Tony Cunnane's RAF Years

Every week during our recruit training course there was an invitation promulgated in Station Routine Orders (SROs) that I am very glad I didn't accept. Volunteers were required at the Common Cold Centre at Porton Down. They would spend a week there and receive a few shillings a day additional pay. Only minor discomfort, similar to that associated with a winter cold, would be experienced, explained the invitation. Our Drill Instructors told us that if we volunteered we might be re-coursed and that might delay our graduation by several weeks. Tempting though the money offer was, I don't think anyone from our flight volunteered. Years later it became clear that the Common Cold Centre had in fact been the cover name for highly controversial experiments into nerve gases. I have often wondered since whether the corporals were protecting us from something they knew but could not officially pass on to us. I like to think they were.

One day we were shown a film about venereal diseases which had very explicit scenes of real sufferers. One lad got up half way through and stumbled towards the door. "Where d’you think you’re going?" barked the corporal at the door but then, seeing the recruit’s face, got out of the way just in time to avoid a stream of vomit. That film was followed immediately by a film about blood donors.

On the weekend of my 18th birthday, my 31st day in the RAF, we had our first 48 hour pass and most of us went home. Weekend passes were for precisely 36, 48 or 72 hours but why such precision was necessary was never explained. There was a fleet of private hire buses contracted for all 48 and 72 hour passes and routed to take in the major cities. My return ticket cost 25 shillings to Leeds and it used up almost all my available money. The bus took a very circuitous route, through the town centres of Wellington, Chester, Birkenhead, Liverpool, Manchester, Huddersfield and Bradford, dropping lads off at regular intervals. My journey on the Friday afternoon from Bridgnorth to Leeds took seven hours – no motorways or city bypasses of course. The return journey on Sunday evening, leaving Leeds City Centre at 6 pm, took even longer because the driver couldn't remember where he had to pick up the Manchester contingent! Eventually, as we cruised slowly along Deansgate at midnight, they found us.

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