NIRVANA
Peter Hancock
Paradise Gained: National Service in the RAF Valley Mountain Rescue Team 1955-57
Time flies by and memories fade exponentially with age, but not the poignant memories of a young man’s experience of active membership in a Mountain Rescue Team. On the Hill shares memories of dramatic or amusing MRT experiences. This is the only way to relive those times for those of us who live ‘down under’ and unable to time their rare visits to Britain to coincide with reunions. The most striking thing about my experience was not so much the dramatic events themselves, but the enormously beneficial effect of the MRT experience in lifting my sights, enthusiasm and interests. It enabled me to help and enthuse others in safe mountaineering and led me into a career in geology. I will now try to share my Valley MRT experience without boring the pants off the rest of you. It was two of the most enjoyable and formative years of my life and I am grateful to all those who helped to make it so. Many other young men must have similarly benefited from serving albeit just a few years in an RAF MRT.
Half a century ago, as a callow youth who escaped Merseyside’s suburbia for the hills at every opportunity, I first saw RAF MRTs in action. On passing ‘O’ levels and following parental guidance I found myself in a then safe and very boring job as a junior bank clerk. The prospect of compulsory National Service 18 months later soon became a delight compared to staying shut up in the back of a bank six and a half days a week, sorting and adding up pay-in slips and cheques for 18 shillings a week take-home pay. The challenge was to get accepted into the RAF and then posted to one of the stations with an MRT. My schooldays’ mountain friend, Dave Trainor, and I committed ourselves to this challenge – no small task for 18 year olds with a classical grammar school education when the RAF wanted its National Service intake to have some competency in a trade. We both made it into the RAF for National Service, but Dave went to Malta while I was posted to Tangmere in Sussex as an Ops Clerk in Air Traffic Control.
The Education Officer at Tangmere must have been impressed at my immediately taking up study for A levels. Within a couple of months he yielded to my request and fired off an application for me to be immediately transferred on educational grounds to my desired posting, RAF Valley/HMS Goldcrest, “so that I could prepare the field for my intended future career in agriculture by liaising with the University at Bangor”. Once at Valley, A levels took a back seat to the MRT and the hills. Unfortunately, Dave only made it to Valley in his last year with a compassionate posting for a family bereavement.
With an SAC’s pay of £3.3.0 a week all found, a Matchless 350cc that often carried two pillion passengers and gear (unseen or never apprehended by the constabulary) to Idwal or Llanberis, together with weekends and call-outs with the team, I had gained paradise. Even better, the four shift (watch) system for manning the control tower for Valley’s Master Diversion Airfield led to a lively trade in ‘stand-ins’ between single National Service men and the married ones eager to earn extra money. At five shillings for a morning or afternoon watch and ten shillings for the night watch they would happily stand-in so that one could have three days away climbing after two days on the station. On top of that, Valley was rated a remote location so it had extra long long-weekends, which were spent away training with the team, giving us extra long leave in lieu that was spent by staying out in the hills. Several of us had free accommodation on the three tier bunks on the verandah at Idwal Cottage. This enabled us to return on our bikes from the pub and the Swallow Falls dances at any hour and in any condition.
One of these adventures involved the collection of roadside souvenirs leading to one of us appearing under RAF escort at the local assizes to receive a wink and a fine, followed by a letter from the Chief Constable to the CO about the wild behaviour of some of the team members in the Shire of Caernarfon. This was before the formation of any formal Ogwen Valley civilian rescue team so we were of some use to turn out for any rescue of civilians in trouble. I must have spent about half my National Service time in those then relatively uncrowded hills of North Wales.
The MRT base at Valley was in some sort of old air-raid shelter adjoining the sick quarters. Once inside it had a wonderful smell of boots, retired hemp ropes and gear with names to boggle the mind of a civvy; such as jackets jumping, trousers jumping and braces jumping, all airmen for the use of. Contemporaries will remember some of the not so good gear, the hawser-like Kenyon ropes, the old tricouni nailed boots and the heavy radio sets that one wore on one’s chest, with a long aerial that was more effective in sounding out the position of outcrops sticking up ahead in the clag, than in receiving messages from one’s fellow sweep searchers. One of the delights of visiting the MRT base was the fine selection of wee outcrops arising from the adjacent swamp and lake post-glacial landscape. Those of us keen on rock climbing enjoyed many an off-duty hour bouldering on those delightful old rocks.
There were many defining experiences. The station’s T11 and Mark V Vampires used for training the young Fleet Air Arm pilots had no ejector seats. On duty in the control tower I would be involved in the first response to a May Day call or helping to get a fix on one of the Vampires that was not radioing in, possibly due to flame-out and pilot black-out - an all too common occurrence on the solo medium-level aerobatics exercise over the hills. I was then allowed off-duty from the tower for the MRT call-out to search for the crash site.
The first call-out one never forgets. Mine was at the back of Ro Wen above the Conwy Valley. A young midshipman’s Vampire had crashed into the hill of hard volcanic rock. I still clearly recall his name. The explosion, presumably on impact, and the engine being behind his seat and driven through him, resulted in extensive fragmentation and scattering of his and the plane’s remains over a wide area. I helped to search for and gather the body fragments into a small cotton bag bearing his name. This was quite an experience for an eighteen year old. Yet it was natural to take it in one’s stride. Immediately afterwards, in the local pub with post-event beers and crisps, I remember the eerie sensation of feeling my own fingers feeding crisps into my mouth having just picked up and felt similar pieces of anatomy of the unfortunate young pilot. However, I recall no signs of post-event trauma on my part or of the rest of the team.
Today, after similarly horrendous events professional rescuers such as police and firefighters can have problems living with the experience and counselling is provided. It is interesting to ponder the change and the reason for it. Was it the MRT spirit and sense of military duty and our childhood wartime experiences with air raids and bomb-sites that enabled us to take it in our stride, or was it because we talked frankly and openly about the events, viewing each rescue, however tense and dramatic, as ‘no big deal’?
Rescuing injured climbers and walkers with life threatening injuries had of course a great sense of urgency. The adrenalin rush had to be controlled. Everyone worked at high alert in the effort to place the threatened life on the old Thomas stretcher and rush it down to the ambulance for the drive over the pass to the hospital at Bangor. This was well before the days of effective helicopter pick-ups on steep hillsides. There was no time to be squeamish or impaired by shock at the sight of large bleeding wounds and protruding bones when one could see another’s life ebbing away. Team-leader, Johnny Lees, would describe such rescues where life and death were finely balanced and in our hands as “gripping” or “harrowing”, terms he used for hard, exposed rock climbs where protection was dubious or lacking.
Retrieving a dead body was very different. Fast and smooth travel was not a priority. It was all a much more casual affair and a rope stretcher would suffice. But at the roadside care had to be taken because the shocked and grieving relatives and friends would be understandably distressed at any casual treatment of the body or light-hearted banter of the rescuers.
Newspaper reports made hilarious reading for us with headlines such as ‘Brave airmen risk lives to save farmer’s sheep’, when all that was required was a short abseil and walk along a grassy ledge to the sheep. However, this nonsense added to the already well deserved praise for the team locally, the ‘Mountain Rescues’ – and it was all very helpful when it came to landing one of the better-looking local girls at the Swallow Falls Saturday night hop! I think it also helped me to win the attention of the landlord’s delightful daughter at the Douglas Arms in Bethesda and get my feet under the table for some choice dinners and free drinks.
Rock climbing on training weekends is fondly remembered, particularly the encouragement of Johnny Lees and partner, Gwen Moffat, who took me on my first VS – Belle View Bastion on Terrace Wall on Tryfan. Training also included the entire team running ‘The 14 Peaks’ starting at dawn on Snowdon and ending on the last peak, Foel-fras, to be greeted by a mug of steaming tea from an urn, served and backpacked up there by Gwen Moffat. Johnny Lees parked himself on the cul-de-sac ridge to Yr Elen to discourage anyone tempted to short circuit that peak.
Inspired by team training activities, including watching Brown and Willans crossing Cenotaph Corner on their epic Easter 1956 traverse of Dinas Cromlech, and in preparation for a leave visit to the Cuillins, some of us would motorcycle from Valley to Ogwen or Llanberis for an evening’s climbing. One such occasion resulted in a close shave and might well have foreshortened National Service for Colin Hamilton and myself. Leading through onto the second pitch of Suicide Groove in his unsuitable Jackson and Waugh bendy boots, and mistakenly trying to follow the guide book description for Suicide Wall, Colin had a long run out with just one dodgy line-runner on a sharp and tiny protuberance. He became trapped under an overhang. Retreat meant almost certain loss of friction. We were in trouble. When he attempted retreat and peeled off I was dragged up and off my belay towards the runner from which we both ended up suspended, but with Colin concussed. Getting us both down by relying on the dodgy runner as a pulley, and my attempt to satisfy his murmurings for water by taking off one of his boots and running down to fill it from Llyn Idwal, is now a story for the grandchildren. After we both recovered our senses we retrieved the line runner that had saved us from a far greater fall to find that it had been cut half through. We were relieved to find that we had nothing more than abrasions and bruises. Wiser and much chastened we gently wobbled down to Ogwen, climbed onto the old Matchless and rode back to Valley.
National Service with the fulfilling experience in the Valley MRT fostered my ability and ongoing interest in mountaineering and mountain rescue at university and beyond. It led to training fellow students and to climbing trips in the Swiss and Austrian Alps, New Zealand, North America and elsewhere where my life as a geologist has taken me. Furthermore, without that awakening, stimulating and liberating experience as an 18 to 20 year old, I would probably not have gone on to university and stepped out into the world as an adventurer in mining, minerals and engineering. I am doubly grateful for that experience and to those that contributed to it. In addition to those mentioned, I would like, one day, to meet again and say thank you to the Paddy Andrewses, Max Hugheses, Vic Brays, Derek Walkers and many others.
A few years ago, on returning to Mt Cook village, New Zealand from climbing Mt Sealy with my wife and step daughter, I was astounded and delighted to discover a sizeable number of RAF Valley MRT installed in one of the bunk rooms at the NZAC Unwin Hut. I was even more surprised to find that they were there on exercise. The team had clearly expanded its horizons and resources since the 1950s, but of course it is now sadly just a memory for all of us who served in her.