If you served on the route legs within the Nursing Service on CASEVAC Hastings please share your experiences in the air or in the swimming baths for practice evacuation of a Hastings crash/ditching into the sea
Dear John; Here is an extra dimension to your Hastings stories ( or should I say the lack of one) In 1955 I was returning to the U.K. after completing my tour with 80 Squadron at Kai Tak.At Singapore I found that I was most unusually the only fit person apart from the crew and Princess Marys nursing staff on a CASEVAC Hastings flight. For some unacountable reason this was totally unacceptable to the senior nurse who seemed to regard me as some sort of malingerer.As a consquence none of the free goodies courtesy of the New Zealand Government, being distributed ever reached my row and often not the lunch box either.At every night stop after supervising her charges onto ambulances I was pointed in the vague direction of the camp and told to find my own accomodation and be back at first light.This led to some interesting temporary homes not used since the Indian Mutiny I can tell you. Realising early that my KD would be totally inadequate for an October arrival home, I asked each night for access to my kit bag in the aircraft hold and each night it was refused.
At the final stop Malta and yet another refusal I took matters into my own hands and bribed the fellow ground crew Corporal with the promise of two pints to get the kit bag and place it under my seat for the following morning. After take off with the 'angels of mercy' busy pushing pills I made my way with my load the size of a medium beer barrel to the one toilet and entered.Those who will know the Hastings will know that the space is minescule even for its intended purpose let alone what I was attempting.. I was only possible to get in at all by placing the kit bag on the toilet seat before locking the door and then attempting to get all my clothes off first before trying to retrieve items from the kit bag in a lucky dip mode. It was just as as I was totally naked that my plan began to come apart at the seams. An Army Major suffering from a nasty case of dysentry and galloping DT's became alarmed by the take off and made his way urgently to where I was ensconced. Unable to gain access he began to beat on the door and demand to be let immediately, which shortly subsided to whining entreaties and just hand slapping. This left me in something of a quandary. Was I to accede to a superior officer and as a consquence be obliged to stand with my gorgeous body in full view of all for a probably protracted period, or was I to attempt to put back on all that I had just struggled to get off, or alternatively was I to accept that I had certainly had long outstanding presidence and that possesion is after all nine points of the law even to a lowly Corporal and become temporarily deaf.
When I finally emerged in my badly creased and tarnished buttoned finery it was to find my friend the nursing sister mopping up the worst of the result of my decision.As it also happened to be my 25th birthday I felt that some modicum of justice had eventually prevailed.
When we landed and I walked into transit there was a pleasent surprise when waiting there was an officer pilot from my Squadron who had been repatriated some months earlier. We exchanged greetings and shook hands and then he looked me over and said "Good God Bristow you look even worse than usual!" and then added after further thought "And what on earth is that awful smell?" I hadn't the heart to even begin to tell him.
