Boy Entrant; The Recollections of a Royal Air Force Brat (19 page)

Willie Burns was a no-nonsense Scottish lad who was the oldest and probably the most mature boy in my billet. From Corporal Blandford’s point of view, he must have been the perfect choice to appoint as the billet’s Senior Boy. The DIs couldn’t be everywhere and besides, with the exception of Corporal Hillcrest, they all lived in married quarters, which was a considerable distance away. Therefore, one person in each billet had been appointed to the position of Senior Boy. It wasn’t exactly a promotion, but they were given a dark red-coloured lanyard to wear around their left shoulder and a limited amount of power over the other inhabitants of their respective billets. A Senior Boy’s job was to make the corporal’s life easier by shepherding the inhabitants of his billet out on parade in good time, supervise bull nights—“domestic evenings” in official parlance—and keep an eye on the daily schedules to make sure everyone was prepared for the day’s itinerary.

* * *

On the day that Corporal Hillcrest had deliberately halted us for the first time to make us late for our meal, essentially putting us at the very end of the long queue, I returned to the billet after tea and cleaned my buttons, badges and boots ready for the next day. I wanted to get this over with so that I could go back to the swimming pool with the others and continue pursuing my goal of learning to swim.

Once in the pool, I splashed and somersaulted in the water for a while, continuing to develop confidence in my body’s natural buoyancy. Then Basset showed me a new technique that looked as though it could be helpful. He stood at a spot in the shallow end, maybe ten feet from the edge of the pool and crouched down with arms outstretched like Superman getting ready to leap from a tall building. For a moment he crouched there, concentrating, then he launched himself towards the handrail around the edge of the pool. His feet came off the bottom and for a few seconds he was gliding through water, arms outstretched in front of him and without any visible means of support, before he grabbed onto the handrail. Putting his feet back down on the bottom of the pool, he turned to face us with a look of self-satisfied triumph on his broadly grinning face.

“Come on, try it,” he shouted.

And that’s what I tried to do for the remainder of the evening in the pool, although it certainly wasn’t an instant success. At first, each time I tried to launch myself forward it took more courage than I could summon up to let my feet leave the security of the pool’s tiled floor, so that I made countless false starts. But by moving inch by inch nearer to the handrail after each failed attempt, I finally got to a position where it only took a forward fall with outstretched arms to be able to catch hold of it. Bassett had made gliding from about ten feet out look so easy, but I found it to be the most difficult thing in the universe that evening. So I lowered my expectations and just stayed close to the edge, falling forward and only allowing my feet and legs to come off the bottom when I had securely grasped the handrail. But it was a start! I was able to feel the resistance of the water as it buoyed me up when I fell forwards and so I warily started to trust it. Impatient as I was, learning to swim wasn’t going to happen overnight, but just being in the pool was enjoyable by itself and every little improvement towards my eventual goal felt like a major triumph.

Next morning it was drill on the Square as usual, but first the button inspection. The weather had turned colder and we were in winter dress, which meant wearing our greatcoats, which also meant having another set of buttons to clean each evening. At 0755 hours, we all started tumbling out of the billets, falling into three ranks on the road. Corporal Blandford seemed to have drawn the short straw this morning and was calling us to look lively and get fell in—with less of the talking. Then, by 08:00, we were all on parade.

We went through all the usual preliminaries leading up to inspection: attention; right dress; open order march, and then Blandford started at one end of the front rank and worked his way from one person to the next, scanning buttons, hat badges and boot leather with a practised eye in his search for the slightest blemish. All was going well, with everyone seeming to be up to par and there being nothing much more serious than an occasional tug at someone’s uniform here, or a beret straightened there—that is, until the corporal arrived in front of Potter—he of the two left feet. Blandford’s calm, business-like manner suddenly disappeared when he beheld Potter and was replaced by a look of horror, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Somehow, Potter looked all bundled up under his greatcoat; his buttons were buttoned in the wrong buttonholes and his face wore the look of a helpless lamb being offered up to the slaughterhouse. Just for a moment, although it seemed like an eternity, Corporal Blandford was speechlessly transfixed to the spot, his mouth open, unable to do anything but stare at the DI’s nightmare before him. Potter just stood there, pale, innocent and wide-eyed, waiting for the inevitable.

Finally, Blandford found his voice. “Potter,” he roared. “What the
bloody hell
has happened to you?”

“Dunno, corporal,” Potter replied weakly.

“Well, you look like a bloody pregnant fairy,” Blandford bawled, right into Potter’s face and spacing out the last three words for additional emphasis.

Cruel as it seems in retrospect, we all burst out laughing. It was a reflex action that had more to do with Blandford’s remark breaking the nervous tension, than actually laughing at Potter. For one thing, the laughter came as a spontaneous reaction to the sense of relief each of us felt that because the spotlight was so narrowly focused on Potter, it enabled us to escape close scrutiny. But it was also because there was something comical about a “pregnant fairy”. In my youthful innocence, I had a clear mental image of Tinkerbell wearing maternity clothes. Many years later, armed with the knowledge that “fairy” was a slang term for a homosexual, it suddenly dawned on me what Blandford had really meant that day.

Poor old Potter turned bright red with embarrassment. He was such an inoffensive little chap and I felt very sorry for him, despite laughing at his expense, because he seemed so vulnerable, yet was having a tougher time than most of us. Corporal Blandford ordered him to unbutton his greatcoat and then pulled and tugged on the uniform underneath until the lumps and bumps disappeared. He then made Potter button the greatcoat up again—but properly this time—and the situation was defused.

* * *

Thursday arrived, the first of many such Thursdays—all of them a special day of the week to look forward to. It was Pay Day! Or, as some wags crudely, but aptly, referred to it—The Day the Golden Eagle Shits.

Following the morning drill period, we were marched to the Drill Shed: the concrete-floored building adjoining the gym and swimming pool. It seemed as though everyone else on camp had got there before us and all of them were in large, separate formations spread over the vast Drill Shed floor area. We were marched to a vacant area where we found ourselves facing a row of three or four tables pushed together end to end. Three officers faced us from their seated positions behind the tables. On the table in front of two of the officers, metal boxes lay open to reveal bank notes and silver coins, whilst the third officer surveyed a large ledger that also lay open before him. We were brought to a halt in front of the tables and then Corporal Blandford explained that, on being dismissed, we were to form ourselves alphabetically into rows with those having the same first surname initial as ourselves. The first row was to comprise the “A’s” with the other rows following in alphabetical order towards the rear. Corporal Blandford also instructed us to have our identification card, the RAF form 1250, in our left hand ready to show it to the officers as verification of our identity, although on this, our first Pay Parade, we still had not received our 1250s. The photographs had been taken (no smiling—look straight into the camera) shortly after we’d been issued with our uniforms, but it took time for the RAF to process the identification cards. For the moment, each of us had been given a temporary ID chit, a piece of paper signed by the Squadron Commander bearing our name and service number, as proof of identity.

Blandford continued with instructions on what we needed to do. “When your name is called out,” he said, “come to attention and shout out the last three digits of your service number at the top of your voice. Then march smartly up to the table,” he said, ignoring the fact that there was more than one table, “and come to a halt facing the officers. Remain standing to attention and salute the officers, then show them your twelve-fifty.”

He then went on to explain that on receiving our cash, we were to make a left turn, march smartly away and exit the Drill Shed. Once outside we could individually make our way back to the mess for dinner. After receiving these instructions and being asked the usual “Any questions?” we were dismissed to reform ourselves into alphabetically-ordered rows. Then, when we had reassembled, the senior officer nodded to a sergeant standing near the tables who then faced us, took a deep breath and called out, “Pay parade, attention.” He then turned smartly towards the officer, saluted and informed him, “Initial Training Squadron present and correct, sir!”

The officer returned the salute from his sitting position and at the same time responded with, “Carry on Sergeant.”

The sergeant swivelled around on his heels to face the pay parade once again and then ordered us to stand at ease. A short pause followed to allow the combined echo of our feet to die away and then the officer at the ledger began announcing our surnames in alphabetical order. Each person sprang to attention at the mention of his name, yelled out his “last three” and then headed for the table. Some came smartly to a halt, others slid to a stop, while some just simply stopped walking. The officer did not return the salutes, which wasn’t surprising, considering all the salutes he would have had to return during the hour or so that it took to get through with the pay parade.

First the A’s, then the B’s. Ginge Brown’s name was called and then Richard Butterworth’s. I knew that mine couldn’t be far off. The voice calling out the names wasn’t too loud and that, coupled with the terrible acoustics of the Drill Shed and the general hubbub, made it difficult to hear. Campbell, Callaghan, I strained to hear and then there it was—Carlin.

“Sir, 153,” I yelled, as I came to attention, marched forward to the tables and came to what I hoped was a smartly executed halt and snapped up my salute. The officer on my right glanced up and I thrust my ID chit towards him to read. He looked at it and checked my name off on a long list, then announced “Boy Entrant Carlin, seven and six.”

The officer in front of me counted out three half crowns and pushed them across the table towards me. I took the money with my left hand, took one step backwards, saluted again before executing a smart left turn and then headed for the Drill Shed exit. Once outside I dared to look at the coins in my hand. Seven shillings and sixpence! I was rich—rich, yippee!

Seven and six was approximately equal to 33 pence in present day decimal money, but of course it had greater purchasing power in 1956. This was my spending allowance. We were actually paid a total weekly wage of £2, but the remainder was withheld and then paid to us in a lump sum when we went on leave. I had, however, arranged for a weekly allotment of 10/- (ten shillings) to be sent to my stepmother Annie (at her insistence), which left £1-2s-6d (one pound, two shillings and sixpence) per week to be withheld for my going-on-leave pay.

Anyone who grew up with the pre-decimal currency will probably never forget it. Just like inches, yards and miles, or ounces, pounds and tons, the relationships between the separate units had to be learned at an early age, because they weren’t based on any rational system. The Pound (£) was the basic unit, as it is today. But under the old system it consisted of 20 shillings. The shilling was made up of 12 pennies or pence, which were huge, copper coins measuring approximately 1-1/4 inches in diameter. If that wasn’t bad enough, the coinage also included a large heavy silver coin, slightly larger than the penny, known as the half-crown, which was worth two shillings and sixpence—there being eight of these to a Pound. Then there was the florin, which was another heavy silver coin, but slightly smaller in diameter than the half-crown, and worth two shillings. Besides those two, we had a small silver sixpenny piece and an octagonal brass coloured threepenny, or thruppeny, ‘bit’. There was no other coin of greater value than the half-crown and so the next highest denomination of currency was the ten-shilling note, worth half of a Pound and equal to the present-day 50 pence coin. The smallest denomination was the halfpenny, or hae’penny as it was pronounced. Prior to my time there had been a smaller coin known as a farthing, which was equal to a fourth of a penny, but this was no longer legal tender by the time I was able to count my pennies.

Because the initial of my surname was near the beginning of the alphabet, I got paid before most of the others and was able get to the mess before the queue became long. Then after dinner, I made a beeline for the NAAFI shop. My cigarette hoard lay somewhere between dangerously low and non-existent, so I needed to replenish it with some Woodbines. Knowing that the money wouldn’t burn any holes in my pocket, I bought five packets of ten cigarettes all at once, each costing one and tu’ppence, which came to total of five shillings and tenpence. I also bought a bottle of Corona orangeade, a locally made soft drink, for about 9d (ninepence). The price of the Corona included a small cash deposit, which would be refunded when I returned the bottle. Having made these important purchases, I headed for the billet to enjoy a cigarette and some orangeade, but with very little left of my original seven and sixpence.

The intensive weekly training programme contained one or two oases: Sports Afternoon and Padre’s Hour.

Most of the religious denominations, namely Church of England and PM & UB (Presbyterians, Methodists, Unitarians and Baptists were collectively grouped together as the PM & UB denomination) actually took religious instruction during Padre’s Hour, but not the Catholics, who were referred to as RCs in the RAF. Father Carberry was rarely in attendance when we arrived at the RC church for Padre’s Hour. Instead, we made ourselves comfortable in the common room, where we were free to spend the time as we pleased. There was a gramophone and a selection of ancient 78 rpm records to play on it. The records were all favourites from the previous generation, mostly Glenn Miller recordings. They were okay to listen to, but an Elvis or a Tommy Steele record would have been much more welcome. A ping-pong table occupied one end of the common room and bats were provided so that we could indulge in some table tennis—if we could find a ball that wasn’t cracked. And there were books and magazines to read, mostly about church issues or foreign missionary work. Yes, Padre’s Hour at the RC church was like a little refuge in an otherwise hostile world. Perhaps that was Father Carberry’s intention; maybe not, but it was okay in my book.