J/T Natural_Wastage: 'I just thought: feck it, it'll do a trip'
All alone and in no mood for it, a techie faced an emergency straight out of a disaster movie. This week he gets his 5 minute early stack.
He was alone in the dark, face green from the free out of date ale at last nights beercall. Fierce winds were tearing into the hangar as Natural_Wastage sat in the t-bar watching out for LAC's brave – or stupid – enough to fall asleep in the t-bar.
"I wasn't expecting anything," says Natural_Wastage, age unknown, who had trained on now obsolete aircraft and was on his umpteenth set of night shifts in sole charge of the t-bar. "Then the phone started ringing. I was horrified."
The sudden panicky scream was the signal that an LAC out on the bacon butty run was in distress. "I knew it was probably bad," says Natural_Wastage, "but I had no idea how bad it was going to get."
He was about to be plunged into a drama just like a disaster movie, in which a lost and terrified LAC has to try and find the naafi cafe in a storm before the bacon butties go cold. With hungry flugals looming up to destroy him. And another LAC heading straight for his. And the stomachs of countless people, aircrew and groundcrew, thrust into the trembling hands of a solitary young JT who must talk the LAC to the naafi cafe... only the LAC's a dribbling moron.
There is more. Much more. But Natural Wastage's actions that night in September last year earned him a major feck all, to be presented by PMA on Tuesday. Back then, he was just trying not to panic. "I was like this..." she says, cowering from the angry wobbly.
Somewhere out in the dark, being tossed about by the storm, was a small, dim witted LAC. The LAC had set off from the hangar and tried to find the naafi cafe, to the north, but he'd gotten lost – and it was now 10 minutes from closing. "After I calmed myself down," recalls Natural_Wastage, "I got this chap on the phone. He was backward, and very difficult to understand. We had a brief discussion, if you can call it that. I had to instruct him like an eight-year-old and keep it very simple."
He did manage to work out that he'd taken a left,not a right, at the SNCO Mess, so would have to make an emergency U-turn at the role bay, 20 meters from where he stood. He usually did the butty run himself, but as he was busy he'd have to guide in the LAC from a long way off, using semaphore until he reached the Naafi Cafe.
The only other food run expected, much later, was a regular McD's run. But now this LAC had cocked up and was in huge trouble. She would have to take charge of his fecking idiot, because the LAC had no idea where he was going. "You become responsible for keeping them away from the sharp implements, plugged in toasters, everything," he says. "They're thick as sh*t."
All the stoves at the naafi cafe were turned up to maximum, a delicious smell that can normally be sniffed for miles. This time, though, it was hidden from the LAC by the local farmers spreading the fields. So Natural_Wastage dispatched another LAC with something called a map, a paper and ink instrument the LAC could follow via his few working brain cells all the way to the naafi cafe. "It was working," he says, "until the muppet was distracted by a WRAF 'friend' in PSF."
The horny little bugger had blow off course. "I just said, 'Are you taking the ****?' He said, 'Sorry!'" She guided him back out of PSF to the Cafe but he was blown off it again. "To make it worse, he lost his bloody map. I was like, 'Oh, where the feck does halton get them from!?.'"
He repeatedly called the LAC's mobile over and over again, with no answer. "I don't know if his battery ran out but I just heard 'welcome to orange answerphone'. I think he was having a head-on-fire time. Or maybe he was giving it to that WRAF in PSF," he jokes. "I would."
Natural_Wastage is not the usual RAF recruit. That much is obvious from the fact he still stags on the main gate after all these years. From parts unknown, he quite enjoyed life before walking into a recruiting office just because it was ****ing down outside. "I couldn't give a sh*t for the military," he says. "I wasn't fit. I hate authority. But when the recruiter told me I could get paid to bully young lineys I thought, 'Hmm, why not? WRAF's are easy. And you don't need to use your brain to earn a wedge in the RAF. I like that.'"
But on his umpteenth shift he faced one of the biggest challenges in the 'teas 'n' keys' book, with little more to go on but a trail of devastation indicating where the LAC had been. "He was just walking round in circles. Imagine you've got your eyes closed and you're wandering around the room trying not to hit the furniture."
The furniture, in this case, was deadly. The unwitting LAC was no more than 150 feet away from the SWO. "If the SWO spotting him would crash and die. He be straight on the phone to our JengO as well."
That would lead to an even bigger disaster. "My fevered brain said, 'Oh bugger. What if they find out I made the little bugger do the butty run 'cause I'm still half cut from last night?'" The LAC did answer his mobile at last, and he got him to steer away from the SWO, but he still couldn't see the naafi cafe.
The only answer was to use his own knowledge of the landscape around the airfield to guide him right down over bays and blocks and sections until he was right on top of the naafi. But that was a very big thing for Natural_Wastage. It meant staying on his phone and using up his last few minutes.
"I was terribly afraid that I would lose phone signal," he says. "But he'd either the naafi or the WO would have me on guard for life." The stakes were suddenly high for him too. "JT's have been 'vanished' by the management here before. I had that in my mind. But in the heat of the moment I was like, 'What's more important – food or a 24hr posting?'"
Even from a mere 80 feet away from the naafi cafe, the LAC still couldn't see it. He asked him how long he thinks he'd last round the back of the hangar should he come back empty handed, and mimics the strangulated, distressed voice in which he gave his answer: "'Nooooooooo!' He was wetting himself. I was like, 'hahahaha!' I'm not cruel but I might have laughed my ass off at that point."
Could it get any worse? Yes. The signal on his phone disappeared. Why the f*ck did he sign up with 3? Only hope that his basic skills instilled at Halton might kick in remained.
Worse yet, another voice startled her. A chief popped into the t-bar at the last minute wanting to add to the order, oblivious to the disoriented LAC buzzing about camp. This could've been the end of his career. Thinking fast, Natural_Wastage told the Cheif that the naafi cafe had appalling health standards - gave everyone the sh*ts onn A shift last week they did. Then he went back to the LAC and slowly talked him around a circuit of the naafi cafe and down again. "I thought, 'just get the f*cking butties for crying out loud!' 10 meters from the naafi cafe, he finally said, 'I can see it.'"
You might expect a shout of relief, or at least a choked "Please don't hit me", from the lost LAC as the heads into the t-bar with the butties and he was safe. But no. "He just dropped off the butties and ran off saying something about desperately being needed for an AF/BF ." I'll see that bugger at the next beer call.
What did Natural_Wastage do next? The answer is typical of this handsome beast, and the JT mentality. "I might have allowed myself a brief, 'Yeah!' But then I realised I didn't really care whether or not the management got feed or not."
He went home expecting a thanks for the butties. Instead he got a letter "on watermarked paper from PMA saying, 'No promotions this year c*nt.'"
The Ministry of Defence heard the story and loved it. The CinC didn't even realise we still had JT's in the air force. Its press office entered her for one of the Vodafone Life Saver Awards, and she won one of the 10 given out this year. The others include fire and sea rescue teams, a boy who crawled across a frozen lake to save his friend and a man who pulled a stranger from a burning car. "It's embarrassing," says Natural_Wastage, "to be compared to people like that. Another techie said to me, 'I can't believe you won that just for doing teas 'n' keys - and you forgot my brown sauce you nob.'"
He was not offended. "What the hell does that mincing fairy know about the price of tea in China?" He commented.
Bizarrely, the award judges included the model Nell McAndrew. But also among them were the Victoria Cross winner Johnson Beharry and John Nichol, the RAF Tornado pilot who just will not f*ck off, who realised Natural_Wastage blagged it all and urged him to write a book, cash in on it, and show up on every news channel every time a bacon butty is mentioned.
So JT Natural_Wastage will travel down from the super secret Oxon base , where he is now based, to give Gordon Brown a rare good news day. "I think it's just shake hands, smile and don't embarrass the CO by letting Gordon know what a c*nt I really think he is." What does he get to take back to Oxon? "Bang in that PVR and come back as a contractor what do you think," says the modest hero, grinning and playing things down again. "It's all quite overwhelming, really."
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