The setup at Eastern was quite strange, quite unlike anywhere
else in the air force. One duty, which
you either loved or hated, was to man the tea bar. It was basically a kitchen; on one side you
had the officers and civilian controllers, while on the other side you had us,
the oiks. The Corporals had their own
crew room. When manning the tea bar you
would make tea and coffee, on demand, and toasted tea cakes which everyone
loved. Can still taste them sweet, and
warm, and dripping with butter. I liked
manning the tea bar because you could spend all day listening to the radio.
They had a training team at Eastern so you would be taken
through each position and ‘trained up’.
At the beginning you would only be trained on height finders, so you
would spend your time either asleep or bored silly on heights, or else snapping
out smart salutes on the main gate.
Another decent position would be duty driver. Here at least you could get out and about,
sometimes heading over to Honington.
As we were young and stupid, well, I will admit to being
young and stupid, we would have a bit of fun on shift change. Sometimes we would use the land rover to
change shifts, picking the new shift up at the Lodge dropping them at Eastern
then taking the old shift, your shift, off.
I can remember that if I saw anyone walking to or from work, while
driving along, I would take the land rover over to them. I wouldn’t offer them a lift, but as Mick Elsegood
often reminds me, I would chase them along the narrow paths, rearranging the
shrubbery as I went. Mick is now a thespian
air trafficker at Inverness international airport. So will you all please turn towards Inverness
and wave to Mick. He says he still looks
nervously over his shoulder any time he begins walking along a path.
Peter Browne, he of the ironed underpants, was at
Eastern. The pair of us had been ordered
to attend court, don’t worry, we often did sit on each other’s bed, but I can
assure you, all of our feet remained firmly on the ground. It would have been January or February
time. I will apologise now for I know I
have a cine film of this escapade up in my loft, I’ve been meaning to get it
transferred to DVD but haven’t got around to it yet. We decided that we would drive over to Valley
and we would use my car, the Vauxhall Victor I had bought from Paddy O Reardon
at Valley.
Being young, Peter and I thought that an overnight drive
would be no problem at all. We should
have clear roads which would encourage faster speeds and therefore a smooth and
quick journey. Unfortunately the heating
didn’t work and as I said it was winter time.
It was late in the evening and it was dark and we were spraying de-icer on
the inside of the windshield. Eventually
it was so bad and so cold we found a layby and using everything available in
the car wrapped up warm and slept.
I can’t really remember where about in the country we were,
apart from a lay by in the middle of nowhere.
But that was no problem as I could of course ask the policeman who had
pulled up behind us in the lay by. Peter
and I climbed out of my car and came to meet the copper who was standing at the
rear of our vehicle. He saw our uniforms
on the back seat and asked where we were off to. We explained that we were on our way to court
at Valley and quickly added that we were witness for the prosecution and not
the fecking guilty bustards your honour.
He pointed to the passenger side rear wheel which was flat. I opened the boot and rummaged about for the
jack. Being Paddy’s old car this had two
jacks neither of which fitted the Vauxhall.
The policeman suggested that he get his jack from his patrol car. He jacked the Vauxhall up and removed the old
wheel, which he advised should not have been on the car, as there was not much
tread on it. I passed him a replacement
wheel which he declared was worse than the one he had just taken off. I have to say he was brilliant. Peter and I were leaping, about trying to
warm up and jump start our bodies, and the police man changed the wheel for us.
Soon we were on our way and I knew that when I returned to
Watton I would have to seriously think about changing my car. We had a wonderful time meeting all the guys
at Valley. The police had charged the
ring leaders of the Viet Taff who had attacked us at the Trearddur bay
hotel. There were three of them and I
don’t think any of us had been in a court room before, so we all found it very
interesting, especially when the list of previous convictions were read
out. We couldn’t believe that these
fellows were allowed to walk the streets.
They received a very light sentence and we sent on their way. The whole exercise felt like a waste of time.
Peter and I returned to Watton, this time driving in daylight
hours. I had learned my lesson about
night time driving, almost. I was duty
driver for a night shift. This meant
that after ferrying the shifts to and from work, you could really curl up in a
corner and go to sleep. I had curled up
in a corner and was snoozing away when my shift Corporal came in. He woke me up and told me that I had to drive
to RAF Marham.
A signal, that was far too secret to come through over our
network, was waiting for me at Marham. I
had to go and collect it and bring it back pronto. I was so highly trained, I marched straight
out to the land rover and drove off, still wiping the sleep from my eyes. Norfolk is one of those areas that encourages
huge banks of fog to come along and sit on the countryside. I remember driving through Watton village
quite fast as the street lights gave me a bit of decent visibility, but once
back out into the countryside I really had to slow down. I got to the main road, turned right and
continued to drive.
I was concentrating so hard on staying on the road that it
hadn’t yet occurred to me that I didn’t know where Marham was. Not only did I not know where Marham was, I
didn’t know where I was. I was lost. I crept along the road for miles and for
those of you accustomed to the Norfolk roads you know that many of them are
almost single tracks with huge water filled ditches on either side, add to this
the dark of night, and fog so thick you could knit a jumper with and you get
some idea of what I was faced with.
Luckily I found a telephone box and was able to have Eastern
pin point my location and give me directions to Marham. I got there and collected the double top secret
signal and brought it back to Eastern. I
was so chuffed not to have completed the journey, but to find that the signal
had actually come though on our network so in fact there was no need for me to
go to Marham at all.
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