Pen Portraits: what happened next

Pen portraits of post-graduation life, as submitted to the 69th Association newsletter over the period 1994 - 2011

Gordon Tily - Armourer

Like so many of us on leaving Halton, I was to go to 32MU St Athan, but after a year I managed to escape to 49MU Colerne from where I was able to 'live out' in Bristol. Life at Colerne was pretty run of the mill except for a long spell when I was living on RNAS Yeovilton while servicing the armament on Sabres, which were being refurbished by Westlands before returning to NATO service elsewhere.

In 1959 I went to the USA on a Thor Missile course and was subsequently posted to Driffield as part of the operational launch crew for one of the beasts. I was the guy who went out and kicked it if it went wrong during a countdown. Having had all the excitement I wanted for a while I became a 'Substitute Education Officer' teaching Boy Entrants at Cosford in 1962 for three years where I got my HNC. Then, for my sins, was posted to Khormaksar in Aden for two years during all the troubles out there.

I was first of all in charge of the small arms section and then the bomb dump stores before becoming Treasurer of the Sergeants' Mess for four months.

On returning to the UK in 1967 I applied for recruiting duties and was posted to Bristol which suited me as I promptly bought the house I am still living in now. Fearing an 'unaccompanied' I applied for and got an early release from the RAF in 1969.

My first civyy job was for a company producing self-instructional material for industry on teaching machines. I moved from there to British Aerospace where I was a Chief Technical Author on the Concorde Air Intake Control System, then ran a technical publications department at PERME Westcott, Aylesbury, and then became the BAe Bristol Dynamics Site Editor for the Site Newspaper for the next ten years. With the virtual closure of the site in 1989, I took early retirement and have since been running a small typesetting company from home to supplement my income.

If I have any claim to fame it is that I believe I was the only one in our entry to have the same girlfriend when we passed out as when we joined. She was at our passing-out parade. For the record, we were married a year later and we celebrated our 43rd wedding anniversary last June. We have two sons, one living in the USA and one just up the road, and five grandchildren, so life is anything but peaceful at times.