Corporal Ted Stenning was not a happy man. Here he was in the guardroom of RAF Habington at 3 o'clock in the morning on the last Sunday in October.
"Bloomin' rich innit" he muttered aloud, "lumbered with Orderly Corporal on the one night the blinkin' clocks go back."
Being trusted to see that nothing untoward happened in the camp while everyone else was asleep was not something he relished. He’d been in the RAF long enough to know that the duty of Orderly Corporal was a thankless task. He was convinced that the extra hour he would have to do before being relieved was deliberate on the part of the RAF authorities. He adjusted the clock on the wall so that it now read 2am and shuffled over to the table in the corner.
"Refreshments, airmen for the bloomin' use of," he thought as he surveyed the various items of tea making equipment.
He picked up the stained kettle and filled it from the tap over the sink. Returning to the table he plugged the kettle in and frowned. He paused as he waited for the sound of the water heating up.
"Now where's me bloomin' mug?"
Turning round he noticed the offending receptacle on the desk where he'd left it. He strode across the room and reached it just as the telephone rang. With a sigh he sat down heavily and, in as refined a tone as he could muster, said
"Guardroom, RAF 'abington, Horderly Corporal speakin'."
After a pause, a timid voice said, "is that the Guardroom?"
Corporal Stenning rolled his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation.
"It is," he replied, "hoose that speakin?"
"This is 687455 Leading Aircraftwoman Wilson speaking."
Well get on with it he thought but instead said, "L.A.C. Wilson, what can I do for you?"
"Oh, Corporal," she said, "all the lights have gone out in the WAAF accommodation block and I'm stood here talking to you in the pitch dark."
During these events the camp was being patrolled by Senior Aircraftman Graham Nicholls. He was the duty fire picket and, unlike Corporal Stenning, a man who took life seriously. His job was to patrol the camp looking for fires and he would consider it a personal failing if he didn't find one.
For the fourth time that night he had patrolled the airmen’s living quarters and, disappointed, was on his way back to the guardroom. As he turned the corner of the Airmen's Mess, SAC Nicholls stopped short. He could see the Guardroom, with its lights blazing, and, he was certain, white smoke pouring from the window. He immediately broke into a run and aimed for the fire bucket hanging outside the door. Without breaking his stride, he grabbed the bucket and threw himself through the entrance.
Corporal Stenning was explaining to LAC Wilson that the duty electrician would be summoned when the door flew open with a mighty crash. Instinctively, he threw himself back in the chair, his eyes fixed firmly on the column of water hurtling through the air towards him. His right knee banged the edge of the desk just as he took the full force of the icy cold torrent. Letting out a ferocious roar Corporal Stenning crashed to the floor followed by various sodden items from the desk. The final indignity was the telephone, tinkling its bell, as it struck him on the head, momentarily removing all sense of reality.
SAC Nicholls stopped in his tracks as the scene unfolded before him. He dropped the bucket and looked around the room for the flames before spotting the violently steaming kettle. As if in a trance he followed, with his eyes, the path of the steam from the kettle spout, to the ceiling and across to the window where it vented to the outside.
His attention was quickly drawn back to the tangled mess on the floor as Corporal Stenning groaned and began to move. Cold and wet, with an aching knee and pounding head, he raised himself painfully to his feet and glared at Nicholls.
"You stupid little airman" he roared, "I'm gonna have your guts for garters... I'm gonna make you wish you'd ...."
SAC Nicholls slowly backed out of the door then broke into a run as the irate Corporal crash to the ground once more, with the telephone wire coiled round his ankles. He didn't stop running until the Guardroom was no longer in sight and when he did stop, to catch his breath, he found himself outside the WAAF block.
Leaning on the pillar by the block entrance, SAC Nicholls bent forward with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. As the pounding in his chest subsided he heard a noise in the doorway and deftly stepped behind the pillar to avoid being seen. To his surprise he saw Flying Officer Butterworth, the Orderly Officer, come through the entrance with his left arm around the immense shoulders of Corporal WAAF Phyllis Bell. SAC Nicholls remembered her being pointed out to him during his first night in the NAAFI at RAF Habington.
"…That, my boy, is Corporal Phyllis Bell. Strictly off limits as far as you are concerned. She will only entertain being chatted up by the officer classes…"
Nicholls watched her as she passed and for the first time in his service life decided that there was, after all, a disadvantage to being an officer.
To describe her as a big girl would be an understatement of enormous proportions. Like describing the Titanic as a pleasure boat. Much discussion went on about the engineering miracle that must have been achieved in the manufacture of her bra. Nicholls had heard it mentioned that the same engineering principles were used to develop a parachute that would safely deposit two men, in full kit, on the ground at the same time. Unfortunately it had to be abandoned, such was the wind resistance, it came down too slowly.
"Darling Phyllie," said the officer, slipping his right hand inside her tunic blouse.
Nicholls couldn't believe his eyes as he watched the officer's arm disappear past the elbow. There was a hell of a risk, decided Nicholls, in getting too close to Phyllis Bell's chest. One cough is all it would take.
"I'm going to the Guardroom to check with the Orderly Corporal," he said. "Give me half an hour and then come to my window in the Officer's Mess. You can get into my room without being seen and we'll spend a wonderful night together. Don't forget to turn the power back on here, will you my sweet?"
"All right, Rodney," said the WAAF, "I can't wait 'till then, kiss me first."
Nicholls bit his knuckles to stifle any sound as he watched the Officer extract his arm from the tunic and then stand on tiptoe to reach, with his lips, across the gargantuan bosom.
'If she wants to get into his window,' Nicholls thought to himself, 'he'll need double patio doors.'
Nicholls decided to follow the Officer. He knew that he would not be pleased with the state of the guardroom and the Corporal would have some explaining to do. It didn’t matter; he’d hatched a plan to save them both.
As he peered through the Guardroom window Nicholls could see the dejected figure of Corporal Stenning, hanging his head in shame as he leant on the mop. The Officer was stood in front of him, shouting with all his might as he listed the inadequacies of the man before him. Nicholls had to admit, the Guardroom did look a mess and he could just imagine the retribution being planned for the airman who had rushed in with the fire bucket. The Officer moved to the door and said, just before he left for his meeting with Corporal Bell,
"When you are relieved at oh-nine-hundred hours report to my office. I'm going to put you on a charge."
Nicholls stood in the doorway looking at the slumped back of Corporal Stenning. As he moved the mop back and forth he was making little impression on the water that covered the floor. Fifteen years of undetected crime was about to come to an end. With trepidation the airman cleared his throat. The Corporal spun round and at the same time launched the wet mop like a spear. It thudded into the wall beside Nicholl's head and fell to the floor leaving a dirty stain on the paintwork.
"Corporal," said Nicholls, ducking into the room and darting over to the table, "we can both get out of this if you'll just listen. Butterworth won't dare charge you if you'll please listen!"
The Corporal stopped advancing on the pleading airman and lowered his hands.
"Whadda ya mean", he growled.
Nicholls explained, in fine detail, what he had witnessed
at the entrance to the WAAF block.
"So if we go to his room, on some pretext, and catch him red handed, he won't want it known that he had a WAAF in his room. He'd get into serious trouble for that."
Corporal Stenning smiled as the scene was played out in his imagination. Nothing pleased him more than to get one over on an officer and this was a golden opportunity.
"So I don't need to send the electrician then," he said.
"The blighters turned the lights out themselves so 'e wouldn't be seen."
The recent hatred he felt for Nicholls evaporated as he realised he was in the clear.
"'elp me tidy up," said Stenning cheerfully, "then we'll go and get 'im."
A little over an hour later the two men, each armed with a torch, were crouching under the wide-open window of the Orderly Officer's room. The window had jammed open when Phyllis Bell had eased herself inside.
"Oh my darling Phyllie, your bosoms are so large."
"Yes, and you are so dainty."
"Oh, er.... um... try just using your thumb and forefinger, my sweet."
"Ahh, that's better."
At that point Corporal Stenning and Nicholls stood up and shone their torches through the open window. The sight that greeted them earned them both free drinks in the NAAFI for months to come.
Corporal Phyllis Bell was sitting on the bed naked from the waist up and somewhat reminiscent of a barrage balloon ready for take off. She screamed and her voluminous bosoms quivered, wrenching the arm trapped between them and causing Flying Officer Butterworth to wince in pain.
The Officer was lying on the bed, naked apart from his shoes and socks. But the sight that earned the drinks, during the re-telling of the tale, was that of Phyllis Bell's thumb and forefinger holding a part of his anatomy in the manner of a cocktail sausage at a Buckingham Palace garden party.
She jerked her hand away without remembering to let go. Rodney Butterworth was lifted off the bed by the appendage and let out a blood-curdling scream. This caused Phyllis to release the member and the officer crashed to the floor.
"Sorry to disturb you, sir," said Corporal Stenning, "we noticed your window open and was worried that you might have had intruders."
They kept their torches shining on the couple who were by now struggling to put on their clothes.
"Turn those lights off Corporal," said the officer, "there's a lady present."
"Ooh, you are a gentleman, Rodney,” said Phyllis adoringly.
"I think we'd better keep them on sir, you're trying to put your head and shoulders through the lady's brassiere."
At this point Corporal Bell gathered up what she could, ran out of the room, down the corridor and through the Mess exit. The two airmen watched her run over the grass towards the WAAF block and Corporal Stenning couldn't help but wish that she was able to play for the Station rugby team.
'She's unstoppable' he said to himself.
The airmen looked back into the room.
"About our appointment at oh nine hundred hours, sir, the Guardroom is now back to normal. I don't think we need bother the Station Commander, do you sir?"
The officer paused and glanced up at the two airmen.
"I su…suppose not Corporal," he replied, dejectedly.
Half an hour later, safely back in the guardroom, the two airmen were each trying to drink a mug of tea with tears of laughter streaming down their faces as they relived the events of the night.
"Did you see the way she picked him up?" asked Nicholls, trying without success to stifle his giggles.
Corporal Stenning had, at that point, just taken a swig of tea which he promptly ejected, like an aerosol, at the telephone in front of him. As if in protest the instrument began to ring and, with great difficulty, he attempted to answer it.
"Is that the Orderly Corporal?"
It was a timid voice he'd heard before.
"LAC Wilson," he replied almost choking, "what is it now?”
"I'm just reporting all the lights are back on now."
"Thank you," he replied. "Should they go out again, knock on Corporal Bell's door. She is eminently qualified to fix them."
LAC Wilson looked at the instrument she was holding in puzzlement as she heard the shrieks of laughter, just before the line went dead.