Are you a tailor ?
By John Flashman
(served with RAOC 1956-59, army number 23482683).

I joined the RAOC in June 1956 on a 3-year engagement at a time when certain skills were in desperately short supply.  One such skill was that of tailoring and all the recruitment offices carried a notice saying something like: "Are you a tailor?  Then come and join the RAOC where you will be assured of a warm welcome".  In my training squad at Blackdown near Aldershot was a chap named Robinson, a geordie who was a tailor in civvy street.  When he went to enlist he was treated (almost) like royalty and given every assurance that he would be employed as a tailor and all would be well.
 
So what did they do with him?  They made him a clerk.