The most memorable part of my training as a Cadet occurred in June 1939, only a few weeks before the start of the War. I was chosen as one of the group sent to a Gliding School at Dunstable Downs, Bedfordshire (west of Luton). For a glorious week, we ran up and down the flying field, just below the Downs, two teams of four boys pulling on catapult-shaped launching ropes made of strong elastic, called "bunji", and causing elementary heavier-than-air machines to hop into the air for varying distances, never more than 100 yards and never higher than about 100 feet.
Each of us had our own turns at "flying" these machines, and we all graduated from the school by being launched off the top of the Downs, probably 600 feet above the field, from where we glided down to a safe landing on the flat. An amazing experience in retrospect, for we 15 and 16-year olds were sitting solo, on the front of a timber and metal keel, surmounted by a single wing of taut, doped fabric, and manipulating the whole with a control column (the "stick") and the rudder. There were no instruments, no fuselage, nothing between us and the ground except the seat. We were instructed to listen for the sound of the wind in the rigging wires, keep the "stick" slightly forward to maintain airspeed, and if the wind's humming stopped, we were stalling!
I saw one lad get into a stall, about 70 feet above the ground, and in a split second the nose plunged down, arms and legs of the boy were waving frantically, and he sped straight into the earth below - fortunately with no damage to himself, which said a lot for the construction of the craft.
For the next few weeks, I could think of little else except flying. I had already applied to join the Royal Air Force as a Boy Entrant, and had been accepted for training. I thought I should probably be an armourer. The Air Force had sent me a letter telling me to expect my enrolment for training in the third week of September 1939, when I would assemble with a batch of 15 and 16 year olds at the Training School (can't remember now where that was - could have been RAF Halton).