Vets visiting a UK Officer's Mess
 

I've just had a surprising conversation with a suspected walt who asserts categorically that any UK ex-officer has the right to invite themselves into a UK Officer's Mess/Wardroom as a guest and to dine there as a visitor at own expense.
I expressed surprise (well, disbelief actually) citing security questions in the very first instance but was roundly admonished.

I think I can guess who is correct but can anyone confirm please?

Well, I wouldn't wish to put anyone down...

Is this serious, or a wah? There is not, and never has been, such entitlement. The Security aspect adds an additional dimension. “”Kill him!”

Would anyone want to dine in an Officers’ Mess / wardroom under the current catering contracts?

How would they even get close to a Mess without a 1250 or current equivalent? Heck I even had to have a pass or be booked to visit my daughter in OMQs

Sounds about as likely as a conversation I had with a know it all who reckons all serving armed forces are issued with a "Military" passort which means they can travel anywhere worldwide without having to go through passport control.
In his words "They can disappear"

Re Vets visiting a UK Officer's Mess;- Why would an animal doctor even want to visit an officers mess?

Dont forget the Pongoes' horse doctors.

N

I've seen a hoarse doctor and many animals at dining-in nights!

Many years ago, before automated ticket gates, I was dashing through the ticket barrier at Victoria mainline to catch my train home.
I flashed my rail season ticket at the gate man, but he stopped me, and had a good look at it, then said OK go on...

I'd never had it examined before, so once on the train I had a good look to check it was all up to date etc, then realised I'd shown him my MOD pass!
As he let me through with that, I wonder where else I could have blagged using it!? :)

As I recall, it was possible to become an "Associate Member" subject to the approval at a General Mess Meeting. Mind you, that was many years ago; not sure of today's rules.

Earlier this year members of the local RAFA were invited to lunch at the Mess to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee. The RAFA chairman had to submit our names and car registrations, which were checked at the gate, along with ID (driving licence). We were issued with temporary passes.

So in answer to the OP's question...no. Walt alert.

Messes I have been at always had a 'Retired Member' category. Numbers in relation to the number of full mess members. RAF Wyton made access so difficult, most retired members resigned thier membership.Do other messes still have Retired Memebrship available?

I have been into an officers mess for an official Sqn guest dining in night as being a member of the squadron association. An invite was sent out and we put in requests to be considered. I was on a course up near where the squadron was based. 4 other members of the association attended whom were all like myself, non military ID holders but were Officers on their time on the unit, to my non commissioned time. We of course signed onto the base and escorted to the mess where we had booked rooms and did not leave the complex the entire time until escorted off. This was only 5 years ago. Of course it was booked in advance and we were closed as a visit like any other. Depends on the commander of the Station and other things now, but does depend on sponsors and escorts. One officer was there that did question why I was there (due to my previous military ramk) to which my reply was "Because I am Mister." I found out later the colourful history of the Officer in question,.

Ah! Well ....................

JHQ Rheindahlen had an Army entrance and a RAF entrance. The passes were essentially Red, or Blue, and in addition to usual military ID.. JHQ passes were on a chain lanyard. Many folk had a spouse employed in the other half of JHQ.

Thus one day my assistant received a phone call from his army-employed civvy wife for a tryst in Leystrasse.
To exchange passes. The system was so fool-proof as to allow a red pass into the RAF side, and vice-versa.
Rumour was that a a Bass beer bottle label worked on occasion.

Not an Officers Mess, but the principle still applies.

In the late 80s the WOs/Sgts Mess in Brunei had 8 members and a bar. The Officers Mess was dry as the CO had decided to set an example. The only overtly "wet" places were our mess and the JRC within the confines of camp and the Civil Service Club up the coast. Brunei Shell Petroleum policy was alcohol permitted within the confines of their club and individual houses.

Then the Sultan's cousin, (who was Interior Minister until his sexual proclivities and embezzlement activities came to light) decided alcohol was un-Islamic and stopped all alcohol outside the UK military on pain of Islamic punishment and/or deportation.

Within a week we had 158 applications for Honorary Membership............ only three applicants had military backgrounds. Two were admitted. There used to be a formula for such member numbers in relation to full members. Being ex military didn't automatically grant access.

NEO

I don't recall there being any embargo between using either end of the building. I always used to go in at Entrance 6 (Crufts' Entrance) because it was in the same direction as my quarter.

Why on earth would anyone feel the need to enter an RAF station to eat lunch? After all, you can buy sausage and chips in many other places.
It's 28 years since I left the service and in that time I've only ever eaten once on an RAF station (Puma 40th anniversary reunion), and that was at a fold-up table in a hangar.

This sounds on a par with what used to be a widely held belief among civilians that serving personnel paid no income tax, and lived free in married quarters.

Ah, those were great days! I remember them fondly.

:ok: :cool:

I thought that was SCEA.

As opposed to the truth: that civilians overseas lived virtually free in MQs, and, if a spouse worked in, say JHQ, the spouse "avoided" any income tax, be it UK tax or German.
This latter was so widespread and ran so high in "rank"/ grade that nobody dared stop it.
Understand that a friend told me this.

And free coal.

No different to other NATO inter country agreements like our cheap booze, fags and petrol coupons. I did fall foul of French customs, jerry cans and BFG plates once. Mistake never made again.

Anniversary dinner
 

8 squadron ,100th anniversary.Remember a group of us(from1960s 8 sqdn)all waiting in the entrance hall of Waddington officers mess all in penguin suits some with medals and getting curious glances from officers passing by!!
As for security the party was held in a hangar along with a "sentry"and a Hunter!No one questioned us and a grand evening was had by all!

As a UAS cadet, there was always something special about the officers mess.
Even when my subsequent career gave me access to some of the finest eateries/ hotels in the world, I looked back on those days with fondness.

I know what you mean. I gave a talk on AAR to the local branch of Air Britain at St Mawgan a few years ago. I was met at the guardroom by my host, a serving officer, who signed me in and got me a temporary pass. He then stood me dinner in the combined officers/SNCO 's mess on the base, the first time I had come across such a thing. RAF St Mawgan was a shadow of its former self in the days of Shacks and later Nimrods and as a major diversion airfield and by then was little more than a lodger unit of Newquay airport, and consequently had none of the atmosphere of an operational RAF station mess. Dinner was paid for with cash (do mess bills still exist?) , and was ok-ish, but nothing special. When we had a swift one in the bar before my talk I think we were the only two in.

What a contrast to my first experience of an officers mess as an awe struck 18 year old APO. Polished tables and waiter service at all meals in the dining room, dining nights with all the silver out and dinner announced by the band playing "The Roast Beef of Old England", nervousness at being the most junior mess member and having to be "Mr Vice" and standing to propose the loyal toast to a room full of officers, many of whom wearing WW2 miniatures. No cash involved, everything on your mess bill, lounge suits during the week and sports jackets and "flannels" at weekends only. Not to mention having the services of a shared batman, and sending clothes to the laundry, your mess dress stiff shirt coming back so starched you could stand it up! Pay was pretty poor in those days, my carpenter brother was astonished to find that I was earning about half his salary, but I felt I was definitely living the high life in the mess.

Yes I know, yet another post from an old fart of a cold war warrior. I do admire the young men and women of today's depleted RAF who have had a much tougher time on ops than I ever had, but I feel sorry for them as they are missing many of the things which made life as an RAF officer special and made a rather ordinary product of a Northern grammar school feel he had entered a different world.

Tankertrashnav,

I often wonder what percentage of RAF (aircrew?) officers from the 60s and 70s were grammar school boys (so speaks an ex grammar school pupil).

I remember we did a quick survey on out squadron (Victor tankers) in the early 70s. Out of 50 aircrew we could only count about three or four ex-public schoolboys and the remainder were almost all the products of the grammar school system (no comprehensives then of course). We had a fair number of ex NCO aircrew as well, and some of them had come from whatever secondary modern schools were called in their youth. These were all very proficient aircrew, mainly ex signaller AEOs. I remember one of them telling me he had only missed out on a grammar school place because his parents couldn't afford to buy the school uniform.

Tankertrashnav, I myself was the product of the grammar school system.
I was presented with a prize in my last year by an Ex pupil, who then was a serving Group Captain or possibly an Air Commodore, I believe he reached Air Vice Marshal, as did another Ex pupil in the early 00's.
As you say, as an 18 year old being woken up with a morning cup of tea in the mess, did make one feel rather special.

Some of us ex-public school boys were only so.because we had been too clever to be sent to the local grammar school 🤓
I think I reached my intellectual zenith around the 11 plus, though I was only 10 at the time. The council and the public school paid for those of us that made the grade. The council also paid for all my books, which was just as well as the uniforms alone nearly broke Mum & Dad.

I sometimes think we grammar school school boys had something of a chip on our shoulders about public schoolboys. In my brief teaching career I spent a short time teaching at Marlborough and was surprised to to discover that the pupils were generally polite and pleasant and not the arrogant self entitled brats they are sometimes portrayed as. I only once came across an Old Etonian in the RAF, he was flying Whirlwinds at Kai Tak in 1968-69 - nice chap. I met my future wife in Hong Kong. She was a QARANC nursing sister and up to the time I met her she had mainly socialised with army officers who for the main part were ex public school boys who all spoke with that standard Sandhurst accent. She was a working class girl from Nottingham and was relieved to discover when I took her to our mess that lots of RAF officers actually spoke with regional accents !

In my subsequent career, l came across a number of ex public school army officers, who having done their 3 years, then went to work for the 'family firm'.
Some decent, some not. One in particular used to explode at the slightest incident, no matter how minor.

TTN :-
Thanks for that info TTN. Been played into dinner to that ditty more times than I care to remember, but never curious enough to know its title. Same with the slow march dirge that we marched past the dais at Sleaford Tech. Turns out it was 'Coburg'. Isn't t'internet a wondrous thing indeed?

Chug (another ex Grammar Grub and ever grateful to Bournemouth Borough Council for it)

Can't help you there but when I was working at the Inspectorate of Recruiting in the early 90s I came across some statistics that showed that the majority of youngsters applying to OASC (perhaps even the whole RAF intake) had some family connection to the armed forces (Mum or Dad, Auntie, Uncle, Grandparent).

If this is still so then persuading modern youngsters from second or third generation immigrant families will be an uphill struggle. Come to think of it with the forces the size they are any modern youngster will be lucky to have any forces connection.

I was a grammar school educated, direct entrant officer. I had no chip on my shoulder and no problem at all mixing it with public school, Cranwellians at BFTS, or later. Not all of them made the grade anyway.

I was more than a little disheartened at my salary, which on joining was far less than I'd previously earned as a builder's labourer.... and mainly due to Mess charges, over which I had little control and which put my bank balance into the red most of the time!

I was the junior pilot on my first squadron for almost a year before the next first tourist was posted in, to take up the baton of some of the more menial jobs a junior officer had to do. However, his wife declared that her husband could never be considered a junior pilot because he had a degree and had trained at Cranwell.

Obviously, we all took that very seriously :rolleyes:

TTN. Similar age, similar experiences. However, educated (??) in Australia, but I had to self-study for English GCE subjects, since the RAF wouldn't accept Aussie ones.

A few years ago I happened to be near Syerston. The Mess is fenced off, all windows broken, the roof almost falling in. I remember it on the evening of "wings" graduation. As you say, polished everything, band, our ladies in their finest. Times have changed I'm afraid. Mind you, so have I !!

Grammar brat on a Scholarship here. 11+ at 10, then completely wasted the following years (CCF, Girls and Motorcycles intervened). Mercifully scraped 6 O-levels after 2 attempts, and the RAF only needed 5. Yay! Game on! Wg Cdr pension isn't bad either.

BTW, I'se a whitey, even though part of my education was in Jamaica!

I'd agree that the classical 1930s Expansion Scheme messes were (and still sometimes are) rather fine. However, some of the modern ones are fairly dire.

When I was on UWAS in 1973 the mess at St Athan felt like the height of luxury. On 633 VGS in 2013 the mess at Cosford...er...didn't.

The few Army Messes I stayed in re-defined dull and lifeless. But then I was lucky being mainly on vibrant RAF Stations (exempt Uxbridge, the Bean-Stealers' Mon-Fri Dormitory)

MPN11, how right you are! However, if you had moved down the road from Uxbridge to West Drayton (agreed still bean-stealer territory, but I was not!) you would have found very different atmosphere!