Interview with G V Korner

Interview with G V Korner

G Korner completed his training as a rear gunner and was posted to RAF Leconfield. As gunner he witnessed other aircraft above heading into their bombing run and their bombs just missing his aircraft. He also witnessed aircraft being shot down and on one occasion a complete wing passed his turret. They were shot down and he with others of his crew became prisoners of war at Stalag Luft 7. One of the crew had suffered serious burns.

1996-08-20

00:56:28 audio recording

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AKornerGV960820

Good morning, Bill. I hope you don’t mind my calling you Bill. I was introduced to you as Bill Norman at Leconfield. I’m sorry to have been so long with this effort. We’ve been away on holiday to Scotland, Yorkshire and Norfolk and we had such a lot to do when we came back that I haven’t had a lot of time to get down to give you all the gen on what we’d been up to during the war. I started to type this on my new electronic typewriter but the bloody thing is, it’s so temperamental that, well I wish I had my old portable manual still. It’s, I don’t think you can type as fast on it either because you have to wait for the carriage to go back. So anyway, I suddenly, I suddenly realised that I had a little portable radio that has a recording unit on it so I thought well I’ll bang it on to a tape and you can take it from there. Anyway, as you have no doubt heard from Ron Purcell he did send me a copy of what he’d sent you we started off life together in OTU. One of the things that stuck in my mind at OTU was we had to go, as you realise the old Ridgeley only had one turret. A rear turret. So you had two gunners who used to have to take in turn to do their firing. We went out on an air firing exercise and I went in first and did my stuff and fired off all my appropriate rounds and then Ron Heath went in and I sat there and I was horrified. He was blazing away without a break. So he fixed his finger on the trigger and it was just going off and off and off. Anyway, I thought well that’s his, you know if that’s what he wants to do. When we got back later on we got called down to the gunnery office where Ron’s brother was the gunnery leader and boy did he ever give us a rollicking. Apparently when Ron fired off these rounds he fired such a long steady burst that the barrel of the guns expanded as a result of which when the armourers took the guns out to clean them they couldn’t get the barrel out of the actual casing and the guns just had to be scrapped. Well, you know, we were threatened. Well, it was a question of who did it. I looked a bit sideways at Ron but he didn’t say anything. I thought at first we were going to be returned to unit the way he was, you know he was really having a go. However, they let us stay on and we carried on. The other thing that, one of these things that happened during the war I recall here we went to —
[pause]
We went to Eindhoven on the 15th of August in 1944. Our target was the aerodrome at Eindhoven. That particular day was the day when I think about a thousand aircraft had been sent to bomb all the fighter aerodromes they could in North Europe there. This was preparatory to the RAF commencing daylight raids and our target was Eindhoven. We went down across England and we ended up on the south coast there and all I could see all around me as far as the eye could see were aircraft. I have never ever seen so many aircraft in all my life. They were everywhere. It was just like a huge swarm of mosquitoes because the Yanks were going out as well. There were Fortresses, Liberators, Lancs. Everything you could think of. Halifaxes, the lot and it was really rough because we were bouncing around in the slipstream of other aircraft and we went over to Holland and [Case] was threatening dire consequences to old Jock if he didn’t drop his bombs on the target instead of hitting Dutch civilians. However, we did bomb the target and we did well and where I was sitting I counted eight aerodromes going up. You could see the big columns of smoke rising up and there were, I could see eight of them. Some idiot dropped a bomb, a stick of bombs clear across Eindhoven. [Case] really went spare. Dear, he didn’t like that one bit. They could have been hang ups or anything but they went right across the town. However, the target got splashed and then we started on our, on our daylights. We did the first one which was the first German, well we did a daylight one on a place called Watten, 25th of August which was they said it was a flying bomb site but they weren’t sure what it was. There was some suggestion that it was a V-3 site. I think it was like a huge block of concrete set in the ground with tubes mounted in it. Something like this Saudi Arabian gun, a smooth bore and I think they were intending to do, they were going to fire these canisters clear across the Channel on to London. Anyway, we bombed it and we got a bit of flack damage. They said, ‘Oh, they’re only Russian gunners. They’re no good.’ But they were quite accurate. We came back with a hundred and eighty holes in us or something. But we didn’t do the slightest. I think everything bounced off. I heard later that the, one of the squadrons was sent out with these twenty two thousand pounder Tallboys and one of them actually dropped down the side of this block and blew and it shifted the whole thing off centre and I don’t think therefore it was ever used because the shells or whatever they were going to use, the projectiles were, they wouldn’t have hit London. They would have gone somewhere else so I don’t think it was ever used. Anyway, our first one was on the 27th of August on Homberg. An oil refinery. That was the first German daylight and it was quite awe inspiring. The, you know at night time you see flashes in the distance and all that sort of thing but when you go over in daylight and you can actually see the ground and you can see all the flak bursts and everything else it was quite horrifying but however we got through alright and did our stuff and did quite well. We went to Scholven. On the 12th of September to a place called Scholven where we did an oil refinery. We got some flak damage there too. And then the following day, the 13th we went to Nordstern in the Ruhr. Another oil refinery. This time the flak damage had burst in front of us the lump of flak came through the windscreen, just missed the pilot and hit the poor old engineer in the arm and I understand that he was bleeding quite badly and the navigator and the wireless operator and everybody gave him first aid and pumped morphine into his arm and one thing and another and we landed away at an RAF, at an American Air Force camp at Horham in, I think it’s in Sussex or Suffolk. And we went in there, landed there and they sent a jeep out and the jeep came and picked the engineer up and he looked a bit groggy and his arm all done up. The chap who was driving the jeep said, ‘Well, I guess you’ll get a Purple Heart for this.’ We said, ‘Well, not really. We’ll probably get a [unclear].’ And that was the last we saw of him. That was a chap called Les Trapp. That was our eleventh op. We never saw him again. On the 6th of October we did a raid at Sterkrade on another oil refinery in the Ruhr. Again got damaged. On the 14th of September we did two raids on the same day on the same target. We took off at 6:45 in the morning and we bombed Duisburg with high explosives. Came back and later on up go the tannoy again, report for briefing. And it’s the same target and they said that this time, ‘That you’ve blown the place apart with high explosives now you go again. You’ve exposed all the woodwork. Now, you’re going to take incendiaries and burn the place out.’ This we did. It burned for several days I understand. On the 25th of October I recall this particularly well because at that time I think we were more or less the senior aircraft, the senior crew of the squadron and Ron was a very good navigator and they put us on this leading virtually the whole of Bomber Command and I remember we took off and we flew down to the south coast somewhere where we crossed the Channel and I sat in the turret and again all I could see were aircraft everywhere. An incredible site. We got to the target and of course the flak started coming up but we were some of the first in and I don’t think they’d really got our height properly. But we were flying along and all I could see was aircraft everywhere and this flak banging about and above us there was a bloody great Lancaster. It wasn’t two or three hundred feet above us and I was sitting there watching this thing and his bomb doors opened and there was a bloody great eight thousand pounder. Well, I looked at it. Anyway, he was drifting over towards us. I mean we were actually on our bombing run at the time so we couldn’t take any evasive action really and this thing was also drifting over and I said to the pilot, ‘You know, Case,’ I said, ‘There’s a Lancaster just above us with a bloody great bomb.’ And he sort of in his Dutch accent he said, ‘That’s alright, he can see us.’ I thought I hope to Christ he does. All of a sudden this eight thousand pounder went and it went, it couldn’t have gone further than about fifty feet behind us and it dropped and it was like a single decker bus going past and it went down and I was fascinated with this and I watched it go down and down and down as far as I could see and I was still watching and all of a sudden it hit and I could see this colossal explosion and the shockwaves that came out from it and then a column of smoke came up. It must have gone up several thousand feet I think because even after we’d left the target miles away I could still see it on and off. Anyway, we were on. We were routed out more or less on a reciprocal course so we did our, took our photograph and everything, carried on. We turned around coming back and of course all the rest of the main force was still coming in and I have never seen a sight like it. The sky was full of flak. Absolutely full of flak. You could see all these black puffs there and just sailing into it, slowly going through it you could see all these aircraft going through and it was a most fantastic sight. It really was. Anyway, we came back from that one and it was quite a successful one as well I believe.
[recording paused]
I’m sorry about the breaks in this but I’m trying to do this during the day and you get called. The wife’s voice from the kitchen etcetera and I have to leap up and do something else and then come back to it. So please excuse the interruptions. Going through my, my records and things that I have you may recall that in the, your book, “Failed to Return,” you published a crew photograph showing five of us because Jock had actually taken the photograph. However, I have come across another one in which we have obviously got some of the, one of the ground staff to take which has all six of us in and it’s a squarish photograph. Jock’s wife, who I spoke to recently she said she would like a copy of it so I’m getting some copies done. Incidentally, she has actually bought four copies of your book. She has three daughters, Jock had three daughters and they all want a copy of the book and she’s got one herself so therefore I’m going to send her four copies of this photograph so that she can stick it in the front of that book. What more can I send? I’m also going to send one to Ron because he hasn’t got one otherwise he would have given that one to you. I didn’t realise that he didn’t have a copy of it otherwise I’d have sent him one years ago but I’ve had it tucked in my, my stuff for yonks now anyway. But I will send you a copy of that.
[recording paused]
During the night we got shot down which was the 4th/5th of November as you know we bombed the target and were on our way back and the sky was very, everything was quiet. All we could see ahead was a belt of searchlights but it was very peaceful and that, with hindsight obviously what we should have done was either kept losing height or weaving about but it was you know quite frankly I was expecting a night fighter to come in because it seemed so, you know there was no flak. It was as though they left it alone so that the night fighters could deal with us on his own and when the flak did come it was a shock because it was so accurate. It just wasn’t believable because sitting in the rear turret it was over on my port quarter and these bursts came towards us. There was woof woof woof bang at the front. I think it was the fourth one that probably hit us and all I heard, I heard this bang at the front and the aircraft shuddered and I heard Case say ouch and that’s all I heard. Then the engines were still going. We were flying and, but the aircraft it felt wrong. It felt as though it was sideslipping and then all of a sudden it seemed to like a jerk and eased up. I’m assuming that this is probably when Freddie Nuttall grabbed hold of the controls and held it. Anyway, I sat there. I heard nothing and then I heard Purc, Ron Purcell say, ‘Give us the fire extinguisher, Jock.’ And then there was silence again and I thought well they’re obviously dealing with it and then he said, ‘Get the front escape hatch open, Jock.’ I thought bloody hell, they’re off. So I turned the turret, I went to wind the turret around, I always kept my parachute in the turret with me over the Ruhr because I always had a horrible feeling that if anything happened it would get stuck in the fuselage and the stowage I would never be able to reach it and I was a slim young lad in those days and I could get it in the turret with me and I had it beside me in the turret. Well, the first thing I did when we were hit I clipped it on and I started to turn the turret manually and I thought what the hell am I doing this for? You know, the engines are still running so therefore the oil is flowing around to the turret. So I put it back again and I swung the turret right around to the, to the port side and looking down I could, looking back through the side of the turret and down through the fuselage all I could see were like green flames coming down there and the smell of burning. I thought this is it. Obviously they’re off. So I sat back on the turret rim and leaned out to gauge the windspeed which was quite strong actually and then I realised that I’d put my parachute on, I still had my helmet on so I had all the leads going down behind the parachute and I had the helmet on. Well, I didn’t stop to think about that really because my feet in the turret they’re tucked under the ammunition feed boxes and I had flying boots on. Of course, I had to lift them out, pull them out and sort of sit back on the ring and put my feet up where the fuse boxes are and work my way so that I was sitting right back on the ring and then I just pushed and tipped out backwards. I’d always reckoned that when I put it on that the D Ring of the parachute would be on the right-hand side. It wasn’t of course. I put my hand there. Nothing. I suddenly realised it was on the left and pulled it and I gave it such a wrench it came out so easy that I thought I’d broken it. All of a sudden I saw a flash of white and I slowed up and that was it. There I was floating down and it was so quiet after the noise of the engines and I was floating down and I suddenly heard a throbbing of engines and over to my left coming towards me was a four-engined aircraft. I think it must have been another Halifax because the glow in the, in the engines was round.
[telephone ringing]
Well, I panicked because I thought he was coming, was going to gather me up so I started pulling the parachute one side in the hope of side slipping away which I did do. I’ll carry on with this in a minute.
[recording paused]
Anyway, I obviously did the right thing because this aircraft whizzed overhead and disappeared. I didn’t know where I was. I knew we weren’t all that far off the target but on looking down it looked as though we were over water and I had the idea we may have been over Holland somewhere although I couldn’t see it because we’d only just left the target a short while ago. But it looked as though it was water down below and I was frantically looking for an island or something in the middle. So I saw this what appeared to be an island and I started pulling the rip cord, not the rip cord, the one side of the parachute trying to slip over towards it and it still looked as though I was over water. What I didn’t realise the ground was coming up so fast and I hit the ground with a hell of a wallop backwards and I went head over heels, cracked my head on the ground. It was a common farmyard in the middle of a pine forest and I think probably what it was the, it was the moon was reflecting on these trees and it looked like water and what I thought was an island was in fact this farmyard. Anyway, I hit it. My parachute draped itself across the hedge and across a road. I got up and started to pull the parachute in and I heard the people in the farm playing the accordion and singing. I could hear music and singing in there. I suppose they were amusing themselves while the raids were on. I frantically pulled this chute in. I didn’t know what to do with it so I banged the old harness release and got it off and I lugged it over to a ditch and pushed it in this ditch and tried to cover it up with some grass stuff. There was a Dutch barn next to the farm and I thought well perhaps I could climb up into it. I tried to but it was hopeless. I couldn’t get in. So I took my Mae West off and I slung that up in on top of the hay in this barn and I took off across the field. There was a bit of a field where this barn, this house, the farm was. Took off across there and I came across a hole in the hedge and I crawled through that on to a dirt road, a gravel road and across the road into these pine trees and I sat under there trying to recover myself. As I did so an aircraft swooped right around. It was in flames from head to tail. I can only assume it was still ours. It was completely ablaze from end to end and it flew over, disappeared down behind the trees there and there was a bit of a flash and then it all went. That was it. Nothing. I can only assume as I found out years after the war that the aircraft had actually crashed in the River Rhine itself. Three hundred yards west of the Holy Ghost Ferry at a place called Rhein. R H E I N, I think it is. Anyway, I was recovering myself there and I got my escape kit out and had a look in there and looking for the compass. As I did so I could hear footsteps coming along this road and I stood behind a tree. The tree trunk’s thickness was about twelve inches across I suppose and I stood there. I had my, my Air Force uniform on. I didn’t wear a flying suit. I had my uniform and I had a navy blue pullover and I also when I landed I noticed I still had my black gloves on. My silk gloves. So I stood behind this tree and covered my face up with my black gloves and a woman walked by and as she walked past I sort of sidled around the other side of the tree with my hands covering my face and she walked on. She disappeared off into the farm. I bet she’d have had a shock if she had known I was that close to her. Incidentally, when I did land I found —
[recording paused]
Incidentally, I found that when I baled out of course not having taken my helmet off the intercom came up and the oxygen tube with the tube that went to the oxygen economiser in the turret [laughs] had all come down as well. It was wrapped around my neck and I was very lucky actually that it pulled away like that otherwise I’d have been dragged along dangling behind the aircraft. but it had pulled off anyway. I got the compass out and it pointed west but when I went to go west all I could see was across the other side of the road it was all barbed wire fence. The sort of thing you find around an airfield and I didn’t want to go that way so I thought well I’ll have to make a detour and go through the woods. So I went blundering through these woods and at night time it’s not funny going through pine woods believe you me. I worked my way through. I came across a canal and one part went across and luckily as luck would have it there was a dead tree fallen across it and I managed to take a jump and get on to this dead tree and then climb across the other side and I walked, oh I walked for miles. I walked across a great field of cabbages. I came to a railway embankment and I was just going up the rank and along came a train. I shot down the bottom again, waited ‘til that went by and then I went over the top and down the other side. Three more fields. Then I came to some marshland. At that, then I heard some shots fired and talking to Ron Heath my mid-upper gunner afterwards I think that was probably when he got captured because while I was down in the marsh there I was trying to get some water. I’d got some purifying tablets in the escape kit to put in it and I had this rubber thing I was trying to get this water in and I heard these shots and I saw a figure doubled up run across the top of the hill. So I ducked down and laid there for a while and then it quietened off and I wondered. I got fed up walking through these fields, this marsh. I got water in my boots. I didn’t know quite what had happened. I didn’t know whether I had just been an idiot and jumped out and everybody else had gone on or what. So I decided to just walk and I came to a road and this road was dead straight and it disappeared in the distance through these pine trees. You could see the cutting that went through the pine trees but you couldn’t see anything else. It was just black. So I’m walking down the verge of this road and I suddenly came to some huts on the right and there was a sign. Solingen. So I thought well I’ll make my way down that way. I went over to have a look at these huts. They had various markings and things on them and I turned around and standing in the middle of the road was a character who I can only describe as something out of, “Giles,” cartoon. He was a little German bloke with a greatcoat down to his ankles, he had his side cap jammed on his head, he had a bloody great rifle with a bayonet on it pointing straight at me. I hadn’t seen him. Something about hoch hoch or something like this. Anyhow, I didn’t have much choice. I put my hands up and said, ‘RAF.’ And he sort of stood behind me, motioned me into this hut and it was a guard hut and I think what it was it was probably like what they had in this country. It was a Volkssturmer. Now, they’re the local Home Guard and I got taken in there and they all sat and looked at me and there was a picture of Hitler on the wall and I looked at that and went humph [laughs] of course there were phone called being made. Frantic phone calls and one of the guys went into a back room and came out with a guy who I assume was the guard commander. Now, honestly, Bill I’ve never seen anything like it. He came out. He had a long white nightshirt on and he had one of these bobble hats like you see Wee Willie Winkie run through the town in and he was obviously somebody in authority because the others were all very deferential and all the rest of it but I don’t know what he was. And he said, you know, the usual, ‘You think you will win the war, yah.’ And I said, ‘Yah.’ And he said, ‘Nein. Nein.’ He said, ‘The Fuhrer — ’ and there was this picture of Hitler, he said, ‘He will conquer Britain.’ You know. I said, ‘Oh crap.’ Anyway, I sat there for a while and they gave me a peremptory search and I asked, you know for a drink. I don’t know. I couldn’t speak German obviously drink or trink it was much the same thing and they brought me some of this ersatz coffee. It was bloody horrible. There was no sugar or milk. There was just this ersatz coffee but at least it was wet. Anyway, I sat there for quite a while and this little bloke he was as chuffed as hell. I bet I made his day. He probably went home and lived off that for the rest of the war. How he had captured an airman, a British airman. And then later two young flak officers arrived because apparently the flak people had responsibility for the RAF and they’d obviously done it all before because they walked straight in. The first thing they did was take my flying boots off and take the escape knife out because I had these escape flying boots where you cut the top off. There’s a knife inside the leg and you cut the top off and you’re just left with a pair of shoes and they knew all about that. They just took the knife out and they sort of more or less signed for me and off we, away we went. One of them had a bike. The other one was walking and we walked I don’t know we walked virtually back most of the way I’d come I think.
[recording paused]
Anyway, these guys took me in. Miles we walked and we came to I don’t know whether it was a town or a village with a little habitation and they took me into a local police station and I ended in there and it was as though, I mean I served in the Metropolitan Police after the war and the whole thing was very very similar. I went in there and these two guys explained who I was or what have you and they handed, I was searched. They took all the stuff. Everything off me and put all my, everything was listed even the money that they put in the escape kits that was all counted and taken off me and all this and put on the receipt and I was given this receipt. I was more or less formally charged. I had to stand in front of this tall desk in the charge room and they read something over to me. I don’t know. And then they listed all this property and I had to sign for it and the duty officer took the charge. He was the dead spitting image of old Hindenburg. He was sort of square headed, bald headed with waxed moustache sticking up there and he wouldn’t give me my pipe or anything because I used to smoke a pipe in those days. He wouldn’t give me that. Down the cells I went. They gave me this receipt and stamped in English across the receipt, the receipts said, “All these amounts are confiscated and will not be returned at the conclusion of hostilities,” or something. That was stamped in English across it. Anyhow, I got stuck down in the cell there and during the day or night, I don’t know what time, you know it was getting on for dawn I suppose then and they had air raids during the period and I had to be taken out of this cell, down the square and taken down a public air raid shelter underground and the girl who took me down there she was beautiful. She was a dead spitting image of Ann Sheridan when she was young. She was lovely. Anyway, she took me down there and I sat down there. I had to sit in the corner as the populace came in and they all sat and glared at me. I wasn’t feeling too happy actually. Anyway, the air raid finished. They’d take me upstairs again and this happened about three times altogether. There was also a duty runner I suppose. Another little guy down there. A little short fellow who was again another, “Giles,” type character and I was in the cell and all of a sudden the hatch opened and this girl was there and she pushed a pear through. You know, a real life pear and it was a beauty. Looking up and down the corridor scared stiff that somebody would see her. Anyway, I had this pear and said, ‘Thank you very much.’ Ate it. Thoroughly enjoyed it. A little while later the hatch went down again and there was this little runner geezer and he pushed through the hatch to me some real white bread ham sandwiches. How on earth he got them I just do not know but again he was scared stiff somebody was going to see him. Looking up and down the corridor and pushed them through and then scuttled away. I enjoyed them. Later on obviously the duty officer at the time, the old Hindenburg type had gone off duty and the day duty officer had obviously come on. He was a different type altogether. A very nice bloke he seemed. You know, more, much more pleasant type and he had filled my pipe for me with tobacco, pushed it through the bars to me, again looking up and down the corridor in case somebody saw him. Pushed it through with this piped tobacco, a box of matches and five Waldorf Astoria cigarettes. Well, of course, I was as happy as a sandboy then because I used to smoke in those days and I had these cigarettes and I sat there and during the day they came and they showed me a parachute harness which had on it, “R R Heath.” And they said, ‘Is this yours?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s mine.’ Well it wasn’t. It was Ron Heath’s actually. I knew, I again knew that Ron had baled out as well. Anyway, I stayed there for a day and a half I suppose and then a lorry turned up and these guys turned up and the chap who was in charge wore a black leather coat and he had a sort of skull and cross bones hat on and all horrible bugger he looked. In fact, it looked as though his teeth were filed to points. They came down and signed for me. I was taken out and bunged in the lorry and off I went and in the lorry there were lots of bits of stuff out of the aircraft. Well, out of a aircraft and we drove down quite a way. We went down to, we must have been near the banks of the Rhine somewhere and they left one guy with me and they disappeared off down across this field and down through these trees. Anyway, they came back and they were carrying a body that was partly wrapped in paper and they’d got, they put a spar through it or it was resting on a spar of a aircraft or what but they came, they lumped it on to the back of the aircraft. Another guy carrying this round thing like paper which looked to me like somebody’s head. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to know who it was. They dumped it. They stood back and looked at me and then we took off and went about a mile away to a, there was a burial ground. A churchyard place. They brought a wheelbarrow out and they pushed this body off it into it and put the head with it and they wheeled it off into the cemetery there. Well, that’s it. They came back and got in the lorry and we drove off. On the way we were being driven off there was an air raid started. They stopped the lorry in the middle of the road. They all jumped out and ran off and left me standing in the back of the lorry. Well, I didn’t know what to expect so I thought well they looked at me and I thought well are they waiting for me to try and make a run for it so they can shoot me or something? Anyway, I got down and sort of ambled off after them and there was an air raid shelter underneath the road and they all got down there and this air raid wasn’t all that far away but I’ve never heard anything like it. The rumbling. The ground was shaking and there was an American, the Yanks who were doing the bombing and this continual rumble, you know God knows what it must have been like for the people who were being bombed. It was dreadful. Anyhow, the air raid all clear went and back we went. Climbed in this wagon and off we went and actually drove into Dusseldorf itself. We drove down. We stopped in front of some wooden huts and the, out came poor old Ron Purcell. He’d obviously been burned because his face was all blistered. His hands were all done up in white crepe paper and his trousers all down the front had been burned and were pinned together and he was, he looked in a hell of a state and his eyes were very blue. He looked really shocked. Anyway, he came out followed by Jock and they came out and managed to get old Purc in the back of the lorry, laid him down. There was also a Frenchman with him who had also been hurt and they were sort of laying side by side there and Jock got in and I was already in there and then they drove off and they drove us into Dusseldorf aerodrome. At the aerodrome I got yanked off and so did Jock. We were taken into the guardroom. Purc and the French guy they disappeared in the lorry and I never saw Purc again until after the war. Pause for a mouthful of beer.
[recording paused]
I got taken with Jock down to the, down to the cells and as we went down there they opened a cell and shoved poor old Jock in one and I was going further along and in those days I used to, I used to have this sort of tune that I used to whistle which was [unclear] and I whistled this and all of a sudden a voice from a cell there said, ‘Is that you Kiwi?’ And it was Ron Heath. So I said, ‘Can I go in there?’ So they obligingly shoved me in with Ron and of course we were chuffed to see each other because no one knew what had gone on and there we stayed. So we were in there for again I don’t know how long we were in there for. Eventually they gathered us up and we were dragged, taken outside and out there were a load of guys. There must have been about twenty or thirty blokes and most of them were Yanks. Some of them had come out of hospital because they were burned. The poor devils. Their faces and things you know burned almost like a skull. But they’d been, obviously been in hospital there and they’d reasonably well recovered. They marched us down into Düsseldorf and the guard told us, he said, ‘You stay together. Keep tight together because —’ he said, ‘Last week the crowd were so incensed they got hold of fifty two POWs and they strung them up on the lampposts along the street. So needless to say we stayed together and they took us down to the station and at the station there was an air raid I think about to commence. They took us right down underneath Düsseldorf Railway Station. There were about four floors of air raid shelters underneath. They took us right down and a whole load of people in there all glaring at us and what have you and they took us down and they shoved us in a room probably about twelve foot square. About twenty. Over twenty of us in there and some of these Yanks were in a bad way. They’d just got out of hospital. Anyway, we stayed in there and the only air came from a gap under the door and a gap above the door which was a steel door and we sat there. We were down there, oh for hours I think and we could hear a woman outside arguing and shouting and all the rest of it and there was an American in there, a chap called Schultz as it happened who was a first generation American. His parents were German and he could speak German and he said, ‘God damned,’ he said, ‘She’s trying to get his gun off him. She wants to shoot through the door.’ And of course we all pushed away from the door. Kept well out of the way. Anyway, the guard wouldn’t give her his gun and that was it. We stayed down there two or three hours I think and when they opened the door to come out they’d gathered. Obviously they’d gathered up all the German servicemen they could. There were German marines and sailors and soldiers and airmen the lot and they’d made a passage that we had to go through and they were holding the crowd back and by golly were they ever nasty. This passage, we shot through this lot and people swiping at us with briefcases and shouting and I thought, you know if they get out we’re going to be strung up on lampposts. We got through and they took, we went up on to a separate platform and we went up there and obviously nothing else came that way so we were on this platform on our own. But across on the other platform the people there. I think what they used to do at night when they had air raids if there were any idea of air raids trains used to come in and they used to take the populace out into the countryside and they probably used to stay out there at night and then bring them back in the morning because there was a train across on one of the other platforms there and everybody was struggling to get in. They were climbing in through the windows. I’ve never seen anything like it. Then all of a sudden a train came in, it hit this lot bang and it took off straight out of the station people still trying to get on it and it went out of the station and disappeared. Anyway, our truck came along and we got into this and we piled in there. We had a Canadian in the compartment that I was in. I sat directly opposite the guard. There was a guard in each compartment and I sat there and during the night I can recall somebody getting up and going out. He wanted to go to the toilet. He was a Canadian pilot and apparently he never came back. I didn’t realise this. He didn’t come back [laughs] and then we got taken down to Oberursel for interrogation near Frankfurt. We got kicked off at this station and we had to, when we got off at the station of course this guy was missing and they went spare. They started accusing me because I was sitting beside the door. Anyway, I didn’t know anything about it and they got us out and started to march us across these fields and we marched across past a firing range. I thought oh God they’re going to bloody shoot us. Well, we marched past this firing range and they took us up to Oberursel and of course we went into the interrogation camp for interrogation and we were shoved in there, each put in a separate room and oh dear what a load of [pause] that was. In the interrogation place you had a room there and on the walls there were sort of what people had marked one, two, three, four and a stroke, five. The number of days they’d obviously stayed there. And they overheated these rooms and most uncomfortable they were. And if you wanted to go to the toilet you used to turn a lever on the wall and an arm used to drop outside the, outside the room and a guard would come and take you out and take you down to the toilet. But I believe they also had microphones in these rooms so if you talked in your sleep or something they could hear what was going on. Anyhow, had a couple of days in there and then they took me down for interrogation. This young bloke, a Luftwaffe, I don’t know what he was, he was an officer, lieutenant or something and he sat there and the chat they give you is that, ‘You say you are Sergeant Korner. We know all about everybody in the RAF. You have to satisfy us that you are Sergeant Korner because what the Allies are doing they are dropping saboteurs in RAF uniform with suitcases. If they get away then they go and blow bridges up and do all sorts of diabolical things. If they’re caught then they plead that they are POWs and you have got to convince us that you are a genuine POW. We know all about you and your father and your parents.’ And all the rest of it and they say, you know, ‘What squadron were you on?’ And all this and, ‘What aircraft were you flying?’ Anyway, you sit there and give your number, rank and name and they said, ‘Don’t be a bloody fool.’ And the chap said, ‘We know all about everything,’ he said. So I said, ‘Well, why ask me?’ He said, ‘Look through that.’ And he threw this folder over and I thought well he wants me to look through it. I opened it and I could see what it was. They were squadrons and all the officers and all the rest of it. Anyway, I started to go through it and there were all the American bomber groups and fighter groups and who the CO was and the type of aircraft. I thought he’s waiting to see me stop at a certain page and so I just kept on gradually going, spending my time and I came to 640 Squadron and they had all the aircraft details down there. It had the CO of the squadron. They had, the only thing they got wrong was Flight Lieutenant [Clair] was the navigation leader and about two weeks previously he’d been posted to Group and they didn’t have the new one down there but they had all the rest of it down and I read this. Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. The information they had there was amazing. Anyway, I just sat there and said, ‘No. No. No.’ ‘Did you have H2S in your aircraft?’ I said, ‘What’s H2S?’ He said, ‘A navigational aid.’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I’m a rear gunner. I’m not a navigator.’ And, ‘Did you have Gee?’ I said, ‘What’s Gee?’ He said, ‘Again navigational.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know anything about that. I’m just an air gunner.’ Anyway, I said, ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ Because he had some State Express cigarettes on the counter there in front of him. He turned around and said, ‘No.’ [laughs] Thanks very much. Anyway, they took me down. I was there for another day or so and they came and took me out and put me in a big hut and there were a load of other blokes in there as well and there was another chap there and the bloke said, ‘Don’t talk to him. He’s a plant.’ He looked very German actually but he was in RAF uniform but he didn’t seem to speak very much to anybody. I think he was just in there using his ears you know. Picking up what information. The blokes meeting each other and opening their traps and shouting the odds. Well, we stayed there and then they took us down to the station and put us in a train and they took us up to a place called Wetzlar. Wetzlar. Which was where you got in there and the first thing you did was to have a shower. Then they took you into a place and they kitted you out. They gave you a sort of uniform and whatever. RAF greatcoats, a suitcase with change of clothing in it and some toilet stuff and what have you. Actually, I’ve got an American greatcoat which was a cracker. It really was a nice, it had a big collar on it and I was very pleased with that later. And they took you in for a meal.
[recording paused]
All mashed up and fried. It was very nice actually. It was very much appreciated. We were kitted out. They were, in fact on this staff there were some aircrew guys and the chap in charge was a Colonel [Stark], an American colonel. I heard after the war that because he collaborated with the Germans to the extent he did there that he got ten years imprisonment when he got back to the States. I don’t know whether he did or not. But one of the chaps there was a fella called Ted Quick, a bloke I knew who I knew in England before the war. He lived not far from me. I was quite surprised to see him. But they were a sort of regular staff there and we got kitted out and what have you and showers and a couple of days later we got put on a train and we got sent off to the prisoner of war camp where I ended up at Luft 7 at Bankau. About a four day trip across Germany right to the borders of Poland and that was quite a thing in itself. At one stage we even passed some people. Thinking back now they must have been these Jewish people who were being rounded up because they were in these cattle trucks with all barbed wire across them and they were sort of waving their hands out of this barbed wire. I think they were probably being taken off to the concentration camps. But it took us about four days to get across there.
[recording paused]
Earlier on I mentioned a raid we did on the 6th of October 1944 on Sterkrade which was in the Ruhr. An oil refinery. Again on this occasion we were one of the lead aircraft and sitting in the rear turret, it was a daylight, sitting in the rear turret hundreds of aircraft behind us all streaming away into the distance. In particular just behind at about the same height as us there was another Halifax. I don’t know if it was one of ours or not, off our squadron or somebody else but all of a sudden he seemed to speed up and virtually dive and shot underneath us and disappeared from my view and went ahead. And all of a sudden there was a hell of a bang and a wing went past. I think it was a Halifax. This wing, complete wing with two engines on it still revolving around shot past us in the air and just disappeared behind us falling to the ground and obviously the aircraft had received a direct hit and blown up. And as we got further forward I was looking out of the rear turret. I could see a couple of parachutes. I don’t know who it was. Later on when I was in POW camp I found another member of our squadron who had been shot down on that raid. A chap called [Hazzard], another rear gunner and he was in the same camp. I asked him if it was him and if it was his aircraft that had blown up. He said it wasn’t his. They got hit and caught fire and they had to bale out but he said they certainly didn’t blow up. So who it was I don’t know but it was an horrific site to see this wing go sailing past with these engines on it. Yes.
[recording paused]
Another episode I remember when we had been doing night bombing we were coming back from a raid. Quite a big raid. There were two hundred aircraft on it and we were routed in across the Channel over Southampton and we went to the same, actually over Southampton to a fairly low height of about ten thousand feet or something like this. Anyway, we were all coming back and all of a sudden all hell let loose. I don’t know whether it was the Navy or what but all the guns on the ground started going off and the flak was bursting all around and there was absolute pandemonium. Obviously there had been a booboo somewhere because normally all aircraft had IFF on them which used to send out a message that there was a friendly aircraft coming in and anyway they opened up and I’ve never seen anything like it. There were aircraft there, everyone put their navigation lights on, they were all coming in over Southampton. There were drones. All of a sudden you saw all these lights coming on. It was incredible. I didn’t realise how many aircraft there were at the same time over there and then they stopped firing. But it was definitely a booboo there from somebody. Another one, another day we came back and we did a raid on some troop concentrations at a placed called [unclear]. It was supposed to be close support for the Army. I think by the way it was Canadians who were supposed to be advancing. Maybe they could mark the target themselves with star shells and they were going to bomb but something or other happened, a breakdown in communication and they moved up and nobody had told us of course. So the raid started at this place at [unclear] and there was a master bomber and he apparently marked the target who were as it turned out to be Canadian troops and they started bombing and then of course obviously a message got back that they were bombing the wrong people and the master bomber, the code word for abandon the mission was, “Canary,” and he was shouting out, ‘Master bomber to main force. Canary. Canary.’ And the bombing still went on. We heard it. We were actually on our run up with the bomb doors open so of course we just closed the bomb doors, turned around and came back. Of course, having done that we had a full bomb load on board and we were too heavy to land so we had to go and lose a couple in the North Sea. There was an area there where you dropped them. It was an area for this sort of thing. So we went out and we wandered over there and we had to lose I think about four thousand pounds or something like this and we got over there and Jock the bomb aimer he selected his bombs, the bomb doors opened and away they went and he said, ‘Right. Bombs gone.’ They were supposed to have been dropped safe. Anyway, we bombed and I looked down thinking I might see some splashes in the water. Instead of that I saw four explosions. They all went off and strangely enough they were right in the middle of a convoy of ships. You know, we had the flash as those exploded. We could see all those ships there but not one of them opened fire. We came back and a safe landing weight then and came back and went to bed.
[recording paused]
I don’t know if any of this is any use to you, Bill. I’m sitting here trying to call these things to mind. If there’s anything else you want me to just get in touch and I’ll let you know what it is. The other story of course, the POW side of it is a different story altogether and again that in itself is a, is quite a yarn because we had quite a bad time on the three weeks march on the road in thick snow and the things that took place then, well is nobody’s business. But we survived and here we go. So, what I’ll do, I’ll send this off to you. I’m sorry about the one part. I think it goes a bit quiet. I don’t know why. You have to turn it up. Probably because I was laying back in the chair speaking rather than sitting up fairly close to the microphone. Anyway, I’ll stick this in an envelope and post it to you. If you want to use any of it do so. If you don’t then don’t bother but it’s all I can think of at the moment anyway. In the meantime Bill all the best and good luck with your [pause] incidentally I went to Elvington to try and get a copy of your book and do you know they didn’t have one there. Have your publishers sent any to Elvington at all because I’m sure they’d sell there like hot cakes. I went there and they sent me to a firm called Pilkington’s in the Shambles in York and I managed to get one there. That was, that was for [unclear] wife. She wanted me to get three copes. Well, I got one in York but she’s had to order the other ones through Smith’s. But I thought, you know it might be an idea if you could get them to put a few into, into the shop in Elvington because I’m sure they’d sell there. Just for your information anyway. All the best. Cheers.