by Brian Carlin
Two weeks! It must have been one of the shortest postings in RAF history and just when we were finding our feet and getting to know our way around. We hoped that Cranwell would be just as enjoyable as Shawbury, but we really didn’t hold out too much hope in that direction. After all, it wasn’t just “Cranwell”; it was the bloody Royal Air Force College Cranwell where officer cadets are trained before being let loose on the world. That could only mean one thing; tons and tons of bull.
* * *
Two days later, Butterworth and I stood dejectedly on a Shrewsbury railway station platform, dressed in our best blue uniforms and with all of the possessions we owned in this world packed into our cylindrical white canvas kitbags that now rested on the platform by our sides. We were waiting for the Birmingham train to take us on what would be the first leg of our journey to Royal Air Force College Cranwell in the County of Lincolnshire. It was a sad occasion, because we had fallen in love with Shawbury during our short sojourn there. There had been a welcoming feeling at all levels, both on the station and in the surrounding area and we had been settling into it very nicely, thank you, when the order to uproot us had come so rudely and abruptly from On High. The prospect of going to Cranwell, on the other hand, was none too encouraging. Several people had visibly shuddered when we told them of our new posting, which didn’t do much in the way of helping us adopt an attitude of gleeful anticipation at the thought of going to our new home.
Several weary hours and a number of train changes later, we pulled into Lincoln Central station where we would make the last change for the final leg of the rail journey. Accidentally misreading the name of our next destination on the ticket as “Seaford,” we scanned the timetable posted on a wall near the station exit, but couldn’t find it listed. In desperation, we approached a uniformed official, who was quite possibly the Stationmaster.
“Excuse us please,” I said. He looked at us sharply as though we were interrupting something important, but seeing that I had his attention, I continued, “We’re supposed to be going to Seaford but can’t see it on the timetable.”
“Seaford?” He barked. His body language suggested that he was busy and didn’t really want to be bothered by two little erks like us. “There ain’t nowt ’round ’ere by that name, lad.”
I held out my ticket so that he could see the name of the destination printed on it, but had to wait a few moments whilst his officious attention was directed elsewhere, before he condescended to look at the small green rectangle of cardboard in my hand.
“Oh, Sleaford!” He exclaimed, pronouncing it loudly in a slow theatrical manner as though he had solved a great mystery and was making everyone within earshot aware of how he had cleverly exposed our incredible stupidity. His patronising tone strongly suggested that if morons like us intended to travel in Lincolnshire it would help if we could at least get the names of its towns right. He must have enjoyed the moment, because it also gave him the heaven-sent opportunity to be rid of us.
“Need St. Mark’s Station, lad,” he continued gruffly, “train for Sleaford dunnit go from ’ere.”
It was bad enough that we had to change trains, but we also had to change stations and in a city we weren’t familiar with. “How do we get to St. Mark’s station?” I asked.
“You’ll ’ave to go oot the station exit,” he indicated where the exit was as he spoke, “and then go to tha’s left too-ards ’igh Street. Go to tha’s left agin and cross o’er the crossing and it’s aboot ’alf a mile on tha’s ra-ight.”
We thanked him for his grudging help, then threw our kitbags up on our shoulders and headed towards the station exit, proffering our tickets to be punched by the expressionless ticket inspector on our way out. Once outside the station, we turned left as instructed and soon came to the level crossing on High Street that the Stationmaster had mentioned. But the train we’d only just disembarked from was still at the platform and was apparently too long to fit all the way into the station, so the last few carriages blocked the crossing, preventing the gates from being opened to traffic and pedestrians. Instead of waiting until the train pulled out, however, we decided to use the pedestrian footbridge adjacent to the crossing. Climbing up the steps to the bridge level with the heavy kitbag slung over my shoulder was quite an effort, which was further complicated by trying to manoeuvre its awkward bulk in a way that avoided having it bumped into by the fast downward rush of hurrying pedestrians.
It was a relief for both of us to finally reach the level part of the bridge and start catching our breath, as we then started descending the easier downward flight of steps on the opposite side of the crossing. That’s when I was rewarded by catching my very first view of Lincoln Cathedral. It stood majestically on the city’s highest hill, overlooking the landscape descending into the valley below. It appeared tall, regal and serene above the common everyday goings-on of the hoi polloi below. The simple act of looking up and suddenly seeing this beautiful cathedral gave me a pleasantly strange feeling that seemed to resonate somewhere deep within my being. It was somehow like a sense of déjà vu, but not exactly, because I didn’t get the sensation of having been there before. It was just a feeling of familiarity. The sensation is really difficult to describe, but the best way I can put it is that I suddenly knew I liked this city and wanted to return as often as I could. It’s a good thing too, because Lincoln eventually became my second home. It was here that I met and married my wife Pam, it was where both of my daughters, Michelle and Sarah, were born and where I lived out a large portion of my life. But that’s another story I intend to tell some other time.
St. Mark’s Station was smaller than Lincoln Central and with fewer amenities. Eventually, our train for Sleaford arrived at one of the station’s two main platforms. It was a local “milk” train that stopped at every small village station on the way, making the 17-mile journey spin out to more than an hour. Finally, we arrived at Sleaford in mid-afternoon and were pleased to discover that the bus terminal was directly across the street from the railway station. Well actually it wasn’t so much a terminal as a series of buses parked by the kerb along the street. The buses were mid-green in colour and bore the seemingly quaint logo, “Lincolnshire Road Car Co. Ltd.”, displayed prominently in yellow lettering along their flanks. It didn’t take us very long to find a bus with “Cranwell Camp” displayed on its destination indicator and so we climbed aboard. A few minutes later, the bus conductor came aboard and approached us for the fare. We produced the bus warrants we’d been issued that morning by the Personnel Records clerk at Shawbury.
“East Camp or West Camp?” inquired the conductor.
We looked blankly at him. “Dunno. Can you drop us off at the Guardroom please?” one of us replied.
“That’s East Camp,” he said, taking our bus warrants and winding the little handle on his ticket machine to dispense a yellow paper ribbon consisting of two tickets. As this was happening, the driver climbed into his cab and then the bus juddered spasmodically for a few seconds as he coaxed its reluctant diesel engine into life.
“Hold tight,” called out the conductor as he pushed the bell button twice in rapid succession. The ding-ding sound of the bell was drowned almost immediately by the harsh grinding noise of first gear being selected and with a jolt the bus set off, taking us on the last lap of our day-long journey.
As we travelled along its main street, I could see that Sleaford seemed to be a modestly-sized market town, but it was soon left behind as the vista evolved into that of a gently undulating countryside of green fields, woods and copses. The bus crawled along very slowly—probably at about 25 miles per hour, which was something we weren’t used to. The Western Welsh buses travelled along at a fair clip and during my short stay at Shawbury, the efficient speed of the Midland Red buses hadn’t gone unnoticed. Richard and I joked with each other about getting out and pushing or of being able to get there faster if we got out and walked, thinking that the driver was just a little too cautious and didn’t want to put his f
oot down too hard. Later, I found that this slow speed was universal for the Lincolnshire Road Car Co. Ltd.—for reasons that have remained a mystery.
The road along which we travelled was the A15 to Lincoln and except for a short detour through the village of Leasingham, we stayed on this road for about two miles before making a left turn onto a “B” road. Just as we made the turn, I caught a brief glimpse of a signpost pointing in the direction that we were now taking. It read “Cranwell 2”. I took this to mean that the distance to our destination was two more miles, but it was the wrong assumption. The sign really indicated the distance to Cranwell village—the camp itself was another two miles further on. After passing through the village, obvious signs of an airfield began to appear. First a control tower, then hangars and eventually clumps of buildings could be discerned as the bus slowly puttered towards them along the now arrow-straight road. The buildings became more identifiable as we got nearer and then we were passing between them—married quarters on the right and what appeared to be dilapidated red-brick barracks on the left. After a few hundred yards of driving in the built-up area, the bus pulled up at a bus stop with a long wavering squeal of its brakes that set my teeth on edge.
“Guardroom,” sang out the conductor, as he looked in our direction.
I was expecting to see the typical main entrance of a Royal Air Force camp complete with gate, a headquarters building facing the entrance and a Guardroom strategically situated to monitor and control entry and egress to and from the station. But the bus had actually stopped at a place on the road where none of these traditional landmarks were obvious. There was, however, a long single storey building set back a few feet from the road and judging from the abundance of gleaming white paintwork and shining brasses, there was no mistaking that it was the Guardroom. We grabbed our kitbags and alighted from the bus and then heard the ding-ding sound of the bell and the conductor’s “Hold tight” caution as the bus thundered off, leaving us standing there in a dense swirling cloud of black diesel exhaust fumes. Before picking up our kitbags again, we took a few moments to check each other’s uniforms to make sure that everything was as it should be, before presenting ourselves to the Snoops inside the Guardroom.
The structure and location of the building was odd to say the least, but it wasn’t until we walked into a passageway penetrating its midsection that I realized it was actually a railway station. I could see that we were really standing on a station platform. There was another platform facing the one on which we stood and between both platforms lay the track bed, minus rails and sleepers. This had apparently been the terminus of a spur line, probably from Sleaford, that at one time had served the station. But the tracks had evidently been torn up some time ago, although the path they had followed was still plainly visible, grown over as it was. From these clues, it wasn’t difficult to deduce that the main form of transport to and from Cranwell must have originally been by train. And since the railway station was the camp’s main access portal to and from the outside world, it only made sense for it to incorporate the Guardroom. Progress, no doubt encouraged by the Lincolnshire Road Car Co. Ltd., had consigned the train service to history’s dustbin, but the Guardroom still remained as the lone survivor of an earlier era. Whether it had originally occupied the whole building, as it did now, or had completely taken it over later when the railway staff had abandoned ship, was entirely open to conjecture.
A dilapidated storehouse building provided a backdrop behind the opposing platform, although both were separated by an open area of weed-infested ground, blackened by coal dust that had been deposited there over the years. Far from the bull we had been expecting, this camp certainly didn’t seem to measure up to the exalted reputation of the Royal Air Force College Cranwell. It was puzzling—to the extent that we began asking ourselves if perhaps there was some other Cranwell that we had been sent to by mistake. There was no mistake—we were definitely in the right place. But there were good grounds for our doubts because, as we were soon to discover, there really were two Cranwells. Both were in the same geographical location, yet one was worlds apart from the other.
We soon found ourselves at a counter, after having been directed through a doorway that opened off the passageway by a sign that bore the legend, “All Visitors Report Here”, or words to that effect. The SP who came to the other side of the counter seemed to be expecting us when we identified ourselves, because he checked our names off against a list on a clip-board that he stretched over and retrieved from a row of similar-looking clip-boards hanging on a row of hooks along one wall of the room. When we had signed in, he gave us directions to the barrack block and room where we were to be accommodated. He also suggested that we go there first, drop off our kitbags and then go to the bedding store to pick up an issue of blankets and sheets. Thanking him, we retraced our steps back to the roadway as directed and then walked a few hundred yards further along the road in the same direction in which the bus had disappeared several minutes previously, until we came to another road leading into the camp. Strangely, there were no gates. Anyone could have walked right into the camp without being challenged. We soon found the bedding store, which was housed in a small building that came up on our right. Noting its location, we passed it by on the suggestion of the SP and, rounding a bend in the road, were confronted by a row of six or so barrack blocks each built in the configuration of the letter “H”.
Not unexpectedly, the block we had been directed to was the very last one at the end of the row. As we walked along the road towards it, we noticed that all of the blocks were very old and were definitely of a pre-war vintage that had seen better days. They were also much larger than the neatly modern barrack blocks that we had seen, but failed to have been accommodated in, at Shawbury. We now also noticed the parade ground on our left. It had been hidden from our view by the storehouse building when we were at the Guardroom, because in fact the direction in which we were now walking had brought us around on the other side of the storehouse.
Eventually we reached the last barrack block in the row and entered it, to discover that the interior looked even worse than the exterior. It was a two-storey building incorporating eight barrack rooms in all, four upstairs and four downstairs. The barrack rooms formed the legs of the “H”, whilst the horizontal crossbar contained the toilets, ablutions and various other utility rooms. The barrack room to which we’d been assigned was on the ground floor and was accessed by descending a flight of three steel-edged concrete steps to reach its floor level, indicating that the land on which the block was built must have sloped to some degree. The room was wide and cavernous, as were all the other barrack rooms in the block, seemingly designed to each house somewhere between 80 and 100 men. Right now, however, it contained 20 beds all crammed up near the entrance. A row of tall wooden lockers had been arrayed across the room, at the approximate halfway point, in such a way as to form a wall that cut off the unoccupied area. All but half a dozen of the beds were made up, signifying they were taken, so we picked the best two we could find from those remaining and dumped our kitbags on the bare mattresses before retracing our steps to the bedding store.
A little later we were making the long trek back in the opposite direction, this time peering over a pile of blankets, bed linen and pillows, as we headed back to get settled into our new home. It was while we were making up our beds that the corporal in charge of the billet put in an appearance.
“Hello-hello, who have we here then?” He remarked good-naturedly. “You must be Butterworth and Carlin. We’ve been expecting you.”
He then introduced himself as Corporal Dillon and explained that this particular barrack room was reserved exclusively for under age ex-Boy Entrants. He went on to tell us that he was also an ex-Boy Entrant, although obviously not under age, and that he’d been selected as the corporal in charge of the billet for that very reason.
As the afternoon wore on, several other inhabitants of the barrack room, all of them under age ex-29th Entry members, s
howed up in dribs and drabs. Richard and I introduced ourselves and were repeatedly obliged to explain that we had been posted to Shawbury from St. Athan before being redirected to Cranwell because of our young age. Everyone commiserated with us on the stroke of misfortune that brought us to “Cranners”, which didn’t do much to make us feel any happier to be there. Most of them seemed to be radio or radar types from Yatesbury but at least five, Rowse, Simpson, Pyle, Melloy and May, were Airframe Mechanics from 1 Wing, St. Athan. All of us, it seemed, were doomed to live in this barrack room until we reached our 18th birthday, which for me was a long ten months away. So much for passing out into the men’s air force.
We went to the airmen’s mess for dinner with some of our new billet mates and listened as they explained the Cranwell camp layout. The first thing we learned was that there were two camps. We were billeted in dilapidated East Camp, which accommodated the Station’s “other-ranks” support staff. By contrast, the officer cadets were accommodated at posh West Camp, which also contained Station Headquarters and Sick Quarters, as well as the Flight Operations area that included the aircraft servicing hangars. The road that we’d travelled by bus through Cranwell village to the Guardroom continued on past West Camp, which was on the left, before meeting up with the main Sleaford to Grantham road. The palatial-looking Cranwell College building was on the right side of this road, situated directly opposite West Camp. Airmen (the collective term for non-commissioned, non-NCO members of the RAF) were forbidden to fraternise with the officer cadets and were strongly discouraged from having any interaction with them, other than in the normal course of duty. For the cadets, this was the equivalent of the training that we had just completed as Boy Entrants, but at a much higher level. And they were treated with much greater respect than had been accorded us. Cadets wore officer-style uniforms but were easily identified by the white band worn around their hats, or the white disc worn behind the officer cap badge on their berets. They were addressed individually as “Sir” and collectively as “Gentlemen” by their drill instructors. Imagine that!