Perhaps a long association with the letters and rhythms of morse created a tandem proclivity to verbal dexterity. Perhaps not. But I remembered that anyone sending morse on our Malayan network whom we could not identify was called OOJERKERPIV, a nonsense word signifying (to us) ‘unknown’. Some operator might be clacking two bits of wire together above the jungles of Indo-China, or doing the same from a mangrove swamp by the mouth of a Borneo river. Most attempts to make an OOJERKERPIV admit his identity failed because he had no business being on an official frequency. Occasionally the squelch of dots and dashes came from an aircraft too far away to make contact, so that on getting close he was no longer an OOJERKERPIV but had a callsign and a right to be there.
No contact could be confirmed unless the formality of identification had taken place. Duty as well as courtesy meant that you obeyed the rules. An exchange of identity and signals strengths, of where coming and where going, and of latitude and longitude should the aircraft, for reasons known only unto God, suddenly plunge into the sea, were given wit as much alacrity as those messages flashed between ships that pass in the middle of the ocean.
An OOJERKERPIV was not therefore regarded in friendly fashion. One wanted him to transfer his interfering pip-squeak morse elsewhere. But sitting in my hut beyond the runway, earphones on so that the rest of the world was shut out, I was one day called by an aircraft which identified itself by the actual name OOJERKERPIV. I could hardly believe it, but made contact nevertheless. On mentioning this to a fellow operator he said I should stop being a bloody liar, but when he saw details timed to the minute and neatly written in the logbook, each bearing sent to the plane underlined by the usual steel straightedge, he admitted I was right.
The full OOJERKERPIV came out as a kind of Hansardian shorthand by giving only the five letters OJKPV, which belonged to a Belgian aircraft taking people to Australia, and was indeed conceded to be a manifestation of at least one OOJERKERPIV that had plagued us for so long.
The Lost Flying Boat By Alan Silltoe
And now my old material…
I think it is interesting to keep looking back at the photographs I took before. What things do I continue to do, what places do I revisit, where has my work improved? What state of mind do my photographs show at different times?
