An Enjoyable Account of 1950s National Service

A Likely Story

Guy Clapshaw
Librario Publishing Ltd
389 pages, colour; B/W, RRP: $61.10

Reviewed by Peter McQuaid

Conscription, National Service, Compulsory Military Training – call it what you will, but to the vast majority of 18-year-olds it was a waste of time and a financial penalty and something to be avoided if at all possible.

That someone could actually look forward to it seems almost inexplicable – until you find he was set on becoming a fighter pilot, had already been awarded a Cadet Force Flying Scholarship and obtained his private pilot’s licence, and had now been enrolled in the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an AC2 trainee pilot.

This was Guy Clapshaw, fresh out of English public school Charterhouse, brimful of enthusiasm for flying, and mad about aeroplanes even before his first flight at the tender age of nine soon after the end of World War II.

Now he has written A Likely Story. It’s what he describes as a light-hearted account of National Service in the RAF in the 1950s, with the rider: ‘This is not precisely how it was, but it’s how I like to remember it…’

Well, what an enjoyable read! It’s certainly light-hearted in the main, but with plenty of well-disguised serious stuff it paints a fairly vivid picture of the trials, tribulations, good moments and bad, and behind them all the hard work it took to finish up after two years with wings gained as a Vampire jet pilot.

Yet it was sheer luck that took the author and a mere handful of others anywhere near that far. At the end of his very first day in the Air Force, a cold, grey November day in 1954, he and the 39 other young hopefuls at RAF Cardington heard that the National Service Pilot Training Scheme had just been stopped – in future only those prepared to sign on in the regular Air Force would be accepted for pilot training. It was a bombshell!

Then, out of the blue, the corporal in charge cornered Clapshaw and five others as they were bemoaning the news. ‘You lot, get your kit packed and report outside in five minutes. Do it quiet now, we don’t want everybody to see you going,’ he said.

It was bitterly cold and pouring with rain outside, but protests fell on deaf ears. As they fell in at the roadside, complete with their very new kitbags, they strained to hear the corporal tell them they were going to Kirton Lindsey, in Lincolnshire, ’..next course there starts Monday’.

What course, the six wanted to know? ‘ITS. Initial Training School. You’re all aircrew candidates, aren’t you? Well, they need six more officer cadets to complete the next course, so you were the ones I chose….’

As author Clapshaw says, what a quirk of fate. The powers that be had decided they needed six more pilots and had then left the selection to a lonely corporal at Cardington. Ahead lay ‘twenty-four months of unique experience – humour, tragedy, excitement, boredom and other life ingredients blended together to make two unforgettable years of my life.’

Those two years are described vividly – but the incidents and events certainly don’t all relate to flying training! Life was certainly for living for those young men and once the serious part of the day was done there was always time for enjoyment and fun.

Guy Clapshaw not only very obviously enjoys life, but also has the knack of describing it well and with a sense of humour. From the start of his book, when we read of a nine-year-old’s exhilaration at his first flight, there is a humorous twist.

Then we have another picture, of a 17-year-old who has just obtained his private pilot’s licence being overwhelmed at the chance of buying a war-surplus Tiger Moth – ‘Total flying time five hours and 10 minutes, of which two hours were the delivery flight down here (to Croydon). If you want her she’s yours for what I paid for her, seventeen pounds ten shillings’. And this was when a new Tiger Moth sold for £300 or more! But the author had only 30 shillings and his father, probably realizing the pitfalls ahead, refused to lend him the necessary £16.

As the author reflects, today that aircraft in original condition, would probably be worth £150,000 or approximately $225,000 – but he probably would not have survived, because of his own amateurish and insufficient servicing, or incorrect fuel.

And finally we have the picture of a competent and experienced Air Force pilot who has achieved his dream of flying a fighter and has finished his obligatory National Service….

But this was certainly not the finish of Guy Clapshaw’s flying. For the next five years he was a charter pilot, flying cargo and tourists around the world. He then spent a further 28 years flying for Air New Zealand and even married an Air New Zealand stewardess! He and Colleen have two sons and these days live between Auckland, Sydney and Edinburgh.

As a veteran of New Zealand’s Compulsory Military Training and of the Initial Flying Training School at Taieri I have a certain empathy with Guy Clapshaw – but when I think of my three-month course and his two years, both doing what we desperately wanted, that empathy turns to sheer, unmitigated jealousy!