.

On the day of this appointment I took a train from Brixton to Victoria Station and walked along Buckingham Palace Road to an office building near to the B.O.A.C. air terminal.

I can’t remember exactly what further tests took place, although I think they may have involved some sort of psychological examinations. If they did one lad sitting next to me in the waiting room was definitely in need of such an examination, for he suddenly stood up, let out a yell, ran across the room and dived out of a window. I never did find out if he was injured or if he just picked himself up and ran away: but was he really ‘unhinged’ or was this all part of some clever plan to enable him to, what I later learned was called, “work his ticket” ? It was not uncommon to meet potential and serving servicemen pretending to be suffering from some mental illness in the hope that they would be declared unfit for military service. Unfortunately some of them finished up in a far worse place than a barrack room.

After receiving a pass at the highest grade of fitness I was asked which branch of the services I wished to join. Now at this time it was impossible to get into the navy unless you had been a cadet or served in a naval reserve unit, and the RAF was only taking a small percentage of the total number of conscripts. This meant that nearly everyone finished up wearing a hairy khaki coloured suit and big boots.

I had a few friends who were in the army and their experiences only made me determined to get into the RAF; but how ?

After I had said that I wanted to be an airman rather than a soldier I was told that if I had the right educational qualifications, I would have to take an IQ test and be interviewed by an RAF officer to see if I was up to the standard required by the Royal Air Force. Well thank goodness I had those three GCE’s which were just enough to get me as far as the IQ test.

I had hated taking exams at school and now I was back in a classroom sitting behind a desk like thirty or so other nervous hopefuls under the watchful eye of an RAF flight sergeant as we spent the next hour looking at diagrams, drawings and numbers and ticking boxes. Shit! I thought, I’m never going to pass this, but somehow I did and soon found myself sitting in front of a Flight Lieutenant, although I was a bit disappointed that he wasn’t wearing wings or medal ribbons. I suppose that he was just an education or recruiting officer. He asked me questions about school, my work, my hobbies, sports etc. and I lied like mad about almost everything including the question … “Why do you want to join the RAF ?”

“Well sir” I began “It’s like this. For some time I’ve been thinking of joining the air force and making it my career. I’ve friends who have told me what a great life it is and I like the sound of it. I’d like the chance to travel and possibly learn a trade, but I thought that as I was expecting to be called up soon I would wait and see what service life was really like before signing on”.

The officer scribbled away in a file and gave me a wry smile. Had I fooled him ? I wouldn’t know until those call up papers arrived, and that would not be for several weeks, for national service was beginning to wind down and it was being predicted that the ‘call up’ would end in a couple of years time.

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(to be continued)

Chapter One     …       The Brown Envelope

One of the happiest days in my life was when I left school in the summer of 1955. I was sixteen and pleased to be free from the homework, the exams, the PT, the enforced games, not to mention the bloody sadistic teachers. I was never top of the class, but I did just manage to attain three passes in the recently introduced General Certificate of Education and was awarded the prize for geography in my final year, although I never bothered to turn up to collect it at the prize giving ceremony.

Jobs were not hard to find in those days and I soon found one as a junior clerk in a large firm of travel agents. I think that my hard working parents were pleased that their son was now a ‘white collar’ worker who wouldn’t have to get his hands dirty.

My office job was, in fact, bloody boring, and at first consisted of all the office tasks that no one else wanted to do. What made it bearable was the interesting crowd with whom I worked. I worked in the continental tours department at a time when ‘package’ holidays were just taking off. My companions were nearly all foreigners mostly employed for their language skills. Amongst this colourful bunch were a former officer in the Polish Army who carried a small pistol in a shoulder holster, a Belgian ex jockey who had served in the British Army in World War II, an Italian ‘gigolo’ who had learned English from the American GIs in Rome and a Frenchman who claimed to have fought in the Resistance. The department manager was a kindly man who eventually gave me more interesting tasks and even issued me with a document saying that I was a qualified ‘courier’ and allowed me to shepherd people on and off the cross channel ferries and boat trains on some weekends. Now whether he did this out of the kindness of his heart or because I had caught him when his secretary was ‘taking down’ more than just ‘shorthand’ is in question, but the experience of travelling to Belgium and France and picking up a few ‘duty-frees’ was very enjoyable, as was my ongoing pursuit of dating every pretty typist in the office. After attending an all boys school, being let loose among all those nubile young women in their tight sweaters and layers of nylon petticoats was like landing in teenage heaven.

Yes, I was a first generation ’teenager’ and I was now having a great time, for it was the early days of “Rock ‘n’ Roll”, coffee bars, sharp suits and fancy haircuts. I loved every minute of it, but like all young men in those days I knew that it couldn’t last and one day it would all end when a brown paper envelope would drop though the letterbox which would begin the process of turning a callow youth into a fighting machine. Well, as I was to find out it wasn’t to be quite like that.

It was shortly after my eighteenth birthday, when I had taken the new girl in the office to see Bill Haley and the Comets, that the dreaded envelope arrived. I remember that the tickets for the concert had cost me a small fortune. The young lady lived in a ‘foreign land’ north of The River Thames and was about to join The Salvation Army. I had to walk most of the way home to Brixton after seeing her home, and when I arrived it was waiting for me on the mantelpiece.

The envelope contained instructions from the Ministry of Labour and National Service informing me that I was to attend a medical board to see if I was fit for military service. Now I had heard all about these medical boards from older friends who had already been called up and knew that just about the only way to avoid conscription was to fail the medical examination. All sorts of tales were told about boys sticking sharp objects in their ears to puncture an eardrum or swallowing all sorts of concoctions to speed up their heart rates or give them symptoms of various ailments. I was to find out just how far some people would go in the very near future.

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To be continued.

During my recent absence from the ‘blogsphere’ I resurrected an unfinished manuscript in which I recounted a young man’s experiences when serving in The Royal Air Force back in the 1950’s. Of course, that young man was me, and some of you will have read one or two of my old posts over the years in which I recalled, what I hoped were, some amusing events during the days when I was wearing a blue uniform: so for those of you who weren’t bored to death by the details of my not too military life in a very different world, I have decided to ‘publish’ the story here, one short chapter at a time. If you like it (?) I may even finish the tale. If you are wondering why I never finished the story; it was because dozens of other bloody ex-national servicemen had already “got in on the act” before me !

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Prologue      …      Cowboys and Red Lead.

“COWBOYS !” … I heard the cry through my bedroom window, and as I opened one eye I saw my roommate Jim pulling on his blue uniform trousers.

“Are you coming ?” he asked “It sounds like it’s bacon and beans for breakfast. If you don’t get there early, they’ll only be bloody red lead and rubber eggs left”.

By ‘red lead and rubber eggs’ he meant the mushy tinned tomatoes that resembled the thick oxide paint used to protect metal and the fried eggs that had been left on the hot plate for so long that they bounced if you dropped them.

Because we worked ‘watches’ on a radar station our sleep was never disturbed no matter what time of day it was, so I grunted, pulled up the blankets and tried to re-join Kim Novak in my interrupted dream, as Jim buttoned up his greatcoat and slipped on his plimsoles before grabbing his beret, ‘eating irons’ and mug and headed for the airmen’s mess. He didn’t need the heavy coat as the weather was quite mild, but it saved having to struggle with those damned collar studs and tie, and besides he may have wanted to jump back into his ‘pit’ for some extra shut-eye after returning to the billet and shedding his overcoat and trousers.

I awoke once again having discovered that Kim had buggered off with James Stewart and hearing Jim plonking down a mug of hot tea and a bacon sandwich on my bedside locker.

I sat up and pulled back the curtain covering the window beside my bed and looked at the chart drawn on the glass with coloured Chinagraph pencils. The sun’s rays ‘illuminated’ the colours on my demob chart which had only the number one remaining to be crossed out. Yes ! this was my very last day of two years national service and what better way to start it than with Kim Novak and breakfast in bed.

Now that was more than 60 years ago and today my memory may sometimes fail me, but I do so well remember that day when I returned to ‘civvy street’ after spending 730 days of my youth in the Royal Air Force.

When I look back I tend to remember the good times and the great mates I had, but I think that the attitude of most conscripts was summed up by an RAF recruiting poster of the time which read …. “There’s a place for you in the Royal Air Force” … under which, whenever I saw it, some disgruntled conscripted ‘erk’ had scrawled … “YES, MY F***ING PLACE !”

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To be continued.