Tracing our footprints stamped at Stable Hill

The article on the Diyatalawa Army Camp on December 14, in the Sunday Times “Plus” was very exciting and encouraging. It took me way back to my transformation from Civvy Street to a serviceman, 45 years ago at Stable Hill.

On November 17, 1969, sixty young men just out of school including the writer boarded two special carriages of Uda Rata Menike night mail train. Each one of us was carrying a large white sack, ( Ali Kakula in Air Force colloquial jargon) resembling an elephant leg. Singing and dancing throughout the night, our batch reached the Diyatalawa Railway Station by 6 a.m. the following day.

A pretty view of the surrounding hills dressed in the morning mist greeted us -- Fox Hill rising in the distance, the C.C.C. emblem, roofs of zinc painted green all around.

The pleasure of admiring the scenic beauty disappeared as a khaki clad group of tough-looking men appeared from nowhere. Black bands and batons in their hands made us freeze.

They shepherded us into two trucks that took off at a lighting speed to Fox Hill, the one and only Ground Combat and Recruit Training Centre of the Royal Ceylon Air Force at that time.

Out of the thousands of past and present Air Force members, men and women who have been trained at Diyatalawa are more fortunate than the others trained elsewhere as the conditions and the mountainous terrain in and around Stable Hill created a location ideal for training.

They may be having tons of nostal- gic and unforgettable memories while they were tenderfoots in the Air Force, that could be useful for the proposed publication.

I wish the three veterans led by Air Vice Marshal Brendan Sosa all the strength, courage and determination in completing the uphill task of writing the book about the Diyatalawa Air Force Training Centre.

Rohan Wijekoon Former Base Warrant Officer Sri Lanka Air Force Base,

Katunayake