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

ISSUE No. 5 - NOVEMBER 2005
81st ENTRY NEWSLETTER
Editor: Mike Stanley

FIRST POSTING by John Gornall 681233 Instrument Fitter (Gen)

My first posting after passing out from No1 S of TT RAF Halton, was to RAF Lyneham and thus began a long association with Transport Command as an Instrument Fitter (General). No 99 Sqn was equipped with the Handley Page Hastings Mks 1 & 2 and they were quite the biggest aircraft I had ever seen at close quarters. After the Hunters, Swifts and Canberras of Airfield Sqn at Halton, I was a bit apprehensive about walking under them at first.

I had hardly settled in when, three months later I was given the opportunity to go on a two week detachment to the RAF staging post at the French Air Force Base at Orange in southern France. The small unit of about 40 personnel manning the staging post had only one or two tradesmen of each trade and, when someone went on leave a replacement was needed. What jollies there were to be had in those days!

This detachment turned out to be quite an adventure. First of all I had to go to Abingdon to meet up with other airmen going on the same movement. They turned out to be a Cpl Cook and an SAC Steward who were posted to Orange. The following day we were told that we would be travelling overland - and sea. There was no tunnel in those days. We were given rail tickets to London where we were to stay in the Union Jack Club (10/- night and rubber sheets on the beds) over the weekend. As it was the beginning of November we were able to witness the Lord Mayor’s Show on the Saturday and the Remembrance Service at the Cenotaph on the Sunday, including RAF Apprentice trumpeters playing.

The following morning we took a train to Dover, a ferry to Calais and another train to Paris were we were told we would receive further instructions. On arrival at the Gare du Nord together with several hundred other passengers a man in a belted raincoat emerged from the crowd and presented us with train tickets for Orange and told to find our way to the Gare de Lyon to catch the Marsailles train, at which he disappeared into the crowd. Spooky, or what. Using my small amount of schoolboy French, which had never been exercised outside the classroom but was a good better than that of my travelling companions, we got a taxi to the Gare de Lyon and a meal there. This consisted of ‘chateaubriand et pommes frites’. Steak and chips being the only thing I recognised on the menu. The train was very full and we spent most of the journey on our feet or sitting on our cases, but once we arrived at Orange we were made welcome by this little outpost of the RAF.

We operated from a hangar and some wooden buildings on the edge of the airfield well away from most of the French Air Force activity. The only drawback was that our accommodation was in a barrack block outside the security fence. In fact, there were two fences in parallel, into which guard dogs were released at night. In addition, there were 50 foot guard towers with an armed sentry at the top of each one. The situation was made more hairy by the fact that the guards were non - English speaking Algerian national servicemen armed with sub machine guns and live ammunition. Security was pretty tight as the Algerians were agitating for independence and had blown up some oil installations in Marseille. Apparently one of guards, who were rather trigger happy, had recently shot the French Air Force officer of the guard, who had been checking up on him by trying to pass unnoticed.

To move on foot between the billet and the work place to the mess for meals, a distance of about 50 yards, we had to pass the foot of one of these guard towers. The procedure was to stop when challenged, shout “Je suis anglais!” and wait for a grunt of approval before continuing. Now, this situation was not too bad by day when one could be clearly seen by the guard, but it took some nerve to do it at night with the guard’s searchlight following you all the way and the clink of his sub machinegun on the rails of the tower.

With the two week detachment, working on transit aircraft complete, I successfully hitched a lift back to Abingdon in a Beverley. It was a Friday and it seemed to be preferable to making the long overland journey alone. It was not a good idea. The Bev was carrying a troop of ‘pongos’ that had just completed a 3 month detachment to Cyprus as part of the response to the EOKA uprising. All went well till we landed at Abingdon about 6 pm. In the chaos of disembarking and wishing to get to the front of the customs queue I and a couple of other airmen used our knowledge of the aircraft layout to nip out of the crew door at the front. What we did not know was that the customs were experienced in dealing with unruly ‘pongos’ with much undeclared contraband and were mob handed. We were apprehended and made to wait till every single soldier had been through customs declared nothing, had his baggage searched and much contraband confiscated. Needless to say, by the time they got to us their sense of humour had completely failed to say the least. It is the only time I have experienced a strip search down to my underwear.

As a result of this debacle I only made it as far as Wolverhampton where I ran out of trains and spent the coldest and most uncomfortable night of my life on a wooden waiting room bench. Having recovered at home over the weekend, I returned to Lyneham on the Sunday evening, unpacked all my kit and reported to work on Monday morning to find that I had been elevated to the exalted rank of Acting Corporal and posted to RAF Colerne where the Hastings of 99 Sqn were moving to make way for the Britannia. A fair introduction to the frequent upheavals of Service life I was to experience over the next 30 years.