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Middle Wallop.

I arrived at Middle Wallop, from Salisbury station, in the back of an RAF truck driven by a civilian. This was a strange part of the country to me; the rolling hills of Salisbury Plain and obvious ancient earthworks were not a bit like the Cheshire and North Shropshire countryside to which I was accustomed, yet nonetheless welcoming in appearance. The day was warm and the old pre-war and Battle of Britain airfield with its roofless hangar, still unrepaired since the day it was bombed, came into view from the back of the truck as it turned left off the main road into the driveway of the Officers Mess.
I was surprised to find that I was not allocated a room in the old pre-war Mess but in a Seco hut attached to what was known as the Students Mess a short distance away. I was surprised, too, that there were a number of junior Army Officers also in the same range of accommodation. They, I quickly discovered, were on a course connected with the operations of the Joint Experimental Helicopter Unit (JEHU), run by the RAF and Army. Some were also Army AOP (Air Observation Post) pilots who had experience in extremely low flying in Auster aircraft, using trees, buildings and geographical features as cover when spotting for Artillery Units.
As was usual when arriving at a new posting, I found the Mess notice board and read everything on it. There, in one of the Details, was the information as to where, and to whom, I was to report next morning, Monday, September 25th, 1955.
At the appointed time and place I arrived to find that I was to be Course Leader of the nineteen-member, No.57 Fighter Controllers Course. This position was awarded me, in spite of there being two Wing Commanders and 5 other Flying Officers on the same course, because I was the most recently experienced fighter pilot. The rest of the students were Officer Cadets, one of whom was Derek Needham, the Old Birkonian school friend of mine, who had visited Jever earlier in the year.1 I also discovered that Flt.Lt. Les Tweed, recently from Station Headquarters at Jever, was Station Adjutant. I had been told many times that wherever you went in the RAF, after about four years service, you would find someone you knew or, at least, someone else who knew someone you knew. I was discovering the truth of this for myself.
The Wing Commanders used me as their guide and adviser. They were not doing the full course because, whilst at Middle Wallop, they were also preparing themselves to be future Commanding Officers of Radar Units, and would shortly be posted as such. They were treated with awe by the rest of the course but, having worked closely with Wing Commander Hammer West at Jever I soon struck up a respectful rapport with them. They really only wanted to know the main theme of the course and to attend what they considered to be lectures relevant to them, usually on my advice!
The course instruction buildings were on two separate sites. One, the radar site, with its radar equipment, mobile control cabins, and class-rooms, was positioned on old revetted wartime hard-standings on the south-east side of the airfield. The second site was a distance away through the main camp, up the rise on the main road and some way to the rear of the Students Mess. Here, there were plotting tables, microphones and head-sets (head and breast sets comprising a standard, GPO style, breast microphone and a single earphone) all connected to various simulated
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1 When I was Officer i/c Visits by Air Squadrons & Summer Camps. See page 148.
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