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42told we were going to Ballykelly. Not only that but we were to go the next day. We pointed out that we would arrive on a Friday and could not we at least wait to travel up after the weekend. No, we had to go straight away. So, we packed our stuff and caught the train to Stranraerin Scotland. We then caught the ferry to Larne before a train to Ballykelly arriving after a 24 hour journey. We were sent first class on the ferry as conditions on the boat were pretty awful in those days. So,having checked into the mess, we reported to the adjutant of 203 Squadron. He promptly asked us who the hell we were and what were we doing. The Squadron knew nothing about us holding with them and so we were told to go back to the mess and report back on Monday! It was an interesting station, more or less at sea level and prone to flooding. There was no problem with the IRA in those days but the guards did have live ammunition which was unheard of in the rest of the UK. As orderly Officer you were supposed to count the bullets in and out every hour when the guard changed. In fact, the orderly sergeant, who was up all night did that, and you just signed everywhere the next morning, always hoping that nothing had gone wrong. It also had a railway crossing the main runway and trains had priority. It was said to be the only station in the UK where a sheep had been killed by a train in the middle of the runway and that sounded to us to be very believable.203 Sqn was about to be detached to Florida for 6 weeks but they would not take us. More bad news was that because there had been 3 recent Shackleton crashes, we were not to be allowed to sit in the pilot%u2019s seats. When we flew it was just as lookouts which was very boring. I flew one 12-hour sortie looking for a Frenchman, Joan de Kat, who had abandoned his sailing boat on a transatlantic race. The centre of gravity on the Shackleton was a bit far back and so for the early part of the sortie spare people had to sit in the nose area. We had taken along a young local reporter so he could report on the search. Once airborne I