Danny and Friends help a Lame Dog over a Stile.
March ended, and I was off to Shawbury. The Joint Air Traffic Control Course assembled for the "Welcome" party (I think we had one RN officer in our number). Witold Suida was a welcome familiar face, all the rest were strangers, but ex-wartime aircrew officers and SNCOs to a man. I particularly remember one case, whom I shall not name, for he may yet live.
He had been a W/Cdr Nav at the war's end. Leaving the Service, he'd joined British South American Airways. Not as a nav, but as some sort of Station Manager at Rio or Buenos Aires. As I don't suppose they ran more than one service a week, he was pretty well placed - and then BSAA folded. He was out on the street. It was downhill for him from then on.
He was a family man, they were reduced to penury. At last a life-line: he was offered a SSC as a Flt. Lt. in ATC. But of course this was conditional on his passing the Course. So it was for many of us (including me, I was in the same boat with my LCPC, and others had SSCs or LCPCs at stake).
But this did not worry us in the slightest. All aircrew are "naturals" for ATC to a greater or lesser degree. Above all pilots and navs are genetically fitted to become "poachers turned gamekeepers". This Course would be a doddle: it was impossible to fail, we were all convinced of that.
But so much was riding on it for him that this poor devil set about working himself to death. Every night he'd be up to the small hours mugging up his copious lecture notes, he never came into the bar. By day, when he wasn't at a lecture or in the "Mock", he'd be wandering around in a kind of trance, muttering his mnenomics. He was clearly heading for a nervous breakdown unless we could get him to relax.
As I was without wheels for much of the early part of the Course, I was stuck in the Mess for most of my time. I was sorry for this chap. He reminded me of the few ex-servicemen whom I'd been able to help in my brief sojourn as a Resettlement Advice Officer, although goodness knows the miserable little jobs in the Civil Service I was able to shoe-horn them into would hardly keep a newly born wolf cub from the door, they were pathetically grateful. It is a mistake to suppose that with "full employment" in Britain in 1946, life was a bowl of cherries for everyone who came out of the Services.
Two or three of us rallied round this man, ostensibly to form a sort of Question and Answer "Jam Session", to review the instruction and lectures we'd had during the day. After an hour or so of these, we were usually able to entice him into the bar for the odd half-pint. In this way we gradually eased him back into some semblance of normality, and I'm happy to say we kept him sane; he sailed through the final exam - might even have come out on top, but I can't recall. Whatever happened to him afterwards, I don't know.
And the Course was a "piece of cake". The Nav, Signals and Met were what I'd had at ITW. We knew all about airfields, signals squares and lighting. The R/T patter was second-nature to us. In fact, I can't remember much that was new on the Course, except possibly the operation of the new CR/DF wonder machine, and of course Crash Action, Crash Action, and still more Crash Action !
In those days nobody had radar in the Tower. You might have a Mobile GCA on your field if you were lucky, but there was a separate month's Course for aspiring "Talkdowns".
Goodnight again, all,
Danny 42C
Not to worry.