Blowing my own trumpet - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

By the time I had started my fitters course I was already very proficient on the RAF’s valveless trumpet and I took over the solo trumpeting from an airmen who had finished his fitters course and moved on. This involved going to the basic Colour Hoisting and Colour Lowering ceremonies every day when there was no formal parade. On these occasions there were only three people present on the parade ground: the Orderly Officer, to do the saluting as the RAF Ensign was hoisted or lowered, the Orderly Corporal who did the hoisting and lowering, and me. I stood alongside the Orderly Corporal facing the officer who stood about 20 yards away.

There were four trumpet ‘calls’ to be made on the orders of the Duty Officer. The first order was “Trumpeter, sound the Still!" This was the signal to everyone within earshot to come to attention and face the ensign. Any servicemen of any rank, all civilians and all marching columns were required to halt and face the ensign; anyone on bicycles, service or civilian, were to dismount and face the ensign. The second order was “Sound the Alert!", which seemed not to have any precise meaning in this context. The third call, much more difficult for the trumpeter to play, especially on icy cold occasions because it involved a lot of triple-tonguing, was simply “General Salute!" As I played this the Orderly Corporal would slowly hoist the ensign, aiming to get it to the top as I ended the trumpet call, and the officer would salute. In the evenings the trumpet call for General Salute was replaced by the Retreat and the ensign was lowered. The final order, morning and evening, was “Trumpeter sound the Carry On!", the signal that the ceremony was over and normal activities could be resumed.

Most, but not all, of the young officers carrying out the duties of Orderly Officer had no idea of this procedure – they’d probably been commissioned in the RAF for less time than I’d been an airman. I briefed them, tactfully, that if they couldn’t remember the orders when they were in position in front of the flag they should simply nod at me and I would play four short trumpet calls, one after the other, with just a short pause between. They should come to the salute as soon as I started the third call, as the flag went either up or down, and cease saluting when I started the final call. They seemed grateful for this briefing and usually managed to remember what I’d told them. Only very rarely did I come across an Orderly Officer who knew the procedure and was able to shout out the necessary orders to me - in the correct order. The RAF, theoretically, paid me 2d (less than one penny in decimal currency) for each time I played the trumpet on these solo occasions but it was very tedious filling in the claim forms every month so after a while I didn’t bother any more. More importantly, I was excused most barrack room and kit inspections.

In October 1954 Mick Moore, one of the other trumpeters in the band, and I were taken by Warrant Officer Garnham to RAF Filton, north of Bristol. After lunch in the Airmen’s Mess he drove us to a city cemetery where Mick and I played the Last Post at the funeral of an Australian pilot who had crashed his Canberra bomber into the Bristol Channel a week earlier. Mick and I never found out why we, rather than professional trumpeters from the Regional Band based at Locking, had been selected for this sad duty. We didn’t get paid for it and no-one said thank you.

During the last three weeks of the course we were taken daily to a secure area in one of the large hangars where we learned about Typex machines. The civilian instructor told us the equipment was secret and that we should not discuss it with anyone outside that room. Our notebooks had to be locked up before we left each lesson. When someone asked what was the point of making notes, the instructor said that they could be forwarded on to us if we were subsequently employed on a job where Typex equipment was used. I never was, so I never saw my notes again. Many years later I discovered that Typex cipher machines had been used by the RAF since 1937. The machines we worked on had five cog wheels and were obviously similar to the German Enigma machines of World War 2, but in 1954 none of us had heard of Enigma. We learned how to set up the machines and how to service the mechanism, but that was all.

Course GSp22 at No 1 Radio School Locking finally came to an end on 15 November 1954. We were all promoted to the rank of Junior Technician, now a obsolete rank but it used to be the first rung on the Technician Ladder which had promotion prospects all the way up to Master Technician - the equivalent of Warrant Officer. Technicians wore their rank chevrons on their sleeves upside down to differentiate them from NCOs on the ordinary ladder. Junior Technicians wore a single upside down chevron and ranked just below corporals - but considered themselves much better than corporals (!!) because we had all passed a year-long fitters course. We were also entitled now to wear the coveted 'sparks' badge on the sleeve of our uniforms. Actually chaps like Sparky Wale and I, who had qualified as wireless mechanics before starting the fitters course, had been wearing the sparks badge proudly throughout the course. Now we wanted to know our postings.

I was one of several on our course posted to the Middle and Far East but three of us, the lucky ones, were selected to fly to our destinations instead of having to travel for several very uncomfortable weeks on a troop ship. In the early 1950s there simply were not enough Hastings transport aircraft available to transport everyone who needed to get to overseas locations. Naturally, the RAF got preference over the RN and Army although I imagine the RN would have chosen to travel by sea anyway. I was sent home on 14 days embarkation leave a few days later.

Towards the end of my embarkation leave I wrote the following in my diary:

“A Government White Paper has been issued, according to the news on the wireless today, about the desperate shortage of skilled tradesmen in the RAF, especially in the electronics trades. They are looking for ways of encouraging more long term regulars. I don’t think they will have much of a job to encourage me to stay in – I’m enjoying myself too much.”