Apprentice Life
I was on a ground tour 69/72 and made an apprentice flight commander
It was my first experience of proper man mangement, apprentices and staff and taught me a great deal but I am convinced we did a good job for the youths we trained
They came from a variety of backgrounds and had a large spread of needs but we tried hard to meet them, mostly we succeeded but we had our failures too
My greates triumph was rec,ing one of my lads for a commision and meeting him much later as a wing commander
My worst failure was reluctantly allowing a nasty bully to pass, he later had taken a mates car and killed several others while drunk driving
Overall the apprentice system did a great deal of good to almost all our entries. There were a few who should never have been recruited and some others determined to thwart our efforts; mostly these left.