3 RAF

Recruited into the RAF at the age of 22, after four years of deferment, I struck lucky.  Square-bashing in Staffordshire came close to being a pleasure, partly because it was interrupted by the chance to play the piano in a local Gilbert and Sullivan society’s production of The Mikado, in which several senior officers were singing important roles.  This, without being too taxing for a pianist who fumbled more than he accompanied,  enabled me to escape some unpleasant duties, including the dreaded assault course, which formed the climax of two months of basic training.

Then, before the passing out parade, came the offer I felt unable to refuse. Would I like to go to Paris? As a trained journalist, with a virtuoso typing speed, I needed no additional RAF training and lived in the hope of a plum posting.  The offer, when it came,  was for just under two years at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, otherwise known as SHAPE, up the hill from Versailles and a free bus ride from Paris via a route that included St Cloud, the Bois de Boulogne and the Avenue Foche, where the Gestapo had until recently had its headquarters.

If I was interested in the assignment  I was to report to Biggin Hill, where I would be interviewed by an aged wing commander.  “I know nothing much about you,” he said, “but as I’m a Dunfermline man myself I’m willing to take a risk.”   So off I went, kitbag on shoulder, from Victoria to the Gare du Nord, where I was met by an American driver who said he didn’t think much of Paris  but that life was otherwise good. 

SHAPE was controlled by General Grunther, supreme commander in Europe, who strolled along the lengthy central corridor in the morning, wishing us all a good day. His deputy was Field Marshal Montgomery, whom we seldom saw because he had his own private entrance leading straight to his office.  Most of the personnel were American, French or British, with small gatherings of Greeks, Italians,  Dutch and Danes, as well as eventually, during my time, a solitary German in the new German uniform. 

The RAF had its own small faction, commanded by Squadron Leader Goldie, a quietly civilised  man who caused nobody any trouble. But most of the RAF staff were dispersed to other departmnets and I found myself working initally for a naval petty officer in top secret files called Wallace Crummy and then for an American major, Lester R Dauphin, who among other things  ran a small private cottage industry as editor of a Boy Scout news letter. He was soon to be my editor, too, but I’ll come to that later. 

Meals were free in the British mess (mostly army, with cooks from Britain) or, if you were happy to pay the very low price, in the much superior  French mess. I sometimes went to one, sometimes the other, though I know which I preferred. The French mess also had the advantage of possessing an excellent small upright piano in the kitchen staff’s chnging room, on which I found myself allowed to accompany the singing of old French songs and to give piano lessons for a few francs a go.

There was also an American mess, where we were not allowed to eat but could sit reading if we wished, and  there was a big international cafeteria, where you had to pay for meals but could buy a drink (as also in the French mess, which served wine;   the British mess served  water). But much of the time, at least in the evening, I ate in Paris, which in those days was stunningly cheap and which I was determined to get to know better than anywhere else I’d ever been to.  Sadly, a lot of my fellow recruits never bothered to go into town and preferred to hang  around SHAPE instead. Well, since it was all so free and easy, who could blame them? 

 I was not the only journalist on the premises. There was also the dapper Private Coote from the Daily Telegraph. There was Senior Aircraftsman Michael Harvey, whose girl-friend was the daughter of the Daily Mail’s Paris editor. Michael operated one of these smart, electrical, high-speed  reporting machines, which at one time you saw being employed in courtroom dramas in the cinema.  He was in great demand at SHAPE. 

Apart from office work there were few duties, no parades, and only the French were put on a charge if they failed to salute the flag. There was a good American library, from which I borrowed the recently published Catcher in the Rye. Using my magnificent Adler typewriter, built like a battleship, I wrote freelance articles about Paris for the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch and The Scotsman, both of which by then had new editors. My RAF pay was low, but enough for meals in Paris two or three times a week, for operas and  concerts, galleries and the occasional play. And - gloriously- there were classic films, enough of them to make me think of becoming a film critic. But I was not writing anything for SHAPE itself. That was something that still lay in the future. 

23 June 2014