Boy Entrant; The Recollections of a Royal Air Force Brat by Carlin Brian

Author:Carlin, Brian [Carlin, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2011-05-07T14:00:00+00:00

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Bleak winter weather slowly gave way to less bone-chilling days, as the green shoots of spring began to make their welcome appearance on the stark skeletal trees that dotted the camp. Instead of marching head down with teeth clenched against driving sleet and rain that drove in mercilessly from the Bristol Channel, it became a pleasure to hold my head up and savour the cool clear sunlit air of the new season.

By this time, members of the 26th entry were beginning to prepare for their passing out parade. They had been issued with white webbing belts and rifle slings for the all-important ceremony and were spending much of their time between parade rehearsals applying fresh coats of white blanco to the webbing, polishing brasses until it seemed they might wear the yellow metal away and bulling their boots to such a mirror shine that the inspecting officer would have no trouble seeing his face in their reflection. The 26th entry boys in my billet performed these chores as a labour of love. The amount of care needed to achieve the desired standard of perfection was much too important to be entrusted to mere bull boys and, more importantly, all of the blancoing and polishing for the last great hurrah was filled with a great amount of symbolism that needed to be experienced by the lucky graduate himself. For a change the senior entry were performing many of the personal bull tasks that up until now had been dumped on the junior entry. We would have a short respite until the 26th had passed out. The 27th would then, unfortunately, want to exercise their new senior entry privilege, so we would continue to be bull boys for new masters until the 30th entry came up to the Wings from ITS.

In the last few days as Boy Entrants, the graduating entry members were issued with the new badges of rank they would be entitled to wear just as soon as the pass-out parade was over. Most Boy Entrants passed out with the rank of Leading Aircraftsman (LAC), signified by a two-bladed propeller embroidered in light blue silk on a blue cloth backing. This badge was worn on both arms, with the blades of the propeller aligned horizontally. In addition, the senior entry boys had been taken to the clothing store where each had been fitted out with a new battle dress that would be their normal daily working uniform on entering the “men’s service”.

The most significant feature of this new uniform was its waist-length blue serge jacket, known as a blouse, which fitted snugly at the waist but ballooned out from there to fit loosely around the upper body. Although its name might conjure up the mental picture of a female shirt-like garment, it had little similarity to a woman’s blouse. Because it was derived from a uniform that was literally used in battle, the jacket lacked the highly visible brass buttons featured on our Boy Entrant tunics. Instead, a

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