Bizarre life on a Military Base

[MollyMaz]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046994/Your-husband-promoted-wear-trousers-An-RAF-wife-reveals-VERY-bizarre-life-military-base.html

Read this today in the Mail (so should be taken lightly), but managed to get wound up at the outdated attitude of the writer and those she describes......

Although, I'm not surprised she's divorced now if her DH having to do the families online Tesco orders whilst on deployment!

It's someone who doesn't understand the system and never bothered to try, that's all.

As to the bit about letting a civilian onto a base - why would they without the appropriate passes? It's not rocket science after all.

I needed forms or a permanent pass before I could ever get into the dockyard or Drake.

So she didn't fit in and nobody liked her. Don't blame them really.
I did like this bit though If a couple on the base had been posted elsewhere, and they had left good plants behind, the other wives would jump over the garden fence and swipe the plants for their own gardens
Except when we did that it turned out we had planted onions and not daffodils. The Families Officer, on marchout, said to DH 'Nice onions'

It's a crap piece of fiction. She has got herself totally confused - there are no Colonels in the RAF, and non commissioned ranks would not be called Squaddies, they'd be called Airmen.

Tradition says that you do not wear trousers to an evening mess function when the serving members are wearing mess dress. Ladies wear long dresses when the serving member is in mess kit (male spouses would wear Black Tie), or cocktail dresses if the serving member is in a suit. On occaisions such as Remembrance Day spouses are just asked to wear 'something appropriate' when the serving member is in Service Dress - ie not jeans and tshirts.

If any of her fantasy is correct then I suggest she is talking about more than 20 years ago.

(oh and as for the 'went off and got herself married to an officer and got into the mess the next day' what a load of absolute complete and utter bollocks!)

Liking the new name Eve

The photo of the RCWs is a laugh, I happen to know some of them and they (I hope to think like me) are very down to earth and since when did us wives ever get to see a military doctor rather than the local GP?

Well glad to see the mail keeps up its reputation as a fictional childrens book (couldn't be an adult onel the words aren't big enough)

Cooooorr ..... must have been a slow news day!

Was expecting something juicy, like car keys in the fruit bowl or the old washing powder in the kitchen window

The son excited by the post man being a man did she not leave camp for months on end? and the whole camp does not clear off and leave the plant nicking, trouser haters alone to plan weddings just to get in the OM

Little bit that the column inches were used to reflect a forces wife like this and not something a little nearer to the truth and focussing not only on the struggles and heartache but also on the benefits, pride and sense of community.

Simply twaddle!

What a load of crap. Stinks of someone who just couldn't be bothered to try, and was going to hate it from the off.

She is right about the kitchen doors at lyneham never closing though

(oh and as for the 'went off and got herself married to an officer and got into the mess the next day' what a load of absolute complete and utter bollocks!)

Yes it sounds so factual, like it happens all the time..........

What a load of rubbish she is talking. A Corporal getting turned away from the OM so she went and got married to an officer the next day so she could be let in........I don't think so...you can't get married that just like that! Plus a wedding ring still doesn't automatically let you in the OM.

No wonder she is divorced talking that amount of shit. For someone who supposedly lived in Forces accommodation she knows very little about forces life

Thought it would stir some debate LOL....Glad its not just me that found it all so farcical! Got to love the Mail sometimes, perhaps one day they'll get their stories right! Just ashamed that thanks to their crap journalism some people will believe we are like this.....

It is a ridiculous story..although some of it sounds like it may have been many many years ago! I have to be honest though, I have met a couple of women like those depicted in this woman's 'story' and they were all consumed by doing the proper thing every day.

The charges for the march outs are accurate

The book was written in 2004. I can identify with the march out requirements but the rest is a load of fiction!

Well that's cheered me up on a dull and stressful afternoon. I loved the line

"Living on an RAF base never felt like home. Everyone was in uniform". Well of course they were, they were at work!

The wife and I had a jolly good larf at this article before.

Hi-ho ladies, it is the Daily Fail after all.

I did enjoy the "dressed like a tree" comment though, I think I'll use that one in the future....

"DARLING, WHAT THE FECK ARE YOU DOING WEARING TROUSERS?! GET THEM OFF NOW, GET THEM OFF OR I'LL SET THE FLIGHT SERGEANT ON YOU."

.....Sounds a bit...kinky actually.

(I think it's impossible to be funny at 5AM...)

I had a packet of Omo once (DH brought it back for me from overseas where it was still available)

Not one bloody response - I had it in the window by the front door for weeks.

Seriously though - I thought the article was hilariously bad; as if someone had gathered together all the old cliched chestnuts about married patches, officer/ORs dischord and competitive rank-wearing wives - and thrown the whole lot together in a not very convincing military-bashing tossed salad.

I sometimes think that if you're looking for these things, you will find them. As a forces wife of many, many years (and an ex-patch-dweller), I've yet to encounter even a tiny fraction of her gripes and misfortunes. Maybe I'm just very lucky - on the whole, throughout our long and happy marriage, we've had the privilege of meeting and befriending some of the most genuine, lovely people you could hope to encounter. The odd tosser, yes; hugely outnumbered by generous and supportive people of every rank and background.

I stopped reading the paper the day they decided to do a huge spread on the lack of standards and morals in the RAF based on the breakdown of a service marriage and completely slated anyone in the RAF, especially serving females. Really disgusted that an influential paper can get away with writing this rubbish, all it does is contribute to the total lack of regard or respect most of this country has for the Forces.

how bizarre. it's like 'gumboots and pearls' but astonishingly badly written and factually incorrect. she should really have employed a proof reader to iron out some of the obvious wrinkles.

am still rofling at the idea that lyneham was ever a man free zone. it was busier when everyone was deployed, so they were all working their arses off in the hangars, not wandering around with their thumbs up their bums.

and even as a pg servicewoman at lyneham i got sent orf for scanning elsewhere. not a military doc in sight once i'd been diagnosed

i feel a bit sorry for her really. she clearly has a real chip on her shoulder about the failure of her marriage and blames the military for it. which, y'know, is sometimes not far from the truth but is sometimes more about failing to adapt to any life change.

i do think i know some of the folk in that pic though. and i blardy well hope they gave their permission before they were emblazoned as 'RCW's (wt actual f) in the national press...

Hiya, am a Mumsnet blogger - I wrote a post about this article:

amodernmilitarymother.com/community/raf-wife-the-daily-mail

It's not a halycon life but my challenges and gripes aren't the ones she mentions. Like the Lt Col who said to me 'the problem nowadays is that we have educated the womenfolk and they are not happy to stay at home anymore!'

or that I am considered to be a 'dependent', when they depend on me to keep the home fires burning so they can go to war and not fulfill their legal responsibilities.

I think that report is from a booke Annie Walker wrote about 10ish years ago when we were still based at Lyneham. I think the Hive etc were trying to promote the book at the time as she (the author Annie Walker) was still based or only recently posted away from Lyneham.

I am vaguely trying to recall about the book now but I think it was a fictional story based on her real life, married into the RAF.

I started to read the book after a mate passed it onto me, the DM article seemed familiar to me - so I am guessing its from the book.

If I am correct then it makes sense - lets face it normal life as an RAF wife is hardly best seller material (well not for me anyway). I suppose she had to spice it up a bit with the dumb old fashioned pre conceptions that go with military life.

Here is a link to the book I am on about www.amazon.co.uk/Married-Albert-Turbulent-Marriage-Military/dp/095463991X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318541466&sr=1-1

ah, interesting. i don't have any problem with the book, it's about a fictional heroine, kate and her fictional husband, guy (and i actually think i may have read it at some dim and distant point in the past...) but the dm article appears as a bang up to date story about annie and her (ex) husband paul, as a topical bit about real life being married to the military.

book - yy fair play. there's only so much to do when your partner's deployed and the kids are in bed - yy draw on your life and embellish it. everyone's got a stroy in them yada yada.

article in the fail - she's obviously skint and churning out the same stuff as 'how it is', having forgotten it was published as a story ten years ago and she didn't get it right then.

let's hope she got paul and all of the 'rcw's permission to get their picture published on the www. because i'd be mightily pissed off to have my face emblazoned all over the fail as a mentalist stepford wife. and i'd probably be suing her and them for defamation of character (or whatever it's called).

are you in the pic, shirl?

god, how i long to write an updated 'gumboots'.

Madwomanintheattic

Vintage teacups and I did debate that whilst I was on maternity leave but I never got chance, now I'm back at work I have mo chance

every woman with a military link has that sordid little dream somewhere in their psyche, don't they?...

fortunately, most of us manage to keep it well tamped down.

i really must write down some of my craziest anecdotes though, for my own benefit once i start losing my marbles. after 20 bleeding years i've got a few. maybe i'll start a blog to reminisce like modmilly.

i quelled my fetish by interviewing military spouses for research purposes - that was almost as much fun.

i still have my fantasy feminist military spouse research on the back boiler, a la lyn dostoevsky and some other woman whose name escapes me...

i'd get like annie though, and start mixing fact with fiction and forget which was which. or forget which were my anecdotes and which were a research participant's. (never a good look, ethically speaking!)