Children have no place in the British Army.

[Tinribs]

Fair Treatment

If you measure the services for fair treatment you run into minefield unless you relate that treatment to what was reasonable at the time

In past years women were denied many service advantages routinely available to men such as married quarters, duty travel for family and spouses to postings abroad and home to duty travel allowance.

Pension allocations were denied to men under 18 and officers under 21 though we paid tax and national insurance. We were denied state pensions attributable to our service because the RAF opted out of SERPS but few of us understood the implication and we were not allowed to make up the years as civilians who had missed payments were allowed to.

All this though it seems unfair but was normal at the time and we learned to live with it and must do so now because there is no recourse to remedy

You get some perspective when you recall that a young officer friend was dismissed the service by Court Martial for failing to attend a mess dinner

The best thing I ever did was to join the RAF in 1964, they treated me well on the whole the medical service was excellent and married quarters a fair deal at least in the early years. They prepared me well, for a second career in civil aviation allowing a free aircraft for my flight test instrument rating and a grant towards my licence costs. The second best was to leave in 1983.