Grasshoppering a little bit; in 1963 we had a pretty large mock war in Libya (which is great contryside in which to have a war - as Rommell and Monty discovered).
This "war" was called Exercise Triplex West and it went on for a couple of months and was mainly based in El Adem.
Now, I have a hundred stories about Triplex West but just for now, we are talking moustaches here.
There were about several thousand of us under canvas on the extreme west of El Adem airfield and we had about three showers between us. It would fair to say that morale was not great and would have been non-existent had it not been for the ready supply of Slops and Amstel.
And so it was that one wag on 267 Sqn suggested that we had a moustache-growing contest. There would prizes of usually, a gin and tonic, for the bushiest, the longest, the most aesthetically pleasing etc. The one thing was that we had to keep our moustaches intact until we got back to base at Benson.
Now, unbeknown to us, our CO had decided that since most of his squadron had gone off to North Africa for a couple of months and he was at home, then that would be the perfect time for him to grow a moustache!
Can you imagine his reaction when he met his six crews and aircraft back at Benson coming back from the "war" and every single man got off with a ridiculous moustache!!!!!
It really was an innocent happening but I don't think he ever got away from thinking that we were all taking the piss.