Four decades on … my (brief) RAF career

On this day 40 years ago (7 November 1984) I found myself at RAF Swinderby about to spend my first day as AC (Aircraftman) Pearce after having completed my attestation at the Careers Information Office (CIO) in Chatham Kent with the following oath.

I swear by Almighty God [or: do solemnly, and truly declare and affirm] that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will, as in duty bound, honestly and faithfully defend Her Majesty, Her Heirs and Successors, in Person, Crown and Dignity against all enemies, and will observe and obey all orders of Her Majesty, Her Heirs and Successors, and of the air officers set over me.

I had accepted my first pay, signed on for a minimum of 9 years and agreed to potentially give up my life in the service of the country. When you think about it, that is quite something for a young person who wasn’t even 20 to do. At the time, a steady stream of young people in the UK were making a similar declaration, whether or not they fully understood how significant that oath was. Most young people who joined up were doing so for the career and the chance to escape their civvy lives. I was definitely one such young person.

The year before I had joined Lloyds’ of London working in their Chatham office as a Non-Marine Policy Checker. It was a job I was spectacularly ill-suited for! After about 8 months I realised that I needed to look for another job before I lost the one I had. The Lloyds’ building and the CIO were a couple of hundred yards apart and one day, in a very despondent mood, I thought ‘What the hell?’ and walked into to see if the services might be able to use my negligible talents! Well, it turned out they thought they could as a clerk in one of the offices, handing out pay, rail tickets and keeping records. I certainly wasn’t going to be any good at anything else! In the days of flexi-time I could chat to the Sergeant, decide on where I could best be fitted and undergo my entry test during my lunchtime. Luckily my lunchtime on that day could run from 11:30 – 2:00!! Within a month of the tests, two things happened, but not in the order I perhaps expected. I was called in to the manager’s office to be told that I was in last chance saloon. I responded by taking out my prepared resignation letter, dating it and handing it straight to my rather bemused boss! While I worked out my month’s notice I kept coming home looking for the letter from the CIO. Then, about a week before I finished at Lloyds I was officially looking at 9 years as an RAF Clerk!

I left Lloyds, almost certainly to their immense relief, and, despite my impending cashflow problem, mine, with the clear aim of getting fit. I was tall and thin but I had barely done any exercise since leaving school a year earlier. I resolved to get myself to a level where I could complete the one and a half mile run in under 11 minutes which was the benchmark to get through basic training. My first run saw me plod round two miles in 20 minutes and collapse in a heap! Well, that was my baseline and I had three months to improve things. I got up every day, put my tracksuit on, put a cassette in my Walkman and went out running before even having a cup of tea! Over the next three months I set myself targets to increase both my speed and my distance and within that time I was running a steady 5 miles in 30 minutes. Looking back, that was a pretty impressive rate of improvement! So I was ready to go … or so I thought!

I was not on my own at the attestation or the journey up to RAF Swinderby. Darren Wellard was joining up with me and it helped the nerves that we were on the same train for both legs of the journey. We got to Newark Northgate and then all hell broke loose! We were met by Corporal Hunter who proceeded to scream and shout at the 30 or so recruits who had caught that train in what seemed to be a completely deranged way! It was clearly designed to frighten and unsettle us and to let us know that civilian life was at an end, and it certainly worked. I am not going to pretend I had the slightest idea what to expect but the greeting from our Corporal sure as hell wasn’t in my wildest nightmares! What it gave all of the new recruits was a common enemy to force us to bond together as a flight. I really enjoyed the feeling of camaraderie and that is my abiding memory of my time there. I met young lads like myself from all over the country, getting on best with pretty much anyone from Wales, Scotland and anywhere from the Midlands northwards!

The biggest problem was the Sword of Damocles hanging over our collective heads. Every week, based on make or break tests, the decision was made whether or not to backflight the recruits. Backflighting was the nightmare scenario for all of us, taking us away from the lads we had got to know and rely on. I escaped the first two weeks, being much better than I expected at stripping and reassembling a rifle, doing it in 50 seconds, comfortably beating the 11 minutes for the run and being much better at PT than I had ever been at school! The third week was where things unravelled. I ended up in the medical unit with chest trouble after being forced to stand in the CS gas chamber for well over a minute by the Rockapes (RAF Regiment) who were generally nasty pieces of work, had a total disaster on the firing range and finally falling foul of foot drill which, with my dyspraxia, was a huge struggle throughout. My backflighting was inevitable. The shock was that I was sent back three weeks to the very start, which was totally unfair in my opinion, then and now. I was utterly demoralised, close to quitting and after another three weeks it was back to the start again. My original flight was due to pass out on the middle Wednesday of December and by the time that happened they were down to half their size. I’ll never forget them marching past to the RAF Swinderby band playing Winter Wonderland. I hated that song for years afterwards!

Oddly enough, when I went home for my Christmas break, it gave me much needed space and made me determined to go back for 6 weeks and get through after finding out how many people were rooting for me. Best laid plans and all that! Within one week I was back in the medical unit having torn all the ligaments in my right ankle and my achilles tendon for good measure due to a twisted ankle that just became more and more damaged. A few weeks later I was off to the Joint Services Medical Rehabilitation Unit Chessington where I stayed for three months before being returned to Swinderby to await a P8 medical discharge. The process dragged on until February 1986, a full 15 months after I joined. At the time I was, according to a couple of the chattier regulars, the longest serving AC they had ever had at Swinderby! Whether that was true or not it certainly felt like it.

So four decades on, how do I view my time in the RAF? For years I was reluctant to even think of myself as an ex serviceman, considering myself unworthy of counting in that number. Then on a Facebook chat in the RAF Swinderby group I wrote that down. The first response I got was to remind me that I had signed up to give my all to the country up to and including my life. On that basis I should always see myself as a proper ex serviceman. That comment changed my entire mindset.

My fifteen months changed me completely. I became a far more self reliant person and I learnt how to deal with, what was then, the absolute worst that could be thrown at me in a given situation. I also matured inwardly, if not outwardly, to an extent that would never have been possible in the safety net that my old life gave me. I used the compensation money from my medical discharge to go to America as an International Scout, something I would never have had the nerve to do without my time in the services. Those 15 months have shaped the next 40 years in many ways. I never paid my dues in terms of the nine years I signed up for, but I came to terms with the fact that it wasn’t entirely my fault. Would I do it again if I was sent back in time to 1984 and knew that the outcome would be the same? On balance yes. Per Ardua Ad Astra.