sospiri
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Eric,
I agree entirely - far less bull. Being in the Station Band, I was also excused guard duties & fire picquets, though, of course, we had the monthly CO's Parade and a similar arrangement with RAF Shawbury, because their band only had four members. Fortunately the band never got inspected at either airfield, which is just as well because we were the scruffiest irks imaginable. The fact that I & two others were on permanent night shift meant that no one could kick us out of bed at some unearthly hour and we were even allowed to sleep through the C.O.'s hut inspection.
My brother, two years younger than me, decided that he was going to ignore his call up papers and carry on as usual. However, they eventually caught up with him and instead of having his choice of service, was drafted into the Army Pay Corps at Catterick, where he spent the whole two years. You can't beat the system!
National Services was abolished purely on the grounds of cost. I and two of my mates were doing third line servicing of Marconi Radio Compasses. Having very little to do, because the sets were only used for their original purpose during an exercise, we spent many hours on the night shift making coffee - boiling water in the mug by connecting two carbon rods out of a dry battery across the mains. We also did fairly pointless accounting exercises and calculated that the cost of repairing a set across the board was about £800. The cost of a new set from Marconi at that time was £365, so repairing equipment was far from being an economic operation, but, of course, it carried on as a means of giving us irks something to do.
In the eyes of the aircrew, the radio compasses had just one useful feature - the ability to tune into was was then the BBC Light Programme on 200 kHz. From our point of view, we had a component store of readily useable civilian bits, so another another pastime was building illicit radios for whoever would give you a couple of quid.
Maurice
I agree entirely - far less bull. Being in the Station Band, I was also excused guard duties & fire picquets, though, of course, we had the monthly CO's Parade and a similar arrangement with RAF Shawbury, because their band only had four members. Fortunately the band never got inspected at either airfield, which is just as well because we were the scruffiest irks imaginable. The fact that I & two others were on permanent night shift meant that no one could kick us out of bed at some unearthly hour and we were even allowed to sleep through the C.O.'s hut inspection.
My brother, two years younger than me, decided that he was going to ignore his call up papers and carry on as usual. However, they eventually caught up with him and instead of having his choice of service, was drafted into the Army Pay Corps at Catterick, where he spent the whole two years. You can't beat the system!
National Services was abolished purely on the grounds of cost. I and two of my mates were doing third line servicing of Marconi Radio Compasses. Having very little to do, because the sets were only used for their original purpose during an exercise, we spent many hours on the night shift making coffee - boiling water in the mug by connecting two carbon rods out of a dry battery across the mains. We also did fairly pointless accounting exercises and calculated that the cost of repairing a set across the board was about £800. The cost of a new set from Marconi at that time was £365, so repairing equipment was far from being an economic operation, but, of course, it carried on as a means of giving us irks something to do.
In the eyes of the aircrew, the radio compasses had just one useful feature - the ability to tune into was was then the BBC Light Programme on 200 kHz. From our point of view, we had a component store of readily useable civilian bits, so another another pastime was building illicit radios for whoever would give you a couple of quid.
Maurice
