Ron Raymond - Over the Rainbow

I never really intended to become a pilot. Not that I had anything against the vocation. It was just that, as a boy, my preference had been a life at sea, to serve as an apprentice deck officer in the merchant navy and eventually rise to command my own ship. That was what I had really wanted to do; in the event, I finished up flying in the Royal Australian Air Force, so this is a story about that.

In fact, the whole thing was a bit of a disaster from the start. My widowed mother flatly opposed my marine aspirations on the basis that the sea was full of carnivores ready to eat me on sight, even though I tried to explain that most carnivores were land-based mammals like lions and tigers rather than fish; an argument she dismissed with the observation that I could not swim very well either. Adding to her concern, my alcoholic stepfather insisted I join the air force because he did not like me very much, an attitude heartily reciprocated on my part. It also seemed an uncle or somebody had been shot down in a Hawker Hurricane during the Battle of Britain. How an obscure relatives demise in 1940 could impact so completely on my life ten years after the event has always been lost on me. Nevertheless, my elders prevailed, duly completing the prescribed forms and packing a solitary bag to sustain me during my great leap into manhood at the RAAF Ground Training School, Forest Hill, Wagga Wagga, Australia, where I would become an air force pilot. Unfortunately, the air force did not teach pilots at the Ground Training School, Forest Hill, Wagga Wagga; it trained mechanics, another fact that escaped me at the tender age of 16. I thought the air force built its own aeroplanes and that everybody, apart from girls, flew those aeroplanes.

The awakening began as I stepped from a hot, dusty air force truck onto a hot, dusty parade ground in the middle of an equally hot, dusty summer day in the Riverina. A crusty old flight sergeant drill instructor barked at my bewildered colleagues and me as we emerged from the vehicle and everybody stood up straight. The flight sergeant barked again and we all turned to the right. Another bark and we shuffled off in the direction of the hospital. Left! Right! Left! Right! Smarten up there. Youre airmen now or will be when Im through with you. So, lets see real marching. Head up! Chin in! Chest out! Suck in that gut! Left! Right! Left! Right! Some of us tried to meet the great mans expectations, some wondered what on earth he was talking about, and some were reaching the conclusion that they had just made the mistake of their lives.

Eventually, the assembly ambled to a stophalt the flight sergeant called itoutside the base hospital where we received a lecture from an ageing medical doctor on the danger of venereal disease, the hazard of irregular bowel movements and the virtue of circumcision. Most of us were intrigued that the first step in a military career involved a harangue on VD when we could barely spell it. We were then formed into a queuesingle file, the flight sergeant called itand individually led into a surgery for vaccination, inoculation and medical examinations. Without knowing what was coming, I approached the medical with mild enthusiasm: if anything was wrong with me, perhaps I would be rejected and allowed to go to sea after all. Unfortunately, my hope was dashed when I passed the medical with flying colours. I dont doubt that I could have arrived comatose and still passed. Fitness seemed confined to body temperature; you passed if you were warm. There was no escaping the clutches of the air force at that late stage.

At least the process was brief. The doctor studied my tongue while I said Ah! listened through a stethoscope while he tapped my chest, checked my blood pressure, peered into my eyes with a light, held my testicles while I coughed and made me pee into a bottle.

Multiple moles on body, the man declared to an orderly noting details on a clipboard. Next!

I dressed as quickly as I could and hurried aimlessly through the sole exit from the surgery. You there! the flight sergeant bellowed at me from a distance of 4 ft. as I emerged into the heat. Get your air cut!