Danny reaches his Squadron - at last.
Next stop, HQ 12 Group (Newton). This was not encouraging, normally I would have expected to be posted directly on to my Squadron. And (let's face it) 12 Group was the "B" team of Fighter Command. I sensed a slight uncertainty: as in so many times before: they had got me, but didn't know quite what to do with me.
From the record, it seems that they pondered for 13 days (during which I took the opportunity to do some skating in Nottingham), and then put me on the train to 20 Squadron at Valley. This involved a very awkward cross-country journey with many changes, culminating in two ancient coaches pushed by a 0-6-0 "Terrier", which clanked through Stevenson's century old iron box tunnel bridge * over the Menai Strait into Anglesey - and on to Valley.
* Burned down (accidently, it was thought) a few years later. The most popular theory was that a fire had been started inside the tunnel (merely to warm themselves) by some old tramps, or a bunch of "Just William" lads, the inch-thick lining of dry soot (accumulated over a century) ignited. It blazed for hours, until the old wrought-iron plates and rivets softened and the whole lot fell into the Strait. I believe the huge old masonry supports still carry the new road/rail bridge built to replace it.
(Wiki tells a different (and no doubt correct) version of what happened, but I have not corrected my account).
Why "Valley"? It isn't a Welsh name.* In this most Welsh corner of Wales, all the villages had Welsh names. The best known of all is "Llanfair P.G." in Anglesey, when spelled out in full is the longest place name in the U.K. - it goes the full length of the station platform. Valley isn't in a valley. For that matter, there aren't any valleys worthy of the name in Anglesey, nor any hills either if you count out Holyhead mountain.
* EDIT: Oh, yes it is - "Y Fali". Why was it anglicised when all the villages around were not ? Don't know. D.
I have always believed that Valley had been a Coastal Command station, an airfield built in WW2 between village and sea (Caernarvon Bay). It was a typical Nissen hut affair, which you would have thought would have been abandoned post-war like so many others. But Valley had been found to have an unique attribute. In the autumn nights of radiation fog, which in those days might close down every other airfiield in the land, Valley could be relied upon to remain open.
This single meteorological quirk made it too valuable as a diversion airfield to lose. It's still there, now home to to the RAF's "Hawk" Advanced Flying School (and also to an Air/Sea Rescue helicopter detachment, much in the current news on account of one of its pilots - Flt.Lt. William Wales).
Now I learn from Wiki that it was actually a fighter station during the war; based on it a number of squadrons had defended Liverpool and West Lancashire with considerable success by day and night.. The USAAC also used it as a ferry staging post for their replacements at the end of their Atlantic crossings (this may help to explain a later episode in my tale) . You learn something every day !
Wide open to all the westerly gales off the Irish sea, it was a bleak, wet and windy place. We said: "If you can see the hills (Snowdonia), it's going to rain - if you can't see them, it is raining !" The windsock rarely dropped below the horizontal. We lived in wartime discomfort with our coke stoves in the old Nissen huts, with a Nissen-hutted Mess and draughty Nissen hut communal ablutions. (All very different now, I suppose).
20 Squadron had been there since the summer of '49, I arrived in March '50. We were the only "lodgers" on the Station, commanded by a W/Cdr J.E.T. Haile. Between the Wars, No. 20 had been a dedicated Army Co-operation Squadron, spending most of its time out in India. Centrepiece of the Mess silver was a farewell gift from our old Indian Canteen Contractor. This was a richly ornamented silver urn - at least as big as, and more ornate than the F.A. Cup. (Another item - a silver ashtray - came from a certain F/O B.E. Embry, who was destined for greater things).
The Cup showed what a fortune the Contractor must have made out of us over the years (for he would have done the catering for all the Messes). "Gratitude is the lively expectation of favours to come", said that old cynic La Rochefoucald. The Squadron might well come back to India one day (Independence was still eighteen years away). They would need a Canteen Contractor again.
More about the Squadron next time,
'Night, all,
Danny42C.
Home, sweet Home.
Last edited by Danny42C; 21st Aug 2013 at 23:22.
Reason: Alteration.