Sir Basil Embry didn't always find favour with his subordinates, who included our sadly missed contributor Danny42C. Having flown Vengeance dive-bombers in Burma Danny returned to his old job in the Civil Service in 1946 but found its stuffiness unbearable, so he rejoined the RAF and at last was given a Spitfire to fly. His bid for a permanent commission was going quite well until he encountered Sir Basil, as he wrote in his e-book
Danny and the Cold War:
So far, so good. It looked like a re-run of my original commissioning in '43. All I had to do now was wait. Done and dusted, or so I thought.
But it happened that Fighter Command was then headed by the redoubtable Air Marshal Sir Basil Embry who in one of his escape efforts had killed a German guard with his bare hands — which did not endear him to his captors when they picked him up again — and who in 1939 had dismissed the Vultee Vengeance as worse than a Fairey Battle.
As at that time we were not fighting anybody in particular, he found time hanging heavy on his hands. To keep himself busy, he decided to check out a selection of the young gentlemen who had been put forward for PCs in his Command. Which is why later in the year I was bidden to present myself to the great man for inspection.
He greeted me cordially enough, but the difficulty was that he had done his homework, and worked out that the best I could hope for was a "scraper" around the age of 40 — not quite what he was looking for at all! That was bad enough, but when he found that, although I'd been to a rugby school I didn't play even for the Station, he lost interest in me completely; my fate was sealed. Thumb down.
Most followers of this wonderful thread will have copies of Danny's e-books
In with a Vengeance and
Danny and the Cold War but if anyone hasn't, send me a PM with your email address as Prune cannot handle attachments.