Cardington

Our first taste of the RAF was at Cardington where all RAF recruits got their hair cut and uniforms fitted. Here is a picture of a couple of wet-behind-the- ears 'sprogs'

Click on this thumbnail to see a larger picture of  a couple of these new recruits anxious but full of hope, ?? and our own Mike Voges.

Mike Voges tells us that he is writing a book … fictionalised romantic autobiography …  not for publication – just for selected family members … so he's inflicting all this on you lot first!!!

Part One of Mike's Autobiography

In early December 1954 The General Havelock pub was in Ilford High Road - as was the Ilford ‘Pally’ obliquely across the road from it. And the Ilford Catholic Club hadn’t changed one jot from the time that Jackie and I used dance there in the Church Hall.

I went back in November 2002 Jackie and I went back to look at the old neighbourhood but as Max Bygraves – also an old RAF National Service man – woulda said, “Fings ain’t wot they used ter be”.

The pub is still there but the Guiness is now £2.60 a half-litre whereas the bitter of the days when I was home on leaves and weekends was “one-and-three a pint”. And the local Pally is a disco … No more Teddy Boys in velvet-collared drape suits and crepe-soled ‘brothel-creepers’ doing ‘The Creep’ … smooching to ‘Tenderly’ … or earnestly entreating the bird of the moment , “Come arhtside dahlin”.

Now what’s all this got to do with me and the RAF …Well, the RAF recruiting bods weren’t as daft as I thought.

In order to get home from the Havelock in those days after college I had to fall out of the pub door and crawl left for about 20 yards (as they then were) to get the 123 home.  And on this particular day in early December I noticed - and for the first time ever – this plate glass window. And as I started heaving myself up to a reasonable perpendicular – let’s say 85 degrees – on the plate glass instead of the bus-stop pole, this blue blur started mutating in to what I now know to be the RAF roundel.

So what with being a bit fed up with the Pure Maths, Applied Maths, Physics and Chemistry at college, plus the bitter and this roundel bobbing and beckoning in  front of me … there I was chatting to this recruiting corporal and he was doing my PULHEEM checks.

Then I realised why the RAF recruiters weren’t as daft as I thought because just then three Teds, who’d also been drinking in the Havelock, threatened the corporal, “Look mate, if you don’t sign us up naah we’ll do you” … at which point they produced a cut-throat razor just to get his undivided attention … I never did see the end of the scene …!!!

In fact I hadn’t remembered a damned thing … until the first week in January 1955.

I got home from college and found this brown envelope, containing forms and … the railway warrant to Cardington. So I looked at the stuff in the envelope, then at the La Place transforms and other stuff of that ilk and my pile of textbooks … well … the rest as they say is history.

I suppose we all remember packing up the civvies(!!!) for posting back to Mum after signing on the dotted and then being co-erced into contributing to SSAFA; then being shipped to Padgate, Bridgnorth, Hednesford three days later - or wherever it was where one did square-bashing in those days.

Unlike the fotos on the website Hednesford was thick with snow and ice in January 1955 .. a foretaste of which in the Cardington foto. But it obviously illustrates the enterprise of the fotog who had the franchise in Hednesford for flogging fotos to the erks … must’ve been a kick-back element somewhere, methinks.

And then of course there was the night exercise in deep bloody snow on Cannock Chase, and guarding the bloody coal compound … hmmm …

Hednesford

These pictures were taken from the photo album momento we purchased from an enterprising photographer at the end of the square bashing ordeal. That is after our wills had been broken into the RAF mold. Only the section picture was special

Here is a picture taken from the main gate at RAF Hednesford Square Bashing Camp Circa 1955. This could easily have been mistaken for the gates of hell	Inside a typical billet ready for inspection! An example of hyper bullshit that we all endured.
Passing out parade (Boiler Plate Photo)	Only two months from the time this photo was taken, they were spring chickens See how they have been transformed into shitehawks of sinister aspect. Mike Voges is third from left, middle row. Bill Wood is second from the right on the front row.