The story of bringing a Waffie back to the Mess reminded me of the (true, cos I was there) story below. Coincidentally, I just saw the no longer quite so young officer who was the star of this yarn for the first time in quite a few years, whose nickname from those days should probably be changed from B-Squared to B-Cubed, (adding ‘bald’ to the original two Bs).
Apologies if it is overly long, but it was originally written (along with many others) more years ago than I care to remember for people not familiar with the curious ways of the Service life.
Three Minutes, Are You Extending?
Back in the 20’s, some very sharp real estate agents managed to sell the Government of the day the most fog-prone swamp within forty miles of every major city in Australia as the site of that city’s Air Force Base. They also went to some pains to make each site as inaccessible to decent public transport as possible. This has resulted in most young men and women on their first posting after training being virtual prisoners on the Base until they can afford a car on the never-never.
Junior officers experience the same urges as most other young men, but if unable to get off the Base, they find outlets for these urges somewhat hard to come by. They are forbidden to fraternize with the enlisted women, the Waffs. It is quite in order to marry one, but to take one out is seriously frowned upon by the powers that be. Just how a junior officer is expected to get himself into a position to ask the girl to marry him has never been explained to me - perhaps arranged marriages, as in the Muslim world?
In those now far off days when automation was in its infancy, one Waff who was available to all, to speak to at least, was the duty telephonist. Late at night, she was often as bored as the drunk on the other end of the line, and many’s the young man who has spent half an hour late at night chatting up the bird on the switch.
One duty suffered by every young officer every one or two months is to be the Base Orderly Officer. The Orderly Dog has a number of duties, one of which is to be dragged out of bed at all hours of the night to read any signal which comes into the Base Communication Centre. One signal in a hundred might require action - (“The yellow hordes will be attacking at dawn.” Yawn.) - but all except the routine ones must be read by the long-suffering Orderly Officer. The Comm Centre is usually in the same building as the telephone exchange. Sometimes the Orderly Officer might stay for a cup of coffee with the switch girl.
One young officer, whilst doing his night as Orderly Officer, was caught having considerably more than a cup of coffee with the switch girl. They had to be punished, if only for both being seriously out of uniform whilst on duty. The switch girl was awarded a month’s night shift as punishment for her crime. (‘Awarded’ - that’s the word the RAAF uses in such circumstances.)
But what of the officer? Well he was ‘awarded’ a punishment that only the military mind could come up with for such an offence - one month’s orderly officer duty, which meant he could not leave the Base at all for another thirty days. I’ll leave it to the reader’s imagination how the two miscreants spent most of their nights during their punishment.