Usually the fuel supply was pretty meagre and lots of scavenging had to be done to keep the supply up. I leave that to your imagination.
Some years ago I was sent on a course in Hatfield and we were accommodated at RAF Stanmore Park. In a WW2 hut, with pot bellied stove - but with no coal. It was January. The hut had twenty bed spaces and there just four of us. By the time we left we had burned 16 chairs, 16 bedside lockers, 16 wardrobes, all the linoleum, the handrails from the outside corridor to the outside ablutions and we had started on the tar paper roofing of the ablution block. So, if you were the SWO at RAF Stanmore Park in January 1969 you now know what happened to your "transit" accommodation and with a bit of simple research you can trace at least one of the culprits.
Nothing changes. The RAF may not have traditions, but it certainly has well established "habits"
