The 81st Entry
RAF Halton Aircraft Apprentices
Sept 1955 - July 1958

ISSUE No.22 - FEBRUARY 2010
81st ENTRY NEWSLETTER
Editor: Mike Stanley

Then and Now
by Mike Stanley

Last October I managed to break my wrist , quite badly , and so spent a few days in hospital, prior to an operation to pin everything back into place. I know that the NHS is not perfect but I was well impressed with the treatment I received and also with the standard of the staff I encountered. I did find the perplexity of the various uniforms [and none uniforms] a bit puzzling, it being difficult to tell who were nurses or technicians, cleaners or caterers. I soon realised that the young kids wandering around in casual dress were the house doctors and the sober suited, usually foreign, gents were the consultants.
So different from the last time I had visited a hospital as a customer, albeit only for a couple of hours and albeit a RAF hospital.

In 1973 I was a member of the 2nd Battalion, The Wessex Regiment [TA]. {I had left the RAF in 1968 so I don’t want you to think that I was moonlighting.} The battalion was on a weekend exercise at Ogbourne St. George, which at that time was a small village, complete with a disused airfield, some way to the south of Swindon. The weekend training was an Internal Security [IS] exercise, using buildings and roadways on the airfield to practise the skills of Cordon and Search, Vehicle Checkpoints, and all the other delights of IS in an urban environment. The “urban guerrillas” were provided by army apprentices, and their keepers, from the Army Apprentice School [Oops! it was a College in 1973!] at Aborfield. We arrived on site late Friday evening and set up a company area, got a brew going and prepared for exercise start at sunrise the next morning.

All day long on Saturday we ran around, setting up roadblocks, searching buildings, reacting to “snipers” and attending IED ‘s. It was high summer and the weather hot. We soon worked up a sweat, which attracted the dust and grime, so what with the camo’ cream already applied to our noble warlike features we must have looked a really villainous bunch of desperadoes [though not as villainous as those bloody apprentices; ran us ragged they did!!]

Even after sunset there was no let up [once the army has you for the weekend they intend getting their pound of flesh] We did manage a bite to eat and a swift brew-up but it was mainly all rush and tear. Eventually we had a break when the company was tasked with a Cordon and Search at 2 am on Sunday, so about midnight we “rested” in what had been the station pig farm. The original inhabitants had long gone but their memory lingered on, in smell and in other little mementoes, if you were unfortunate enough to discover them.

The hour arrived and my section piled into a Bedford 3 Tonner, to be dropped off at our part of the cordon. The object is to set up the cordon before the bad guys realise what is happening, so the Bedford raced into position and screeched to a stop. I kicked the tailgate down and hopped over it as it was descending. It was a feature of the Bedford tailgate that it bounces back up, so the first man out holds the tailgate down to stop it coming up and causing injury to the rest of the section as they de- bus. I landed and turned back to hold down the tailgate only to be met by the heaviest man in the section landing on top, and knocking the air out, of me. He then added injury to insult, for as he got up from off of me as his rifle, slung over his shoulder, swung round and the butt cracked me on the head.

I saw stars, and then not very much more, as I suffered an injury well known to “Our ‘Enery “ [Cooper]; a split above the eye, with blood cascading down in to said eye .No matter, the show must go on so the cordon was set up and I, groggily, carried out my duties as section commander. Eventually the Cordon and Search was over and the Company medic came over and took a look at me. He cleaned off as much caked blood, camo’ cream and muck as he could around the eye and pronounced that I needed stitches, and checking for concussion.

A rare bit of inter- service communication and cooperation then took place. Battalion HQ somehow managed to get through to RAF Hospital Wroughton and off I was sent, with the medic, to be examined at that centre of excellence.
The sun had just risen on a beautiful summer morning as we drove through the Wiltshire countryside of sleepy villages, with their soaring spired churches, duck ponds, Olde Worlde pubs; thatched roofed cottages and village greens. Golden wheat waved gently in the fields; from flower-strewn hedgerows came the chorus of melodious bird song; it was the whole Merrie England scene.

The medic, who was driving the Landrover, leaned towards me and said, “ It’s bloody marvellous innit?” I agreed and started off with the speech from ’ Richard II ’ [This Sceptered Isle, etc] The medic looked at me in amazement, probably thinking that I did have concussion, for he then continued, “It’s bloody marvellous that we can pick up the company’s radio messages this far out from the transmitter” I hadn’t realised that the radio was squawking away in the corner.

We arrived at the entrance of the hospital, which if memory serves me was quite an imposing edifice. Through the main door we went and into a corridor that stretched as far as the eye could see, the lino burnished to a brilliance that I had not seen bettered, even at Halton.

A sound of heels on floor, and approaching along the corridor came a vision in starched white. She looked as if she had stepped out of a bandbox; her immaculate uniform matched by her immaculate make up The rustling of her uniform was counter pointed by the whispering of her stockings.

What she thought of the sight, a be-grimed, dishevelled, bloodied pongo standing amidst this perfection, never showed on her beautiful, impassive, face.

“The doctor will be along in a minute, please follow me” Her voice was a match for her looks, and I gladly followed her swaying hips up the staircase; it was almost worth having the crack on the skull for that alone.

She showed me into an examination room and told me to get up on the bed. I demurred, as my boots, although not muddy were not exactly clean, and the bed was covered by a blindingly white sheet. She quickly vetoed me taking off the boots, wise decision; they had been glued to my feet since Friday afternoon when I had left home. So up on the bed I went, with my great big DMS boots defiling the sheet.

Just then a young Flight Lieutenant M.O came in the room, surprisingly civil considering his breakfast had been rudely interrupted by having to attend to me. “What happened to you? “ he enquired briskly. I told him that I had been hit on the head with a rifle butt. “Tut tut” was the only sound he made as he raised his eyes to heaven, but in his mind I knew it would be more like. ” Pongos! What are they like?”

The nurse came over with a bowl of warm water and gently removed more layers of grime and blood from my face. I caught the whiff of a subtle blend of gardenia, toothpaste and warm, young woman, smell. She caught the unsubtle stench of me; sweaty feet, body odour, cordite and pig sh*t.

I think that I had the better of the exchange.

The doctor shone a torch in my eyes asked questions [number rank and name, what day month etc] and pronounced me concussion free. He then stitched up the gash above my eye and said I was fit to carry on playing silly beggars. [Not in those exact words]

I left the hospital with the picture of that highly polished floor, starched perfection of the nurse and the professionalism of the Medical Officer. burned into my memory.

Maybe the most important element that has survived in the medical world since those times is that professionalism?