In mid-1973 I had been stationed at RAF Waddington, my first full posting, for a few months when I was sent on detachment to Australia and Singapore. Within minutes of arriving in Darwin I began to feel really ill and eventually it was discovered I had tonsillitis and appendicitis. My appendix was removed in a civvy hospital in Darwin, and I later moved on to Singapore with the rest of the troops when the first part of the detachment finished. Apparently, a signal was sent back to the UK to say that I wasn't fit to fly in a VC10 yet, so I had ten days of rest in Singapore after flying there from Darwin in a Hercules. When I travelled back, we staged through Cyprus where two navy lads got on and came to sit in my row of seats. They asked if I could swap seats and let them sit closer to the window as they had never flown in one of these big planes before and they wanted to see what it would be like as it came into land.
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