Page 254 - Demo

250Apart from the nausea of writing reports on both staff and students and supervising them all, I was terrified that when a new Squadron Commander was found that they would post me. That could mean perhaps Cranwell which would have been domestically disastrous. The whole point of going Spec aircrew was to have domestic stability. Our boys were settled at the local Comprehensive school at Easingwold which had a good reputation at that time and Alex would be going there shortly. I suppose that I could have been ordered to take that post but I was not sure about that. In the end I spoke to the CI who must have taken it up with the Station Commander. I got them to agree that I would do the job as long as necessary but at the end I would just go back onto the Squadron as a line QFI. And so I changed offices from OC B Flight to OC 1 Squadron. I think the guys were a bit amused by it all but I played being the boss lightly and all went well.Chapter 24One of the perks was that I could go on an Advanced Leadership Course (ALT). There were 2 Flights on the Squadron and while I had been on B Flight, A Flight had planned to climb Mount Kenya. Actually, I would probably have gone anyway as I was one of the very few people qualified to lead the expedition. ALTs were supposed to be some kind of expedition designed to give them experience in planning and doing something adventurous. In fact they were often thinly designed jollies. They would get a flight to the USA and then do not very much. One of the chaps on A flight had done an expedition to Kenya when he had been at Halton. They all thought that was a good idea and went and planned it. They had to get indulgent places on a VC10 going to Kenya. The Army did a fair bit of training there and so aircraft sometimes flew out to bring people or equipment back and also to take it there. By picking the time it was possible to get there for the about 8 %u2013 10 days required. They put in all the paper work and Support Command approved