Life Takes Unexpected Turns With Apprentice Training – Rob (Sam) Weller – 307th

My early life passed in the largely agricultural area just Kent side of the Sussex border where my father was a bus/coach driver for Maidstone and District and I was the eldest of four sibling. Those early years were only unusual for my love of reading school encyclopaedias in break time. To the surprise of everyone, including myself, I passed the 11 plus and headed off for Cranbrook School. With no family academic background, I largely wasted the opportunity. The Geography Master was ex-Navy and In my first lesson with him he said that, as a Weller, I must be known as Sam (a Pickwick Papers reference). That nickname stuck until the day that I left the RAF. The school Cadet Force (RAF Section) introduced me to the Principles of Flight, how engines worked and numerous flights in either Chipmunks as RAF Manston or Kirby Cadet gliders at RAF West Malling. Chipmunks also featured on annual camps but at RAF Coltishall I flew in a SAR Whirlwind and at Wyton in a Comet (2?). I had no life plan but applied to Biggin Hill for a Flying Scholarship but eyesight and a ‘parochial outlook’ were my downfall. The only subject that I enjoyed was maths so accountancy looked like an option, but “indentured servitude” would mean long term family support until I qualified. However, it seemed that I could train in the RAF and get paid along the way. So, off I went to the Chatham CIO and then to the Youth Selection Centre at RAF Stafford. With everyone clamouring to be in technical trades, many were only offered other apprenticeships but for me it was the opposite. Despite their arguments I was determined to be a clerk – which shows how little I understood the option being pressed on me.

On 8 Sep 1966 I signed myself into 307 Entry 2 Squadron of the Apprentice Wing at 3S of TT, RAF Hereford. For three months one could buy oneself out for £25 – a huge sum when on 17s 6d per week. Most of that time was square-bashing, bull nights and PE but trade lessons started to appear with little to no accountancy, so I made the bold move of meeting with my Flight Commander. ‘Clerk Accounts? There haven’t been any Clerk Accounts apprenticeships for several years. They used to be 1 Squadron!’ Too late to save £25 so stuck with it to be a Clerk Sec, missing a distinguished pass by one mark on the practical. However, I did win the Education Prize which meant that my old headmaster was invited to the pass-out to accept a set of books that was a part of my prize – I received a copy of ‘Trenchard. A Man of Vision.’ The staff were all a bit overexcited to meet my headmaster, J McG Kendall-Carpenter, once the England Rugby captain and subsequently the organiser of the first Rugby World Cup.

My apprenticeship was eleven months training and then 28 days leave – but the Chief Clerk at 231 OCU Bassingbourn knew nothing of the leave and had listed me as absent. He had a stunningly low opinion of apprentices and sent me to the Flying Wing Orderly Room to forget all that apprentice nonsense before I would be taught ‘properly’ in the General Office. Typing reports and incidents was no problem for me – I had a wonderful view of the Canberra flight line and got a trip to Germany in one. After six months my 24 words a minute from my training had improved and I was sent on a Q-SEC-T course back at Hereford. Naturally the first night was a bull night with PE the next morning before an assessment of our current skill. I exceeded the course pass mark and returned fully qualified to my unit – after collecting the required 22 clearance signatures. After a brief spell with the ladies in the SHQ typing pool I cleared a backlog of work in the Central Registry before moving into the General Office on P2. Never seen officer’s records! We trained on airmen’s records (P3).

When Bassingbourn was listed for closure flying courses were run down ahead of the OCU moving elsewhere. P2 work quickly ran down and I was given twelve options for my next posting. I took Chessington, the Joint Service Medical Rehabilitation Unit for Other Ranks. After a brief spell on P3 in the General Office I was moved to resolve a major problem with a backlog of unredirected mail for patients who had left the unit. This kept me busy but was hardly fulfilling so I took over running the station cinema (3 films pw) and discos (2 pw). I also qualified as the male netball umpire in the RAF at the time but that is another story. I also was introduced to volleyball for the first time, of which more later. With the mail backlog cleared I became the Families Clerk working for the SWO who was also the Families Officer. In preparation for the Dock Strike in London I was detached to go to the abandoned Lingfield Army Barracks to help set up to receive all the troops that would be used to break the strike – which thankfully came to nothing. Chessington did not have a Comcen and it fell to the Families Clerk to act a courier between Chessington and the Comcen at Biggin Hill. That lead to dating one of the Comcen girls and an application to train as a Personnel Selection Assessor (Q-SEC-PSA) to get posted over there. By the time I got there she was married and gone – having not mentioned that she was engaged to someone in Cyprus!

Aptitude Testing for three and a half years was interesting, but we tested Sunday to Thursday so that officers could interview Monday to Friday. While there I joined a local amateur dramatic group where I met my wife, Sue, who was teaching in Westerham. Luckily avoiding deployment to Cyprus when the Turks invaded, Sue and I married a week later just as I was finally accepted for overseas (NATO duties). Sounds exotic but was to the Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) at Rheindahlen. We had been promised married accommodation on our return from our honeymoon but ‘we have decided that we have too many hirings.’ We took on a six-month private rental in Godstone to get through to my posting date, but when someone failed his PV clearance I was to go two months earlier but to the new HQ AAFCE at Ramstein AFB. An ideal posting in many ways because we spent our first three years of marriage without constant parental advice. A 15-hour journey via Luton – Dusseldorf – Koln saw us arrive at our eleventh floor flat in Kaiserslautern. Next morning I was gone just after 0700 and Sue was left knowing no-one with nothing to do having just left a full-time teaching job. Meanwhile I was confronted with ‘my printing press.’ Never seen one before! After a highly enjoyable tour I returned on promotion (at last) on Christmas Eve to take up my office manager role in the College Secretariat at Cranwell after my disembarkation leave. From a warm German flat to a freezing married quarter. Within a couple of months Sue said that she would not be there another winter even if it meant ‘going home to Mum.’

We bought a house in Grantham, and my boss formally counselled me about the loss of station facilities and the cost until I pointed out that the mortgage was less than my married quarter rent. While at Cranwell I did eventually manage to get flights in a Jet Provost and a University Air Squadron Bulldog and a Jet Provost but got posted again before the planned flight to Goose Bay in a Vulcan could take place. Over these years I had applied for every aircrew role, but my eyes prevented that happening and when I applied for ATC all that I was offered was a Branch Commission so that I could sign the documents that I had been preparing for years. At this time, I started a station volleyball team, qualified as an umpire, served on the RAF Volleyball Association, the Lincolnshire Association and the East Midlands Association which led to me being a line judge at the first Commonwealth Volleyball competition which was held in Nottingham. I also started about ten years of running the RAF second Volleyball team in National competition with occasional duties with the first team which resulted in the award of RAF Sports Colours to go with the RAF College Sports Colours.

From Cranwell I was posted to JSATC (Joint Services Air Trooping Centre) at RAF Hendon, again doing P2 instead of P3 but also covering any absences of the Chief Clerk. Finally, I had RAF staff working for me. It had only taken 13 years! I needed to be moving up the ranks, so I applied for a ‘data processing’ aptitude test and was one of the few lucky enough to pass – but there were no posts vacant. Almost immediately I was posted again with the promotion that I had sought anyway. I became the Operations Wing Adjutant at RAF Odiham which was the best post that I ever had. Plenty of opportunity to fly with Wing Commander Ops – always offered the flights to the staff but, unlike me, they were not frustrated aircrew and rarely showed any interest – so the boss and I would fly in the afternoon and do the admin work in the evening. Got to fly a Gazelle which was a camera ship for weapons trials at a tank gunnery range down near Lulworth Cove and then to fly it back with Boscombe to Odiham. Also got to fly ‘circuits and bumps’ in a Puma rather than my usual role as ballast and when a newly serviced Chinook needed to be returned to 18 Sqn at Gutersloh – a seven-hour flight with two stops – I was stood behind the pilots. We returned next day on a Tristar.

This fantastic posting was cut short when that IT aptitude test came back to bite me as I was short toured to head for Innsworth and a final seven years of service on the computer. On the upside they did allow me to day release to gain my BSc (Computing) that became the basis of my career when I left after almost 25 years.