Parades
Parades
There was very little “bull” and parades at Leconfield but there was a C.O.s parade once a month. This was a long drawn out affair with long waits between inspections. The parade started with a church service which in itself was a revelation. The officer in charge of the parade, usually the station adjutant. calls out “Fall out the Roman Catholics and the Jews”, and anyone of that persuasion would march of to the edges of the parade ground and face away from the assembled airmen. I have asked various ministers why this came about and never got a feasible answer. One minister said that he was going to a camp with army cadets and heard about this, so he contacted the local R.C. priest and asked if he had any objections to his members taking part in the service and he said he had no objections. Anyway the short service took place within earshot of the R.C.s and the Jews and then they were ordered to fall in. The parade was then inspected by the various officers in charge before the C.O. arrived in his Standard Vanguard and he selected which part of the parade he wanted to  inspect then proceeded to do so. This took an age and then we all marched past the saluting base and the parade was over. The camp Guard of Honour which fell in when any VIPs were coming were looking for a few more members and I was selected to join them. They did not take part in the main C.O.s parades as they had their own. We were mostly of the same height and could march well. On one of our get togethers, one of the members was congratulated on the high shine on his boots and we all knew how he had done it so waited for the row. He admitted that he had painted them with black lacquer from an aero modelling kit. The officer said, “Well done. Right everybody do your boots that way.” So that’s what happened. The guard of honour wore white webbing instead of the normal airforce blue but it wasn’t blancoed, instead after every parade we handed it into the workshops and the painter sprayed it with white paint and we collected them at the next parade. We also represented the station at any parade in Beverley and Hull and also at the funeral of two members of the station who had been killed in a plane crash. Beverley was the home of the East Yorkshire Regiment and we were in a church parade with them through the streets of the town. We were quite a crack team at this time and they were only young recruits and managed to keep losing the beat of the band. Eventually our officer called to their officer to shout out the beat which he did although was he very embarrassed. I quite liked the ceremonial in the services and was asked to join the main RAF Guard of Honour which travelled throughout the country at various ceremonies. This function I notice is now done by the RAF Regiment. I was to join the guard of honour at one of the Guards depots outside London but politics reared its ugly head and the Station Warrant Officer sent a pal of his instead.
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