As the Courses came in, we laid on a Welcome Party early the second evening, so that the Instructors and their new students could get acquainted before formal lessons began. These were held in the Instructors' Common Room on the first floor of the Main building, and modest alcoholic and non-alcoholic refreshments were laid on.
I particularly remember one such occasion - it must have been in the early years (no exact date) before the influx of new, young entrants had started. Instructors and nearly all the students were still both of the "old" ex-war generation: there were frequent cries of recognition as another pair of old comrades were happily reunited, perhaps for the first time in twenty years.
I'm not sure, but I think that each Instructor was alloted two or three students, to monitor them at least for the first week or two until they'd settled in. In this instance, I got two (names long forgotten) Master Aircrew, a Czech pilot and a British signaller (former Wop/AG), and they could not have been more unlike in appearance. Naturally we were all out of uniform: ranks being of no consequence here.
The Czech's history was a familiar one. In the pre-war Czecho-Slovakian Air Force, he'd got out ahead of the German invasion and across to France. Hardly had he settled there when France collapsed and he'd managed to get away a second time (by devious means) across the Channel to the UK. There the RAF was glad of every pilot they could get their hands on; he flew with the Czech Squadrons, and RAF Transport Command, throughout the war years.
Post-war, he stayed here (like many of his compatriots and the Poles, well knowing the likely reception they'd get from the new Communist Governments), naturalised, married and stayed in the RAF till retirement. A remarkable thing was that he'd managed to continue in one flying appointment after another, never doing a ground tour (I suppose there wasn't much they could do with him); his last job being with the Hastings Met flights out of Aldergrove before he came to us.
I gathered that he'd not exactly "volunteered" for ATC: he struck me as a little, wizened, prematurely "old" man, seemed taciturn and uncommunicative in the extreme, and by no means happy with his posting to Shawbury.
"We're going to have trouble here", I mused.
The other (Master Signaller) was the complete reverse. Sleek, assured and confident in a well-cut blue pinstipe, he was the very image of a successful businessman. He was happy with his transfer to the Branch (I don't know what he'd been doing before), and was keen to get started and "make a go of it". In other words, an ideal candidate.
"This one'll be no problem", was my immediate assessment.
To cut a long story short, what we got was the exact opposite of our expectations. The seemingly "bolshie" Czech turned out, in fact, to be "as bright as a button". You only had to tell him a thing once, and he'd got it. Quick thinking and resourceful, he romped through the "Mock" exercises in the face of all we could throw at him. (Of course his long and varied flying experience in war and peace could not but help enormously in this respect; we began to see why the RAF had kept him on the flight deck for so long - he was simply too valuable a man there to lose). Needless to say, he completed the Course successfully, breezed through the Final Exam and was on his way (where to, I know not, but some SATCO must have thanked his lucky stars).
It was the other way round with my Master Sig. It wasn't that he was lazy or uncooperative: he was clearly trying his hardest, building up a huge swathe of notes and spending hours swotting them up. His trouble was that (there is no other way of putting it): he was "thick as two planks". He was a Slow Learner, but we helped all we could, and I'm happy to recall that he scraped through at the end by sheer determination. I hope they shoehorned him into some quiet, low intensity place where he might do very well.
I learned my lesson from that -
never judge by appearances !
Goodnight, all.
Danny42C.
Things are not always what they seem !