Boy Entrant; The Recollections of a Royal Air Force Brat (45 page)

“Yes Sir,” they both mumbled. Then Ben added, “We only did it as a joke Sir, and didn’t think it would hurt him like that.”

“Is that so?” The Flight Commander retorted, “Well, there’s no place in my Flight for stupid jokes like that and you’re both going to spend a little time on Defaulters’ Parade to make sure you understand that! You’re also going to apologize to Butterworth when he recovers and can return to his duties. Is that clear?”

“Yessir,” they both replied in penitent voices.

Flight Lieutenant Grafton then turned and fixed his eye on Sergeant Savoury, “Sergeant Savoury, put these men on a charge.”

“Sah!” responded Savoury, reaching into his left breast pocket for the little pad of Form 252s that all Discipline NCOs carried with them. With that, the Flight Commander turned brusquely and left the billet. Meanwhile, the sergeant’s radar locked on to the two hapless culprits, streaking towards them as accurately and deadly as a guided missile.

“Roight you two, let’s ‘ave your twelve-fifties,” he demanded, referring to their Form 1250 service identification cards. Then, looking around at the rest of us, he announced in his broad cockney accent, “The rest of you lot—get your stuff togev-vah and get aht on pa-ride. On the double!”

Grabbing our overalls and books, we all tumbled out of the billet and onto the road. In one final glance backwards before leaving the billet, I saw Bill and Ben standing with hang-dog looks as Savoury copied the information from their 1250s on to the 252 charge forms.

Later that afternoon Butterworth returned to class. I was dying to talk to him and find out what had happened, from the time that he had left the billet to go to Station Sick Quarters. Finally, at break-time, he told me the whole story.

Walking into Station Sick Quarters had been quite a surprise to the medics, who weren’t accustomed to very much activity after lights-out. They quickly sized-up the situation and began swabbing him down with a cool-feeling lotion, probably calamine, which eased the itching. But he was still in agony and most of the skin on his trunk and legs looked an angry red inflamed colour. Going back to his bed in the billet was obviously out of the question and besides, he needed ongoing treatment, so they took him over to the hospital. He spent the next two days and nights there, receiving further ministrations from pretty nurses, in stark contrast to the male medics that most of us were used to seeing at Station Sick Quarters. The best part, from Butterworth’s point view, was that his stay in hospital was all a legal skive, even though he had suffered in agony for the first few hours. He was completely unaware of who had put the glass fibre in his bed and was surprised when I told him that it was Bill and Ben, but he wasn’t displeased when he learned of their lunchtime encounter with Flight Lieutenant Grafton.

When we returned to the billet that evening after Workshops, Bill and Ben were already busy cleaning brasses and webbing before getting attired to go on the first jankers parade. Apparently, there had been little time lost from the time that they were put on the charge until they were marched before the Flight Commander to formally answer to it. Flight Lieutenant Grafton proceeded to throw the book at them, subjecting them to a stern lecture before “awarding” the maximum sentence of seven days jankers that his status of Flight Commander permitted. They were lucky to get off with that, because inflicting personal injury to someone else could very easily have put both of them in the Guardroom for an uncomfortable spell, if they had been remanded up the chain of command to the Wing Commander.

A silence descended on the billet the moment that Butterworth entered, but the two janker-wallahs immediately approached him and offered their very sincere apologies, which Richard graciously accepted. Then they all shook hands and that was the end of it, except for the jankers.

* * *

Not long after the fibreglass incident, Butterworth had to make a return visit to the hospital, but he wasn’t alone this time. During mid-summer of 1957, the Asian flu pandemic, which was sweeping around the world that year, invaded Britain. By the time September rolled around, it had found its way into South Wales and to Royal Air Force Station St. Athan.

Initially, those who succumbed were few in number, but the virus was highly contagious and within one or two weeks the entire camp population was severely affected. Station Sick Quarters worked overtime to process the hordes of Boy Entrants who were turning up on the daily sick parades. In fact, the sick parades, which usually consisted of no more than five or six blokes, competed in size with the workshops parade. Eventually, anyone suspected of harbouring flu symptoms was despatched immediately to Station Sick Quarters, instead of having to wait until the next day for the routine daily sick parade at 0830 hours.

The Station Sick Quarters medics soon became highly efficient at handling the deluge of Asian flu patients, as I experienced first hand when, several days into the crisis, I came down with the dreaded symptoms: high temperature, headache, shivering, severe body aches and weakness. On arriving at Station Sick Quarters, no one asked the nature of my complaint; instead I was brusquely told to sit down on one of the long hard wooden benches and before I knew what was happening a thermometer was thrust into my mouth. At the same time I was given a short form to fill out that required me to provide my name, rank, service number and a description of my perceived ailment, the latter being almost a formality. Within moments, the thermometer was whipped out of my mouth and inspected. The medic then took one brief look at me before ordering that I needed to take myself to the hospital. I never got as far as seeing the Medical Officer. The hospital was a considerable distance away but, like everyone else, I was expected to walk there, Asian flu or not.

During the time that the pandemic raged through St. Athan, those succumbing to it were so numerous that the hospital was forced to drastically increase its number of beds by expanding into a whole section of nearby empty billets. In normal times, these billets were used only to accommodate visiting parents during the passing-out parades. Now, they were full of sick boy entrants and frantic medics trying to cope with the sheer weight of numbers. I was directed to a bed in one particular billet and, before getting into it, was given some syrupy amber liquid in a small glass and a few pills. I had no idea what they were, but trustingly swallowed them anyway. Blankets, pillows and sheets were provided and the bed was already made up, so I got quickly undressed and into my pyjamas before sinking wearily into the bed and drifting off into a sweaty sleep that was full of strange dreams. I don’t know how long I was out for, nor did I care. One medic or another periodically came by to wake me up to ask how I felt. I would groan when they shoved a thermometer in my mouth, whilst asking me if I felt warm enough. I always nodded yes, that I did, wondering why they didn’t seem to notice the perspiration in which I was evidently drenched. But it was their reaction to my response that never failed to surprise me, because they would always throw another blanket on top of the mound that already covered me. This particular scene played out several times over the course of the next two days and not just with me. Everyone else confined to bed in the billet seemed to receive the same treatment. On reflection, I suppose the strategy was to either simply sweat the germs out of us, or kill the little buggers by making conditions too hot for them to exist!

On the first and second days, I just fell in and out of a coma-like sleep, not knowing what time of day or night it was, not feeling hungry, but always thirsty when I woke up. In addition to loading me up with more blankets, the medics came around with their little cups of liquid amber and pills, insisting that I sit up and take them. After struggling to sit up and take the medicine, I would crash back onto my sweat-soaked pillow as yet another blanket was piled on top of the huge and ever-growing mound that my aching body was already supporting.

On the third day, I was beginning to feel a little better and although my mouth tasted as though something had crawled in there and died, my state of consciousness seemed to be returning to something nearer normal. And I was hungry.

It now became obvious that other patients, who were in the later stages of recovery, but still not well enough to be discharged, were acting as orderlies to help the overworked medics. One of their jobs was to bring around the meals to those of us still confined to bed. The food, it turned out, was being brought over from both 1 and 2 Wing cookhouses by lorry, which must have been a logistics nightmare in itself. Individual plates had been prepared and stacked on top of each other, separated by those little metal rings that are commonly used in the catering industry. Because of the sheer numbers of patients and the few lorries assigned to ferry the food from the messes, breakfast was more likely to turn up stone cold at around lunchtime. Lunch was similarly time-shifted, as was the evening meal. It wasn’t very appetising, but I was hungry and had little choice other than to eat it. Besides, I couldn’t taste anything anyway.

Two days later, one of the medics pronounced that I was well enough to be up and about, so he told me to first go and take a bath and then get dressed. The recovering patient’s “uniform” was pyjamas worn under a working-blue tunic, with plimsolls as footwear. For the next two days, I helped out with such duties as distributing meals, sweeping out the billet and making up beds for the new patients, who arrived to fill them as soon as they were vacated. Those of us in the process of recovering discussed amongst ourselves the excellent opportunity this pandemic presented for the Russians to attack Britain, because if the situation at St. Athan was anything to go by, the entire RAF was probably laid low by Asian flu. All of the ground defence training that we’d undergone would have been little use in putting up any resistance, since most of the camp was near comatose during those late summer weeks of 1957. Cold-war Russia seemed so far away from our little part of the world in those days, that it never occurred to us that they too were probably under attack by the very same microbes that had brought Britain to its knees.

After two days of dishing out food, rinsing dishes in the bath before stacking them in containers for their return trip to the mess and generally being at the beck and call of the medics, I was only too pleased when the duty M.O. (Medical Officer) pronounced me fit for discharge. Being able to wear my normal uniform again instead of pyjamas and plimsolls felt weird at first, probably because I had lost some weight into the bargain, but it felt good to be discharged from the temporary hospital and back in the normal world once more, even if I did still feel a little weak and shaky.

That evening in the billet, I was surprised to discover that more than half of the beds had become unoccupied in the days that followed my own forced absence. Classes at workshops were sparsely populated by the few of us who had recovered and those who had yet to succumb. The few instructors still with us were marking time until class levels returned to somewhere near full strength. Just to keep us occupied until that day came around, we were tutored on topics that had been previously covered, which was actually a heaven-sent bonus for someone like me, since I was able to receive almost personal tutoring on my weaker subjects.

The situation wasn’t without other bonuses as well. We received more personal attention at the boy entrants’ mess, not unlike the long weekends during which some of us had to remain at camp when the majority went home on 96-hour passes. It was easy to find a good seat in the Astra and there was scarcely a blue uniform to be seen on Barry Island, except for those few of us who took on the heroic task of ensuring that the teenage girls of Barry didn’t pine away out of sheer loneliness. All good things come to an end, however, although it was nice while it lasted. Within a few weeks everything had returned to normal. Regular instruction resumed at the workshops, mess queues regained their customary length and life everywhere just got back to being crowded again.

* * *

In October of 1957, the 32nd Entry commenced their ITS training. The routine had become old hat by now. Suddenly there were hundreds of pounding feet running up the concrete pathway to the mess at lunchtime, when the brand new sprogs were dismissed by the drill instructors. What it meant for old sweats like the 29th was that we either had to train them to be respectful of our Entry status or wait until the rush had died down. Most of the time, it was easier just to remain in the billet for half an hour or so and then take a casual saunter across to the mess. Invariably, when I did this, the queue had melted away, enabling me to go directly up to the servery and get lunch in good time, without having to compete with the press of humanity.

* * *

When the October trees had taken on the golden colours of autumn, it signalled that the balmy summer weekends spent flirting with the Rhondda Valley girls on Barry Island were behind me. Soon it would be greatcoat weather again and that magical summer, when I was 16 and knew everything there was to know about everything there was, would fade into the background to become nothing more than a dusty memory that might occasionally be taken out and aired once in a while as the years rolled by.

The Rhondda Valley girls were a breed apart. They weren’t shy by any stretch of the imagination, as many a boy entrant was destined to find out, much to his utter amazement.

The valley itself was a highly industrialised area just a few miles to the north of Barry, given over to coal mines and smokestack factories. Most of the teenage girls born and raised there went straight into factory jobs as soon as they had finished school at the age of 15. Apart from the few days off work at Christmas and Bank Holidays, their only escape from the everyday monotony of factory life was when all of the Valley coalmines and factories closed at the same time for the annual two-week summer holiday. One of the highlights of the girls’ lives during this period of unfettered freedom seemed to be a day trip to Barry Island on chartered coaches. And day-trip they did, arriving in wolf-like packs with an apparent single-minded determination to enjoy every second of their day out. They loved boy entrants! The sight of our uniforms, coupled with the fact that we were around the same age, seemed to attract them like magnets. If a group of them caught sight of us—and they always went around in large groups—they were immediately in hot pursuit, until they caught up with us. Not that we exactly ran too fast, mind you. It seemed that every Rhondda Valley girl’s ambition was to snatch one of our SD hats to be borne triumphantly back to the valley as some sort of hunting trophy. Thwarting this quest meant that we needed to be ever on our guard.