Originally Posted by
MPN11
Ha! DWRAF (or was it DDWRAF?) visited RAF Stanley in ‘83, reviewing the suitability for WRAF deployments. I escorted her to our Tactical AR1 site in the rocks on the north side of the airfield ... through the mud. “Where are your ablution facilities here?” she enquired. One of my FS controllers answered ... “You’re standing on them, Ma’am.” I don’t know if Stanley ever got WRAF staff.
They arrived at Stanley in around '85 I believe. Up 'til then, everything went swimmingly. Bring a Boss nights in the JRM next to the Flotel were a good way of meeting up with the lads who you didn't meet at work every day and often broke the ice. After the girls arrived, they set up little friendships with the lads, and at one BaB night, a JO was chatting amiably with one of the WRAFs on his section. Unfortunately, a young stud thought that this was someone moving in on his girlfriend and attacked him with a bottle. The aftermath? BaB evenings were banned and it became a them and us. On another occasion, one of the WRAFs who was circulating through airmen dumped her current "boyfriend" who subsequently got very drunk and smashed the windows of several Land Rovers parked outside the Flotel. There were lots of examples: the mobile Met Forecasters stated that the Christmas of '85 was the bleakest that they had. Rather than be invited to parties, they found that all the WRAFs had been invited instead, and with number limits being enforced then the Met Men were excluded. At this time, I tried to book an Eric to take one of my shifts on their 4 day mid-tour R&R to a farm on West Falkland. I could not get one, because the Erics were busy ferrying WRAFs to and from the various parties at the outposts and radar sites. (The chaps used one of their annual travel warrants to go via FIGAS). I could go on, but time and space prevents me from mentioning all of the problems that having just 35 WRAFs at Stanley on a camp of around 700 men caused after things had run smoothly for a couple of years.