By John McGregor
´Ít was Twenty Years Ago Today
Sergeant Pepper Taught The Band To Play ´
Well, yes, it wasn’t twenty years ago today that The Beatles released their masterpiece, for the mathematicians it was fifty-seven years ago – in 1967. That year was an amazing time for me – and Sergeant Pepper played his musical part in my young life.
The year had begun dramatically. On 30th January I joined The Royal Air Force. I didn´t get far as the basic training station was only seventeen miles up the road from my home city of Nottingham. But what a shock to my tender eighteen year-old system awaited me and 119 others as we nervously alighted from the busses that had picked us up from the railway station. A quick visit to the butchers – I mean barbers – ensured we were all quickly reduced to looking like convicts and were soon led smartly round to sick quarters. Here we were examined – or peered at naked – by a Medical Officer (doctor to you) before being taken to the clothing stores. After being measured a large amount of uniforms were issued with a big blue holdall to put it all in. Our civilian clothes we had arrived in were bundled up, brown paper and string dished out and they were all, and I mean all sent home.
So now we looked the part – at least. But there was a lot of brutal stuff to come. Plunged into a long room with seventeen other young men there was no room for modesty. I had been in enough lads changing rooms for football so I knew how it works – flashers, braggers, muscle men strutting. There were a few shy ones who undressed quietly with their backs to everyone, but they soon got the hang of it. Basically there was nowhere to hide – and everyone began to slowly but surely come out of their shells. It was a great leveller on how to get on with your fellow man. On the NAAFI juke box Donovan was giving it Mellow Yellow…
For the next seven weeks we woke at 5.30, washed, shaved, showered and breakfasted by 6.30 and were outside on parade for seven. There we were screamed at, sworn at, and roundly cursed as we cringed. But steadily we learnt to march, salute, handle a rifle, clean and look after our uniform, kit and bedding ourselves – and in the meantime become a worthwhile member of Her Majesty´s Forces. Unbelievably in mid-February we were taken for a week’s camping in Sherwood Forest – and it snowed: very character-building. But somehow, fitter than I had ever been and would never be again I passed out at the final parade and was allowed home for the weekend.
No rest for the weary and I was soon on my way to a huge station called RAF Cosford near Wolverhampton. This was to teach me my trade, which was aircraft radio. From tough physical stuff this was very hard mental training which I found difficult. The course was fourteen weeks and we had to pass an exam every Friday on what we had learned that week. If we failed it was an immediate re-sit and if you failed again you were out. I think eighteen of us started the course and fourteen finished.
One huge memory of that time was the music. In the room we all slept in there was little entertainment, apart for one lad who had a record player – and just two LPs. One was The Beach Boys Concert and the other? The mighty Sergeant Pepper album, which I quickly grew to love – I should do, I heard it three or four times a night for four months. At its time with that wonderfully iconic sleeve it was hailed as one of the greatest albums of all time – and I believe it still is.
Somehow I passed the course – and everything suddenly got better. I received an unbelievable posting to the South coast, far away from home which helped at that time as I needed to grow a bit. Others on the course, Londoners particularly were incensed they hadn’t been posted to the south while they were heading for Yorkshire, Scotland and even Northern Ireland.
It was July 1967 – the Summer of Love. Flower Power was everywhere, peace and love man were preached, and Scott McKenzie told us to go to San Francisco. Well, I didn’t get that far but I hit the South Coast running. Thorney Island, the station was adjacent to Hayling Island near Portsmouth and that being a holiday area was a Mecca for healthy young men looking for fun and life – that’s a nice way of putting it. With 2,000 red-blooded young men on the island and very few women the local girls called it ´Horney Island´. On the same theme but going in the other direction was Bognor Regis with night clubs, discos and – Butlins, again full of young ladies on holiday. It was like a reverse Colditz where you rolled under the big wire fences trying not to get dirty, and then mingle with the holidaymakers – great fun.
´Work´if you could call it that was great albeit a little dull for a couple of weeks working in a servicing bay: eight til five soldering resistors I think. But then I was sent ´Up The Line´ to be on alternating shifts, days one week, nights the next. This entailed crawling all over the massive Hercules Transport aircraft that had just come into service, making sure the aerials were in place before and after flights, and replacing black boxes when any of the radio systems weren’t functioning properly.
Travel has always excited me, and I took every opportunity to go everywhere and anywhere. It wasn’t all sweetness and light, Libya was an awful place for three-week detachments but a certain army officer called Colonel Gaddafi soon put paid to that. We then ventured to other, better more enjoyable places like Malta and Cyprus. I was also lucky enough to travel to New York, Bermuda, The Azores and the Far East – not the most comfortable transport on the Hercs, but great when you got there and back.
I had wanted to be a pilot and emulate my Dad, but it wasn’t to be – and I´m not complaining. By the time the year had finished I had moved from boy to man and had begun to see the world. I made good friends which have lasted all my life and although I only spent four more years in the RAF it was an experience I am so glad I didn’t miss. Oh yes, 1967 was a great year.
