Page 278 - Demo

274I loved the LSEs. They came up about every 6 weeks I think. It was great to have a different thing to do apart from just flying, even though I enjoyed that. For each course I had first to attend a range booking meeting at Otterburn, putting in a bid for the areas we wanted and to try and get a hunter force for the escape and evasion exercise. I then had to brief the students and issue their kit just before we went. We also did a bit of a shelter and fire building practise in the bomb dump. I had to give the lessons in ground school and usually managed to get them scheduled early or late in the day so as not to interfere with my flying. I would also do them when I was DSS and would have to explain that I might get called out. Sometimes the lectures stretched out of the normal hours, which the students did not like that much. We usually had a staff of about 6 including me. The students would be divided into 4 groups for the navigation exercises, and these would be accompanied by a member of staff. The GSTO usually came as did one of the PEdOs. The rest were made up of QFIs who would be teaching that course. Often,we would take Sqn Ldr Henry Morgan who was a navigator but was doing his last tour as the flying wing adjutant. He was also a CSRO. We had a lot of fun together and are still in touch. We stayed in a farm run by Mary Carruthers and her husband Tom. They had a son Aden, who worked on the farm which was just sheep and some cows. In earlier days Tom had been known to take sheep to market and come back 3 days later when he sobered up. We saw all aspects of the farm; the sheep shearing was fascinating. We had some bedrooms upstairs, most guys shared but I had my own. Downstairs we had a large lounge and kitchen. Mary used to come down early every morning and lit a fire. We kept it going throughout the day. Mary used to make us a breakfast which was ridiculously large. You would start with grapefruit, fruit juice and/or porridge. Then there was a full English breakfast plus. The plus could be anything, chops, chicken Kiev for example. If we ate it all there would be much more the next day. We made ourselves pack