Well, you’ve done it again.
Your voracious reading has brought another award to Celtic Illumination,
The Versatile Blogger Award. This time
the nomination came from one of our own Illuminati, Brad Fonseca, a Canadian
fellow in Canada. Thank you very much
Brad. This just shows what good taste and
how cultured you all are. I understand
that I have certain tasks to carry out now so I will prepare everything once I have
finished today’s blog. The goat is the tethered
in the yard, the altar is prepared and the virgins should arrive shortly after
tea.
So; it was my first day in Germany. Getting out of bed was very difficult and if
I remember correctly the water in the shower was very noisy indeed. I dragged myself to the mess for some breakfast
and was standing at the servery looking at a row of ties that had been pinned
above the servery, when one of the ladies, reached forward, took my tie and
snipped it in half with a pair of scissors.
Luckily Gary was with me and he took me away to a table where he
explained that this was ‘Rosenmontag’
(Rose Monday) the highlight of the German carnival.
It seems that, in Germany on Rosenmontag, a lady can cut off
your tie and if she can match it up again that evening, you are hers for the night. I saw the row of thirty plus black ties and
wondered if any of the fellows would actually go to the local town that night
wearing half a tie. With a good feed
inside me, I still didn’t feel any better, so set off to ‘arrive’. It was all very organised, you could tell that
no air traffickers were involved. First
I had to attend an arrivals brief. The Sherriff,
the senior police person on the camp, kicked everything off by breathalysing
everyone in the room. He wasn’t
completely off his rocker but was showing us that if we had an accident, first
thing in the morning, as a part of their standard approach, the civilian German
police would breathalyse all concerned drivers.
Everyone in the room failed the breath test and he warned us to be very
careful.
There followed a selection of briefings concerning the role
of the unit, the expected standard of behaviour both on and off camp, the
wearing of uniforms off camp, and what we would be doing for the following two weeks. I had forgotten about the SWO’s working party
and realised that I would be emptying the bins on Wildenrath for the next
fortnight. Despite the fact that I had
attended an overseas briefing at Honnington before leaving the UK I was now expected
to go through the whole thing again.
The rock apes who ran this one watched far too many Rambo
movies. I don’t suggest anyone try CS
gas with oatmeal biscuits, perhaps a little cream cheese. It would certainly take away the taste of your
breakfast. I don’t mean the first time
you eat it, I mean the second time you see your breakfast, as it comes back out
thanks to the CS gas. To make matters more
interesting they put us on the rifle range wearing our full NBC kits. I was still a rubbish shot.
The following day I began the arrival procedure, which is
wandering around camp and reporting in to every department, so in a way you
were physically making sure that you were entered into their system. At SHQ I was told that I needed to open a
bank account with a local German bank.
Luckily there were two German banks on camp so I wandered into one and
asked to open an account.
After my experience in the UK and aware that I was awaiting
some form of disciplinary action I can freely state that bankers were not my
favourite people. I have to admit I was
taken by surprise. I reported to the counter
and introduced myself. A young lady came
to me and explained that she was the manager and would help me open an
account. She pulled out a typewriter and
very quickly filled out the required form.
“How much would you like to borrow?” she asked, as she slid a cheque
book and card across the counter to me.
“Nothing,” I said. “I
just want to open an account.” “Yes,”
she said, with wonderful Teutonic efficiency.
“But you are in Germany now, you will want to buy a car, or go on
holiday. How much do you want to borrow?” The pen hovered over the empty box and I was
amazed. In England bank managers were
very much a part of the class system.
You had to crawl in to their office, normally all men, and almost beg
for their permission to borrow some money.
Here in Germany it was a business, and they made their money from charging
you interest. I loved it. I still didn’t borrow any money and just
wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. I had made sure that I had gone to the families
office and put my name down for a married quarter, I was told that it could take anything up to
seven weeks.
The final place I had to report to was 92 squadron. It was situated somewhere on the far side of
the airfield, too distant to walk, so I telephoned the squadron for some
transport. A minibus arrived and I
hopped on. We drove off, away from the main
camp and into the clumps of trees that surrounded the airfield. It was a huge place. As we entered the squadron dispersal I saw my
first phantom aircraft and thought it looked an impressive beast. The driver dropped me at the main entrance
and after the regulatory deep breath I went in.
I reported to the admin desk who signed my official arrival chitty. I was now properly at Wildenrath. I was then
told to follow the corridor to air ops.
As I walked along I noticed that I was passing through a series of heavy
steel doors. The walls were getting
thicker and external noises were fading away.
I walked in to the operations room and was taken back with the amount of
information that was displayed. The walls
were covered in statistics boards each split into little two inch square boxes,
each carrying a certain amount of information.
One wall was half glass and I could see a similar set up on
the far side which was manned by engineers.
But standing before me, in a clump, was half a dozen men in green
suits. They casually ignored me as I looked
around. Then Bob Juckes came in. This was the fellow who had bottled the
station commander’s daughter. We shook hands
and introduced ourselves to each other. “Come
on,” said Bob. “I’ll show you around.” Bob walked around the squadron, with me in
tow, and pointed at various things and I don’t think I took anything in. It’s not that there was too much information
coming at me it was just all so new, I had never come across stuff like this
before.
It slowly began to sink in with me that I was in the real air
force. Bob and I were in the aircrew
crew room standing at the tea bar having a coffee. I looked about and saw all these men in green
suits. Some were pilots and some were
navigators but it slowly began to dawn on me that I was actually going to be
working alongside fast jet pilots. We
went back to the operations room and the pilot behind the desk got up and left,
saying as he went, to Bob. “You’re in charge.”
Bob sat behind the desk and I stood in front. He worked his way around the room explaining what
our duties were. A group of aircrew
came in to the engineer’s side of the building; they were kitted out for flying
and were reporting the conditions of the aircraft they had just flown. Once they had debriefed the engineers they
came through to us in air ops. I noticed
one of them was a wing commander and assumed that this was the boss of the
squadron. He set his flying helmet down
and signed some papers. Bob was dealing
with him; he brought out a pipe and lit it.
Once happy with his pipe he took a deep draw and looked at me. “Who is this?” he asked.
”Oh sorry boss,” said Bob.
“This is the new chap.” I couldn’t
believe that the wing commander walked over and offered me his hand. I shook it.
“Good,” said the wing commander. “Welcome
to ninety two.” “Thank you sir,” I said. “When do you start?” “Tomorrow boss,” said Bob, and I butted
in. “No.
I’m on the SWO’s working party. I’ve
gotta empty the bins on camp for a fortnight.”
I had sort of resigned myself to the fact that I would have to complete this
duty; after all, air traffic had never stood up for me before.
“Phone the SWO’s office,” said the boss. “Tell him that I can’t spare any of my men.” Bob was already dialling. I couldn’t believe that someone would
actually stick up for me. Bob replaced the
receiver and nodded. The boss picked up
his flying helmet. “Welcome to the Cobra’s,
we don’t empty bins here. You’ve got two weeks to train him up Bob,” said
the boss, who walked away winking at me.
“What does he mean two weeks?” I asked, once I felt that he was out of
earshot. “Oh,” said Bob, in a very
matter of fact way. “You’ve gotta be up
to speed in two weeks, because we’re off to Cyprus in a fortnight.”
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