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239and in particular for finding the broken piece of equipment that caused the crash thus considerably speeding up the enquiry into what had gone wrong. I have thus seen both sides of the operation.Chapter 23Back to September 1985 when we started with a new course. A few names leap out at me from my logbook. The first is Andy Offer. We had taken the course on their Survival Exercise in the North York moors. He had hated it and although he did OK he explained that he had been brought up in London and had never been out of sight of a street light. Consequently, he was well outside his comfort zone. We chatted about it and I suggested that he came out and helped at our cubcamp in the same area later on. He did so and was quite remarkable. When he arrived, I asked him to set up a game of football with the cubs. He got them into a group and did so. Within a couple of minutes, he knew all their names and they adored him. He stayed the night and then asked if he could go. I replied he was only there to do us a favour and of course he could. I had a pit that I had built when I built the garage and at some point told him he could use it if he wished. He turned up with his girlfriend, later his wife, who was a vision of loveliness made up to the eyeballs. We were doing some of our renovations and Gabby was very much in work clothes. To say that she was a bit upset is something of an understatement.The weather was bad when we got into October and so the flight arranged to go to West Freugh. I think I was detachment commander and took 3 aircraft. We were to fly out in a vic formation and I was to lead into West Freugh. It was all a bit last minute and so it did not help that the DCI insisted on giving me a detailed brief on what I had to do. As a result, I just about ran to the aircraft and we got airborne in a hurry. One of the other QFIs was leading on the way out and I was to take over when we got closer. I had not had time to look up the various radio fre-