HALTON

Life was to change dramatically for him now, and he was to enter a world of very strict discipline, but a totally different discipline to what he had experienced at home. He was to have drilled into him a sense of purpose, of self-discipline and a great respect for authority. All together in one room where there were about thirty of them they had to learn to live in harmony and get used to the lack of privacy. They were now a team and each member was to depend on each other and anyone who let himself down, let the whole team down. Each member of the room had his own bed space for which he was responsible and the brown lino floors were highly polished. There was a locker on the wall over the head of the bed, a bedside locker and a box under the bed. The items in these lockers had to be folded in a certain way and when not in use the bed had to be stacked in a uniform manner. The rooms were inspected every morning except Sundays and the inmates too were inspected at regular intervals. These room medicals were very embarrassing at first for the lads had to line up at the foot of their beds facing each other, stark naked. The Medical Officer would make his way down one side and up the other carrying his little stick. There were many red faces initially but they soon got used to

Best Blue

Then that first haircut, what a shock that was to those who had long or curly hair! No doubt he was a skilled barber but everyone seemed to come out looking the same, like a convict! Next was the issue of uniform and kit, and the numbering of every item with their own personal number, some of which had of course to be sewn on. There were lectures on how to look after it and how to lay it out for inspections, also how to wear it properly. The dress uniform consisted of a dog-collared tunic with brass buckled belt, brass buttons and a brass wheel to sew on to the sleeve to denote that they were aircraft apprentices. A peaked hat was worn, with a brass hat badge and a red band to denote that they belonged to No. 2 Wing. No. 1 wing was green. There was a pair of winged pantaloons, puttees and great big boots. They seemed to be great big boots after what most of them had been used to. Then to crown it all, for walking out, there was a silver mounted swagger cane. There was also a heavy greatcoat with brass buttons for colder days.Every Sunday there was a Church Parade and an inspection beforehand and each would rely on his mate to ensure that all was correct before leaving the barrack room. Those puttees were a menace. They had to be started at the right place or they would not finish correctly and there had to be no "pockets" in them. Ultimately they were the cause of his Varicose Veins. They were hot to wear, in fact the whole uniform was, and there was great relief when it was all changed later and the collar and tie tunic introduced and slacks instead of pantaloons.

 

The barrack room - home for three years

The beds were of the telescopic type, in two pieces. The upper or headpiece only had two legs and rested on the lower piece, which had four. All that was required to get someone out of bed was to lift the foot of the bed and the top bit slid off. The mattress was a three biscuit affair full of horsehair. Every morning the bed had to be stripped and made up in a certain manner. The lower piece slid under the upper piece and the three biscuits piled one on top of the other. The blankets were folded, the sheets carefully folded to the same width and the sheets were placed between them, sandwich fashion, and the whole lot wrapped round with another blanket, to hold the lot in place. It looked very smart when laid out. Each day there would be two room orderlies who were to be responsible for the final polish of the centre of the floor and another final check that all was correct before leaving. Those floors were highly polished and each member was responsible for his own bed space, and to protect it they each had a pair of floor pads on which they skated round the whole area to maintain the polished surface. Note from George: The hut on the left wasn't in 2 Wing! However it was in Harry's book and it must be somewhere in his life so here it stays Dinger Bell (85th) suggests "I wonder if the billet in the photos might have been a 'summer camp' under wood instead of canvas. Or, perhaps a 'practical' session somewhere. Also, perhaps the photos were all taken in 1936 i.e. coming to the end of the Halton 3 years for the 29th. I assume that in 1936, the country still had many army barrack type huts everywhere as a hangover from 15 years earlier." (George - we had a Belgian tour but not a summer camp in our time. I'm sure it is, as suggested, a post-Halton photo - Frankie tells me Harry left hundreds of photos, not easy to date or place.)

Of course, occasionally there would be a miscalculation and something would run out. This duty generally lasted a week. Harry once failed to turn up for serving duty and was placed on the charge of "absent from duty". He was marched in front of Flight Lieutenant Chichester who gave him a severe lecture on the serious nature of not turning up for duty and having frightened the living daylights out of him, and promptly punished him with a further seven days of serving. Chichester was a bit of a ferocious looking character, being well over six feet in height and built like a battleship, but was very fair in his punishments. He was an ex-rugby player and used to arrive at the block on a pushbike accompanied by a typical breed of dog, a Bulldog.

Reveille was at 6.30, blown on a trumpet, and they had to get out of bed right away. They had to be in bed half an hour before lights out and woe betide anyone found wandering after that. There was a Corporal in the bunk at the end of the room and he was a "little tin god". Life at first was very hard but it was a healthy one and at the end of the three years they were there, they had been moulded into very fit and capable young men.

At the end of the three years, there was a passing out examination and the results determined their rank or classification. As well as Trade Training, the apprentices had to attend school to study academic subject and this too formed part of that examination. Harry did fairly well in most subjects, his favourite being Engineering Drawing, and at the end passed out with an overall percentage mark of 67 and the classification A.C.1., which was Aircraftsman first class. There was a higher grade, Leading Aircraftsman but not many made that. Their pay for the first two years of apprenticeship was a shilling a day, and for the third year, one shilling and sixpence a day. Of the seven shillings a week, they only received three, the other four being saved for them so that they had money to spend when they went on leave at the end of each term. In the third year, they could draw five shillings. To get their pay they paraded in front of a table at which sat the accounts Officer and an airman. The airman called out the name, the boy answered "Sir" and the last three figures of his number. He then marched forward, saluted, picked up his three coins, turned smartly to the right and marched off. Harry found he could manage on just the three shillings so elected to stay on that sum throughout his full apprenticeship.

When you try to relate that money to today's currency it makes it all look so ridiculous for one shilling was five new pence. Agreed that things were much cheaper then but they still had to buy their soap, toothpaste, Brylcreem, razor blades, blacking, Brasso and so on, so they did not go to the canteen very often unless they received money from home and Harry was not in a position to get any. Fortunately there was a ban on smoking until the third year and then only at set times and in certain places. Harry and his colleagues were to become very proud of their bed spaces, their uniform and their kit, in fact they became very proud of themselves. Cleanliness was of prime importance, most especially as their lives were so public and woe betides anyone who did not come up to standard.

One lad in their room learned the hard way; he was reluctant to take a bath so the other occupants (at least two or three of them) decided to teach him a lesson. Consequently he was dragged from his bed one Sunday morning and dumped on the cold lino floor in his pyjamas. A piece of string was tied from one big toe round the back of his neck to his other big toe. A second piece of string linked one thumb to the other via the front of his neck, both hands being forced behind his back. He was left in this position for some while and the tears of frustration ran down his face. After a while he was released taken into the shower rooms and scrubbed down with coarse white soap and floor scrubbing brushes. He got the message!

Ralph and Harry in the rear cockpit of the Fairey Gordon

Fortunately, these sorts of things happened very infrequently. There were however the lighter moments, like when they bet one lad he would not run round the block six times after lights out with nothing on but his P.T. shoes. It was a light evening and he bravely accepted the challenge. It was amusing to see the curtains twitching in the NAAFI girls' quarters across the road. No doubt some of the girls were admiring the view.

Then there was the Sunday morning when, with the sun shining strongly, most of them were sunbathing on the grass at the back of the block. One of the more affluent characters had a copy of The News of the World and in it was a picture of some dames tossing a bloke in a blanket on the beach. Someone thought this would be a good idea so hastened in and produced one of his blankets. Great fun was had as competition took place between them in performing loops, spins and other athletic manoeuvres. Eventually they tired of this and someone suggested jumping out of a window as in a fire escape. The first and second floors were a piece of cake but no one was keen to attempt the third. However, financial gain, in the form of a bet encouraged one lad to have a go. Climbing up he positioned himself on the window ledge and it must have looked a long way down but having got there he could not really back down again. Had he stopped and thought about it first he could have saved himself an awful lot of hassle for instead of launching himself into space he just sort of slid off. The end result was that he landed half on the blanket and half on the lads on the side that were holding it and the whole lot collapsed in laughter in a heap. They sorted themselves out and the victim hobbled away. What no-one realised at the time was that he had landed on, and damaged the end of his spine, and after a period of severe pain he had to report sick, telling the Medical Officer that he had slipped coming down the stairs.

One Saturday night, having fallen asleep, Harry awoke to a horrible smell and a queer intermittent swishing sound. Sitting up in bed, he could see a dull glow with a bunch of his colleagues round it at the end of the room. The end bed seemed to be on fire and the swishing sound was being made by someone ladling water out of a bucket on to the fire. It appeared that the occupant had been having an illegal smoke after lights out and had fallen asleep. The fag had fallen out of his fingers on to his overalls, which were lying on the floor, and had smouldered for a while before bursting into flame. The burning overalls had set light to his bedding and from there to the lino and the sole of one of his boots.

Hence the horrible smell. They managed to get the fire out without a lot of trouble and they all went back to sleep. They dare not put the lights on or that would have attracted a lot of unwanted attention. It was left to he sorted out in the morning. Needless to say, he was charged and punished and Harry never did find out whether it cured him of smoking or not.

On another occasion, he awoke to the sound of an animal screaming in pain just outside the block. Putting their greatcoats on, he and a friend crept downstairs and went out to see what was wrong. There they found a rabbit caught in a snare and as it was dark could not see to release it, so brought it into the block. There was only one place where they could safely put the light on, that was the bathroom, but unfortunately, there were too many sightseers making too much noise, and the Corporal was alerted. The two of them were promptly charged with being out of bed after lights out. When the case came up before Fl. Lt. Chichester, he was very sympathetic and released them with a caution.

One day in 1934 a twin-engined aircraft flew over them when they were out at the back of the block, making strange noises and obviously in trouble. Suddenly it dived to the ground and a column of smoke arose. Eventually it was salvaged, and all the remains were brought in and laid out in one of the workshops so that the Accident Investigation People could try and determine what had caused the plane to crash. Several of the lads pinched the odd piece for a souvenir and Harry finished up with a "spacer" or "separator" through which the landing and flying wires passed to prevent them chafing one another. These wires are those that run between the top and bottom wings on a biplane one going up and out and the other down and out. This item remained in Harry's possession for many years before morbid curiosity forced him to try to find out a bit more of its history. The story at the time was that it was an aircraft belonging to Alan Cobham's Flying Circus and that it was used for In-flight refuelling. After making enquiries locally, he was advised to write to Flight Refuelling Ltd. at Hamble, but they denied all knowledge of it and even said that in flight refuelling had not started. In a way, they were correct for this was only being used for experiment. However, a short time later there appeared in the Readers Digest of' February 1981 an article written by a Geoffrey Tyson about the very subject, Sir Alan Cobham. At the end of this article, a small addendum said that the writer was now in retirement in Jersey.

So, off to the Post Office goes Harry to look for the telephone directory for Jersey and he comes up with two G. Tyson's. Choosing one, he wrote to him, and was delighted to find that he had picked the right one. He was to receive a reply with all the details he wanted. It was a D Havilland 14, piloted by a chap by the name of Bremridge, who was to lose his life in the crash. It was basically a passenger aircraft, mainly used for joy riding but on the odd occasion the seats were taken out and tanks fitted to carry out these experiments. On that particular day, it had been used to refuel Cobham, who was flying his Airspeed Courier on a record-breaking attempt to fly to Karachi non-stop. This flight was abandoned when he was forced to come down in Malta. Bremridge then set off for somewhere in Oxfordshire (where a display was being held) but did not make it. That souvenir is now in the Air Museum, belonging to the Apprentices Association at Halton.

To go back a little in this story, it has been said that Harry was training as an Aircraft Apprentice but nothing has been said about his trade. It was the practice in the early days for the apprentice to spend three years in training in one trade, either airframes or engines and at the end would pass out either as a Metal Rigger or Carpenter Rigger or Fitter Aero. This included a certain amount of training in Carpentry, Transport and Workshop practice, and after a few years in one trade, the tradesman could go back to Halton on the Conversion course to learn the other side of it. He then became a Fitter 1. Just before Harry joined, it had been decided that an experiment should be made to do away with the Carpentry, Transport and Workshop practice and train the apprentice in both airframe and engines and at the end of a successful three years they would be known as Fitter 2's.

Consequently, Harry was to become a Fitter 2 in December 1936. Each day they would parade and headed by the band would march to the workshops, back for lunch and back again in the afternoon. Although all this workshop training was all very interesting the more exciting part was when they marched to the aerodrome and actually saw aircraft that flew. Among these were a Bristol Fighter of World War 1, and a Fairey Gordon and there was that funny looking thing called a Huck's Starter which was used, as the name implies, to start the aircraft's engines. It was based on a Ford Chassis and had a weird shaft, which came over the drivers head, arid on the end of that shaft was a starter dog, which was made to engage with one in the centre of the propeller on the aircraft. The shaft was then put into gear to turn the engine and start it. It then automatically disengaged and backed off. They were also to learn how to swing a propeller to start one up on light aircraft of course, and even how to do so in what was called chain swinging when three people were used. This could be rather dangerous if one lost his footing. The one nearest the aircraft faced it having one hand on the blade of the prop, the next one clasping wrists, faced outwards and the third, inwards. On the word "go" they ran, pulling the prop round as they went. It did work but was not a very good system.

It was here that Harry was to get his first flight, in a Moth, piloted by Chichester. Was he thrilled! Then there were the occasions of the visits to the Annual Air Display at Hendon when coach-loads of apprentices would be taken there. They were very exciting days for him for he was fanatical about aircraft and flying. The military bands were always a delight to him too, especially the pipe ones. He loved the bagpipes and he had not been at Halton long before he applied to join 2 Wing band. However, much to his disappointment there was a queue for bagpipes, so he tried for a tenor drum. That was no good either; all they would offer him was a trumpet. Finally, he drew one from stores and spent a week or two trying to get a tune out of, it before finally turning it back in disgust. Pity, he loved music.

As each entry completed its three year training there was always a celebration and the first one he experienced was when his senior entry, the 24th, passed out. Some of them were in the upper rooms in his block. Having had a boozy party in the NAAFI they returned to the block merry and in some cases rather the worse for wear. Shortly after their return, six pairs of lads were seen creeping along the back of the block heading for the one next to it. Each pair was armed with a mop and a fire extinguisher. Positioning themselves at each of the six windows on the ground floor someone gave the signal and the mops went through followed by the extinguishers, and the operators faded into the darkness. The lights came on and the devastation became apparent. Then, while the mess was being sorted out, a bombardment started from the windows at the end of the block, and it was not long before all the glass was out at that end. Eventually peace was restored. Another entry constructed a parade on the square with dustbins. They were collected from all over the place. There was a C.O. Dustbin in front with his Adjutant; there were Flight Commander Dustbins and lines of troops. All this was of course done in darkness and as silently as possible. They had it well laid out when someone dropped a lid. The Sergeants mess was on standby and they all piled out, but no one was caught and the poor defaulters had a hell of a job next morning sorting them all out again.

Harry's entry had a celebration off the camp, at The Marquis of Granby pub on Aylesbury road and no damage was done on their return. He had little experience of drinking and fortunately had the sense to take things very slowly consuming a modest amount without getting drunk. Even so he was a little under the weather and feeling sorry for himself, and though he was not sick that night he was the following night after he got home. Their three years had been completed, and Harry was to find that, accompanied by Baxter, Comfort, Eastlick, Foster and Pellow, all from No. 1 Wing. He was being posted to 103 Squadron at Andover and the day after the party they set off for man service in His Majesty Royal Air Force.