COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER EIGHT IN A QUANDARY
banked turn which threw the camera wide. The solution was to
terminate one run at the bend and line up for the next section before
switching the camera on again.
On the last of those river sorties I felt the onset of a cold. At the
time I thought nothing of it, never even realising the implications. For
in rather less than a year the career on which I had set my heart would
collapse with devastating suddenness.
That common cold turned into acute sinusitis, which subsequently
became chronic, but I believed it to be cured after a month of
treatment in the RAF Hospital at Halton. The deep ray therapy had
seemed to work and I was discharged in time for my posting to
Cranfield where ETPS had just moved from Boscombe Down.
We were a vintage crew on No 4 course, the first in peacetime.
Amongst them were two other Old Cheltonians. Jim Haigh, who had
spent most of his war with Coastal Command, had been a fellow
bandsman with me in the OTC, and Dickie Martin. Dickie had
achieved fame early in 1940 as the Prisoner of Luxemburg. Flying
Hurricanes, with No 1 Squadron in France, he had made a forced
landing and been interned. Allowed out for exercise he paraded back
and forward watched by an idle and unsuspecting guard. Each day he
extended the length of his walk until he got far enough away to make
a successful break for freedom. 'Officer Martin' was back with his
Squadron in time to take part in the Battle of France.
There were thirty three of us in all. Ron Hockey, the only Group
Captain, with an illustrious record in Special Forces, was the most
decorated apart from Neville Duke. Others stood out too. The hell
raising Paddy Barthropp, and after 31 years as a POW who wouldn't be
slightly mad, a warm hearted larger than life character. Pete Garner
who was to lose his life flight testing the Westland Wyvern and a
number of naval officers.
One eclipsed the rest. Forceful, brilliant and ambitious, with a
single mindedness which would take him to the top unless he upset too
many people on the way. For Nick Goodhart was one of those
infuriating individuals who knew he was right and, on the rare
occasions when he was wrong, could drive his opponents into the
ground with the force of his arguments and his personality!
Amongst his naval colleagues were others of a different stamp.
Ken Hickson urbane and relaxed, whose appearance, even in his
twenties, was vaguely reminscent of a bishop. In later years, as
Commandant of ETPS, his looks and manner were almost identical to
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