In any summer camp, the various groups of campers will inevitably succumb to “Us vs. Them”. Sometimes this rivalry is encouraged by the Camp staff as a means of building teamwork, sometimes it's traditional, lasting from season to season in an almost mystical process of handing-down grudges from older campers to younger ones and sometimes it springs fully formed from the foreheads of the campers themselves as the sumer progresses. Air Cadet camps are no exception to this, and rivalries between the Leadership flights, Band, Athletic and Tech Weenies will be enthusiastically embraced by the cadets.
More often than not, the rivalry is gently and subtly steered by the camp's Officers and NCOs to take the form of one-upmanship and “We're better than that scruffy lot over there. Our uniforms are immaculate, our rooms are spotless and out esprit de corps outshines theirs ten times over.” When all the flights are embracing this ideal, the sprit of the Camp is high, and the Cadets can do anything they set their minds to. Seeing an entire camp coalesce in this manner is very gratifying to the staff whose achievement it is.
And then there are the Gliding Scholarship cadets. They've all been there and done that. They're senior cadets who have worked for years to earn the ultimate goal of the Air Cadet program: their wings. When they return from this summer, they will appear to be near godlike beings to the new recruits because they are among that small minority who have left the Earth under their own guidance and returned to it safely. They don't need to walk on water; they simply fly over it. For the most part they took the tech track at previous camps, studying Aircraft Systems, Air Studies, Aviation Technology and Aerospace and many other courses at their home squadrons. Esprit de corps matters less to them than the myriad of pieces of knowledge that make up a good pilot. Shiny boots and a stiffly ironed uniform are only a means to the end of earning their wings. Their hearts and minds are in the clouds. Their course lasts 6 weeks, with intensive classroom work for half the day, followed by flying the other half. Uniforms disappear at gliding camp; flight suits, sunglasses and baseball caps distinguish the budding aviators from those lesser mortals they consider to be beneath them.
Yet between the flights on course “Us vs. Them” still rules. A Fight considers the scruffy lot over in B flight to be uncouth barbarians. B Flight thinks that A Flight are stuffy, stuck-up prima-donnas who need to be taken down a peg or dozen.
So it was in the summer of 1981 when I arrived in Princeton, BC to spend the next 6 weeks. I was one of 60 cadets that summer to earn one of the highly coveted places on the course. We were unique in that there were no other cadets at the camp with us, just us, our instructors and the camp staff who kept things running. Once we were sorted out, I found myself along with 29 other cadets neatly slotted into B Flight for the duration of the summer. We settled ourselves down in the former classrooms of the Princeton Secondary School, which had been cleared out for our use, with bunkbeds set up down either side of the classroom and a makeshift clothing rack in the middle whereon would hang our uniforms and our highly coveted flight suits. The boys each got one room per flight. The girls, there being fewer, had one to share, and a little better storage, with dressers for clothes and things.
Cadets are mischevious, air cadets doubly so, and pilots the worst of the lot. One of the shorter guys made a name for himself by standing still between the hanging flightsuits and then silently tapping the shoulder of the poor staff cadets as they went through the rooms on their nightly security patrols, scaring the life out of them. Our instructors had their work cut out keeping us busy and distracted enough with our classes, studying and endless worying about the Ministry of Transoportation Licensing Exam we would sit at the end of the forth week of camp. This was the make-or-break of our careers. If we didn't pass that exam, we would automatically fail the course and be sent home in disgrace. The first 4 weeks of the camp passed in relative quiet, the simmering rivalry held in check by our lack of time to do anything about it.
Oh, there were minor pranks played. One of the instructors found his airplane wrapped in toilet paper one morning, beds were short-sheeted and more than one cadet awoke in the middle of the night with their hand immersed in warm water. Major Weber's son (we called him Minor Weber) woke up one fine morning on the parade square, with his bed neatly arranged in the exact centre. But those were mere bagatelles, hardly worthy of the pent-up creative force that was being so tightly reigned in by our hectic schedules.
Once the MOT exam was passed, however, we who survived the winnowing were free of the shackles that had gripped us so tightly. We still flew half days, but the other half was free time, precious hours to spend as we would, our reward for our intense efforts during the previous 4 weeks. The pranksters came alive.
Our routine was such that every morning we would be marched down the street to a local restaurant for breakfast. If we were flying first, we'd get the first shift, otherwise we'd get the second. On this particular morning, we would be flying in the afternoon, so we were in no particular hurry. But wait, what's going on? Our Senior Cadet didn't show up? How could we get to breakfast if we had nobody to march us over? Simple, we'd march ourselves! As a body, we all called out the drill commands we'd heard every day. “B FLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT, ATTENNNNNNNNNNNNNNN SHUN!” “MOVE TO THE LEFT IN THREES, LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEFT TURN!” “BY THE LEFT, QUIIIICK MARCH!” “LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT!” And off we marched to breakfast. After breakfast, we formed ourselves back up. “B FLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT, ATTENNNNNNNNNNNNNNN SHUN!” “RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT DRESS!” “EYYYYEEEEEEEEEES FRONT!” and marched ourselves back to the school.
There we found our missing Senior, hogtied around one of the beds in A Flight's room. We set him free and immediately began plotting our revenge. It revolved around those makeshift clothing rods. They consisted of a length of 6 cm pipe, mounted on 2 upright 2 X 4 boards with rudimentary feet which kept them more-or-less vertical. This was deemed sufficient to see to the needs of the room's inhabitants for the relatively short time we were using them. We were lucky that the classroom doors opened outwards, and that A flight's room was at the far end of the hall from the front door. Each classroom had 2 doors so we cunningly ran a piece of strong twine from the top of the nearest clothing rack upright to the knob of the door nearest the front doors. We tightened it up until the rack was almost ready to tip over onto the dusty floor (which we had ensured would be extra dusty, then made our escape through the other door. We counted on our victims' laziness to send them through the nearest rather than the farthest door. Then, not wishing to draw too much attention to ourselves, we made ourselves scarce. Of course, by doing so, we also gave ourselves an alibi. How could we possibly be arranging such a nefarious deed when we were so visibly busy spelling out rude messages with our bodies on the school grounds for our comrades flying overhead?
Lunchtime came, and the hungry hordes of A Flight came rampaging into the school from the flightline bus. We held our breaths and listened. YES! From the direction of their room came a most satisfying CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAASH indeed. Victory this round fell to B Flight
