BULL, BERETS AND BOOT POLISH
One-time recruits share their memories of National Service
BRIAN Iles learned how to take the rough with the smooth in the RAF, though the first eight weeks at Hednesford on Cannock Chase were decidedly rough …
I suffered more than some because I was lazy. Early on we had a kit inspection, which we prepared for the evening before. Getting your bit of the hut spick and span, especially your boots, displayed at the bottom of the bed, black toe-caps you could see your face in …
Coming back from early drill, I gasped to see mine pulled out of line. What a brilliant reward for my efforts! Then, farther down the line, another pair, so shiny they gave away the real story. It wasn’t the first time I was outshone by mates. Don’t remind me of my uniform buttons.
It wasn’t all spit and polish though, there was plenty of fun. And, after all, we weren’t destined for the front line were we?
Colin, my best mate and I, risked anything for a bit of extra time off. Leaving our colleagues with their endless ‘bull’, we’d skive off down the NAAFI on a Saturday night: “Piece o’ cake, cutta tea, sausage rawl” he’d order in his best Bristolian. Then we’d settle down for a delicious hour of horror – Quatermass!
For real fun, our PT instructor used to get us touching our toes, then leaping high and clapping our hands. Off the ground we were ordered to shout a dirty word. I remember it as ‘ Round Objects’, recalling an Air Ministry joke about a clerk putting a side note on a circular from the boss. A joker had added, “Who is this fellow Round, and to what does he object?”
I suppose the funniest joke was the one I was the butt of. I couldn’t wait for our adventure on the assault course. But it was over the hurdle I looked forward to the most that I came to grief.
At the top of the climbing frame, something got caught and I flipped over, falling to the ground in what seemed like a second and forever. What a, er, twerp I felt.
And then in another ‘forever’ moment thought, “Blige! What if me rifle had stabbed me somewhere!?”
So it was up before the Squadron
Leader for me. After the briefest flicker of sympathy when I was examined for injury, I was roundly told off by the big man for being so inept. But the funniest bit, looking back, was that he was most angry when in answer to a question I replied “RAF” instead of “Royal Air Force.”
I can’t remember what sentence I suffered on that occasion. All that sticks in my mind is the ‘corporate’ punishment we all suffered with such boring chores.
For me the worst was cleaning the toilets. Especially the seemingly endless hours rubbing Vim into yellow, pitted baths.
To be fair though the most miserable ‘chore’ of all was climbing Kit Bag Hill from the railway station late on a Sunday night after a ‘48’ weekend home.
What we peace-time Brylcreem Boys had to bear!
It all ended kinda well for yours truly. Because my mum was a widow with four young kids, I got a home posting at RAF Pucklechurch. Forever a civil servant, me, I got a cushy number as a ‘clerk, accounts’ in the Pay Office!
Harry Harrop, who was in the RAF from 1959 to 1961, sent us a long and fascinating account of his time in unform which unfortunately we cannot run in full.
Here’s a flavour of it, though, starting with his time at RAF Cardington in Bedfordshire:
All the intake spent a couple of weeks for preliminaries and to be kitted out. First, we were told that we may have been passed as fit in “Civvie Street” but that didn’t mean we were fit enough for the RAF and we would have to have another medical.
Well that cheered a lot of the group up and put a smile on their faces as there was a possibility they may yet escape.
What a laugh.
The hearing tests were carried with the background of heavy trucks going past along with someone revving a kite up.
The doctor held his watch arm up and brought it towards you and you had to tell him when you could hear the ticking. The other tests were of equal “intensity” and nobody failed.
He was then moved to RAF Bridgnorth:
This was where the rubber hit the road. The Barrack Square was sacred ground and everything sparkled with absolute cleanliness.
Our raw recruit intake arrived by RAF trucks each with a canvas roof and spilled out on the tarmac to be met by four NCOs.
We were shepherded into some form of parade order with raucous help of our not too polite NCO. We
were certainly a motley crew. After about a week we realized that the D squadron NCO, a sergeant, from time to time had a trick up his sleeve.
He was tall and well-built with a handlebar moustache, and when he had sorted a new intake out on the parade ground for the first time he would have a rifle with him.
While laying the law down one of the billet doors opened and an Airman came out with his hands in his pockets and no beret and strolled onto the parade ground (three unforgivable sins).
“You there, Airman, come here!” bellowed the sergeant.
“Get lost,” shouts the Airman. With no more ado the sergeant raises his rifle and “Bang”.
The Airman falls down, the billet door opens, two airmen rush out and pick up their comrade, go back to the billet and slam the door.
The shock only lasted a couple of minutes. Of course, it was only a blank cartridge and the whole thing was staged. If that happened now the RAF would be sued for millions for violating somebody’s human rights or some such twaddle. To us it was just a bit of fun.
John Merritt (Royal Army Service Corps, 1957-1959) was a victim of bureaucratic incompetence, but it all came good in the
end
On completion of training I was posted to 2 Infantry Brigade HQ, Kiwi Barracks, Bulford Camp Salisbury Plain. On arrival I could not find Kiwi Barracks.
A passing fellow soldier pointed out a group of deserted buildings, surrounded by tall grass and the odd broken widow, informing me that 2 Brigade had left ages ago – four months to be exact.
He suggested I report to the Military Police who were nearby. The all-powerful Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal, a Major, in charge of the unit phoned Aldershot and tore them off a strip. He located the unit in Plymouth.
I was given a meal and provided with the necessary new travel documents. He arranged for one of his men to drive me to Salisbury Station. He further ordered that the duty driver pick me up at Plymouth Station and he had the cooks out of bed to provide me with a meal on my arrival a Seaton Barracks at around 2am. You could say I joined the unit in some style.
Life in the Brigade HQ was pretty comfortable when in camp but very uncomfortable on the frequent exercises, when we got very wet. On two occasions a rum ration, which was measured into the tea, was authorised by the Medical Officer.
The HQ offices were in the old Crownhill Fort. We started at 9am, working for the Brigadier, the Brigade Major and a number of other Staff Officers under the supervision of the Chief Clerk a WO1 SSM.
The Officers used to ring for us on a system seen in country houses,
a box on the wall with little windows indicating who was calling.
We lived in wooden spider accommodation across the road from the Fort separate from the stone built barracks occupied by the Leicestershire Regiment.
I have a lasting memory of a barrack room full of blokes lying on their beds, regularly listening to Listen with Mother on the Rediffusion radio. You can just imagine the answers to questions, the comments and suggestions expressed.
Brian Blestowe was among the last men to be called up, “being invited to join on April 19 1960 by post, just before my 23rd birthday”. Life in the RAF, he found,
was not all that bad:
The RAF were not too drill-mad, but we were subject to the usual stupidity of “the Bull” aspects of initial service life, like not being able to walk on the polished floors of the billets, having a set of clothes and toilet items on display in your locker, all the stuff you actually used being jammed together in an unhygienic kit bag and having to fold your bedding up into a “bed pack” each day.
At the end of basic training, I was lucky as you were allocated your trade after completion of this initial stage of your service and in my case I was selected to become an Air Wireless Fitter.
This involved a long training course at Yatesbury (Wiltshire) from the end of June 1960 to the end of May 1961.
After training at Yatesbury he was sent to RAF Mount Batten, an RAF Marine Service station on the Plymouth Sound.
I became a fully qualified Air Wireless Fitter and promoted to a Junior Technician which increased my pay a bit.
In my last three months of service my pay was all of £3 a week, as I usually travelled by train to Bristol each weekend to see my girlfriend and the fare was £2 I did not have much left to spend on luxuries, but as all your worldly needs of food, accommodation and clothing were provided, life was not too difficult.
Although I was an Air Wireless Fitter, I never saw an operational aircraft in my time in the Air Force.
The service accommodation at Mount Batten was positioned in a quite a desirable site on the edge of the Sound, in a three storey block.
The rooms were open dormitories with about 20 bed spaces. I was on the top floor and the views out of the windows were magnificent.
In those days there were still a few Transatlantic liners in operation, which occasionally called into Plymouth, I can remember seeing the S.S. United States on one of its visits. I saw it in more recent years rusting away in Philadelphia, a sad sight.
As National Service was very much like a prison sentence, in that you knew the date of starting and when it was due to end, there was great use made of «Chuff Charts».
In the superior mathematically educated personnel in the higherrated trades in the Royal Air Force
this had been developed into the «Chuff Factor». This was not just a chart on which you crossed days off as they were done; it was days done over days to do and once it got to one you were hopefully on your way out, and when it got to 729 you had made it, although I was officially on the «G» Reserve until June 30 1969.
At 19, David Oates found himself in Japan, and having to grow up very quickly.
I was enlisted for National Service in the Royal Army Medical Corps on February 7 1952. Following my three months basic training at Keogh Barracks and Crookham Barracks I was posted to Tidworth Military Hospital on Salisbury Plain.
I think I made an assumption that I would be at the hospital for the whole of my two years’ service then, out of the blue, I was put on a draft for Korea (to serve in a Field Hospital as it was in the middle of the war in Korea) and I left Southampton, aboard the troopship Empire Orwell on November 18 1952.
On December 19, we arrived at Pusan, it turned out that only seven of our small detachments of twelve men were needed at this time and the remainder were to go on to Kure, Japan.
I was taken on strength on the day of arrival and due to my previous experience of operating theatre work I joined the surgical team at the British Commonwealth General Hospital, Kure.
Casualties from Korea were transported by hospital ship, MedAir Evac and sometimes helicopter. They also arrive by train from Iwakuni (a port and airfield along the coast, west of Kure), and an ambulance would transport casualties from Kure railway station to the hospital.
At 19 years of age working in the surgical team at British Commonwealth General Hospital was probably the most maturing experience of my life.
I seemed to suddenly grow up and was undertaking duties and responsibilities that would not have been dreamed of in civilian life. My working days were always hectic and there was little time for recreation, although we did generally have a Saturday or a Sunday off
duty, a weekend occasionally and rest and relaxation periodically.
R&R for me was spent at a Rest Camp, at Miyajima, an island west of Kure. Miyajima known as a sacred island (no one was supposed to die there) provided a tranquil haven, an opportunity to relax from the moment the ferry docked. You walked everywhere as no vehicles were allowed on the island, although I do remember that the camp, run by the Australians, had a Land Rover. Patients from the Commonwealth Hospital also convalesced there, but they had to be ambulant and self-caring.
There was tremendous comradeship in the department and it was important not to become depressed by the appalling injuries sustained by many of the casualties.
On Friday December 11 1953 we had to report to JRBD (Japan Reinforcement Base Depot), at Hiro, in readiness for our departure to the UK on Monday December 14.
At midday we sailed out of Kure Harbour for our month long voyage home. I well remember, to this day, the sadness that came over me on our departure, but at the time I could not understand this feeling. Looking back I realise it was the friendship, which had been built up, during my service, which is now the comradeship that I think and speak about.
My return voyage proved to be very busy. A small team, including my long-term friend Syd Francis and myself, were designated to provide 24-hour total care to a patient with a fracture of the spine.
As the years have gone on I have often wondered how those men, who passed through our hands during the time that I was at BCGH, are getting on? Also the young man with the spinal injury, which I helped to nurse on his return to the United Kingdom.
The broken bones, the scarred tissue from burns and wounds will have, in the main, healed, but what of the emotional trauma that these men might still be suffering? I don’t know for during the time which has passed, I have not had the good fortune to meet or hear from any patient from that time.
BT is very grateful to everyone who took the trouble to send us their stories. If anyone else has tales of National Service to share, mail our letters page – Bristol. times@b-nm.co.uk