Boy Entrant; The Recollections of a Royal Air Force Brat (33 page)

Wiring up navigation lights or identification lights and then getting them to work soon paled in comparison to the excitement of 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

T
he 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 time was to visit London. The possibility of being able to go there with the band was all the encouragement I needed.

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.

“No,” I replied, half expecting to be told that I couldn’t join, because I still did not truly believe what Birchy had been telling me.

As he said this, the Trumpet Major turned and walked towards a storeroom, motioning that I should follow him. I eagerly shadowed him to the storeroom and was soon holding my very own brass trumpet. This, I thought, will be my passport to London and will give me freedom from future button inspections. Although thrilled to get the trumpet, I had to admit to myself that as a musical instrument it had seen much better days. The large flared end looked as though it had been pushed very hard up against something solid, which gave it a crumpled appearance instead of the smoothly curved belled-out shape that one usually associates with a trumpet. In fact, dents covered most of the entire trumpet body. It was also in dire need of an energetic application of Brasso to replace its dull, thick patina with a brassy gleam more in keeping with its military duties.

The type of trumpet used in Boy Entrant bands was an E-flat cavalry trumpet, which is a very simple “straight through” type of instrument, lacking the valves that are apparent on trumpets used by professional musicians. The instrument consists simply of two elongated loops of brass tube with one end holding the mouthpiece and the other end flared out into the familiar “trumpet” shape. When being played, the trumpet was grasped in the right hand, around and halfway along the upper elongated part of the loop. The other arm remained at the player’s side when he was standing still, or was activated in a normal swinging motion when marching. A rope-like binding, consisting of interwoven strands of red and gold coloured fibres, was wound tightly around and along the whole length of the lower elongated part of the loop. Two large tassels, one at the beginning and one at the ending of the binding, hung below the trumpet when it was being held in the playing position.

“Here, you’ll need this too,” said Trumpet Major Davison, as he handed me a silver mouthpiece. “Always take the mouthpiece out and keep it with you when you’re not playing or marching in the band, because it’ll get stolen if you don’t,” he warned. “Okay, you can go and start practising now,” he said, giving a small wave of his hand in a gesture of dismissal.

I tried a practice blow, but nothing came out of the trumpet end except the sound of my breath. That came as something of a surprise. I’d been expecting to make some kind of trumpet noise, remembering how toy bugles made noise just by blowing into them when I was a child. Feeling a little defeated, I found John Birch again and asked him to show me how to play. Birchy removed the mouthpiece from his trumpet and blew into it, making a kind of squawking noise.

“You have to do it like that,” he said. “You kind of spit into it at first to get it started, then keep it going, although you don’t actually spit
spit
, if you know what I mean.”

I wasn’t quite sure what he meant about not
actually
spitting, but went along with it as though I did.