by Brian Carlin
“Inside the Guardroom you lot, and sign for your bedding,” he barked.
We made our way to a counter just inside the Guardroom doorway. An area of woven-fibre matting protected the floor at this particular spot, but on the other side of the counter it appeared as though we were gazing on the Holy of Holies. The tan coloured linoleum floor was so highly polished that I could clearly see reflections in its glassy surface. The same kind of matting that we now stood on was laid along the boundaries of the floor, allowing access to the inner areas of the Guardroom, where cell doors were plainly visible. Clearly, no one was allowed to walk on the highly polished area of linoleum. There seemed to be an unspoken message in its pristine brilliance, that to defile it in such a pedestrian manner as walking on it would be at the peril of a person’s miserable life.
Each of us waited our turn at the counter to sign on a form for bedding and eating implements, before being ushered back outside and around to the bedding store at the rear of the Guardroom. In the process, we discovered to our horror that the lorry had disappeared, taking our worldly possessions with it. Sergeant Malloy calmed us down by explaining that our luggage had been taken on to our quarters, and that we’d be able to pick it up when we walked there. Then, still wondering if we were ever again going to be reunited with our meagre belongings, we each collected our heap of bedding and staggered off in a straggling line into the darkness and away from the island of light that surrounded the Guardroom. I followed some distance behind the person in front of me, who was just about at the limit of my vision on the sparsely lighted camp roads. Likewise, someone followed me at a similar distance. I only hoped that someone up front was following the lorry, but as it happened we only had to go about a hundred yards to our new home, where we were reunited with our luggage.
The lorry sat outside a black, creosoted single storey wooden hut, commonly referred to as a billet in RAF parlance, similar to those we’d stayed in at Cosford during our visit earlier in the year. It was the first hut in a double row of identical interconnected billets and was identified by a 3-foot high “G4” painted in neat white characters against a square green background, on the left side of the billet entrance. There were three other huts in the same row, labelled successively as G3, G2 and G1. Although the front entrances to all billets were independent of each other, the rear entrances opened onto a connecting corridor between the other three huts. The second row of huts, G5 to G8, was a mirror-image of the row that contained our billet and had the same interconnecting corridor arrangement as our row. Both corridors opened onto a series of latrines, washrooms, bathrooms and other utility rooms sandwiched between both rows of billets. Huts G4 and G3 shared one set of latrines and washrooms with G5 and G6, while G2, G1, G7 and G8 shared the other set. We soon learned this complex of billets was known as “G-lines”.
A concrete path provided access to the front doorway of the billet and beyond that, a small entrance hall led to an inner doorway that opened into the billet proper. Two small rooms opened off the entrance hallway; one of these was a one-man bedroom known as a bunk; the other was a storeroom. On passing through the inner door, I discovered that the billet was furnished in much the same way as the one I’d stayed in at Cosford.
As well as the familiar row of beds on both sides of the billet, there were two Formica-topped tables arranged lengthways down the centre of the room, each with a set of four wooden chairs tipped forward on their front legs at a 45 degree angle, with their backrests supported against the long edge of the table. In the centre of the billet, between the two tables, there was a carefully set up arrangement of two brooms, a waste-bin and a strange-looking implement the likes of which I’d never seen before. The unknown object possessed a cylindrical shaft similar to that of a broom, except that it was thicker by half as much again and probably about 5 feet in length. The business end consisted of what appeared to be a solid rectangular block of cast iron about one foot long, six inches wide, three inches high, and painted black in colour. The handle was attached to this metal block (or the head, as it came to be known) within a centrally located recess in such a way that it allowed the handle to swivel back and forth to describe an arc the long direction of the head. An array of very short densely packed bristles, no more than half an inch in length, covered the underside of the head and these were caked with the residue of ancient floor polish, which provided a vague clue to the implement’s purpose.
On entering the billet, I had noticed another person dressed in civilian clothes standing just inside the doorway of the bunk. He followed us into the billet and then introduced himself as Corporal Hillcrest, adding that he was the NCO in charge of the billet. Hillcrest inquired as to where we’d travelled from and seemed interested and friendly, even helpful, as we each selected a bed and then dumped our blankets on it. Someone offered him a cigarette, but he said he didn’t smoke. That didn’t stop the rest of us taking time out for a smoke break and a chat. We had a million questions, because there was so much we wanted to know about this brand new world. Hillcrest was baby-faced and didn’t appear to be very old, but he was a little older than any of us and it later transpired that he was 19. Having lived all my life in Ireland up to this point, I wasn’t able to pick out regional English accents—they all just sounded “English” to my ears—but we learned that Hillcrest came from the North-eastern corner of England. That was “Geordie” country, with its own distinctive accent and dialect. He confided that we were the first group of new recruits of the current intake to arrive at St. Athan and that the others would be arriving over the next few days.
I can’t recall what we did for food that evening. I believe that we were all so tired, having travelled for more than 24 hours without a break, that we just went to bed right away and quickly slipped into blissful unconsciousness.
Next morning, Corporal Hillcrest directed us to the cookhouse—the Boy Entrants’ Mess. There were two routes available to get to the Mess; one was a short direct route that passed through the middle of another set of billet lines and the other was a longer, less direct route that paralleled the main runway, but at a reasonably safe distance from it. Hillcrest strongly advised against taking the short route. He said it would take us through “The Wings”, and that the Wings people wouldn’t take too kindly to us using their territory as a shortcut. His advice left us a little puzzled, but we did as he said and headed off to the Mess by way of the long route, carrying our white china mugs and eating irons.
Breakfast was served from a long stainless steel counter that we learned was referred to as a servery. The food items were contained in separate metal trays, some deep and some shallow, that were set into recesses in the servery so that their rims were flush with its surface. Steam was piped into the space beneath the servery surface to keep the food in the trays hot and small wisps of this could be seen escaping from around the rims of the trays. Kitchen staff, dressed in white cotton jackets above thin blue and white chequered trousers, served food to the individuals ahead of me as they shuffled in a line along the front of the servery. Picking up a plain white plate from the stack at the end of the servery, I took my place in the queue and joined in the slow but steady progression. When I got to the first server, he scooped up a pre-cooked fried egg with a spatula, from one of the trays in front of him, and slid it unceremoniously onto my plate. The tray contained about twenty identical eggs, all cooked only on one side with a covering of clear slimy uncooked “white” lying atop the yellow yolks. And the white part of the eggs that had actually been cooked was shiny and plastic looking. I would have much preferred to have had the eggs cooked on both sides, with bubbly parts in the white that made the edges appear all lacy, maybe a little browning around the extremities and even a few little black specks from the fat in the frying pan embedded into them. But the temperature at which these eggs had been cooked was far too low to endow them with such desirable gastronomic qualities and they just lay there staring up at me with their single yellow eyes, like toy fried eggs made fr
om real plastic. Sadly, this was the style of fried eggs I would be obliged to get accustomed to for many years to come—these weren’t gourmet fried eggs, they were RAF fried eggs!
Other members of the kitchen staff served me with fatty bacon, sausage, tinned stewed tomatoes, baked beans and fried bread as I shuffled my way along the front of the servery. There were also some scrambled eggs in a deep metal container, but they looked vaguely grey, watery, and altogether unappetizing. I helped myself to cornflakes from a large container and ladled some milk over them out of a large vat. Then I picked up a few slices of white bread and a dollop of a yellow greasy substance that everyone referred to as axle grease. The substance was allegedly butter whipped with margarine, although whatever percentage of butter the mixture contained, it was completely overpowered by the unappetizing taste of margarine. Having now reached the other end of the servery, I headed off to find the others sitting at one of several long Formica topped tables, six people on each side. The food certainly wasn’t gourmet fare, but we hadn’t had much to eat for many hours, so we scoffed it down. Some even went back for more. When everyone had finished their meal, we left the Mess and washed our mug and irons in a large tank of scalding hot water that bubbled and belched loudly because of the steam that was being continuously piped into it to maintain its temperature. Then we made our way back to the billet.
A little while later, some of us went out to explore the camp. Initially this took us along the road that we had staggered down the previous night under a pile of bedding, but in the opposite direction. In daylight and unburdened, the walk seemed very short and before long we came to the major camp thoroughfare. The main gate was a short distance off to our right and the southern end of the Station Headquarters building, also known as SHQ, was immediately to our front. On its western frontage, SHQ faced a huge square-shaped expanse of tarmac of about 500 feet in length on each of its sides. A thin layer of fine grey gravel covered the black tarred surface. At the northern side of this square, opposite to the side on which we were walking stood a large flagpole from which the Royal Air Force ensign wafted gently in the breeze. Actually, the ensign didn’t fly directly from the vertical flagpole, but rather from a shorter pole about quarter of the way from the top of the main pole that jutted out over the Square at an angle of about twenty degrees to the horizontal. This arrangement allowed the flag to be fully extended, even on the calmest of days. A smaller flag, with a swallowtail-like notch in its free end, fluttered from the very top of the flagpole. Its dominant colour was the same light blue as the RAF ensign, but it bore a red horizontal bar the length of its centre and two darker blue bars, one along its top edge and the other at the bottom. It turned out that this was the Station Commander’s pennant; its shape and design signified that he was an Air Commodore.
There weren’t any nearby buildings on our side of the Square, but we could see an interesting collection of brick structures diagonally across from the corner at which we were now standing. Being practical people, who were not given to walking further than was really necessary, we set off in a beeline across the gravel surface of the Square towards the buildings that now held our attention. All was going well until we were about halfway across, when a loud bellowing voice from somewhere to the rear caught our attention. Reacting instinctively and in unison, we immediately looked backwards towards the source of the voice to see a red-faced Sergeant standing facing us on the road from which we had departed only moments before. He looked as though he was about to have a fit as he yelled for us to come to him—on the double! We kind of understood from the way he emphasized the word, and from his body language, that “double” meant “get there very fast,” so we ran.
“Just where do you bloody lot think you’re going?” He angrily demanded to know, when we reached the spot where he waited for us.
One of our group mumbled something about looking for the swimming pool, but the sergeant wasn’t interested in explanations.
“Hasn’t anybody told you bloody people that you don’t go walking across the Square as if you’re out on some bloody Sunday school picnic?” He yelled in our faces.
“No, Sergeant,” we all answered meekly.
“Well, I’m telling you now. The Square is like sacred ground and you only go on it when you’re marched on there by an NCO,” he continued, calming down slightly, but still highly agitated. “When did you lot get here?”
“Last night Sergeant,” we replied.
“Well okay, you’ve been warned. Just keep off it in future. You’ll be on there sooner than you think anyway, laddies, and believe me you’ll then wish you weren’t. But for now, just stick to the roads. And don’t walk on the grass either, okay?”
“Yes Sergeant,” we all answered.
“Okay, that’s all. Get on your way then.”
We turned around and walked away from him, but I couldn’t resist a quick glance over my shoulder only to see him still standing there watching us, while shaking his head and appearing to mutter something to himself.
We continued along the road that ran parallel to the Square and finally arrived at the buildings we had been heading for, prior to being so rudely interrupted. Most of the structure consisted of a large gymnasium that included an Olympic size heated indoor swimming pool. I gazed at it mesmerized, never having seen anything so grand in all my life. I couldn’t swim a stroke, but had always wanted to learn, so I knew that this pool was going to be a magnet for me. The others seemed to feel the same way too. The remainder of the gymnasium complex was enormous. It housed all kinds of athletic apparatus, a boxing ring, an indoor running track, vaulting horses, parallel bars, and punch bags—just about every piece of athletic apparatus a person could think of. This wouldn’t have been so surprising if we had been aware that St. Athan was also home to the RAF Physical Training Instructor (PTI) School.
Further exploration of the complex resulted in our discovery of the Astra cinema. All RAF cinemas were—and I believe still are—named “Astra,” taken from the Latin service motto “Per ardua ad astra”—“Through endeavour to the stars”. Whoever came up with the idea of borrowing “Astra” from the RAF motto obviously intended to associate the name with the stars appearing on Astra cinema screens rather than those stars that appear in the heavens.
The YMCA canteen stood directly opposite the Astra and the prospect of sticky buns, sandwiches and tea or pop proved too strong an attraction for our hearty teenage appetites to resist. So we went inside to find out what it had to offer and then sat and talked, whilst stuffing ourselves with the goodies and liquid refreshment we’d purchased.
Around lunchtime it seemed a good time to make our way back to the billets, so we departed from the YM, taking the little concrete pathway down to the road and then turned left, heading towards what looked like a boiler house. On our left we passed the tall brick-built water tower that served as the major station landmark and approached an intersection where the main camp road crossed the road on which we were currently walking. We needed to turn left here, which would then take us back past the Square that we now knew wasn’t there for the purpose of taking casual strolls! As we neared the intersection a faint musical sound came to my ears, growing louder by the second. And then, from the direction of some hangars that I had noticed earlier, there came a parade of Boy Entrants marching in columns of three and led by what appeared to be a drum and bugle band, the latter being the source of the music. But it couldn’t be a bugle band, because the instruments appeared to be longer than bugles and in fact looked like brass trumpets minus the valves. As the band approached our position, the trumpeters and drummers ceased playing, save for only a single rhythmic beat from the bass drum to keep the marchers in step.
The band leader was taller than the most of the other boys and carried a drum major’s mace that he spun and twirled around in a dazzling display of dexterity, occasionally tossing it into the air as he swaggered along at the head of the column, then skilfully catching it on the way down. I noticed, howeve
r, that there were several dents on the ornate silver head of the mace that bore silent witness to the fact that not every toss in the air ended in a successful catch. A row of drummers marched immediately behind him, some with side drums and others with deeper tenor drums. Behind them a hefty fellow carried the big bass drum strapped to his chest. He was the one beating out the time with one drumstick for the marchers. Most members of the band, those that surrounded the bass drummer, carried the trumpet-like instruments tucked under their right arms, with the flared trumpet end pointing rearwards. Then, as the band drew nearer to where we stood, the leader grasped the narrow end of the mace in his right hand and then fully stretched his arm above his head to hold the mace in vertical position, so that its head was the high in the air and visible to all members of the band. At this signal the side drummers started to beat out a tattoo in synchronism…drrr-drrr-dit, drrr-drrr-dit, drrr-drrr-drrr-drrr-drrr-drrr-dit. Simultaneously, one of the trumpeters at the rear yelled out what sounded like an incomprehensible order. At the first drrr-dit, the trumpeters thrust out their trumpets at a full arms length in front of them with the mouthpiece pointing vertically up and the flared end pointing down towards the ground. Then, at the end of the third and longest drum roll, they brought the trumpets to their lips, in perfect unison and started playing. The sudden blast of noise startled me since I was so close, but it wasn’t unpleasant. I didn’t recognize the tune and in truth, not everyone seemed to be playing perfect notes, but what they may have lacked in musical skill they certainly made up for in enthusiasm.
