Hi SOSL, Blacksheep may have a better memory than mine. I thought the food strike was about 1970. The date is irrelevant, food being served up in the airmans mess was worse than atrocious at that particular time. Remember that the place was open around the clock seven days a week and firing on all four cylinders, even after the handover to Polaris. Food being one of the elements of maintaining morale, morale was very low. The strike cum boycott seemed to be the only way to rectify the situation, as it appeared OC Catering had lost the ability to read the comments book in the mess, or at least react to the comments.
I do remember that it took place on a Monday and it only took one meal, lunchtime, to retrieve the situation. To the best of my recollection there were only a few civvies, MPBW etc, and a few visitors who ate in the mess that lunchtime. When we arrived to get fed at 17.00 a total transformation had occurred, all the cooks, they hadn't become chefs at that time, were in crisp clean whites and the servery was a joy to behold. All of this was attributable to the man mentioned in my previous post, who, a couple of hours earlier had been at RAF Newton.
It came to light that the staff in the ration store had been exceedingly generous with food that should have found its way into the mess. One particular Sergeant was allegedly burying frozen chickens in his garden when the SIB arrived. Wensleydale could be spot on with the year, because this individual had been court martialled in Aden and reduced in rank from Flt Sgt. One of the butchers, remember them, was also caught up in all of this.
The saddest part was an LAC MT driver who unwittingly admitted to the SIB that he had received some food from the ration store, "Because everyone on the ration run did". He was up in front of Groupie and received 28 days detention. He had been married less than a year and had a newborn, plus, his wife, who was German, spoke not a word of English. On release he was posted to North Luffenham and died in a vehicle smash shortly afterwards.
Fortunately I did not work for the newly arrived Warrant Officer, being a different trade. He would appear in the mess at any hour of the day or night to carry out quality checks on the servery. It was not unknown to have entire trays of food thrown the length of the servery because they did not meet his exacting standards, leaving the duty cook to both clean up and provide replacement meals. The reason i thought it was 1970 was because I arrived in Masirah in 1971 as we were doing the Pakistan evacuation, and the self same Warrant Officer was photographed feeding a baby cradled in his arms.
The SIB never did find the organisers. I just hope there is a statute of limitations on this sort of thing.