I'll try to answer some of your questions and to clarify the times and sequence of events as best as memory serves me. First off, the first RCAF types - the Advance Party, arrived at the then RAF base at North Luffenham in about August 1951. Ross Smalley, who was a member of that party was the "best man" at Virginia's and my wedding at RCAF Station Trenton on 28 July 1951. Ross and his wife were already "on notice" for their upcoming transfer to 1 Wing. I bought most all their household furniture for Virginia and I to get started with. So, it must have been in early August 1951 that Ross and Freda Smalley headed off to England. Freda was a "war bride" so it was a bit like going home for the Smalleys. Regarding the adavance party, the RCAF saw fit to pay for the wives and families of those people to sail to England, or they were flown there by 426 Squadron North Star aircraft.
It was about a month after getting married in July that I was notified of my transfer to 1 Wing which was to take place in November 1951. By that time the policy had been changed and anyone who was married and transferred to 1 Wing was obligated to leave their family behind in Canada, or to make their own arrangements for their movement to England and to pay for same out of their own resources. I was among that "unlucky few". I arrived at 1 Wing on the day the base was officially turned over to the RCAF by the RAF. It was 15 November 1951. It was not long after that when the policy changed and wives and families were transferred at government expense.
When I arrived at North Luffenham, a number of caravans were already on site. All the caravans were rentals. Many were ones that normally were rented out to vacationers at such places as Skegness and other resort areas. The one I obtained was already on site, occupied by some other airman and his wife. It became available to me when they moved it off their site when they were able to obtain a larger one. Most all the larger caravans were 25 to 27 feet in length. The larger one which I obtained shortly after moving into the little one, was owned by a woman in the city of Rugby. She, like many other holiday caravan owners, on hearing of the urgent need for rental caravans by RCAF people, contacted the base and had the caravan advertised on bulletin boards or through DRO's. I believe that the people who rented the caravans to Canadians saw it as an opportunity to have a steady, year round rental of their caravans at a much higher rental rate than any ordinary "Brit" would be able to pay. A virtual gold-mine! For that very reason, there was really no shortage of opportunity to rent a caravan when you were transferred into a housing shortage area.
There were a number of permanent married quarters located about a mile off the base on the road that led to the county seat, the town of Oakham. There were a certain lot of the PMQ's that were available only to Officers and a few that were available to non-commissioned personnel. There were also some "temporary married quarters" available adjacent to the Village of Edith Weston, very close to the school for RCAF children.
I do not recall any commissioned officers ever living in one of the caravans on the base. The highest rank I can recall was that of WO1.
The caravans were located along the one side of a service road that ran from the peri-track to the county roads beside the Astra Cinema. Edith Weston started right there by the cinema. There were also a large number of caravans sited on the grassed area between that roadway and the back of the barrack blocks and other buildings that faced onto the main street of the base.
Regarding such things as electricity, water reticulation, toilets, running water and all those such amenities, there were none at all!
Each caravan had a very small (perhaps 3 gallons) holding tank for water. If you pumped the faucet up and down it spurted water into the sink. The toilet consisted of a large, black painted steel bucket which went under a permanently fitted toilet seat. To keep down the smell when the bucket was freshly emptied and rinsed, a black, vile looking fluid called "Elsinol" was placed in the bottom of the bucket along with about two inches of water. The Elsinol floated on top of the buckets contents and being a somewhat oily like substance, did manage to keep the smell within tolerable limits. For the purposes of obtaining fresh water and also for dumping the nasty contents of the Elsin toilet, we had the use of a nearby barrack block that was unoccupied. We also had the use of it for such things as taking a shower.
Emptying that damned bucket was a deplorable chore which everyone hated doing. Most times it took place under the cover of darkness as there was less chance of meeting a neighbour then. I once went so far as to wax poetic about it. For the life of me I cannot remember any great part of the poem, but here are the first few lines:
There were several verses to it describing the whole horrible operation. How I wish now that I had kept a copy of it! It really was quite funny! Oh well, I guess that sometimes certain things are best forgotten.
The constant trips to the barrack block to refill the tiny holding tank for fresh water for our caravan was a real annoyance. So having learned scrounging at the feet of a master scrounger when I was with 426 Squadron, I took it upon myself to remedy the situation. Somewhere on the base I found an unused auxiliary gas tank as used during the war to increase the effective range of British bombers. It was made of a thick rubberised fabric and had a large fitting for filling up then sealing the tank and a small outlet for the fuel line out to the aircraft's engines. I also managed to scrounge a suitable two wheeled cart to haul the tank around on. So, after thoroughly cleaning the tank I fitted it with a tire valve that sealed tightly to the fabric of the tank around the perimeter of the hole I made in the fabric to receive the valve. From there on it was quite simple. When our water supply ran low I would load the nearly empty tank on my cart and haul it off to the nearby barrack block and there with the aid of a water hose which I had also scrounged somewhere I would fill the tank to about the three-quarters level then haul it on the cart all the way back to our caravan. By simply tipping the cart up a bit the handle end the tank of water would slide right off the other end of the cart onto the ground in the place selected by me. I would then hook up the outlet from the tank to a hose leading to the small holding tank on our caravan. Once that was done I would then, with the aid of a tire pump, pump air into the air space above the water in the tank through the tire valve which I had installed. This would pressurise the tank sufficiently that when the faucet at the sink in the caravan was turned on, the water would flow out of it with no need to pump the faucet up and down. Every day or two I would have to pump more air into the tank as the pressure would decrease as the volume of the water lessened with use. All in all it worked quite well.As to lighting and heating, most all the caravans depended on bottled gas for this purpose. It was called "Calor Gas" and it fueled the gas lights in the caravan. It fueled the small stove used for cooking and heating a bit of water and in most caravans it also supplied heat by means of a small gas-fired heater. In our larger caravan we heated the place with a small cast iron stove that would burn either coal or wood. The Calor gas had one bad failing. As the steel gas bottles or tanks were stored externally, they became very cold during the winter nights and the liquified gas in them froze up and refused to flow, so those who depended on such for heat often had no heat on the really cold nights and no way to heat even a bit of water to make the morning coffee! Our little cast iron stove using solid fuel was a great boon to us.
A small sidelught on living in the Caravan Site - I was never able to figure out why or how it got started, but for whatever reason, the Air Force people who lived on the Site became to be called "Donnickers" by all other RCAF types. We all came to accept the term and at one time we went so far as to have our own Dance Night and booze-up. It was advertised as "The Donnickers Dance". It's funny how such things get started and nobody ever seems to know the how or the why of it.
.Updated: April 28, 2003