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

  “You’re at the edge now,” I was told. “There’s nothing in front of you. When we let go, all you have to do is jump.”

  Easier said than done. Now I was shaking, trying to summon the courage to take this literal leap in the dark.

  “It’s all right, we won’t let anything happen to you,” the voice encouraged, “show us you’re a man!”

  Then another voice that I recognized as one of my own entry-mates piped up from somewhere in the room, “C’mon Carlin, you can do it. We had to do it too, so don’t let the 29th down!”

  A chorus of “Yeah’s” followed this challenge, coming from the others that I’d noticed in the room earlier. That kind of did it for me. I bent my legs and crouched, trying to imagine how high I was off the ground so that I could consciously make the normally instinctive compensation needed to absorb the shock of landing. I tried to launch but my feet seemed glued to the table when the rest of my body tried to spring forward. I crouched again and failed again.

  “Come on, or we’ll push you off,” the voice said, “We haven’t got all night!”

  I got down in the crouch position again and this time leapt blindly into space. Shock! I was expecting a short time interval of maybe a second between launching and landing, but there was none at all: my feet met solid ground almost as soon as they lifted off the table and I fell forward heavily onto the linoleum floor. That was the first shock, but it was immediately followed by a second surprise when a huge burst of laughter suddenly filled the room. I tore the blindfold off and then saw why I’d landed sooner than expected and the reason for the laughter. The tabletop was sitting on the floor with its legs removed. I had never been more than three inches off the ground the whole time that I’d been agonizing about making the jump!

  My tormentors laughingly ushered me to the side of the room to join the other erstwhile victims and by this time I was laughing myself, but more from relief than from amusement. Then the next prisoner was brought in and I was able to see how it had all been pulled off. As soon as he was out of the room, the “judges” got up from the table and brought the tabletop with them. The legs had simply been propped into place with the whole rickety structure craftily supported on the knees of the three people seated at it. Next they laid the tabletop on the floor and then called for the blindfolded prisoner to be brought into the room. Four of the 27th grabbed him, one on each leg and one on each arm and then they lifted him high, purposely moving him around so that he would be disoriented. Then, when they lowered him onto the table it seemed to the unsuspecting prisoner that he was standing on a table a few feet above the floor.

  There were motioned signs for no one to laugh and the poor guy was then subjected to the same goading that I had undergone just a short time previously. Then, when everyone had been through the “punishment”, we were allowed to return to our billets and go to bed, but only after having to remake them as a result of the initial raid.

  The next morning we awoke to find a white bed-sheet hanging from the very top of the 100 feet high water tower, with “27th Entry” crudely painted on it in large black characters. It flapped up there in the breeze for a whole week and no one ever found out who put it there, or even how the person or persons unknown managed to get to the top of the tower, because the door that gave entry to the internal stairway was always securely locked. We could only guess that one or more brave if foolhardy souls must have risked their necks for the glory of “The Entry” by scaling the outside of the brickwork structure under cover of darkness. Or maybe they had assistance from the St. Athan-based RAF Mountain Rescue team, which sometimes used the water tower to practise rope climbing. The banner was finally taken down, but in getting it up there in the first place, the 27th certainly scored a major propaganda point.

  Mac, the 26th entry boy for whom I bulled, passed out with his entry, but that wasn’t the end of my servitude as a bull boy. On the evening following the night of the court-martial, Mick, one of the 27th approached my bed-space carrying his tunic, beret and boots.

  “Hey Paddy, you’re going to bull for me, aren’t you?” He asked smilingly, using a name by which many people addressed me because of my Irish origins.

  I happened to like Mick. He was a sort of role model for me, in a similar way that an older brother frequently is for a younger male sibling. I agreed, feeling that I didn’t have much choice in the matter anyway. Besides, it would only be for about four weeks, until the 30th entry moved up to the Wings. When that happened, the “duty” would be gladly handed over to one of their number.

  * * *

  In Workshops we moved from cockpit internal lighting to aircraft external lighting. There were the navigation lights, red for Port, green for Starboard and white for the tail. As with so many things, there’s a little more to simple aircraft navigation lights than a person might suspect. They aren’t just coloured lights stuck indiscriminately on the extremities of the aircraft. In fact, the lights serve a more important purpose during night-time navigation, especially in the years that preceded sophisticated aircraft anti-collision radar systems. Each light was masked in a way that made it visible only when viewed from a certain angle from a horizontal viewing position; 110 degrees for both Port and Starboard lights and 140 degrees for the tail light. The angles of all three lights add up to 360 degrees. This arrangement makes it possible for an observer in one aircraft to deduce the approximate heading of another aircraft at the same altitude in the night sky. If he can see a red and a green light at the same time, it means that the other craft is approaching on a collision course. One green and one white light, or one red and one white light, indicate that the aircraft is on a parallel course and directly on the observer’s left or right side. A single red or green signifies that the other aircraft is travelling on a parallel heading in the same direction as the observer’s aircraft, but behind his own position. A single white light indicates that the observer is viewing the other aircraft from the rear.

  Then there was the retractable landing light, the type “J” I believe. This light was mounted in the underside of the wing and designed to be flush with the wing surface when retracted during normal flight. A small integral DC motor drove a mechanism that extended the light into two selectable positions: “Land” or “Taxi”. Because the light was only supposed to be extended at low airspeed, it incorporated a clutch device that caused it to disengage from the mechanism if the light was lowered into the slipstream whilst the airspeed was too high. When this occurred, as it frequently did, the disengaged light would be pushed back into the wing by the force of the air against it and could only be reset by operating the light to its “Retract” position before it could be extended again.

  We also learned about Downward Identification Lights. This was a set of three separately coloured lights, each of which could be operated in Morse code fashion or simply left on “steady”. The purpose of the lights was to visually communicate with someone on the ground whilst maintaining radio silence, either by Morse code or by displaying a pre-arranged colour code as a means of identification.

  After learning about these external lights, our task was to wire the components of the circuit together, using wiring diagrams and then find “snags” that had been deliberately set by the instructor. A favourite “fault” was to cause the high airspeed clutch to disengage on the landing light and then challenge us to determine why the light wasn’t lit in the down position. It was tempting to assume it was for the most obvious reason—that the bulb had burned out—but a more careful analysis of the situation would reveal that the mechanism was disengaged. Since the micro-switch that completed the circuit to the bulb was attached to this mechanism, it hadn’t moved to the position where it would close to light the bulb. Exercises such as this taught us to think before jumping to conclusions, which could waste a lot of time and resources in later operational situations.

  Wiring up navigation lights or identification lights and then getting them to work soon paled in comparison to the excitement o
f getting a landing light to extend, after having wired it up, and then seeing the intense light beam turn on as it swung down into the “Land” position. We were still a few months away from getting an even greater kick out of the 24-way bomb gear system, which could be programmed to drop bombs from an aircraft in several different patterns. Although they wouldn’t let us play with real bombs, the electrical release mechanisms made a very satisfying din as they operated in rapid succession. But for the moment, we had much more mundane stuff to learn—like batteries for instance.

  Batteries just sat there and did nothing. There were no flashing lights, no clicking relays, just nothing. Yet there was a mountain of information to absorb regarding these passive black, oblong shapes. Although they didn’t appear to do much, they were just as important to an aircraft’s electrical system as a car battery is to a car. But unlike a car battery, which is largely ignored until it becomes a problem, aircraft batteries were removed every two weeks and replaced with a freshly charged set. And the task of replacing them was a large part of an aircraft electrician’s duties. We needed to know that they contained a corrosive solution of distilled water and sulphuric acid and that any spills needed to be neutralized and then promptly cleaned up. But there was more to know about them. In the thorough technical training traditions of the RAF, we learned about the materials that went into the manufacture of a battery, the chemical processes that took place during their charging cycle and the reverse processes that occurred as this chemical energy reconverted to electrical energy.

  ‘Instruments’ was slightly more interesting. This topic referred to meters, such as voltmeters and ammeters, which exhibited activity when power was applied to them, unlike the static immobile batteries. There was quite a lot to learn because of the different types of internal mechanisms that are used in the various meters to make their pointers move and the ways in which different types of meters are connected in circuits. But regardless of the subject, my trade knowledge gradually increased as we progressed further along the path towards our eventual pass-out. In my case, this was a minor miracle considering how little I knew when I first applied to become a Boy Entrant.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Seductive Call of the Trumpet

  The Easter break intervened just a little more than one week after the 26th Entry’s passing-out parade—Easter Sunday fell on 21st April that year—giving everyone a welcome respite from the 27th Entry’s mad senior-entry rampage.

  Easter marked the end of the winter term and time to take a short break before starting the spring term. For this reason, a 96-hour pass and a free travel warrant were granted to all those wishing to spending the long-weekend of Easter at home. Most of the English and Welsh lads took advantage of this opportunity, but it was impractical for those of us who hailed from the further reaches of the Kingdom to make the trip, because additional travel time could not be added to the pass. There were compensations, however. From “after duty hours” on Thursday the 18th of April until 2359 hours (midnight) on the following Monday, the camp was almost deserted. Discipline was at a minimum: we could stay in bed for as long as we wanted and didn’t have to make our bedding up into bed-packs whenever we finally decided to drag ourselves out of our “pits”. Breakfast was at a later hour and, because there were so few of us, the cooks were very willing to provide a little more individual attention to our culinary desires. Instead of being faced with the mass-produced, pre-cooked plastic eggs that we were used to seeing, eggs were cooked to order and the atmosphere in the mess, like everywhere else on the camp, was altogether more relaxed and easygoing.

  Mick, the 27th lad for whom I bulled, decided to stay on camp for the Easter break, even though he lived somewhere in southern England and could easily have made the journey home in a relatively short time. Perhaps it was an 18-year-old’s gesture of independence, especially since he had a girlfriend in Barry. On Easter Saturday, he invited me to travel into Barry with him on the bus, because even though I was his “Man Friday”, we had become quite friendly. He introduced me to Phyllis, his girlfriend and all three of us sat chatting over a prolonged cup of coffee at a café near Barry railway station that many of us frequented.

  By this time, my “Man Friday” role for Mick was nearly at an end, because two weeks later, on the 4th of May 1957, the 30th entry moved into the Wings from ITS. In the process, they assumed the dubious honour of replacing the 29th as junior entry, which certainly didn’t cause me any unhappiness at being freed from my demeaning role as personal valet to Mick—even if I did like him. But more importantly, this was another small step on our way to becoming the senior entry. My billet received at least four of the new juniors; Boy Entrants Brown, Allen, Acton and Taff Jones. They fitted in well and soon became accepted as valuable members of our small Hut E7 community.

  * * *

  It was John Birch who got me interested in the trumpet band. He had joined the band almost as soon as we came up to the Wings. I envied how he was able to casually stroll into class all by himself, after everyone else had been marched there by the class leader several minutes earlier. He would remove the mouthpiece from his trumpet and put it in his pocket, before dangling the trumpet from a peg on the coat rack at the rear of the room. I had also noticed that whilst most of us formed up in the morning for the work parade and then suffered through the button inspection, the band just ambled loosely together into a semblance of ranks, where they chatted and tested their musical instruments until it was time to march to workshops. If they endured any inspection at all, it was a very casual affair and nothing like the microscopic scrutiny to which non-band members were routinely subjected.

  Birchy would often say to me, “You should join the band Brian. It’s a ruddy good skive.”

  Birchy always called me by my first name, unlike most other people who just called me Carlin, or “Paddy” if they were feeling friendly towards me, and he always said “ruddy” instead of “bloody”. He was like that with other swear words too; always saying “frig” instead of the more commonly used “f-word”, in contrast to nearly everyone else who, by this stage, “effed and blinded” like proverbial troopers. Usually, I just smiled and made some excuse when he encouraged me to join the band, because I couldn’t play the trumpet. But then one day, just a few weeks before Easter, I became a little more interested. Maybe it was because I’d been put on jankers for having dirty buttons—a fairly regular occurrence by now—and saw the band as a means of avoiding the morning button inspections.

  “How can I be in the band,” I asked Birchy, “when I can’t even play a trumpet?”

  “It doesn’t matter about not being able to play,” he replied, “you just learn as you go along.” He then thought for a moment before continuing, “There’s a lot of frigging people in the band who can’t play, but they just make it look as though they can. We all just practise together until we can play the tunes.” Then he added, as an afterthought, “We’re going to Earls Court in June.”

  “What’s Earls Court?” I asked naively.

  “You’ve never heard of Earls Court?” He asked the question a little scornfully, as though everyone but the remotest of cave-dwellers had heard of it—and perhaps kids like me, fresh from the bogs of Ireland.

  “No, I haven’t.” I admitted.

  John Birch liked nothing better than to snootily lecture someone on a subject that he believed the other person knew nothing remotely about.

  “It’s at a big indoor arena in London where they hold horse jumping shows and things like that,” he loftily informed me. “And every year they hold the Royal Tournament there, which is a kind of big show put on for the Queen. All the Services take part in it and bands from all the Services come to play and do figure marching,” he continued. “And this year the St. Athan trumpet band has been invited to play,” he ended on a triumphant note.

  Little did John realize that he had unwittingly pressed just the right button to launch my recruitment into the band. One of my greatest ambitions at that t
ime was to visit London. The possibility of being able to go there with the band was all the encouragement I needed.

  “How do I join?” I asked.

  “Well, you can just come with me to band practice on Tuesday night and talk to the Trumpet Major,” he offered.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’ll come with you.”

  By the time Tuesday night came around I still hadn’t changed my mind. In fact I was more afraid that I wouldn’t be accepted, despite Birchy’s assurances that they took all comers. So, with some anxiety, I accompanied him over to No. 4 Squadron, where the band practice room was located. It wasn’t really a very difficult place to find on band practice night—you only needed to follow your ears. The night air was filled with the sound of trumpets squawking out competing tunes, frequently interspersed with flat notes and other terrible sounds reminiscent of elephants suffering from extreme flatulence. All the while, drummers beat out various staccatos on their tenor drums and cymbals clashed as though the other noises weren’t quite loud enough.

  Birchy introduced me to Trumpet Major Davison, who wore four inverted chevrons on his right sleeve, surmounted by a small brass badge that was in the form of two crossed trumpets.

  “Can you play a trumpet?” Davison asked, emphasising the word “play” as though he already knew the answer only too well.