The 1997 Reunion

Once more unto the breach: A report of the third annual reunion of the 69th Entry Association

Once agath Tony Parrott and his committee excelled themselves in organising yet another reunion of the sixty-niners for our third annual gathering in March. The Windmill Village Hotel at Allesley was selected for this year's venue; still based on Coventry as a reasonably central location for members journeying from places as far apart as Launceston, Cornwall (Frank Sheppard), Newcastle-on-Tyne (Tony Hutchings), Stockport, Cheshire (Tom Faulkner) and Kings Lynn, Norfolk (Laurie "Jock" Shuardson, Derek Beames and George Rork). Also in attendance and looking pretty spry after his recent illness was Gordon Hocking, all the way from Hitchin, Herts.

For our £55 we received pleasant rooms overlooking the golf course, an excellent three course dinner and an ample breakfast buffet. Sandwiches in the bar and hang-overs the next day were extras, of course, but we did find a yew reasonable pinot noir from Oregon on the wine list to accompany our dinner. Purist wine buffs might deprecate our drinking red wine with chicken, but it managed to evaporate fairly rapidly, nonetheless. I am sure that Oz Clarke would wave his left hand in approval of our choice.

As I ramble on about wine, it should be noted that if you are planning a holiday in the wine regions of Italy, Leon Northeast no longer lives there, having returned to live in Sussex. A few years ago, Leon's interest in wine led him to take up residence in a remote mountain village in the Chianti region. He says that although he made valiant efforts to master the Italian language, the local dialect delivered at a machine gun rate baffled him. After five years, the difficulty of getting maintenance work done in a part of the world where gates, for example, have remained unpainted for two hundred years "so why paint them now'?", combined with the insularity of the locals to disenchant him from what might have otherwise seemed an idyllic existence. He says that it was even difficult to buy a decent bottle of wine there, mainly as a result of government regulations which require most of the good vintages to be blended with inferior ones to keep the poorer vineyards in business. It seems that a lot of the good wine goes to British supermarkets, anyway.

As in previous years, much of the conversation at our gathering included, "Do you remember when ...?." and "Whatever happened to old so and so Obviously, we have far from exhausted those topics. In this vein, recollections of the efforts by some of us to help Queen Elizabeth II with her coronation while the rest had fun and games at summer camp, stirred up some lingering resentment about the allocation of the Coronation Medal. Since it has been a long established military principle that those furthest from the battle get the most medals, I cannot see why such pettiness should last so long. At least some of us got them. Peter Quinn explained that he probably won his by helping to push the Princess Royal's coach out of the mire after it had stalled in front of him.

Its you are into unusual holidays, you might want to trek along with Tom Faulkner some time. Torn specialises in wandering around the more remote parts of the globe. In 1.995, he covered the Anapurna circuit of the Himalayas and in June this year, together with nine other Brits and 50 porters he is going on another expedition to the foothills of the Himalayas, going up to 18,000 ft altitude on K2, the world's second highest peak. No wonder he still has enough puff to blow the bagpipes' As we assembled for dinner, Tom once more curdled the milk for coffee with his rendering of our old favourites whose titles now escape my memory.

Our guest of honour for the event, Group Capt. A.J.Smith, O.C. R.A.F. Cosford, revealed that early in his career, as a young RD he had the interesting experience of working for Pete Quinn and throughout the evening he subsequently addressed Pete respectfully as "Boss". He could not, however, resist the temptation to take a little revenge when, during his after dinner speech, he alluded to the occasional indications of a quick temper by his old boss. Nor were the rest of us spared for, quoting from the official report on the graduation parade of the 69th entry from Halton, he noted that "although the standard of drill was higher than that normally seen on graduation parades .... the entry's education standard was lower." And to think that once we couldn't even spell aprentice.

Alan Skipp revealed another angle to the potentials of Halton when he produced a clipping from the Daily Express which discussed the value of military cadet training in building a sense of discipline and responsibility in young people. To illustrate the point, the sub-editor thinking, no doubt, that he had on file a nice picture of Air Training Corps cadets, used a photograph of what we suspect are some of the 69th Entry Coronation squad_ Clearly identified were A/A Blewehamp, VA Bennett, VA Cockroft, and A/A A.D.G.Smith. Sic transit gloria. (You remember her. The one in the NAAFI with the big blue eyes).

On a similar theme, there have been suggestions in the papers that unused military establishments could be used as detention centres to reform young criminals. Civil liberties campaigners have however objected, claiming that short hair cuts and being verbally abused by rude D.I.'s would the infringe the human rights of the young hoodlums. I don't know how many of us were diverted from a life of crime by our Halton training or, conversely, how many learned to refine their criminal skills there. Considering the diversity of our ultimate careers, it is quite possible that we have a few felons in our number, but I doubt it. I do know, however, of one man obviously not Halton material who, given the choice by the magistrate of going to Borstal or becoming a Boy Soldier, opted for a military career. He successfully channelled his criminal bent into a talent for driving Grand Prix racing cars and eventually into his becoming a Senior Captain in Cathay Pacific. And Rev. Richard Humbly says he often goes to prison but only as a visitor, of course!

In case you were worried about the future of the R.A.F., Group Capt. Smith, our guest speaker, had a few words of reassurance to impart. Although it will be somewhat smaller -down to a total manpower of 52,000 from today's already diminished figure of 55,000 tomorrow's Air Force will, he says, be better equipped with modern aircraft and weapons and well able to support Britain's international operations. As an indication of how times have changed, he told us that R.A.F. Cosford is now designated as No.1 S. of T.T. and has a female SWO! With these revelations about the state of the R.A.F., some of us were probably thankful that we are no loner part of it. But then such thoughts voiced aloud would probably not be "politically correct".

Thinking of station commanders, did you know that Frank Sheppard is now a station commander'? To be precise he is the unofficial, acting, unpaid station master for Egioskerry, near Launceston, Cornwall, but if you are thinking of catching a train there, you should know that they ripped up the lines many years ago. In fact Frank says he has to travel 50 miles to Exeter if he wants to catch a train. I imagine that the station, which Frank has converted into his new home sans trains, is one of the few that has not been adorned with graffiti. Let's hope he doesn't have a visit from those vandals who gouged a huge "69" into the Chiltern hillside forty years ago.

Four members brought their wives with them this year and cast them adrift in Coventry for the afternoon while we attended to the senous matters of finance, future venues and the local brew. Unfortunately, the presence of the ladies curtailed the scope of our speaker at dinner to include a few rude rugby stones which he had prepared It was the general consensus that perhaps it would be better in future to have separate social function designed to include the ladies - and possibly families, too. Yours truly was promptly "volunteered" for the job of "Entertainments Officer. Obviously I did not learn much at Halton especially about keeping one's mouth shut and never volunteering.

And on another personal note, the meeting was the occasion for me to be reunited with my old buttonstick. It seems that Al Smith had it all these years, thinking it was his own until he noticed the number 587281 stamped upon it. As he handed the now gleaming piece of metal back to me, he explained what it was for. I often wondered. Terry Hardeman