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196At the end of their course, they could take off, fly in a straight line somewhere, drop a bomb, and then turn around and come home. When they arrived to start in the new Zimbabwe Air Force, they first had to have a medical which many of them failed. They then had to do some ground school, which again many failed. So, they did more ground school and took the same exam again. They got worse marks than the previous time and that was more or less the situation as we understood it when we arrived.We decided to go back to the hanger over the weekend and learn our checks and in the meantime settled into the mess. We had good rooms in a single-story building at the back of the mess which was nice. The Squadron was the other side of a road and railway line. Several times a day I think a steam train trundled past. We went back to the Squadron at the weekend and spent time familiarising ourselves with the SF260. Eventually we walked back to the mess and as we were approaching the guardroom, saw a group of airmen practising a Present Arms with their rifles. They needed the practise as one of them dropped his rifle on the first go. They sorted themselves out and we realised there was a carcoming up behind us and so we stepped out of the way. The car swept past, and the airmen presented arms, successfully this time. We noticed a very small figure sitting in the back of the large staff car and realised that we had just seen President Mugabe. When I started writing this section, I had various memories about our time in Zimbabwe but I have now read the letters I wrote home to Gabby and so I hope this will be a bit more accurate. We saw lots of interesting things and did some exciting flying, but it could be depressing and we both very much looked forward to getting home after a while.We attended the met and ATC brief on the Monday morning but were surprised how few people were there. It turned out that most pilots did not bother to attend although more turned up on Fridays when enter-