Military career progression, promotions to Flight Sergeant and Warrant Officer, experiences traveling overseas, and stories from postings including Egypt.
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My constituents queried why I hadn't been promoted earlier but I had a brief altercation with a senior officer at Butterworth over nothing really but that delayed any promotion. The paperwork got sorted out very quickly when I got back to Melbourne to the staff I had known previously. Letters flew backwards and forwards to Support Command and I got my promotion, many years after it should have occurred, to Flight Sergeant.
I immediately saw a position opening for a Flight Sergeant on a project so I went straight upstairs and applied. An hour and a half later I got the position. These are just silly things that happen in a service career.
From there it only took me about two and a half years to get promoted to Warrant Officer. I had a good tender for these positions and eventually took over command of the project on my own. This was only three months from the end of my career.
I knew I was going to be discharged and at this time I was offered all the promotions in the world but the kids didn't want to travel anymore. We would have had to go to America or France.
Over the years I went all over the place, including England. I went on a ferry flight to bring aircraft back from England. I heard many stories too. One I recall being told was about the guys sitting out in the hot sun in Luxor. (Suez Canal) They had been watching two heads bobbing up and down all the time in the distance. They didn't know at the time that there machine guns trained on them all the time. These guys wanted their money, the Empire's money. Anyway, all survived.
People: Derek [DISTEL, implied author]
Places: Butterworth, Melbourne, Support Command, England, Luxor, Suez Canal, America, France
Interesting facts
What a Warrant Officer is. The most senior non-commissioned rank, above the sergeants and below the commissioned officers. A Warrant Officer Engineer ran the maintenance of aircraft rather than working on them, and carried authority a junior officer would not argue with.