The President
The 
President reminded everyone that, of course, the whole idea of these Reunions – the Association coming together -
It was a new format, of course, and the President thanked Eugene for bringing everyone together in a very convivial way, with the pictures – the atmosphere remained the same although the room was smaller. He had done very well tonight, so thank you very much for that.
The President mused that he could tell the story, of course, to round the occasion off, about dropping the Squadron Commander’s suitcase in the North Sea. But, how many had heard that story? Well, perhaps that would be better told another time, when everyone had forgotten!
But he would tell one story, which he thought reflected our age in a way. His daughter had rung him from Manston. She lives in Greenwich, and she was down in Kent on some trip with friends, and they stopped off in Manston, where there is an aviation museum, and there is a Buccaneer there. Sadly, like a lot of displays in museums today, it’s a Buccaneer’s front nose bit: the fuselage, but no wings.
She said to him: “Dad, the 3 grandkids want to know, because they knew you flew Buccaneers, had you flown this aircraft?” Of course, he had flown the Buccaneer, but she said “have you flown this particular one?”
“Give me the number.”
“XV352.”
So he said, “Yes, I think I’ve flown it, the number’s familiar, I’ll go and check my log book and give you a call back.”
“That’s the beauty of log books,” he described, “and it’s an amazing thing that, when you go to a log book, and you see: ‘19th January, XV352, flew with Milligan’, you know we dropped a thing, or we flew over, what’s that place there, that turning point we had: we had five railway lines, two churches and a big wood – yes, I remember it. We look at the log book and can see exactly what it was we were doing.”
2017 Reunion -
