A Taceval on a base recently deprived of its last flying flat iron, where, the funniest looking Nimrod was being introduced. And two Jnr Techs of the Airframe persuasion were posted to guard a "significant" building. It was around 2200 hrs and pretty dark, although the starlight gave you reasonable vision at around 20 feet. At this point I should admit that I was one of the guards, the other was a very large, very straight talking Yorkshireman who said what he thought, and loved American movies, we'll call him Fred. So we've been out there for around 2 hours and its pretty bloody cold, no contact with anywhere, and no visits from guard commander or anyone else.
We hear the sound of someone approaching, so I shout the challenge "halt, stand still", they keep coming, and now we see two officers, no NBC kit on so probably Distaff. I repeat the challenge, to no avail, they keep coming. At this point we can make out (around 20 feet away) two Squadron Leaders, one of whom was dark skinned and rather large. Seeing they were not going to stop Fred decided to take the situation in hand, he stood up from behind our sandbags, pointed his empty rifle at the pair, and announced in a very loud, Yorkshire, accent "one move and the nig**r gets it" ( just think of Guy Gibsons dog). The two stopped put their hands up and played the game from then on. They were both umpires from another unit and were impressed, so they said, with Fred's use of the vernacular. There was no complaint from either officer, I believe they were both amused. But could you get away with that now ? I doubt it.
Smudge
