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| Official Year 2005 AWF 72 Reunion.PlaceThe 2005 AWF 72 reunion was held in Knutsford at the Cross Keys hotel, Address: 52 King Street, Knutsford, Cheshire WA16 6DT, ENGLAND, Tel. 01565 750404
An inspired choice of venue, thanks to Redvers.
The Reunion Report
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Mike |
Chaz |
Arthur |
Redvers |
James |
Editors Note 2: I , that is James Marsden, I also received an email from Chaz Chambers. Chas had found an entry I had made to a find-old-pals website, the name and address of which I don't recall. He asked if I remembered him. This prompted me to search the web for other AWF 72'ers. I found Mike Voges entry in Forces Reunited, I think in the Yatesbury page, and so contacted him. Chas triggered the whole thing off!!
After the reunion Mike put pen to paper and sent a few reminiscences. Here are extracts:
Apart from Arthur Henderson and I (three years' 'extended national service' and five years respectively), the others were straight out of civvy street. Mike Issott and Dickie Bird, however, were held in awe since they were SACs already. The rest of the guys were National Servicemen with various educational qualifications ranging from stacks of GCEs to Colin Dash, who had a PhD in Entomology. We were never quite sure of the RAF's logic in sending him on a wireless fitter's course. But in the end we decided that it was the RAF's sense of humour that was responsible ... after all, for the rest of his service he'd be sorting out bugs in various wireless equipments.
But having looked through Phil Tomaselli's 'History of RAF Yatesbury 1955 had the second highest peace-time output from Yatesbury between 1948 and 1965.This seemed to mean that the RAF would need all the technicians it could lay hands on. This a reasonable assumption because once I'd started selling semiconductors after demob it was at companies like Decca Navigator, STC, GEC, Marconi and Plessey that everything was going solid state.
For me, up until Yatesbury, a radio had always just been a box from which a noise emanated if a knob was turned. Others, who were in the same position as I was, some sparked off a mutiny ... of sorts. It seems Arthur Henderson was the ringleader. After looking at the assessment papers for the mechanics' course he and others bowled off to see the course Flight Looey and successfully 'negotiated' their entry to AWF 72 instead ... it seems the Flight Looey got a rocket from the Squadron Leader afterwards, but by then it was too late anyway.Others like Mike Issott, Dickie Bird, Don Ransome and Julian Poupard had previous radio knowledge and were regarded with some reverence.
... and then press the pause button ...
Graham 'Chaz' Chambers was watching the Yatesbury Association detachment marching past when he suddenly decided to do a search on the internet; it seems I'd been pestering his memory for ages. Shortly after I had an email from him ... and for good reason.After passing out as J/Ts in December 1954 Chaz, Mike Burridge, Don Ransome, Bill Wood and I were posted to RAF Watton (90 Group), near Norwich. Well, Chaz was from Pompey and his girlfriend Mary was a WAAF at White Waltham. I was from Ilford in Essex and had been knocking around with "Jenny Major" (I have to call her that for the purposes of this story for very good reasons!!) since my arrival from South Africa in February 1954 as a lad of 18. So on a Friday night he used to drop me off in Ilford and carry on to Pompey and Maidenhead and then pick me up to get back to Watton for work on the Monday morning. But the other reason I'd been pestering his memory, he says, was because he'd been to work in South Africa after demob. Once down there he unsuccessfully looked up various phone books to try to locate me and gave up.
He has since reminded me of the time I signed on for the "extra seven" while at RAF Watton to make up the twelve. I didn't really have a choice then. I'd run up some gambling debts as a very bad brag player and in those days there was a signing-on bounty of 300 quid and thirty days extra leave!! So I was able to take care of my creditors and have them call off their dogs!
But what to do with the 30 days' extra leave?Well, 90 Group had this calibration Hastings called Iris which had the job of checking out all the landing aids on RAF airfields. Then one day, about 0930H, while in the station barber's chair, I heard the barber's throwaway remark that Iris would be going down as far as RAF Eastleigh (Nairobi) via RAF Idris and RAF Khormaksar ... but leaving at 1630H the same day. The reason he mentioned this was because he recognised my South African accent, and since he'd worked there himself in years gone by, he thought it might be interesting barber-shop chit-chat ... little did he know what he'd started. Now how I managed to scrounge a lift on Iris from Flt Lt Mancey, the captain, get my 30-day leave pass approved, get paid and packed and down to the dispersal by 1600H on that very same day is really another story. Sufficient to say that I then hitch-hiked from Nairobi to Cape Town and was back at Watton for 2230H a day before my leave ran out. I walked into RSF on the Monday morning - 1st week in September I think - to find out on PORs that would be on 13 Squadron, RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus on 5th October 1956 for two-and-a-half years. I lost touch with Chaz after that.
Which brings me back to why I'd been pestering Chaz's memory ... it was because of that posting that I'd missed his wedding. He in turn, having carried me down to Ilford so often on his rickety 250 Beezer to see Jenny, had been looking forward to our wedding.
But fate and youth are cruel.In June 1957, seven months after my arrival in Cyprus, I got the usual 'Dear John' from Jenny ... never heard from her again. I looked high and low but couldn't find her when I got back home to Ilford in April 1959.
But fate can also be kind.Through a series of remarkably spooky coincidences - yet another story for another time - Jenny and I met up again in May 2002. Then in a twist of fate Chaz was the first person with whom we met up ... so after 48 years he was finally able to see the reason for all those hairy motorbike rides at ungodly hours down and up the A11 (as it then was) way back in 1956!!!
... because an hour after Chaz's email, and out of the blue, there was another email. Thjis was Jim Marsden (he of the film star looks) in Raleigh, North Carolina: was I, by any chance, the Mike Voges, erstwhile of AWF 72, who had put details in Forces Re-united? So at this point the three of us decided to see who else might crawl out of the 1154/55 casings. With a bit of detective work and help from the Association newsletter we located eight of the old class.
Five guys no longer the sleek, bone, muscle and sinew versions from Hednesford days ... well ... we won't go into all that ... or the grey beard, salt-and-pepper moustache and grey balding heads! But speaking personally my expense-account days of loose living while I was selling communications systems for Motorola and satellite earth stations for RSI had taken their toll and manifested themselves in a girth which I won't mention!! Red, however, was his old direct self: "Mike, I'm going to stand next to you for the fotos because you make me look so slim"!!
And so the reminiscences, nostalgia and "war stories" started ... and what a mixed bag they were too. But what emerged as the common factor was that service as Air Wireless Fitter's had determined our subsequent civvy street destinies to greater or lesser degrees ... and all seem to have done a fair amount of globe-trotting in the process.Arthur Henderson is perhaps the best example of one whose life was determined by Yatesbury training. From Air Cadet Flight Sergeant, then via demob as a corporal after his 3-year stint and licensed ARB Radio Engineer, he retired in 1994 as a Chartered Engineer of the Royal Aeronautical Society, but now keeps his hand in as a specialist Mathematics teacher for the Lincolnshire County Council. After demob he remained associated with ground and air radio and radar equipments. He had technical assignments with Swissair in Zurich, as National Air Traffic Adviser to Saudi Arabia, then finally retiring as the Senior Air Traffic Control Engineer for Scottish and Oceanic Control, Prestwick. By his own admission his whole life has evolved from the time spent at RAF Yatesbury. He says it's been one long adventure, with far too many stories to tell ... until we meet again next year!!
By contrast Chaz couldn't say too much about what he'd been up to because of the Official Secrets Act. Sufficient to say that although he and I never met in civvy street I probably sold some of the the TTL integrated circuits from Texa Instuments and CMOS from RCA that went into the equipment of that genre. Then he ended up on satellite tracking and other communications assignments in South Africa for about five years. The odd thing is that it all started with his first job after demob of repairing the humble 1986s and 1987s - the old airborne VHF sets.
Before selling the integrated circuits into war-winning 'gadgetry' and immediately after demob as a sergeant in 1967 from 111 Sqdn RAF Wattisham (erstwhile Black Arrows but still living in its 'bullshine' days!) I'd joined a company to sell the new stripline RF power transistors from TRW in the USA. These had bveen devceloped by the companyh becauase they had to build the communications systems for the lunar programme. These devices revolutionised airborne and mobile radios from 1969 onwards. The RAF's airborne sets from Plessey (as it then was) came down to shoebox size; power supplies were made light and efficient by using fast switching transistors; mobile radios from people such as Pye and STC could now be fitted into dashboards for the emergency services ands taxis. But salesmen have to move with the markets if they're to make any dosh. So I moved on to selling trunked radio and telemetry systems for people like Motorola; satellite earth stations as turnkey projects in West/East Europe and South Africa. After retiring from the rat-race in 2001, and to stop the brain rotting, I took up TEFL-ling (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). This qualified me to teach ESP (English for Specific Purposes) in Law (I went back to university for four years when I was 41), Telecomms and Marketing (studied that while on 230 Sqdn at RAF Labuan,Borneo 1965 - 1966) to business managers from abroad who need English in the current business situation of globalisation.
And an earlier phase of globalisation it was that took James Marsden (he of the film star looks!!) to the USA. After demob he got involved with the telephone switching of ITT companies in Italy, Germany, France Norway, Belgium, Spain and the UK. At some point ITT took a hand and James had to co-ordinate UK and USA engineering documentation standards which resulted in him finally being sent over to the States. Before that, following demob, James was employed by the National Cash Register Company installing and comissioning and maintaining the National Elliott 405 digital computers each containing more than 2,000 thermionic valves. These monster machines 15KVA of electrical power and filled large rooms, very dramatic!James retired in 2000 and fulfilled a dream of sailing the the seas in his 41 ft sailing cutter. The longest of his voyages being a cruise of one years duration, crossing the Atlantic from Beaufort, NC USA to the Mediterranian and back again, via Madiera, the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, the Caribbean islands, Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas.
Red Chown and Jim Marsden got posted to RAF Syerston together. But how to get Red’s 200cc Villiers plus themselves and kit up there. It seems that Bob Carruthers (we believe it was), who had an Austin 7 special, was being posted somewhere in the vicinity so they piled all three lots of kit into his car and set off in convoy. Once at Syerston it seems they played volley-ball most of the time … but did do the odd bit of radio servicing in between times!!
But he reminded us of the billet jester, Les Titt, who urgently needed to get to Guildford one weekend for his mother’s (second!) wedding and was desperate for transport. So he asked to borrow Red’s bike. But some time previously Les had already run someone else’s bike into the side wall of the billet during a disastrous practice for the ride to Guildford.
“How do I know you won’t wreck my bike?”, asked Red anxiously.
“Don’t worry … it’ll be OK … you can trust me”, said Les, “I’m a Titt!”
After demob Red left the family farm for a very, very extended ‘gap year’ to do his own thing. But it seems the Syerston syndrome kicked in because he says his stint as a TV repair engineer wasn’t very successful!
But then he went walkabout in Zimbabwe, Canada, Australia and the USA doing lots of odd jobs, having various mishaps like car smashes and things falling on him.
But then, as my ole gran used to say: the bad thing about good things is that they come to an end!! So Red, eventually, had to start working for a living by taking over the family businesses. He obviously did this more successfully than TV repairs job because he ended up flying own Cessna his own plane and now, having retired in 1998, spends most of his time on the high seas cruising with wife Valerie than he does at home. As they would’ve said to him in Oz, and as we all do, “Good on yer Red.”
Now there’s always one in every class, isn’t there … and sure enough, we had ours. I’ve saved him for last because he turned out to be the biggest surprise after fifty years. I mean the softly-spoken, dry-humored and studious Mike Burridge … helluva nice guy. He already had his HNC in Mechanical Engineering and two-stroke motor bike which was always highly bulled up despite disappearing on it some weekends.
Well, when Jenny I went up to Monks Risborough to visit him and Val prior to the re-union we went to lunch in his monster motor …4.2L turbo-charged Jag giving 375 BHP …Then with his dry, quiet humour I got the throwaway line, “Well actually, it’s governed at one-fifty”.
But there was more to come over lunch.
It turns out that after demob he and Val did their Rocker thing on his Triumph Bonneville, causing her Mum to wring her hands, tear at her hair and make predictions of the dire consequences of knocking around with a motorbike maniac. But the Bonneville is still around, albeit in bits in the shed … and he’s threatening to rebuild it, he says! Well, they say the older biker is making a comeback. But having ended up as a chartered mechanical engineer he now does some leisurely consultancy – just to keep the Jag in petrol. And nobody had any inkling that Mike was really a closet speed-freak!!
But the most exciting piece of news was provided by Red - ‘NCO i/c Membership’.
Two days before the re-union he’d been tapping into the net and located Colin Dash (he of the PhD in Entomology) and Dave Willey – so now there should be ten for next year.
If the 2005 bash was anything to go by then the next can’t come too soon.
