Boy Entrant; The Recollections of a Royal Air Force Brat Read online

  When I’d changed into my PE shorts, I followed the others to the shallow end, and eased my way into the water. It wasn’t cold, just a pleasantly comfortable temperature. We recognized a few other denizens of the shallow end as ITS boys, so we joined up with them and for the next couple of hours we all splashed and jumped around in the water, getting used to moving around in it, gradually gaining the confidence we needed before we’d ever be able to swim. Bassett was having a great time flipping somersaults in the shallow water. He would stand up and then plunge his head into the pool. The next thing I’d see was his feet come up and then disappear before his head popped back out again. It looked like fun, so I tried it but only managed to get water up my nose and quickly resurfaced coughing and choking.

  “No, no,” he said. “Do it like this,” and he pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger before ducking below the surface once again.

  I followed his example and this time managed to turn a complete loop under the water. It surprised me that I could hear the noise made by others splashing while I was submerged, although it sounded muffled and far away. The experience was exhilarating, and I spent the remainder of the time in the pool, flipping somersault after somersault until it was time to go back to our billets and get ready for the evening trip to the mess hall. But I knew that there would be many return visits to the pool—and very soon.

  Back at the billet I resumed preparation for the kit inspection on Wednesday morning. Indeed, these preparations consumed the next two days of our lives, interspersed by brief excursions when we were marched, denim-clad, to the tailor shop to collect our items of uniform and to the mess for meals.

  Tuesday night arrived, and the kit inspection loomed large in everyone’s consciousness. On Wednesday morning, all items of kit needed to be laid out on our beds in a very precise arrangement, so it was just as important to get everything folded in readiness as it was to iron, clean and polish. A poster prominently displayed in every billet, illustrated the exact layout we needed to abide by.

  The bed pack was a basic part of the layout, but on top of it we needed to place our greatcoat, folded in three with the buttons facing outwards. Then, our Best Blue, trousers on the bottom and tunic on top folded in two with the buckle at the fold. The small pack came next with its bottom brass buckles facing towards the foot of the bed, and finally the SD hat, complete with gleaming hat badge and ITS hatband, topped off the stack.

  The remainder of our kit had to be displayed in rows across the blanket-covered mattress. The first row consisted of three equal-size stacks of garments, all folded in the prescribed manner. Midway down the bed, a snow-white towel was to be stretched lengthwise across it and tucked under the mattress on either side. On top of the towel we were supposed to set out an array of small articles such as socks and gloves, folded in some cases or tucked into tight little balls in others. The array needed to be balanced so that whatever went on the left side was mirror-imaged on the right. Just about everything we had been issued with and that we weren’t going to be wearing at that particular moment was to be displayed on the surface of the bed, including our brushes and the button stick. We also needed to include personal items such as soap and toothbrushes, and the cleaning materials we had purchased.

  On the floor at the foot of the bed we had to place one pair of our highly polished bulled boots that had their laces pulled tight and the ends tucked away out of sight. These were flanked on either side by our plimsolls, with laces similarly tightened.

  If getting our stuff ready for kit inspection wasn’t enough, we also had to polish the billet floor until it too gleamed. This meant slopping dollops of orange floor polish on the linoleum, then spreading it out and rubbing it in with the bumper. After that, we put a “pad” made from an old blanket under the bumper to buff the floor into a shine. Everyone swept and bumpered his own bed-space and we all took turns at bumpering the central billet floor until it gleamed. In the morning we would only have to give it a quick once-over again with the bumper, and it would be ready for inspection.

  As 2130 hours, lights-out time, approached we were all more than ready to collapse into bed, but there was one last ritual to be completed—bed check. This was a nightly routine that took place during all phases of Boy Entrant training. At 2100 hours or thereabouts, the Duty ITS Corporal made his rounds of all billets. As he entered our billet, someone yelled out the mandatory alert, “NCO present!” We all sprang to attention.

  “Stand by your beds,” the corporal ordered.

  Each of us made our way to the end of our bed, and stood there to attention, facing the centre of the room. The corporal then walked the length of the room to make sure that each bed had a Boy Entrant standing alongside it. When he had satisfied himself that everyone was present and correct, he dismissed us with “Carry-on,” as he went on his way to pay a visit to the next billet on his rounds.

  I put my kit in neat piles under my bed in readiness for the morning, and then went to the washroom to clean up before turning in for the night. At 2130 hours, the lights were switched off and then, as we lay in the darkness, the sound of a trumpet playing “Last Post” played softly over the Tannoy, the billet public address system. This was from Radio St. Athan—not a true radio station, but a closed system that was wired to speakers in every billet throughout the camp. The solo trumpeter’s notes played out clear as a bell, interspersed by a soft orchestral rendition of the “Evening Hymn”. This was no Boy Entrant trumpeter, but a professional recording, made by someone who could really play the instrument. The music stopped and there was silence, all talking had to cease by 2200 hours, but we were all too tired to talk anyway. I fell fast asleep recalling the strains of that beautiful music that somehow seemed so comforting in this seemingly hostile new world that I had gone and committed myself to.

  A different trumpet sound woke me up at 0700 hours. It was Reveille! At almost the same time the door of the billet was flung open and the Duty Corporal was in the room yelling, “C’mon, c’mon, let’s have you. Out of bed. Feet on the floor!” Incredible as it seemed, one or two individuals continued sleeping regardless of the racket going on around them, so the corporal shook them roughly by the shoulder to wake them. The

  heavy sleepers each grunted and one muttered something completely unintelligible before coming fully awake.

  There was a Service myth about being unceremoniously awakened in this manner. Supposedly, a sleeping person was immune from being held accountable for the first few semi-conscious utterances made when awakened in this way. I don’t really know if this was true, but if so, it theoretically granted us the right to indulge in downright insubordination to our superiors during that brief moment. In reality, I never knew of anyone who actually put it to the test.

  Wednesday morning. It was the big day! We scrambled out of bed, got washed, and struggled with the unfamiliarity of putting on our new uniforms. The collars again—they were so difficult to work with, but the lace up boots took time for a group of people who had been used to wearing shoes. Most of us skipped breakfast; there was so much to do before the kit inspection at 1000 hours. The process of just laying everything out took about an hour, but then the billet needed to be cleaned up as well. We swept and bumpered our bed-spaces, then swept the central floor and gave it a final bumpering. Corporal Blandford, who was the NCO in charge of our particular billet, had shown us how to move around on the floor like skaters, using pads made from old blankets to protect the shine on the lino. So we glided backwards and forwards on the pads as we tried to get everything ready for the big event. We even had several pairs of pads available at both entrances to the room so that anyone entering could pick a pair up, and then drop them off at whichever door they left from. The Flight office was located in one of the small rooms at the front of our billet that usually served as a Corporal’s bunk, so through traffic was heavier for us than for most other billets. Blandford and most other NCOs who traversed the billet to the Flight office used the pads to protect the fl
oor, but as we were to discover, there would be one notable exception.

  By 0945 hours we were all standing by our beds finally and officially dressed in our full uniforms for the very first time. Most of us fidgeted, frequently checking our buttons to make sure we hadn’t inadvertently smudged them, or making minute adjustments to items of our kit where it lay on the bed. Corporal Blandford hovered around outside the hut watching for the inspecting officer, but also occasionally checking our individual displays or uniforms to make sure everything appeared acceptable. Getting a bunch of raw recruits to this stage was a big reflection on him, so he certainly wanted the inspection to go well.

  During one of the periods that Corporal Blandford was outside, the rear door suddenly opened. We all sprang to attention, but it wasn’t the inspecting officer, it was our erstwhile friend Corporal Hillcrest. Instead of using the floor pads, he just ignored them and deliberately stomped the entire way down the centre of the billet floor, from door to door, all the while displaying a nasty little smirk on his face as the hobnails and steel heel-tips on his boots carved scratches in the linoleum. Corporal Blandford returned a short time later, after Hillcrest had disappeared into the office, and when he saw the damaged floor surface he must have strongly suspected who the culprit had been.

  “Did Corporal Hillcrest come through here?” he asked of no one in particular, while arching one eyebrow.

  “Yes corporal,” several of us replied.

  Both eyebrows came down together as Blandford’s face took on a grim look. He said nothing more, but he didn’t have to; his expression said it all. It didn’t take any great measure of intuition to learn from this little incident that Corporal Blandford, together with Corporal Kaveney as we later learned, considered Hillcrest to be a snide little snake-in-the-grass who was thoroughly disliked by his peers. In fact, Blandford helped us to plot a small act of revenge on Corporal Hillcrest for this and the other tribulations he would subsequently inflict on us, but that was several weeks later. For now, we had no choice but to tolerate Hillcrest’s spiteful act.

  The inspecting officer, Flight Lieutenant Hubbard, who was actually our Flight Commander, entered the billet with his entourage.

  “Billet, attennnn-shun!” barked Corporal Blandford, as he sprang to attention himself and threw a stiff salute in the officer’s direction.

  Flight Lieutenant Hubbard, returned the salute by raising his brown leather-gloved hand to the peak of his hat in a relaxed officer-like way, “Thank you corporal, stand the billet at ease.”

  Blandford immediately turned to us and gave the order, “Stand at ease! No talking!”

  Starting at Niall Adderley’s bed, Hubbard led the way down one side of the billet and back up the other, followed in single file by Sergeant Clarke and Corporal Blandford. Hubbard stopped in front of each person and as he did so, the Boy Entrant under scrutiny came to attention, as we had all been instructed to, and gave his name and the last three digits of his service number. The officer examined him closely and then his kit layout, picking up some items to look at them more closely. Occasionally, he made a comment to Sergeant Clarke, who then scribbled something into a small pocket-size notebook that he carried in one hand. Most of the time this was due to a problem with a Boy Entrant’s kit—maybe some buttons that weren’t quite as clean as they needed to be. When this happened, the Sergeant lingered behind to make a note of the offender’s name and number before catching up again with the inspecting party. It took some time to get to me since I was halfway down the opposite side of the billet, but when it was my turn I came to attention like the others.

  “Sir! Carlin, 153,” I managed to say in a loud voice, in spite of the nervousness that had me quaking in my boots.

  Flight Lieutenant Hubbard stood immediately facing me and looked at my buttons, at my hat badge and then down at my boots. He stepped back a little way and took in a full-length view to check my general appearance. Were the creases sharp enough? Any wrinkles in the uniform? He stepped forward and reached up to adjust my hat. It was an anxious moment. Then he looked at the kit laid out on my bed for a few minutes.

  “Very good Carlin. Carry on,” he finally said, and moved on to “Charlie” Chaplain, whose bed-space adjoined mine.

  I felt great relief that the ordeal was over and I had come through inspection without any hitches.

  Altogether, the kit inspection in our billet took about thirty minutes. When Flight Lieutenant Hubbard finished inspecting the final boy, he turned to face Corporal Blandford and said, “Carry on, corporal.”

  “Thank you sir,” said Corporal Blandford, whilst saluting.

  Flight Lieutenant Hubbard returned the salute and then left by the front entrance, followed closely by Sergeant Clarke.

  We all immediately felt very relieved, including Corporal Blandford, who also seemed pleased.

  “Okay lads, stand easy,” he said. “That wasn’t bad, but there’s a lot of room for improvement.” He then continued, “Some of you got picked up by the Squadron Commander,” then, looking at a piece of paper in his hand, he read out the names of the boys who had been picked up by Flight Lieutenant Hubbard. “Sergeant Clarke wants to see you in the Flight office at thirteen hundred hours. Be outside the office door by twelve fifty-five hours.”

  It was getting on for 1100 hours by now. A little too early for lunch, so we quietly put our kit away in our lockers, took our berets off and unbuttoned our tunics carefully so as not to get fingerprints all over the buttons, then sat on our beds and relaxed for a while. At around 1130 hours, someone said, “Anybody coming to the cookhouse?”

  A few people answered verbally, but most of us responded by just picking up our mugs and irons and heading for the door. It was a ten-minute walk to get there by the safe but roundabout route that avoided the dreaded Wings, and the queue started to build up for quite a while before the mess door was unlocked at midday, so it was good to get there early. We were all hungry, so the thinking was that if we left now we’d get a place near the head of the queue. A few others were already making their way to the mess along the road that ran parallel to the runway, everyone walking in little groups of three or four.

  Our earliness paid off, because we found only four or five people waiting on the step leading up to the closed mess door. Even though it was obviously locked, I still walked up to the door and tried to open it, unaware that in the next few moments I would learn that not all English people speak in what we like to call the Queen’s English. Standing with his back to the door, as though guarding his place of first in line, was one of my fellow Boy Entrants by the name of Swaley.

  “Wha’s tha think tha’s doin? Can’t tha see bluddy doh-ah’s shoot,” protested Swaley in a broad Yorkshire dialect, “ah were ‘ere fest.”

  He might as well have been speaking Outer Mongolian for as much sense as it made to me. Although my ears heard sounds, my brain that had been tuned to a regional Northern Irish dialect since birth just couldn’t process them into intelligible words.

  “Eh?” I responded, screwing my face into a questioning grimace.

  A small ginger-haired lad standing nearby piped up, “He says ‘what do you think you’re doing, can’t you see the bloody door’s shut, and he was here first.’ He’s from Yorkshire and that’s how they talk.”

  I looked at Swaley and said, “Am surry, ah wusn’t try-in’ tae go in frunt a yeh.”

  But this time it was Swaley’s turn to look blank, as though I had spoken to him in something akin to Swahili. Richard Butterworth, the ginger haired kid, jumped in again to interpret for Swaley.

  “He says he’s sorry, he wasn’t trying to push in front of you.” Then he added helpfully, “He’s from Ireland,” as though it explained everything, which it probably did.

  That’s how I became friends with Butterworth. He was from Liverpool, which people jokingly called the capital of Ireland because of its large Irish population, so he was used to Irish accents and had little trouble understanding my broad brogue. And
since Liverpool was in the neighbouring county to Yorkshire, he also understood Swaley’s thick dialect. This was a good guy to know, I thought, he could be of some help. As for Swaley, he and I spared each other any further attempts at conversation that day, but as time went on we all found an ear for regional accents and dialects, so understanding each other became a lot easier.

  Finally, the mess door was unlocked from inside, and we made our way in line to the servery. The Wing boys were also making their way in there through another door, and queued up on the opposite side of the servery to ours. This was just as well because, as we had already started to discover, there was a definite pecking order amongst the entries, in which members of the newest entry came last—we were low men on the totem pole or at the bottom of the food chain, whatever you want to call it. Although we were protected by having a section of the mess specially set aside for us, the pecking order amongst the Wing boys didn’t escape our notice. Those with the most inverted stripes on their cuffs seemed to be able to push in front of those with fewer stripes. Some of the Wing boys had no stripes at all and it appeared that the one, two and three-stripers could all push in front of them. It appeared that by being down at the bottom of the food chain, it was going to take us a long time to swim to the top.