englandj
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Our First Day At Locking !!!From John England
The first day we arrived off the train we were hearded into the old wooden billets oposite 4T block. The first night before going to bed I went into the washroom to have a splash. There were no plugs except for one which I inserted in the sink and filled it up. I then found I had forgotten my soap so I went back to the room for it. On returning my sink was empty and the plug was now in the sink of a big fat ********. I went over pulled out the plug from his sink and re-filled mine. The fat gentleman said "do you know who I am ?" Yes I replied you are the fat git that nicked my plug ! He replied "I am Sgt Apprentice Pile (Heapy) I replied "I don't care who you are, I had the plug first - you will have to wait"
The next day we were all sworn in and became members of the RAF. This is where things rapidly went down hill as "Heapy" was in charge of the block and he remembered the plug incident from the night before. After all the things I had to do including bulling his boots/webbing etc. and being promoted to the "pan wash" I was suprised he did not see the funny side of it all,
John
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iquarrie
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Nice one John. If I remember correctly there were 2 Piles, Mick in the 94th and his similarly inclined brother Graham in the 97th.
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Frank
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Our First Day At Locking !!!You are right Ian, 2 Pyles brothers but I remember the 97th being much worse than his elder brother. In the boxing hut, there was a carricature of Graham Pyle on the punchbag to encourage hard hitting!
Do you remember Graham Pyle suddenly developing a parade ground voice a few months before his passout parade so that he would become Flt Sgt App? And he succeeded!
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Dai
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I (T) Block, not 4(T) Block. I(T) was behind the new brick Apprentice Barrack Blocks and 4(T) was up towards AM quarters.
They were going to call it Marconi Block, but the name did not stick likewise 2(T) was to be Watson-Watt, 3(T) was to be Faraday Block
4(T) was to be known as Maxwell Block and 5(T) Babbage Block.
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iquarrie
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I also remember the signing on session. We were all given several forms to sign, I queried one with Flt. Sgt. "Flapper" Price, he didn't say what it was but said that if I didn't sign I would not get paid, being desparate for the 10/6 that was on offer, I signed, only to find out later that what I had signed was a service long commitment to RAFBF subs. Some years later I tried to withdraw this but that's another story.
Later that day we were herded to sick quarters, they had set up trestle tables facing each other with a bench between the tables. We had to straddle the bench and shuffle down one after the other whilst teams of medics on the other sides of the tables stuck needles full of various substances into both arms. Our next port of call was an empty ward where an Air Commodore medic introduced himself by saying " No doubt whilst you are here, some of you will put your private parts in places I would not put my walking stick !"
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