Everyone had a wonderful time until well after 2 am when the party ended. After changing back at Bill and Peggy's, and drinking a cup of hot coffee, I staggered back to camp to get to bed at about three.
Sunday mornings, unless I was on watch, were always very relaxed. Breakfast was available until 10.00 after which Walter Huldt, our ancient German waiter, closed the dining-room. As often as not I, and maybe Fg.Off. George Rapley, Fg.Off. Mike Grant, Plt.Off. Clive Sabel, and sometimes one or two others, would congregate for an informal chat in the batwomen's ironing room upstairs over the front door. In this way we caught up with village and other events whilst practising and improving each other's languages. Little hunchbacked Frau Höhn, tall thin Elspeth, Frau Rust, and comely Margot, depending on who was on duty, would chat away to us while they got on with the ironing, shoe cleaning, or whatever. We heard all sorts of gossip from the village and were kept well up to date with local affairs. Our relationships with our batwomen were very informal but respectful, yet the work was always done and few, if any of us, ever had cause for complaint. They looked after us well. Frau Höhn tried to mother us. If someone had been out with a girl, and she knew of it, she used proudly to say, with a twinkle in her eye, "Wissen Sie, Mutti weis alles!" Which, loosely translated, was "You know, Mummy knows everything!" - a fact that no-one could dispute. Margot left to become bachelor Wg.Cdr. Kilmartin's housemaid when he moved into his CO's house on the married patch. Her place was taken by a Fräulein who eventually married Sgt. Rogers (previously of the cinema volunteers) and afterwards lived in married quarters.
About once a month, a visiting Church of England or Nonconformist Padre would call. There was no Chapel on camp so they both had an arrangement with the incumbent of the Lutherkirche to use his Church. The Roman Catholics were better served for they used the baroque village Church. Attendance rates of any of the faiths was fairly poor. I sometimes went to the Lutherkirche but have to admit that it was not all that often; certainly not as often as I went to the C of E Chapel at Jever.
It was the time of Rock and Roll. I listened to it on my new Philips Philetta radio in my room. The Airmen, however, went one better. It all started with a couple of lads bringing guitars back with them on returning from leave. Others followed, and skiffle groups were quickly formed with drums improvised from buckets and dust bins. Rehearsals took place in the concrete-floored loft space above the barrack blocks. Then there was inter-barrack rivalry. Each block had its own band and, with practice, became very proficient. In the erstwhile silence of a Borgentreich evening, it was possible to hear the latest Rock and Roll and other tunes being competently rendered until lights out, or the Orderly Sergeant decided that enough was enough. One of these bands actually played, by invitation, in the village hall during one of the local festivals. Whenever there was the option to have a Rock'n'Roll film shown in the cinema I would always choose it. Such shows were always well attended, none more so than when I was able to show 'Rock Around the Clock'.
A local German chap saw the opportunity to make a few Deutschmarks by hiring out a juke box to the NAAFI. His idea came to naught because some enterprising Erk discovered that if he nudged the machine in a certain way at a precise moment at the end of a record, the machine would play it again at no charge. After a month the German came to collect his takings and found that the cash holder was almost empty. Two more months passed before he removed the machine.
Our 'new' Mess offered many benefits. The BFES teachers, Barbara Fisher, Dorothy Hogg, Miss Moth, and Betty Hargreaves all had rooms of their own downstairs. There was a ladies sitting-room too so that they could relax or entertain female guests in private. The bar (my responsibility), anteroom, and dining-room were much enlarged and we now had a snooker room. Our quality of life improved

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