Mr Pink was short, somewhat rotund and, when without his cap, seen to be thoroughly bald. After asking our names and ages he demanded those of us to put up a hand who did not brush their teeth. I had to signal this admission, which I did without embarrassment, never having considered my mouth to need that kind of attention.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’m going to put you recruits on probation for a month, to see how you behave. If everything goes well you will be given a uniform, and then you’ll be able to write the word cadet before your name, but don’t forget that, in the meantime, if you want to belong to 209 Squadron, which is second to none, let me tell you, you will clean your teeth morning and evening! Is that understood?’
It was, and a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste were paid for out of my next week’s spending money. The only thing I didn’t like about his otherwise sensible speech was that he put me, among others, on probation, and had not accepted me immediately as being the finest possible acquisition.
My limbs were so unco-ordinated that for a while I had difficulty in marching correctly, but the drill soon taught me how to move, and my aspect smartened quite a lot. Lectures were given twice a week for a couple of hours in the evening, with an optional assembly on Saturday afternoon, which I went to, and instruction also on Sunday morning, ending with a grand review of all 400 cadets of the two West Nottingham squadrons. The only attendance I disliked was that for the monthly church parade.
On each ordinary occasion, however, I made sure that the uniform trousers were pressed to a sharp edge, and my shoes well polished. I would hurry home from the factory, have tea, a good wash, get into uniform, then quick walk a mile to the school. On Saturday afternoon, and again on Sunday morning, it was a round four miles to different buildings, and because buses were infrequent and often full, or stopped running by nine in the evening, I never used them, knowing in any case all the short-cuts of the area.
My knowledge of maps decided that I would train to be a navigator, and many hours were spent studying at home. There were classes in subsidiary subjects, and Arthur Shelton, who was clever with anything electrical (and chemicaclass="underline" we once tried to make gunpowder) wired up morse keys and buzzers, so that we practised until we could take and receive faster than anyone else in the squadron. We also improved our English, and learned mathematics, the principles of flight, aircraft recognition, engine theory, meteorology, navigation, RAF law and administration, health and hygiene, and anti-gas regulations — the Initial Training Syllabus for aircrew, in fact — our teachers being business and professional men who gave their time free. The reckoning of the day changed its character when calculated from midnight to midnight, all navigational problems and squadron orders being based on the twenty-four-hour system.
At annual camp we were attached to an aerodrome for a week, and the RAF looked after us. The first place was at Syerston, too near Nottingham for my liking, where we slept twelve to a bell tent and it rained most of the time, but we were given demonstrations of parachute packing, took a turn on the Link Trainer, and were shown the rudiments of air-traffic control.
Going by rail to our second camp, my first train journey as a grown-up, I followed the route through Lincolnshire with my National Road Atlas, noting every lane, bridge or stream, to the amusement but, possibly to the satisfaction also, of Mr Pink who accompanied us. This time we slept in Nissen huts, and on the range fired twenty rounds each from Short Lee Enfield rifles, which left me with an aching shoulder. Strangely enough, though always left-handed, I picked up a rifle and used it in the normal right-handed way. We were also instructed in infantry tactics and street fighting, creating mayhem among the blocks of the married quarters with blanks and thunderflashes.
In less than a year from joining I had gained the Proficiency Certificate Part One, but was too young to be given either the paper or the badge, for no one was expected to pass under the age of sixteen. The only part of the test which I had to take twice was drill, but I received high marks for English, mathematics and navigation, and the absolute top for signals. When Flying-Officer Wibberley, who ran a motor haulage firm, asked what he could give me as a reward for my success, I asked for a copy of The Complete Air Navigator by D.C.T. Bennett, the bombing raid pathfinder of the timer. This book, generously supplied at the cost of fifteen shillings, joined my much-read library, and from it I learned, among other things, the Greek alphabet, also noting the motto at the beginning: ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of safety.’
My father disliked me putting on a uniform but hadn’t been able to do anything about it. His permission was needed before I could go flying, however, and this he was reluctant to give, because he was genuinely afraid for me, considering the aeroplane to be a dangerous kind of transport. There had been cases, though he couldn’t have known about them, of cadets being killed in accidents, or in planes shot down by German nightfighters roaming the sky above training airfields. I forget whether it was his signature I obtained (something he was normally glad to give, in order to show he wasn’t totally illiterate) or my mother’s, since I was quite capable of forging either, but a group of us were taken by bus to RAF Newton, seven miles from Nottingham, to go up for the first time.
In a hangar smelling of peardrops, or ‘dope’ as we called it, we were given a parachute, told which handle to pull if we had to jump out of the plane, and sent to wait our turn outside the flight hut. The parachutes banged against our behinds as we walked across the grass and hauled ourselves on board the De Havilland Dominie, a twin-engined biplane of plywood construction, with seating for a pilot and ten passengers.
The Polish pilot taxied to the edge of the field for take-off, put the nose into the wind after a long slow rumble over the grass, then increased speed until the fixed undercarriage parted from the earth. Such a moment of truth could not have been more spectacular. At a couple of hundred feet, as the aircraft gently turned, or ‘banked’ as we had learned to say, the first blue elbow of the Trent came into view. Fear of air-sickness was forgotten at the sight of familiar landmarks between the Fosse Way, straight as a Roman ruler, and the Derbyshire foothills fading into the green haze.
Smoke from the marshalling yards and factories lay south of the city but, immediately to port and starboard, visibility was good enough to distinguish churches and park spaces, streets and railway lines, the castle squat on its sandstone rock and Wollaton Hall among the greensward, as well as old hideouts and well-run routes that up to a few minutes ago had seemed so far apart but that now in one exposing vista made as small and close a pattern as that on a piece of lace. From 1,000 feet the hills appeared flat and lost significance, but the secrets of the streets covering them were shown so that no map could have done the job better, doubly enthralling because I hadn’t seen a street plan of Nottingham which, with the one-inch Ordnance Survey maps, were not sold to the public during the war.
Distance opened in every direction, countryside and townscape from the vantage point of the clouds, on this first flight of many. It was obvious at last where part of my mind had always been, and I knew that if I could get so far vertically off the earth there should be no limit to the mileage I might do on its surface. Eyes ached in closely concentrated search, till after twenty miles the stately old Dominie turned east to join the circuit for a landing, and we were taken to have a meal in the Polish airmen’s mess. What was eaten there has been forgotten, but I do recall that pudding came on the same plate as the meat, thus providing a culinary signpost towards life with a difference.