by Brian Carlin
When I look back, life has been good to me—all things considered. And I think I’ve handled it with some degree of success, even if I say so myself. But it could have turned out so much differently and probably less successfully, if I had failed to make a certain fateful decision at a critical time in my early life.
Many of us make decisions that set the course of our futures—for good or ill—whilst we’re still only youngsters. For some it might be a decision to do nothing: the easiest of all to make, just allowing ourselves to be tossed around like corks on the sea of life, washing up on any shore, or maybe never seeing shore at all. For others, it might be a decision to take a path in a new direction that, if followed unwaveringly, will yield benefits in our adult years. I’m happy to say that I made the latter kind of decision at the tender age of 15. It was a very good decision, as things turned out, although I didn’t realize that at the time. I’d like to tell you about it.
It was summer of 1956 and I was desperate to escape from what I realized was a dead-end existence. This was Northern Ireland before the Troubles, but not before the trouble that caused the Troubles. I’d just left St. Malachy’s Public Elementary School. The school leaving age at that time was 14½, but my father made me stay on for another six months to give him more time to get me apprenticed into a good trade. I really loved working with wood and was good at it, so he tried to get me placed as an apprentice carpenter. But a Catholic lad had little chance of landing something like that in the Ulster of those days, unless his family had exceptionally good contacts. Sadly, mine didn’t. So I finally left school at 15 and worked full-time as a message boy for a local grocer by the name of Paddy Corning. My job was to go on errands, mostly delivering large grocery orders to Paddy’s customers. A battered bicycle operated by boy pedal power was the means by which I delivered the groceries to our valued customers. The bike came equipped with a large tubular metal pannier mounted in front of the handlebars and supported over the front wheel, which held a wicker basket containing the groceries. Typically, an errand meant pedalling for several miles to deliver a grocery order to the customer’s home. The freedom was wonderful after having had to sit in a single classroom all day, especially for six months longer than I needed to. I knew, however, that I couldn’t stay in this job forever, not even for very long and so I kept looking for an opportunity that might bring something better. Although, for the life of me, I didn’t know what that might be.
That wasn’t the only thing troubling me. To put it in the language of today’s family psychologists, my family was chronically dysfunctional. I was the eldest of four children, two sisters and two brothers, whose mother had passed away eight years previously. For the first two years after her death my father paid a succession of women to look after us, so that he could go out to work. Some were good and some weren’t so good, but not one of them could replace our mother, whom we missed desperately. My father then married again. His new wife was in her forties and had never been married before. Her desperation to find a husband was matched only by my father’s desperation to get someone to look after his kids for free, cook him a meal when he came home and share his bed. Maybe it worked out for him, but it sure as hell didn’t work out for us. She was a mean-spirited bitch, who did everything she could to make life miserable for my sisters and me. But our brother, the youngest in the family, was a little luckier. Because he was still a toddler, he seemed to kindle her maternal instincts and she adopted him as her own. But as for the rest of us, we were just someone else’s brats and she treated us as such. To make matters worse, I didn’t really hit it off too well with my father. He believed that I favoured my mother’s side of the family and, since he didn’t get along with them, any of my personal characteristics that reminded him of them made me a target of his scorn. Young as I was, I realized I just had to get out of that miserably unhappy situation as soon as possible; all I needed was a good opportunity. Then one day, just out of the blue, came the break I’d been looking for.
Leafing through a boys’ magazine—probably The Wizard or The Hotspur—that early summer day in 1956, I noticed a picture of a boy around my own age of 15 looking back at me from an advertisement. He was wearing a round military-style peaked hat with a badge prominently displayed at the front bearing the familiar initials RAF, which anyone would have recognized as the insignia of the Royal Air Force. There was an unusual chequered pattern around the outer hatband that I’d never seen before and I’d seen plenty of air force servicemen around and about, since the RAF station at Ballykelly was near my home town. The young man’s uniform looked familiar and yet it was different somehow.
“Become a Boy Entrant in the RAF and learn a trade,” said the advert, in very large type. My eyes lingered over the words as I wondered what exactly “Boy Entrant” meant, but the words “learn a trade” certainly caught my attention. Could this be the answer to a prayer?
The small print in the advert informed me that if I was a boy between the age of 15½ and 16½, was medically fit and could pass a basic education test, I might qualify for training as a Boy Entrant in the RAF. Well, I was medically fit, reasonably intelligent and certainly had more than a passing acquaintance with the three R’s, so it seemed that there was a very good chance of qualifying. Here was a chance to learn a trade and get away from home, all rolled up in one package.
The advert concluded by inviting me to fill out my name, address and age in the spaces provided and then send off for more details. In very short order, I found a pen and filled out the requested information then found an envelope and addressed it, as instructed in the advert, to the Royal Air Force Recruiting Office, Clifton Street, Belfast. A little later, I bought a stamp and posted the application, without telling anyone.
Filling out the application and sending it off was just a simple act, but it had a far-reaching effect on the rest of my life. That’s what I was hoping for, in a way, but at such a young age it was all just a vague dream of a far distant future. I wanted to be a success at something and rise above the poverty and misery that had been my lot since my mother had passed away. Yet I was groping towards this goal without any real plan, just taking it one step at a time. Little did I realize what a major step I had just taken by posting off that application to the RAF.
If this was a life changing moment, it didn’t arrive with any great fanfare of trumpets or off-screen dramatic music. No heavenly ray of golden light shone down on me, no sudden realization of the far-reaching consequences of this deed endowed my countenance with a look of knowing wisdom. Instead, that day life just continued in the very same way it had the day before and the day before that. I pedalled Paddy Corning’s message bike, delivering groceries to the customers. And on the way I helped myself to one, well maybe it was two, of Mrs. Mulligan’s Gypsy Crème biscuits.
This was back in the days when biscuits came in biscuit tins; sheet metal boxes that measured about one cubic foot. The grocer would weigh out the ordered quantity and put them in a paper bag, which he would then hold by the top two corners and twirl it around a couple of times to close it. One day, sitting on the very top of Mrs. Mulligan’s grocery order, was just such a paper bag containing half a pound of Gypsy Crèmes—my favourite. They were thick, craggy-looking and chocolate flavoured, with a thick layer of chocolate cream filling sandwiched between two biscuits. From time to time I had sampled a few customers’ biscuits, but usually they were from bags containing a full pound and not Gypsy Crèmes which weighed heavy so that there weren’t too many in a pound. Mrs. Mulligan was a schoolteacher at St. Malachy’s Girls School and quite an unpleasant teacher, at that. She didn’t like boys of my age, thinking that we were always up to no good. But on this occasion, at least, I couldn’t fault her for holding that opinion. My guess is that she suspected something because maybe she’d been a victim of my sampling tendencies in the past. In any case, when she answered the door to take the delivery of her groceries, she bade me to wait and then immediately grabbed the bag of biscuits and disappeare
d into her house. A few moments later she returned with a challenging look in her eye, holding the bag of biscuits before her, up at face level.
“I ordered half a pound of biscuits and I’ve just weighed these, but there isn’t a half pound here,” she pronounced in an almost victorious manner, like some prosecuting barrister presenting the case-winning evidence. “Why is that?” Mrs. Mulligan then demanded, her thin lips stretched into a decidedly un-humorous smile.
“Dunno,” I mumbled with a half-hearted shrug. But by now I knew the cat was well and truly out of the bag, as well as the Gypsy Crèmes.
She waited a few uncomfortable moments for the explanation she must have known wasn’t going to be forthcoming.
“Okay, I’m going to phone Paddy Corning and ask him why I’m getting short weight in biscuits!” She announced, closing the door in my face at the same time.
Mrs. Mulligan did exactly as she said she would. Paddy was waiting for me when I got back and immediately took me to the storeroom at the rear of the shop, where I got a stern lecture on the importance of the trust customers placed in their grocer’s honesty. The desire to escape to pastures new couldn’t have been any stronger than it was during that short session getting the sharp edge of Paddy Corning’s tongue.
Thankfully, it wasn’t too long after sending off my application to the recruiting office that a large brown envelope bearing the boldly printed legend “On Her Majesty’s Service” plopped through the letterbox of my home in Windsor Avenue. Hurriedly I opened it and found a booklet describing life as a Boy Entrant, with a list of available trades for which I could apply. There was also a letter requesting that I complete the enclosed one-page form, on which I was expected to provide details of my education, current occupation, parents’ names and a history of any illnesses or physical handicaps.
Many of the listed trades seemed very limiting. I ask you, what kind of demand would there be for armourers in normal civilian life? No, I wanted to learn a trade that would stand me in good stead during my life after the RAF. I suppose I was thinking of my father’s example. He had joined the Royal Navy as a stoker when he was a young man and in the process was taught skills of brick-laying that were needed for re-lining a ship’s boilers with firebricks. On leaving the service at the end of the war, he was able to use these skills to make a living as a bricklayer during the post-war building boom.
With this thought in the back of my mind, the trade of Electrical Mechanic seemed to stand out above all others. One of my former schoolmates was apprenticed as an electrician because fortunately for him his dad practised that trade, so he had a leg up in getting his apprenticeship. Yes, I thought, that sounds like a useful trade, so I made it my number one choice. The instructions for completing the paperwork informed me that I needed to select a first, second and third choice of trades for which to be considered, because all trades might not be available to all applicants. So, I selected Electrical Mechanic as my number one choice, then Instrument Mechanic and Engine Mechanic as my second and third choices. It took a little longer to complete the form this time, but I filled out all of the requested information and asked my father to sign, giving his parental consent.
“I don’t want you to go,” he said, “but I’m not going to stand in your way.”
He had left home to join the Royal Navy when he was 18 and had always commented that a good military training would straighten me out, or words to that effect. My stepmother had no qualms, she said to let me go, that it would make a man of me. So my father signed the form and I returned it in the pre-addressed postage paid On Her Majesty’s Service envelope that had been enclosed with all the other stuff I’d received. This edged me a little farther down that fateful road to the future, but still life went on. Oh, I should mention that I told my best pal, John Moore, what I had done. He didn’t believe that I would go through with it, but he would soon be proved wrong.
The information I had included on the form must have interested the RAF, because they sent me an even bulkier envelope a short time later. This time, there was much more information on life as a Boy Entrant. Of course it leaned heavily on the glamorous stuff, in the same way that holiday hotel adverts always seem to include those nice pictures framed by bougainvillea, neglecting to mention that the bougainvillea is actually growing in the garden of the much nicer hotel across the street. Included with the glossy books and pamphlets was another form, longer than the first one—four pages this time. It seemed the RAF wanted just a bit more information and some references. I filled out the form in my neatest handwriting and then took the form to my former headmaster, Mr. Murphy, known fearfully as The Boss. I’d been in his class during my last two years at St. Malachy’s school and he had given me more than my fair share of a tough time when I was there, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
The Boss squinted at the form through his bifocals for a few minutes, then took out his Parker fountain pen, the one with the solid gold nib and filled with royal blue Quink ink and scribbled something in his sophisticated, grownup, educated, professional-person handwriting. As he handed the form back, he icily told me that he didn’t approve too much of an Irish Catholic boy going into British military service and that I should remember my religion and go to Mass on Sundays.
“Don’t be like all the others who go to England and fall by the wayside,” he said and with that he went back into his classroom. I left too, but as soon as I got around the first corner I opened the form to see what The Boss had written. It took me quite a while to decipher his writing, but when I finally managed to read words he’d scribbled I was pleasantly surprised. He said something to the effect that I was a very intelligent boy and would excel in anything and everything that interested me. He had me to a tee and yet I never dreamed that he held that opinion of me: in fact he had told me once that I’d probably end up being a member of a gang. But when I think about it, maybe he wasn’t so far wrong about that after all—some gang!
Paddy Corning wrote up the other reference for me. He told me that he was sorry that I was going to leave my job and go off to the RAF, even offering me a rise if I stayed on with him and promising to eventually promote me to work behind the counter in the shop. Of course, the prospect of staying in Coleraine and working in Paddy’s shop for the rest of my life just didn’t fit in with the mental picture I had of my future. The siren song of the glossy brochures and the exotic lure of faraway places had me in such a stranglehold that chains and leg-irons couldn’t have held me back from going. I politely turned down Paddy’s offer, at which he sighed, shook his head and wrote out a glowing reference. This greatly surprised me after the Gypsy Crèmes incident and the fact that I continually raided the expensive biscuit tins at tea breaks, instead of being contented with one or two of the more economically priced Rich Tea biscuits that seemed to satisfy everyone else.
In August of 1956, just a few weeks after I’d returned the completed form, including the references, another brown envelope from Her Majesty plopped through our letterbox. Inside was a letter inviting me to present myself on a certain date for intelligence and education testing at the RAF Recruiting Office in Belfast. A voucher for free rail travel was included with the letter. I could hardly wait to tell John Moore, but for the first time since we’d talked about it, I detected a hint of sadness that he couldn’t quite disguise as he tried to be enthusiastic for me. In the following days, word soon got around and before long I heard that two other boys from Coleraine had also applied and that they would be travelling with me to Belfast.
The day finally came and my friend John came to the house to say goodbye. Then he decided to accompany my father and me on our short walk to the railway station, where I was to catch the morning train. I exchanged my travel voucher for a return ticket at the ticket window and then showed it to the ticket collector at the platform barrier. He punched a neat little hole in it and then all three of us made our way onto the station platform. The other two Coleraine boys, Melvin Jackson and “Bull” McDonald, were already
there. Melvin was with his mother, but Bull was by himself as he usually was. There’s safety in numbers, so we joined them because, as I recall, we were the only people there.
As we waited on the platform for the Belfast train to arrive, the stationmaster and porters engaged us in friendly banter and soon learned all about the reason for our journey to the big city. Then, as we boarded the train for the two-hour trip to Belfast, everyone including the station staff waved and wished us good luck. It had been arranged that Melvin’s aunt was going to meet us at the other end and get us safely to the recruiting office. So, three young boys off on a great adventure would still have adult protection from the big bad world, although it was a more innocent time and we were in no great danger. The wheels clickety-clicked and smoke from the steam locomotive’s smoke stack streamed past the carriage window as we sped towards Belfast, stopping with a screech of brakes and a blast of steam at Ballymoney, then Ballymena and finally past Bleach Green as we swept around the eastern end of Belfast Lough and into Belfast’s York Road railway station.
Melvin’s aunt was there waiting, as promised. She welcomed us then led us to her home a short distance away for some very welcome sandwiches with steaming mugs of tea and freshly baked Irish soda scones topped with butter and strawberry jam. It was mid-morning by now and the time had come to present ourselves to the RAF. So, when we had finished our scones and tea, the kind lady escorted us to the recruiting office in nearby Clifton Street and then wished us well before saying goodbye.
A friendly sergeant welcomed us, introducing himself as Sergeant Malloy whilst he checked our names off his list. If you’ve seen one recruiting office, you’ve seen them all. They’re full of colourful posters and brochures depicting the glamour of life in uniform, but it was the RAF ensign, hanging from an almost horizontal flagpole over the building’s entrance, that really made an impression on me. The ensign was sky blue, with a small Union Jack in the upper corner nearest the flagstaff and a large red white and blue RAF roundel just a little off-centre. This was the first time that I’d laid eyes on the RAF flag, little realizing that, starting from right there and then, I would be seeing it with great frequency for the next 15 years of my life.