Recording of several events during a tour of New Zealand and Australia. Oct/Nov 1974

Recording of several events during a tour of New Zealand and Australia. Oct/Nov 1974

First - Leonard Cheshire - Sacred Heart College: talk to the school. Talks of the dambusters and their operation to the German dams. Goes on to talk of operations against V-weapon sites and other operations carried out by 617 Squadron. Goes on to talk of civilian war-time casualties and possibility of future wars. Recalls the event after the war that set him on the path of looking after disabled and the establishment of his homes. Gives examples of their work.

1974-10

1974-11

Audio recording 00:24:18

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SCheshireGL72021v20025-0002, SCheshireGL72021v20025-0002-Transcript

Leonard Cheshire Resonate Project

File Title: Recording of several events during a tour of New Zealand and Australia. Oct/Nov 1974.

Duration: 24 mins 20 secs
Transcription date: 09/09/20
Archive Number: AV-S_510 S4 Part 1

Start of Transcription

00:00: Leonard Cheshire: Sacred Heart College: talk to the school.

00:03 [no speech] to 00:14

00:15 [applause] to 00:21

00:22: LC: Well I’d like to say that I’m very happy indeed to be given the chance of coming to meet you and to have these few moments together. The only trouble is, I suppose that if I weren’t here, you’d be in class. I’m keeping you out of class am I? No? I’d better not be too long had I – you’ll want to get back.

00:48: Children: No.

00:50 LC: Now Father Columbanus has said … has invited me to talk about the disabled, the poor, those that we are trying to do something for in a little way. Is that what you’d like me to talk about? You don’t want me to talk about the War at all do you?

01:12: Children: Yes.

01:16: LC: Well, do you know anything about the Dambusters?

01:22: Children: Yes.

01:23: LC: Shall I just say a few words about them? Well the Dambusters (for those of you who may not have seen the film or read the book) was a special duty squadron, but was formed from volunteers to do some special duties work. And in fact, Mrs Stanford, who you see on the platform here – her husband was one of the pilots in that squadron, and I’m staying with Ross and Joyce Stanford. The first job that the squadron had to do was to destroy the 2 dams in Germany – the Mona and the Ada dams, and that was done by the means of a skipping bomb. There was a very famous English scientist called Barnes Wallace, and he designed a bomb which worked rather like the way that you’d take a stone and throw it into the water – you know, it skips. And so it was able to skip over the torpedo net, hit up against the wall of the dam; it was spinning and it would drop to the necessary depth – I think it was 20 foot – and explode. The difficulty was that the aeroplane had to be exactly 60 foot above the water for it to work. – If you were 70 foot (10 foot too high), the bomb would sink. If you were 50 foot (10 foot too low) it would blow your tail off, and nobody particularly wanted that to happen. And there was no instrument accurate enough to judge whether you were 60 foot above the water, so the Commanding Officer of the squadron – Guy Gibson, a very famous and a very brave man who later was killed, and I in fact took his place a little later on in the squadron – thought up the idea of putting a searchlight in each wing tip, and the beam of light came obliquely downwards, so that it met at exactly 60 foot, so the bomb aimer was made to put his head in the … put his nut in the nose and look down through the Perspex window, and he’d watch these little pools of light. As the aircraft got lower they’d get closer and closer and closer, and when they just joined and made one pool of light he’d say ‘That’s right Skip’ (or something like that). If of course they crossed (which meant he was too low), then he’d say something much more abrupt and told the Skipper to get up a bit higher. It was a dangerous attack, because all the guns were mounted on the wall of the dam and the squadron lost a lot of aircraft that night I’m afraid. But they did their job. Later, when I came we had a different job, and our job was to destroy Hitler’s third secret weapon called the V3. Now you’ve probably heard of his secret weapons – the V1, the pilotless aircraft full of explosive and the V2, the rocket. The V3 was a great big gun which was buried under 50 foot of concrete and was going to fire one 500 lb shell every minute into London, and there was no bomb on earth which would go through 50 foot of concrete. But the same scientist, Barnes Wallace, designed a deep penetration bomb which he called Tallboy. If you dropped it from 16,000 feet it would go 90 foot into the ground and blow this gun up from underneath. Hitler hadn’t thought of putting 50 foot of reinforced concrete under his gun. The difficulty was you had to drop it within 15 yards – that’s not much more than the width of this hall – from the outside of the concrete of the gun emplacement. And when I said to Barnes Wallace that dropping a bomb from 16,000 feet within 15 yards was going to be difficult, all he said was ‘Well if you’re going to pepper the whole of northern France with my bombs, I don’t see why I should take the trouble to design and build them’. That was all the comfort we got out of Barnes Wallace. So we had to devise a method of doing this, and the only way was to send 1 or 2 aircraft in at very low level with what we called a marker. That was a bomb which was magnesium and burned very brightly – it made like a beacon, like what you have at sea that tells ships … a lighthouse. And then the high-flying aircraft could line up on this light and come slowly in and drop their bomb. We had to try the method out and we were allowed to have 1 trial in France against a target outside a very lovely old city called Limoges where they make beautiful china. And outside this city was a factory that made engines for the German air force – the Luftwaffe. It was the Cabinet itself – Churchill and the Cabinet – who gave these orders, and the condition imposed was that we did not kill 1 civilian. We were only allowed to hit the factory. The trouble was that at the time we were due into the target there were 500 girls on the nightshift. So how would you destroy a target, a factory with 500 girls inside it and not hit any of the girls? Can any of you tell me? Yes?

07:51: Child: [Unclear]

07:58: LC: Well they wouldn’t be able to get back. Yes?

08:01: Child: [Unclear]

08:03: LC: No. I’ll tell you what we did: we did 3 low level runs in a heavy 4-engine Lancaster, just above the factory roof, and a 4-engine Lancaster at 25 feet above a factory roof makes an awful lot of noise. And we hoped that the girls would take the hint. And fortunately they did. And all ran out, except for one, who was curious by nature. And I’d like to warn you that curiosity is not always … is sometimes a dangerous characteristic. And she decided that she wouldn’t go any further than the ditch, the other side of the road, and she’d sit there and see what was going to happen. Well I’m glad to say that the attack was successful, that all the bombs landed inside the factory, of which there wasn’t much left at the end. And nobody was touched at all, except this girl, who got hit by a bomb splinter. But fortunately she wasn’t very badly hurt and she recovered. So we were able to go on, develop our technique and eventually destroy those V3 sites which never fired their 500 lb shells. Well now, that was something about the War. Of course my part in the War was a very small one when you think of all the others that were involved, and particularly when you think of all those who were killed in it. I don’t suppose anybody in this room knows how many people – men, women and chidren were killed in that Second World War. Do you know?

10:06: Child: 25 million?

10:07: LC: No, 55 million. 20 million were killed … were put to death – nothing to do with the war – they weren’t soldiers – in the Nazi concentration camps alone. And that showed what was going to happen to the world if the Nazis had won. My generation – when I was young like you – we never wanted war. We refused to accept that war was the right way of solving disputes between nations. But unfortunately governments and others made mistakes and we were thrown into war. And we learned what it means to the world to have a world war, and we cannot afford a third. And so the question that was in our minds at the end of the war, and I expect is in many of your minds (or will be when you get older) is what can you and I … what can an ordinary person do to help see that there will not be another war? Or to put it another way, and a better way, what are we going to do to see that there’s peace, that there’s real peace in the world – unity, freedom, justice and the opportunity for everybody to lead the kind of life that he wants. Now that was a question that I myself couldn’t answer, and while I was trying to answer it I found myself unexpectedly with an old man in hospital dying of cancer. He had no relatives or friends and the hospital couldn’t keep him. They said ‘we can’t keep 1 old man blocking a bed when there are others we could take in and cure them’. And so I was asked to find somewhere else for him to go. I couldn’t find anywhere else for him, even though in Britain we are a welfare state, we have a National Health Service and we are told that whoever is ill or in need, he will be looked after by the state. Because there was nothing more to be done for him, nobody could afford a bed. So I set out to help him. In fact I took him into a large empty house that I was living in at the time and trying to sell. I looked after him as best I could myself. And that led me into a new world, that until then I never knew existed and I didn’t think had anything to do with me, and that is the world of the disabled. When I say the disabled I mean somebody who has become paralysed – either by accident or by illness. Somebody can go out today, this afternoon, cross the road, be hit by a car, or dive into a river or the sea or a swimming pool and find it’s too shallow, and you hit your head and break your neck. That can quite easily happen. You become paralysed, or you may get a disease. And I’m talking about the young, about people in their teens, their 20s and their 30s. Now we think, most of us, that somebody to whom that happens will forever after be a passenger in life, be somebody who is no longer able to give anything to the world – merely put in bed and looked after. But this is not the case. You’ve become disabled in your body, but in your heart and your mind you’re just the same as every other person – every other young person. I want to give you an example. In one home in England (my country), where we have 60 homes for disabled people, there’s one person I think of who’s started a typing business. He takes in typing and he types it, and he gets paid for it. And he has to keep fully professional … he has to type a really good letter – the same as a secretary here in school or in business. Now Norman (is his name): he can’t move his legs; he can’t move his hands – he can’t move his hands at all – they’re just dead. So he types by blowing down a tube. He has a tube … You know what a hookah is do you? You’ve seen pictures of Africans and others smoking a hookah – a sort of pipe. Well this tube is connected to an electronic box. That electronic box will operate the key on the typewriter that he wants – like a morse code. If he blows a short, long [LC demonstrates] that’ll be “a”. If he blows a long short [LC demonstrates] it’s “n”. So Norman sits there blowing into the tube, and he can type a letter that’s as good as any letter you’ll see typed by anybody. Now Norman has made something out of his life, and he feels that he’s earning his own living. He isn’t completely, because he doesn’t earn much in the week, but he’s making the most of it. He feels that he’s useful. And I think that everybody – you will know this – everybody has his own hopes for his own life. He wants to feel not only that he is wanted, that he belongs to a family, that he has friends, he wants to feel that he can give something. We all want to give – not only receive, and all of us want to be independent and free – to go the way we want. This is what the disabled want. But their disability makes it almost impossible. In the Philippines for instance we have 5 homes, and they’re all very disabled people – they’re in wheelchairs. In those homes they have no staff – no helpers – not to do the work in the home. And so the disabled have to do everything. They cook – even the men. The men live all alone in one home. They go out and they do the buying … they buy their vegetables and their meat. They do the cooking; they take it in turns to cook. They do their own washing, and they do work. One of them has set up work as a watch repairer. He has a little window on the street, and people stop and give him their watches and he mends their watches and gets paid for it. They have a wheelchair basketball team. Have you ever seen basketball played in a wheelchair? No? Well you’d be surprised at the speed in which they travel. And it’s really exciting to watch them play basketball. Well to them it’s just the same as an Olympic team. You know, they’re giving everything they’ve got. So I’m saying that throughout the world there are people who’ve been made completely helpless by accident or by illness, and they are waiting to be given the opportunity to be useful, to do something worthwhile with their lives. To give you one last and further example: I know a girl who was a good athlete. She got polio, and now she’s completely helpless. The only part of her body that she can move is one big toe. She can’t breathe, but she has a machine that makes here breathe. She can see and she can hear, but she can’t talk. She just lies absolutely helpless in bed, except for this one big toe. Attached to that toe is a microswitch. Now with it she can do quite a lot of things. She’s very musical, so she likes music. She has a hi-fi set – system. She can turn it on, she can choose the channel or the tape or the record that she wants, and she can adjust the volume. She can put her television on. She can work a typewriter slowly. You go in and you see her – Hilary is her name. You have a conversation with her (she can hear you). She answers on the typewriter. She’ll have a joke with you. She’ll pull your leg. And she can compose poetry – very nice poetry. Now I know that there are a lot of people who having seen Hilary as she once was would say ‘Better let her die’. And of course I respect the sincerity behind what they say. But Hilary never wanted to die. She wanted to live. And she wanted to make something of her life. She has, but she’s only made it because on her side she had the will and the talent and the determination, and on the other side there were the doctors who saw her through, the scientists who designed the equipment for her, her friends and her family who gave her companionship and support and encouragement. You might say that it’s a team. And this is what I have learnt in my time amongst the disabled: that all of us in the world, whoever we are, whether we’re rich or whether we’re poor, whether we’re old or whether we’re young, whether we’re helpless like Hilary or very strong and powerful like others, we’ve all got a part to play in building unity and peace in the world. The trouble is we think it’s … I can do nothing about the starving millions of India, and if you go to India and see them, you’d hardly believe that people could live as they do, with nothing. And yet they’re happy, they’ve got dignity, and like you and me they want to feel that they can be good citizens of the world.

21:53 [no speech] to 21:56

21:57: LC: Each of us has been given by God a job to do, not only in our own work, but outside it, in trying to make the world a little better for other people. And if we say ‘What can I do for all the poor in India’, I answer ‘Don’t look at the problem – the problem is too big; look at what we can do, what can I do?’. Perhaps it’s only very little, but do it, and have faith that that little thing you’ve done is really worthwhile. Now I would like to say how much I value the help that you have given us by your beachathon, by the fact that you’re interested in people like Norman and Hilary and the leprosy patients and the starving and the others that I know and live amongst. I would like to say that the very fact that young people, that children and students and others who are young are taking the trouble to do something for them gives them new encouragement and a new sense of purpose. And as I stand before you, I can picture in my mind the people who will receive the benefit of your help and be given a new opportunity and in a sense a new life, and I would assure you that they’re very grateful to you and that what you have done means a lot to them. So, as I finish, I just want to say that one thing: never be stopped from doing anything because it seems too little. It’s doing the little things well in life that counts. And one day you’ll realise how much it has meant. So I’d like to thank you for what you’ve done, thank you for inviting me and listening to me, and offer my very warmest wishes to you all, asking God’s blessing on you, both here at school and the success of your exams when they come along, and also in your future lives, wherever they may take you. I’m very happy to have been with you, and thank you.

24:20: Speech ends
24:20: End of recording

End of transcription