Into the wide blue
Andrew Allan
1958
Exactly eight days after I'd married I received my call up papers from the Royal Air Force. They informed me that I had to report to Bedford six days after that. How dare they! 'They' being the authorities who decreed that all call-up dates for National Service were sacred.
So it was that on 15th April 1958, with my little suitcase, railway warrant, and tearful, young, only one fortnight married wife, I arrived at St Enoch Railway Station in Glasgow. I was wearing a white sports jacket and grey trousers, white shirt and red tie, this outfit being taken from a hit song of the day 'A White Sports Coat and a Pink Carnation' and I was right at the peak of fashion as witnessed by the number of other white sports jackets I could see around me.
There were crowds of people milling around, mostly young men with little suitcases and tearful young wives, girlfriends or mothers. I remember wondering if we were all heading for the same destination, the same life-changing destination - two years of bloody National Service.
It seems that we were. They were all gathering around the same platform, where the train for Bedford stood, spitting and hissing little jets of steam, adding to the quota of murk in the station's atmosphere. With my heart sinking I climbed into the nearest carriage and found myself a seat among some other young men.
We were all going to the same destiny - judging by the row of little suitcases in the rack - and we crowded the window, waving goodbye to our nearest and dearest. I looked back at my wife's lonely little figure waving, and wondering how long it would be before I saw her again. With a jerk the train puffed out of the station and we were on our way.
On arrival at Bedford we were herded on to a line of buses, waiting in the station forecourt, by an unexpectedly smiling corporal. It turned out that he was a National Serviceman ready to be demobbed and this courier duty was just to fill in time until his release date. I remember looking at him with envy. Two years seemed such a long time in the future to me then.
Our short stay at Cardington - our kitting out and induction centre - passed in a flash of uniforms being issued, inoculations, vaccinations, and filling a huge kit bag with towels, underwear, socks, vests, boots, denims and - unbelievably - rifles. We were armed and no longer civilians. Still, they had the sense not to issue us with ammunition. Anyway, as we were soon to learn, the rifles would be mainly for drilling on the parade ground. But all of these delights were still ahead of us.
The one sad moment that remains in my memory of Cardington was the posting home of all the little suitcases with our civilian clothes. So it was goodbye to the white sports coat and the rest of it. We now belonged to Her Majesty's Royal Air Force. We would be paid the princely sum, for the privilege, of two shillings per day, just ten pence in today's currency. The married men had to allot seven shillings of that to their wives; to qualify them for a pension should anything fatal happen to us. That gave us something to think about because at the time Cyprus was in the throes of a terrorist war and there were British National Servicemen serving there.
Another train, and another step on the journey, this time we were heading for Bridgnorth in Shropshire - the locals called it Salop - where we would do our recruit training. We pulled into Bridgnorth station at 8am on 16th April 1958. 5059557 AC2 Allan and 699 other recruits headed for No. 7 School of Recruit Training, RAF Bridgnorth.
The train doors opened and we spilled out into the large station square, to be met by a row of eight sergeants with clipboards, all with voices like gravel, and all using them at full volume.
'Evans, McKay, Aberdeen, Green. Denver, Bruce, Carolin, Kelly, Allan... ' the names came rolling from all along the line of sergeants, all shouting at the same time as they ticked off their own group of recruits.
700 young men in heavy boots, full pack and webbing, carrying rifles and kitbags, were scurrying hither and thither trying to locate which sergeant was calling their name. It was chaotic. We were skidding, tripping and falling over kitbags, rifles, heavy boots, or each other. There were hats, bags, and recruits, rolling all over the place, and corporals bellowing in our ears to "Get a bleedin' move on we haven't got all day" orchestrating the whole comedy.
Once the dust had settled and we were more or less where we were supposed to be, we had a moment to look around at where we'd arrived. The station square was set into the side of a hill, and above that a road, bordered by iron railings, overlooked the square. To our considerable embarrassment, there lining the railings, was what was probably half the population of the town, gathered to watch their four-weekly Monday morning entertainment.
We recruits stood there, panting and totally humiliated. So this was to be National Service in the Royal Air Force. I suppose it had to be done, the law required it, and we just had to get on with it and do the best we could, but we hadn't expected an audience for our circus antics. They might at least have applauded us.
That was the journey I took. From young married civilian to browbeaten, harried and humiliated airman: from Alexandria in Scotland to Bridgnorth in England.
The most surprising thing of all, to me at least, after these initial shocks, was that I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. My two years in the Royal Air Force remains one of the interesting and enjoyable periods of my life.
