🎶Mull of Kintyre, Oh, mist rolling in from the sea 🎶

Leaving RAF Newton behind for two weeks, we headed off to Scotland to play “war games”. Our destination was RAF Machrihanish near Campbeltown on the Mull of Kintyre, train and bus services amounted to a good 6 or 7 hours.

To be honest, it is quite a bleak location but at the same time very picturesque.

One of the first exercises we went on involved an aircraft down and recovery of occupants.

The scene was set, as they say. The location we yomped to had a disused aircraft slowly disintegrating into a shoreline hill. Interestingly, on our journey to the plane, we got a view of Paul McCartney’s farm, which he bought in the ’60s. Our level of being impressed was pretty low at that point as we had little idea of what lay ahead.

On a damp, slightly misty day, ankle-deep in boggy ground, we formed up for the next stage of this outing.

So, there just happened to be 3 stretchers propped up against the aircraft fuselage. They looked as though they had seen some service, possibly WW2 in origin.

Teams were allocated, and personnel to enact the evacuees appointed….yup, that was me going on a stretcher. I think I was picked as being one of the harder loads for people to manage.

For safety reasons (?) those of us on the stretchers were basically lashed with webbing so we didn’t fall off….all good thus far?

And off we all trotted, the slimy landscape adding its own challenges for the stretcher-bearers.

Along the route were several streams to navigate but which had makeshift bridges or walkable depths…

… But then we reached one, that didn’t have an easy route over.

There was much discussion about getting across, it wasn’t massively wide but had steep embankments and walking downstream may add miles to the journey.

My stretcher crew decided they could make a slide down the embankment and a leap of faith across….

…OMG!

That, of course, did not go well…

As the bearers started the embankment phase, my stretcher angling downwards, head first, the lead stretcher carriers both lost their footing, dropping me in the process. My head and upper torso submerged into the icy stream.

Being strapped to the stretcher meant I had no means of escape and I had had only a split second to grab some breath to hold.

Thankfully, Instructor intervention came swiftly as did their barking expletives at the crew for making the wrong decision.

Once rescued I was allowed a 10-minute break before we set off again…this time taking a route around the stream…pheeew!

The barracks we were in housed both our intake and that of the intake about to depart. There was plenty of banter between us and them, us being the “newbies” on the plot and them ready to leave the next day.

One thing they did impart, was some story about “The Airman”…rumours of a ghostly airman haunting the barrack block. We laughed off the concept, taking it as a piss take to unsettle the new intake, probably something each cross-over crew do.

We had had a hard day one way or another and felt the call of the NAAFI, we knew we probably wouldn’t get many opportunities for a beer on this part of the course, so hey, let’s do this!

The barrack block was arranged with sets of bunk beds, myself (now allocated as Assistant Senior Man) and the Senior Man (Addy) had the bunk nearest the building exit.

One of the lads, Andy, decided to do the David Bailey picture-taking of the group in various areas of the block and gathered everyone around me and Addy’s bed space for a couple of snaps before we set off for the NAAFI.

We had a great night, but were all too aware that more beastings would be dealt out the next day, so returned to our bunks around 2200.

Lights out and many tones of snoring began to serenade us into the night.

Around 0200 there seemed to be some commotion in the barrack annex, an area that housed 3 sets of bunks adjacent to our main area. The only occupant was, Daz, a potential Dog Handler.

A couple of the lads bundled through to where Daz was and we could hear some shouting…

“Lad’s! Lad’s! I can see HIM!”, this was Daz and the tone of his voice seemed frantic.

“Get to sleep, Daz! It’s not a time to be messing about” I shouted and turned over in my bunk.

Again, his woeful shouts could be heard and Addy, the Senior Man decided to get up and go through to see what the matter was.

Duty-bound, I joined him.

Daz had a top bunk, on a bunk bed facing another vacant bunk bed.

He was sat bolt upright, staring towards the empty bunks.

“He’s there! He’s there!” and even in the dim of the night, you could see streams of sweat pouring down his face.

Now I don’t know if you can see where this is going, but worthy of note is that Daz, when the “Airman” story was recounted, professed no belief in such nonsense.

“Daz, don’t mess about man, we ain’t having it…..just settle down and let’s all get some kip!” I said as I started to walk to the foot of his bunk.

Addy, the Senior man, also began to move to the end of Daz’s bed space.

“No! No! He’s getting up….he’s walking towards me!” To say Daz seemed genuinely cared would be an understatement.

Now, Addy and I arrived at the end of the bunk, we both felt a cold chill down one side (mine on the left, his on the right, Addy, was on the left of me) and flinched.

“You’ve walked into HIM!!!”

And with that, the place erupted, several of the other guys had become spectators

We managed to calm Daz to some degree, whatever he thought he saw, was apparently no longer there, but he was still quaking with fear.

So, we took turns to keep an eye on him and almost none of us got any sleep from there, it was a long 4 hours to reveille.

When morning broke, Daz took himself to the Medical Centre and we appraised the Instructors of the night of events, which they put down to our NAAFI night and laughed it off.

We didn’t see Daz again until we returned to RAF Newton for the final phase of training. He had become very introverted to what he had been prior to the “Airman” incident and wouldn’t talk about what had happened after he sought medical help.

Our final phase was “Operation Supervisor”, this was a high-pressure mock-up of being in control of a Guardroom. We each had to manage the Indicent Book (no computer input back then), deal with incoming Radio messages and periodic wildcard incidents ie someone coming to the guardroom to report an incident.

The incidents and calls were added to during the several hours and compounded to test a person’s ability to manage both the necessary paperwork and any resources or major decisions needed to be made in light of ongoing events.

Again the reciting of Military and Civil Law definitions came into play just to frazzle your head even more.

But, hey, we got through it.

Next came our first “posting”, I had been allocated RAF Marham in Norfolk on SD814 duties.

SD814 refers to a secret document that outlines written procedures for the protection of nuclear warheads. It likely details security protocols, handling procedures, and responsibilities related to the safeguarding of these sensitive materials.

Until Next Time

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“Exercise! Exercise! Exercise!” Share Dominus Owen Markham

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Originally published at https://dominusowenmarkham.substack.com.