Boy Entrant; The Recollections of a Royal Air Force Brat

by Brian Carlin

“That’s a shitty entry, isn’t it?” The voice taunted.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Say it, sprog! The twenty-ninth is a shitty entry!” He shouted in my ear.

  I mumbled, “The twenty-ninth’s a shitty entry.”

  “Louder! We didn’t hear you!” The voice shouted in my ear again.

  Identification with one’s own entry was strong amongst Boy Entrants and being forced to make a statement like this seemed like a betrayal. But I remembered the advice we’d received immediately prior to the raid and hastily decided that it was a minor thing compared to what might lay in store if I didn’t go along with them.

  “The twenty-ninth’s a shitty entry,” I said, speaking louder.

  “What’s the best entry?” The taunting voice now continued.

  “The twenty-sixth,” I replied, giving what I thought was the obvious answer.

  “No! Say ‘the twenty-sixth’s the best entry’,” he demanded.

  “The twenty-sixth’s the best entry,” I parroted.

  Apparently satisfied, the torch beams left my face as the raiders turned their attention away from me and sought out the other 29th members. Two were subjected to the same treatment that I’d just suffered, but Ron was left alone. The fact that he towered above most of the other boys, and was powerfully built into the bargain, probably had something to do with that. And then, just as suddenly as they’d arrived, the 26th raiding party left, on their way to the next conquest.

  We couldn’t turn the billet lights on because it was after “Lights out”, but a few people had torches of their own and these provided enough light for me to upright my bedstead and replace the mattress before remaking my bed and getting back into it. The voices and footsteps of the raiding party were still audible somewhere in the distance, as the band of Senior Entry raiders inflicted mayhem on some other hapless billet, but eventually the noises subsided and peace returned once more. A little later, our own billet’s small detachment of 26th entry returned, still chuckling over their adventure. They climbed into their intact beds, which had been spared in the raid because each had been marked by a white towel laid across its end to signify that it belonged to a member of the senior entry. The night’s raid was over and we were finally able to settle down and get some sleep. Strangely, our Leading Boy was noticeably absent during all of the excitement. It seemed that he preferred to keep a low profile while all the shenanigans were going on. It turned out that he was 27th entry and was following an unwritten law that said he shouldn’t interfere in senior entry affairs. Later, when the 27th entry came to power it was a slightly different story, but more about that later.

  Reveille was half an hour later next morning because it was Sunday and we were allowed to sleep in a little longer. Church parade wasn’t until 1000 hours, so most of us skipped breakfast to enjoy an even longer lie-in, safe in the knowledge that nobody would be around to bother us for a while.

  Church parade that morning was the first time that I wore my newly-embellished uniform. The corner of my eye kept catching the splash of red on my left arm from the disc behind my wheel badge, as I marched to the RC church. It moved rhythmically in and out of view as I marched along swinging my arms at the more relaxed waist-height level, like the other Wing boys, instead of having to swing them up shoulder high as we had been required to do in ITS. Those around me wore red and blue chequered hatbands and I knew that the SD hat on my head also matched theirs. I felt proud and elated to be in the Wings, even if the 29th was the lowly junior entry. That very same evening, I was rudely reminded of my entry’s lowly status.

  It was after tea and I was sitting on my bed cleaning my buttons and boots in readiness for inspection next morning when Mac, one of the 26th, came over to my bed-space carrying his greatcoat and tunic draped over one arm. He was taller than average and close to 18 years old. Mac had been one of the inhabitants of the billet who had regarded our initial arrival in E7 with a look of utter disdain. Although trying not to let him see me looking, I had noticed that he always seemed devoid of humour and his face appeared to wear a permanently angry expression. This formidable presence now stood not two feet from me and I wondered why? Maybe he had seen the stealthy glances I had cast his way? Whatever the reason, I felt a great sense of intimidation.

  “Here, clean these buttons while you’re at it,” he said, tossing his garments down on my bed beside me.

  I looked up at him, but was unable to say anything due to the sense of dread that had gripped me. This evidently made him think that I needed some further explanation.

  “You’re going to be my bull boy,” he announced with a cynical little smile, as though that explained everything.

  But I already understood. Being someone’s bull boy was just another rite of passage. It was something that nearly everyone had to do when his entry was the most junior. The only consolation was the potential of a deferred reward: an ex-bull boy could enlist the services of his own bull boy at a later date, when his own entry finally became the senior entry. The strictly unofficial privileges claimed by those in the senior entry didn’t just end with having their personal bull boys clean buttons and boots for them. In fact, they felt entitled to opt out of anything and everything of a menial nature. So, on bull nights they would go out to the NAAFI or the Astra, leaving all the cleaning and floor polishing to the other non-senior entry billet occupants. Junior entry bull boys were also expected to sweep and polish the senior entry boys’ bed spaces. To refuse, or under-perform to the extent that the recipient of these favours got into trouble for having dirty buttons or an unacceptable bed space during billet inspection, meant even bigger trouble for the bull boy. He would be hauled before a “court martial” hastily convened by the senior entry, tried, sentenced and then punished. All of this was very unofficial, of course and Sergeant Savoury and his corporals didn’t seem to know that it went on. Actually, I believe that they vaguely knew that some things like this went on, but were unable to do too much about it because they were up against the universal code of silence observed by teenagers, that discourages them from ratting on their peers.

  On Monday morning the events of the weekend were only a memory, as we tumbled out of our billets at 0745 hours and paraded on the road for the daily inspection. Everyone on parade carried a rolled up pair of denims under his left arm. Most had classroom notebooks rolled up inside their denims, but since we of the 29th hadn’t been to “Workshops” yet we didn’t have anything to carry except our denims. The squadron was divided into two flights, based on billet numbers. Those of us in billet E7 belonged to “A” Flight and I now followed the others to where it was forming up into three ranks, a short distance up the road, near the boiler house that supplied hot water for the camp. For inspection, we faced towards the billets, sandwiched between “B” Flight on our left and the drum and trumpet band on our right. A corporal-boy called us to attention and then proceeded with roll call, after which he moved through the ranks to inspect us, picking up a few people here and there for having tarnished buttons. During the time that we stood there at attention, I watched the boiler house workmen arriving, one by one, for work. The casualness that marked the beginning of their day was enviable compared with the beginning of mine. Each man that arrived went to the boiler-house office window and rapped with his knuckles on the glass, then waved to the person inside before entering the building through its main door. They didn’t have to suffer standing to attention for roll call, there was no button inspection for them and no marching to work. Besides that, what could be cosier than working in a nice warm place like a boiler house?

  With inspection finished and the time approaching 8:15, it was time to set off for Workshops. The sergeant-boy, who had been overseeing the squadron inspection, now took over by ordering the whole squadron to make a right turn. On his command, each person swivelled from the line abreast position, transforming our formations into columns of three ranks that faced in the direction of travel, with the trumpet band at the head of the parade. />
  “Number 3 Squadron! By the left, quick march,” yelled the sergeant-boy, at the top of his lungs.

  As one, all three formations stepped off on the left foot, keeping time with the slow rhythmic boom of a single-stick drumbeat from the large bass drum. This lasted for several paces until we’d travelled a short distance up the road, then all of the side drummers suddenly started beating out a full tattoo. I heard a voice in the band briefly yelling out some unintelligible command and next thing the trumpeters started playing a tune. It was one that I’d vaguely heard before somewhere, but couldn’t quite place. Music to march to work by! This was a lot better than having someone like Corporal Hillcrest call out "Yeft, yeft, yeft-yoyt, yeft"!

  The march to “Workshops” lasted no more than ten minutes and then I was able to discover what the word actually meant, within context of Boy Entrant training. The outward appearance of the structure where we came to a halt was that of a light-brown, brick-built aircraft hangar, but when we entered through a set of red-painted steel fire-doors set midway along the length of the building, it became apparent that the building’s function was very different from that of a hangar. Most of the floor area was partitioned-off into classrooms that were accessed from a grid pattern of aisles. In addition to the classrooms, there were also a few open areas in which work-benches were used to support brown coloured panelling surmounted with complicated-looking electrical equipment and wiring.

  On entering, we were led along one of the aisles to a classroom, into which we entered through a door-sized opening in the light-green painted partition. An elderly civilian, who wore a light brown coat-style overall and an armband with the word “Instructor” on his right arm, was waiting for us. He indicated that we each find a place to sit at one of the tables arranged in four or five rows in the classroom. After finding a seat and sitting down, I turned my attention to the instructor. He had a kindly face and appeared to be in his late fifties. A full moustache, sandy in colour, covered his upper lip and his thinning hair was of a similar shade. He wore a clean white shirt with a neatly knotted tie and gave off the appearance of orderliness and self-confidence. His name—Mr. Edridge—had been chalked at the top right corner of the blackboard to the left of “Instructor” and above the line that read “Subject: Basic Tools”.

  This class would last for a few weeks, with the object of teaching us the correct use and maintenance of hand tools, in a practical sense. But first, we needed to learn about the tools themselves and this meant spending the first two weeks in the classroom. Here we learned everything that anyone would ever want to know about screwdrivers, which were referred to in the peculiar backwards military fashion—screwdrivers, ratchet-handle; screwdrivers, general service (GS); screwdrivers, non-magnetic. Then there was the family of pliers—pliers, insulated, sidecutting; pliers, long-nose; pliers, wire stripping. And then there was one of my favourites. It came under the general heading of “files”—actually, it was one file in particular: the one that was known as a bastard file. This was during a more genteel time, when the word “bastard” was considered taboo in polite society. It was the kind of word that was nearly as bad as the “eff-word”; a get-your-mouth-washed-out-with-soap class of word. Yet here we were, being given official permission to use expressions such as “Hand me that bastard,” in the serious pursuance of our high calling as tradesmen and with the noble awareness that we were merely using a technical word that just happened to have an evil “bad-language” twin.

  To learn about tools we would also need to use them, however, so at one point during our instruction we were taken to another workshop hangar and each issued with a basic toolkit that came in a tough fabric carryall bag. The issuer was Corporal Simpson, an unsmiling skeletal-looking man who bore the unfortunate nickname “Gummy”, for a reason that wasn’t particularly obvious. Rumour had it that at one time all of his teeth had been removed because of some gum disease. For some time after that, he didn’t wear dentures and unfortunately his appearance during this period saddled him with his unflattering nickname. Gummy wore the same kind of brown overall as worn by Mr. Edridge, with the addition of another armband worn loosely on his left arm bearing a heavily soiled set of corporal’s stripes.

  After issuing us with our personal toolkits, Corporal Simpson ordered us to fan around him in a wide semicircle and then instructed us to empty the contents of the bags out onto the floor. Then he went through a checklist of the tools that we were each supposed to have in our toolkit. As he called out the name of a tool, using its RAF nomenclature—hammer, ballpane—we would hold up the appropriate tool to indicate that we had it. When Gummy had scanned around to confirm that everyone was holding up the correct tool, he told us to put it in the bag before calling out the next item on the list. Checking that we had all of our tools after performing a task was a good and necessary habit, we were told. This was because of the danger that a loose tool can create if carelessly left behind in an aircraft. Loose objects are very likely to move around during flight, possibly jamming the controls, or even causing injury to someone during military style flying, when the pilot might be rolling or looping the aircraft.

  This was no exaggeration because I recall an incident from later in my RAF service career when a large, heavy screwdriver struck the pilot of a Meteor on the head while he was performing an inverted manoeuvre. The screwdriver bounced off his helmet and then struck the cockpit canopy. He was lucky that the helmet saved him from injury and it was with great presence of mind that he remained inverted long enough to reach out and retrieve the wayward tool from where it had come to rest in the inverted canopy, before making a hasty return to base. The owner of the screwdriver denied that he had lost it in the cockpit, but an identifying mark on the blade provided evidence to the contrary. A subsequent tool check then revealed that the screwdriver was indeed missing from his toolkit although, in this case, carrying out a tool check after the event was like closing the stable door after the horse had gone. The airman was punished, but worse, he was permanently banned from working on aircraft and was forced to work in a non-aircraft trade for the remainder of his service. Tool checks were rigidly enforced for many weeks after the incident and eventually a new system of keeping better control of tools was established on the squadron.

  When Gummy Simpson had completed the tool check, he ordered us to close and padlock our tool bags. He then told us that they would be stored at Workshops under his supervision, but we would have possession of the key to our own personal tool bag so that no one else could open it. Trustingly, we believed him.

  During the following two weeks, I learned to identify many of the tools that I would be using in my everyday working life. They consisted mostly of screwdrivers and pliers. We then moved on to some of the other tools we would be expected to use from time to time, for the purpose of cutting and shaping materials. This category included hacksaws and files. We were also introduced to some of the less common tools, such as a scribe used for marking guide lines on metal prior to cutting it, in the same way that one would draw a line on a piece of wood with a pencil before sawing it. There were surface tables and vee-blocks, both of which are precisely machined to provide true, flat surfaces that enable measurements to be made with a high degree of accuracy, and there were tri-squares for checking the trueness of right angles. Next, we moved on to micrometers and Vernier calipers, both of which are used for making precise measurements down to 1/1000 of an inch.

  All of this was a prelude to going into the workshop, where we could put our new knowledge into practise. And when that time came, we were taken to an area of the hangar that was equipped with workbenches, for the first of many sessions of workshop practice. The object of this initial session was to start us off simply with some basic work, but first we collected our tool kits from storage, which naturally called for a tool check as an essential part of the training.

  Just as before, we all stood around in a semi-circle with a pile of tools at our feet while Corporal “Gummy” Simpson we
nt through the checklist. All went well until he called out for us to hold up hammers, ballpane, one. I dived into the pile, but couldn’t find the hammer. I then began frantically rummaging around in the pile, but it just wasn’t there. So I looked in my toolbag, expecting to find that it had lodged in there when I had emptied the other tools out, but the bag was empty. Then I looked at the other piles of tools near me, thinking that maybe my hammer had strayed into one of those, but that also drew a blank. In the end I had to admit to the corporal that my hammer was missing, even though I couldn’t for the life of me understand how it could have disappeared when the only other time that I’d taken it out of my tool bag was during the previous tool check. I mentioned this to the corporal, but he dismissed my reasoning and told me that I must have been careless and hadn’t put the tool back in my bag after that last tool check. He took my name and serial number, telling me that a report would be sent to Pay Accounts on some kind of RAF debit form and that the cost of the tool would be deducted from my pay. At this point he had me doubting myself—maybe I had left the tool out of the bag, or maybe someone else had picked it up by mistake? In any event, there was little I could do but go along with the debit charge against my meagre pay.

  For our first project at Workshop practice we were provided with a roughly cut piece of aluminium that was slightly larger than six inches square and was half an inch thick. The object of the practice was to file the edges of the piece until its dimensions were exactly six inches by six inches, with each edge perfectly level and each corner a perfect right angle. The task was designed to give us practise in the use of a scribe, a tri-square, the surface table and of course a whole series of files, from coarse file all the way to a very smooth finishing file.

  Like everyone else, I clamped the metal piece in a vice and worked on it throughout the morning. Then, when I thought it was very close to the required dimensions I checked all four edges with the tri-square, only to find that none of them were level—when I held it up to the light I could see gaps between the tri-square and the aluminium. It took quite a lot more work with a smooth file to get all the edges square and then, when I was satisfied that each edge seemed level and at right angles to all the others, I was ready for the next step. This entailed sliding the work-piece around, one edge at a time, on a surface table that had been lightly coated with oil and then checking to see if the entire edge of the work-piece was uniformly coated with a film of oil. Not surprisingly, that happy result was not achieved the first time. There were a number of low points that remained dry, indicating that the edge was uneven. This meant more careful filing and many more trips to the surface table to reduce the high spots so that they were at the same level as the low points. Finally, I was able to get the film of oil to completely coat all of the surfaces and the job was done. I carried my work-piece to the instructor, who checked it before giving his approval. Work assignments such as this were marked and the results placed in our training records, counting towards the award of a proficiency stripe at the end of each term.