BLIGHTY BOUND ... but I wish I wasn't
Where are they now? Flying Wing football team, winners of the Cowasjee Dinshaw Cup 1952. Most of these lads were less than a decade older than I was, and they spoiled the Kids rotten. Sadly I can't remember their names.
GOOD NEWS and bad news yesterday ... Dad tells us we’re flying home instead of the boat, and we leave in six weeks’ time. I can hardly sleep with the prospect of flying again and pester Dad for all available info on the Hastings transport; I would have preferred a Lancaster myself, but one must take what Their Airships provide. Just a moment. Did he say SIX weeks? A tiny cloud appears in the sunlit skies above Aden, a cloud which spreads into eight octas as the days fly by.
But before we go, it’s December 1952 and everyone has a part in the Khormaksar Pantomime at the Astra Cinema. Warrant Officer Haden brings the house down as Baron Hangover, LAC John Elliott tap-dances brilliantly as Buttons, the Chorus Line Kids excel with unintended comedy from appalling timing and one (me) always managing to turn the wrong way, and Marcia Trinnick steals the show as Cinderella, in a dress of silk, parachute, white, the property of His Majesty. The creation comprises an awful lot of unclad creamy Marcia atop yards of layered silk, and when she comes on stage the thunderous roar from the appreciative airmen can be heard inside Dad’s hangar half a mile away. Me, I don't know what they're all excited about, it's only Marcia, as I've said before she's a nice girl but she's past it, she turned18 last month.
Afterwards we’re praising the costumes and mum says Marcia looked like a big meringue. Dad says he wouldn’t mind a nibble of that himself and mum kicks him on the shin. To my surprise he doesn’t kick her back as a normal person would but instead they fall on each other, their faces turn red, their eyes start watering ... Oh no, I think, here we go again.
In an instant it’s time to go back to England, and for the first time on a posting I don’t want to go. I walk listlessly around the station saying goodbye to my friends around the hangars, and more than my eyes seem rather moist. Even Abdul the crab seems sad, he stops eating his cockroach while I stroke his shell.
Next day I look down from the departing Hastings at the square of houses that once was home. That little white speck is our school, inside are my friends at their desks and dear Miss Buckle... my last glimpse of Khormaksar is blurred by the tears which stream down my cheeks. To the rumble of four Bristol Hercules I find myself singing the Aden Song from the pantomime finale:
All the little phones go brrr brrr brrr, HQ staff want you ...
Bound to be a panic, flap flap flap,
Last thing on a Saturday, too !
The Vampires go wheeeeeee, the Brigands crash,
Main gate guards shout Aintcher gotcher pass ?
Watching all the troopers, sailing out to sea,
Here we are in Aden, happy as can be !
Footnote, 60 years later: As we now know, the secret was kept and the Russians never succeeded with their cunning plot. The Khormaksar Kids exchanged a few letters but as so often in Service life, we never saw one another again. At 71 I’ve probably grown up as much as I’m going to, and I haven’t caught VD. But my wife keeps the chequebook because I’m still a menace with figures.