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This contribution was submitted by Haydn Evans and is added to the site with his permission.

I was then posted to 12 PACT Pre-Air Crew Training. Cadets who hadn’t been to university and weren’t in a university squadron had this initial period of training before they took part in the actual flying training. This took place in a technical college in Edinburgh to Christmas 1943 and was a mixture of military exercising and academic study. I was billeted with four others with Mr. and Mrs. Dunlop in Buckingham Terrace, Edinburgh in a large home near the college. There were 24 of us in our flight, supervised by a Flt Sgt and Flt Lt. There was one incident in August…I was instrumental in assisting an old lady in a motor accident… and Mrs. Dunlop wrote to my mother about it: 13th August 1943. “Dear Mrs. Evans your son will have told you how he helped an old person who was knocked down by a bus. He had only said he witnessed an accident and had to give his name. I have a friend, Mrs. Harvey who told me that a dear old coke was in an accident and an airman pulled her out of the way and pulled her clear of the bus and certainly saved her life by his quickness. That he had been very kind to her and helped her in every way. He also gave her his hanky. She wished she knew his name, so I told her. I have also told his officer about it so it should go on his record. He is splendid, we are all very proud of him. Your son will have told you that he and five others sleep here. They are all very nice we are all glad to have them. They are counting the days till the holidays…Yours sincerely, Mary Dunlop“.

After Edinburgh I was under orders to proceed to Stratford on Avon to take up training at the ITW - Initial Training Wing…and was billeted at the Shakespeare Hotel in the centre of the town with a number of other cadets. ~The course lasted 12 weeks and involved such things as: meteorology , star constellations, night navigation, theory of flight, quite a lot of emphasis on physical fitness. We were then posted to a small aerodrome near Wolverhampton for 12 hours flying training on Tiger Moths…that magnificent two-seater open-cockpit training which is still in use today.
After that we went to London again for aptitude tests which electronically recorded your reactions to different situations which were then measured scientifically. I passed out with the grading of cadet pilot and waited the next step in training to Elementary Training School which usually took place overseas. At the time it was really important to me…becoming a pilot. In its own way we were the best of the best.

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