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Airman Training
When I had been in my temporary job at the West Riding County Council Licensing Department for several months (click here if you wish to read about that job), I was deemed to be sufficiently reliable to be allowed to deal with incoming telephone calls and that made my job marginally more interesting. Most of the calls to our office were from police forces up and down the United Kingdom – the 1953 equivalent of today’s PNC checks. I was pretty good at rapidly locating individual cards. I could take down the details of the request, find the card, and get back to the telephone in about a minute. The index cards showed, amongst other things, the current registered owner and his or her address, and whether or not the vehicle was currently taxed. The rest of the office staff were impressed by my speed, except for my fellow junior clerk who had difficulty with the principles of alphanumerical order! Perhaps he was dyslexic but I don’t think dyslexia had been invented in 1953. He certainly thought I was far too keen for my own good.
At that time I knew almost nothing about any of the armed services; I could recognise the different uniforms and that was about it.
‘Tony,’ said Mr Webster, the Office Manager, one day, recognising that I was rather down in the dumps, ‘you should sign on as a regular for the minimum engagement and that way you can have the choice of which service you want to be in – and get paid nearly twice as much as a National Serviceman. If you wait until you’re drafted you’ll have no choice about whether you go into the Navy, Army, or Air Force and you’ll end up in whichever job happens to be available. You could end up as a clerk in an office again! With your six GCE O Levels, I’m certain you can do better than that.’
I hadn’t thought of it like that. The prospect of receiving seven shillings (35p) a day as a regular instead of the measly four shillings a day paid to National Servicemen settled it for me.
That day I wrote in my diary, ‘I’ve never been so bored in all my life as I was today. Mr Webster talked to me this morning. About 1230, during my dinner hour, I went to the Army Recruiting Office in town and picked up a pamphlet on careers in the Royal Army Education Corps. Since Monday of this week I have personally filed over 1,300 vehicle registration cards.’
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