Page 10 - Demo

18Thus, we were the first Cranwell course to do straight through jet training. Later we left the junior mess and most cadets moved up to the main college. Four cadets from each Squadron including me, went to Daedalus House where we all had our own rooms although the bathrooms were still communal. The reason for this was that the engineering cadets who had been being trained at Henlow moved up to join us and there was not enough room in the senior college. Daedalus House was where we had stayed during our initial selection course and was actually rather good. However, we had no bar and had to pay for our own TV and magazines. A senior cadet spent a week on duty with us to keep us in order, but we quickly realised that we could deny him use of the magazines and TV if he annoyed us. Thus, we were very much left to our own devices and had a much freer time than other cadets. On one occasion the Officers Mess had had a cheese and wine evening put on by the French to which we were invited. Some of our entry who could speak French were detailed to man the dozen different wine stations. While our officers and their wives were taking it all very seriously, we proceeded to have a great time. We decided to see how many times you could visit each wine station and as our friends were serving it, we had full glasses each time. We also passed bottles out of the window and had our own cheese and wine party the next week. This would not have been possible in the main college. We moved up to the senior mess later. While I was at Cranwell I took part in the Devizes to Westminster Canoe race. This took place at Easter and involved canoeing down the Avon Kennet canal. There were many locks on the canal and you were supposed to carry the canoes round them but if when we arrived at a lock some boats were going through, we went through with them. Alan Roberts and I used a Moonraker as did another pair, but the others used K2s which were much faster but less stable. Our Moonraker was old and always leaked, so to try to stop that we fibre glassed a very large patch into it. This stopped the leak but made it very heavy. We also had