35 - Home Leave at Last

I returned to England in the Aquitania. We left Sydney on 4^th December, 1945 and reached Southampton at the end of the first week in January, 1946, after calls at Fremantle and Cape Town. With over 8,000 passengers aboard after leaving Cape Town, the ship could provide only two sit down meals a day for us, and each of those had to be taken in three shifts. However, sandwiches, biscuits etc., and hot beverages, including soup, were available for all during the middle part of each day and no one felt any hardship. It was a much more pleasant voyage than the one to Australia a few months before.

I was the senior RAF officer aboard but had no responsibilities in connection with the other RAF personnel in the ship. However, when a very young RAF officer committed a rather serious breach of discipline at Cape Town, the case was referred to me. I had him on the mat and told him I had no legal power to deal with him, but that he could either accept unofficial punishment from me, which would not go on his record, or he could face court martial in England. He elected to accept my punishment, without knowing what it would be. I then gave him a bit of a tongue lashing, 'sentenced' him to organise a ship's concert and told him it had better be good. It was. Put on about ten days later, it was astonishingly professional and won much praise.

I reported to the Air Ministry the day after I returned to London and, as usual, was asked what I would like to do next. My reply of, "Command a station, please", was greeted with hollow laughter and the statement, "So would every group captain".

"Ok", I replied. "I've had a wonderful run of command and I will cheerfully do whatever you want; but you did ask me what I would like".

"Oh! well, we'll see what we can do".

A very few days later I was sent to HQ Bomber Command where I was interviewed by the Air Officer in charge of Administration (AOA). From there, I was sent to HQ No 3 Group at Newmarket. I was told the group had a job for me, but not what it was. On arrival, I reported to the SOA, Group Captain Nuttall, an old friend, who greeted me with the words, "Thank goodness you're here, Rankin! We are sending you to the worst station in the command and want you to do something about it". By that, he meant that its administration was in a mess and I was to sort it out and get it running smoothly and properly again. No details, no specific instructions: in effect, just, "go and find out what's wrong and fix it". That suited me well; it would be a challenge, not just a routine job.

The station was Mepal, about six miles west of Ely, on the edge of the fens. It had been built during the war and had come into use in the middle of 1943 as a home for two Lancaster bomber squadrons which were still there. I quickly found that it was in every bit as bad a state as I had been told; but the details of what I found, and what I did to put it right, are of no significance in this story. What is significant is what that job led to, and how it came about.

At the time of which I am writing, commanders of flying stations had been made personally responsible by regulations for so many administrative matters that it had become very difficult for them to give adequate attention to the very thing for which their stations had been created - flying and the related technical support organisation. At Mepal, I soon found that it would be quite impossible for me to give proper attention to this, the primary function of my command, if I was to carry out the task of overhauling its administration as I had been instructed to do. I therefore wrote to Group Captain Nuttall and asked if he could find me a spare senior wing commander, perhaps one awaiting demobilisation and not currently filling any established post, to run the flying side of the station for me for a few weeks while I dealt with the administrative problems. With my letter, I included a sketch of an organisation 'tree' showing how I proposed to reorganise the station if he could meet my request.

Nuttall replied that he could not do what I had asked, but told me that trials of a new organisation, remarkably like the one I had proposed, were shortly to be started on two stations in Bomber Command. In it, the station commander was to be freed of almost all his direct administrative responsibilities. Each station was to be organised into three wings: flying, technical and administrative, each presided over by a wing commander. The station commander was to oversee the working of all three wings as evenly as possible and ensure their proper co-operation, but he was not to take over the work or responsibilities of any of them. There was much more, but this is no place for such details. Suffice it to say that, if the new organisation proved to be satisfactory, it would profoundly affect the operation efficiency of the Royal Air Force for many years to come, and its ability to expand quickly in any future emergency. It would, therefore, be very important that the trials be carried out with great care to ensure that the right answers were found.

I was very interested and did a lot of thinking about the matter in the next few weeks. I wished that I could have some part in the trials, but I already had a station and a challenging job to do on it, and I got on with that. I resumed flying after a break of almost nine months. I played a lot of hard squash and often went out jogging at night. I soon became physically very fit again and this, combined with the challenging nature of the job, helped me to get back onto a even keel mentally and emotionally.

Early in April, I learnt that Tuddenham, in West Suffolk, had been chosen as one of the stations on which the trials were to be conducted, and that the necessary preliminary work had already started. My mind at once began seething with ideas about how the trials should be conducted. Next morning, with mind still seething, I consciously expressed the thought that I would give almost anything to have the running of that trial. At that moment, my phone rang and Group Captain Nuttall told me I had been posted to Tuddenham to do just that! I was to hand over Mepal and move over to Tuddenham at once.

When I took over Tuddenham, on 8^th April, there was still a lot of preliminary work to be done before the trial could begin. Some new offices had to be built and new technical facilities provided in just the right places to meet the requirements of the new flying and technical wings, while personnel had to be regrouped in both living and working areas to fit the new organisation. While attending to all this, I found that the station transport section was in a real mess, and that the warrant officer in charge had no idea what to do about it. At Mepal, I had had a particularly good transport officer named Gathercole. One morning, after an exasperating session with the incompetent warrant officer, I just said to myself, "I wish to heaven I could get Gathercole over here to run the transport section". A few minutes later, Gathercole walked into my office, announced that he had been posted to Tuddenham and was reporting for duty! Remembering the swift response to my earlier wish about running the trial, and now this, I decided that I had better be very careful about what I wished for in the future!

In this period of preparatory reorganisation, I also studied carefully the directive which I had received about the conduct of the trial. Without going into details, parallel trials were to be run simultaneously on two stations: Tuddenham, which was a temporary wartime 'tin' station, and Binbrook, a permanent pre-war station. In order to get two completely independent results, the two station commanders were forbidden to discuss the trials with one another while they lasted. We had been provided with a new station organisation which it was hoped would be a big improvement on the old one. We had also been provided with a personnel establishment which was expected to enable all the normal work of the station to be carried out without anyone having to work abnormally long hours. We were ordered to test both the organisation and the establishment exactly as they were and report any weaknesses found, but not to try to overcome them by making unauthorised changes. We were to make monthly progress reports and a final report, with conclusions and recommendations, at the end of the trial period. If any snags needing urgent attention were disclosed, we were to report them at once.

When the trial began at Tuddenham, I was quickly able to get my three wing commanders working well together as a team and we conducted the trial exactly as directed, found and reported such weaknesses as existed, and Bomber Command authorised one important change early in the trial. Binbrook found much the same things as we did, but did not bother to report their difficulties. Instead, they just used spare aircrew members to help out without telling anyone, and thereby completely invalidated their whole trial.

At the end of our trial, I made a comprehensive report to HQ Bomber Command, recommending the adoption of the organisation with the changes which the trials had shown to be necessary. Bomber Command paid me the compliment of adopting my report as their own report to Air Ministry. Several copies of my report were simply sent to Air Ministry with a covering letter from the C-in-C in which he said he agreed with everything in it and made some very flattering remarks about the way the trial had been conducted. The organisation was quickly adopted and installed on Bomber Command stations where it remained in use until the exigencies of the cold war, and the necessity to maintain nuclear bombers continuously at instant readiness, made another change necessary.

While at Tuddenham, in addition to the station Oxford, I flew Lancasters and gliders, each for the first time, and was pleased to find that I had no difficulty with either. The versatility which I had developed in the war years was still holding.

On 22^nd October, the British destroyers Saumarez and Volage were severely damaged, and many crew members killed and injured, when they struck mines which had been laid in Corfu Straits by Albania, which was attempting to claim the straits as territorial waters. In the ensuing political crisis, tentative plans were made to send a bomber force to Malta for possible retaliatory action. The units selected were the four Lancaster squadrons at Tuddenham, and I was to go as the commander of the force. That brought me a quick trip to Malta to discuss arrangements for accommodating and supplying the force; but the crisis simmered down and no move became necessary.

Very soon after I arrived at Tuddenham, I became involved in an unusual disciplinary case. A young airman, aged twenty, appeared before me on a charge of absence without leave for a period of several months. Only the fact that he had voluntarily surrendered himself to the police saved him from a charge of desertion. His conduct sheet showed that he had several convictions for similar offences in the year or so he had been in the service. I decided that my maximum powers of punishment were inadequate to deal with such a persistent offender, so I remanded him for trial by court martial. Having done that, I dismissed his escort, sat him down and asked him if he would like to tell me what was behind his persistent misbehaviour.

He told me that he had married when he and his wife were both eighteen, about the same time that he had enlisted in the RAF. They were unable to live together because of his service in the RAF. She had no family of her own. There were money worries and quarrels whenever he could get home to her and eventually she left him and had a baby by another man. He was unbearably distressed by all this and it had caused him, quite irrationally, to embark on his career of absenteeism. However, during his last absence, he and his wife had had a complete reconciliation. They really did love one another and decided they must get back together again. They decided that he should return to his unit and take whatever punishment was coming to him, after which he could make a fresh start in the service and they could make a fresh start with their marriage. She was now living with his parents at Goxhill, on the Humber River, almost opposite Hull. They had welcomed her and were being very supportive.

I asked him how he felt about the baby. He said he liked him very much, that he certainly was not to be blamed for any of their troubles. I liked that. I also liked the fact that, when talking of his wife and their reconciliation, he never once spoke of having 'forgiven' her. It was obvious that he did not think on such lines; he simply loved her and wanted to share his life with her.

When he had completed his story I felt that, if it were all true, he was not going to give any more trouble in the service and the infliction of harsh punishment would serve no useful purpose except as a warning to others. He had already forfeited all pay for the period of his absence and that had caused hardship for his wife. If he were to be sentenced to a period of detention, as seemed almost certain, he would lose all but sixpence a day of his pay for that period, and that would only prolong the hardship being suffered by his wife. Because of his past record, he would have to be tried by court martial, but I decided I would try to help him.

The first step was to verify his story. I flew up to Binbrook, borrowed a station car, drove up to Goxhill and called on his parents and wife. I found everything exactly as he had told me. His parents were providing a stable and strongly supportive background for the two youngsters. They obviously had no reservations about their acceptance of the wife and baby into their family and were going to give her all the help she would need until her troubles were over. I was impressed by the wife's bearing and strength of purpose. When I asked her how her husband behaved towards the baby when he was at home, she told me he loved to play with him and take him out in the pram. Back at Tuddenham, I told the young man that I would still have to send him for trial by court martial but that, if he wished, I would act as his defending officer, and he accepted my offer.

At the trial, I pleaded him guilty. When the court asked if he wished to make any statement before sentence was passed, I told his story, pointed out that severe punishment was not now necessary to effect his reform, that it would only prolong the hardship being suffered by his wife, and I begged the court to be as lenient as possible when deciding on their sentence. The court then closed to consider what sentence to impose. I forget now what the sentence was but think it was six months detention. When the court reopened, the president thanked me for what I had told the court. He told me that the court had decided it would not be justified in letting that influence them and they had felt obliged to impose a sentence appropriate to the nature of the offence and the previous record of the accused. However, he went on to remind me that the sentence was subject to review by the Air Officer Commanding No 3 Group and advised that I should tell him what I had told the court.

I did. The AOC decided to suspend the sentence and ordered the man returned to Tuddenham to work under my supervision. I was to render monthly reports on his conduct. If he misbehaved in any way the sentence would be re-instated at once and he would serve every day of it. If he behaved properly for six months, the AOC could consider (no promise) remitting the sentence. The young man never looked back. His behaviour was exemplary from then on and, after only three good reports from me, the AOC remitted his sentence entirely.

Tuddenham closed down at the end of the trial of the new organisation. I was posted to Hemswell, near Market Rasen, in Lincolnshire, and lost track of this young man. On a warm Sunday in the spring of 1947 I rode my bike from Hemswell up to Goxhill to see his parents again. He was not at home that weekend, but his wife who, by then, was living near by in their own home, was visiting his parents when I arrived. She was obviously very happy. Her husband had continued his good behaviour, was happy and doing well in the service, and their marriage was very firmly back on the rails.

In the late spring of 1947, I went to Buckingham Palace to receive the DSO from the hands of the King. Later in the year, I also had the honour of being invited to a royal garden party there.

At some time while I was at Tuddenham, Air Ministry informed me that I had been granted a medium service commission, starting from a date which I do not now remember. That relieved some of my worries about the future. For the next four years I would at least be assured of an adequate income on which to support my family; but it did nothing to help me solve the problem of getting us all back together again. I knew that Tuddenham would be closing down before the end of the year and I had no idea of where I would be posted next. There was a great shortage of housing throughout Britain. If I were not posted to a station where there were married quarters, it was very doubtful if I would be able to find a home for them at all. I certainly could not send for them until I had found somewhere for them to live when they arrive.

Tuddenham was closed down as soon as the trials of the three pronged station organisation were completed and I was posted to Hemswell, as station commander, on 7^th December, 1946. Hemswell was a permanent bomber station, with two squadrons of Lincolns. It was situated about 12 miles north of Lincoln and about midway between Gainsborough and Market Rasen. It had been built just before the war, complete with married quarters of a standard of comfort and convenience previously unknown in the RAF.

The station commander's residence was a large brick house of three storeys, plus a basement furnace room for the two boilers which supplied the central heating and hot water systems. There were no less than seven bedrooms on two floors, with a separate dressing room opening out of the master bedroom, all with built in wardrobes and basins with hot and cold running water. There were all the usual offices and a garage. The house stood in about three quarters of an acre of ground, and the station commander was entitled to two full time servants at public expense to help run it. It would have been perfect for the family, but alas! my future was still to uncertain for me to send for them. All promotions during the war were only temporary, to be reviewed when the war was over. Now that the RAF was contracting, war time ranks were being reviewed and many officers were being reduced in rank. I could not expect to escape that fate indefinitely. If and when it happened to me, I would certainly be posted again, with only a small chance that it would be to a place with married quarters.

In fact, I did not know whether I should try to get the family back to England at all. My extended service commission was due to expire in mid 1950, after which I had no idea what I would be able to do to earn a living. As things were just then, I simply could not do any planning whatever for our future. Already another whole year had passed since I had last seen Dorrie and the children. The years were slipping away and creating an ever growing gap in our lives which could never be filled. I was missing all the growing years of our children and could see no end to our long separation. That was worrying me almost unbearably and I knew that it was affecting Dorrie just as badly.

I could not bear to live in such a huge house by myself. Indeed, it would have been unpardonably wasteful to keep the central heating and hot water systems running for a single occupant, so I closed it up for the time being, and went to live in the officers' mess.

Hemswell was what I might call a 'normal' station. It housed two bomber squadrons which were settling down to peace time routine training. The station had no special task and no special problems. For the first six weeks, my job was pleasantly hum drum. The station was running smoothly; I had a good staff and never needed to take work back to my quarters at night, so I had plenty of time to write letters to Dorrie. And then the great 1947 freeze-up struck! It lasted until Easter and, before it ended, it had thoroughly disrupted the economy of the nation and caused over two million people to be thrown out of work.

Snow started to fall on 19^th January and continued for about three days. Probably no more than about six inches of snow fell in that time, but it was dry, it fell over a very wide area and it was accompanied by light to moderate east to north-east winds. It just went drifting steadily across country, completely filling railway cuttings and covering roads to the tops of the hedges lining them, completely disrupting road and rail transport. Roads and railway cuttings which were cleared by day drifted over level again during the night. With no general thaw, occasional further light snow showers and at least one good blizzard, these conditions persisted until Easter. Industry all over the country came to a standstill because coal could not be moved from pitheads, factories could not get delivery of their raw materials, nor clear their finished products, and so on; but some main roads were kept open and some railway services did manage to keep functioning.

At Hemswell, married quarters and the officers and sergeants messes all had their own individual heating system, but all the barrack blocks, offices and workshops were heated by a single coal burning heating plant. When the coal stocks for this got down to seven days consumption at normal operating temperature, and no more deliveries could be expected, I was ordered to reduce the working temperature of this plant to bare anti-freezing level, close the station, and send everyone, except occupants of married quarters, on indefinite leave.

There followed a hectic 24 hours preparing about 900 leave passes and travel warrants and arranging bus transport to the railway station at Gainsborough, eight miles away. A blizzard blew up as the evacuation started. Road conditions, already bad, quickly got worse. When, with dusk coming on, a buss got hopelessly stuck just outside the camp gates, and all traffic on the Gainsborough road ceased, I ordered the evacuation stopped for the night. I feared for the safety of the airmen and airwomen should they become stranded in the blizzard. There were still many airmen and airwomen awaiting transport when I issued that order. I was quite alarmed when, next morning, I learnt that every one of them had disappeared during the night. I had visions of frozen bodies being found in roadside snow banks when the thaw occurred, but they all got home safely, somehow or other.

I closed the officers' mess and, with two or three other officers, moved into the station commander's house. From the families in married quarters we were able to keep the station telephone exchange manned and the transport section operating with a skeleton crew. All stations had received orders to do whatever they could to help local authorities in this national emergency. We had two blower type snow ploughs on the station, but the only trained operators had been sent on leave. I appointed myself as operator and offered my services to the County Engineer at Gainsborough. He asked me to undertake the task of clearing, and keeping clear, a four mile stretch of the old Roman road named Middle Street, from Hemswell to Kirton-in-Lindsey. In addition, I was asked to do whatever I could to clear access roads to the farms in that area, the object being to keep the farm produce flowing to the towns.

That job kept me fully occupied for about a month, until coal supplies improved and it became possible to reopen Hemswell. In the process, I was deeply shocked by the meanness and uncivilised behaviour of the local people, including the farmers whom we were trying to help. I had never met anything like it before, even in darkest Africa, nor have I since. I am not referring her to the behaviour of just a few bad mannered individuals, but to that of every Lincolnshire native with whom I had any significant contact during the whole period of the freeze-up, the subsequent floods, and the cleaning up operations which followed those. A few instances will show what I mean.

One Sunday, about noon, the snow plough became stuck about 100 yards from a farm house. The snow on the road had become hard packed by the frequent crossings of cattle and machinery. Unable to bite into this, the plough had ridden up on top of the bank. The driving wheels then broke through the crust and the heavy machine bellied down onto the hard packed snow, coming to rest with its wheels several inches above the road. The only way to get it moving again was to dig the snow out from under it. My offsider and I attempted to do this with snow shovels, the only digging tools we had with us, but the packed snow under the weight of the machine was almost as hard as ice, and we made little progress. I went to the farmhouse and asked the farmer, who already knew of our plight, for the loan of a pick, mattock, crowbar, axe, or even a spade - anything with which to break up the hard snow. He just looked at me and said, "We don't have anything like that on the farm", and shut the door in my face.

Later in the day, when I and my helper were still hacking away with our shovels, several labourers from the farm, still in their working clothes, came along and just stood watching us, never offering to help. When I eventually suggested that they might do so, and offered them spare shovels, they refused, saying they would not be paid for doing such work. Still later in the afternoon, a few sightseers arrived in cars and again just stood watching. When I again asked one able bodied man if he would help us, he just said, "No. We just came out to watch, not work".

On another occasion, when a fan belt broke, we stopped in a small village in which there was one large farmhouse with a telephone. I asked the adjutant, who was my helper that day, to go to the house and ask permission to ring Hemswell and get a new fan belt sent out to us. The family was at morning tea when he made his request. He was allowed to use the phone on payment of sixpence. He was not offered even a cup of tea nor invited to warm himself at the fire, but was ushered out of the house as soon as he had made his call.

Two hours later, when the fan belt still had not arrived, I again sent the adjutant to ring and find out why. This time, the family was at midday dinner but, as before, he was just asked for sixpence, shown to the phone and then to the door as soon as he had made his call.

Between these two calls, a bright ten year old boy appeared from a cottage on the other side of the street and asked a lot of questions about how the snow plough worked. He was quite thrilled when I invited him into the cab, started the engine and let him operate the hydraulic controls which raised and lowered the plough and moved the deflector from side to side. He disappeared after a while, but came back about half an hour later with a tray loaded with cups of tea and a plate of hot cakes from his mother. When we had dealt with those, I took the tray back to the cottage to thank the mother, who turned out to be a Yorkshire woman, a widow with only one arm, living in very poor circumstances. That was absolutely the only hospitality we ever received in a month of often bitterly cold work. No native of Lincolnshire ever offered help or hospitality, or even thanks.

When the thaw came, it was very sudden and accompanied by continuous heavy rain. This caused record flooding in many parts of the country. Water entered many houses in low lying parts of Lincoln and Gainsborough. Hemswell had been reopened by this time and we helped in every way we could. We sent rubber boats to Gainsborough to help evacuate families from flooded homes. When the bakery there was flooded out, we sent our entire stock of bread to the town to help feed the hungry people.

The River Trent tore a great gap in one bank just north of Gainsborough, at a place where the river bed was actually well above the level of the surrounding reclaimed fen land, and many thousands of acres were inundated. When a Dutch firm was called in to rebuild the river bank, we provided them with a fuel tanker for their fleet of dump trucks and a mobile lighting plant so that work could continue throughout each night. Whenever a dump truck fell into the river (a fairly frequent occurrence), we sent a mobile crane to lift it out again. When the city of Lincoln authorities asked for help to dry out houses as the floods receded, we lent them our two big mobile hot air blowers for three weeks. I cannot recall ever receiving a single note or word of thanks from anyone except the Dutch engineers for any of this assistance.

Throughout the long period of trouble which I have described, all army and air force units in Lincolnshire had done whatever they could to help the local authorities. At a meeting of the fully county council that summer, this was acknowledged and the council passed a resolution stating that the people of Lincolnshire 'ought to be' grateful for this assistance. Those councillors, the elected representatives of the people of Lincolnshire, could not bring themselves to say that they were grateful. I could hardly believe that these people were part of the England I had come to love.

One day, while the station was still closed down but I was not out on the snow plough, I received a phone call from the AOC. His first words were, "Congratulations, Rankin"! Mystified, I asked, "What about, Sir?" and he replied, "On your permanent commission of course". A whole load of worries about the future was swept away instantly and I was so stunned that I literally could not speak for a while. Presently, the AOC asked if I was still there and I was just able to squeak out, "Yes, but I can't speak".

The news came as a total surprise. It was less than a year since I had been told by Air Ministry that I had been turned down for a permanent commission and I had no idea why it had suddenly been granted. It was not until I started writing this chapter that it occurred to me that it might have had some connection with the running of the Tuddenham trials. I still do not know whether it had, but it at least seems a possibility.

My financial future was secure at last. I still had no idea when I would be able to send for the family, but at least I knew I would do so as soon as I could find accommodation for them where we could live together again; and that lifted another huge uncertainty from my mind.

I left Hemswell at the beginning of August, 1947, to attend No 2 course at the Joint Services Staff College which was located at Latimer, near Chalfont, in Buckinghamshire. The course was something of a disappointment and at its end I did not feel that I had gained much from it. This was largely my own fault, as my depressed state made me a very poor student. However, it was also due in part to the poor quality of some of the directing staff and to the fact that much of the syllabus dealt with matters with which I was already thoroughly familiar.

The course was not without interest, however. Visits were made to several military and civilian establishments, and we were treated to some very interesting lectures by visiting military and political experts. One such was by Field Marshal Montgomery, then Chief of the Imperial General Staff. In the course of a masterly survey of the military situation in various parts of the world, he assured us that the Arabs would certainly and quickly drive the Jews into the sea when Britain withdrew its troops from Palestine in 1948.

Another officer told us about the ground nuts (peanuts) scheme in East Africa, where the British government was spending vast sums to establish a peanut growing industry where none had existed before, with new roads and a new railway to bring the nuts to a brand new seaport. All this was being done in an effort to bring more food to a hungry world, while completely ignoring the existing old established industry in northern Nigeria, where mountains of peanuts were piled up at Kano and other towns, alongside an existing railway system which lacked only half a dozen additional locomotives to enable the peanuts to be moved to existing seaports.

An American admiral gave us a wonderfully interesting and accurate account of the great naval battle of Leyte Gulf, in which he had taken part.

Then there was the day when the morning papers announced the appointment of Emanuel Shinwell, a life long pacifist and a conscientious objector in the first world war, as Minister for War. The British army officers on the course were deeply embarrassed, and the rest of us so sympathised with them, that we all refrained from pulling their legs. In fairness it must be said that Mr Shinwell proved to be very good at his job.

At some time during the course, all wartime temporary ranks were converted to acting ranks. Those of us who held such ranks retained them until the end of the course, when the reductions became effective. I then reverted to my substantive rank of wing commander.

Towards the end of the course, all officers received forms on which we were asked to indicate our preferences for our next appointments. Citing the long separation from my family, now over seven years, I asked to be posted, in any capacity for which I was qualified, to any place where married quarters would be available so that we could be reunited. I handed the completed form to the RAF Senior Directing Staff (RAF SDS) officer, who was responsible for informing the Air Ministry of our preferences.

When our postings were announced, just before the end of the course, I was dismayed to learn that I had been posted to HQ Flying Training Command at Reading, where there were no married quarters, while an unmarried officer, with much the same qualifications and seniority as myself, had been posted to HQ Bomber Command, where there were many married quarters. We were both equally suitable for both posts, and it would have been very easy to switch the postings.

In some distress, I asked the RAF SDS if he had any idea why my request had apparently been ignored. He replied that I had not expressed any preference for my next posting and he had informed Air Ministry accordingly! Challenged, he produced my form, acknowledged his mistake with a half-hearted, "Sorry!" and then dismissed the matter by saying airily, "Oh! well, its done now and can't be helped".

There was another reason by I did not wish to be posted to HQ Flying Training Command. I had discovered that my immediate boss there would be that same officer who had shown such hostility to me at Manston in 1936, and I did not want to have anything to do with him again.

As the postings would not become effective for another two weeks or so, there was still time to make changes. I went up to Air Ministry and explained the whole situation to the postings officer concerned. I pointed out the possibility of simply switching the postings of myself and the officer who was to go to Bomber Command, and begged him to do that, or to make any other change which would meet my expressed preference. He declined, saying that Reading was a big urban area and he was quite sure I would have no difficulty in finding rental accommodation there. How wrong he was! As if that were not enough, he, or someone else in his department, then rang my prospective boss and told him what I had said about not wishing to serve under him.

I joined the staff of HQ Flying Training Command (HQ FTC) on 8^th March, 1948. My post was known as Wing Commander Organisation 2, or Org. 2 for short. My immediate superior was known as Group Captain Org. At a rather frigid interview on arrival, we agreed we would not let personal feelings interfere with our professional duties, and we got on surprisingly well; so well, I am happy to record, that we soon developed a mutual respect and liking, and eventually became good friends.

After that interview, I was introduced to the Commander-in-Chief, Air Marshal Sir Ralph Cochrane. It was he who, when C-in-C Transport Command, in 1945, had ordered my trial by court martial and then, as I have related, effectively varied the court's sentence to one of transportation to Australia for leave with my family. Needless to say, I was very happy to serve under him.

I was responsible to Group Captain Org for writing and keeping up to date the establishments of all the units in the command. 'Establishment' in this context means a document setting out in complete detail the authorised levels of manning and equipment of a unit. Each establishment had to be tailored to meet the prescribed task of the unit concerned. It had also to conform to scales laid down by Air Ministry and Treasury, who were responsible for ensuring that the RAF as a whole did not exceed its establishment, which was laid down by parliament. The job necessitated many flying visits to the stations in the command for consultations with the units concerned. It also called for close consultation with other branches of the HQ staff and, of course, with the responsible civil and service officers at Air Ministry. In other words, it involved a lot of meticulous staff work combined with plenty of flying. I had a good assistant squadron leader and a good clerical staff. Since establishments seemed to be a mystery to everyone else, including Group Captain Org, I was very much my own boss and I enjoyed the work.

Things were not so happy on the domestic front. I found lodgings in a boarding house run by the wife of a RAF officer. She was a very pleasant person, very considerate, and she ran the place very well indeed. It could hardly have been bettered, but I was never happy there: I just hated living in a boarding house. I eventually found a place with a young couple and their two young children, where I was the only lodger, and I was much happier in this family environment.

Standing in the hall of this house was a very nice grandfather clock which was not working. I knew nothing about clocks, but the mechanism looked to be fairly simple. I was given permission to try to get it working again. On dismantling the movement completely, I found nothing wrong except that the cogs were clogged with hard packed dirt. After cleaning it thoroughly and oiling it, I reassembled the movement and soon had the clock keeping almost perfect time. My hosts then produced two more unserviceable clocks and I was able to get them working again. One of these was a very interesting one-handed alarm clock in which a single weight supplied the power for both the time-keeping and the alarm mechanisms. It had been made in the time of Queen Anne. Working on these provided me with some much-needed healthy hobby interest.

I began house hunting almost as soon as I got settled at Reading. I visited all the real estate agents I could find and told them what I wanted. I regularly bought all three of Reading's newspapers and followed up every house to let advertisements that seemed to offer any hope, and I later placed advertisements in all three of the papers. These measures brought offers of a few houses, but all were at rentals far above anything which I could afford, or were so far from Reading that I would have needed a car, which I had not the money to buy.

When I finally gave up hope of finding any accommodation for the family in the Reading area, I began to feel really desperate. We had now been separated for almost eight years. In the normal course of events, I could not expect another posting for at least two years. By that time, we would have been separated for ten years, and even then there was only a small chance that it would be to a place with married quarters, or at which I would be able to find other accommodation. The prospect just did not bear thinking about: I had to ask for help. I wrote a letter addressed to the Air Officer in charge of Administration, but intended for transmission to Air Ministry. In it I told the story of our long separation and what I had done to try to end it. I finished by asking, "Please, is there any way by which I can both remain in the service and resume living with my family?"

As I learnt later, when the letter reached Air Ministry, it was passed swiftly to the Director of Personal Services (DPS). He was so impressed that he took it at once to the Air Member for Personnel (AMP), the highest authority on personnel matters in the Air Ministry. After reading the letter, AMP, said, "Tell Rankin to send for his family at once. He is to be guaranteed that a married quarter will be available for them when they arrive, and he is to be guaranteed at least two years uninterrupted residence with them after that", or words to that effect.

Two group captains rang me the same morning to tell me this great news and I cabled it to Dorrie at once. She, bless her, quickly organised the move; the family embarked in the Esperance Bay at Brisbane towards the end of September, and I was posted to HQ Bomber Command on 29^th October, about three weeks before the ship was due at Southampton.

My new post at Bomber Command was Wing Commander Org 1. The Organisation Branch, under Group Captain Org, was divided into three numbered sections. Org 3 dealt with works services and buildings. Org 2 dealt with establishments, as I have already described, and Org 1 dealt with anything which nobody else knew what to do about. The head of the org branch was Group Captain Coates. When I reported to him on arrival, his first question was, "Can you shoot?" I modestly admitted that I could and was told to start practising and prepare to shoot in the HQ unit rifle team.

The AOA was Air Vice Marshal (AVM) Breakey who, in addition to his normal duties, controlled the married quarters at the command HQ. The C-in-C was Air Marshal Sir Hugh Pugh Lloyd, who was mostly known as Huff Puff. I had first met him on my first trip to Malta, in July 1942. He had been the RAF commander there all through the worst of the blitz, when its only fighter defence force consisted of the three Gladiators nicknamed Faith, Hope and Charity, and he had done a great job organising the passive defences of the island. At the beginning of July, 1942, he handed over his command to AVM Park of Battle of Britain fame, and I flew him out to Egypt.

All the married quarters at HQ Bomber Command had been completed shortly after the outbreak of war but had never been used as such until after the war ended. All through the war they had been used as dormitories for the HQ staff officers and had become rather shabby. The AOA allotted me a quarter which was about to be vacated and ordered it to be completely redecorated and generally refurbished before Dorrie and the children arrived. The house was very similar to the CO's residence at Hemswell, which I have already described, and I would have a full time batman to help with the running of it. It would be a lovely spacious and comfortable home for the family when they arrived.

While the refurbishing of the house was going on, I pondered the problem of getting the family from the dock at Southampton to the house. I eventually decided that the only sensible way to do it was to hire a bus. The smallest I could find was a 32 seater. The ship was due to dock at 0800 hrs. I had the bus pick me up at HQ BC at 0530 hrs and we drove straight to the dock at Southampton, arriving a few minutes before 0800. The ship had already berthed but disembarkation had not started. A few passengers were lining the rails and I stood on the dock scanning their faces, wondering if I would recognise my own children if any of them were there. Presently, I saw a fair haired boy who I thought might be Christopher, our youngest. He was in the company of a tall dark girl somewhat older than himself, and I wondered who she might be. They seemed to stare hard at me for a while, then disappeared for a few minutes before returning to the rail with Dorrie. They were Christopher and our middle daughter Kathleen. When they first saw me they thought I might be their Dad and had gone to fetch Dorrie to tell them whether I was, or not.

They all came ashore a bit later in the morning to a happy but rather shy reunion. All through our long separation, Dorrie had done a wonderful job of keeping me alive in the minds and memories of the children, but we really were almost strangers to one another.

As soon as the baggage came ashore, we piled it and ourselves into the bus and drove back to Bomber Command, stopping for lunch at Reading on the way. Many of the people at Bomber Command saw us drive up to our house and the family disembark. This caused some amusement and I subsequently had to endure some good natured leg pulling about having to hire a 32 seater bus to move my family.

Everyone was delighted with the new home. We got the children enrolled in their new schools and they quickly settled into normal family life. Dorrie and I were deeply happy to be back together, to be rid at least of the awful uncertainties and doubts, but we had now been separated and living on opposite sides of the world for almost exactly half of our married lives, and it took us many weeks to adjust fully to each other, to recover the lovely feeling of unity which we had known. Happily, we were never again to be separated for more than a few days at a time, except for one break of about three months when I was posted to Egypt some years later, and that break was for our own purposes.

We remained at HQ Bomber Command for almost two and a half years and it was a happy time for all of us. We had a lovely home; the children were in good schools but were able to live at home. Dorrie quickly found good friends amongst the other wives on the married patch and we had a very pleasant social life. Dorrie revived her musical skills and quickly found herself leading the second violins in an orchestra in High Wycombe.

As 'ordered' by Group Captain Org when I first arrived, I quickly got down to serious shooting practice and soon found myself shooting in the HQ Unit's small bore and service rifle teams. After the first year, I undertook the coaching of these teams. I eventually became a member of the Bomber Command team and took part in inter-command competitions at Bisley.

During this time, I persuaded Dorrie to try her hand with a small bore rifle. She had never fired any kind of fire arm before, but showed considerable aptitude and enjoyed it. I coached her and eventually bought her her own BSA 12 competition rifle. Before we left Bomber Command, she and two other wives formed a team of three which won the annual national competition for the Edith Summerskill Rose Bowl.

As at Flying Training Command, my work was interesting and challenging and it provided me with plenty of flying.

One of the Bomber Command units was a photographic survey squadron of Lancasters then based at Nairobi and operating over Kenya and Uganda. Plans were afoot to move it to West Africa later and, at one stage, I had to go out there to discuss with the colonial governments the facilities which they would need to provide when that move occurred.

I flew out to Accra as a passenger in a BOAC York, landing at Tripoli/Castel Benito, Kano and Lagos on the way, all places very familiar to me. The squadron sent a Lancaster over from Kenya to enable me to visit the other colonies quickly. When I had completed my work and went to book a passage back to England, no seats were available for over a week, and I found that I could actually get back sooner by flying over to Nairobi in the Lancaster. This delighted me, for it provided the opportunity to see some more of the endlessly fascinating continent of Africa.

We took off from Takoradi about 1800 hrs with enough fuel to make the almost 14 hours flight non-stop. When flying over the Congo during the night, we flew through several mild thunderstorms. As we ran into the rain each time, I saw for the first time the phenomenon known as Saint Elmo's fire. An inverted cone of purple light appeared on the tip of a short aerial rod just in front of the windscreen, and all four propellers instantly became entangled in gossamer scarves of the same ghostly light. On one occasion, when flying in pitch darkness, the whole windscreen became speckled with dancing points of white light as each raindrop struck it and split, emitting a tiny spark. Dawn found us over Lake Kivu in its beautiful mountain setting on the borders of Ruanda and the then Belgian Congo, after which we flew right across huge Lake Victoria and arrived at Nairobi for a rather late breakfast.

The next day, I jumped at an offer to drive a small truck to a farm near Nakuru, over a hundred miles north of Nairobi, returning to Nairobi by car the same evening. On the following day, the squadron took me in their communications Dakota on the weekly mail run to visit their outlying ground control stations in Kenya and Uganda. After visiting the last one we went on westwards and had a close look at the Murchison Falls, that incredibly narrow slit in the rock through which the Nile River pours down into Lake Albert.

On the day after that, I caught a South African Airways DC4 flight to London, landing at Khartoum for dinner that evening, and at Tripoli for breakfast next morning.

After nearly two and a half years at Bomber Command, I was posted to command RAF Station Hednesford, in the south of Staffordshire. I was made acting Group Captain for this and the acting rank was made substantive on 1^st January the following year, 1952. There was a married quarter on the station for the commanding officer, so Dorrie and the children were able to accompany me. The quarter was a long wooden hut which had been built originally as single officers' quarters. It had been converted for use as a married quarter by knocking out a few partitions and installing a stove, a sink, a couple of laundry tubs and some appropriate furniture. It was very cold in the winter time, but it was a married quarter and it enabled us to stay together as a family.

The station functioned as a recruit training school, providing eight weeks' basic training for new recruits, with new courses of up to 400 young men arriving each week. It was interesting and rewarding work, but there is nothing to tell of it that would be of interest in an account of this nature.

We remained at Hednesford for a little over two years, during which time we made many new friends. Dorrie and I continued our shooting and Dorrie was selected to shoot for the Staffordshire ladies team in inter-county competitions, thereby earning herself a county badge. Dorothy jointed the WAAF, Michael was accepted as a Cranwell cadet, Christopher remained at boarding school in High Wycombe, coming home whenever possible, and Kathleen and Jacqueline finished their schooling at Stafford.

Among the friends we made were Mr and Mrs ('C J' and 'Pat') Whieldon, who lived at Hagley Hall, a big old stone house in Rugeley. They were kindness itself. They kept a caravan permanently in a very primitive caravan park at Abergele in North Wales and several times lent it to us. On one of our visits there we saw a remarkable aurora borealis. We had walked down to the beach after supper and were looking out northwards over a calm sea, when we saw a luminous white cloud form in the northeastern part of the sky. In the course of the next few minutes, it moved across into the northwestern quadrant, where it faded out. Almost at once, another cloud appeared in the northeast and did the same thing; and this process was repeated again and again at regular intervals of a few minutes. After watching this for a while, I happened to glance up into the sky directly over our heads and saw another, even brighter white cloud, long and narrow, roughly lenticular in shape, quite large and very high up. It was quite stationary at first, but suddenly moved off very quickly towards the west and soon faded into the distance.

In May, 1953, I was notified that I would shortly be sent out to Egypt to work at HQ Middle East Air Force (HQ MEAF) as the Middle East representative of the Director General of Organisation at the Air Ministry. My job would be to act as his watchdog in everything to do with establishments and to help and advise Command on all matters relating to that mysterious subject. For that purpose, I would be posted to Air Ministry but would spend a full normal tour of duty in Egypt. I went to Air Ministry in mid-May for a week of briefing and then returned to Hednesford for leave and to prepare for the move to Egypt. We had to evacuate our married quarter before I left. The Whieldons invited us to stay with them at Hagley Hall, and Dorrie and Jacqueline continued to stay with them until they were ready to joint me in Egypt.

Following my work on establishments at HQ Flying Training Command, this seemed to be a fairly logical posting. It certainly would be interesting work, involving many flying visits to all parts of the command and occasional visits back to Air Ministry, and I was looking forward to it with pleasant anticipation. Judge then my surprise and dismay when, only two or three days before my departure, I was informed that my posting had been changed. Another officer, already in Egypt, was to be given the job for which I had already been briefed, and I was posted to the HQ MEAF staff as Group Captain Administrative Plans. I was even more dismayed, and rather annoyed, when I later learnt that the change had been made because the other officer had originally been posted to the admin plans job and had proved incapable of handling it. It looked as if he had been rewarded for his failure by being given my job, which was regarded as something of a plum, while I had been shunted into his, which was regarded as being very difficult.

I am happy to record that, as had happened in the case of every surprise posting I had had in the past, this one proved to be extraordinarily interesting and rewarding. I am also happy to record that "Griff", who got the establishments job, proved to be exactly right for it, and we became firm friends.

I left Hednesford on 22^nd June, 1953, and arrived in the Suez Canal Zone next day. Dorrie stayed behind for a few weeks to get Kate settle into her occupational therapy course and to see Christopher settled back into his boarding school after the summer holidays. She and Jacqueline would be ready to come out to join me early in September if a married quarter were available.

HQ MEAF was split, with the C-in-C and the Air Staff being located at Ismailia and the Administrative and Technical Staffs at Abu Sueir, where I had been stationed with No 37 Squadron in 1942. I felt very much at home, there. A married quarter was allotted to me almost at once, so Dorrie and Jacqueline would be able to join me just as soon as they were ready to move. I was very happy about that.

The quarter allotted to me was occupied by a family who were about to return to England and would be vacated long before Dorrie and Jacqueline could arrive. The family occupying it had, as their cook and general servant, a rather ugly little Aswani Egyptian named Abdul Wahab, plus a third name which I do not now remember. They adored him and he adored them, especially the children, so much so that he felt he could not bear to work for any other family after they left, and had vowed not to do so. I was invited to dinner with the family and Abdul was introduced to me. When I asked him his three names and let him see that I understood their significance, and that I knew the Aswanis were a proud people who regarded themselves as being Sudanese rather than Egyptian, I was able to persuade him to stay on and look after the house, at least until Dorrie and Jacqueline arrived. When that happened, we all took such a liking to him, and he to us, that we became very real friends and he stayed with us for the whole time we were in Egypt. When he thought we were going to be moved to Cyprus, without saying anything to us, and at considerable expense, he got himself a passport and exit permit so that he could accompany us. He was utterly loyal and honest. He was also a superb chef, having been trained in the kitchens of the Egyptian royal palaces.

Very soon after arriving in Egypt, I joined the French Club and the RAF Sailing Club, both based on Lake Timsah. I had first learned to sail when serving at Brindisi during the war, but had not done any since then and was glad of the chance to get back onto the water. When Dorrie arrived, I introduced her to the sport. She loved it and we sailed whenever possible thereafter.

At this time, I was becoming concerned about our future. I knew that I would have to retire from the RAF on my 50^th birthday, four and a half years hence. Dorrie and I had often discussed what we should do thereafter, but had never found any satisfactory answer. I would need to have a full time, congenial occupation; but, if we could live on my pension, I did not want to tie myself down to any salaried job, especially one in a fixed location. Neither of us wanted just to buy a house and settle down to growing cabbages, lest we take on something of their appearance and mentality. We were both fit and well, we both liked travel, and we were not overly concerned with personal comfort, safety, or security, as understood in the welfare state.

Dorrie's people were all living in Australia and she very much wanted to see them again; but we also wanted to be able to visit our own children from time to time, wherever they might be. At that time, they were all in Britain and it seemed likely that they would remain there. Clearly, my pension would not allow us to travel about the world by conventional means. If I took a job, I would be unable to leave it for such extended travel, and Dorrie would not go alone. The problem had seemed insoluble for several years.

In January, 1954, I contracted a bout of 'flu. While still confined to bed, I sent out to the camp bookshop for copies of Yachting World and Yachting Monthly, and read them from cover to cover. The stories of long distance cruises particularly interested me and, as I scanned the yacht brokers' advertisements and studied their prices, it dawned on me that such cruising would be within our capabilities, and could be the solution to the retirement problem.

I had learnt to sail small boats, in Italy, in 1944. I had not done any sailing in the intervening years, but had just taken it up again. This time, Dorrie was able to share it and, as already noted, she loved it.

After mulling it over for a while, I eventually asked Dorrie what she thought of the idea of buying a boat and sailing ourselves back to Australia when I retired. Her immediate response was, "Good heavens! We could never do that!" I explained that we were as fit and as intelligent as many of those who had made such voyages, and that we certainly could do it, provided that we got ourselves properly trained and educated before hand. No more was said just then; but, in the middle of the night, a soft voice said, "But, Bunty, what would we do if.....?" and the discussion was on.

Neither of us took it seriously for quite a time. However, we agreed it would be possible, and found we were quite unable to dismiss the idea from our minds. It kept cropping up whenever we were not fully occupied with something else. Often we would wake up in the middle of the night and start talking about it, thinking up imaginary problems and working out ways of solving them. Slowly but surely, we came to the conclusion that it really was a good idea and, after many weeks, we formally adopted it as our retirement project.

From then on, the subject just about completely absorbed us whenever we were free of our service and social obligations. We subscribed to the two leading British yachting magazines; we read everything we could find about seamanship, navigation and the experiences of others who had done such things, I began teaching myself celestial navigation, and we sailed whenever possible.

My work in Admin Plans was, at first, mainly routine and not very arduous. I was able to do a good bit of flying to many stations in the command, familiarising myself with its layout, conditions and problems, which were all rather different from what I had known during the war. This familiarisation process culminated in a round trip in which I visited Khartoum, Aden, Mazirah Island, Sharjah, Bahrain, Shaiba (near Basra), Habbaniya, Amman and Aqaba, with refuelling stops at Wadi Halfa, Asmara, Riyan and Salalah, getting back to Abu Sueir just before Christmas, 1953. At Khartoum, I had the pleasure of meeting again my old friend Ali Osman.

All this time, desultory talks were going on between Cairo and London about a treaty under which Britain would withdraw all its forces from Egypt. In my job, I received copies of all diplomatic telegrams (diptels) passing between the Foreign Office and the British Ambassador in Cairo about these negotiations, and I was sickened and disgusted by what I read. I was not so much concerned about whether Britain should withdraw from the Suez Canal Zone, but about the way it was being done. If the British Government had decided that it could no longer afford to maintain its base there, it could at least have withdrawn with dignity and honesty. Instead, despite the fact that it was negotiating from a position of strength, it seemed to go out of its way to invite defeat and humiliation in all its dealings with the Egyptians. A single example will show what I mean.

The British forces in the Canal Zone bought virtually all their fresh food locally. In May, 1953, the Egyptian Government cut off all these supplies. The British military commander retaliated by cutting off all supplies of kerosine to Cairo and let it be known that they would be restored in exactly the same proportion that supplies of fresh food were restored to the British forces. As kerosine was used for cooking and lighting by most of the inhabitants of Cairo and the Nile Delta region, this action quickly began to hurt. The Egyptians then protested to the British Government that this was unfair, and the Ambassador supported them. Instead of backing up its military commander, the British Government ordered him to restore the kerosine supplies at once while the Egyptians continued their ban on all fresh food supplies.

In its public pronouncements about the matter, and in its dealings with parliament, the British Government was downright deceitful. For many decades, it had been a cardinal principle of British Middle East policy that control of the Suez Canal was vital to British interests, and that was the reason for keeping a garrison along its banks. By maintaining its base and garrison there, it was also maintaining its ability to provide military support for Jordan, Syria and Iraq against pressure from Russian, and so keep a buffer between that nation and the vital canal. Now, the government was trying to make those buffer countries believe that surrendering the Canal Zone and removing the garrison would not weaken the ability to give them that support in future, if the need arose. Similarly, it was telling parliament and the British people that this withdrawal would not endanger the security of this so-called vital waterway.

Of course, the rot had set in some time before this quarrel with Egypt. It started, as far as the Middle East was concerned in 1951, when the Iranian prime minister, Dr Mossadeq, announced that he was going to nationalise the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's assets in Iran, including its big oil refinery at Abadan. Britain threatened that it would take immediate military action to recover the property if that were done. Two divisions, one armoured, were moved into the Canal Zone and brought to instant readiness. Most of the RAF's transport squadrons were also moved into the area and kept ready to begin air lifting the divisions to Iran at short notice. Mossadeq, knowing all about these preparations, went ahead and seized the refinery, with no more than a very weak brigade at his disposal, and Britain's only reaction was a howl of diplomatic protest. Mossadeq had very publicly call Britain's bluff and shown it to be just that.

This less was not lost on the neighbouring countries. If Britain was not prepared to protect what she claimed were her own vital interests while she still had ample military forces in the Canal Zone to do so, what support could they expect from her once those forces were withdrawn?

Early in 1954 the AOA, who was my immediate superior, told me casually to draw up a plan for the evacuation of all RAF units from Egypt. The plan was to be based on the assumption that all British forces would have 18 months in which to get out, starting from some date which would eventually be decided upon in a treaty between the British and Egyptian governments. It proved to be quite a job.

I could find no precedent for, or doctrine on, such planning and had to start from first principles. The first thing to remember was that all administrative and technical services in the RAF exist ultimately for only one purpose, namely, to keep the squadrons flying. The first thing to do, therefore, was to get the Air Staff planner (Gp Capt Air Plans) to give me a timetable for the withdrawal of the squadrons. He reminded me that the Army was responsible for the overall defence of the Canal Zone and that the RAF had a commitment to provide the Army with whatever air support it needed in that role. He, therefore, had first to consult the Army about the timing of its own withdrawal and get firm dates for the stages by which it would be able to reduce its dependence on RAF support. Once that was decided, the Air Planner would be able to give me a programme for the withdrawal of the squadrons and I could then plan the run down of the administrative and technical services.

From memory, I think we had about 18 squadrons and something over 20,000 men and women in Egypt at the time. Most of the units would move to other parts of the command, but some would become surplus to the command's future requirements. Provision would have to be made in the receiving areas for the domestic and technical accommodation and services which would be required by those units moving within the command, and they must be ready, if possible, when the units arrived. Air Ministry would have to be consulted about the disposal of those which would become surplus and the units moved to wherever Air Ministry directed. All of these things had to be written into the plan, which also had to dovetail perfectly with that of the Army, which would be responsible for organising all movements by sea. Drawing it up necessitated many conferences and consultations with individual heads of staff branches and other experts whose advice I needed and without whose help I never could have put the plan together at all. It also necessitated at least one visit back to England to consult the Air Ministry. It all took many weeks to complete and I thoroughly enjoyed the work. When the time came to put the plan into action, it all worked very smoothly and without a single hitch.

When I arrived at HQ MEAF, I had found what I considered a thoroughly bad planning set-up. There were two separate planning sections, air and administrative, each headed by a group captain, and there was very little regular contact between them. Since Air Staff requirements ultimately governed all planning, it seemed logical that there should be only one planning section, which should be headed by a group captain on the Air Staff, with assistants from the air, administrative and technical staffs. I got agreement on this and arranged that my job would cease to exist when the HQ move to Cyprus.

In March 1954, I attended an international conference on the defence of West Africa. It was held at Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and was jointly hosted by the British and French governments. I flew myself and an Army representative over there in a Valetta from one of our transport squadrons at Fayid. We called at Wadi Halfa, El Fasher, Maiduguri, Accra, Abidjan and Freetown on the way, all places with which I had become very familiar during the war. The conference itself has no bearing on this narrative except that it provided me with a lot of very pleasant flying and enabled me to see a bit more of Africa.

About mid-summer 1954 negotiations for the withdrawal treaty began in earnest in Cairo, with a series of meetings between the British Ambassador and the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Doctor Fawzi. Each was backed by a team of Army and Air Force experts and I found myself the Air Adviser on the British team. In this capacity, I acted only as the representative of the C-in-C MEAF and spoke only from a brief provided by him. When asked to do so, I briefed the Ambassador before his meetings with Doctor Fawzi. I also attended most of these meetings, ready to help the Ambassador on any air matters which might be raised, but on those occasions I spoke only when asked to do so. Time after time at these meetings, I was dismayed by the weakness shown by the Ambassador in his negotiating. Time after time he would give way on some point which he had started by saying was absolutely vital to the British, and without getting anything in return.

When Ambassador and Foreign Minister eventually agreed on the draft of the treaty, there followed a great deal of committee work by the advisory teams on matters of detail. The Egyptian officers on Dr Fawzi's team were very hospitable and friendly, despite the fact that our two nations were in dispute at the time. This was not surprising, I suppose, as most of them had been trained in the British services in happier days.

During most of these negotiations, I was shuttling back and forth between Cairo and the Canal Zone between meetings, sometimes by air and sometimes by car. When the committee work started, I had to say in Cairo for days on end. Eventually, I was able to take Dorrie to Cairo with me for five days, which she enjoyed immensely. We were able to spend several hours at the Cairo Museum viewing the great collection of treasure and beautiful artifacts found in Tutankhamen's tomb. Dorrie also had another experience which delighted her. A friend took her on a tour of the bazaar area one day when I was busy on my official duties. In one silversmith's shop she saw two necklaces, both of which she liked. She could not decide which to buy and told the shopkeeper she would like her husband to see both and help her decide. The shopkeeper at once told her to take both of them home to show me and would not accept any cash deposit from her against their return. When Dorrie expressed her pleased surprise at such trustfulness, he exclaimed, "Madame, if we cannot trust the British, whom can we trust?"

The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty for the evacuation of British forces from the Suez Canal Zone was signed and came into effect on 19^th October, 1954. The evacuation of the armed forces was to be completed by 19^th April, 1956. Britain was to be allowed to maintain a storage base in the Canal Zone, but it was to be managed and staffed entirely by civilians, for which purpose a consortium of contractors had been formed in Britain.

HQ MEAF moved to Cyprus and I was attached to HQ 205 Group which was responsible for executing the evacuation plan which I had drawn up. I was to be their adviser on all matters relating to the plan and on the interpretation of the terms of the treaty. Dorrie and I continued to live at Abu Sueir and I shuttled to and from Fayid almost daily to work at the Group's HQ at Kasfareet.

Jacqueline was married on 30^th December to Terence Holyoake, an Air Ministry civil servant whom she had met at Abu Sueir. Under the British Foreign Marriages Act, the ceremony had to be performed by the British Consult at Port Said. Jacqueline wanted a church ceremony as well. This was arranged at Abu Sueir later the same day and followed by a reception in our quarter. Abdul turned out a feast which was both beautiful to look at and delicious to eat. Everything went well during the whole day. The Egyptian car which Terry had ordered even arrived punctually, late in the afternoon and the newly weds drove away to begin their honeymoon.

Dorrie and I were totally unprepared for the emotion which struck us both at that moment. We had never wanted to hold onto our children. We expected them to marry and hoped that they would find the same kind of happiness that we had. We were, therefore, quite happy to see Jacqueline married, and had no feelings of impending loss. Never the less, as we turned back to the house after waving goodbye, we both suddenly realised that there went part of us, never to return. The break-up of the family had begun and would continue as the children found their mates and began their own family lives. The realisation affected us both deeply in a way which I cannot describe.

The evacuation of the Canal Zone went ahead smoothly and it soon became apparent that I was not needed at 205 Group HQ. The station commander at Fayid became tour-expired and I was posted to command that station on 22^nd February, 1955. It was the base for the four transport squadrons in the Canal Zone and would be almost the last flying station to close down. I commanded it for just a year, a year of very mixed experiences.

I started the year by chartering a boat from the sailing club at Ismailia and sailing it down to Fayid so that I could be sure of having a boat available whenever I could find time to sail. We sailed whenever possible, and in any kind of weather. Sometimes, in heavy weather, we would be the only boat on the lake.

Almost immediately after that, I caught pneumonia which kept me in bed for one week and out of the office for another two.

I started flying again in April. In May and June, I made two more trips to Accra in West Africa. On the way back from one of these, I departed from the normal route a bit to fly low over Lake Chad, which I had not previously seen. We left Kano just after 0300 in order to be over the lake at about sunrise. I thought my passengers would be interested to see this very remote part of the world and passed word back to the cabin as we approached, but no one even bothered to look out the windows. Unimaginative clods! We saw a few villages and animals, and one man poling a reed boat through the shallow, reedy marshes at the southern end of the lake.

It is from this area that the so-called duck billed women come. They are so called because of their custom of piercing their upper and lower lips in infancy and inserting in the holes a series of ever larger wooden discs as they grow up. I had seen two of them in the market at Maiduguri in 1941 and had been so affected by this disfigurement that I could not bring myself to photograph them. Although I knew that, because it was the custom in their tribe, those women would have been dreadfully uncomfortable if they had not been mutilated in this way, it still seemed to me to be a hideous and unfortunate deformity.

I also made several flights to Cyprus and one each to England and Aden in this period. In addition, I undertook some strenuous instrument flying training, qualified for a Master Green instrument rating (the highest), and just managed to get a toe into the jet age by getting in a few hours on Meteors. My last flight in Egypt was on 6^th February, 1956, only a day or so before we returned to England.

Christopher came out to Fayid for his summer holidays. We did not see much of him for he spent most of his time flying with the transport squadrons and saw a great deal of Africa and the Middle East. I did have the pleasure of taking him up with me on one of my Meteor flights.

Much less pleasant than all this flying activity was an unprecedented spate of officer trouble. A few aircrew officers began bouncing cheques in various parts of Africa and the Middle East, thereby abusing the trust which had been built up by generations of British officers in the past. A junior accountant officer did the same at Accra and was also found to be embezzling public funds at Fayid. Dealing with these cases made me feel quite sick, but deal with them I did, and made the RAF a bit cleaner in the process.

On a much happier note, the Queen's official birthday in 1955 was, as usual, celebrated at Fayid by a ceremonial colour hoisting parade, followed by a holiday. At the end of the parade, my Wing Commander Flying came to me and said, "Congratulations, sir!" When I asked what about, he told me I had been awarded the CBE. He had heard the announcement on the Forces Radio earlier in the morning. I was astounded. The award could only have been related to my work in connection with the evacuation plan and/or the treaty negotiations and I had never felt that that merited any special recognition.

The transport squadrons moved to Abu Sueir about the beginning of 1956 and we began closing down Fayid. By the first week in February, the process was just about complete and I was ordered back to England for what was to be my last posting.

Before leaving Fayid, the few of us who were left had a rather hilarious closing down party at which one of the performers was a seven months pregnant belly dancer wearing a much too small bra, which soon proved to be incapable of restraining her buxom charms.

Dorrie and I arrived back in England in mid-February and went to a London hotel for the night. I reported to Air Ministry next morning and, as usual, was asked what I would like to do next. I said I would like to command a station. I did not expect to get one as I had just come from commanding one, and had already had a phenomenal run of commands (two wings and six stations) in my present rank. I was, therefore, surprised when my interviewer asked, with obvious relief in his voice, "Do you really mean that?"

"Of course I do! Wouldn't every group captain?" I asked.

"No, indeed!" he replied. "We are having difficulty finding officers to command stations".

How things had changed since my return from Australia, ten years previously!

My interviewer then told me that a new commanding officer was urgently needed for No 3 Flying Training School at Feltwell, in Norfolk, and asked how soon I could be ready to go there. I was due for a month's leave on return from overseas but did not particularly wish to take it, as we had no home of our own to go to, and I was anxious to get settled wherever my next job might be. I told him my bags were already packed in a London hotel and I could go there at once, but he insisted I take a few days' leave until he cleared the posting with C-in-C Flying Training Command, so Dorrie and I went to stay with the Whieldons again at Rugeley.

The posting was quickly confirmed and I moved over to Feltwell only five days later, on 20^th February. I had to live in mess for a short time until the wife of the previous CO could move out of the CO's residence and Dorrie was able to rejoin me. No 3 FTS, then at Grantham, was, of course, where I had started my short career as a flying instructor, 21 years earlier. Now it was to be my last appointment in the RAF.

There is little to tell about my service activities at Feltwell. The FTS was training pilots ab initio on Percival Provost aircraft. The station was being well run by a good team of competent officers. About the only changes I made were to abolish one or two archaic practices such as ordering 'Lights out' in barracks at 2200 hrs, and compelling airmen to book in and out at the guard room when entering or leaving camp. I was able to keep myself in good flying practice, by day and night, right up to the last day of my active service.

In the late spring of 1956, Dorrie and I attended an investiture at Buckingham Palace, where I received my CBE from the hands of the Queen. She quite won my heart by her beauty and by the little womanly gesture of looking over my shoulder and reaching around to ensure that the ribbon lay smoothly in place as I bowed to allow her to hang it around my neck. In the following summer, Dorrie and I had the honour of being invited to a royal garden party at the palace.

Early in 1958, it was decided to disband No 3 FTS and convert Feltwell into Britain's first ballistic missile station. My last duty, therefore was to supervise the disbandment of the unit. During this period, some of the officers who had been taking an interest in our sailing project, presented me with a beautiful little Henry Hughes sextant. Having an arc of only three and a half inches radius, it was very light and ideal for use in a small boat. It was also beautifully accurate.

The period at Feltwell saw big changes in our family. In one period of six months, from October 1956 to early April 1957, no less than three of our children got married, two of them emigrating to Canada. We celebrated our silver wedding anniversary and acquired our first grandchild. Christopher finished his schooling, came to live at home for a while, then joined the RAF on a short service commission and began training as a pilot. Before we left Feltwell, we had acquired two more grandchildren, both born in Canada.

Most of our spare time at Feltwell was taken up with preparing for our sailing venture. I took up woodwork in order to develop some skill with wood working tools. This hobby itself gave me great pleasure and stood me in good stead when we moved into our boat.

We began our search for a boat in September, 1956. We sent our a fairly detailed specification of our requirements to nearly every broker whose name we could discover, and began following up every likely looking advertisement that appeared in the yachting press; but sixteen months were to elapse before we found what we wanted. During that time, we were offered 118 boats. Usually accompanied by Dorrie, I went to look at 29. We had a trial sail in one, were refused a trial in another, and I wrote and received over 650 letters.

I eventually found our boat by a rather curious process. In May, 1957, I was offered a Hillyard 40ft. 17 ton schooner, Penella, said to be lying at Newton Ferrers, in South Devon. I was to visit Brixham, on a cruise, at the beginning of June, and decided to look at her then. In the event, I was defeated by the public transport system and did not get to Newton Ferrers in the short time we were at Brixham. I was not very disappointed because, at that time, I had not seriously considered anything quite so big. However, in September, I was offered another of the same type, went to see it, and realised that it would suit us very well. I offered to buy this one, subject to survey and sailing trial, but the owner went all coy at the mention of a trial sail, and I heard no more from him.

I then remembered Penella and wrote to a broker in Salcombe, asking if he knew where she was, and if she were still for sale. After some trouble, he located her in the Hamble River, and she was for sale - again, not still. She had changed hands the previous February and was not, in fact, on the market when she was offered to me, in May. When I was at Brixham, she was up in the Hamble River, fitting out for a summer cruise in the Mediterranean.

We went to see her at the beginning of December. She was lying in a mud berth, in a small creek, which could only be approached across a muddy field, and anything less attractive could hardly be imagined. All her running rigging had been removed and her masts had been scraped down and roughly undercoated. a muddy gangplank bridged the gap between the bank and her bowsprit, and mud had been trodden right down her side deck to the cockpit. The paid skipper who had brought her back from the Mediterranean was still living aboard, but was absent when we arrived. As was usual in those days, she was not locked up, so we went aboard, and down into the saloon. It was heavily coated with oily grime from the kerosine (paraffin) heater which the skipper was using. The engine space and parts of the saloon nearby had been splashed with some dirty, oily substance, and there was evidence of heavy oil pollution in the bilge and on part of the cabin sole. However, she smelled sweet and healthy and, somehow, felt just right. After a quick look at the rest of the accommodation, Dorrie and I sat on one of the settee berths, looked at one another, and said, "This is it". Penella had grabbed us; the hunt was over.

I also arranged to get as much training and experience as possible on Flying Training Command's 50 square metre yacht, Sperling. In 1957, I managed to get in one fortnight's cruise from Hamble to Cherbourg, Guernsey, Lezardrieux (in Brittany), Brixham and Poole, on which I acted as navigator. I also acted as de facto mate, although another officer was listed as such; a very curious set-up. That cruise was under a good skipper and I learnt a lot.

That was followed by a week of skipper training in Sperling, shared with two others, and with Dorrie along as cook and very keen learner. Having qualified as 'inshore skipper', I later chartered Sperling for a week's cruise. Under Flying Training Command rules, I was entitled to cruise between Selsey Bill and Weymouth, but, because of engine trouble, we never got out of the Solent and had to abandon the cruise after five days. That was all the training we were able to get, actually under sail, before moving into our own boat.

Penella required a good deal of fitting out to adapt her for long distance cruising and her accommodation to our needs, and to bring her to the degree of seaworthiness which we required. We gave this work to Thorneycroft's yard at Northam, Southampton, as soon as the purchase was completed.

The disbandment of the FTS was completed by the end of April. I handed over the station to my successor, Group Captain Andrew Willen, at the beginning of May and then began the compulsory 30 days' leave which would end with my retirement on my 50^th birthday, the 4^th June, 1958. The work on Penella had not been completed, but the boat was habitable, so Dorrie and I went to live aboard in the middle of May, 1958.