Barry, the new chairman, and myself quickly became
friends. He was an animal of the highest
order and he was the only person I had ever met who had been through a court
martial. In fact he had been through
three. Barry told me that he was once
stationed at Saint Athens in South Welsh Wales.
He liked his beer did Barry, and dabbled in the world of darts. An Irish darts team, from the Republic of Ireland,
were passing through, on their way back to Ireland, when Barry came across
them. They were not on the Saint Athan
base they were in the local town. Barry enjoyed
their company so much he joined in with them and ended up in the Republic. It took him two weeks to sober up and
realise that he was absent without leave, in the Republic of Ireland.
He got back and was faced with a court martial. Barry then let me into a secret. Normally when you were charged, you went
through the usual process of marching in and listening, to make sure that the correct
details were read out. At the end of the
disciplinary proceedings the presiding officer would say, “Do you wish to
accept my punishment, or do you wish to elect for a trial by a district court
martial?” First of all there is no need
to ask how I know those lines so well, but having heard them so often, it’s
hard trying to forget them. I think most
people in the forces were afraid of a court martial, no one actually knew what
they were; well, everyone knew they were pretty serious and that afterwards you
usually ended up in Colchester military prison, polishing the inside of
dustbins, after you had emptied them and washed them.
Every time the station routine orders came out the first thing
you would check is postings to see if you were off somewhere nice, or if any of
your friends were. Next you would read
the list of court martials for that month, most of which would have been
connected in with drunk driving, and you would of course want to see if you
knew anyone on the list. So at the end
of the standard ‘charge’ disciplinary proceedings when you were asked if you would
accept the presiding officers punishment or go for a court martial most people would
immediately accept whatever punishment was coming their way. Barry explained to me that this was wrong, it
was all a game. What you had to do was
ask for the court martial. You may think
that the accused would be the person most against proceedings moving into court
martial territory but in fact it would be the presiding officer who would not
want the court martial.
First of all it would show that he hadn’t handled the charge properly
and secondly he would have to now get all the senior officers on camp to
attend. Important people wasting
important hours, we can’t be having that now can we? So Barry warned me that if I ever faced disciplinary
action again, to ask for the court martial and the whole process would crumble
around me. It was interesting and deliciously
dangerous, who knew if I would ever get to try it out? There was no way I would ever be in trouble
again. I, along with my career, was on
the way up, in fact one day reading orders I noticed that the guy in charge of
Flight Planning had been posted. I immediately
volunteered to take over the Flight Planning department. It would mean that I could finally get away
from air traffic and Joe Pearson.
I was accepted for Flight Planning which was quite an important
position. First of all you ran the Flight
Planning department, no problem. My
second duty was being the deputy in charge of station operations, but I now had
to prepare the Station Commanders brief every morning at seven o clock. I always knew that the best place to get noticed
was sitting next to the big boys and I certainly was doing that now. There were one or two idiots in station operations. O C Operations was fresh in his post and was
a nice fellow; the Squadron Leader was an honorary good ol boy. He was only interested in shooting things and
had converted a rough area of scrub land, on the edge of the airfield, and was breeding
pheasants which he, along with O C Operations would slaughter when the birds were
ready.
So as you can imagine the focus of station operations was on
the breeding of pheasants rather than those noisy aircraft things. One of the operations officers was a great
fellow and the other was an arse, a navigator who couldn’t fly. One day we came in and he was bubbling with enthusiasm. “Look!
Look!” He would squeal at anyone who came into operations. “Look what my wife bought me for Christmas!” “A shotgun?”
“Oh no, she bought me a left handed shotgun.” The gun would then be taken out of its
leather cover and displayed to all and sundry before being put back in. Strange how his lifelong passion for shooting
things was only now coming to the fore. The
Wing Commander came in and was walking across the operations floor. “Sir!
Sir!” says the air operations arse.
“Look what my wife bought me for Christmas!”
The Wing Commander had a beautifully dry sense of humour so
he looked at the gun and said. “Oh how
nice, she bought you a shotgun cover.”
The arse heard me laugh and the look he gave me could have taken down a
charging rhino at fifty paces, but the Wing Commander, as they say, had left
the building. From that moment on the
air operations arse was after me and would go out of his way trying to make
life difficult for me, always trying to show me that he was so important and
posh. It was one morning, after a long
night in the Families Club, that I came in to Flight Planning about forty minutes
late for work. He was waiting for me,
bouncing about the place, whining that he had to sit in with the Station
Commanders briefing that morning and it wasn’t good enough.
Now; you know what it’s like when you’ve got a hangover and a
total arse rabbiting on at you. Yes; that’s right, you tend to react, so I didn’t
over react, I simply turned around and told him to shut up and feck away
off. I wish I had remembered Steve
Underhill’s wonderful saying which is, ‘Why don’t you feck off, and when you
get there, why don’t you feck off again!”
The arse of an operations officer ran away which I thought was standard practise
for him. But he returned demanding that
I give him my identity card so that he could make sure the details he entered
on my charge sheet were correct. At this
point I was more concerned with my hangover and couldn’t have cared less what he
was doing.
Rumour control now took over and people were wondering what
the outcome of the charge would be, for it was quite rare for someone in my
position to be charged, normally I would be the person issuing the charge. The day that the charge was to be heard came
about. The Wing Commander was away on
leave so the Squadron Leader would be chairing the proceedings. There was no need for the usual briefing
before the charge, but Joe Pearson felt that he should go through it anyway. I think he was enjoying himself. In we marched and once again, when we lined up
in front of the Squadron Leader, I checked to my left and to my right, working
out which one of my escorts I would punch first, if things started going wrong.
I didn’t even listen for any mistakes as the Squadron Leader
ran through the details. It was all very
perfunctory until he came to the end of proceedings. “Do you wish to accept my punishment or do
you wish to elect for a trial by district court martial?” I was standing to attention so couldn’t cross
my fingers but I hoped to high heaven that Barry had been telling me the truth. “I want a court martial,” I said. Joe Pearson looked as if fifty thousand volts
had gone through his head. “Clear the
court room,” said the Squadron Leader, who then pointed to a chair and indicted
that I should sit down. Once we were
alone he apologised for having to take me through such a pantomime, but I
really shouldn’t go around telling officers to feck away off. I explained that
I was very tired and normally wouldn’t act like I had done
“Tell you what,” said the Squadron Leader. “We’ll bring everyone back in. I’ll ask you again, and if you say ‘I accept
your punishment,’ I’ll admonish you. How’s
about that?” Everyone was called back in
and we took up our positions. The Squadron
Leader asked and I took his admonishment, which of course is no more than a
very light slap on the wrist. The first
thing I had to do was get to a telephone and ring Barry. I couldn’t believe his advice had worked. If
only I had known at the beginning of my career, what I now knew, but how many times
have people said that?
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