DON'T NEVER FORGET YOUR LAST THREE!
As Remembered By Wing Commander Peter West, MBE
April 11th 1951 started early, very early as I recall. I had been in a deep, untroubled sleep when I, together with twenty one other seventeen and eighteen year-olds, was shattered into wakefulness by an incredibly loud clattering.
Some fool was thrashing the side of a large metal coke box with a poker. The
noise was deafening,
ear-splitting. My head was ringing and my throat dry with the shock. As my senses
returned I could
discern an uncultured voice screaming: “FEET ON THE FLOOR … NOW!”
Natural reflexes came
into play and without realising it, I had indeed got out from under my bedding
and was sitting bolt upright with my bare feet on the ice cold linoleum.
Looking around I noted that all of the others had reacted similarly and all looking as dazed and uncomprehending as I.
We were all staring in disbelief at the source of our torment. All eyes focused on a tall, muscular, square-jawed and extremely smartly turned-out Corporal standing to attention in the middle of the hut, his boots gleaming, the awful poker still clutched in his hand and the echo of the clattering still in our ears.
“Moveyerselves! No one’s goin’ter bring you no cuppa tea in bed!” His voice seemed never to drop below a scream. Was this how he always spoke to people? Anyway, where was I and why was this ghastly person shouting at me, and who were all of these other fellows?
It probably took no longer than a micro-second before I remembered that I had actually volunteered to undergo this torture. The previous day, my room-mates and I had arrived, by train and bus from various corners of the realm, at RAF Station Cardington in Bedfordshire. The station was dominated by enormous hangars, a local landmark, which had at one time housed airships such as the ill-fated R101. No screaming and hectoring from our tormentor yesterday, but now we were committed….
Shortly after our arrival we had been fed, if you can call what we ate “food”, and had been allowed to settle in our hut, a large wooden room containing twenty-two beds and a similar number of light oak utility wardrobes and bedside lockers. Dominating the hut were two large “Smokey Joe” stoves beside which were two galvanised coke bozes which, together with a poker, had been the instrument of our rude awakening.
That first evening was spent getting to know one another, allowing youthful humour to mask our mixture of apprehension, excitement and homesickness. We were an interesting and motley crowd, linked only by acne, youth and enthusiasm for a hoped-for career as aircrew in the Royal Air Force. For all of us, our inspiration was the generation which had gone just a few years before. They had won their spurs.
Over the years ahead, those of us who succeeded and stayed on in the Air Force
would be involved in a very different war, a Cold War, chilling in its prospect
but never, as time would tell, a war which would require us to deal with the
heat of battle as our predecessors had done. They had won a glorious but costly
victory and we too would eventually win but our victory would take many years
and be a quiet, largely unsung one in which politicians would claim the laurels.
Our equipment too, would be very different. Weapons of mass destruction. Jet
aircraft of increasing sophistication and performance. But this was all in the
future. For the present our enemy was a six
foot tall Corporal Drill Instructor.
He was shouting again, something about “Hablutions” and, more invitingly, breakfast. It seemed that we were to perform the former before we could hope for the latter. We, therefore, “Habluted” then dressed hurriedly as the good Corporal had a fetish for fresh air and had left the doors at each end of the hut wide open. He also insisted that all of the windows be opened, another incentive to haste. All of the foregoing had begun at “Ho six ‘undred hours!”
Breakfast was ghastly. Powdered eggs of a greenish hue, greasy and very salty bacon, sour, lumpy porridge, unsweetened tea with the texture of sand and all made hours earlier. Grey bread and even greyer margarine was the filling bit. Needless to say, being ravenous youngsters, we wolfed everything down, all the while thinking that most of our weekly pay of forty-nine shillings (£2.45p) would be spent in the NAAFI on egg and chips. Actually no, not all of our pay. Oddly enough, with so little money we still all, or nearly all, smoked in those days --- not like now when only schoolgirls and actors smoke! So, some cash was kept for a few cigarettes (5p for 20) and a visit to the cinema of course.
The Corporal marched us to the stores where we collected our kit. Uniforms were made of rough serge and seemed to fit only those of us who were deformed. The Station Tailor, I use the term loosely, then took trousers and tunics away to be “fitted”. Since they were all back the next day, we rightly didn’t expect a great deal of difference, but to be fair he and his workers had done their limited best. Boots were a problem for some. Why is it that in every intake of new recruits there is always one with enormous feet? If the rumours were to be believed, then Aircrew Cadet Stone with his size fifteens would one day make some woman very happy.
For me, the worst item of the uniform was the detached shirtcollar. These objects, and we were issued with six of them, had to be fastened to the neck of the shirt with fore and aft collar studs ‘Airmen for the use of’, which left behind small green patches on the Adam’s apple and the nape of the neck.
We were assembled by the Corporal, who, by now, had insinuated himself into our lives like some unwanted and hectoring Aunt. He had, he proclainmed, something of great importance to impart: we were going to be photographed for, then issued with, our ‘Twelve fifties’! We didn’t realise it at the time, but the RAF Form 1250 (ID card) would become as much a part of us as a limb. Inscribed upon the ‘1250’ was a number. “That is your number, don’t never forget your number” yelled the Corporal, “Hespecially don’t never forget your last THREE!” This latter he screamed as a word of command on the parade ground. “Without your last three you won’t get no PAY!” He went on to explain the mysteries of pay parade and how in order that one might be identified properly when one’s name was called out, one had to shout out one’s last three: having, of course, sprung smartly to attention. Springing smartly to attention was, it appeared, a regular and highly important ritual of RAF life which had frequently to be exercised.
I looked closely at my number, hoping against hope that I would “Never
forget it”. But to my delight this was going to be easy. As an ex-member
of the Air Training Corps, my service number began with 35 and, since all of
the 350’s had been used I was the first of the 351’s hence: 3510000
As this was sinking in the dulcet tones of our beloved Corporal filled the air
and he was addressing ME! “You, West,” “Yes Corporal,”
(springing to attention). “Hi don’t never want to ‘ear you
shout ‘Nought, f**k-all blank’ and, if you say ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’
– I’ll charge the man behind you”.
Bless him, he had probably waited for years to come out with that one, but it was worth it as it still, fifty seven years later, makes me smile when I think of it – and I never did forget my last three!
(First published by the Armed Forces Pension Society, to whom thanks and
acknowledgement are due)