On arrival at North Luffenham, I discovered immediately that married quarters – a scarce commodity on most camps – were freely available here, albeit a distance away from the base. The camp had recently taken part responsibility for a newly built estate at North Witham, around 18 miles north, aside the Stamford to Grantham stretch of the A1 (Great North Road). Reportedly the estate had been constructed for the workers of an open cast mine planned nearby. When this project was cancelled at the last minute, the RAF at North Luffenham and Cottesmore stepped in to take advantage of the available housing.

This news was not the deciding factor in our decision for an early marriage, but certainly was influential. Not many couples get the opportunity to move into a brand new, fully furnished house immediately on marriage, but that happened to us. I had a couple of weeks’ leave on return from Germany. We used this fully to prepare for our wedding on 3 June 1970.

I have never been able to understand the social demand for expensive wedding preparations. It is just a waste of money for young couples. At this important juncture in their lives, there are inevitable expenses more deserving of any available income. Whether a wedding happens in a church or a register office, a couple is equally married in the eyes of the law. For reasons stated before, I would not consider a religious ceremony. Kath, who was a Church of England follower, understood this from the start and did not insist on a church wedding, agreeing my proposal for a register office marriage. She did, however, ask that any children we had be raised in Church of England practices, not Roman Catholic. She was pushing against an open door with this request; I agreed without reservations.

After our wedding at Huddersfield Register Office, we took a few days’ honeymoon in York. Well, that was the plan, but having foolishly booked into the first available place – the Railway Hotel within the York Station building and not a local Bed & Breakfast – the cost immediately exhausted our monies and we returned home the next day. Nevertheless, we were able to take over – or “march in” using military terms – our new married quarters within a week.

A couple of interesting members in our makeup: veteran Johnny Guerin was then – to the best of my knowledge – the last remaining French linguist in the RAF (he had later trained in Russian), whilst Larry Bawdon had neither served at Digby nor Gatow. He and his wife had been pre-selected after his initial Russian language training to go straight to the office of the Air Attaché at the British Embassy in Moscow. This was a posting offered to married linguists from time to time, although those who completed this attachment were generally tight-lipped about their duties there. 

The Language School also sometimes taught officers bound for diplomatic duties. The story has been since been published of one officer who learned Russian at Luffenham before going to Moscow. At the end of his stay there, his counterpart (probably KGB) told him “Although you will deny it, we know that you speak Russian. We were aware of this from the beginning of your placement here. We had read a report about your one-year posting to the RAF Language School in publicly available records”. If there was ever an example of the different approaches to security east and west, this is it. There is no way that the Soviet military would publicise the movements of its officers; the RAF News, on the other hand, contained a regular officers’ postings section for all to see.

We met our joint instructors on the first day: Herr Morgenbesser, originally from the Sudentenland German-speaking area in now Czechia/the Czech Republic, and Tony Parsons, a native of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. They could not have been more different in many ways, but together they made a formidable teaching team. Tony once described their differences as follows: “If one day we went into the classroom to find a group of chimpanzees sitting there, I would storm off immediately to complain to my superiors. Herr Morgenbesser, on the other hand, would look up, say ‘Open your books at page 39’, and carry on regardless.” We were never given Herr Morgenbesser’s first name, although one of my colleagues recalls once seeing a book he was using with the name “Nick Pilic” on the inside front cover. Perhaps this was his birth name. “Morgenbesser” is German for “Tomorrow better”. It would be a suitable choice for a new start alias.

It must be admitted that I had the benefit of already having studied German to GCE ‘O’ Level standard (albeit with a miserable failure result) when the course started. I also had another advantage: my new wife Kath. She, too, had taken German for a period at grammar school. With her help – especially as concerns training for the inevitable vocabulary tests – I was top of the academic course from beginning to end. 

We all passed an early sitting of the German ‘O’ Level examination and, with Tony Parsons’ freely given guidance, I achieved an ‘A’ Level, followed by a Civil Service Commission Interpreter qualification in German. I got a ‘B’ pass in the ‘A’ Level.  Tony reckoned that the only reason why I did not achieve a top mark was because I did not have practice in answering the literature section of the paper, a skill which my school-based competitors would have refined. I was just delighted to add an ‘A’ Level to my short list of qualifications.

There was one influential part of my ‘A’ level examination. As the testing was organised through the RAF, I had to make a journey down to RAF Uxbridge near London for the conversational portion of the examination. The Education Officer there – a Squadron Leader – was to be my examiner. He started the test, writing notes now and again. When our ten minutes or so was up, he said to me in English “Please wait there, I’ll be back in a minute”. He returned full of smiles. He told me the test was completed. He then added: “The reason I left after the exam was to check a few words I had never heard before. You were exactly right with their usage. You could just as easily be examining me here”. He then drove me back to the Tube station. On the way he made a comment that, if he ever found out that he was to test someone from the School of Languages again, he’d make sure that he was fully up to date with modern German. “Things have advanced in the ten years since I finished university” he concluded. His remarks boosted me tremendously and, resultingly, put the germ of an idea into my head for the first time that higher education qualifications might not, after all, be outside my capabilities.

When we moved over to ‘B’ Block and the practical side of our language work – this time logging the voice messages of the East German pilots – my success continued. I recall our first test, where after the tape was finished, I went back over filling in the gaps I had left in my written record. Our Applied Language Flight instructor – fellow Yorkshireman Brian Siberry – told me to leave it there, as all my classmates had already completed their logs. A couple of days later, when giving out the results, Brian made a point of giving the results in reverse order. He started at around 70% and, by the time he had reached the sixth result, had got up to around 80%. He then paused and said “Leo – 94%”. That day stays fixed in my memory. It was reportedly the highest live logging mark ever achieved by a student, apparently by several percentage points. When I returned to the section three years later, this time as an instructor, this achievement was mentioned even then.

I was elated with this success, but I couldn’t tell anyone outside our circle, even my wife. I endeavoured to match, or even surpass this result, in later tests but this did not quite happen. When it came round to the final examination, I was ready to continue to rewrite the records. I thought that I did well in the test but, when the results came out, I was just beaten by Lynn Howells for the first time. I don’t recall being over-disappointed in this; I was surprised but genuinely pleased that Lynn had shown his true colours in the end. And I learned a valuable lesson that day: pride often comes before a fall. As Rudyard Kipling wrote: “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same… you’ll be a man, my son!”

Kesteven Rugby

I took up playing for the RAF North Luffenham rugby side on Wednesdays once more. However, problems with accessibility from my new home location thwarted my initial plans to return to weekend club games with Oakham. I didn’t have a car and there were no direct buses there from North Witham. 

By chance, I met a player from the local side – Kesteven Rugby Club – one evening in the village pub. Within a few minutes of talking to him, I already had a lift to the club for the next Monday evening’s training session. The clubhouse and pitch was located around ten miles further up the A1, just south of Grantham.  In this way, I quickly found myself representing my nearest team.

This proved to be a most enjoyable arrangement. Whereas Oakham had generally played games in the highly competitive Leicester area, Kesteven’s fixtures tended to be against rural Lincolnshire sides. The atmosphere in the club was correspondingly lighter, with an emphasis on enjoyment of the game, rather than a ‘win at all costs’ attitude. 

For a short period, I was the only RAF player in the first team, until I persuaded a couple more from Luffenham to join me there. They soon shared my opinion that Kesteven were a great group of lads to play alongside. The fact that my newcomer additions made the side stronger and harder to beat had, of course, a beneficial effect on team spirit.

I thoroughly relished my days playing at Kesteven. It was another fifteen years before I came across a similar rugby club at which it was always a pleasure to join in. I had to move back home to Huddersfield YMCA to find the same enjoyment with teammates and their approach to playing.

A second Margaret Thatcher?

We were delighted to find out in early 1971 that Kath was pregnant. She received her prenatal support at the nearest hospital – Grantham. This town was the birthplace of the UK’s first female prime minister, so perhaps it was preordained that we should have a daughter. Suzanne Elisabeth Leonard was born 7 September 1971 at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital.

I recall that, after a false alarm a week earlier (Suzanne’s due date was given as 4 September, my birthday), Kath was taken into the hospital’s maternity ward for observation earlier on the 7^th. I made arrangements for a friend to give me a lift to the hospital that evening. On arrival, the ward sister gave a mask and gown, telling me “Hurry up if you want to witness the birth of your baby!” She was right; within an hour, at around 8 o’clock in the evening, I was there at Suzanne’s birth. Mother and daughter, as they say, were both fine.

A couple of days later I arrived by taxi at the hospital to take them both home. To save time, we decided to call in on the way back at the Register Office in Grantham to record her birth. After the female registrar there said that she had to remind us that our chosen spellings of Suzanne’s names were not the commonly accepted versions, she went on to add – with a broad smile – “You didn’t have to bring the baby to prove the birth. This certificate is enough”.

I was immediately a proud dad. I recall clearly how pleased I was to take a few days old Suzanne in her pram alone to the local shop at North Witham. I felt disappointed that I wasn’t stopped by everyone, congratulating me and asking to look at the new baby. Just one person, a near neighbour, made a comment: “You’ll soon be wishing she’d stay sleeping like that more often”. He was, of course, right.

We quickly made a trip back to Huddersfield to show off our new addition to friends and relatives. My mother was delighted with her first granddaughter. She became a most beloved “Granny” to all her grandchildren. Even now, Suzanne and Paul repeat that no-one made Yorkshire puddings or steak pies like my mum. She adored taking care of them, showing infinite patience, always willing to step in on caring tasks without a single complaint. Carole, then a teenager, had already travelled down to spend some time with us at North Witham. The family now was closer than at any time previously.

It was soon time to look forward to my next posting. For a newly qualified German linguist there was only one option: back to Berlin. In October 1971 I left wife and daughter behind, staying with a family friend in Huddersfield, with a mission to obtain married quarters at RAF Gatow as quickly as possible. 

_____________________