BIRKENHEAD SCHOOL

0039 CCF & RAF

In the days of my youth public schools were committed to having CCF (Combined Cadet Force) contingents. Moreover, we pupils were forced to join these. We all started in the army, and spent our time – as did all recruits into the army – practicing drill. There may have been good reasons why such drill was necessary at the time of Waterloo, with its red squares of infantry. But I fail to see what use it is in modern warfare. I amply demonstrated this when I led a team of cadets tasked with ‘ambushing’ other cadets; albeit our only weapon was a rattle, which was supposed to sound like a sub-machine gun. We ranged about the countryside, and our victims followed the requisite procedures, dropping to the ground and returning fire from their empty rifles. At the end of the day they all lined up ready to march back to the school. That was when we attacked again. You have never seen so many cadets falling over each other as they tried to react. Typically, for the army, we were ticked off for daring to ambush them when they weren’t expecting it!

Even worse was all the bull. Our boots had to shine, with the boot-polish boned up with the handle of a toothbrush. Our brass also had to shine. And we had to ‘blanco’ our webbing and gaiters every time we went on parade. It meant that much of the evening before the half day a week we spent on such pursuits was spent on this bull.

Worst of all was the day we had our general inspection, by some local army bigwig. Several hundred of us had to stand to attention in perfect lines for hours on end, as he wandered up and down the lines. As this usually took place in June, on a hot day, quite a few cadets used to faint; and we all dreaded the thought that we might be one of them.

After a year I was able to join the RAF contingent, hoping for better times there. It wasn’t much better in fact; except that the masters in charge were more incompetent and we were able to get away with some tricks which we would not have perpetrated previously. 

Even the RAF uniform did                Church parade, at the local cinema!

nothing for me!

Much as I bitterly hated having to participate in the  CCF, even the RAF,  I hated the two annual camps I was forced to go to even more. They were an opportunity for the older boys to bully anyone they wanted to, especially the younger ones. I ended up being the butt of much of their bullying. The first one was when I was in the fourth form. We went to RAF Hucknall near Nottingham. It was the first time I was away from home and also the first time I had stayed in a dormitory, if you can call a nissen hut that! This offered the maximum opportunity for the bullies, and they took every advantage of it. It was also the first time I had to take showers in public, and I hated it. In fact I steadfastly avoided doing it, which made me even more a target for the bullies.

The camps were meant to be a combination of training and holiday. Thus, while we were on the first camp, we also went to Lincoln Cathedral to see the Magna Carta, and made a number of side trips. But most of the time we had to put up with the drill and boring routine of RAF camps; and being subject to all the bullying squaddies are forced to endure.

It was, though, the first time I saw an X film. This was the 'Moon is Blue", with David Niven, and I saw it in the camp's cinema. The thrill of getting into an X film at my age was rather diminished by the fact that the front row contained a number of cubs still in their uniform!

The second camp, in the fifth form, was at Driffield in Yorkshire. This was a night fighter station and, as in the previous year, the one thing I did very much enjoy was the flying. This was in two seat piston-engined planes doing aerobatics high in the sky. There is nothing like the thrill of doing a loop or a role or a spin. It is a wonderful feeling.

But one flight stands out in my memory. A number of us were to be given a special flight in an old Anson aircraft. Left over from the war, these were rather rickety piston-engined passenger planes and were normally not of special-interest to us. But we were promised that we were being taken out by the group captain who commanded the station. We were thrilled because he was a World War II fighter ace!

I began to have my doubts when I saw what was going on in the pilots cockpit. I was at the front of the cabin, just behind the cockpit and, through the door opening, I heard the sergeant pilot, who was alongside him, saying to the group captain say: "You pull this back to take off'! This was scarcely reassuring! With that the group captain revved up the engines and rushed off down the runway. My problem was that, without warning, he went straight down the runway the wrong way. Possibly he thought he was entitled to do this as the aerodrome belonged to him, and I guess it did. But it was an awe inspiring sight, as we accelerated down the runway, to see a whole wing of night fighters coming in to land ahead of us and all shearing steeply away on either side off to avoid us. How we avoided going head-on into them I don't know!

The flight was then relatively quiet until we came to land. He did not want to waste time

going around the circuit, so he cut across the corner of the airfield and in the process hit a large tree. Fortunately he didn't crash the Anson and, after a rather bumpy landing, we came to a halt. But, as we were clambering out, the tyre at on the left-hand side, amply decorated with tree branches, gave a loud gasp and the whole plane slumped over. The tyre had burst. I dread to think what would have happened had this taken place when we were landing. So much for the thrill of flying with the RAF. Thereafter I avoided camps like the plague.

I was reminded of this later, when one of my students in IBM turned out to have been an RAF pilot who was cashiered because, on a bombing run during an exercise, he came in from the wrong direction and could only make the target by flying - at supersonic speed - under some electricity transmission lines. He was still aggrieved for, as he often pointed out, if it had been in time of war he probably would have got a medal!

The one thing I have not mentioned is National Service. The reason for this is that this ceased just a few months before I was due to enter it. As a result, it does not feature either in my memories of the time or in terms of its impact on my life as a whole; and I am eternally grateful for that! For most of my peers, however, it loomed large in their lives, and often shaped their destiny. Not least, it took 2 years, or latterly 18 months, out of their lives. That was the amount of time that, in their late teens, they had to give to the government; to defend the country. For most of them, as ordinary squaddies, it was two years of drill and bull; much as I have described above. But it often broadened their experience of life, not least taking them to strange places across the world they would never otherwise have seen. For some of those in the under-classes it was their making, giving them skills they would never have otherwise have gained. But for most it was dubious that they gained anything like enough to compensate for the 2 years of career they lost.

I had originally thought I too would have had to undergo this treatment. As such I had to decide whether to do it before I went up to university. In that case, due to my time in the RAF contingent at school, I expected to spend my two years in something like air traffic control. This wouldn’t have been too onerous, since it would have been just like a civilian job. My roommate at Farnborough, for example, was in the airforce but he was treated in all respects exactly the same as I was. The alternative would have been to do it after university, when the ‘job’ would have been as an officer. Fortunately I didn’t have to do either, and I gained an extra two years of career on those just a few months ahead of me!

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