“Now look here, Farnsbarns, stop faffing about and send this lad his papers, we’ll say no more about the missing petrol coupons.”
Something like that. Anyway, a week later, my call-up papers arrived. The usual buff envelope headed by the letters OHMS. On Her Majesty’s Service. I was to report to RAF Hornchurch for aircrew selection tests.
I have little doubt no one knew that I had already done that once, and the presumption was that I would fail and that would solve the problem. After all, only about one in a hundred National Servicemen passed. There was a sound reason for this.
Since the end of the Second World War, the procedure had been that those getting their wings during National Service would go back to Civvy Street but remain on the roll of the Auxiliary Air Force, flying at weekends with one intensive two-week refresher course per year.
But it was becoming very plain that weekend warriors were not going to be any match for the Soviet Union’s MiGs and Sukhois if it came to World War III. The economists in London were even then pointing out that training someone to fly fighters—which took two years, anyway—then losing him a fortnight later, was a waste of money.
Awarding a boy a flying scholarship was going to cost the Air Ministry thirty hours in a Tiger Moth at six pounds per hour. From zero to wings on a single-seater jet, even back then, cost over one hundred thousand pounds. The system continued but unwillingly, sustained only by the inertia of all bureaucracies.
The only thing the men in blue could really do was to ensure that National Service trainee pilots were as few as possible and were “chopped” (discarded) for the slightest inadequacy. I had only one ace in the hole. I had been through the Hornchurch tests the previous year and knew what to do and what was expected.
So I took my rail pass and went up there for the second time. I made no mention of the earlier visit and divulged to the interview board only that I had my pilot’s license, but not how I got it. They assumed my father had paid for it and approved the enthusiasm. I also implied I was only a National Serviceman because if I could not fly, I did not wish for a life behind a desk. The two officers with wings nodded at that as well. The one with a uniform unadorned by wings looked glum, but two outvote one.
A week after returning home, I got the last buff envelope. No mention of being seventeen and a half. It had just got lost. I was ordered to report in civilian clothes with one small suitcase to RAF Cardington, Bedfordshire, the “kitting out” base for new recruits, all branches. At last I was in.
I’M JESUS CHRIST
Cardington had once been the base of the barrage balloons that had floated over British cities to deter the bombers of the Luftwaffe. The gigantic hangars that housed them proved perfect for the masses of stores needed to transform a generation of young men from civilians to aircraftsmen.
There was a day of filling out forms, then haircuts. The mid-fifties were the age of the mods (moderns) and rockers (bikers). The former had short hair, wore suits, and rode scooters. The rockers had long, greasy hair, wore leathers, and rode motorbikes. When they met, they fought in “rumbles,” gang fights that consumed the seaside resorts, to the outrage of the citizens. Out in the early May sunshine, rows of service barbers gleefully wielded their electric clippers, reducing everyone to (very) short backs and sides.
There were several thousand young men on the camp, well over 99 percent extremely “bolshy,” a short form of Bolshevik, meaning seriously truculent. After shearing, everyone passed down the long lines of trestle tables in the hangars, to be issued with boots, socks, undershorts, undershirts, shirts, trousers, blouses, and berets. After everyone changed back in the dormitory huts, the civilian clothes were packed in suitcases and mailed home. There was one exception: a very small group destined for flying training and thus immediate junior officer status. There were eighteen of us in a single hut trying to survive the week. Because of the shirts.
All our uniforms were of very scratchy serge, but the shirts were different. Those destined to be airmen, or “erks,” had shirts of the same rough serge. Those destined for officer cadet status were issued shirts in lawn, a type of soft cotton. It was a dead giveaway.
As soon as we emerged for “chow” in the eating hall, it was plain to all that if you really wished to thump an officer, the next two days would provide the last chance. We retired to our hut, and more or less barricad
ed ourselves in.
You could tell very quickly who had been to boarding school and who not. The former immediately grabbed the beds farthest from the door, standard dormitory lore. When the NCOs came in at the crack of dawn to waken the exhausted and fast-asleep youngsters, they would start bed-tipping nearest the door. Those at the far end had a few seconds to wake up and get vertical with a bleary but cheerful “Morning, Sarge.” It helped the day start without a tangle of sheets, blankets, and bed frame. It also meant you did not have to put the whole thing back together again.
The senior NCOs knew perfectly well we were targeted by the rest of the intake and, to be fair to them, stuck fairly close to us. Two days after kitting out, the “soft shirts” were ordered to assemble with kit bags near Main Gate. We were off to boot camp. Even though we were destined for a flying training base, there was still the ritual of twelve weeks of basic training.
That would mean endless polishing of metal buttons, leather boots, pressing of uniforms, marching and counter-marching, rifle drill, running, obstacle courses, physical training, and saluting just about everything but the trees.
A blue bus showed up and took us to the nearest rail station. In the late afternoon, we were decanted from a branch line on a wayside halt in the middle of the wilds of Lincolnshire, at a place called Kirton Lindsey.
As we stood blinking in the sunlight on the platform, surrounded by our kit bags, a small corporal strutted up and planted himself in front of me. I am no giant, but he was much shorter. He wore his flat hat well forward, with the black plastic peak just above the tip of his nose. This meant that to see where he was going, he had to hold himself like a ramrod, extracting the most height from his tiny frame.
Even so, he had trouble glancing upward. I was aware of two malevolent sultanas glaring up from beneath the cap’s peak. Then he spoke in a shrill and outraged squeak. I learned later he was always outraged.
“Do you know who I am?” he screeched.
“No, Corporal, I don’t.”
“Well, I’m Jesus Christ, that’s who I am. And that’s how you’ll bleeding well treat me.”
The tone was set. I had met my first British junior NCO. Corporal Davis.
The twelve weeks of boot camp passed quietly. We polished and marched, attended the gymnasium and the rifle range, practiced with .303 rifles and submachine guns, marched again, polished again, and saluted everything. And there was the drill. Hour after hour of it. Up two three, down two three, general salute, present arms, trail arms, port arms, shoulder arms, left turn, right wheel, halt, quick march. AttenSHUN.
Honestly, we were not a success. Some of us had been in the cadet force at school and pretty much knew the ropes. Others were new to it and quite bewildered. Our course leader was the oldest at twenty-six, with university and a doctorate in chemistry behind him. I was the Benjamin, six months younger than the next youngest.
Our drill sergeant was not the monster of comedy films, but a kindly flight sergeant who treated us like wayward nephews. At that age, everyone over forty seems elderly. He tried so hard to turn us out like the Brigade of Guards and failed nobly. Once, after we had ended up at the edge of the parade ground in a tangle of limbs, he actually burst into tears. It is a terrible thing to see a grown man cry. (Well, it used to be.) Though we had a few shillings a week pocket money, we took him down to the local pub, the First and Last, and got him well plastered.
Finally, there was a passing-out parade and we prepared for the next camp and what we had come for—basic flying training. At this point, we divided. The six trainee navigators went off to one training school and the remaining pilots to another. We spent one last evening in the First and Last, downing foaming pint after pint, singing really bawdy songs, knowing the villagers, wives, and all were listening in the neighboring bar, pretending to be shocked while missing not a word, and laughing their heads off.