The net result of that - now what happened
was if you were going to become
you all went to the same place,
which was RAF Biggin Hill,
And these lasted 3 days.
You go there in civilian clothing,
you're the lowest rank
They don't know you
who's there trying to
And most of the people who are there are
So I go to Biggin Hill for these 3
Now my recollection of loadmasters
what they do is they serve
I don't realise of course that they are
when paratroopers are on there,
But I just saw it as a simple job,
So I had no planning,
I said, "OK, I can do that.
I'll just go, do these 3 days of tests,
I didn't realise that if you didn't
you didn't do the second day.
If you didn't pass on the second,
So I just went expecting
and I was there for 3 days.
First day, a lot of admin stuff -
Second day, one of the things
leadership test to see if you
So two RAF officers
"OK, we're going to give
who are also here looking to
"And we want you - this is on -
where we've drawn this line
that this is the banks of river,
and there's another line over there,
that's the banks of the river,
and this is a crocodile-infested river."
"So what we want you to do,
you can choose any of the
and you've got to get these
"Do you understand?"
So I brief these guys, say,
"Well, let's go and see what's
There's some barrels, there's some planks,
"Well, let's collect stuff that we
and we'll bring them across here,
and then we're going to climb across it."
"So we're gonna get the barrels
we're gonna get a plank across,
I'm gonna get you on the plank,
there'll be a plank to the
and I'll climb up the plank,
"Any questions?"
I get to the point where we've got
the plank across,
and all we've got to do is
Now these guys are
they've just finished
or 22, they've just
I'm 23, approaching 24,
I've been overseas for 2 years.
I'm well-rounded
But they can see that we're going
and they're starting to get excited.
And they're saying, "Come on,
I said, "Before I climb this plank,
And they said, "Yeah, yeah,
I said, "Well, you look really
there are no crocodiles
And they all laugh and fall off.
And I thought, "Oh, damn it."
cos I realised these two officers
are behind me marking down.
I thought, "Oh no, they
I'm not taking this
But as I hear them walk
"Well, that wasn't too bad, was it?"
I'm not sure what they
Later on, when I did do
I realised that they weren't
to get these guys across
They were marking me on
six guys to do what I
And therefore I had passed the test.
