“AWOLs will be severly dealt with!”
Each week I would read the same notice and each week “severely” was spelt wrong. Or perhaps not. Perhaps there WOULD be some degree of SEVERING a limb or other appendage. Because we AWOLs deserved it, cowardly bastards that we were, traitorous fucking oiks!
I was 13. I was one of the impressionable students of St ******** College, all-boys Catholic secondary school, who succumbed to the BIG FUCKING LIE that the Combined Cadet Force was FUN. A 6th former from the RAF section of the school’s CCF strolled back and forth in front of us in assembly, arms folded, brow furrowed film-star style, telling us about field camps we could go on, how we’d get to fly a De Havilland DHC1-Chipmunk two-seater plane and how we’d get to shoot a Lea Enfield rifle. OH YES. We were having some of that.
We had been streamed that year into 7 form classes according to test results in our subjects. A strict hierarchy from the boffins at the top – we called them “stiffs”– to the “remedial” class at the bottom. There was a distinct correlation between the 3 sections of the CCF and the academic demographic from which they attracted recruits. The RAF appealed mostly to the top classes and that included me, because I was good at tests. But I wasn’t a stiff. The Army appealed more broadly to boys from the more able classes down to the below-average ones. And inexplicably the Navy consisted exclusively of remedials.
I say “inexplicably”, because in terms of who looked the biggest DICKS in their uniforms, the Navy were OUT THERE in their own league. If the stigma of being labelled a “remedial” and treated like thickheads by the school system wasn’t bad enough, here they were, the poor sods, volunteering to wear the biggest DING DONG FUCKING BELL BOTTOMS seen this side of 1975. And this was 1983. So. Not cool.
Obviously the Army cadets DID look cool. Consequently, they wore their combats and big bastard boots to all lessons on Thursdays, as Cadets was after school that day. We stiffs and stiff-deniers in the RAF carried our uniform to school and changed at the end of the day, because it WAS NOT cool. It wasn’t knockabout fucking comedy hilarious like the Navy cadets’ clown outfits, but it certainly wasn’t cool. Our trousers, which were made from pure starch, blue dye and asbestos, were moderately wide around the hem (i.e. twice the 12 inch hem width that was considered de rigueur in those days.) And they itched like an eczema-sufferer in a sand-pit filled with council road grit. The blue jumper with obligatory epaulets and badges was bearable and could be worn to Thursday’s lessons with normal school trousers, but the beret was ill-designed to match the sprouting hair-styles of the mid-80’s, my Bono mullet in particular, but also the occasional George Michael bouffy wedge. Luckily, most stiffs had a short back and sides, a sensible decision by their mothers I feel.
Our first field trip allowed me to bond with some of the stiffs in my class, who were fellow privates in the RAF. They were all into heavy metal music and - I should imagine - Dungeons and Dragons. The first night at camp we were allowed to roam around the local town (Folkestone, I recall) and spent most of it sat outside the cemetery listening to tales of Ouija boards, subliminal messages on Iron Maiden albums, devil worshipping and encounters with ghosts. In hindsight, they were sad fuckers really, but at the time – given the fact that I was then still Catholic and had seen “The Omen” several times since a young age – I was so worked up by all these ghoulish and supernatural stories that I near as hell shat in those starchy blue flares. Had I done so, of course, the wide hem would have allowed any ballast to fall unimpeded to the pavement outside the cemetery.
We did get to shoot guns at this camp as well. And take them apart and clean them and put them back together and feel like REAL MEN. And not long after, we went flying in Chipmunks. That was cool, although I didn’t get to take the controls, because I was the last one to go up and the lad before me had been sick in the cockpit and it smelt and I think the pilot was rushing a bit.
And so, up until this point, the “Warrant Officer” from the 6th form had been honest. CCF WAS fun. And that fun lasted exactly one term. In our second term, every single Thursday after school we would have DRILL in the playground (embarrassing, as other boys leaving school late would walk past and take the piss) followed by an hour’s classroom lecture on the rudiments of FLIGHT. Every single week. Drill then lectures. And the next term. And the next.
We’d been enticed in and entertained and now it was this old shit every week. So a couple of us started bunking. As the noticeboard said, we became AWOL’s. This is where the whole Mickey Fucking Mouse aspect of the CCF really sunk in. We were 14 now, less willing to be ordered about by older kids, whatever their pseudo-rank; and we were VERY BLOODY HOSTILE to the worst of the pseudo-rankers, the RAF’s “Squadron Leader” who was an English teacher and Head of 6th Form by day.
Mr G****** (and yes the Head of 6th form in “The Inbetweeners” does share the name) was a 1940’s throwback with a huge portrait of Margaret Thatcher on his office wall. Enough said. Except to add that he REFUSED to let anyone leave the RAF cadets. Even when my Dad came up to the school to demand that I be allowed to leave, he was told that the boys were being taught responsibility and commitment and so, as with the real armed forces, would not be allowed to leave until they’d finished their enlistment. In our case, this was 3 years. A decision made at 13 committed us to 3 years marching up and down the bastard playground, attending countless lectures about what makes a plane fly, dressing up in musty old uniforms (that must have been stitched together 40 years before) and playing soldiers (or in our case pilots, and even then we’d only done that once all year!) What utter BOLLOCKS!
So, with my Dad’s consent, I just refused to go. At first, while still young, I’d have to run away from the 6th form officers stationed at the school gate to apprehend the AWOLs. I even disguised myself once by wearing glasses and giving myself a centre-parting (only slightly less likely to elicit scorn that the RAF uniform.) But even at 16, while sitting my O’Levels, I’d look at that CCF notice board to see my name amongst the list of AWOLs alongside a threat to be “severly” dealt.
I never was. And needless to say, I never went on to join the RAF in later life, but mostly because I still can’t shake that smell of Chipmunk cockpit vomit from my nasal hairs.
