A BOGBRUSH FOR CHRISTMAS

“Mr Davis, you will never fly an aeroplane. You’re deformed. You are a bloody cripple!” Flight Sergeant Holt’s red face and ginger moustache were inches from my nose. “You did your medical at Hornchurch, but they didn’t find in three days what a tailor from Burberry’s spotted in three minutes. When Hornchurch said you are fit to fly they made a terrible mistake, didn’t they Mr. Davis?” “Yes, Sir.” Then his voice went quiet, “Don’t ever insult me again by calling me Sir! You call me Flight Sergeant! What do you call me??” “Flight Sergeant, Sir!” “Mr Davis, you are even more stupid than you look!”

I WAS A GAWKY 17 YEAR OLD – actually three months too young to get into the RAF – but they made an exception because I had come all the way from Kenya. They also made ahuge mistake by selecting me as one of sixty, from three thousand applicants. We were the elite, at least the rest of them were.

It was the bitter Lincolnshire Christmas of 1956. A month earlier the RAF in Nairobi had shoved me in the back of a Handley Page Hastings that was going to London. We had to make two night-stops on the way. One was at a hellhole called Kano in the middle of thedesert. Shiny tears of sweat dripped off us as we eyed the vultures roosting on the dining room roof.

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