Within a week or so of our arrival I commanded a Guard of Honour for the General Officer Commanding the British Army of the Rhine (C. in C. BAOR for short) who arrived by air and, shortly after that, I commanded another Guard of Honour for the Commandant General of the RAF Regiment (C.G. for short) who was on a tour of all the Regiment squadrons in Germany. The Senior RAF Regiment Officer in Germany accompanied the C.G. and, at the end of the visit, he told my Squadron Commander that he wanted me to help sort out another squadron that had gone to pieces. So, once again, I was detached for a few weeks.

The C.O. of the other squadron had been posted away as a result of the C.Gs. visit and the second - in -command had taken over by the time I arrived. There was nothing really wrong with the squadron and, after three weeks of really hard training, it was back in shape and I returned to Lubeck.  However, before returning, I officiated, for the first time since I qualified as  Boxing Judge in 1946, at an RAF boxing tournament.

Amateur boxing in those days was controlled by a referee sitting outside the boxing ring behind a table raised to the level of the ring. The timekeeper sat next to the referee and one of three judges sat at ground level on each of the other three sides of the ring. The judges, of course, did the actual scoring of points after each round of boxing. In order that the boxers could hear the referee’s instructions during bouts, spectators were only allowed to cheer before and after each round, never during a round.  Any infringement of the rules, by the boxers or spectators, was dealt with by the referee saying “Stop Boxing” before he admonished the boxer or spectator. He would then say “Carry on Boxing”. Every time the referee said “Stop Boxing” the timekeeper had to stop his watch until the referee ordered “Carry On” when he would restart the timing, so some bouts, with many infringements, became rather lengthy affairs.  The referee, for this my first tournament as an official, was an old hand at the job and he appointed me timekeeper.

Anyway, back to Lubeck to supervise the training of my flight, including a visit to the rifle ranges at Putlos and a three days exercise sleeping rough. It was just before dawn, during this exercise, that I awoke from my slumbers under a tree to find a wild boar about 10 feet away. I am not sure who was the most surprised. There then followed an operational detachment with my flight because the Russians had erected a substantial fence and barbed wire around the RAF’s Air-Sea Rescue base in the Baltic.

The base, with two or three Air-Sea Rescue boats, was located on the far side of the mouth of a river at Travemunde and could only be approached from the water because its land perimeter led directly into the Eastern Zone occupied by Russian Forces.  On their side of the fence and barbed wire, the Russians had mounted machine guns and the two officers at the Air/Sea Rescue base, together with about twenty N.C.Os. and airmen, who manned the boats, had become a little worried. I was ordered to take my Flight (about 36 N.C.Os. and airmen) there to give them protection. A chain ferry across the mouth of the river at Travemunde provided the link with the Western Zone and we crossed on it with our vehicles, weapons and equipment.

It did not take us long to settle in and show ourselves to the Russian Border Guards, but then what ? As all the airmen were National Servicemen there were many areas of training which they had not covered, or which could be improved, so we had training sessions every morning preceded by P.T. and, after lunch we played all types of team games. I also laid the foundation of a squadron boxing team and practised my soccer refereeing (they could not argue very much with their Flight Commander’s decisions). There was also time for me to learn to drive. I had been riding a motorcycle for two years but here, with no other traffic around, was the ideal place for me to get behind a wheel. So under the guidance of one of my drivers (L.A.C. Betty) I learnt to drive and, following a period of road driving when we returned to Lubeck, I was able to pass my test in very short time.

After about a month we handed over to another Flight and returned to Lubeck to continue with our security duties there and training. I also managed to pick up an extra job for myself when the Squadron Commander appointed me Mechanical Transport Officer for the Squadron in addition to my Flight Commander’s duties.

We had somewhere in the region of 30 four wheeled vehicles and 10 motorcycles, and my first job, as a matter of  urgency, was to equip one of our 15 cwt. vehicles as an emergency vehicle to search for, and go to the aid of, any aircraft which crashed outside the airfield boundary. ( The Station’s Fire & Rescue team with its vehicles would, of course, deal with any emergencies on, or in the vicinity of, the airfield but not miles away. Furthermore, one side of the airfield was very close to the border with the Eastern Zone.)  It was not long after equipping this vehicle that we were called out to search for, and rescue the crew and passengers, of an Anson aircraft with which the Control Tower had lost contact. We found it in the middle of a wood some 10 miles away and there were no serious casualties.  This was the first of several callouts, but the others were later in the year, one being in the Eastern Zone.

As the M.T. Officer I was also called upon to take charge of a convoy of large and unwieldly radar vehicles which had a journey of over 100 miles to cover, including crossing through the centre of Hamburg. I decided to use a motorcycle as my means of transport and took 6 other motor cyclists with me. We moved them on a Sunday and it was a hard day’s ride.

About this time I became friendly with the four ladies who ran the Station’s Malcolm Club.  They had one of the new post-war Volkswagens as their means of transport and I taught two of them to drive it. Then, with three of my friends and another car, the eight of us often visited the Officer’s Club in Travemunde on Saturday nights where we would eat, drink and dance until 5am when we would have breakfast before returning to Lubeck. 

It was about this time that I was voted onto the (Officers) Mess Committee as the Messing Member. This committee normally consists of a President, who is appointed by the Station Commander, and a number of officers responsible for specific functions such as Mess Secretary, Wines Member, Messing Member etc. and they are voted onto the committee by their friends, or enemies, at a General Meeting of all officers. All the duties are part time and should not interfere with ones normal work. Messing Member is the least popular of all the jobs catering for all meals cooked and served in the Mess. However, with no more than 50 officers living in the Mess, and a good catering staff, it was not a difficult task - at first.

As so often happens, however, the Russians took a hand in matters by closing all rail and road access to Berlin from the Western Zone so an airlift started and RAF Lubeck was one of the airfields used to fly all supplies to Berlin. With all the additional transport aircraft based there, the Officers Mess population rose to 200 almost overnight with four or five officers being accommodated in rooms which had previously held just one and, with round the clock flying, meal times were lengthened to 3 hours for breakfast, lunch and dinner and 2 hours for tea. Furthermore, with the severe overcrowding in the Mess, an hotel in the centre of Lubeck was taken over, less the staff, as an additional Mess to accommodate those officers who had been living in the Station Mess before the airlift began and my part time job as Messing Member increased considerably covering both Messes.

The Airlift, of course, affected and increased the duties of everyone on the Station. Our Regiment security duties increased to prevent sabotage of aircraft and fuel supplies etc.  Furthermore the task of Orderly Officer (carried out by junior officers and warrant officers) increased to include the encoding of a daily signal to the Air Ministry each evening giving the serviceability state of every aircraft, listed by its number. We did not have an encoding machine, all the information was encoded using code books and this signal took at least two hours to compile each evening.

I made a third attendance as an officer under instruction at a Court Martial and this was followed by my appointment to be the Defending Officer at the trial of an airman charged with theft. He was found guilty.

Our airmen were accommodated in very good pre-war barrack rooms and the barrack block next to theirs accommodated the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) girls.  Around midnight one night, one of the girls in a room of four started screaming that there was a man in their room. Where the man was when the screaming started, and what he was actually doing, was never made clear, but he was off like a shot leaving his P.T. shoes behind under another girls bed.  As the P.T. shoes were clean and polished the RAF Station Police deduced that the man must have come from the RAF Regiment block next door, so an Alsatian police dog was brought in to try to sniff out the man to whom the shoes belonged - but Alsatians are not good sniffers and the man was never caught.

There was plenty of entertainment available even though in 1948 we were not encouraged to fraternise with the local German population. However, being a healthy and eligible bachelor of  24  I was constantly being invited to make up the odd number at parties in the Officers Married Quarters. During the autumn and early winter I played rugby regularly for the Station team and I started a boxing club which proved so popular that I was able to issue challenges to other units. The result was three tournaments and I officiated as a judge at each of them.

Towards the end of 1948 my Squadron Commander asked me if I had considered applying for a permanent commission. (The types of commissions held by officers at that time could broadly be categorised as Pre-war Permanent Commissions, Extended Service Commissions of 4 years duration which included me, Wartime Commissions which were subject to extention on a yearly basis, National Service Commissions of two years duration and a very small number of Post-war Permanent Commissions). In answer to the Squadron Commander’s question I told him that I did not think that I had a cat in hells chance of getting a Permanent Commission because I had not been to the right type of school. His reply was, “Balls, you are a bloody good officer and that is what counts. You are well respected by all and the Station Commander thinks very highly of you. So fill in this form”.  I completed the form without much hope and attended a Selection Board.  There the matter rested until I returned to the UK in January 1949.

Coming up to Christmas the President of the Mess Committee told me that flying was to continue throughout the Christmas period on the normal three shift basis and those aircrew flying on the evening of Christmas Day would miss the traditional Christmas Dinner unless alternative arrangements were made. So we decided to have two Christmas Dinners, one on Christmas Day and a second one on Boxing Day. Everyone would then have a traditional dinner and one third of the aircrew officers (those not flying on either evening) would have two dinners. Those of us who lived in the Lubeck Town Mess would have our traditional dinner on Christmas Day. So that meant that I had three dinners to organise - two in the Station Mess for about just over 100 each time and one in the Town Mess for about 50 (we had decided to invite some female guests to the Town Mess dinner). I managed to purchase extra turkeys etc. where I could and the end result was complete satisfaction all the way round.

My last week at Lubeck included a farewell party every night somewhere or other and my departure from Germany ended a very full and enjoyable tour of duty of nearly three years.