Kisses From Nimbus Page 2

  We decided as a family that it would be best if everyone were to say their goodbyes there and then and leave just myself with him till he passed away.

  Twenty-four hours went by and, despite huge doses of intravenous diamorphine, Howard was very much alive and able to communicate with me. Over the next six days, he managed to take small amounts of food and water. I cleaned his teeth, brushed his hair and washed him regularly since he had always been fastidious and insisted on being kept clean and tidy. On the final day, Howard told me that his sight was rapidly failing and he was now barely able to see. He was adamant that life trapped in a body without being able to see or hear would be unbearable.

  My brother held my hand and begged me to help him.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I was born and bred, up to the age of seventeen, in Accrington, affectionately known as ‘Accy’. Accy was, and still is I think, a grimy industrial town in the north of England. It has a population somewhere in the region of fifty thousand people, being famous only for its football team, ‘Accrington Stanley’, and its brickworks. The Accrington Brick Company, trade name ‘Nori’, a contrariwise spelling of Iron was world renowned for the hardness of its bricks, which in 1929 were shipped out to the USA to build the foundations for the Empire State Building.

  Growing up was a fairly unremarkable time of my life. I was brought up in what would now be called a slum since we had no bathroom or hot water, and the toilet was one of a block of six old thunder-boxes about twenty yards away from our back door. I never thought it was a slum however, I liked living there, I just didn’t like going to the toilet, especially on a cold winters night.

  I was never beaten or abused in any way, but I don’t remember ever sitting down to a meal with my mum, dad, two older sisters and two younger brothers. My given name was the same as my father’s, Patrick James Riley. At the age of four or five dad and mum would sometimes play the game Ludo with myself and my two sisters, which I loved doing.

  ‘I’m red. I’m red!’ I would squeal as the Ludo box was being opened.

  ‘OK son, from now on, you are Red.’ Said my dad as he patted me on the head affectionately.

  The nickname ‘Red’ has stuck with me to this day, and I am so thankful that I didn’t like the colour yellow.

  Since regular meals were never a part of my life. As a teenager, I would just grab whatever was available to eat in the kitchen, I was certainly not starved, but I always felt hungry. I remember looking forward to bath time, which would only happen when mum could afford it. Usually once every couple of weeks or so. My mum would give me a towel and a shilling and send me off to the public baths in Accy, with strict instructions to make sure that I washed behind my ears and the back of my neck. I was off like a shot, straight round to the chip shop in Church Street for four penn’eth of chips and a tupenny scallop, which was just a deep-fried slice of potato in greasy batter. Next stop was the corner shop for a selection of their finest Liquorice sticks, halfpenny Spanishes to dip into the two penn’eth of Kaylie; the local name for sherbet, and a pocket full of penny chews and gobstoppers.

  I then walked around the town centre, for as long as I reckoned it would take to have a bath. Next stop was the public toilets to wet my face and hair in the sink, not forgetting of course to dampen the towel my mum had given me. Looking back, it seems strange that I would forego the opportunity of a, far from regular, hot bath for the sake of a few sweets.

  I left the Holy Family Secondary School in Accrington at the age of fifteen with no qualifications whatsoever. I was scheduled to sit some exams and would, probably, have done quite well in them. However, I decided to give them a miss and go to work helping my dad to plaster a living room ceiling instead, having told him that it was my last term at school, and our whole class had been given the week off. Looking back, it seems likely that the deceptions and lies that I practised as a youngster would give me the inherent qualities necessary to become a successful spy many years later.

  It didn’t take long for me to get fed up of mixing plaster and making brews for my dad, although I did enjoy being close to him, and I loved his quirky anecdotes, like:

  ‘Time and plaster wait for no man!’

  Or: ‘If ifs and buts were whisky and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas!’

  He was a quiet man with a lovely sense of humour, and I thought he was the best plasterer and dad in the whole world!

  One morning I woke up and decided, without talking it over with anyone, that I was going to join the Army. I went down to the phone box at the bottom of the hill where we lived and rummaged through the phone book until I found the address of the nearest Army recruiting office, which happened to be on Station Road, Blackburn. Blackburn was a five-mile walk from home and it was belting it down with rain. Even wet-through, I couldn’t have weighed in at much more than six stone, so I must have looked like a drowned rat when I finally arrived to offer my services to Queen and Country.

  When I told the recruiting sergeant that I was here to join the Army he looked me up and down for what seemed to be an age and said, “Bugger off and come back when you are old enough t’shave!”

  I was gutted, and the pathetic look on my face must have struck a chord with the rugged looking sergeant, for as I turned to leave, and start the long walk back to Accy, his voice had mellowed a little as he told me.

  “The minimum age is seventeen and a half, son… I’ll still be here when you come back.”

  And he was.

  Two years later, almost to the day, I was there again. I still had another month to go before the minimum age of seventeen years and six months, but I couldn’t wait to get away from Accy and begin what I imagined was going to be one big adventure. I should have been sent packing again, but I got the feeling that the grumpy old recruiting sergeant had taken a bit of a liking to me. He told me to take a seat and he allowed me to start the enlistment process, which included sitting the necessary exams, with a view to starting my training the following month, January 1964.

  I must have done reasonably well in the exams since I was informed that my results meant that I had qualified not only for one of the most elite branches of the Army, but I was also being recommended to join the Royal Corps of Signals. The Royal Signals is a technical corps responsible for communications throughout the British Army and some parts of the Royal Air Force. It was some years later that I learned that this was total bullshit and it was, in fact, just the luck of the draw, and I was being allocated a place wherever there happened to be a shortage. Even so, the sergeant’s flim-flam had worked and I was happy to be offered a place which I readily accepted. I took the option to sign on for the maximum allowable period of twenty-two years, with the first opportunity to leave after nine, mainly because this attracted, by far, the best pay deal of seven pounds and seven shillings a week. With no food or lodgings to pay for, this meant that I would be able to send one pound a week home, put another pound in the Post Office Savings Bank and still afford to live like a lord!

  I took the Bible in my right hand and swore allegiance to the queen, and then signed the Official Secrets Act. The signing of the Official Secrets Act was necessary for any potential member of the Royal Signals likely to have access to the country’s most secret secrets – bit more bullshit from sergeant nice guy.

  Before leaving the recruiting office I was given a railway warrant from Accrington to Catterick in North Yorkshire, made out for the tenth of January 1964. After handing me one pound seven shillings and sixpence to cover my days’ pay and expenses, more than I normally had to last me a week, the recruiting Sergeant shook my hand and welcomed me to “The most noble profession in the world – a soldier in the British Army”. Even though I could now afford to take the bus, I chose to walk back to Accy and ponder what lay ahead for me. Upon arriving home, I recall my Mum and Dad seemed to be a bit surprised, almost shocked, at what I had just done, but it didn’t take long for them to accept that there was no way they were going to change what I was setting
out to do and they soon got used to the idea.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I arrived in Catterick camp after the longest train journey I had ever taken which had been delayed due to heavy snow over the bleak North Yorkshire Moors. Ahead of me lay six weeks of basic Army training. Having been warned to expect life to be tough, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, not only did I not find it tough, I loved it!

  Shortly after I arrived a whole bunch of us raw recruits were lined up and told to undress in preparation for our first medical examination. The Medical Officer came down the line towards me giving each recruit a very brief physical assessment, generating a loud cough from each one in turn.

  ‘Stand up straight, lad!’ said the Corporal as the M.O. approached.

  He stood in front of me and cast his eyes from head to toe, taking a step backwards and focusing on my feet which, by now, had a few weeks of grime caked on them. I began to wish that I hadn’t spent my fortnightly bath money on chips and sweets. I felt fairly certain that I was in for an embarrassing bollocking in front of my newly acquired peers. But it didn’t happen. Instead, he stepped forward and whispered in my ear.

  “Don’t let me see your feet like that again soldier. You know where the showers are – use them.”

  That M.O. made a lasting impression on me, and I certainly took his advice. From that day forward my feet have been a sight to behold, and getting my shoes and socks off has always been an important part of my courting ritual.

  We were certainly kept busy during this introductory period to my life in the army. At five-thirty every morning the silence was shattered by the booming voice of the corporal in charge.

  ‘Reveille! Hands off cocks, Hands on socks. Twenty minutes be standing by your beds, ready for PT!’

  After PT, we were kept continuously on the go until lights out at ten o’clock from Monday to Saturday, and on Sunday it was church parade. Church parade was the part of basic training which I disliked the most. It entailed turning out in our best uniforms and being thoroughly inspected by the troop sergeant. We were then marched to the relevant church which catered for the denomination declared on the initial recruitment form. This would either be Church of England or Catholic, since there was no provision to indicate agnostic, atheist or any other religion. For over an hour we were made to stand, or kneel, in front of the padre and mumble the appropriate bits of the service where the congregation are meant to join in. All this chanting was mumbo-jumbo to me since the only times I had ever been in a church was to attend weddings, funerals or christenings.

  For the first time in my life, I was being supplied with three good meals a day, which I certainly took advantage of. I gorged myself on everything from black pudding and sausages in the morning to jam roly-poly in the evening. The huge intake of food and the many hours of gruelling physical exercise each day meant that, by the time I got to the end of my basic Army training, I was in superb physical condition. I was still not quite, eighteen years old.

  Having qualified as a trained soldier, and being designated the rank of signalman, which is a private really, but signalman sounded marginally better. I was entitled to my first period of leave.

  The seventy-two-hour long weekend pass which I was granted, was spent strutting around Accrington in my shiny new boots and uniform and splashing out the small fortune I had saved from my seven pounds seven shillings a week amongst my old, school mates.

  Over the next fourteen weeks the Army and, more specifically, the Royal Corps of Signals taught me a trade. At the age of eighteen, not only was I now a trained soldier, but I also became a qualified lineman, which was basically a second, or even a third-rate telephone engineer.

  My first posting was to Royal Air Force Station, Laarbruch on the German/Dutch border with the nearest large town being Roermond in Holland.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MOLLY

  It was whilst installing some new telephone equipment into the Officers’ Mess that I met the woman who was to become my first wife. She was eighteen at the time and working as the Mess Receptionist. In those days, and perhaps even today, social intercourse between the likes of me, a lowly private in the Army, who wasn’t even allowed to enter the Officers Mess via the front door, and the debutante-like young female sitting behind reception, was strictly taboo. Something had to be done if there was to be any chance of me getting to chat with her, and perhaps even showing her my feet. I left the building, via the back door, of course, and drove around to the central telephone exchange. It didn’t take me long to locate the circuit for the Officers’ Mess reception number and pull out the circuit breaker. All I had to do now was wait.

  The telephone operator passed me a message that a fault had occurred, on the phone of the Officers’ Mess reception, which looked like a complete disconnection, and I needed to get on to it straight away. A quick splash of Old Spice, a comb through my hair, a check in the mirror and I was back in front of the reception desk. I explained to the damsel in distress, that it may take some time, but I was here to undertake a detailed investigation of the phone, the line, and the connection box under the desk, which was where I felt almost sure the fault lay. After twenty minutes of waiving a screwdriver about and laying on the charm, I rang my mate in the exchange who then popped the circuit breaker back in. Not only had I fixed the fault, which had the desired effect of impressing the nubile receptionist no end, but I also got a pot of tea served on a tray and a cup and saucer with a biscuit the size of a threepenny bit. I also managed to get a date to the camp cinema for the following Friday night, when the film The Dam Busters, starring Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave, was being shown. Being on an RAF base, the cinema was bound to be packed out. Getting a seat was going to be difficult enough, let alone getting two together in the back row, which is what I was most certainly aiming for.

  Her name was Molly and she turned out to be far more than just a receptionist. She was, in fact, the station commander’s daughter, no less. Officers and their families were kept very much apart from the other ranks such as myself and I knew that I was playing a dangerous game by pursuing her. Nevertheless, not only did we make the camp cinema that Friday night, with a bit of a snog and a fumble thrown in, but we started seeing each other regularly. Within a couple of months, she fell pregnant and a few months later we were married in the registry office in Burnley. My mum and dad were not only the witnesses at the wedding but were also the only guests, and a grand reception was held in the chip shop across the road where potato pie, chips and mushy peas, were served at my dad’s expense.

  To say that my new, highly esteemed father-in-law, was disappointed in his daughter’s choice of consort would be a huge understatement – he would probably have described his feelings as ‘frightfully displeased’ rather than ‘pissed off’! He could probably have coped with a son-in-law who fell slightly short of the standards required of a thrusting young Air Force fighter pilot, but a private in the Army was almost beyond his comprehension. I fell so far short of the standards he expected and required for his daughter that he could barely bring himself to look at me, let alone speak to me. It took a full two years for him to deign to hold a conversation with me and another two for him to invite me to his golf club for a round with his chums. I didn’t need to think too long and hard about his invitation. I just always seemed to be far too busy to accept.

  Having been blessed with eyes like a shit-house rat I turned out to be a very good marksman. I was selected to represent the Corps in shooting competitions across Germany and Holland and each year went back to the United Kingdom to take part in the National Championships in Bisley, home of the NRA – the National Rifle Association – just outside London.

  Apart from fixing phones and shooting, I was also making up for the lost time at school by going to night classes to get my qualifications in maths, English, physics and the like.

  Every working day, orders and notices were posted outside the troop office and it was whilst reading them one evening in July 1970 that
my life took on a whole new direction.

  Volunteers required to train as Army Pilots was the headline on the notice board.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Army pilot’s course is one of the toughest courses in the Army to get through. It consisted of an initial selection phase at the Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre (OASC) at RAF Biggin Hill. If successful at the OASC then candidates would progress to a further selection phase at the Army Air Corps Centre at Middle Wallop in Hampshire. Then came the biggest test of all, the pilot’s course proper, which consisted of a full twelve months of intensive flying training and ground school covering the technical and tactical aspects of flying as an operational pilot.

  I received notification that my application to volunteer for the course had been accepted and I was ordered to attend the first phase of the selection process in March 1971. I had no idea then how slim my chances of getting over even the first hurdle were. Less than fifty percent of candidates make it through the Officer and Aircrew Selection process, most failing on medical grounds such as; eye muscle balance tests, colour perception, or even having shin bones that are over the maximum allowable length for sitting in a military cockpit. All these conditions were unlikely to have had any impact upon an individual prior to the medical examination, and usually came as a shock to the candidate before being sent packing and graded as medically unfit to serve as aircrew. Next came a whole raft of tests from progressive matriculations to mechanical comprehension and complicated coordination appraisals to get through. Having passed the OASC, I was then on my way to Middle Wallop, deep in the Hampshire countryside, for the more practical aspects of the assessment, such as military organisation and the ability to take command and control in a wartime environment. Part of the test was ‘Signals’, which covered details of communications, not just within the Army, but throughout the military as a whole. A subject in which I was expected to excel, being a fully paid-up member of the elite Royal Corps of Signals. As it turned out I gained the very dubious distinction of becoming the first ever member of the Corps to fail the ‘Signals’ exam. The testing officers seemed to be dumbfounded and had difficulty understanding how I could have failed the test since they assumed that my knowledge of communications must have been vastly superior even to theirs. Rather than giving me the boot there and then, they agreed that I should be allowed to re-sit the exam the following day. I decided that I was not going to take any chances. The only way I was going to guarantee passing was to take up smoking!