This is a true account of my experiences and adventures as a National Service man serving with the Royal Air Force in the mid 1950s. While National Service was discontinued in 1961, I am sure that there are still many survivors from the period that would have their memories stirred by the events I have described.
My early life was fairly uneventful apart from the scrapes and mischief to which all boys of the period were prone. Then there was the fact that the bulk of my education was blighted by taking place during the years when Mr Hitler decided to attempt world domination. But that’s another story which, given time, I may tell later.
On leaving school, I was fortunate to be accepted as an apprentice engineer by the, then, Bristol Aeroplane Company for a period of five years. On completion and qualification I gained a position in the Jig and Tool Design office and expected to be there for the rest of my working life.
At eighteen I met my future wife, courted her for four years and married her in July 1952. There followed two years of wedded bliss before I was conscripted and obliged (as were all fit males of the day) to become a member of the armed services, in my case the Royal Air Force.
My adventures as a ‘Reluctant Recruit‘ are the subject of this volume. I decided, at the time that I would, one day, tell the story. One day was fifty years later but here it is at last.
I was born in 1930, an only child and the son of a driver on the Great Western Railway. My mother was a ‘housewife’ whose mission in life was to look after her husband and son to the exclusion of any other career (as was the fashion in those days). My early years were happy although I subsequently realised that my parents were not well off. My education was spent during the war at Cotham Secondary School, Bristol following which I served a five year apprenticeship with the Bristol Aeroplane Company and spent the rest of my working life with that company, finally retiring in 1988 as a computer systems analyst. I was in my seventies when I wrote ‘A Reluctant Recruit’ and was so surprised at its reception and the comments made by reviewers, that I decided to tell the rest of my life story in two further books.
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