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Faster and higher.

I had an enjoyable leave, during which I was sent my next posting information together with an appropriate First Class Travel Warrant. On the 17th of March 1953, I set off for RAF Merryfield in Somerset where I arrived in the late afternoon.
Merryfield is situated next to the small hamlet of Ilton, between Taunton and Ilminster. Ilton station was a wooden unmanned halt on the now defunct single track railway linking those towns. At Ilton there was an alehouse, a tiny shop, some very pretty thatched cottages, and little else. The village of Wellesbourne Mountford was a metropolis by comparison.
I Warned In at the Mess and was allocated a double room in one of a group of Seco huts on low ground some distance away from both the Mess and the Flight huts. The latter also doubled as our class-rooms and were on the edge of the airfield. The Mess and the airfield were uphill from our accommodation. I shared a room with John James Smith who had just married during the last leave. He was an ex-apprentice of Jones & Shipman, machine tool makers, of Melton Mowbray, and answered to either 'JJ' or 'Smithie'. We were to get on well together. There was a civilian batman who also lived in a room in the hut and looked after its 8 occupants.

'A' Flight, 29 Course. From an official photograph.

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