In August 1943 I received my call-up papers to join the Royal Air Force as a medical officer with the rank of flying officer. This rank was equivalent to that of a first lieutenant in the army. The newly recruited doctors first reported to a training centre where there were about ten other doctors who had been conscripted at the same time. We were given a week's preliminary training: how to salute, how to march reasonably in step and the structure of the RAF. Since I had been in the Officer Training Corps at Ampleforth, this was straightforward.

After a few days of basic training, we were sent to a large air force station at Halton, Buckinghamshire, to learn something about aviation medicine and tropical medicine. In order to impress on us how important it was to use oxygen, we were put into a decompression chamber. As the atmospheric pressure was lowered, we were asked to do simple sums, such as 13 take away 6. I wrote down the wrong answer. I remember little after this until I woke up on the floor of the decompression chamber, the sergeant in charge having plugged in my oxygen mask. We were not likely to forget the importance of using our masks. On another occasion an aeroplane flew overhead and dropped an irritant gas, such as is used to disperse a crowd, so we quickly appreciated the importance of always carrying our gas masks. Fortunately, poison gas was never used in the Second World War.

The officers’ mess at Halton had formerly been a palace belonging to the Rothschild family. There was a magnificent hall in which we normally took afternoon tea. After I had been at Halton about ten days, I was talking to my friends in the hall while having tea and was leaning negligently against one of the tables.