I spent the weekend in London and I arrived back at about six p.m. Sunday evening. The place was like a morgue. Everybody was sitting around looking miserable. It transpired that on the Saturday morning whilst we were having our block inspection 153 course had received the results of their Intermediate Test. The consequences of this were that three had been sent home awaiting instructions to report to RAF Cardington for their basic airman training to complete their national service. One, a navigator who had demonstrated his total inability to read maps and charts, but was OK in everything else, had been offered an alternative career in the Engineering Branch so he was off to RAF Halton. Two of them who were going to become airmen were the hail and hearty ones telling everybody how easy it was.
The party was over.
Monday morning we paraded out side and waiting to meet us was an incredibly fit looking corporal. The two NCOs and I inwardly groaned because we knew it was a Physical Training Branch corporal.
“Good morning gentlemen, will you temporarily dismiss and reform in your gym kit.” We broke, changed and five minutes later we were out again slightly shivering in the cold morning air. I hope this isn’t going to be too hard, I thought, otherwise I am going to throw up my breakfast. No marching this time, we trotted down to the gymnasium and once inside were introduced to the latest weapon of mass destruction, circuit training.
Around the floor and along the walls was spread every conceivable form of old fashion wooden exercise architecture very much in the form of a show-jumping ring. The PTI demonstrated all the things we had to do going through, going through the whole gambit of press-ups, chin-ups, crutches and vaulting plus a few more equally crippling sequences. We were going to have it easy to start off with. We would go around in turn and go through the entire sequence only having to do five of the nastier ones.
“Next week,” he gloated, “you will go in sequence so as the first finishes his five press-ups the next one follows, and if anybody is caught up by the person behind he starts all over again.”
I was still fit, our monthly weekend sessions in the Rhodesian reserves had made sure of that but the NCOs were older and a bit softer. The direct entry cadets made it pretty obvious that the severest test of strength on their part was swinging a cricket bat and our ex University Acting Pilot Officers were a disaster, three years of soft university life showed us that. I didn’t push it too hard, I could still feel yesterday’s beer sloshing inside me but I worked up a bit of a sweat. Not so the others, some were having trouble gripping the bar, let alone trying to do a chin up. One hour later a host of panting, wheezing, scarlet-faced people wearily trotted shambolicly back to the block.
We went into our accommodation, picked up our towels and dived into the shower room. On went the taps and a cascade of freezing water descended on us. We frantically turned the hot taps to try to correct it but that was when we found that the coal-fired boiler was shut down on Monday mornings for decoking. The scarlet had turned to blue by now so we dried ourselves down and got back into uniform. A chorus of nose blowing was interrupted by WO Thomas walking in.
“We now know how fit you are, by the time we have finished with you you won’t believe what you will be able to do.”
We marched to the classrooms straight into the tea break and then continued with the daily routine. I was having my own troubles. Logical English writing I could understand and do. I had worked for a bank in Rhodesia and they had encouraged me to sit the Institute of Bankers exams and I had obtained a credit in English so I knew the score. What I couldn’t grasp was the layout of service letters and when to use Formal Official, Semi Official and the stupid endings like ‘I remain Sir, your obedient servant’. I took an instant dislike to administration, something which effected my career for the next eighteen years and still effects me in later life with things like tax returns etc. My protests that I had joined the air force to belt around in aeroplanes and not spend time scribbling in an office fell on deaf ears and after three weeks I was formally warned that I was going to have to improve if I was to continue training.
My saviour was another student. We had sorted out our problems that had started on the train. He had a gift for military writing and not only that he could explain how to do it with a collection of phrases that covered just about everything. What he could not grasp were aerodynamics, which is where I came in because it was an open book for me. The result is that we used to spend an hour together in the evenings and sort each other out. My standard improved so much that when we had to write an example of some letter or other the instructor would watch me intently to make sure I wasn’t copying somebody else’s work. In two weeks Jenkins and I would be off review for our respective subjects. He was more grateful than I was; the spectre of National Service was waiting for him.
My progress was interrupted the next week. We were having a session of softball on the sports field. I was awaiting my turn and was taking to somebody when my lights went out. I spent some minutes unconscious and when I woke up I was surrounded by worried cadets and they had already called up the ambulance. What had happened was that the batsman had missed the ball and let go of the bat which had then found the back of my head. I was still groggy when I arrived at sick quarters and the SMO immediately had me shifted off to RAF Hospital Wroughton for a check up. When I arrived I was wheeled in to have my bonce Xrayed. There was nothing serious but they decided that I should stay in for observation until I could see straight and recover from a God Almighty headache.
To be continued