Other Roommates
Other Roommates
Because most of the other armourers were mostly National Servicemen, there was always a turnaround of roommates and you had to get along with other airmen from time to time. But there were a few who were either short or long term regulars such as myself. Some of them had come in for three years but needed money for something or other and would sign on for another five years and get a bounty of a few hundred pounds. And this was repeated later. Most of the National Service personnel always seemed to be short of money. The starting pay for them was 28/- (shillings per week) or £1.40 in decimal currency. The starting pay for Regulars was app. £3 per week. Out of that you had to provide soap, razor blades, etc. plus all you required for cigarettes and beer. Most of the airmen went home at the weekends, i.e. from Friday evening until Monday morning which was a further cost to your pocket. Railway booking staff came to the camp on Friday lunchtime to sell tickets and their were special buses to take you to the railway station.  I didn’t go home much for the weekend unless there was some special reason for doing so. I went home once with another four in a car. He dropped me off in Hamilton and I had to find my way home from there. Then on the Sunday evening, I had to get to Hamilton and meet up with them again and travel through the night to camp. It was arranged that we would all stay awake and keep the driver talking but somehow we all fell asleep, including the driver then had a rude awakening when the car was running along the grass verge. Thankfully, all the telegraph poles were on the other side of the road. After that. all the windows were opened wide and we froze all the way there. I didn’t think it was worth all the hassle. 

Those of us who didn’t go home at weekends got a bit fed up being wakened up by the others who arrived back at 2am and made tea then sat around talking about what they had done over the weekend. We asked them politely to go to bed but when this fell on deaf ears we had to use another strategy. The rooms were all centrally heated and were usually quite warm in the winter and they were arriving very cold and were glad of the warmth. All the stay-at-homes decided they were not going to enjoy the heat, we all got ready for bed, opened all the windows wide and then got under the blankets and waited for the cold homecoming. Sure enough, in they came, put all the lights on and then realised the room was freezing. When they saw the windows open they realised this was no heating defect. They were told in no uncertain terms that this would meet them every week until they realised we were not happy. They had to agree that they would be quiet when they arrived, only put one light on and go right to bed. And it worked. Another example of direct action concerned one of the armourers who didn’t want to have a bath very often. He slept on the top bunk of the bed right at the door and the smell hit you whenever you came in. Someone saw his feet and he had a chronic case of athlete’s foot. One of us who had reason to visit the M.O. mentioned this and he said we should take action ourselves to make him aware of his condition. So that night, one of the baths was filled with cold water then he was grabbed and flung into it fully clothed. He went berserk and when he was locked out of the billet he punched through a glass window. When he calmed down , the corporal in charge of the billet had a quiet word with him and said, that if he didn’t start taking showers and got treatment for his feet, he would be reported to the M.O. It seemed to work because he started showering regularly and the smell vanished. But they made him pay for the broken window. 

I didn’t smoke at that time and only went out to the pictures or had a drink in the local pubs or NAAFI at weekends, so I usually had money to spare but I did not encourage anyone borrowing money from me as it was too much trouble trying to get it back. I bought a record player and played records in the billet from time to time. Ella Fitzgerald had a record of a song called “Later” in which the same five or six words were sung all the time. I acquired a copy and Bob Robinson and I put it on repeat and tried to guess which of our roommates would crack up first. It was usually the same person. Later I bought a tape recorder and asked the sergeant in charge of the camp radio, “ Radio Leconfield”, if I could copy some of their records. He said OK so long as I would help to run the radio. At first I put the records on for one or two of the DJs but gradually some of them left and I had to put the records on plus announce them. My programmes sometimes had a Scottish theme as there were a lot of Scots in the camp but I also liked playing comedy records such as Spike Milligan, etc. I quite enjoyed doing it as I was getting to copy the top twenty which was supplied by a local record store each week. We also had to read the news from an East Yorkshire evening paper. Once or twice at weekends, I was only there myself and occasionally had to put on an LP while I set up the next batch.
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