This joke lasted two weeks, and is just a blur in my memory. I remember the importance of hanging on to your "Irons" (knife, fork. spoon and enamel mug), or you wouldn't eat, and knowing your "last three" (digits of your RAF number) without which you wouldn't officially exist and certainly wouldn't get paid. Every ex-serviceman remembers that number to his dying day. Every form (of many) you filled in asked you for the details of your Next of Kin. It was plain what they thought of your life expectantcy.
I remember a day spent in scrubbing the aforesaid bare boards, and looking down at my "kneeler". It was a soggy pad of old newspaper. On top I spotted an RAF recruiting advert: "THERE IS A SPITFIRE WAITING FOR YOU!" I sighed and picked up my scrubbing brush. One day I would get there, but it was a long way off.
All good things come to an end, the two weeks flew by and I was back on the train again. Just a short trip across to Cornwall this time, with a full kitbag slung round my neck, to No. 8 Initial Training Wing at Newquay for six weeks. Of all the RAF Courses I have been on in more than thirty years, this stands out as the best organised and most worth while of the lot.
Not a single moment of our time went to waste. They taught us "Theory of Flight", how and why an aircraft flies and why it sometimes doesn't (at the end, I nearly understood Bernoulli's Theorem). We were grounded in Navigation and Signals (Morse, up to six words a minute on the Buzzer and four on the Aldis lamp). We studied Meteorology and Armaments (in our case the Vickers Gas-operated Gun, an obsolete drum-fed weapon, as all the Brownings were needed in service). Air Force Law and "Administration and Organisation" gave us an insight into how the nuts and bolts of the RAF worked. Mundane mattters were not neglected: I recall one lecture on "The Principles of Construction of a Deep Trench Latrine".
"Aircraft Recognition" was a "must", of course, and fresh air exercise was not overlooked. We had an hour's P.T. down on the sands every day (then deserted, now crowded with surfers). To get there meant a 100-step descent down the cliff face, and we had to "double up" (run) back up to the top. At first we had to stop several times, scarlet in the face and gasping for breath, but at the end we could all run up non-stop and still breathe normally at the top. I was never so fit in all my life.
There was a half-hour's foot drill every day. I can still see - and hear! -Drill Corporal Shepherd (the "Good Shepherd", we called him) - "I wants to 'ear yer boots workin' " In the Service all his life, his proudest boast was of having been "put on a charge", in the early twenties, by Flight Lieutenant the Duke of York (it wasn't every "old sweat" who could say that he'd been "put on a fizzer" by the King !)
More later - Cheers to all - Danny
Disputes will not be entertained after leaving the Pay Table
Last edited by Danny42C; 20th Mar 2012 at 12:59.