Interview with Dr James Hendrie Burt. One

Interview with Dr James Hendrie Burt. One

James Burt conducted his medical training St Andrew’s University in Scotland. Although he and his friends had tried to join a Service during the war their training was a Reserved Occupation and not only were they refused but they were strictly told off by the Dean. Once qualified James chose to do his National Service with the RAF and was posted to RAF Waddington as the Chief Medical Officer. Although his training in Psychiatry was only brief he expressed concern about some of the higher ranked airmen who had been prisoners of war and displayed certain personality characteristics in their post war years.

2022-06-23

02:13:59 Audio Recording

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

ABurtJH220623, PBurthJH2201

JB: Yes, please do. We have a special department that looks after ex-Waddington people and I’ll put you in touch and this chap, this flight sergeant Andy [unclear] was his other name. Andy got on to it and said yes could I arrange dates, suitable dates. So it was arranged that I go up with David my eldest son and Alistair, my other son and Jan and I went up on the 16th of May and that and they clearly suggested that I go and see the Medical, the Medical Centre and they said they had a Heritage Centre as well that they would like me to see. So that was all arranged. Then he said, Andy said, ‘The group captain will have you for lunch,’ and that. So obviously that was all settled. Then later on we got another letter from them. The first contact from them saying that the padre would like to come to lunch. Had we any objections? So, we said well of course we had no objections to the padre coming. Coming to lunch. So, I thought, I had no idea what but that there would probably be the four of us and the padre and group captain and probably the senior medical officer would be there and that we would be there before lunch. So anyway, that all seemed to be settled. Settled up. So, we then got instructions from Nigel [pause] not Nigel, from Andy when we had to be there at a quarter to ten on the Monday. The Monday morning at the guard at quarter to ten. So at a quarter to ten we, we were there. We were stopped by the guard of course who had all the information about us. They just checked on who we were and everything so all that was settled. Then there was a tap on my window. I was in the front passenger seat and there was a guard with a rifle tapping on the window. I put the window down. I said, ‘Oh dear, you’re not going to shoot me before I get in.’ [laughs] Put my window down and he said, ‘What badge is that you have on your lapel?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s the Vulcan badge.’ He said, ‘I know it’s the Vulcan but,’ he said, ‘I’ve never seen that badge before.’ I said, ‘Well, I can assure you.’ I said, ‘It’s the Vulcan badge.’ And I said, ‘My name is going on a plaque on a Vulcan that they are redoing and it will go on display. I said, ‘That’s alright.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘That’s quite all right.’ You see and that. And he said, ‘You know this place.’ I said, ‘I was medical officer here, you know.’ I said, ‘In ’46. 1946. ’46, ’47, ’48. He immediately drew himself up to attention and gave me a nice salute and said [all due]. So that was that. So we got in. Andy picked us up. Took the others. He gave me my pass to get in. We all got our passes. He said, ‘Right. Now,’ he said, ‘We’re on a timescale.’ He said, ‘I’ll take you to the Heritage Centre first.’ So we went there. A chappy who was, who was there, George I think his name was he was ex-RAF took us in and showed us around. Wanted me to look at photographs that they had and did I recognise anything and some things I was able to talk to him about and that and we got on very well from that. Andy appeared on the scene again and said, ‘Right. Time’s up.’ He said, ‘We must go to the Medical Centre now.’ He said, ‘They’re expecting you.’ So, I got into the car and drove down to the Medical Centre and I got out and he said, ‘Do you recognise the place?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘It’s actually the same as I left it.’ I said, ‘There’s no change. It’s just exactly the same. Except there was a wing commander standing on the, on the step. And he came forward. He said, ‘I’m the senior medical officer here.’ I said, ‘God,’ I said, ‘When I was here,’ I said, ‘I started off as an FO and,’ I said, ‘I got promoted up to flight lieutenant and —’ I said, ‘That was, I was there as a flight lieutenant.’ I said, ‘Now you’re, I was senior medical officer.’ I said, ‘Now, you’re two jumps ahead of me.’ So, we had a good laugh about that. So, he said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘We’ll go in and see.’ So he opened the door. As I walked in I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘This is not the place I left.’ He said, ‘No. It’s been redone.’ And that. He said, ‘Can you describe what it was like when you were here?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I walked straight in the door.’ I said, ‘The door there. The blank space there.’ I said, ‘That was my door into my office. That was it. That was it.’ And this corridor went to the left here and,’ I said, ‘That was, I had a couple of beds in there for the sick. The sick patients.’ I said, ‘Along the right here,’ I said, ‘There was another room.’ I said, ‘The dental officer used that sometimes.’ And I said, ‘Sometimes I slept here if anything going.’ And then I said, ‘Up the passage straight ahead,’ I said, ‘There was one office.’ I said, ‘That was my flight sergeant’s office.’ I said, ‘The staff. I had a flight sergeant, two corporals, one male, one female and two LACs.’ And I said, ‘That was it.’ I said, ‘That was my whole, whole staff.’ And I said we looked after.’ He said, ‘You know. The whole station.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘We had three. Three squadrons on one station and all the airmen and the WAAFs.’ I said, ‘We looked after the whole bunch.’ ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘Very interesting. Well,’ he said, ‘Thank you.’ He said, ‘I’ll take you around.’ I was [unclear] up this, one of the modern doctor’s rooms. There’s another doctor’s room there and that and we go up. There’s an x-ray there. A scanner there. I said, ‘My God,’ I said, ‘You’re a little hospital here.’ ‘Oh yes.’ He said, ‘We do everything.’ He said, ‘We’ve got a civilian doctor here as well’ As she appeared on the scene and that. I said, ‘It looks like you’ve got some staff and that.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Yes.’ So he shut the door. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’ll go down this passage here.’ And we went down this passage. Came into this room and here were all the staff in the room who immediately sang, “Happy Birthday,” to me and that and what they wanted to know was what it was like when I was there. I wanted to know what it was like. So, anyway, we got on very well and that. I said, ‘You know that I got to the station when I was posted to the station and that was October ’46. I said there were three squadrons. I said,’ I’d never been in a plane.’ I said, ‘I’d asked deliberately to be posted to a flying station.’ I said, ‘I got posted here but —’ I said, ‘I’d never flown in an aircraft and I was supposed to look after aircrew people. Talk to them about their experiences flying and everything.’ I said, ‘I know nothing whatsoever about that. About that.’ So, I saw the CO and I said, ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘Would it be possible for me to fly sometime?’ ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘Sure doc. Anytime.’ He said, ‘Go and see the wing commander, wing commander and I said [unclear] a New Zealander. He said, ‘See him. He’ll arrange it.’ ‘Alright sir.’ So I contacted the commander who said, ‘Sure doc,’ he said, ‘Anytime.’ He said, ‘And I’ll tell you what.’ He said, ‘The next time we’re having a trial flight it’s just for servicing and everything.’ He said, ‘I’ll get you up on that.’ The following day he came and he said, ‘Can you manage a half an hour or an hour?’ I said, ‘Oh, yes. It’s quite easy.’ He said, ‘Right, we’ll take you up.’ So, we got out. Up to the peri-track and that was there and there was a Lancaster. He said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘You’re going up in that.’ So I got in and he said, ‘Right. Stand between. Behind the pilot and the flight engineer,’ he said, ‘Until we get airborne.’ And he said, ‘When we’re airborne,’ he said, ‘Then we’ll get you into a seat so that you can see.’ And that. So I said, ‘That’s fair enough.’ So I held on. Then we went airborne up to five thousand feet. He levelled off and he said, ‘Right now.’ He said, ‘We’ll get you into where you can see.’ So he said, so the flight engineer said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Down there, Doc.’ He says, ‘We’ll put you down there. I went down there into the bomb aimer’s seat and there was nothing under my feet more or less. All Perspex. Fright of my life. So I saw everything. That was a bit, so we flew around a little bit, came back and landed and that. So he got me out and said, ‘Well? How do you feel?’ I said, ‘I feel fine.’ He said, ‘You weren’t frightened about it. I didn’t upset you in anyway?’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I thoroughly enjoyed myself.’ I said, ‘I’m looking forward to the next time I could, I could get up.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Well, that’s fine.’ He said, ‘The next time we’ll put you in the front gunner’s seat.’ He said, ‘That’s a lot easier to get into and,’ he said, ‘You’ve got a wonderful view up there,’ he said, ‘And you’ll be in a nice comfortable seat.’ So he put me in the bomb aimer’s seat to see if they could upset me [laughs] and they didn’t.
NM: Excellent.
JB: That was, that was fine. So after that I could, I could if I had any spare time and anybody was going anywhere I would say, ‘You know, if it’s decent give me a ring,’ and I said, ‘I can go.’ So I started to go flying. I think I had three. Three times in the, the Lancaster before it went out of service and the Lincoln came. Came in then so all my flying was done after that by Lincolns.
NM: Ok.
JB: And this went on and I had to have an operation on my thumb and went down to Nocton Hall and that, and well there was a little ward. There were only two beds in it and the officer’s bed. There was a chap in the other bed and he said, ‘Oh, you have, you’ve had an operation on your hand.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Oh. I’ve just had my appendix out.’ So that’s alright. ‘Where are you stationed?’ I said, ‘Waddington.’ ‘Oh’ he said, ‘I’m at Scampton.’ So we just immediately, we were both Scottish, we got on straight away and that, so —
NM: Ok. Can I —
JB: Sorry?
NM: I’ll take you back a little bit.
JB: Yes.
NM: In a minute. Can I just introduce the tape?
JB: Yeah.
NM: For the, for the people who are transcribing this. So, it’s the 23rd of June 2022. I’m with Dr Jimmie Burt, ex-medical officer in, at Waddington, Binbrook, Coningsby and Scampton. We are in his house in Bedfordshire. My name is Nigel Moore. So, Jimmy I’m just going to ask you a series of questions.
JB: Yes.
NM: Going right the way back and I will, the stories you’ve told already were going back to Waddington last month to celebrate your hundredth birthday and, and seeing the Medical Centre there and then you went on to talk about your service at Waddington and we’ll come back to that if we may. So going right back if we can Jimmy where were you born and what was, tell us something about your childhood and schooling.
JB: I was born in a mining village in Fife called Cardenden which was near Kirkaldy and that. My family on both sides, my mother’s side and my father’s side were all in mining. All the [unclear] I never knew my paternal grandparents they were both dead before I was born actually and a bit about that was I had a stepbrother. My father was married and his first wife had a son, David and she died. But in those days people never talked in Scotland anyway they never talked about ancestors or what happened. I never found out what she died of or anything at all. All I do was I had this, well I didn’t know he was my stepbrother. I assumed he was my brother until I was in a friend’s house. We were both about ten at the time and I said something about my brother and this chap’s mother said, ‘He’s not your brother.’ And I went home in tears. I said to my mother, I said, ‘They just said that David’s not my brother.’ She said, ‘David is your brother but he’s your stepbrother.’ She said, ‘Your daddy was married before and David’s mother died but David is your brother.’ You see. There was a big gap and because David was what? Twenty two years older than me and he was a GP in Thirsk and that. And I think I’d always wanted to be a GP I think because he was a GP. I got this and when I went to school the headmistress of the primary school said, ‘What are you going to do when you grow up, James.’ You see. She’d known me from when I was a baby really and I said, ‘I’m going to be a doctor, miss.’ She said, ‘Oh yes. You’re going to be a doctor.’ I met her twenty years later on the station at Kirkcaldy. I was coming off a train and she was waiting to go on a train. On a train. And we spotted each other, came out and that. I was in uniform at the time so she said, ‘What are you doing now?’ She said, ‘I’ll bet you’re a doctor.’ I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ She said, ‘I knew you would be a doctor.’ So that was that. So I had that from primary school when I sat the exams and went up to the High School. There were two exams in those days. One a qualifying exam and you went to a Secondary School for up to the age of fourteen or fifteen. But if you wanted to go to the High School to go to university you had to sit what was called the [control ] examination and then you went up to the, well we went up to the High Schools. So that was how it happened. I went up there. We were interviewed by the headmaster and what are you going to, are you intending to, do you intend to go on to university? And if you said yes you went in to A stream. If you said no you weren’t interested in going to university you perhaps you were going in to business or something after that you went into the other stream. So I was in the A stream. Went on. We got up to the, finished our third year, went up to the fourth year. Then you had to decide which subjects you were going to take. So as I was going to do medicine English was compulsory. You had to do English and that. I had a choice. I said, ‘Yes, well I want to do physics and chemistry and mathematics.’ French and Latin were the other subjects you had to take but the science ones were all at A level. What was in Scotland it was just called higher, the Higher Level. If you did the languages then you could do them at a higher level or a lower level but the majority of us did a lower level but kept the science subjects going and that and when I got to my A levels and that I’d applied to go to St Andrew’s University and that because that’s where my brother had been. The headmaster wanted me to go to Edinburgh. I wanted to go to St Andrews. We had a bit of a disagreement about St Andrews. That was that. So that was ’40, 1940 when I went up to St Andrews and —
NM: And you studied medicine at St Andrews.
JB: Pardon? Yes. On the wall there is the crest. On the wall. The bottom one.
NM: Oh right.
JB: But there we are. So, I qualified at St Andrews and that and then when, when we finished because we were Reserved during the war we, we tried to six of us tried to enlist and got into trouble. It was reported back to the Dean of the Faculty, and he had us all. We got a very strong lecture you know. Alright we know you want to do something,’ he said, ‘Here we need doctors. If it comes bad it needs doctors and you must get qualified. Once you get, you’re qualified then if the war is still on you’ll have, you’ll have to join up and that. So, well by the time I qualified I think I was one of the first back before it changed to National Service.
NM: So you qualified in what? ’44 ’45.
JB: ’45.
NM: ’45. Yes.
JB: And I got so [pause] so that was that and when I qualified I did psychiatry as the psychiatrists were very keen that I do psychiatry. So I did that until I decided I’d had enough and that.
NM: So, you specialised in psychiatry.
JB: Well, I had a bit of an argument with them. One of my duties at the hospital, I ran the hospital on the age of twenty three. I was the only doctor in the hospital. The professor, he was a superintendent. He lived in the grounds but he only came in in the morning and at lunchtime he disappeared and went off home.
NM: So this was in St Andrew’s was it? The hospital.
JB: This was just outside St Andrew.
NM: Ok.
JB: [unclear] and, and one of my duties was to censor all the lectures, all the letters that were sent out and we were doing pre-frontal lobotomies at that time. It was separating the brain. They don’t do them now but I was reading one of the letters. It was written by a dentist who was a patient in the place and I said to the superintendent, I said, ‘I can’t sensor this letter, I said, ‘Because I’m involved in it.’ I said, ‘He mentions me my name so — ’ I said, ‘I think you’d better sensor it yourself.’ So he said, ‘Right.’ So he started to read through it. After every sentence he literally [KABAR] [unclear] He suddenly looked up and said, ‘You think I’m mad don’t you doctor?’ It was too good a chance. ‘Yes, sir, I think you’re paranoid.’ And that. He went up through the roof. Who was I to psychoanalyse. You know he was a professor over the rest of us. I said, ‘Well, you taught me all the psychiatry I know.’ I said, ‘If I can’t diagnose paranoia now,’ I said, ‘You’ve done a bad job.’ [laughs] So we settled down. One of my duties then of course was to see him off in his car when he left and he was just getting in to his car. He was standing in front of it, he put his arm around my shoulder and he said, ‘Aye doctor,’ he said, ‘When you both been with them, as long as I have been with them.’ He said, ‘You’ll be just like me and just like them.’ I said, ‘No, sir.’ I said, ‘You’ll find my resignation on your desk in the morning.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to do any more psychiatry.’ ‘Oh?’ He said. ‘No.’ I said, ‘I’m going to join the Air Force and I’m getting married.’ That finished it. So that was how I got. But I went for my interview in London. At London. I was in London and when they asked what I did I said, ‘Psy.’ ‘Ah yes. You’re just the man we’re looking for. We’ll get you into a psychiatric unit in one of our RAF hospitals.’ I said, ‘No, you won’t.’ I said, ‘I’m not doing psychiatry again.’ I said, ‘I’m not doing it again.’ I said, ‘I want to go to a flying station.’ So that was it.
NM: So why did you choose the RAF?
JB: I had been in the, I joined the [unclear] Corps when I went to St Andrews first. That was voluntary. We were attached to the Black Watch so we wore the Black Watch kilt and that. Our, the senior officer that was in charge was Argyl. When you say Argyl Sutherlands and our chief warrant officer was Scots Guards. So we got all Scots Guards drill. So, I knew all the drill before. In the second year it became compulsory for all male students at university to do military training so we all changed our kilt into wearing just the khaki. So we did that. You did your prelims at St Andrew’s. That was physiology and anatomy and botany, zoology. All the rest of it. You did that there. You had to get your degree and pass the exams in anatomy and physiology and that to go on to the Medical School at Dundee. That was the Medical School. So we did that and we did all the military training in St Andrew’s. We went over to Dundee. We went into a Medical Unit distinct from the other boys who were just square bashing. So we had a sort of basic knowledge, medical military training there and and I did a lot, we did a lot of route marching and that was it. Well, I get terribly seasick and that so I said well, I don’t want to go into the Army. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to fly and I was always interested. We’d got Leuchars Airfield was in our unit. A friend and I used to cycle up there to the air displays and everything. So, I said I’m going to volunteer for the Air Force. So that was how I got sent to —
NM: So it was National Service.
JB: It was the National Service.
NM: So —
JB: Yeah.
NM: This was 1946.
JB: And then just, it was just at the time when it changed. National Service became compulsory.
NM: Right.
JB: For everybody you see. So I think I was one of the first. One of the first on there. It doesn’t make any difference. And that was, that was at —
NM: So, you joined the RAF for National Service as a qualified doctor.
JB: That’s right. Yeah.
NM: So where was your first posting?
JB: Well, first thing we went to was down at Chessington. Heart of Chessington. That was near Tring and near Halton. Halton was Queen Mary’s Hospital. So we had to do some square bashing when we went in first and then we went to the hospital to do tropical medicine and that’s all tropical medicine there. Then the first official posting was Waddington.
NM: Ok. Did you have to, just an interesting comment that you made about tropical medicine. Was that because of the Far East at that time? Or —
JB: That’s right. Yes.
NM: People were going over to the Far East.
JB: Yes.
NM: Ok.
JB: Well, most. There were only three of us went into the Air Force. Two went into the Navy and the rest all went into the Army. The Royal Army Medical Corps and that and they nearly all finished up in the Middle East.
NM: Ok.
JB: And but —
NM: So your first posting was to —?
JB: To Waddington.
NM: Waddington. Did you have any choice about that? Was it, did you ask for Bomber Command?
JB: I didn’t ask for Bomber Command. I asked for a flying station. I wasn’t terribly [pause] as long as they’d got, there were aeroplanes in the thing that’s what I wanted. So, I well you did get a bit of a choice. The first one we wanted it was Northern Ireland and I said, ‘No, thank you very much. I don’t want to go to Northern Ireland.’ And then they said, ‘Well, we could post you to Anglesey.’ I said that didn’t sound very much like a flying station to me and that and they said, ‘Well, there’s Waddington.’ I said, ‘Where’s Waddington?’ They said, ‘Up at Lincoln. It’s Bomber Command.’ I said, ‘I’ll go there.’ So, we did get a bit of a choice. Actually, the first choice I had was to Rhodesia and that was a chap in front of me. We all swore that he had prior notice that this was coming up because he got his hand up before I did but that was the only one that wanted to go to was Rhodesia. Never got there. But that didn’t bother me as long as I got to a flying station I was definitely happy.
NM: So, can you describe the role of a medical officer at RAF Waddington? What was your day to day, week to week, month to month role?
JB: Well, you were responsible for the whole. The whole station. Aircrew, the ground staff, the officers and the WAAFs.
NM: Yeah.
JB: You had, you had the whole lot. They had five, five office staff to run it as you know. It worked very well because this was one of the things that was interesting. Why did I have the time to go flying? I said I was dealing with a healthy bunch of people. The aircrew boys were all fit and healthy. The ground crew boys on the whole were all fit and healthy. They had the odd little accident but they were dealt with readily by the staff. I only saw the ones that were in trouble or anybody who needed examinations. They were all passed on. On to me. As I say they were all pretty, pretty healthy. We did, I finished up by saying yes when they asked did I enjoy the Air Force I said yes. I did enjoy it but I said there was no medicine in it. I said I qualified in medicine and I said I wanted to be a GP and I didn’t get much medicine to do. I was offered a short service commission. An air vice marshall came up himself to Binbrook. I was up at Binbrook at the time and that’s another story but we’d better not tell that. Tell that one. But he came. He was up at Binbrook and we were having lunch together with the CO and he said, ‘What about taking a short service commission?’ He said, ‘I can guarantee,’ he said, ‘You’ll get it.’ I said, ‘No. No.’ I said, ‘I can’t.’ I said, ‘My wife has not taken to the Air Force whatsoever.’ I said, ‘She does not want to be connected with any service. So,’ I said, ‘What choice do I have?’ I said, ‘No way.’ I said, ‘If she doesn’t want it. What’s the difference? So I didn’t. I said, ‘No I won’t.’ But that was the bit I said no. I said I did enjoy it but there was no medicine at all really. You got the odd little cough, tonsilitis or little colds and things. Somebody got bronchitis and that and the only, the only real medicine I did was in 1947. That was the winter, the very bad winter. The whole country was snowed under and that. Well, we were at that time classified as a marshalling airfield and had to keep open seven days a week all day. We had big snow ploughs churning up clearing the runway. To keep the runway. The camp was shut down. There was no leave granted at all at that time. We were just for a short time in that and three months later I held what was in seeing the staff. The staff were all talking you see. I said, ‘Well, up at the end of these corridors there was one big room.’ I said, ‘That that was my antenatal. There were just gasps. Antenatal. I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘How did you get antenatal?’ I said, I told them the story. I said, ‘The big lock up.’ I said, ‘There was no one to get off the camp. I said, ‘Boys will be boys and girls will be girls.’ I said. That’s what the result was. Several of them got discharged for being pregnant. So that was about the only, the only real medicine I did. I think that was the thing that —
NM: So that was definitely out of the ordinary.
JB: That was out of the ordinary.
NM: Yeah.
JB: That was.
NM: Were there any other out of the ordinary cases you had to deal with at all?
JB: No. We did have a crash of a Mosquito one night. This was [pause] I’ll tell you the reason for it after but one night the Mosquitoes of Coningsby were up doing something. There were four of them and they couldn’t land at Coningsby. It got fogged up and they could land here because we had the basic landing radar. I think it was called H2S or something like that and we could more or less get the bed with this and our runways were clear. They came around but one of them crashed and the pilot was killed and that was the, that was the only ever serious thing and of course there was nothing you could do. But the chap was dead and that was that. But —
NM: Was the navigator injured or was he OK?
JB: He was alright. Yes.
NM: Ok.
JB: He was alright.
NM: You didn’t have to deal with any injuries with him.
JB: But he really didn’t. He just a bit of patching up but that was it. There was a rumour went on but I could never get to the bottom of it that one of the Mosquitoes had run out of fuel over Grantham and the crew had to bale out there. Well, the navigator got out but the, there was rumours that the pilot didn’t and that he’d complained about a difficulty of getting out of the cockpit with a parachute on and that. But he was a big lad and but we didn’t get contact with that whatsoever. That was the only one. But the result of that was I had to go to Coningsby. I was posted to Coningsby because of the Mosquitoes and to do some aviation medicine up in Coningsby. The reason for that was I’d been flying one day when I came back, we’d been up the coast of Norway and just on our, we did a lot of Met jobs, meteorological. I came back and walked into my office and there was a pilot sitting in my chair and I was just about to ask him what he meant sitting in my chair and that’s when I had another look at him. Three bars on his shoulder and I looked at his collar and he had his medical tags in his collar. I immediately drew myself up. He said, ‘Yes?’ He said, ‘Sir.’ I said, ‘Wing commander, sir.’ ‘Doc, ’he said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I gather you were a flyer.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you like flying?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do like it,’ and everything. I said, ‘Well, anyway,’ I said, ‘Can I ask you a question?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Just, who are you?’ He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘My name is Peter Lee.’ He said, ‘Wing commander.’ He said, ‘I’m the flying personnel medical officer for Bomber Command.’ He said, ‘I am responsible for all the aircrew boys in Bomber Command and,’ he said, ‘I do aviation medicine.’ He said,’ I’m one of the few medical officers in the Air Force that knows anything about aviation medicine. He said, ‘I was trained in America.’ And he said, ‘I do all the aviation medicine.’ He said, ‘Would you like to work for me?’ I said, I said, ‘Well yes but,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to leave the station.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You wouldn’t leave the station.’ He said, ‘What I would do,’ he said, ‘I’ll get somebody else posted in.’ ‘What?’ He said, ‘When I want you to do work for me,’ he said, ‘We’d come here. That would be no problem for me.’ So, I said, ‘Well, that’s fair enough if you want to but I know nothing whatsoever about aviation medicine.’ He said, ‘Well, I do.’ He said, ‘I’ll come up at the weekend,’ he said, And we’ll go over.’ He said, ‘I’ll teach you the basics up there,’ he said, ‘And then you can do some work for me.’
NM: So that was being posted to Coningsby to do that was it?
JB: That’s, that’s where it was. We used to go up to Coningsby after the crash.
NM: Ok.
JB: I went up after mainly to measure the crew boys that were up there. See if there were big lads that were [pause] there weren’t many. We didn’t have to change very often. Only two were changed so far as I remember rightly. But that was all.
NM: So that —
JB: That’s when I was stationed up there for a couple of months.
NM: Ok. But you were also stationed at Binbrook and Scampton as well. So, what was the circumstances around those?
JB: Right. Get on. In ’47, 1947 the Americans came back and a bomber wing came in to Waddington. They landed at Waddington and we had them there for a little while and I got quite friendly with the two medical officers who were there. One in particular [unclear] and that and then they were moved to Scampton. There would be clearance in Scampton whether they could both [unclear] their way in and and I was up at Binbrook [pause] not at Binbrook at Bawtry which was Group 1 Headquarters up there. All my bosses were up there at Bawtry. Got there and I met a general who was one of the top medical people in the American Air Force and he said, ‘You know, we’re having a little bit of trouble settling in.’ Of course, anybody who has the slightest little illness is put on a plane and flown back to America. They just do not note the workings of the RAF hospital and the other hospitals. ‘Would you go to Scampton and help them out?’ So, I’d been just been asked by a general and by your own wing commander you can’t say anything else but yes. So I said, ‘Yes, I’ll go. So we had a small holding unit there so I went. That’s when I went to Scampton with them. So they were flying B29s at that time. They were. There were all sorts of restrictions put on us. I don’t know why. But we weren’t allowed to go to the cinema [laughs] They wouldn’t let us go, go to the cinema. RAF, the RAF officers were not allowed to go to the cinema.
NM: Why was that?
JB: I’ve no idea. I’ve no idea why or anything because it didn’t apply to me according to the Americans. They said, ‘Right Jimmy, you know, there’s a good show on tonight. Here’s your coat.’ Well, I put the uniform jacket coat on and off we went to the cinema.
NM: You went. He went —
JB: That’s right. So he did get me little flight on a B29.
NM: He did.
JB: Just to get around to say I’d been on a B29. B29. When I was at Coningsby I scrounged a lift on a Mosquito and had a trip around the place on a Mosquito. Everywhere I went I tried to get a little bit of a flight in so it meant I did quite a bit. Quite a bit of flying.
NM: So, you got, you had flights in Lancasters, Lincolns, Mosquitoes and B29s.
JB: B29s.
NM: That’s quite an impressive list.
JB: Yes. And a Tiger Moth.
NM: And a Tiger Moth.
JB: Yes.
NM: Very good.
JB: Tiger Moth. Because somebody put out a rumour that the doc takes pills and I was sent to the Mess one day you see. The [unclear] and some of the boys had been sick on one of the flights. They said, ‘Oh, the doc says he’s never, he’s never sick. He takes pills.’ I said, ‘I don’t take pills.’ I said, ‘I don’t take pills.’ I said, ‘I’m perfectly alright.’ You see. ‘Ah well, you know, we’re sure you take pills.’ The following weekend the wing commander said to me, he said Sunday morning he said, ‘Are you doing anything?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Would you like to go flying?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Where are we going.’ ‘Oh, he said, ‘Come on down to the runway,’ he said. We got down to the runway and there was a Tiger Moth. He said, ‘We’re going up in that.’ I said, ‘Fair enough.’ But a single engine aircraft. I wasn’t terribly happy but still I thought we’ll see how it goes. Did some manoeuvres, a few corkscrews and diving, turning in. He never did anything really dangerous but just enough to make me sick. But I wasn’t sick. Came back into the Mess. ‘The doc doesn’t take pills.’
NM: ‘You proved it.’
JB: And that was that. I got on well with, with the aircrew boys because I don’t think a medical officer before had done any. Had done any flying. [unclear] admitted have you taken a medical officer up at all. So —
NM: So just going back to your if you like psychiatry days and your work at the Bomber Command stations it was immediately after the war so all the aircrew you were dealing with some of them were probably operational during the war and flew in operations. Was, did you ever get any sort of people with sort of flashbacks or mental issues or worries about that type of thing as well as the physical side of being a medical officer?
JB: Group commanders on stations. Two group commanders. I shouldn’t really talk about them but at Coningsby there was Group Captain White who was the Waddington and he and I got on very well together. But at Coningsby the CO there was peculiar. He would come into the Mess at lunchtime and that and of course everybody jumped to their feet when he came. He walked in, never said anything to anybody. He walked in, got a chair, turned it around, put his arm on the back of the chair and looked out the window. Never spoke to anybody. And the senior officer in the Mess said, [unclear] ‘Sit down gentlemen please.’ So we all sat down. But the CO never never spoke to anybody. He was an ex-POW so he was a bit affected. At Coningsby it was. The aircrew boys weren’t terribly happy with him when I went up and 50 Squadron had moved up there. First there I got where I was posted up to there was with boys that I knew. The aircrew boys. They said, ‘There’s dining in tonight, Doc but we’ll tell you now we’re complaining. The top table gets all the best port and the best wine. The rest of us is not so good. Tonight we’ve all decided that for the royal toast we’re all going to refuse the port and we are going to drink water. Are you with us?’ I said, ‘Well, I didn’t want to be posted to Binbrook but I said here I am. I’m posted so I reckon I would be near the top table.’ But I said, ‘If you’re all protesting,’ I said, ‘I’ll protest as well.’ So I said, ‘Well, I’ll drink water as well.’ So we did that. But he again had been a POW so he was a bit, a bit funny.
NM: But you’d never had to deal professionally with any, any cases —
JB: No. No. No. Well, any [pause] actually I don’t think anybody. Most of those flying boys you know one of them had been a POW. Peter Tunstall, Squadron Leader Peter Tunstall had been, he was 50 Squadron here. He’d been a POW and I didn’t know his medical history but he died a couple of years ago. There was a big obituary in the Telegraph and I found out he held the record for being in solitary confinement longer than anybody else but he never let on or anything at all. His only eccentricity was sometimes after dinner he was settled just jump up, go and sit down at the piano and bang away on a piano and sing all the bawdy songs he could think of. I flew quite a bit with, with him. The most memorable bits was where you know I paid [unclear] and there was that good Lanc couldn’t land at Waddington because it was fogged up and that and they said land at Lossiemouth. So, Pete said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Lossiemouth.’ He said, ‘I’ve been there.’ And that. He said, ‘It’s Fleet Air Arm.’ So he called them up coming into Lossiemouth. They said land at runway so and so you see. Got on the blower. He said, ‘Do you realise that this aircraft I’m flying,’ he said, ‘Is the largest thing that’s flying at the present moment.’ He said, ‘And you’re bringing me in on the shortest runway.’ He said, ‘I don’t think I can make it.’ ‘Oh, you’ll have to land on that runway.’ So Pete wasn’t very complimentary about [laughs] about that. So he said to us, ‘Right boys,’ he said, ‘When I hit the deck,’ he said, ‘You hang on tight with all your body.’ He said, ‘The brake will go on as soon as I hit the ground and he said, ‘We just hope that we’ll make the end of the runway.’ So he did it. We just made it to the runway. In fact, we went off the runway. I said, which didn’t please him no end but we were alright. We got back. Just turned around. When they were turning us the batman was on the port side and moved us. Moved us around because we went off and off the runway which didn’t please Pete at all. And so we got on to the, in to the Mess there and it was dinner in the evening and he said, you know alright we can go to the Mess and get dinner. The senior Naval officers there said, ‘Sorry. You’re not dressed. You can’t go into the main dining room. You’re not dressed.’ We said, ‘How can we be dressed? We’re in flying kit. We haven’t got any dress to put on.’ We’ll put you in another room and you’ll be served dinner on your own in another room which they did. A very nice dinner but that was it. So we had our dinner on our own in this room. So he said well a few uncomplimentary remarks about the Fleet Air Arm and that and a door opened and a chap poked his head in and said, ‘Oh aye,’ he said, ‘What are you all doing in here?’ And I said, ‘Well, we weren’t allowed to eat in the dining room and because we weren’t dressed and that.’ He said, ‘Has nobody given you a drink?’ We said, ‘No. We haven’t had a drink. We can’t buy a drink. We’ve got no money.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘That’s not so good.’ Shut the door. Went away. Like I say the next thing we knew was the door was banged open. A few Fleet Air Arm boys came with trays with drinks on you see. And that was that. So we had a good night there. Then we flew back to Lincoln in the morning. But one of their senior officers said he wanted to go to London. He said, ‘Can I get a lift?’ He said, ‘Would you take me down to Lincoln. I can get to Grantham and get into London.’ So we said, ‘Aye, captain. Be our guest.’ You see. So took this. From then on we got on very well with the Lossiemouth boys. If they were coming down to, flying down to the Channel with the aircraft if they could manage they always tried to get into Waddington. Had a stop over at Waddington and that and if we wanted anything we could always go up to Lossiemouth. Got free drinks up there [laughs] all became quite a family party. Aye.
NM: So what was it like off duty at Waddington and Coningsby and the other stations?
JB: Well, there was, we had a cinema at Waddington. There was a cinema. I was the only officer there who was stood to attention with my eyes shut at the cinema. I don’t know if you knew it [unclear] here and the three services had shots on the screen for the Army, the Air Force and the Navy and that day there was a destroyer going up and down like that. It made me seasick even to look at it and I used to stand to attention. Everyone used to laugh at me. I used to say take the shot. It was funny I was only seasick and bus sick. Never sick in a car. Never sick in an aeroplane. Never sick on a train but I was sick on a bus. I had to travel to school by train. Everybody else went by bus and I went by train and but that day I just, I just couldn’t.
NM: So you —
JB: I go cruising now.
NM: Good to hear.
JB: Not the worry on the big ships. More stabilisers. It doesn’t —
NM: So, you were married at this period. So where were you? You were in married quarters, were you?
JB: No. That’s another story. I was married and when I joined up I was twenty four and the CO said, ‘Sorry doc, you’re not married.’ I said, ‘I’m married, sir.’ He said, ‘No. You’re not. The Air Force doesn’t recognise you can be married until you’re twenty five.’ Well, I said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘But you have to live in the Mess.’ That was alright. My wife, she’d been teaching at Dundee. We’d been trying to get a place. She’d been trying to get a place in Lincoln she could come down to. Eventually we got, we got a place and I said, I said to the CO, I said, ‘My wife’s coming down to live in Lincoln. Have you got a flat in Lincoln?’ I said, ‘The problem is,’ I said, ‘Me having to live in the Mess here.’ And I said, I said, ‘Could I have permission to sleep off the base in Lincoln?’ So he said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Agreement. As long as we are not flying. As long as nothing is booked for us that we have to have a medical officer on deck,’ he said, ‘You can sleep in Lincoln. But,’ he said, ‘If any, if we need a doctor,’ he said, ‘That’s it.’ He said, ‘You can go and sleep in Lincoln.’ So that’s how where it worked out very well. Of course, when Pete Lee got this other medical officer into Waddington he was six month senior to me so he agreed that he would go over the station which left me completely free then. And he was older and married he got the, he got the house. Which did worry me. My wife didn’t really want to live on the station at all so, but there was nothing to say. But Group Captain White was very very good at letting me fly and everything. And also [pause] there was one year I was examining an airman. I had him stripped down to the waist. I was examining his chest when the door, my door burst open and this officer, I was an FO at the time but this chap was a flight lieutenant. Just barged into the room without knocking on the door or anything. I was just, I was livid and I just sort of grabbed him and shoved him out of the door and that. And when I’d finished with the airman he came storming back in. He said, ‘I’m going to report you to the station commander.’ He said, ‘You insulted an officer in front of an airman.’ I said, ‘You’d better be quick because, ‘I said, ‘I’m going to report you to the CO.’ I said, ‘If that airman makes a complaint about somebody barging in when he was being examined,’ I said, ‘I’m backing him up to the hilt.’ I said, ‘You were wrong.’ So, I said, ‘I am getting on to the CO.’ So, I immediately got on to, on to the CO and told him. I said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I turned him around, I pushed him out.’ I said, ‘That was probably wrong but,’ I said, ‘I was furious that somebody did this.’ You see and that and I said, ‘If the airman complains, sir,’ I said, ‘I’m going to back the airman every time.’ He said, ‘Oh yes.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, Doc.’ He said, ‘I will deal with this personally.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you something.’ He said, ‘No officer on the stations can give you orders to do anything.’ He said, ‘You are the medical officer.’ He said, ‘No officer can give you orders.’ He said, ‘You’re respective of the ranks but,’ he said, ‘They don’t order you to do anything.’ He said, ‘I am the person on the station that can give you orders.’ He said, ‘If I give you an order,’ he said, ‘You obey it.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir. I will.’ And he said, ‘No other officers,’ he said, ‘Will give you orders. They will ask you but,’ he said, ‘They won’t give you an order.’ So that was how, that was how it worked.
NM: That was. Yeah.
JB: It didn’t work like that on some of the other stations. Binbrook and Coningsby. I, at Binbrook the CO ordered me. He said, ‘You’re the gardener for the station’s sick quarters. The order had come direct through the adjutant. ‘The CO says that you’re gardener for sick quarters.’ It’s a mess and needs to be redone and that and get your staff to do it.’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘They’re medical staff.’ I said, ‘They’re not gardeners.’ I said, ‘I don’t want medical staff —' I said, ‘With dirty hands doing the gardening.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to allow them to do it.’ So I said, ‘You’ve got the gardeners who do headquarters.’ I said, ‘They could come and do sick quarters as well.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to allow them.’ You see. The next I heard was the CO was absolutely furious about this, and that and the next thing I was summoned. A few days later I got a phone call from the adjutant saying, ‘You’re wanted immediately in the CO’s office.’ He said, ‘You’re in trouble, Doc.’ He said, ‘You really are in trouble.’ He said, ‘He’s furious.’ So I said, ‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I’m going out of the Air Force.’ I said, ‘I’m not really worried.’ So I went down and that and the adjutant knocked on the door and said, ‘Flying Officer Burt, sir.’ So I went into the office and threw up a salute and looked and it was somebody else there. I looked and a wry grin came over my face. [unclear] was sitting there and he looked at me, he said, ‘Oh good God, doc,’ he said, ‘What are you doing up here?’ I said, ‘I’ve been posted up here, sir.’ You see. The CO said, ‘Do you know Flying Officer Burt?’ He said, ‘Oh sure. He was my personal medical officer for two years [laughs] and very strict.’ The CO said nothing at all. He was going to complain to the [unclear] about me. It wasn’t worth his while to do it. The airman said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s lunchtime.’ He said, ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘Let’s [laughs] let’s all go for lunch. So the CO had to go and have lunch with me in the end. I thought that was that but he was a difficult, a difficult chap but he again he was an ex-POW. He was one of the ones in psychiatry and I decided absolutely no way that I was going to psychoanalyze the station commander. So all I did was report him to Bawtry. To Group. The chaps there and said, ‘Well, I’ll leave it up to you.’
NM: So, you were concerned about him.
JB: Yes. I said —
NM: So you reported to —
JB: As I say, they should, they should be looked at you know but I had gone by the time any of these got going. But these were the only, the only two.
NM: Ok.
JB: I had any [pause] But they were never really nasty to me or anything like that. Well, the one in Coningsby just ignored me.
NM: So the four stations you experienced, you were posted at which was your favourite?
JB: Waddington was my favourite station.
NM: You were there longest, were you?
JB: Yes.
NM: Ok.
JB: That was, that was my parent station. I always came back to Waddington. When I went we always came back. Back to Waddington. I really, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed being at Coningsby as well. I enjoyed being at Scampton. I did enjoy being at Binbrook. I enjoyed all the stations. I don’t think I was a typical RAF officer. I didn’t like taking orders.
NM: So you came to the end of your two year National Service in ’48 and you then chose to leave the RAF did you?
JB: That’s right.
NM: Yes. So did you have anything in mind when you left the RAF or did you just leave the RAF and then decide what you were going to do?
JB: Oh no. I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I left. As I’d been here, when I knew I was being demobbed and that I wrote to Professor Patrick who was a person at medicine at Dundee and I had been one of his students and, and I wrote to him and said I’d been demobbed and wanted to do some medicine again. Was there any chance of getting a job up there? And he wrote back and said yes. He said, looked underneath it, come up. So when I was demobbed I went straight up to the hospital, saw him and that and agreed what I was to do. Some medicine and that. So I was just fitted into the, into the team which meant I did ward rounds with him. I stood in when he had the students and had lectures with the students or ward rounds with the, with the students and it all worked out very very well that way. And once I’d decided you know well I began to remember something about medicine I put in an advert in to the BMJ and said I was looking for a, for a job, put my credentials in and I got some. They were all, everybody was looking for doctors because the National Health Service had started at that time and everybody was looking for doctors so my wife and I went through them. All the London ones and said no we didn’t want to live in London and that and eventually we worked out two. One in Chesterfield and this other one in Bury. And we went to the Chesterfield one and they were very nice, very good and everything. They told us about the practice and that. They all had jobs in the hospital as well as the practice and that. In bed that night we were talking. Talking about it. Moira said to me, she said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I’m not too happy about it.’ She said, ‘I’m not happy about it either.’ She said, ‘I feel that you’re going to be the dogsbody here. You’ve got all the work to do while they’re working in the hospitals.’ And she was, she definitely was very much against the job in Chesterfield. So I said, ‘Well, I agree with you.’ I said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be terribly happy in this set up.’ I said, ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘There’s this other one in Bury.’ I said, ‘Let’s give them a ring and see.’ So I rung up a Dr Young and said, you know we were on our way back from Chesterfield. Would it be possible to come and see him? ‘Well yes,’ he said. You know. ‘We’d be delighted to have you.’ So, we went up and stopped at Bury and he met us and said, ‘My partner’s out doing calls at the present moment but he’s coming back definitely to see you.’ So we had a long talk and the door opened and this chap walked in.’ We took a long look at each other and burst out laughing. He had been the captain of the Golf Club where I played at St Andrews. So, that meant the three of us were all Scottish. David [ Tyrell] was Edinburgh and Tommy Travers and I were St Andrews. So right away we talked about it, you know. What did I like about General Practice and that. I want to do it and that. He said, ‘Well, do you enjoy doing obstetrics?’ And I said, ‘Well, I did when I was a student.’ I said, ‘I enjoyed it.’ I said, ‘I haven’t done any, you know. Being in the Air Force I haven’t had to.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We do all our own obstetrics. We do all our own babies.’ He said, ‘All the very difficult ones have to be hospitalised.’ He said, ‘We send them to hospital. That’s what we do. Besides, if you accept the job here,’ he said, ‘You’ll be expected to do.’ I said, ‘That’s fair enough.’ He said, I said, ‘Well, you know, I haven’t done an awful lot.’ He said, ‘We will teach you.’ He said, ‘Everything has a case. Whoever’s doing it you will work and assist at that. So that should be fine,’ he said. He said, ‘Well, go home and think about it.’ He said, ‘Give me a ring.’ But he said, ‘If you want the job, it’s yours.’ So, I said Moira, I said, ‘What do you think?’ She said, ‘I like [unclear] I think he’s very nice to everybody.’ She said, ‘He’s been very very nice. I think we’ll be happy here.’ So, I said’, ‘Well, I think the same.’ We said to him, ‘Right. Fine. We’ll take the job,’ I said. He said, ‘Well, you’ll come as an assistant with a view to partnership.’ And I said, ‘Yes. Fine.’ I said, ‘I’ll come and stay for two years anyway.’ I said, ‘I’ll guarantee I’ll stay for two years,’ I said, ‘But I might want to move after that.’ So, he said, ‘Well, that’s fair enough.’ So that was settled and we decided that I would start on the 1st of August 1949 and that’s when I started work. 1949. That’s when David Young went on his summer holidays and that was left to Tommy and I to run the practice and we did very well. I didn’t have a car so I had to walk and [laughs] or take the bus. I had to get a certificate from the British Medical Association that I was in General Practice and needed a car which I eventually got this and David Young, he had a big Ford V8 and that so he said, ‘I’ve spoken to my garage and,’ he said, They will supply you with a car.’ He said, ‘When you get the certificate.’ Which they did. So I got a Ford Prefect. That was my car.
NM: So how long were you in Bury? At the job.
JB: I left Bury in 1998. A very long two years.
NM: That was fifty years. Forty nine years. Yeah.
JB: That’s right. That’s it. At the end of my first, first year there David being Scottish always had a New Year’s party and that’s, we were at this party and he said, ‘Jimmy,’ he said, Tommy and I want to see you.’ Of course, he lived on the practise. The surgery was in his house. So, he said, ‘We want to see you in the surgery.’ So, went down to the surgery. He said, ‘How do you like working here?’ I said, ‘I like it very well, you know.’ I said, ‘I seem to get along with the patients alright.’ I said, ‘We’re all like one member of staff. I get along very well with that.’ ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘That’s fine.’ He said, ‘We want to offer you a partnership.’ I said, you know, I said, ‘That’s a bit, a bit early.’ And he said, ‘Well, we know it’s a bit early but we want you to stay.’ So he says, ‘Will you accept a partnership?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We worked it all out.’ He said, ‘You’d be a junior partner,’ he said, ‘And every year,’ he said, ‘In two years time,’ he said, ‘You can be equal partner.
NM: So, you were seventy six when you retired.
JB: I was seventy when I retired.
NM: Seventy.
JB: It was compulsory.
NM: Oh ok.
JB: Yes.
NM: But you stayed on in Bury though.
JB: Yes. But David Young died in ’53 and that and it, which left Tommy Travers and I to run the, run the practice. Well, we had a full practice which was three thousand five hundred patients each. Which meant we had seven thousand patients to run between us. There was something happened which I won’t detail with you but Tommy Travers said, I was wanting to split the practice because of this trouble and he said, ‘You don’t need to bother.’ He said, ‘I’m leaving.’ He said, ‘I’ve taken a job at Tasmania.’ And he said that, ‘The practice is all yours.’ So that was that. Which left me with seven thousand patients to look after. They talk about being stressed. They don’t know what stress is. So I had these seven thousand patients. You’re only allowed six months to do that. It was in that day anyway. I had to take a partner, another partner or you had to lose all these patients and that which was three thousand five hundred. Anyway, I knew the lad that I wanted. He was, his family were patients of mine and he was a Cambridge and Manchester Medical School qualification. I knew George was a very good doctor and so I rang him up and said, ‘George,’ I said, ‘I need a partner.’ I said, ‘Do you want to come and work with me?’ He said, ‘Sure thing.’ He said, ‘The only trouble is,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to —' he said, ‘I’m assistant here.’ He said, ‘I’ll have to ask my boss if he minds me moving because,’ he said, ‘We interfere a little bit with your area. And so I said, ‘Well, just see what he says.’ So he rung me back. He said, ‘That’s all right. So,’ he said, ‘I can come.’ So I said, ‘Well, alright. I’ll fix up when you can leave there. Give your notice and then come and work with me.’ So he came and worked with me. So we worked very well on that and I was [pause] they started a General Practice Department at Manchester University and this chap who became the first professor there and had been on the complement in there and that and he wanted to start a training scheme for young doctors coming in not to change. Before you just sort of went into General. They wanted to start a grading on it. When you qualified you had to decide what you wanted to do. If you wanted to be in hospital work or if you wanted to be in General Practice. If you wanted to be in General Practice it was a three year course. You had to do two years in hospital moving around various departments. Medicine, surgery and a bit of gynae and that you did and in your final year you came to what was called a trainer doctor. That was the GP who would accept you into his practice to teach you how to change from being a hospital doctor to be a GP. It had to work that way. It was quite a difference in doing it. So I was one of the first people to be known as a trainer which I did for twenty five years. So I saw a lot of young doctors through and everything and taught George came and sent me one and I had this girl who came as a trainee, a young doctor, Carol. Carol, and that. She was there. George went off. He was unmarried and he and his mother went off to Austria for a holiday and when he came back he phoned me up and he said, ‘I’ve got angina.’ I said, ‘George, you haven’t got angina. You’re only forty odd.’ I said, ‘You were eating all that good rich food in Austria and it’s indigestion.’ ‘He said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I thought of that too but,’ he said, ‘I’ve got angina, Jimmy.’ I said, ‘If you say you’ve got angina George you’ve got angina,’ I said, ‘I know you.’ So I said, ‘Right. I’m coming up to see you. I’ll get the electro-cardio machine. I’ll pick it up and I’ll come out. I’ll come out and see you.’ So I checked him over. I said, ‘There’s nothing coming up on the machine. But —' I said, ‘If you say you’re having anginal pain, I said, ‘I believe you.’ But I said, ‘Do you want to have more time off work?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ll be back in to work tomorrow.’ This was Sunday. He said, ‘I’ll be in tomorrow to work,’ he said. I said, ‘Alright.’ I said, ‘We’ll just keep an eye on you. You’re very [unclear] I said, ‘You must let me know and that.’ So a few days, that was Sunday, on Monday he was in. On the Wednesday when I went in I found him slumped over the desk and that. He said, ‘I’m having this anginal pain again.’ So, I said, ‘Right.’ So, I just immediately phoned up the consultant at the hospital. I said, ‘Look,’ I said George has got an anginal attack.’ I said, ‘Could I bring him up?’ He said yes so we had to get, bearing in mind we were friendly with all the consultants. We spoke to them personally. We didn’t go through any secretarial. So I put him in the car and whipped him up to the, to the hospital. Put him under a cardiograph. Nothing came up on the cardiograph so the consultant said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘Put him on a bicycle and give him exercise and see what happens.’ Put him on the bicycle. His heart went everywhere on this thing. He said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘He’s on the brink of having a coronary,’ and that. I said, ‘Well, best to get him down to Manchester to the cardiology people.’ The specialist people in Manchester.’ He said, ‘Right, he said, ‘I’ll do it.’ He said, ‘You get him back home.’ He said, ‘I’ll get on to Manchester and, he said, ‘I’ll get an urgent appointment for him.’ Which he did. He was seen a couple of days later in cardiology so they did an angiogram on him and that and said, ‘Well, we’re sorry but you’re going to have a bypass. You either have a coronary bypass or you die. It’s as easy as that. Your coronary arteries are just like thin threads.’ So, I said, ‘Well, George,’ I said, ‘You have to make your mind up.’ He said, ‘They haven’t given me much option have they?’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘You’re going to have to have the bypass.’ So that was agreed. Manchester had only done three bypasses at this time.
NM: Ok.
JB: He was the fourth one. So, he had the bypass and became brain dead.
NM: Oh no.
JB: Just brain dead. So, so I then was stuck there with a trainee and [unclear] By this time we had several thousand more people wanting to come in to the practice. I said to Carol, I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry but,’ I said, ‘I’ll have to get somebody else to look after you.’ I said, ‘I just really don’t have the time.’
NM: Sure.
JB: ‘That I should give you.’ And she said, ‘I don’t want to go anywhere else.’ She said, ‘I want to work with you.’ I said, ‘But Carol.’ I said, ‘If you stayed to work with me,’ I said, ‘You’ve got to do an awful lot of extra work.’ She said, ‘I don’t mind the extra work.’ She said, ‘I want to work with you.’ She said, ‘I want to stay here.’ I said, ‘Alright.’ So she stayed and we got on very well together. George of course had died eventually. I took his brother in to see him after the operation. His brother took one look at him and ran out and refused to go back again. His mother of course wouldn’t go in at all so it was left to me to go down after I’d finished the surgery every night to see him. Then go back and see his mother. Tell her. It was really really hard. Hard work. Eventually they said, ‘Well, we’re sorry but we’re going to have to shut the ventilator off.’ So, but to go and tell his mother, ‘We want your permission to shut the ventilator down.’ ‘I can’t do that. You’ll have to do it. If you think it’s necessary you’ll have to do it but I can’t say to shut the ventilator off.’ His brother would take no part at all in it. So, I had to say, ‘Look, shut the ventilator down.’ So that was that. So George had died so I was left with all the practice plus a trainee. She worked like a slave. She really did. At the end of the year we were just coming up to the end of the year she would be with me she came in one morning and said, ‘Can I have a reference?’ I said, ‘What do you want a reference for, Carol?’ She said, ‘Well, I finish at the end of this month. I’ll be looking for a job.’ I said, ‘You’re not looking for any job.’ I said, ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ I said, ‘You’re staying here.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Thank God for that.’ She said, ‘I thought you were never going to ask me.’ So I said yes. So I sent, made notifications to everybody I was going to take Carol in as —
NM: So, she was —
JB: Assistant partnership. Don’t. Everybody said, ‘Do not do it. Women in General Practice are an absolute menace. They’re never there when you want them. Their husband wants them, their baby wants them, or their sick or something like that but don’t have a female partner.’ Everybody advised me against it. All the GPs said, ‘Don’t do it Jimmy. Don’t do it.’
NM: What year was this?
JB: I don’t [pause] It would be ’73. About ’73. Something like that when George died.
NM: Ok.
JB: I thought, and I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘You can say what you like but I said Carol has been working with me now for a year.’ I said, ‘I know how hard she works. I know how good a doctor she is. I know that the staff get on very well with her. I know the patients get on well with her.’ I said, So,’ I said, ‘Despite all your warnings,’ I said, ‘I want a chance to take her as a partner.’ So, I said, ‘Right. You’re coming in.’ And she died a couple of years ago and that. After I left, when I retired she became senior partner.
NM: Oh wow.
JB: In, in the practice and —
NM: So your faith was paid off.
JB: It paid off and she worked with me for twenty five years. We never had a cross word the whole time. We worked happily together. But when she died I was talking to her husband. He had been a headmaster in one of the schools, Michael and he said, ‘You know, Jimmy,’ he said, ‘Carol didn’t look on you as a partner. She looked on you as her uncle.’ He said, he said, ‘I’ll look after you, Jimmy as the uncle that I never had.’ And he said, ‘We get on so well.’ I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Michael,’ I said, ‘We were all that time together,’ I said, ‘We never had a crossed word.’ I said, ‘I was never happier in the practice then I was with Carol.’ I said, ‘I can tell you that.’ ‘Her opinion is that she was lucky that she worked with you. That she didn’t have to work with anybody else.’ We got, we got on very well. By that time we’d taken in another trainee. A man. He had a fellowship in surgery. He was a Catholic and when he qualified at Edinburgh he’d gone off to Africa as a medical missionary and when he left there he came back to Bury. He couldn’t get a job at the Manchester Unit because he was an Edinburgh graduate and they just took their own graduates. So his cousin was the orthopaedic surgeon in the hospital so he phoned me up and said, ‘Look, would you take Ed as a trainee?’ He wanted, ‘He’ll have to get a job somewhere but,’ he said, ‘You’re, he said he would like to do General Practice.’ So, I said, ‘Well, fair. Fair enough.’ I said, ‘Ask him to come and see me. We’ll have a talk about it.’ So he came. His wife was a doctor as well so I said, [laughs] ‘I can only take one of you.’ Anyways, I took Ed. He came in and that. It was decided. I was on the committee that did it. There was no compulsory retirement age for GPs at that time. A psychiatrist could retire at fifty and they all went mad over that. Surgeons, medical obstetrics, they could all retire when they were sixty five or sixty and that. So, it was decided that GPs could retire at seventy. They could work until they were seventy. So —
NM: So, you retired at seventy.
JB: Well, I was chairman of the what was called the Family Practitioner Committee at that time. I was seventy six when the Tories changed over the whole thing. That was the committee around all the doctors, dentists, opticians and healthcare workers. Everything. Dentists. And I was chairman of that committee and that so I’d been on the committee that decided that it had to be compulsory at seventy. I was working away happily and I got this letter this morning from the administrators of the Family Practitioner Committee. “Dear Doctor Burt, On the 21st of May you will reach the age of seventy. Goodbye.” I thought you cheeky devil. He was my administrator so I drew the initial letter [laughs] [unclear] afterwards so [unclear] so I had to retire. They said, ‘Well, you could come back and but you can’t be a partner. It would have to be as an assistant and that.’ And I said, ‘There’s no way I’m coming back to be an assistant.’ I said, ‘It’s not fair on the rest.’ I said, ‘You’re going to have to get somebody eventually to replace me and that.’ And I said it wouldn’t be, they would still be looking to me as being the head of the firm.’ And I said, ‘This I can’t be.’ So I said, ‘I can’t do that,’ I said. Anyway, we were doctors for transparent papers and I said, ‘I’m keeping that on,’ and I said, ‘I’ll keep doing, doing that.’ I said, ‘I can always come in and have coffee in the morning and that. So it was agreed. Of course, I’d had an anginal attack before that and my heart, I knew there were problems with my heart. My aortic valve was giving trouble and I’d been, I’d been ill and advised. They advised me to retire and I stayed off for a month and I put [unclear] I said, ‘Look,’ I said, ‘This is the quickest way to the crematorium for me.’ I said, ‘I’m just absolutely bored to tears and I must go back and do some work.’ They said, ‘Well, you’ve got, if you go back to work you’ve got to restrict what you’re doing.’ And I said, ‘Oh, yes. I can do that.’ So I said, ‘I’ll have a word with my partners.’ So I said to them, I said, ‘Look,’ I said, ‘My consultant says I can come back to work but I’ve only got to do part time.’ And I said, ‘What do you think about it?’ And they just looked at me, burst out laughing and said, ‘What do you mean what do we think about it? Jimmy, this is your practice. We’ve all been trainees with you. You are the boss. You tell us what you want to do.’ I said, that’s it. They agreed to it. So I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to do any more night work.’ I said, ‘I think I’d better stop doing obstetrics as well because that’s always in the middle of the night or sometime. You know, I don’t want really to do it.’ I said, ‘I think I’ll stop doing that.’ I said, ‘I’ll work Monday, Tuesday and that’s enough.’
NM: Yeah.
JB: I’ll be off on Friday.
NM: You phased your way out.
JB: I said I’ll phase it out that way. So that it worked. It worked very well.
NM: Ok.
JB: Until I decided that I just I didn’t want to do it anymore and —
NM: Well, you’d done it all the way through.
JB: That’s it. Definitely. I said, ‘I’m finished now.’ I said, ‘I think Moira deserves holidays.’ I said, ‘We haven’t really had holidays.’ I said, ‘We’ll have extensive holidays now. We’ll go where we want to go. We’ll go all over.’ So we used to fly a lot to America and and when we moved out to [pause] well after I retired Alistair my youngest son, he is the right honourable Alistair Burt who was MP and was the specialist for the Middle East. He was the state, Minister of State for the Middle East and that. He’s retired now, Alistair and that but he was MP. He was our MP in Bury while I was there and he at eighty three —
[telephone ringing]
JB: Oh, I think perhaps if we, excuse me.
[background talking]
[recording paused]
NM: He’s doing very well. We’ve got through to retirement. He’s gone all the way through.
JB: Yes.
NM: But it’s been fascinating.
JB: Yeah. But when, when Alistair, and Alistair lost his seat then when they had the big change over to Labour and Tony Blair came in and Tony Blair actually had been to St John’s College, Oxford with Alistair. Alistair knew him. But he got a job as a head-hunter. A headhunting firm in London headhunted him and that and he eventually took this job with them as head-hunter. And we were having lunch one Sunday and Eve said, that’s his wife, said, ‘Dad, we’re moving to Bedford. It’s far too far for Alistair commuting back to London for this new job he’s got and that and we want you to go with us.’ So, it took me and Moira thirty seconds to make our minds up and said, ‘Right, we’ll move. But we’re not going to live with you.’ ‘Oh no. That’s not the idea. The idea is to come and live near us and that will be alright.’ They had to move to get the children into, the boy and the girl, to get them into the schools here. So really we had decided we’d would put our house on the market and that was in November.
NM: This was ‘98 was it?
JB: Yes, ’98.
NM: You moved.
JB: Well, you know it was wintertime. Nobody, nobody really is looking for houses in the wintertime so we were off to the Canaries for a couple of weeks. Had a couple of weeks in the Canaries. Came back. The estate agent phoned up and said, ‘We’ve sold your house.’ ‘That’s early.’ ‘She wants in. She’s sold her house and she wants it pretty quickly.’ I said, ‘Well, we’ll have to go looking for a house.’ So, we came down here. Moira and I had both been ill and she said, ‘I want a bungalow.’ I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve never lived in a bungalow. I don’t know.’ She said, ‘I haven’t lived in a bungalow either but,’ she said, ‘The state of our health,’ she said, ‘We’re not going to be able to look after a big house and,’ she said, ‘I think we should look to our future and get a bungalow.’ I said, ‘Alright. We looked for a bungalow.’ We stayed in this one hotel in Bedford there. Oh, we stayed, whenever we said bungalow they just shook their head and said, ‘No bungalows. We don’t have any bungalows in the area at all.’ And that. So we were getting to the stage when we were deciding we’d been around everything and we were going back home again. So, Eve, she, they were down living in rented accommodation in Bedford at this time waiting for a house being built and she phoned up. She said, ‘I’ve found a bungalow.’ She said, ‘It’s small but,’ she said, ‘It’s a bungalow and it’s the only one.’ So I said, ‘Oh, well. Let’s go and have a look at it.’ So came here. I saw it. I said, ‘No way.’ I said, ‘I don’t like it.’ Well, she said, ‘You’ve sold your house, the lady wants in, you want a bungalow. This is the only bungalow in the, in the area and that so you really don’t have much choice do you?’ I said, ‘Well, I suppose I don’t.’ I said, ‘Anyway, I don’t like it.’ I said but, I said, ‘We’ll take it and we’ll see what else crops up.’ Because everybody, friends, a friend of mine, a GP in Rochdale that told me that his daughter had moved down and said the best place to live was at Biddenham. And so I said, ‘Alright. We’ll take it.’ So we took it.
NM: And you’re here.
JB: I can’t understand, we’ve got —
NM: Twenty four years later.
JB: Very good. Very good neighbours roundabout. Everybody was so friendly and when the chap next door he was the first one I spoke to and that when we moved in. I said we didn’t have any water. Couldn’t turn the water on. So I went and said to him, I said, ‘Do you know where the mains are? We’ve got no water.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’ll turn it on for you.’ And that so he came out, showed me where it was, turned the water on. It was alright. He said, you know, ‘If you’ve got any other problems,’ he said, ‘Give me a ring.’ He said, ‘If I can help I’ll help.’ So I said well that’s a friendly chap to start off with. So we became friends right from the very start.
NM: It’s been a good, it’s been a good move for you.
JB: It’s been a very good move.
NM: Has it?
JB: This other bungalow, an old lady was in there and that but she wasn’t at all with it but anyway she eventually was brought in. Her family moved her into a home and another couple bought it and that and we became friendly. Friendly as well. So there’s six of us. Three bungalows.
NM: Very good.
JB: Formed a bubble.
NM: Yeah.
JB: During the pandemic.
NM: Oh, did you? Ok.
JB: And we had coffee mornings together.
NM: Brilliant.
JB: And that. If it was good weather we would have them outside.
NM: Exactly.
JB: If it wasn’t good weather we’d have them inside but we were all well spaced out.
NM: Brilliant.
JB: Out of the way. And we did this.
NM: Good idea for a bubble.
JB: And we have Alistair and Eve. They have a house in Wootton which is ten minutes in the car. David, my eldest son was a consultant anaesthetist in London and that. He always wanted us to come and live nearer him. I said I refused to live in London and then we moved to Bedford. But he lives in Eyeworth now which is near Biggleswade and that. So they’re only half an hour’s journey by car. So I’ve got the family all around about me here.
NM: That’s good.
JB: And so of course, when Moira died I still had the family.
NM: So just to bring the interview full circle.
JB: Yeah.
NM: Who’s idea was it to go back to Waddington for your hundredth birthday celebration? Was it yours or Janet’s?
JB: Jan’s. She did it all on her own. Didn’t tell me a thing about it until this. We’d got all this lined up and everything. We went. I said we went all this to the Medical Centre. To the —
NM: Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant.
JB: Yeah. Right. ‘The COs waiting on you for lunch.’ And that so —
NM: So yes. This is where —
JB: Came to the, to the Officer’s Mess and that. Looked at the outside. I said, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘That was my bedroom up there.’ I said, ‘That was mine. I had my bedroom and sitting room up there.
NM: It sounds like your visit brought it all back.
JB: They’ve added bits on to it now.
NM: Yeah.
JB: Oh yes. It’s a big building on there. Anyway, they said the CO’s been waiting on me. So we went in. I said, ‘There’s been a change here.’ You know. It’s all been redone anyway.
NM: Sure.
JB: He said, ‘Oh yes, it’s been re-decorated and everything and that.
NM: It sounds like it.
JB: So the CO came with us and said you know, ‘Well, what was it like when you were here?’ I said, I pointed out where various things were. I said the best was down there. I said, ‘If you look inside, have you still got the fireplace?’ I said, ‘As you go into the Mess,’ I said, ‘The fireplace is on your right-hand side.’ I said, ‘There was a big fireplace there.’ ‘Oh yes. There’s a fireplace.’ I said, ‘Well, if we’d have gone to the top right-hand corner,’ I said, ‘There’s a bullet hole.’ I said, ‘Don’t ask how it came there.’ I said, ‘All sorts of rumours go around.’ I said, ‘It was there when I was there and I said a friend of mine was on Vulcans. A pilot on the Vulcan bombers and he was stationed at Waddington and he said yes the bullet hole was still there. I said, ‘Let’s go and have a look.’ I looked at the fireplace and I said, ‘This is not the same fireplace.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘This is the new fireplace. So I said well there’s no bullet hole then.
NM: No bullet hole. There we go.
JB: Lunch was served you see so —
NM: It was a good way to celebrate your hundredth birthday.
JB: I thought oh well we’ll go into the main dining room. Oh no. We were having a separate dining room. So they opened a separate dining room. Took one look at this and nearly dropped down. The table extended from here right up the whole dining room and that. The Waddington crest, silver crest with the cathedral and everything was bang in the centre of the table. Eighteen places all the way up and that and I was put right beside the crest. The CO was on my right-hand side and on the other side I forgot to tell you about this but I went to the Medical Centre and I was looking around at one of the chaps I could see was an air commodore.
NM: And they were all there to celebrate your birthday.
JB: So, I said, you know, I said, ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘Are you an air commodore?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am the senior medical officer for the RAF.’ He said, ‘Nobody higher than me.’ He says, ‘Welcome. Can we be friends.’ Everybody who was there they couldn’t have been friendlier. Everywhere we went they fell over themselves to be friendly to us. So I had the CO on the right hand side, right opposite me was the air commodore. I said, ‘Many a time,’ I said,’ I have been to dinner with the CO but,’ I said, ‘Only on dining in nights.’ I said, ‘I was at the bottom and the CO was at the top. I was never beside him. So, I said, ‘Here am I. CO on the one side and the air commodore on the other.’
NM: Shows how far you’ve travelled from being a flight lieutenant.
JB: So that was that.
NM: Amazing.
JB: So then we had, we had our dinner. The chef had phoned Jan up before to find out if I had any likes or dislikes of food. She said, ‘He’ll practically eat anything.’ So he made a special menu for us and I have it over there and we had this. When we said said, ‘Alright, we’ve got other things for you.’ So the wing commander and the senior medical officer went off. He came back with a whole pile of photographs taken when [I was there]and bags of mail. All this. So these were all presented to me and that was that. And then a chap, a flight lieutenant in a pilot’s uniform, a pilot’s badge on came up. He was from 617 Squadron, the bomber squadron. I’d been with them at one time for a short time. He came and presented me with a print, a signed print, a limited edition of the new Lightning aircraft landing on an aircraft carrier. It’s up on the wall in the other room there. So he presented me with this and that’s that. I had it framed. It’s up on the wall. And all these cards came and every, every department in the Air Force had sent a card. There is a handwritten card from the air chief marshall. Chief of staff.
NM: Really.
JB: Handwritten. And the Queen’s card as well.
NM: Of course.
JB: So what more could you ask?
NM: Of course. Yeah.
JB: But everything was —
NM: A celebration of a great career.
JB: You couldn’t, you couldn’t have treated the Queen any better than they treated me.
NM: Yeah. Quite. Brilliant.
JB: Quite honestly. They were so kind. So friendly. Everybody wanted to talk to me. So we had that. On the Sunday before we went up there we were, we were asked to go to Woodhall Spa. When we found it it was the Dambusters celebrations up there at the time so we were introduced to all the relatives, the Dambusters, [unclear] and everything but absolutely charming. I got a book signed by the chap who wrote the book on it. And then on the Tuesday we went to the Memorial. Bomber Command Memorial in Lincoln and the Queen was there. When we were at the Memorial we went around with this guide and that and he’s telling us all about it. The wing, the Memorial with the big span of the Lancaster bomber and that was it. Metal plaques with all the names on them and everything. But I had a photograph that had been taken off the Lincolns flying. It was supposed to be the Lincoln flying. A Lincoln flying over the Cathedral. But actually the Lincoln was flying too low. I was in the one that was taking the photograph. Nobody knew that I was there but I was there and it was flying too low. The CO got to hear about it when we got back and ordered that all the photographs be destroyed. He said all photographs to be destroyed. He was there while they were all being destroyed. The only thing was he didn’t know there was another machine doing some photographs. About a half a dozen photographs on this. I had one. The chap who organised it was a warrant officer and he wanted some cards and the camp photographer wanted to take some photographs so they had arranged between them to do this flight. I heard about it. I thought oh well you know something, something like that. I’m going to have a seat somewhere. I got myself in. Took all these photographs. The CO never knew I’d been in as well. Everybody got told off but I got these photographs. So, this chappy had wanted the Lincoln newspaper to publish the photograph. This type. They took one look at it and said, ‘No way. This is secret stuff and, you know that has been banned. You won’t get that published for twenty five years.’ So he said alright. When those twenty five years were up he had it published. Have you not seen it?
[Pause. Paper rustling]
NM: Ok. You’ve got photographs of Lincolns flying alongside. It looks alongside.
JB: That’s right.
NM: Lincoln Cathedral.
JB: Yeah. Well, he should have been up here but he was down there.
NM: This was the one the CO wanted destroyed because it was flying too low.
JB: That’s right. Because he was flying too low.
NM: Excellent.
JB: He was flying too low.
NM: Excellent. A lovely photograph.
JB: I had that.
NM: A lovely photograph.
JB: So when the chap had finished talking to the group and everything I said, ‘Well, I’ve got a photograph,’ I said, ‘You might be interested in seeing.’ So I showed him this photograph. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘When you get back to the main Centre,’ he said, ‘Show it to — ’ so and so there, ‘Because they will be very interested in that.’ So we took it back. The next thing that happened you’re here. They decided they wanted me to do something about the life of a medical officer in the Air Force post war. The fact that I should think I was, I’m certainly the last medical officer to fly in a Lancaster.
NM: Yeah. I’m sure you are. And a Mosquito. Yeah.
JB: Because there was nobody else.
NM: That’s right.
JB: Had done anything because the chap who came in with me, they were Lincolns by the time he came in so he never got the chance to fly in a Lancaster but [pause]
NM: So —
JB: So that’s that so the only thing I’ve got to do now on Sunday if the weather is good I’m going to London to the Memorial Service at the Bomber Command Centre in London. That’s our Sunday. Going there. And in July I think, I forget the date. Sometime in July I’m going to Coningsby to a tea party at the Battle of Britain Centre.
NM: The Memorial Flight. Yeah.
JB: Yeah.
NM: At Coningsby.
JB: Flight there. I’ve been there before. I was there for 2017 because I’m in Rotary, the Rotary Club and the president of the Rotary Club at that time his father had been a Lancaster pilot during the war and he’s very much involved with it, with this thing and he decided he wanted to raise some money for the Battle of Britain. We did. We put on a dinner and everything and the flight engineer came down to the dinner because the squadron commander couldn’t come. He’d been changed I think at the time. They said he couldn’t come. Anyway, a flight engineer came down and we had a tombola and he said he would give the first prize to win the tombola and that would be a visit for six people to the Battle of Britain, the only one as his guests. And well it was the district governor lady who won the prize. She said, ‘Right. My husband and I are going. That leaves four.’ And that and she gave them to John, our president and that as he was involved with the Lancasters. She said, ‘You pick.’ So, John pointed at me and said, ‘You’re first on the list because you’re the only one that’s ever been on a Lancaster.’ So he said, ‘You must go on it.’ I was ninety four at the time so I had a chair. But anyway, we went up there and we were treated like VIPs. Taken into the Mess and all the rest of it and announced that we were shortly ]we were taken in. Have you ever been up? Well, you know the barriers are up. The public are on the outside. We were taken inside the barriers and shown all over the outside of the aircraft. Some people had complained about why were they on the outside and this crowd were on the inside. They said, ‘Well, they’re very important people. They are special invitation by one of the crew members.’ We were there.
NM: Of course.
JB: So that was, that was that. And we were just having a coffee in the, in the Mess and I just said, I said, ‘You realise,’ I said, ‘That exactly seventy years ago just now,’ I said, ‘I was the medical officer on this place.’ ‘What?’ I said, ‘Yes, it was seventy years ago exactly I said I was medical officer here. Well, the chap who was writing an article for us for [unclear] the article he said immediately elevated from VIP to royalty. They couldn’t do enough for us.
NM: Good. What a, what a nice story. Yeah.
JB: They were they were absolutely so they said, ‘Would you like to go into the aircraft?’ And I said, well there was Jimmy seventy four years on, they said it was up to [pause] up these steps like a two year old into the aircraft. So I was in. I got my photograph taken in the pilot seat and and well you know do you want to go to the back?’ I said, ‘The only place I haven’t been in in a Lancaster I said is the rear gunner’s seat. I said, ‘I never got that far back.’ I said because there never was a rear gunner really that far back when I was flying. So we went over all these things. I had to climb all over the main spar in the [unclear] had to climb over that so they heaved me over, pushing. People were over the other side. Somebody grabbing me. I eventually got to the rear gunner’s seat and got in and sat there so that made my day. I was in the rear gunner’s seat.
NM: You’d finally been in every single position in the Lancaster.
JB: Aye. Terrible.
NM: There you go.
JB: Terrible.
NM: What a good story. And despite your, despite your recent milestone birthday you still got these Armed Forces Day on Sundays.
JB: On Sunday.
NM: To look forward to. Bomber command at Green Park.
JB: Yes.
NM: And Coningsby.
JB: Coningsby.
NM: Next month.
JB: In this.
NM: What I love about this is you’re still looking forward. Brilliant.
JB: Oh, I’m still looking forward.
NM: Brilliant. Brilliant.
JB: It’s —
NM: I think, I don’t want to exhaust you too much Jimmy so can I just thank you for your time this afternoon.
JB: Oh well.
NM: And we’ve got it all captured.
JB: It’s been a pleasure talking to you.
NM: It’ll be transcribed.
JB: They say I talk too much.
NM: I hope it’s brought back some happy memories for you.
JB: Oh, it has that. I have a lot of happy memories. I didn’t have really any nasty memories. We had odd disagreements with the odd people but on the whole I had a very good relationship with everybody. I never had any trouble with my staff and that and the only trouble I had was, was when I was leaving the Air Force. I was caught with the, I was with the Americans at the time and it was the blockade of Berlin. The Berlin Airlift when we thought we were going to have to fight the Russians again and the B29s of course were the ones who dropped the atom bomb. So they were you know kitted out for that I would say. But I thought I was due to be demobbed near October and that and they said, ‘Oh, no you have to stay on.’ Moira had left and somebody had left and somebody had taken her flat over. She had gone back to Dundee. I was posted. This policeman told me that I had to stay on a bit more. A couple of months and that’s our [pause] but I complained about that and got posted to Binbrook instead so so that was it.
NM: Ok.
JB: But no. Once I was there I enjoyed it.
NM: It was great.
JB: Aye.
NM: That’s very good. A very good interview if I may so. Thank you very much for your recollections and the IBCC will appreciate this and we’ll leave it there shall we.
JB: Yeah.
NM: Very good. Thank you very much, Jimmy.