Blast from the Past after 41 years - Military Reunion

On 1st November 1977, after professional technical training in the RAF, I was posted to RAF Brawdy. This ex-naval base had been returned to the RAF in 1974 and had become the No1 Tactical Weapons Unit for flying training. The airfield is perched atop a hill near the coastal town of Newgale, in southwest Wales. The coastal fog is a regular visitor which prevents local flying and makes the airfield look like a Castle in the Sky. This weather pattern was colloquially known as ‘Engineer’s Sunshine’, as such weather usually resulted in very short working days for the engineers. I was just seventeen years old at the time and in awe of being responsible for working on operational fighter jet aircraft. In the five years I lived and worked at RAF Brawdy, I went from a naive adolescent young boy to an immature and physically broken adult. In March 1979 I suffered an extremely serious road traffic accident on my brand-new Yamaha, XS 650 Special motorcycle.  I wrote off my pride and joy and did a pretty good job wrecking myself as well. In 1981, I eventually succumbed to letting go of the past and sold the bike as scrap to Russ Shand, an RAF mate. We never kept in touch, life simply taking us in different directions.

Flying training ceased at RAF Brawdy in 1992 and all flying stopped in 1994. Twenty years later in 2014, two RAF Brawdy mates; Pete Buckingham and Vic Osborne, decided to arrange an RAF Brawdy reunion at the local campsite in Newgale. It was a success and has now become an annual event and somewhat of a pilgrimage for a few hardcore Brawdyites (you know who you are) and on 19th July 2024, the reunion would celebrate its 10th Anniversary. Through the power of social media, more Brawdyites have slowly come out of the woodwork, but sadly many have passed away. The Roll of Honour for those who served at Brawdy gets bigger every year and I wanted to make sure that I attended a reunion before my name gets added to the list. I had decided that 2024 would be my year and I would travel there and back in just a few days.

On arrival at the Campsite, the day of the reunion, engineers sunshine was all around making me feel at home. It too, had come for the reunion weekend. I was met by my old mate Mike Bailey. We had not seen each other since I left Brawdy in 1983. The years had been good to us, as we both recognised each other immediately. I caught up with others I had served with, but many worked on a different part of the base, so we shared stories of people we both knew. One chap at the campsite looked like Father Christmas and was clearly a biker. It was Russ Shand. Russ could not remember that he had bought my written off pride and joy. He told me that he had used my bike as an organ donor to complete a mild café racer he was building at the time in his back bedroom - not his garage! He was using the engine from a XS2 650 Yamaha, the predecessor model of my XS 650 Special along with parts from a Suzuki GS250 and T500. It made me smile to know that my pride and joy had breathed new life into an older version of itself. Russ shared a photo of his Frankenstein Café Racer. We celebrated piecing together the two parts of the story, it was a great excuse (like I needed one) to drink out of the tankard I was gifted just 41 years ago!

Everyone had a great time and I felt so grateful for being able to attend and learn about what had happened in people’s lives. A lifetime of memories shared with a few old RAF mates in just a few hours. The group photo with me second left, represents over 300 years of life experience.  A trip full of memories, which is what life is really all about. Smiling all the way back home. Till next time…..