Recreation in Weston-super-mare - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

In my first week I learned that such was the RAF’s demand for wireless technicians of all types that new intakes of 20 to 30 airmen started every week. The largest area on the station was called No 1 Wing where several hundred RAF aircraft apprentices lived and worked. Apprentices joined the RAF at the age of 16 and studied at Locking for three years before being let loose on the real RAF. Regular airmen trainees were part of No 3 Wing and were banned from visiting No 1 Wing while the apprentices were banned from visiting our areas. Quite what the RAF thought we might do to each other if ever we met, baffled us. I suppose the RAF as an institution took their in loco parentis role very seriously. I never discovered what 2 Wing was.

I can’t remember much about the Airmen’s Mess food at Locking but my diaries show that virtually every evening my friends and I went either to the NAAFI for a supper or into Weston for fish and chips. The buses to Weston ran only very infrequently. Usually we set off walking and more often than not some kind soul in a car or lorry would stop and give us a lift. About halfway to Weston the A371 road from Banwell passed close by Weston Airport on the left and aircraft landing or taking off flew only 6 feet or so over the main road. On one of many walks from the camp into Weston I took these two photographs of aircraft landing at Weston Airport. (Click on either to pop up a larger version.) Then there was a humped back bridge over the railway from Bristol; there was even a single wooden platform there known as Weston Halt and occasionally troop trains used to pause there - although I never actually saw one stop there. Immediately after the railway bridge there was a T-junction at the A370 Bristol to Weston main road.

At the end of my time in Pool Flight, 40 mostly enthusiastic airmen congregated in a large classroom. I say ‘mostly enthusiastic’ because for the first time the regulars amongst us met National Servicemen. It was not simply a matter of the  difference in pay either: regulars were paid seven shillings (35p) a day and National Servicemen only four shillings (20p) a day. We soon found that most National Servicemen resented being in the RAF at all although many seemed reconciled to their two-year  fate. I also discovered that some were already qualified to various standards in wireless and radar theory. There were too many of us for one Ground Wireless Mechanics course, so we were divided into two. I was put into GWM159A, which comprised those  of us who had no prior knowledge at all of wireless or radar. The remainder, who were supposed to have some knowledge of wireless, formed GWM159B. I imagine it was pure good luck that the numbers split more or less equally.

In early November I joined the 3 Wing voluntary band and started to learn to play the RAF valveless trumpet. There were certain advantages to being in the band: we had our own barrack block which was rarely inspected; we were not normally inspected on  colour-hoisting and other parades either; and we were excused some PT and drill periods so that we could go along to the band room and practise. Playing the trumpet was quite a come down from my earlier aspirations to be a professional musician but I  really enjoyed it and soon became very proficient and eventually the solo performer.

Money was a problem for all of us. At Bridgnorth we’d been encouraged to make a weekly allotment to our parents to “help repay them for all the years they’ve looked after you.” That was a very British thing to do in the 1950s  and it was typical of the RAF to encourage us. I was very conscious of the fact that my parents had scrimped and scraped for many years to provide my professional music lessons, so I set up an allotment of 10 shillings (50p) per week which was deducted  from my pay and sent directly to them. Most of the other regulars made similar arrangements. With our board and lodging paid for by the RAF, I considered that I should be able to manage on the remaining 39 shillings a week. Manage I did, but it was not  easy. How the National Servicemen coped, I couldn’t imagine – perhaps their parents sent them money?

I couldn’t afford to go home very often. Fortunately, in the 1950s motorists were always very willing to give lifts to hitch-hiking servicemen in uniform. One winter weekend I described in detail in my diary my trip home.

“I caught the 5.15pm bus from outside the Locking Guard Room and got off at the Borough Arms on the main road to Bristol. I then set off walking in the dark along what was little more than a country road but quite soon got a lift to Bristol centre.  I then continued walking miles up the long hill towards Filton airfield. Soon after Filton an RAF corporal picked me up but his car broke down about five miles short of Gloucester. He told me to go on without him. I got a ride on a motor bike to near  Tewkesbury where a lorry driver picked me up and took me all the way to Manchester which was rather out of the way but still heading north. There I soon got a lift across the Pennines to Huddersfield. I then had to walk all the way to Dewsbury, about  six miles, where I got a lift to Wakefield. I walked into home at 6am exactly.”

At the end of that short weekend I decided to take my bicycle back to Locking with me. A single railway ticket for me from Leeds to Bristol cost 21s 6d and I had to pay 11s 5d to put my bike in the Guard’s van. Once again I travelled on the Devonian  express, leaving Leeds at 9.54am. En route I discovered that the train stopped at Weston-super-Mare after Bristol so I paid 2s 1d excess fare and arrived at my destination only 6 hours after setting out.

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