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228to 3 weekends training every month and the married ones two weekends a month so it was quite a commitment. The only bonus they got was that they were excused guard duty. Because we only had a small pool to recruit from we were allowed to have a civilian ambulance man in the team. He was a first class chap much admired in the Ambulance Service and in the team. He died a few years later of some disease and I have never seen so many people at a crematorium. There was a formal training syllabus for the members of the troop which was quite arduous. Apart from being very fit they had to be skilled at land rescue techniques and mountain craft. They progressed through this training and got graded and once qualified they were entitled to wear the badge on their uniform sleeve. The training took place every weekend. They moved out on a Friday evening and came back on the Sunday. They would either put up tents to camp or stay in a bothy somewhere and were totally self-contained. A couple of lads would be in charge of cooking for the whole weekend, a not very popular job as if the food was not judged to be good enough they would almost certainly be thrown into a convenient river, summer or winter. The permanent team members would plan the training, often in the Lake District but it could be anywhere. The idea was that they would become familiar with the possible call out areas. They would also do joint exercises with and,generally liaise with local civilian teams. If an incident occurred where they were training they would render assistance as required and they were available for civilian call out if need be. However, their priority task was to attend aircraft accidents. As they were self-contained they could be on their way very quickly and after any rescue had been accomplished they would stay and guard the crash site for 24 hours. That gave the Station that had lost the aircraft time to muster and deploy a guard force and for a board of inquiry to visit the scene. In reality, a rescue helicopter was usually first on the scene but after picking up any survivors then left.