Centurion

Reflections of a Centurion

A boy tells his father he wants to be a pilot when he grows up. His father says “That’s good son, but you can’t do both…” I reflected on this line of thinking recently as I joined 14 of my mates from the RAAF’s No 151 Pilots Course at the graduation celebrations for No 251 Pilots Course. Each graduating course invites the ‘Centurions’ – graduates from 100 courses ago – to attend their end-of-course festivities and re-live the experience of having their wings pinned onto their uniform for the first time.

Although I had not seen some of my former course mates for at least a decade, we slipped back into each other’s lives as if we were still young, enthusiastic 20-somethings, rather than the middle-aged men we wish we weren’t (we didn’t have any women graduate from our course).