Why (& How) I became a Fid
I am writing this story on 23 October 2021. Quite by chance, in just a few more days on 1st November, it will be exactly 51-years since I first flew from London Heathrow to Canada with pilots Dave Rowley and Bert Conchie and engineer Dave Brown, to begin my Antarctic experience with BAS. On arrival at the De Havilland aircraft factory in Downsview, Toronto, I started my engineer’s training courses on the Twin Otter and Turbo Beaver, before the ferry flight South from Toronto to Base T, Adelaide Island.
In early 1970 I was 21-years old, locked into a 9-year term in the British Army as an aircraft technician in the REME, with another 5-years to run before I could get out into the big wide world, and hopefully find the same kind of aviation engineering job but with a radically different employer.
My job description and work experience at that time is documented in a paragraph of the MBW Adelaide story about the 1972 Twin Otter VP-FAP Engine Change at Fossil Bluff. So there’s no need here for repetition.
I was getting a bit discontent with my lifestyle and wanted to try something different and bit more challenging. Fortunately, I did something I had been warned never, ever, to do in the Army, and that was to volunteer for anything. I volunteered for what was called a ‘Secondment’, and filled in a lot of forms presented to me by military people who I think, were trying to hide their doubt, pity or incredulity at what I was doing.
I had no knowledge of any previous or existing British Army connection with the Antarctic, and had no idea where I could end up. I thought it could be anywhere with a British military presence, but hoped it might be somewhere remote and exotic like supporting the Beaver aircraft operating with the Nepalese Ghurkhas in Kathmandu, or somewhere in the Middle East, as I had heard that the Army operated helicopters in that part of the world, and it was completely new to me. Guess who was in for a big surprise! Base ‘T’ was certainly remote and exotic.
It took quite a while for anything to happen, and I began to assume that I wasn’t going to get my mystery secondment. But then suddenly, and to my great surprise, after more interviews by various military men who wanted to know why I was volunteering, and if I was still serious, I was offered the chance to be interviewed for a job in the Antarctic by BAS in London on my return to UK later that year. I immediately jumped at the offer, and then spent some time trying to find out where the Antarctic was. My only previous awareness of Antarctica was the original “Scott of the Antarctic” film in glorious black & white, and the amazing close-up photos of the Sno-Cats crossing crevasses on the 1955-58 TAE that I had seen in magazines like the National Geographic or adventure story magazines when I was a young lad at school. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever visit such a place, let alone work there.
A few weeks after arriving back in UK after nearly three years away, I was sitting in the London office of BAS, talking to Bill Sloman on my potential Fidlet interview, and rabbiting-on about the parts of my life and any qualifications or experience that I thought may be relevant to the job I was hoping to get.
As a teenager I had always enjoyed a variety of team sports and annual summer camping holidays in Devon. I left school with a small and not very impressive handful of O-levels, no aspirations or demonstrated potential for higher education, and drifted into the Army just before my 16th Birthday. I was surprised to be offered the chance to become an aircraft technician, as at that time I thought that only the Air Force and Navy operated aircraft.
I successfully completed a 3-year airframe and engine technician apprenticeship at a training college near Reading, but peaked-out academically with an ONC in General Engineering. In addition to the engineering and military training, the college also offered me the chance to take part in the 1966 Duke of Edinburgh Ten Tors Dartmoor Challenge; have my first skiing experience on a trip to Austria; and enjoy regular travel around the UK competing in inter-college seasonal sports meetings. Hockey in the winters and athletics in the summers.
Shortly after the Bill Sloman interview, and the news I had been accepted by BAS, came the precautionary appendix removal in a London hospital, followed by a few days in Cambridge for the induction process. On arrival in Cambridge, totally out of my comfort zone, and in awe of the scientific stuff I was hearing all around me, I was given my little green book packed full of instructions and lists for new Fids. I still have it, and it makes interesting reading. Fortunately for me, Dave Rowley, Bert Conchie and Dave Brown sought me out in the crowd and put me at ease. They were the pilots and engineer I was to fly and work with for the next 6-months or so down South. The rest of my story is pretty much the same as every other Fid in the BAS Air Units over the years.
I found the experience of the 10 to 14-day ferry flights from Toronto to Adelaide via North America, the Caribbean, and South America, and the same route in reverse at the end of the season, together with working as a Fid at Adelaide even though only as a “Summer Jollier” to be such a rewarding experience that I applied to do a second season in 1971-72.
There is a Post-Script to this story: Working for BAS with the Fids in Marguerite Bay for my two Summer Seasons, and the experience of the four intercontinental ferry-flights in those two tiny aircraft was inspirational, and made me even more determined to find my ideal employment.
A few years after leaving BAS in 1972, I did at last find the aviation engineering job of my dreams: For the next 30-years, based in various locations in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and UK, working for the “radically different employer”, a Greek shipowner, and travelling extensively maintaining and supporting the helicopters on his private yacht.
Rob Campbell-Lent. Adelaide Base T. Aircraft Engineer. 1970-72