Some new Corporals were arriving and they were neither
ancient nor arrogant. I think it would
be fair to say that they were mid-twenties.
Des Dobbin was a Belfast man with two loves in his life, one was his
bright yellow Ford Escort, which he was always polishing, and the other was
Abba. Don’t ask. Rod Shackleton, another Corporal, used to try to be everybody’s
friend, which I think was related to the heavy Valium intake.
Rod came over to me one evening at the electric piss up in
the NAAFI. Boys and girls were shuffling
about the dance floor, not one of them jiving I might add. It was all pop music not one country tune in
sight, what was a good ol boy going to do?
Rod approached me and pointed out two females on the dance floor. He stated that he wished to dance with a certain
one of the females and requested that I engage the other in a shuffle or two across
the dance floor.
With legs like mine, and the looks, don’t forget the looks, I
was in. The young lady was dazzled with
my dancing ability; either that or she had far too much Vodka. As happens, she escorted me onto the veranda,
where I could show her just how expert a snogger I was, after all, I did have
the President of Ireland as an instructor.
We enjoyed the moonlight and the idle chit chat. She was most certainly interested in coming
up to my room and seeing my etchings, so we went back inside to gather our
coats, to find Rod completely legless on the dance floor.
Rule one; never leave a man behind, but rule two, section B,
two birds one stone. I encouraged the
young lady to help me pick Rod up and we brought him back to his room. Some of you may say that this was a most un-gentlemanly
move on my part, as I had used an underhand situation of a man down to get the young
lady into the accommodation block. How
wrong you would be, you don’t think the air traffickers would want me living in
their block? I was still in temporary
accommodation, and very happy to be there, if I may say so.
We laid Rod out on his bed and, as it was quiet and
comfortable, resumed the snogging. Rod unfortunately
regained consciousness and leapt off the bed screaming that I had danced with
the wrong fecking women. The woman in my
arms was the one he intended to romance.
Well; words to that effect. As
you know, one of the reasons behind the receptiveness in military training is
that you don’t think, you act. So as you
may guess when faced with a fully grown, angry and inebriated man, charging at
me across his bedroom, I had no choice but to encourage him to get back on his
bed, in an unconscious state, and remain there till the morning.
The next morning Rod was asking everyone, he could remember
who was at the dance, how he had got his black eye, no one seemed to know, not
even me.
There was another youngish Corporal there, John Brock. John was a Scot. He drove a Simca motorcar; I believe they
make very good sewing machines. John
often stated that his greatest desire in life was to own and drive a white, two
litre, Ford Capri, with a black vinyl roof.
I’m going to have to make a literary side step here, because if I am to
continue the story about John Brock, then I must include John Wilkenson.
John Wilkenson was the same as myself, expect he wasn’t as
good looking, wasn’t Irish and wasn’t getting into trouble every five
minutes. John was a lovely fellow from Warrington. We were on a shift with Paddy O Reardon and
as you can imagine suffered quite a large amount of stress. John, on our couple of days off, decided to
go home to his parents in Warrington and very kindly invited me to accompany
him.
John drove the most wonderful, white, soft top, Morris
1000. As with most young males with
motor cars, the radio was top of the range, and I have the most fabulous
memories of driving along the North Wales coast with The Small Faces performing
their album, Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, with the wonderfully surreal narrative of
Stanley Unwin, blaring out of the stereo. I promise you we knew that album off by
heart. Warrington was fantastic fun, John’s
brother was a civilian police officer in Warrington but we didn’t hold that against
him. We fell in with the, local crowd
and after a month, or two, there was quite a contingent of air traffickers
coming over for the weekend to Warrington.
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Some of us formed relationships with the local young ladies
and going to Warrington for the weekend became something more of a ‘must do’
rather than a one off. John’s mother was
a lovely welcoming woman and if it wasn’t for the yappy little King Charles spaniel
that nipped my ankles to ribbons, I would have enjoyed eating the pig’s trotters
and boiled onions she cooked for me, and I’m not being funny about her cooking,
it was the first time I had ever eaten them and they were particularly nice.
As for the girlfriend, the first time I went to her house I
walked in through the front door and she and her mother stripped the clothes
off me. Those among you who have prevert
tendencies can stop right there for there was no hankie pankie intended. My girlfriends mother realised that washing
clothes in a hand wash basin would not produce the required freshness for said garments,
so everything in my kit bag, and off my back, went into the washing machine.
One weekend we had a party to attend in Warrington, but
John’s car was off the road for some reason.
I hadn’t acquired my custom modified Vauxhall Victor from Paddy yet, so
as Winston Churchill once said, ‘we were snookered’. However a guardian angel appeared and offered
us transport to Warrington in the form of John Brock.
John had come up with a cunning plan that we could use his
car to get to Warrington, but we were not to bring it back. We were to set fire to it and he would declare it stolen, collect the inflated insurance claim, and buy his coveted white, two
litre, Ford Capri, with the black vinyl roof.
Wizard idea, for John and myself were two young men who were
not exactly being led by our brains, if you get my drift. As we traversed the North Welsh coast of
North Wales, we began smashing the car up.
It was ridiculous and we were screaming with laughter, for it would be
the last thing a normal, sensible; person would do in a moving motor car. We were stabbing the speedometer with a screwdriver,
unscrewing bits and bobs and generally behaving like horrible little vandals. In my defence I have to say that this was not
mindless violence, we were supposed to destroy the car.
We came across a lorry that had skidded on a corner and was
now on its side. We of course were fine upstanding
young fellows from the Royal Air Force who would help any person in trouble,
but especially a lorry driver who had shed his load of cigarettes all over a field. I attended to the lorry driver keeping him
warm and resting, in case he had injured his spine, even though he didn’t want
to, as John secured some of the load in our car in case highway robbers or
thieves turned up.
When the ambulance arrived John and I made our excuses and
left, as we were just doing our duty and didn’t require any thanks or rewards
for what any decent Christian would be expected to do.
Well; what a weekend we had.
I promise you, there was a fancy dress party, and I remember that I had
slept on a floor, which was nothing new for me, but sleeping on a recently
varnished floor, did introduce some new questions and difficulties in the morning
when looking for the gorilla.
That’s when we realised two things, the first was that the
car would be reported stolen from RAF Valley and found in Warrington. It wouldn’t take the police long to find out
who, if anybody, had travelled from Valley to Warrington that weekend, even the
military police could have worked that one out pretty sharpish. So seeing that we would be placing ourselves
very much in the frame, a criminal term I hope you don’t mind me using it, John and I discovered the second point not in our
favour. We had spent all of our money
and had no way of getting back to Valley, unless we used the petrol meant to
burn the car, to transport us back. We weren’t
daft, well, not that bad, so we drove back to Valley in a car that we hoped
would make it, for we didn’t know what speed we were travelling at, we didn’t know
how much fuel was in the tank, but at least we had enough cigarettes to keep us
going if we broke down.
John Brock was not impressed as he walked to the mess for his
breakfast on the Monday morning for sitting there in tatters was his poor
little car. I would say still in one piece but that wouldn’t be correct. He wasn’t a happy man, but couldn’t really
accuse us of not stealing and burning his car. I do wonder if he ever did get his white, two
litre, Ford Capri, with the black vinyl roof?
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