Boy Entrant; The Recollections of a Royal Air Force Brat (18 page)

Physical Training wasn’t confined just to our sojourn in the Initial Training Squadron; it was a solid part of the curriculum throughout our entire 18-months’ long Boy Entrant training. Even at the very end, when it came close to the time for our final passing-out parade from Boy Entrants, we were taken on daily five-mile route marches—on the double! Although a general improvement in our physical fitness wasn’t noticeable in the short term because it was so gradual, we were all in excellent physical condition at the completion of our Boy Entrant training.

Sports were also an important part of the physical training regime at St. Athan. Wednesday afternoon of each week was dedicated specifically as Sports Afternoon, during which we were expected to participate in an organized sporting activity. St. Athan catered to almost every sport one could think of. In addition to the usual football, rugby, cross-country, cricket, basketball, boxing and field hockey, there were more exotic activities such as fencing, small bore rifle shooting and of course, the unofficial but ever-popular Egyptian PT—the latter being best performed in a horizontal unmoving position on one’s bed with the eyes closed. Unfortunately, as well as being unofficial it was also strongly discouraged and heaven help any Boy Entrant caught in the billets engaged in this somnolent activity by the ever-watchful DIs. If one wanted to practise Egyptian PT, rather than one of the more physically demanding Sports Afternoon pursuits, it was advisable to find a hidden nook far from prying eyes where such inactivity could be enjoyed undisturbed. Some Boy Entrants became experts at finding such hidey holes and on any given sports afternoon a small dedicated number of them participated in this less than physically demanding “activity” whilst most of the Boy Entrant population engaged itself in the healthier fully-approved physical sports. Personally, I took the opportunity to pursue my current passion—learning to swim—and so enjoyed this and many other sports afternoons thrashing about in the pool.

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Not all of our time in the Initial Training Squadron was devoted to the physical. Further education was the fourth pillar of our overall training.

The Education Centre consisted of a conglomeration of classrooms and offices built in the same single storey wooden style of construction as our billets. Corporal Hillcrest marched us there on the first day that we were scheduled to start classes. As soon as he dismissed us, we gathered around a bulletin board to find our first classroom.

It was an odd sensation. When I’d left school back in Coleraine, I thought I had left it forever, but here I was back in the familiar surroundings of a classroom again. There were desks and blackboards, and the smell of chalk dust mingled with the aroma of freshly sharpened cedar-wood pencils. RAF history was the first item on our agenda and waiting to welcome us was our old friend Pilot Officer Morgan-Williams, who had briefly lectured us on this very same topic during our induction.

“Be seated lads,” he said to no one in particular as we flooded into the room. I chose a desk by the wall in a row midway between the front and the back of the class. The chubby little officer, whose dark jowls always seemed to imply that he’d forgotten to put a blade in his razor that morning, waited patiently until everyone was seated and then started roll call. When each person’s name was called out he answered by shouting “Sir!” Morgan-Williams then handed out some notebooks and pencils and for the next hour we learned about the organization of our service by listening and copying the notes he chalked up on the blackboard. First, he described how the service was divided and subdivided into increasingly smaller units and then he explained the rank structure.

We learned that, starting from the top, the RAF is divided into several Commands. Famous amongst these, from their wartime exploits, were Fighter Command and Bomber Command. But in addition to those, there were Transport, Coastal, Flying Training and Technical Training Commands. We, of course, were current members of the latter.

The Commands were then subdivided into Groups: No. 1 Group, Fighter Command, for example. Groups were made up of Units—a Unit being usually a Station, although not necessarily so. And Units were broken down into Wings. At St. Athan, we had No. 1 Wing and No. 2 Wing. Wings, in turn, were made up of Squadrons and Squadrons were made up of Flights. Although a Flight is the smallest official subdivision in the RAF, a very small group of people organized into marching order was generally referred to as a Squad.

At the conclusion of our lesson on RAF history and a short break, during which I took the opportunity of having a few puffs on a Woodbine, we moved to another classroom and a different education officer. This one was also a Pilot Officer, who wore a hairy battle dress with the almost invisible thin stripe that signified his rank on the epaulettes. The hairy uniform marked him as a National Service conscript—probably a teacher in civilian life, like Pilot Officer Morgan-Williams. The measly pittance of a salary earned by the poor souls suffering through this compulsory duty, didn’t quite afford them the luxury of purchasing one of the nice smooth uniforms favoured by career officers.

Shortly after we had taken our seats at our desks, another education officer entered the classroom and then both officers proceeded to pass out exam papers. This, they informed us, was an exam to test the level of our individual knowledge. The results would be used to break us into a number of smaller groups with different levels of competency, whose specific needs would be easier to meet.

Following this exam, most of us were assigned into the groups as promised, but two or three boys did so well that they were head and shoulders above everyone else. Significantly, they were all from Scotland, which at that time was reputed to have the highest educational standards in the United Kingdom. These boys were immediately offered transfers to the Apprentice training school at Halton, where lads of our own age went through a 3-year training course, emerging as skilled tradesmen with the rank of Junior Technician. By contrast, our 18-month training course would send us out into the regular service as semi-skilled tradesmen, who would then need to take an additional Fitter’s course to reach skilled technician status.

For the remainder of our time in the Initial Training Squadron, we spent at least two half-days in the Education Centre each week studying Mathematics, Physics, English, Geography and RAF History combined with Current Affairs.

Not surprisingly, Current Affairs dealt mainly with situations in the world that directly impacted the Royal Air Force, with most of the focus being on events of the recent past rather than those that were strictly “current” affairs. The Suez crisis had just ended, so we learned a lot about Colonel Nasser and the British and French invasion of the Canal Zone. We were told that Nasser had scuttled ships in the middle of the canal to block it. Also, that the Americans disapproved of the entire invasion and had been successful in putting pressure on Britain and France to withdraw.

The topics were interesting, but my favourite classroom subject was Physics. There was so much interesting stuff to learn. The two important subjects for my group were the theory of flight and electromagnetism. The Physics education officer frequently used clever demonstration models to show us how things worked, like lift on an aeroplane wing, or how iron filings could be used to show the normally invisible lines of force between the North and South poles of a magnet.

At the beginning, my knowledge of both subjects was just about zero. I didn’t have a clue how an aircraft managed to remain up in the sky and as far as electricity was concerned, all I knew was that if I turned the light switch on, lo and behold the bulb would light, or if I poked around in an electric socket it would give me an unpleasant shock.

As time passed, I learned that an aircraft wing is lifted because the airflow across it develops low pressure on the top surface and high pressure on the bottom surface. As the high pressure tries to get to the low-pressure area it pushes the wing upwards. Theory was reinforced by a demonstration using a cross-section model of an aerofoil—the end-on shape of an aircraft wing—as a fan blew smoke across it. This made the normally invisible flow of air visible, revealing that the smoke molecules were squeezing together as they passed under the bottom surface, creating high pressure and moving apart in the low pressure flow over the top of the aerofoil.

The effect was further reinforced by another aerofoil model, but this time there were rows of little transparent plastic tubes inserted into the upper and lower surfaces of the wing from within the model. The tubes all led to a small rack, where they were arrayed vertically alongside each other. Each tube contained the same small volume of red ink, so that all ink levels were horizontally equal. When the fan started blowing air across the aerofoil, the level in each tube went either up or down, depending on which surface the other end of the tube was located. Levels in the tubes attached to the lower surface tended to drop, while those attached to the upper level tended to rise. This gave us a visual demonstration of the pressure differences at multiple spots on the wing’s surface.

Electromagnetism was probably the most important subject for those of us who were going to train as aircraft electricians. In addition to his demonstration of the magnetic lines of force emanating from a magnet, our teacher used a little instrument known as a galvanometer to show us how an electric current was induced into a length of wire when it was passed through the magnetic field. Of course, this is the basic principle on which the production of electricity depends, but I hadn’t known that previously. We learned important physical laws of electricity, like Faraday’s Law, Lenz’s Law and Ohm’s Law. Overall, the education was excellent and by the end of our time in the Initial Training Squadron I was very well prepared to tackle the more practical aspects of my chosen trade.

CHAPTER 5

Home Sweet Home?

B
y the time we had finished our first session at the Education Centre, Corporal Hillcrest was waiting outside to march us back to the billets. I was looking forward to getting back there so that I could dump my newly acquired notebooks and go to tea. We “fell-in” in threes on the road adjacent to the Education Centre and set off marching when Hillcrest gave the order. I don’t know whether it was weariness, or just the fact that we still hadn’t got into the habit of swinging our arms up to shoulder level, but halfway back to the billets Hillcrest called a halt.

“You’re marching like a bloody shower of shit again,” he bawled. “Well, I’ve had my tea laddies, so I’m in no hurry to get back. We can just bloody-well wait here for a while until you bloody-well decide to get your bloody arms up shoulder high.” He paused briefly for breath, very red in the face by this time. He then continued in a quiet, but sneering voice, “Don’t think you’ll break my heart, laddies. You might have broken your mothers’ hearts, but you won’t bloody-well break mine!”

Corporal Hillcrest kept us standing at attention for a good ten minutes before finally calling out the command to march. We were famished and I know that I swung my arms shoulder high with so much force that it felt they were going to fly off. Mercifully, we soon arrived back at the billets and were dismissed so that we could get to the mess for much needed sustenance.

Hillcrest seemed to enjoy making our lives miserable, which he did as often as possible and in many ways. For the most minor of infractions, he would frequently detail people to perform evening fatigues, or make them run around the Square on the double, with a rifle held in both hands at arm’s length above their heads. But what could we do? We were the lowest on the pecking order with no one to complain to. It was just a case of tolerating the punishments and indignities with the knowledge that they couldn’t last forever.

Over and above what Corporal Hillcrest might have dished out in his mean-spirited manner, we got our fair share of normal fatigues during the weekly Tuesday bull-nights. Everyone in the billet was expected to pitch in to help in the task of applying floor polish with the bumper, then bumpering it off with the blanket pads. On top of that, Senior Boy Willie Burns doled out additional cleaning tasks, because each billet had a responsibility to provide representatives to perform cleaning duties in the communal areas. The worst of these assignments was to clean the toilets and washbasins in the ablutions area. Of course, we didn’t call them the “Ablutions”, but instead called them the Bogs—the RAF slang name by which they were universally known. There were also the ironing room, bathrooms, windows and the exterior of the billet area.

Wednesday mornings always involved some kind of inspection. Usually, it was a “stand-by-your-beds” type of inspection by the Flight Commander, during which our billet would be inspected for microscopic specks of dust and our persons for the slightest hint of tarnish on our buttons or cap badges, lack of creases in our uniforms, or a less than perfect shine on our boots. That was on a good day. Periodically, on not-so-good days, we would experience the thrill of a full-blown kit inspection.