Raf Upper Heyford

A Memory of Upper Heyford.

I was in the Parachute section at Heyford until 1950 when I left the RAF, as an ageing wrinkly my memories are not that good, But I remember we used to get a battered old coach at a weekend ( Smiths Coaches)( I believe now Heyfordian) to bring us on weekend pass to London I then lived in Essex, he would then pick us up at about midnight from Marble Arch on Sunday for the return trip, I well remember on one occasion getting carried away with a girl I was with and missing my return trip, I had to get an early morning train to Oxford then walk all the way from Oxford station back to camp to be back on parade for Mon morning, I was shattered.
Part of my Job with two others was to unload the now empty chute bags from the Dakotas when they came back from the dropping zone, the Daks did not have their side doors on and on some occasions we would blag a ride on a night drop and you could look out though the open doorspace at the lights above Oxford. and I have not flown from those days to this.
We used to get Wednesday afternoons off to participate in a chosen sport I with a few others would go for long rambles in what was to me very nice countryside, I f anybody had told me then that in the future I would be living not so very miles away in the North Cotwolds I would have thought them nuts.

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