Spectacles, Testicles, Fags and Matches

About the Book: 

Spectacles, testicles, fags and matches was a ritual used by Servicing Commandos after doing anything they called 'hairy'. It was a completely non-religious act, but strangely comforting. From the jungles of Burma to the foggy plains of Germany, the RAF Servicing Commandos were the men who kept the most advanced aircraft of the RAF flying. Yet there has been very little written about them.

Historians, up to today, are surprised to learn of their existence and astonished to learn of their activities. But without those Units the RAF would have had great difficulty in providing close cover for the forward troops. Without them, the fighter planes would have spent less time in action, destroying the strong points and tanks of a determined enemy. These elite Units serviced and maintained, re-armed and re-fuelled, repaired and recovered the front line aircraft on which so much depended, and did it all immediately behind the most forward troops. Fully trained in the techniques of Combined Operations they could land from the seas on any hostile territory and establish new airstrips almost instantaneously. They are, surprisingly, the Forgotten Men. This is their story told by the men themselves.

About the Author:

TOM ATKINSON had a very interesting life. After serving in the RAF throughout WWII, he spent the next twenty years in the diplomatic service of the Republic of Indonesia, having been in a position to help the young Republic to become established, during the latter part of his RAF service. This is described in his contribution to this book. 

Tom left Indonesia just before the horror of the military take-over in 1965, when a million or so Indonesians were slaughtered. Since then he has been a hotelier in the remote north-west of Scotland, followed by ten years on a small self-sufficient farm in west Wales.

Returning to Scotland, he founded Luath Press, and wrote a series of guide books to his beloved West and North of Scotland.

Later he helped his herbalist daughter to breathe new life into Napiers of Edinburgh, a herbal consultancy established in 1860, and he operated Napiers Mail Order business for three years, before retiring for the third time.