I suppose my biggest worry was staying out of trouble, not
that I was a trouble maker, far from it.
Associating with certain people would almost guarantee trouble would
come knocking. A new admin wallagh was
posted on to the squadron, John Zammo.
John and I became good friends; he was a level headed sort of chap. We were gearing up for another trip to Cyprus
so John and myself decided to stick to each other and keep ourselves as far
away from the madness as we possibly could.
But as the great Scot, Robert Burns, once said, the best laid schemes of
mice and men go often awry.
This time I was going out on the advance party and returning
on the rear party, John was moving with the main party. This would mean that I would have to stay in
Cyprus for six weeks. You may think, oh
how lovely, six weeks in sunny Cyprus, all I could think of was forty two days of
madness that I would have to survive.
There were one or two rules we all had to follow when flying in air
force aircraft. We had to wear smart
presentable uniforms or jacket and tie.
This was in case we landed anywhere, prior to our destination, so that
we could show Johnny foreigner what a smart turned out bunch of lads we were.
The Hercules aircraft was fondly known as a Fat Albert. The movers and loadmasters would pack all the
equipment in and then we would be ushered in to fit ourselves around the equipment. Like a sort of human polystyrene packing chip. The noise was quite annoying, just a constant
droning which was loud enough to inhibit conversation. Any communication was done by shouting or
hand signals. Once airborne we would
find a comfortable slot and stretch out.
I always made for one of the side doors and although it was a little
strange lying in a forward sort of curve, at least you could stick your face in
the small bubble of a window and watch the world crawl past underneath.
We were aiming for Brindisi air base in southern Italy. Our phantoms would follow us. It would be a very quick turn around and re-fuel
and with all our birds airborne again and heading for Cyprus, we would load up
and follow them. Dave Magee was part of
that forward detachment. Dave had
started a game of imaginary ball passing in the back of the Fat Albert. People were pretending to spin a basketball,
bounce it on their heads and knees and elbows before passing it on. Everyone played because if you didn’t you
were fined a crate of beer.
We landed in Italy and were milling around waiting for our
aircraft to come in. We were standing in
a lazy circle, still passing the imaginary ball to each other, being careful
enough to get out of the way of the Italian F104 Starfighters that were zipping
about the place as if they were in a grand prix. A small group of Italians had gathered around
and were watching us pass our imaginary ball to each other. One brave Italian stepped forward and asked “What
is this you do?” Magee of course decided
to become the liaison officer. “We are
the Royal Air Force baseball display team,” announced Dave. “But where is de ball?” “Aha!” says Dave. “We can’t carry one because of the pressurisation,
but we still have to practise!” The Italian
accepted Dave’s explanation and spread the information to the assembled crowd.
It was then that I noticed that some of our chaps were
missing and without drawing attention to this I looked about. I spotted them in the buildings stealing anything
they could loosen. I wasn’t aware that
this elaborate ploy had been staged so that the squadron could liberate a few
gizzits from the Italians. Someone
pulled up on a moped with a shopping basket on the front. There was a small machine gun in the
basket. A few minutes later all that
remained was the machine gun and I could see the moped disappear into the rear
of the Fat Albert.
Our birds came in and went and I had hoped that we would be
airborne and away before the Italian authorities would realise what was happening. Of course, our guys were engineers, and very good
ones at that. Something happened to the Fat
Albert so we couldn’t get airborne and would have to wait for a spare part to
arrive the following day, meaning that we would have to spend the night in
Italy. With us all dressed to the nines
and no aircraft or crews to look after, we could do the only decent thing which
would be to go into Brindisi itself and experience the night life. It would have been wrong not to.
We ended up in some posh hotel drinking the night away. Drunk and lost we took the party to the beach
where the hotel had a huge collection of sun loungers. As it had been a long day and the drink
probably contributed to the fact that we were all exhausted we stretched out
and fell asleep. You probably think it
might be nice to wake up on a luxury private beach. It’s the sort of place that would attract the
right sort of people. Unfortunately it
also attracted the wrong sort of people.
Some Italian pickpockets had decided to crawl around under the sun
loungers and steal our wallets.
One of the guys had twigged what was going on and rather than
lie there and think a crab or a mermaid was getting amorous grabbed one of the
tea leaves and began to administer his own form of justice while the rest of us
woke and applied a similar form of instant righteousness to his comrades. The thieves legged it, well; hobbled away and
we laughed the incident off. As we waited
for everyone to get themselves together and were trying to decide on the best
way to get back to camp and breakfast, we were surprised to see a contingent of
Italian police roll up and arrest us all for GBH.
The fecking tea leaves had gone to the local police and
declared that we had attacked them, and they had the bruises to prove it. Italian police cells are really cool. I don’t mean that in a seventies, Osten
Powers, sort of way. I mean they were
fecking freezing and could do with the once over from a mop and some disinfectant. Luckily we were all together so kept each
other’s spirits up. Dave was in command
and wasn’t that worried about the Italian authorities. He was more worried that someone would notice
that absolutely nothing was broken on the Fat Albert but something was missing.
These guys new exactly what small component to remove that
would ground the Fat Albert and have us stay overnight in Italy. They wanted to get back and replace it so
that the aircraft would appear to miraculously fix itself, the un-serviceability
would be put down to being ‘just one of those things.’ Eventually the situation was resolved and we
were released from the police cells. The
aircraft healed itself and we set off for Cyprus. Although we seemed to have more equipment in
the rear of the aircraft I was quite uncomfortable for the remainder of the
flight as I kept watching everyone just in case they decided they wanted a
night stop in Athens. One day down, and
forty one to go, I hoped the following forty one days would be shenanigan free,
or at least that I wouldn’t get caught.
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