Tankertrashnav (#61),
...Fair enough, as long as people don't want to start shaking me by the hand and "thanking me for my service" as seems to be the practice now in the US...
This excerpt from my Page 120, #3298 on "Pilots brevet" may amuse
...And we were the "blue-eyed boys". A little of it rubbed off on me one morning. I was trotting along in Liverpool with my new wings and sergeant's stripes. I can remember exactly where I was - by the side of Lewis's, opposite the Adelphi. A dear little old lady buttonholed me: "GOD BLESS YOU, MY BOY", she quavered (surprisingly loudly). Passers-by murmured approval. Liverpudlians wouldn't see all that many aircrew at that stage of the war, so I suppose I stuck out a bit. Naturally shy, I was dumb with embarrassment, but managed to stammer a few words of thanks. I hadn't even flown my first "op", but Liverpool had taken two year's battering from the Luftwaffe, so I suppose I looked like a possible St.George for their dragon. I'll never forget that day.
I was posted to Bournemouth, another Transit Camp, in a seaside hotel - had been a rather swish one, I think, but can't recall the name. Here the natives were well used to seeing aircrew and old ladies did not greet you with little glad cries - nor young ones either, come to that, (the Yanks were in town)...
and this:
...Concur about the term "veteran". That's an old car is...n't it, and a vet is someone I take my dog to when she need attention...
In Customs & Excise (as then was, and where I earned an honest crust to augment my pension)), you started as an Officer of C & E: after four years service, if you'd kept your nose clean and impressed your superiors, you could be placed on a "vetted list" from which you could "bid" for promotion into any Senior Officer post falling vacant in tne UK that no one senior to you wanted.
Was on it myself, but the only posts on offer were "in the smoke" and so graciously declined... As in the RAF, I remained a "bottom feeder" to the end of my days ("he started at the bottom and liked it there").
Danny.