Well at least we get two different payoffs!
Danny, your brush with death, for that is surely what it was bears repeating anyway, for it illustrates the tightrope that aviators tread all the time, and how the what ifs can lead to salvation or disaster at the slightest whim. Then to have to recover all your kit as well merely adds insult to your injuries. Reminds me of the farewells to those who went their way mid way through basic training. "Cheerio old chap, good luck. Oh, have you promised your "Cere" Boots to anyone? If not can I have them?". So off to Cal with you, see you later!
DFCP, my head is spinning with the demob, Uni, UAS, RAuxAF, etc etc. Slow it down a bit please, if I might beg you. It really is of great interest to know how that enormous outfit, the RAF of WWII, wound down at the end of the war and what that meant to its wretched incumbents. The RAuxAF alone is now a far off item of which we knew little. What a great flying club to belong to, to be paid to fly Meteors and Vampires at the W/E before going back to the "real job"! Already you are set to go back to the land from which you have only just returned, but first you are in that great cross roads of the Med, Malta. Not Luqa though, with which many here are familiar, but Takali. So hopefully we will take a deep breath now, settle into our accommodation there, good, bad, or indifferent, and take in our new surroundings. Over to you, Sir. Oh, just to acknowledge your sage advice. As pertinent as ever of course; never, never, never, volunteer!
Radar 101, thanks for the anecdote re Gus Walker's injuries sustained at Syerston. "Get me my arm back, its got a new glove on it!". Classic!