Page 98 - Demo

94One weekend we went up into Malaysia and spent a day on the beach just off where the Prince of Wales and Renown were sunk during the war. There was a group of boys playing football and so we gave them a game. Some of us also wandered into the jungle and looked at their native village built on stilts which was interesting. While we were there Gabby drove down to Oldham. Philip came up to accompany her on the journey as it would be the longest journey she had done. There were few motorways in those days. Partly because of that, she was a bit haggardly at writing to me and so her letters were a bit few and far betweenOur headquarters was in Singapore at HMS Terror and the staff all had airconditioned accommodation and quite a few perks. They were pretty useless at tasking us and not at all efficient. On one occasion we were tasked to look for a Russian floating dock. The code on the signal for that was %u201cAD%u201d. We searched all day and could not work out how we could have missed it. When we debriefed, we were told we should have been looking for a Russian Oiler %u201cAO%u201d. They tried to pin this cock up on us, but they could not deny in the end that the tasking signal was wrong. They eventually realised that crews were getting a bit fed up and so decided that each crew could have a weekend away at either Butterworth or Gan. You would do a surveillance sortie going up and coming back and so it made no difference to the task. We decided we would go to Butterworth. We knew that there was no air-conditioned accommodation there and so we could ask to be accommodated downtown on Penang Island. This was all arranged with the Australians, and we were all happy. Staying in a hotel meant that we would get some allowances and so could have a few beers. Our AEO was a Squadron Leader and so he felt he should be the detachment commander as Ben was a Flight Lieutenant. Everything had been arranged by phone but now the Squad-