Page 249 - Demo
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                                    245being well guarded by his wife. I longed to ask him some questions about his war, but this do was for the Canadians and so I was unable to do so. He died a couple of years later.On the Sunday I had to turn a page at the Bomber Command Book of Remembrance in York Minster. Marching down the Minster, complete with sword, in front of all those veterans was for me a very special honour. That night we had a hale and farewell at the Viking hotel in York which was another great evening. And then it was all over. Over the next few years, I laid a wreath by the monument on Remembrance Sunday, initially in civilian clothes as we were not allowed out in uniform because of the IRA threat, but eventually in uniform. We had to travel with our uniforms covered when we went to and from work and had to check under our cars if they were parked outside.Our Iraqi students finished during October 86 and we started the whole process again with a new course. There was a certain amount of overlap so one day we were flying low level sorties in Mk 5s at 300 kts and in the afternoon sitting in a Mk3 patiently waiting for a student to stumble through his checks. In retrospect it was an odd sort of life. We had a group of students that we got to know very well. Sometimes inviting them into our homes for a meal perhaps and sometimes sharing many exciting events with them. Then they graduated and disappeared to advanced flying training. Some months later we would hear how they had got on but by then we were deeply involved with the new course. Sometimes we would find out what they had gone on to fly and might meet them again on an airfield somewhere, but for the most part they just left our lives for ever. As usual the Autumn weather in the Vale of York was poor with the odd week of fog. And so back we went to West Freugh. That airfield was usually quiet but you had to be careful in the late afternoon as flocks of Canada Geese flew about. We flew lots of circuits at our Relief Landing Grounds, generally Dishforth but some-
                                
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