OBITUARIES
Lucky people may meet a really charismatic person, sometimes several in a lifetime. Such a one was Bunny Downhill. I have not seen nor heard of him for 52 years but my memory of him is fresh. Now he is dead: unbelievable, in our early 20s we all thought we were immortal.
Bunny was the undoubted, unchallenged leader of all the erks in the notorious Hut 6, the slum of RAF Kinloss, where we seemed to be exempt from barrack inspections by reason of our volunteering for duties in THE mountain rescue team.
This giant of a personality, handsome, muscular, athletic, was very proud of his northern accent - probably Lancaster, because it is that cathedral where his memorial service was scheduled.
A ‘Nasher’ (National Service man), he probably left the service after a year or two, to rise to greater heights, while some of us soldiered on trying to get back to Kinloss or even to join other teams.
All the inmates of Hut 6 with whom I am still in touch - Dave Halstead, William Patrick and Reg Sturges - still remember Bunny as vividly as I do. He was always the instigator of any ploy and the centre of any council. A very clear and forceful speaker, he was the first person I remember who used non-English, conjoined words such as ginormous and prezactly. Now the habit is trite, but in 1948 it seemed original and helped to make him such a colourful friend.
As with all MR volunteers we were a very mixed bag, but the cheerless Hut 6 would burst with life when we were not away on Wednesday or weekend mountain exercises. To get a commendation from Bunny and the others, somebody would always sneak away from work early, steal some coal from the other huts and get the two pot-bellied stoves burning red hot to about thigh height. It was more like home than any other service establishment I’ve known. There was none of the nasty ‘initiation’ that crept in later. Bunny would not have allowed it. Even if we had not had a team leader or NCOs our discipline was perfect.
Jack Emmerson also comments: The son phoned me, curious to know my interest. They are bemused by the popularity of the father they have not seen for over thirty years. Sounds like a great tragicomedy. I have no idea where the idea of the cathedral came from, it certainly is not the family.
Further information emerges from the cuttings sent by Jack:
Bernard ‘Bunny’ Downhill was 72. His son, who had not seen him since the 1960s, is quoted as saying that he was a nuclear physicist: “He used to go and measure the blasts from nuclear bombs all around the world.”
“We have been astounded by the feeling locally,” Bernard’s daughter said to the reporter. “He was a very bright and intelligent man with a fascinating life history but a lot is shrouded in mystery because of his job. He had seen at least three nuclear tests.”
During the 1950s Bernard travelled to Canada and the South Pacific with the Atomic Weapons Research Authority. He also helped test the Bloodhound missile system in Australia and while working in the UK was based at Aldermaston in Kent. The ‘50s were the height of the nuclear tests and in 1957 the British dropped their first hydrogen bomb over Christmas Island.
It was believed that he became a tramp on the streets of Lancaster about 1987. An official of the Homeless Action Centre said: “About 12 to 15 years ago he was living in a boarding house in Lancaster and then he moved out and went on the streets. He was a great storyteller but it was always difficult to know what was true.”
The press report concludes that at the time of going to press no details were available about the funeral.
In writing this, I cannot help reflecting how sad it is that John Hinde, who wrote the first obituary and obviously admired the man very much, himself had died before he could learn about Downhill’s later life.
• Any further information on the fascinating Bunny Downhill would be welcome for next year’s issue. See photograph in centre pages.
GP CAPT. R E G BRITTAIN MA (1909-2002)
Bob Brittain was the first IMR from 1952 until his retirement in 1954, appointed in the aftermath of the Beinn Eighe incident in 1951. It is probably a measure of the seriousness with which reform of the MRS was regarded at the time that the first IMR should be someone of his rank, although he occupied the post on a part-time basis.
One of his first executive actions was to save St Athan MRT from obliteration. A battle over money was taking place in the Air Ministry at the time (when was it not?), and only a year after Beinn Eighe and five years after the South Wales team moved to St Athan from RAF Madley, it was proposed in a minute to the VCAS on 13 June 1952 that St Athan be disbanded and the whole of Wales be covered by Valley; the VCAS agreed. However, St Athan was reprieved by the arrival of Bob Brittain. He was a keen mountaineer with, I understand, some experience in Asia, and immediately seeing that this disbandment would throw too great a burden on Valley, blocked it. He did agree to other disbandments - Jurby and Aldergrove - and to a reduction in strength of the St Athan team and others from 36 to 25. In the only photograph I can find of him from this time, he is unfortunately not in climbing gear but in a group captain’s full fig.
He recommended the training of more expert SNCOs to replace some of the existing team leaders, and the PT branch was asked to provide volunteers. This, I believe, is how Johnnie Lees came into the picture, but Johnnie himself has said that few PTIs could be found with the necessary interest and qualifications. He recalled long afterwards that “...by the time training finished at Kinloss, with the winter course in February 1953, only three PTI pupils were left out of the eight who started.”
Records show Bob Brittain as a pilot in No. 148 Squadron (bombers) in January 1938, but the seeds had been sown years before that. When at Oxford he was commissioned into the RAF Reserve, and took his first flight in a Tiger Moth on 30 June 1931. With some like-minded friends, he formed the RAF Reserve Flying Club, later to be the RAF Flying Club, of which King George VI was Patron. Soon after taking his regular RAF commission, he was posted to Egypt, and quickly set about forming an Overseas Branch of the flying club. By November 1937 the club had a fleet of 12 aircraft in the UK and Egypt. Photos from this period show an extremely slim and tall young man (with, to judge by the company he’s keeping, some very useful connections; well, Prince George and Lord Trenchard - beat that!).
So far, his wartime career remains a closed book, but in 1949 he was posted for two years as Air Attaché in Rumania. It was after his return from there that he was brought in to head the Mountain Rescue Service. He had been promoted to group captain on 1 July 1951. He retired from the Air Force on 5 April 1954.
His immediate successor as IMR in 1954 was David Dattner, who worked with him and has provided us with his own memories.
The group captain was a very reserved, shy individual who initially impressed as someone not given to talking about himself. As I got to know him better, primarily because he spoke often about his post as Inspector, he became, when talking about things ‘Mountain Rescue-ish’, totally alive. I saw him as completely dedicated to the work , and he spoke unceasingly about the quality and dedication of rescuers, those who were seasoned climbers as well as those having to do the ‘donkey work’ but as yet not experienced climbers. He visited each team regularly and made certain of getting his own climbing in.
He was always very concerned abut those things that he thought made the climbers unhappy and set about remedying the situation. He was an exceptionally good listener, and
I feel that teams became more confident with his help. He left a good impression on all who met him wherever he went.
Other than mountain rescue and related matters, he was essentially a very private person. His personality was delightful and with an infectious sense of humour.
Gordon Blackburn, who had been ILR from 1979 to 1985, died in January after a long illness. Heavy Whalley comments: “Gordon gave me my chance after the team leaders course at Valley in the 80s. We had some good arguments in the good old days when you could argue with our leaders!” Alister Haveron and Bill Batson arranged to attend the funeral. Photo: centre pages.
I was saddened to hear of the death of Gordon Blackburn, not only my boss but a true friend in his time in MR. I first met Gordon as the ILR designate on the 1981 Winter Course. Gordon was an ex Canberra and Vulcan bomber navigator who had arrived as ILR via the Combat Survival School and was completely unknown to us in the MR system, which was very unusual in those days. He had the battle-damaged face of a rugby player and ex-paratrooper, and his imposing personality gave the first impression of somebody that would stand no nonsense.
Very quickly Gordon gained the respect and friendship of the troops as he set about altering our rather quaint system of conducting our business. He identified our weakness in clothing and kit and set about changing things. The story goes that he made an appointment with the clothing policy maker in Whitehall, marched into his office and emptied the contents of a black bin liner onto his office floor and invited him out for a pint to discuss the problem. I had the pleasure of organising an exercise at Kintail where we dressed this civilian in MR kit and flew him to Ben Attow for a walk back to base. He was absolutely knackered, so we took him to the pub in his wet gear and sorted out the problem; he needed three days off work to recover when he arrived back in London. After this, much of our kit was obtained on LPO’s rather than the three years it took to change kit previously. I think all team leaders can tell similar stories with regard to radios, transport and many other items of kit. The acquisition of Piep’s avalanche transceivers was done in a similar fashion. It was only three years later that this ploy caught up with us when they became unserviceable - they were not properly provisioned and therefore had no repair contract.
I vividly remember Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher putting a moratorium on spending in the armed forces. Very rapidly the Royal Air Force was grinding to a halt and everybody was having a hard time. Suddenly, a real gem of a signal arrived from Gordon at MoD stating that the moratorium did not apply to SAR forces and once again the troops were happy and carrying on as normal whilst the rest of the RAF stagnated!
In addition to his formal annual inspections, Gordon was a frequent visitor to teams. Everybody looked forward to these visits, but he had a very unfortunate problem in that he was the world’s loudest snorer, it was not unusual to find the space around him empty in the morning as the troops moved out overnight.
One formal inspection turned into a callout on North Uist in the Western Isles, for a missing light aircraft; it lasted three days. Gordon could compete with most of the heavy mob in the social scene and we had a very enjoyable and expensive weekend. However, his big mistake was to get involved with Gus Tait and Keith Powell on the ferry back to Skye. Two hours and nine pints later they dumped this wreck in my Landrover. He spent the rest of the journey trying to convince me that he was sober and had seen the troops off.
Gordon fell in love with the MR system as most of us do and I sometimes think he believed we were his own private army. He sorted out lots of problems both personal and private for many troops and I seem to remember him defending one of the Stafford troops at a court martial; the outcome was a not guilty verdict.
Another story - Gordon was passing the Embankment station, one lunchtime, when a tramp, one of many who inhabited that area in cardboard boxes, spat at him. Gordon grabbed him, looked into his eyes and said “I am coming back with my troops at 5 o’clock and we will spray you with petrol and set light to you”. When Gordon went to catch his train that night there wasn’t a tramp in sight. What a man!
Gordon was fit but had little mountaineering experience in the early days. He thought that his position entitled him to act as a party leader; this sometimes caused team leaders a little problem, as it could be difficult to restrain him. However, on one occasion he really starred on the hill. He was descending Stob Ban in Glen Nevis with Steve Fleming of Kinloss MRT when Steve slipped and tumbled about 100ft into a river and was unconscious, face down in the water. Gordon climbed down the extremely difficult terrain, recovered Steve from the river and almost certainly saved his life.
MR has always been blessed with very good ILRs but Gordon was the very best of
the best. Gordon was awarded a well-deserved MBE for services to MR in 1984.
During his five years as ILR he made radical changes to the system and we are
still feeling the benefits of them today, fifteen years later. I consider it a
real privilege to have worked for him for those five years. I look back on
those years as my most enjoyable time in MR. Gordon leaves a wife and family to
whom we offer our sincere condolences.
Ray Sefton (Sunshine)
It was in January 1961 on Bomb Site Buttress and 8 Site Rocks that I first met Pib at RAF Valley. With six others we wandered most of the British mountain areas for three months. Under the hawk eyes of Johnnie Lees and Gwen Moffat we were being assessed on our suitability to be RAF MRT team leaders. In 1950 Pib had made the first ascent of Kneewrecker at 8 site, not easy for those days.
The most dangerous moment with him was on Stob Ban, Mamores, in a torrential rainstorm avoiding a mud avalanche on 14 February 1961. We were so keen in those days we actually reached the summit, our Everest. He was very fit, trotting round the Glenfinnan Horseshoe in a few hours, and I heard he was not too bad at carrying bicycles around the Snowdon Horseshoe. He was most helpful and generous: I remember him leaving sandwiches for Lees and me on Buachaille Etive Mor summit when we had been delayed on D Gully Buttress. In April 1976 when leader at RAF St Athan he visited me in Findochty. He had supported seven of us with food drops when walking all the way from Glenbrittle to Stonehaven across partly winter Munros.
I remember best his capability driving Landrovers, down the new Coire Cas Ski Road before it was completed, for instance. I doubt if Lees was his driving hero; with Pib one always felt he could get you there in one piece.
His bravery was undoubted. When team leader at Khormaksar he drove John Sims, Pete Addis and me to Crater. We just wanted a stroll from Tawela Tanks along the ridge of Jebel Sham San. It was about a month before Mad Mitch went in amongst the not very friendly locals. Trusting Pib knew them well. Depositing us he drove back through the centre of Crater alone, his only protection armour plated floor boards against land mines.
Later at Sharjah he was really organised. God knows how many half-shafts he took with him, but he went through quite a few. Desert rescue was his job. The LWB Landrovers were fitted with enormous, under-inflated sand tyres, with the torque required in proportion to their diameter. Entertainment was provided by the troops who were so well-trained they could change a snapped half-shaft in under five minutes. Time saved may have been spent in acquiring more monitors, vipers and scorpions for the menagerie. A drive with Pib through Buraimi and over the passes down into Muscat was quite an experience. He was just as efficient collecting exhausted NEAF Parachute Rescue Team members from the desert, trying to walk back to Sharjah from their dropping zone about twenty miles away.
I cannot speak for the late Tony Bennet but I know he would wish to add to mine his tributes to Pib. Everybody who knew him realises that Colin Pibworth served us all well.
Pib’s funeral service was conducted in Christ’s Church, Pen y Groes, the service taken by the RAF Valley padre, Ken Wilson, and the RAFMRA represented by Alister Haveron. Pib is buried in Rhosgadvan churchyard. Other obituaries appeared last year.
FLT LT DOUGLAS CHANDLER
I had a call informing me of the death of Flt Lt Douglas Chandler, Medical Officer with Madley /St Athan MRT circa 1947. ‘ Doug’ Chandler was a real character, and the family remember many stories of his time with MR. I have some of Doug's excellent photos to hand to Len McNab at Shap. One set of a Willys Jeep being repaired, was taken by LAC Ronald Parmenter, still an active member of RAFMRA living in Devon. In the severe winter of 1946/47 the team spent many hours digging out sheep and Welsh farmers out of snowdrifts and there are many shots of team shovelling!
Sadly on his way to a performance of his favourite Gilbert & Sullivan Opera the car in which Doug was being driven, was in a head-on collision. Doug, well into his eighties did not survive the crash. A sad end to a lengthy and very interesting career. There must be many surviving RAFMRA members who will find Doug's group photographs interesting.
FLIGHT SERGEANT ALF CARD AFM
When I was in the middle of researching Whensoever, I took a call one day from someone I had never met or even heard of: Alf Card. He explained that he was tracing his family history, and speaking to every Card he could find. In the course of a long conversation, he learnt what I was doing, and told me that he had been an RAF parachute instructor during the war. That led me to mention Flt Lt Des Graham’s epic recovery in the Burmese jungle of a Canadian crewman from No. 357 Squadron. He knew about that, and gave me the astounding but very welcome news that the parachutist who had jumped with Graham was an old pal of his; in fact, they were still in touch. I obtained the address of Tom ‘Chalky’ White, and went to see Tom and his wife Mary in Grangemouth, thus adding much first-hand information to that chapter of the book. So, although Alf had never been involved in the Mountain Rescue Service, he was indirectly very important to the way its 50-year history was told, and I was grateful to him.
He was born in Crewe in 1921. Leaving school at 14, he worked in a local hat factory and also helped his father who made boiled sweets and sold them in street markets. At the age of 18, he joined the RAF and became a PTI, and later was sent to the parachute training school at Ringway. After helping to train members of the Parachute Regiment, Alf was posted to Egypt in 1943, training people who were to drop into Yugoslavia and Greece to fight behind the lines.
He stayed in the Air Force after the war, and by 1956 had trained some 2000 parachutists, in recognition of which he received the Air Force Medal. Unusually, he received a bar to that four years later. He was posted to Akrotiri in 1961 to train the Near East Air Force parachute medical team. Obviously a man with a liking for busmen’s holidays, he was a member of the British Parachute Team, the British Parachute Association and the Oxford Parachute Club. In 1960, he made the then rare achievement of a 62-second free-fall jump from 12,000 feet.
Alf died in May at the age of 80, and our condolences go to his family.
JOHN HINDE BEM - 1927-2002
John was born on 21st December 1927 in Staveley, Derbyshire, an area of strong coal mining traditions. His father was a lorry driver and his mother worked in a local factory. Widowed when John was only 5 years old, his mother was left to bring up John, his older brother Frank, and his sister Beth, alone.
Inspired by a book he read at age 10, and as a member of the Army Cadets, he spent any free time exploring the hills of Derbyshire, cycling from place to place, and recording all in his extensive diaries. These run from 1941 when he was only 14. Full of sketches and hand drawn maps, they are a pleasure to read.
He was a pupil at Netherthorpe Grammar School from 1938 to 1943. At 15 and a half he followed his brother, Frank, into the RAF, and for 6 months he was its youngest member. Sadly, in 1950 Frank, a pilot, was killed in a flying accident. This was a great loss to John.
Trained as an aircraft engineer, John worked on engines for the first 18 years of his RAF career. During this time he gained some engineering qualifications including what was known as the G.I.Mech.E.
Betty and John met in Elgin during his first weekend in Scotland on his earliest posting to Kinloss in 1948. They married within a year and have been together for the last 53 years. They have a son, Neil, daughter Fiona, and 4 grandsons aged from nearly 20 to 16. Steven, Stuart, Finlay and Alex were grandsons 1, 2, 3, and 4 to him! Neil is working in Abu Dhabi as a civil engineer at the moment and Fiona is teaching in Fort Augustus.
At age 33 John’s mountaineering experience was recognised by the RAF and most of the remainder of his 30 years service was spent as leader of RAF mountain rescue teams in Kinloss and Cyprus. He climbed extensively throughout his life in Europe, Alaska, Iran, Turkey, Himalayas, Kenya, South Africa and Iceland. In 1964 he was awarded the BEM for his services to mountain rescue. At about this time too, he gained the Mountain Instructors Certificate, a civilian award which was to form the basis for his next career move.
John left the RAF in 1973 and was Chief Expeditions Officer on the Buckie built schooner “Captain Scott” for 3 years. This work involved training courses for young people in which they sailed the ship all around the west and north of the Highlands and Islands with occasional land based expeditions organised and led by John. In his own words “ three adventurous years doing this were probably the best years of his life”.
For 20 subsequent years John worked as an Outward Bound instructor in the British mountains, including teaching sailing, canoeing, rock and snow climbing, general mountaineering and, particularly, long mountain expeditions. During this time he touched the lives of countless folk, young and not so young, and their many letters, included in his diaries, bear witness to this.
As a long term member of the Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland, John has for over 20 years been its mountain accident statistician. The compiling and recording of this information has provided an invaluable service to Scottish mountain rescue over the years, and gave John a great deal of satisfaction.
Since their retirement from full time work about eight years ago, Betty and John have spent more time than ever in each others company, and have obviously thrived on it, as busy and adventurous as ever. At home they have been stalwart members of the over 50’s Rambling group, exploring the wonderful countryside of Banffshire and surrounding areas, and abroad, they have roamed the hills of Canada, Spain, Cyprus, Portugal, Poland and Tenerife. John had taken up Scottish Country Dancing in recent years. He had realised that he couldn’t beat Betty’s love of it, so he had to join in too! Together they had some great fun and made many new friends.
John spent his last week based at Muir Cottage in Braemar, a favourite haunt, in the company of good friends. He had a great time, loving every experience as usual. His diary record extends to the day before his death. It does not, however, cover his last hill! On his very last day, on his way home, he climbed Bennachie with a friend.
We are so glad that he was given the strength to enjoy life to its very end. John’s epitaph might be “A ship is safe in the harbour, but that’s not what it was built for. Go for it! Live life to the full!”
It is ironic, to say the least, that an issue of On the Hill that carries two obituaries by John Hinde – of Colin Pibworth and Bunny Downhill - should also carry the obituary of him. The sad news of the death of this great team leader came through just as OtH was approaching its editorial deadline.
A product of the late lamented RAF apprenticeship scheme of respected memory, he was nominally at least, an engine fitter, though he seemed to spend most of his career outside his trade, in the Mountain Rescue Service. I recall seeing a copy of the RAF Akrotiri station magazine wishing him well when he was leaving the Team Leader post there to go back to his trade in 1972, and adding “They don’t have propellers any more, John!”
He started walking on Kinder Scout at the age of about eleven at the beginning of the war, inspired not by friends like most of us but by Frank Smythe’s The Spirit of the Hills. Indeed, as he told me in 1990, he did not know any climbers, and to the best of his knowledge there were none in the town:
“So, I got an old German army rucksack and loaded this up with a blanket, biscuits or something like that, unsuitable foods, and I’d go off for the weekend. Very little money. I was a very early member of the Youth Hostels Association. I felt a stranger, because there was nobody with that interest. I felt a sort of freak.”
John first arrived on the MR scene in 1947, when he was posted to St Athan, the year that the MRT was moved from Madley. He applied to join the team, despite rather looking down on the hills in its patch, because, as he explained to me, “...I didn’t really regard them as mountains ... because by that time I knew the English Lake District and I knew Snowdonia well, and I didn’t think the Mountain Rescue Team at St Athan would be doing the sort of stuff that I wanted to.” However, the decision was made for him: he was declined as he was on a course.
Finishing his apprenticeship in 1948, he was asked to state his preference for his first trained posting, and opted for Scotland, because he had never climbed in Scotland. Then, with a rail pass to Kinloss in his pocket, he made his way north:
“...And I saw my first sight of the Scottish mountains from the great pinewoods of Strathspey. And I saw these Cairngorms and as soon as I was there, I thought this is where I’m going to live. And this is over forty years ago... and I’m still here!”
He told me about a Kinloss operation in 1949, when four men had been climbing Raeburn’s Gully on two ropes well below the cornice, which collapsed, sending all four down about six hundred feet. The worst injured was the second man on the first rope, who had been belayed onto icicles at the crux and dragged out of the cave by the rope as the leader fell past. Bunny Downhill (whose obituary by John himself appears above) and Geordie Haggard took two men to Glenmuick, whilst John and Flt Lt James Carden descended to the avalanche debris below the gully. One man had a broken leg, and John gave him morphine before splinting his leg with an RAF issue British Bulldog ice-axe, a piece of equipment that vied with Boots Grooved Heel for the title of Most Unpopular Bit of Gear at the time.
When the rest of the team arrived with their vehicles, John went up with the stretcher party to recover the injured man. It was the early hours of the morning before they got back to Ballater, and John recalled vividly the sight of the forty or so people with their Tilley lamps, forming a long diagonal line of blinding white light across the snow; an eerie and impressive sight, he told me.
A tragic case that haunted him from the mid-50s was that of a young couple, engaged to be married, who had left the old Glenmore Lodge (later Loch Morlich Youth Hostel) and walked towards Bynack More, but without leaving details of their proposed route. The man died of exposure on the wide moorland. John commented many years later, “Women usually last longer, and so had she.”
Probably in despair at having to leave him, she had carried on to get help. She made another five miles or so, and might have succeeded, but tragically was going in the wrong direction, towards the peat bogs at the head of Water of Cainlich, which then was even more remote than now since a road has been extended above Faindouran Lodge in Glen Avon.
For many weeks the teams and others tried to find her, long after her fiancé’s body had been recovered. Only one person persisted to the end: her brother, who continued looking weekend after weekend. Eventually he found her remains in the springtime, after most of the snow of that long winter had gone.
After a spell out of MR, with postings to Southern Rhodesia, South Wales and Dyce, he came back ‘home’ in 1957, this time to RAF Leuchars. One of his more memorable SAR operations there was the hunt for Johnny Squiers. After an RAF career, Squiers had joined English Electric as a test pilot, and at this time was testing the supersonic P1, the prototype Lightning. At 40,000 feet, something went wrong and he ejected. The Leuchars MRT was called out, but had no precise area in which to search; in fact, the pilot had come down in the sea. He was not picked up by Air-Sea Rescue, but after two days in his dinghy finally reached the shore. The team, however, stayed out, looking for the aircraft, which, it was later discovered, had crashed in the sea.
John took his team leader qualification in 1961, and for the next seven years led Kinloss MRT. Hamish MacInnes, in his book Call-Out (Hodder & Stoughton 1973), paid tribute to him:
John Hinde was then [1963] the Flight Sergeant in charge of the team. He had recently returned from an expedition in Alaska where he had his toes frost-bitten. Despite this handicap he was still getting about, though not back to his usual active self. John is a tall, quiet-spoken man and the fact that he is liked and respected by everyone in the rescue team is a high recommendation, for their assessment of fellow team members, and especially their team leader, is stringently critical.
In 1962 a shepherd reported that he had come across what looked like a Sputnik - an early Soviet spacecraft - high on the Ardgay moors. Scepticism about this report concentrated on the shepherd’s probable whisky consumption and the known presence of a wartime wreck not far from the reported spot, but nevertheless a small party was sent up there to investigate. They had to confirm the truth of the report, as far as they could judge. It had obviously been there some time and important items seemed to have been removed. Nearby there was a large number of clear fluid, which might have been water, which led the party to wonder whether an animal had been carried. No-one was allowed to speculate that it might be a spacecraft, but a brass recovery plate riveted to the outside gave the game away. It did not seem to have crash-landed, and was in good condition.
During this same period, the Kinloss team, noting that many of the crack regiments of the British Army had goats as mascots, reasoned that it was only logical that the RAF’s crack mountain rescue team should have the same privilege. Permission was sought, and obtained, and the Station Commander’s response, headed PLAYING THE GOAT, showed a nice touch of humour:
Regarding the goat’s adoption as an official mascot, the goat’s lineage and pedigree will first have to be obtained. It may also be necessary in due course to institute positive vetting procedure and in this respect past and present associates of the goat may render its adoption undesirable.
The animal stayed on the strength for several years, but became a source of irritation to the CO for the damage it was doing to his roses. Threats were issued, promises made, but still the goat continued to eat its way through everything in sight. When the Glen Brittle hut was formally opened on 5 June 1965, Mike Holton was one of the visitors. He was pulled aside by the Station Commander, who said, with a hint of desperation in his voice, “Look, Michael, if you’ve got any influence with these characters at all, please get them to do something about that bloody goat!”
During the actual opening of the hut that evening, Mike spoke to John through a haze of Talisker, asking him to keep the goat, metaphorically speaking, out of the CO’s hair.
A Shackleton from Kinloss iced up on 21 December 1967, and dived into a hillside with 13 men on board near to Loch Eil. The team set up base in the ballroom of Inverailort Castle, and this was the beginning of a long friendship between Kinloss MRT and Pauline Cameron-Head, the owner. She always afterwards, until her death a few years ago, made the team very welcome when they were in the area.
In 1969, John was posted to RAF Akrotiri, in Cyprus, to be Team Leader there. One unusual incident was when an aerial rigger, high on one of the radio masts at Bitter Lake, became unconscious and was suspended on his harness. John, Ian Cunningham and David Oliver started making their way up the masts with 500-foot ropes. The rigger seemed to stop breathing several times, and John shouted for oxygen bottles to be tied to one of the ropes so that they could be hauled up. It was difficult to get the man down, as he had fallen inside the triangular framework of the mast. In the end, he was lashed to Ian’s chest, who then had to prevent the rigger from suffering collisions with the mast as the wind buffeted them.
After Akrotiri, he was posted to Kinloss and went back to his trade from 1972 to 1973 and was a volunteer member of the MRT there, with George Bruce as Team Leader. He was awaiting the team leader position at Valley to become available, but decided to leave the service as he found that he “had to actually ‘work’ now and then - for the first time since 61.”
For many years after retiring from the RAF he managed the Outward Bound centre at Loch Eil, taking businessmen, children and others over the hills. In 1994, he became President of the Royal Air Force Mountain Rescue Association for a year, and then Vice-president. John also did much work for the Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland, mainly on rescue statistics.
In 1998, with several like-minded people, he helped organise an expedition to Nepal, given the acronym OGRE - Old Gits Reunion Expedition. With Spoons and Christine Blyth, Ian Jones and Chris Shorrocks he climbed Kala Pattar (18,217 ft). In perfect weather and only five miles west of Everest’s summit they had an excellent view up to South Col and the top, and down to the Khumbri Icefall and Everest Base Camp. A cairn and plaque were built on a promontory for Rod A. Fountain, killed in a road accident at Kincraig.
John Dumbill was another member of OGRE, who died before they met to go to Nepal. John Hinde made a plaque to him:
RAF MRT
JOHN DUMBILL
1998
WE MISS YOU
and photographed it on a cairn against the magnificent background of Cholatse. He wrote afterwards:
“The incredible sharp pointed summit, white against a deep blue sky, somehow signified our friendship and his achievements.”
He was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1964, during his Kinloss period, “For services to Mountain Rescue”. Many reading these words knew John much longer than I did, but still I feel privileged to have known him for 12 years and to have experienced his unstinting help. In closing I cannot do better than repeat John’s own words when writing about Bunny Downhill:
“Now he is dead: unbelievable, in our early 20s we all thought we were immortal.”
When he wrote that only a few months ago, he was almost painfully prophetic.
DENNIS WYNNE
I’m very sorry to have to pass on news of Dennis Wynne's death.
Ian Brunton rang and said that Dennis's wife had rung him to say that Dennis had died in his sleep on the night of 13 / 14 July.
Everybody who knew Dennis appreciated his individual sense of humour and bouncy personality. A sad and premature loss.
I believe that Dennis served not only at Valley MRT, but also in Masirah, but somebody better informed can correct and expand on that. I do know that he served at Kinloss and at Mountbatten on the Survival School with Ian Brunton.
Tom Taylor
Sadly, we also have to record the loss of the following, and our condolences go to the families. Anybody who knew any of these members well is invited to send in a full obituary to be published in the 2003 issue of On the Hill.
Alex Dockar (West Freugh 1955-7): 20 June 2000
Alan Rich (Kinloss 1948-9): recently died in Zimbabwe.