R.A.F. Cardington

R.A.F. Cardington

In late January 1955, I travelled by train with some other recruits to R.A.F. Cardington, a famous airfield in Bedfordshire where the airships R101 and R102 were built. The hangers where they were housed were still there and were immense. But we weren’t there to see the hangers, we were to be inducted into the R.A.F.

We were there for about a week in which time we were given another medical, issued with our uniforms and given the oath of allegiance to Her Majesty. Surprisingly, care was taken that the uniforms actually fitted and some were altered by tailors to fit the individual. We were shown how to take care of the clothing and how to press them, etc. by an airman who was assigned to us as guide while we were there. He said the usual practice was for everyone to chip in and he would buy an electric iron for us to use while we were there and before we left it would be raffled among us. I was a bit suspicious about giving him money as we didn’t know how much the iron cost but we all chipped in as we needed an iron.

Apart from pressing our uniforms, another use for the iron was to remove the raised dimples from the toecaps of our brand new boots so that we could start putting a high polish on them. Another method was to rub the toecaps with the heated handle of a toothbrush but it would be weeks before we achieved the result which would please the NCOs. The berets which accompanied our working blues had to be shrunk into shape so that they looked smart. So they were soaked in warm water for ages then pulled on to your head and pulled to one side so that it lay against the side of the head. Everyone had their own ideas for achieving the right effect and some were successful and others not. The buttons of our dress uniform were brass plated and had to be polished. Later in our service we could dispense with this by purchasing, quite legitimately, anodised buttons which did not need polishing. We also had to put blue blanco on all our webbing and pouches.

We had to purchase all the polishes and blanco from our own money. The blanco had to be brushed on with one brush and polished off with another and care had to be taken not to get any blanco or polish on our uniforms. All this pressing, cleaning and polishing took up most of our spare time. By this time all our civilian clothes had been packed into a box and sent home.

I had been warned by other ex-servicemen to watch my money as it was likely to be stolen so I purchased a money- belt. Unfortunately, the NCOs were not in favour of this addition to the uniform and it was duly sent home too. In all the time I was in the R.A.F. I didn’t hear of one case of money being stolen or indeed of anything being stolen. And this is among young men who didn’t have much money and were permanently broke. I was lucky in that I didn’t smoke and my earnings were slightly more than the national servicemen. Some of the others played cards for money but I only did this once as it took me two weeks to collect my winnings of three shillings. 

The days at Cardington passed quickly as we were constantly on the move from one place to another and the time was divided by breakfast, lunch and teatime plus additional cups of tea in the Naafi. I thought the food was very good with plenty of it which was a blessing as we were always hungry.

At meal times, the orderly officer always came round with his usual narrative of“Any complaints?”to which the answer always was “No, sir”. When our time at Cardington was over, we were allocated to a training camp. In our case it was R.A.F. Padgate, infamous throughout the service as a nightmare but we had no knowledge at that time of what ‘square bashing’ was all about. So we were bussed down to the railway station and had our own private carriage which would take us on the next stage of our service training at RAF Padgate, near Warrington.

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