Boy Entrant; The Recollections of a Royal Air Force Brat (27 page)

After issuing us with our personal toolkits, Corporal Simpson ordered us to fan around him in a wide semicircle and then instructed us to empty the contents of the bags out onto the floor. Then he went through a checklist of the tools that we were each supposed to have in our toolkit. As he called out the name of a tool, using its RAF nomenclature—
hammer, ballpane
—we would hold up the appropriate tool to indicate that we had it. When Gummy had scanned around to confirm that everyone was holding up the correct tool, he told us to put it in the bag before calling out the next item on the list. Checking that we had all of our tools after performing a task was a good and necessary habit, we were told. This was because of the danger that a loose tool can create if carelessly left behind in an aircraft. Loose objects are very likely to move around during flight, possibly jamming the controls, or even causing injury to someone during military style flying, when the pilot might be rolling or looping the aircraft.

This was no exaggeration because I recall an incident from later in my RAF service career when a large, heavy screwdriver struck the pilot of a Meteor on the head while he was performing an inverted manoeuvre. The screwdriver bounced off his helmet and then struck the cockpit canopy. He was lucky that the helmet saved him from injury and it was with great presence of mind that he remained inverted long enough to reach out and retrieve the wayward tool from where it had come to rest in the inverted canopy, before making a hasty return to base. The owner of the screwdriver denied that he had lost it in the cockpit, but an identifying mark on the blade provided evidence to the contrary. A subsequent tool check then revealed that the screwdriver was indeed missing from his toolkit although, in this case, carrying out a tool check after the event was like closing the stable door after the horse had gone. The airman was punished, but worse, he was permanently banned from working on aircraft and was forced to work in a non-aircraft trade for the remainder of his service. Tool checks were rigidly enforced for many weeks after the incident and eventually a new system of keeping better control of tools was established on the squadron.

When Gummy Simpson had completed the tool check, he ordered us to close and padlock our tool bags. He then told us that they would be stored at Workshops under his supervision, but we would have possession of the key to our own personal tool bag so that no one else could open it. Trustingly, we believed him.

During the following two weeks, I learned to identify many of the tools that I would be using in my everyday working life. They consisted mostly of screwdrivers and pliers. We then moved on to some of the other tools we would be expected to use from time to time, for the purpose of cutting and shaping materials. This category included hacksaws and files. We were also introduced to some of the less common tools, such as a scribe used for marking guide lines on metal prior to cutting it, in the same way that one would draw a line on a piece of wood with a pencil before sawing it. There were surface tables and vee-blocks, both of which are precisely machined to provide true, flat surfaces that enable measurements to be made with a high degree of accuracy, and there were tri-squares for checking the trueness of right angles. Next, we moved on to micrometers and Vernier calipers, both of which are used for making precise measurements down to 1/1000 of an inch.

All of this was a prelude to going into the workshop, where we could put our new knowledge into
practise. And when that time came, we were taken to an area of the hangar that was equipped with workbenches, for the first of many sessions of workshop practice. The object of this initial session was to start us off simply with some basic work, but first we collected our tool kits from storage, which naturally called for a tool check as an essential part of the training.

Just as before, we all stood around in a semi-circle with a pile of tools at our feet while Corporal “Gummy” Simpson went through the checklist. All went well until he called out for us to hold up
hammers, ballpane, one
. I dived into the pile, but couldn’t find the hammer. I then began frantically rummaging around in the pile, but it just wasn’t there. So I looked in my toolbag, expecting to find that it had lodged in there when I had emptied the other tools out, but the bag was empty. Then I looked at the other piles of tools near me, thinking that maybe my hammer had strayed into one of those, but that also drew a blank. In the end I had to admit to the corporal that my hammer was missing, even though I couldn’t for the life of me understand how it could have disappeared when the only other time that I’d taken it out of my tool bag was during the previous tool check. I mentioned this to the corporal, but he dismissed my reasoning and told me that I must have been careless and hadn’t put the tool back in my bag after that last tool check. He took my name and serial number, telling me that a report would be sent to Pay Accounts on some kind of RAF debit form and that the cost of the tool would be deducted from my pay. At this point he had me doubting myself—maybe I had left the tool out of the bag, or maybe someone else had picked it up by mistake? In any event, there was little I could do but go along with the debit charge against my meagre pay.

For our first project at Workshop practice
we were provided with a roughly cut piece of aluminium that was slightly larger than six inches square and was half an inch thick. The object of the practice was to file the edges of the piece until its dimensions were exactly six inches by six inches, with each edge perfectly level and each corner a perfect right angle. The task was designed to give us practise in the use of a scribe, a tri-square, the surface table and of course a whole series of files, from coarse file all the way to a very smooth finishing file.

Like everyone else, I clamped the metal piece in a vice and worked on it throughout the morning. Then, when I thought it was very close to the required dimensions I checked all four edges with the tri-square, only to find that none of them were level—when I held it up to the light I could see gaps between the tri-square and the aluminium. It took quite a lot more work with a smooth file to get all the edges square and then, when I was satisfied that each edge seemed level and at right angles to all the others, I was ready for the next step. This entailed sliding the work-piece around, one edge at a time, on a surface table that had been lightly coated with oil and then checking to see if the entire edge of the work-piece was uniformly coated with a film of oil. Not surprisingly, that happy result was not achieved the first time. There were a number of low points that remained dry, indicating that the edge was uneven. This meant more careful filing and many more trips to the surface table to reduce the high spots so that they were at the same level as the low points. Finally, I was able to get the film of oil to completely coat all of the surfaces and the job was done. I carried my work-piece to the instructor, who checked it before giving his approval. Work assignments such as this were marked and the results placed in our training records, counting towards the award of a proficiency stripe at the end of each term.

Workshop practice took up one day of instruction each week and on the other days we sat in the classroom, being instructed in subjects that were designed to give us the knowledge and skills we’d need to become the best aircraft technicians in the world. That’s not to say that we were finished with our general education. We still went to classes at the Education Centre once a week for maths, physics and current affairs. Then there was PE, which was always a welcome break from sitting in a classroom. And of course, the weekly Padre’s Hour and Sports Afternoon all helped to provide some variety in our week. Thankfully, the drill sessions and Ground Defence Training had been removed from our curriculum and we went to Workshops for trade training instead. Other than that, the activities involved in our training seemed to remain just about the same.

* * *

Life in the new billet settled down into a routine of sorts. When we finished Workshops for the day, we were expected to do homework in the evenings, which involved transferring the scribbled notes that we’d copied down from the blackboard during the day into our “best” notebooks. The theory behind this was that the information that we had received in the classroom during the day would be reinforced by transcribing our rough notes and diagrams into the “best” notebooks, using better handwriting and draughtsmanship. I didn’t agree with this theory, because I felt that the act of transcription was somehow automatic and that the knowledge didn’t sink in very well this way. In retrospect, it would have been better for me if I’d read over the notes after having neatly written them out into my notebook, but by the time I’d finished writing them out I wasn’t in any mood to read them again. That’s really a pity, because I think it would have helped me a little later on. Sometimes, when transcribing notes, I had difficulty in reading my own scribble or the hasty free-hand sketches that I’d made during the day. At such times, it was difficult to produce neat copperplate hand-written notes and elaborately-coloured diagrams from my scrappy, rough information. It was a necessary evil however, because our “best” notebooks were subject to weekly inspection by the current instructor and lapses in keeping them up-to-date could easily land an errant boy entrant an interview with Warrant Officer Dimwiddy, who was in charge of instruction in Workshops. Ginge Brown invented an apt expression for that particular experience: he referred to it as “having coffee and biscuits with Mr. Dimwiddy”.

Raids by the 26th still continued after “lights out”, but as the weeks wore on it seemed that the senior entry had become bored with that particular activity and so the frequency of the after lights-out disruptions lessened progressively.

One of the seemingly exciting benefits that appealed to me when I first moved into my Wings billet was discovering that one of the occupants possessed a record player. We never had that kind of luxury in ITS, so at first I enjoyed listening to the “Rock around the Clock” LP by Bill Haley and the Comets and another LP featuring “The Platters”. Unfortunately, that was the full extent of the collection possessed by the owner of the record player. The result was that both LPs were played over and over again, until I was sick to death of hearing both of them and longed for lights-out so that they couldn’t be played any more. One dubious advantage of this exposure is that, to this very day, I can easily remember the lyrics on each track, word for word, on the odd occasions that I am unfortunate enough to hear either of them again.

* * *

The bond of friendship between Butterworth and me, that had been born in ITS, was strengthened somewhat by the fact that we had both ended up in the same 2 Wing billet. But to a larger extent, the bond had already found considerable reinforcement due to similarities that we shared in our backgrounds. At an early age, we had both helplessly felt the pain of losing our mothers to untimely death, only to suffer additional salt being poured into our wounds when their places were unworthily taken by less than loving stepmothers. By becoming Boy Entrants, we had each found the very same escape route from our miserable home lives. The circumstances under which we both had suffered were so similar that, after listening to me telling of mine, Richard commented that I could just as easily have been describing how life had been for him. In many ways, it seemed as though we had truly lived in each other’s shoes. The only major divergence we could identify was in the jobs we held before joining the RAF. It was difficult for us to decide which of our previous forms of employment could possibly have been the better: mine as a message-boy or his as an undertaker’s assistant. I kidded him that his was a dead-end job—a joke he appreciated. We did lots of things together, such as going to Barry at weekends and the Astra cinema during the week. We also got ourselves into the same kind of trouble. Butterworth was a non-smoker when he first joined the Boys, but he took up smoking within a few months of falling into my bad company. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but it seems that my regular bouts of puffing away at a Woody Woodbine influenced him to also become addicted to the “weed”. And that’s what got both us into hot water and introduced us to “Jankers”, shortly after moving into E-lines.

Smoking in the billets during “duty hours” was forbidden, including the period in the morning when we were tidying the place up before going out on parade for inspection. But the “standing orders” that forbade the practice didn’t stop us from lighting up and having a few puffs, as we made our bed-packs and swept out our bed spaces during the short period of time remaining between breakfast and the parade. Unfortunately for us, the squadron Sergeant Boy Goodrum sometimes patrolled the billets to make sure that everyone was out on parade on time. Goodrum, of the 26th entry, was a dedicated rugby player with a burly physique that suited him very well to the game. The combination of his build and the three stripes on his arm made him an intimidating figure to slightly built junior entry members such as Butterworth and me. As an athlete, he was also a non-smoker who had little or no understanding of the craving that we tobacco addicts suffered. On one particular morning the Sergeant Boy caught both us with cigarettes in hand—the smoking gun so to speak—and late for parade as well. He read us the riot act and ended by warning us that if it happened again we would be put on a charge.

Being put on a charge was very much like being booked for some misdemeanour by a policeman and was always accompanied by the same sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach. It was something that we had been sheltered from up to now. During our time in the Initial Training Squadron, punishment for minor infringements was dispensed directly by our DIs and usually involved us in performing some type of fatigues, such as cleaning greasy pans in the mess kitchen, or an equally menial task. But being put on a charge was to find oneself in a situation that had similarities to a court appearance in civilian life, from which a more formal type of punishment would be meted out. It usually began when an NCO accosted an individual with the accusation of a perceived transgression. The NCO would inform the accused that he was being placed on a charge and would then proceed to record the details of the transgression on a Charge form, better known by its RAF form number, “two-five-two.” The “court” equivalence was a nerve-wracking appearance before an officer, usually the person’s Flight Commander if the offence wasn’t of a too serious nature. And the most common punishment for minor offences was confinement to camp for a specific number of days, unofficially called “jankers”. But the punishment wasn’t
just
being confined to camp. There were activities that those on jankers were expected perform during the confinement that made the whole experience of jankers something to be avoided if possible.