Danny42C:-
This is my first Post: be gentle with me!
I've followed this Thread with delight and admiration since joining the ranks of the Geriatric Surfers five months ago. My daughter is instructing me -(how are the mighty fallen, it seems only yesterday that I was taking the stabilisers off her bike!). I'm not very good at this yet.
My pen name gives a clue, I can hear the groans: "Not another of these Arnold Scheme/B.F.T.S. characters". 'Fraid so. But seeing that another contributor might be welcome (and seeing the suggestion that the thread might be expanded from "Gaining your brevet in WWII" (made by Cliff, the "onlie begetter", and others, I've decided to put my oar in (if Mr Moderator will have me).
This is what I can put on the table:
26,000 words on training to OTU.
54,000 words on wartime India and dive bomber operations in Burma.
28,000 words on postwar RAF service.
Don't worry, it's not ready yet. I have to finish editing, then get it transferred from floppy disk onto a CD-Rom (it was produced on my faithful old "Starwriter"), then hope that some kind soul can tell me how to "park"
the lot somewhere where PPruners can reach it, (but nobody else).
Meanwhile, I suggest I feed in bite-sized chunks into this Thread, from time to time. What do you think?
I was born within sound of the "Bootle Bull". Cliff will tell you what that means. There must have been something in the air of Liverpool. I believe he hails from there, as did Reg (Requiescat in Pace). And Reg must have been at Blackpool Grammar School when I was at St. Joseph's College. I was in the First XV. I wonder...
I like Cliff's idea of a little old 'bon mot' to round it off.
You'll be all right on a big Station.
So the prospectus laid out in your first post (p114, some 2 years and 9 months ago) has been more than delivered in full. Thank you for taking us along that journey with you Danny, truly the long journey of everyman. For though it is obviously your story, I have felt from the start that it was also the story of your remarkable generation, faced with either confronting the evil that threatened freedom worldwide or simply submitting to it. As a generation you chose the former and each and everyone of you became a tiny cog in an enormous machine that spanned the globe. The machine prevailed, but only thanks to each and every cog doing its duty, doing its best.
So thank you for that Danny, and thank you for telling your tale in such an enjoyable and entertaining way. Above all thanks for the modesty in the telling which was such an integral part of your posts because it is clearly such an integral part of you. Again, a quality so typical of your generation...