Whilst at Duxford (or back to Halton)

Tod Slaughter (681187)

It was late October in 1959, just over a year from the passing out parade at Halton, where as a brat I had been posted to RAF Duxford, joining 64 Sqdn as an engine fitter, to help them get their Javelin 7's to fly. Riding pillion on the back of my Norton Dominator 99 Super Sport was Sally, a WRAF from the Tower, who I was taking to the pictures in Cambridge. The sun was shining on that bright Sunday afternoon so we decided to go the long way round via Royston. Cruising over the brow of a hill just before entering Royston I noticed the front of a Morris Minor in the centre of the road indicating to turn right. Waiting until I was about twenty yards away he pulled across my path. A collision was inevitable! I almost got round in front of him but my right leg didn't and we all hit the deck! Luckily, although badly shaken up, Sally suffered only a small cut on her leg. The bike was virtually undamaged but I wasn't so lucky. Lying in the road I took stock. My right leg below the knee didn't look too good. "I've broken my leg", I thought," Never done that before!" Passers by dragged me to the side of the road. Someone approached, the driver I guess. " Sorry!" he said, "I didn't see you coming!" "That's OK mate" I replied," Have you got a fag?" This he duly supplied. Minutes later a passing doctor gave me a shot of Pethedine and pinned a note confirming it to my chest. An ambulance turned up and I was stretchered aboard. It was the "snatch and go" type of that era not the latest type filled with paramedics and the latest equipment. Soon we were bound for Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge and the ambulance man in the back sat himself down. "Excuse me!" I complained, "You're sitting on my broken leg!" He stood up and turned round to look at my injuries. "I've never seen a leg that bad before!" he exclaimed. "You'll be crippled with arthritis by the time you are forty!" So much for reassuring the patient!!!If he is still around, which I doubt, I'd like to assure him that I'm just short of seventy and I'm not!!

After a couple of weeks at Addenbrookes I was transferred to RAF Hospital Ely where they removed my old plaster and gave me a new one with a walking pad on the sole and a pair of crutches. One young lad, to relieve the boredom of his long stay used to catch flies, some how, by throwing a damp flannel over them. Then using an artists paint box he would paint these flies bright reds and blues! He would then put them on a radiator where they would dry and fly off. They caused quit a panic when spotted by the nurse!! Soon after this I was sent to the medical rehabilitation centre unit at RAF Chessington. The very first evening there I fell headlong down some steps and broke my plaster. Boy, was I lucky! When they removed the old plaster prior to fitting a new one they found that my leg had become badly infected and that I would require skin grafting! That is how I found myself being transported back to Halton. Princess Mary's Hospital to be precise. I spent about four months there being repaired by Group Captain George Morley who himself had been trained by Sir Archibald MacIndoe, the father of skin grafting! We were all young RAF lads and a fairly unruly mob we were too! Let's face it, when most of us were wearing plasters or dressings and are hitched up to some apparatus on the bed they can hardly put you on Jankers!! We did have a RAF Police Warrant Officer as a patient who threatened to have us marching up and down outside if we didn't stop the gambling schools! As there was about a foot of snow on the road outside we met this threat with some derision!

Whilst there I made friends with Dave Marshall. He had been with No.8 Sqdn working as an armourer on Venoms in the Middle East, where they were rocketing some A-rabs in the Yemen, I believe. Due to some re-arming mix-up on the ground he copped a 2-inch rocket blast in the mouth. At the scene they had thrown a blanket over the "copse" but when the M.O. arrived he found a flicker of life and so Dave's life was saved. He was in the process of having his face re-built, which included skin grafts inside his mouth, which must have been hell! He was amazingly brave. We used to play cards together for matchsticks. After one of his ops. we couldn't play seven card brag because he was so drugged up he couldn't count beyond three! So we settled for three card....he still beat me!! I mentioned his drowsy condition to the nurse who remarked that it was not surprising as he had enough drugs inside him to put the average person to sleep for a fortnight! He showed me a photo once of himself taken just before the accident. Staring at the camera was a tall slim blond, good-looking lad in K.D. The ladies I suspect would have been smitten. He looked at it and then at me. "That person's dead now!" he remarked. What could I say?

The food wasn't very good except for breakfast, which was without the usual extra grease that normally prevails. The orderlies too seemed extra concerned that we thought it OK. Curiosity got the better of me. "Why so concerned?" I enquired. I was told that a short while before my arrival despite many complaints the breakfasts ran with grease. Then one morning at a given signal the patients threw their plates up against the ceiling! I looked up and despite the new coat of emulsion the evidence was there! Fat is very hard to remove! As time went on and my youthful vigour returned one of the gang told me that if you looked down on the lower shelf of the medicine trolley in the reflection you could see up the skirt of the nurse administering the drugs!! So next time I checked this out but I was too late: the news had spread. The lower shelf had been scored over with an emery cloth! Foiled again!!
I spent my 21st birthday in that hospital bed but thanks to one of the nursing staff I managed to get some booze smuggled in. So much so that I got drunk enough to fall out of bed, which is not that easy when you're lying in it!! After this they must have thought that I had improved enough so they returned me to Chessington. Soon I was fed up with the daily monotony there. Every morning all of us...Army, Navy and RAF had to parade in squads in the gym. Mine was "injured right leg below the knee" squad. There was an injured left arm squad an injured left leg above the knee squad, an injured back squad..... you get the picture! Out in front was this "wind-up" gramophone and on it a resident PTI would put on this old "Jimmy Shand" record. We would have to exercise our injured limbs in time with the music! It ate into your soul! Then one morning someone cracked! Out of the ranks came this guy on crutches, dragging himself painfully forward. We watched mesmerised as he made his way slowly towards the source of his torment. Finally reaching his goal he ripped the still revolving disc from the turntable and with a flourish smashed it down and into smithereens on to the gramophone!! The place erupted into laughter!! Parade over!! Not much longer to go and I was to return to Duxford. Some still had quite a lot of recovering to do. This Army bod was recovering from polio and it seem to have dramatically increased his sex drive. Virtually every night soon after lights out he could be heard in the darkness as he left the billet on his crutches dragging his weak leg. He would somehow scale the perimeter fence after which he would consort with the "ladies of the night". Soon after three in the morning he would return but by then the dragging of his leg seemed more laboured!

After five months away getting fixed up I was back at good old Duxford and back on 64 Sqdn Javelins.

Sally the WRAF? She married my mate Mick!