Interview with Peter Greenwood

Title

Interview with Peter Greenwood

Description

Peter Greenwood Greenwood grew up on a dairy farm near Halifax, and joined the ATC before volunteering for the RAF. After training, he worked in a bomb dump manhandling the bombs, and later worked on a searchlight. He discusses flying training.

Creator

Date

2023-12-08

Coverage

Language

Type

Format

01:12:58 Audio Recording

Rights

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.

Contributor

Identifier

AGreenwoodP231208, PGreenwoodP2302

Transcription

BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Peter Greenwood, an armourer in Bomber Command at his home near Halifax in West Yorkshire. We’ve got also present Heather Carcroft, his daughter and John, son in law.
PG: Right. Yeah.
BW: And its Friday the 8th of December at around 1 o’clock. Peter, can I just start by asking when and where you were born please?
PG: In Halifax.
BW: A native to Yorkshire.
PG: Yeah.
BW: And what —
PG: 1926. The 2nd of February 1926.
BW: And how many other people were in your family? Obviously your parents but any brothers and sisters?
PG: I have a younger brother who is now ninety three. He’s still driving. He came yesterday. And he joined the RAF as a two years whatever you call it. You know.
BW: Short Service or National Service?
PG: National Service. And he loved it. He went to Driffield and loved every minute. He was in [unclear] Yeah.
BW: What was his name?
PG: Denis. Denis with one N. Denis Geenwood.
BW: What was life like where you were living in Halifax?
PG: Well, we were out in the country. Well, everything was ok. My dad was a dairyman. We had a dairy and sold milk. That’ll be relevant later on because dad was killed.
BW: So was it, was it his own business that he had?
PG: Yes, it was his own business. He was at the dairy a long time. In fact, he came good. He was in the First World War and was a tailor really. Apprentice tailor. Hated it. But he loved horses so when he was demobbed from the First World War he, he bought a milk round which included having a horse and had an interest ever since. But he then earned enough by working seven days a week like milkmen do to buy a new house out in the country with a dairy. A dairy attached. You know, self-made. But mother hated it. She was a townie and didn’t think he ought to have to work Sundays you see. Nobody else did in those days. Just milkmen you see. So, we was very happy out in the county and got to the age of Grammar School where of course the ATC was formed.
BW: Which Grammar School was it?
PG: Sowerby.
BW: Sowerby.
PG: Sowerby Bridge. S O W E R B Y. Sowerby Bridge.
BW: Growing up did you help your dad on the farm at all?
PG: Yeah. Every Saturday. Yeah. As such my brother never learned to swim. I did but he, the swimming lessons were on a Saturday morning. So he was later in life when, when he learned to swim.
BW: And was the school you went to nearby?
PG: No. It was three miles away which, but buses were regular in those days. In fact, we enjoyed going on them I suppose. You know, life was so different. And Sowerby Bridge seemed like a city but I mean now it’s just a scruffy [laughs] what is it? Just a queue of traffic now, you know. But we — [pause]
BW: What subjects did you do at school?
PG: Well, I finished up doing science. Physics, you know, chemistry. We took the chemistry stream. We did loads but that was a stream. Physics. Which got me into the, to Oxford you see and it finished with chemistry there.
BW: So when did you leave school then?
PG: I left school in those days at fifteen. I went to work for a Swiss firm. Geigy. G E I G Y. They then merged with Ciba and became Ciba-Geigy and I worked in the laboratory. Physics and maths again. In Bradford which was, you know a big city in those days. Well, it is. I went on the train. Steam train. You know, that’s something [laughs] You know, like for real.
BW: So this would be probably late ’30s I would think. Late 30s. Maybe early ‘40s.
PG: Yeah. That’s right.
BW: So, do you recall, I don’t mean in detail but do you recall where you were when, when war broke out? Were you at school or were you —
PG: Oh, at school. But of course —
BW: At work.
PG: You see, the ATC wouldn’t have started then, you know. So the only interest in aircraft was through the [unclear] who was in the back of a bike shop sold American kits, you know. And it wasn’t proper balsa either, you know. Balsa was scarce and the glue what, you know balsa cement cost more than the kit. I think, I think one and threepence was the kit you know and glue would be the same, you know. Something like that. That was the very early interest. That’s before ATC.
BW: So what prompted your interest in flying? How did that arise? Was it something you’d, you’d grown up with?
PG: No, not at all.
BW: From a younger age or was it—
PG: No, it was just being –
BW: The presence of the war or what?
PG: No. It was ATC. ATC did it and you know in that it’s in this thing I’ve written here.
BW: Yeah.
PG: But I mean you got trips to stations and the first one was to Clifton near York and it was a camp, you know. We were there for a day or two. And 4 Squadron were Army co-op but it was old fashioned then. They had been evacuated there from Dunkirk and they were Fairey Battles. I mean battered. They looked awful. And we had a camp there. Well, they could and the Lysanders were so different you know that we were thrilled to bits. Of course, in the evening we could go into York which where there was a funfair and all that. And that started it and then you just dream about the next one you’re going to go to you see and that. And that’s, that was probably Full Sutton which was, no. No. Not for, not then. No. We’d then go to, you know [pause] let’s see. The next one.
BW: When did you join up?
PG: ’44.
BW: Ok.
PG: Yeah.
BW: And had you had to sign on or sign up prior to that or I mean was conscription, were you initially conscripted or did you have to do a test?
PG: Somewhere I, somewhere or other at the bottom of here yeah I have a very wizened, I kept it too. I don’t know why. There it is.
BW: Right.
PG: 1944.
BW: So, this is your service book.
PG: 3041414. I can remember the number.
BW: Yes.
PG: My —
BW: So you volunteered. You signed —
PG: Yes. Yeah. Oh yeah.
BW: You volunteered for the RAF.
PG: At that stage what we would do we were pre-empting not going in the Army if you see what I mean [laughs] The other way around. Making quite sure of not going in the Army but obviously goodies like University Air Squadron was just a prize beyond.
BW: So, the Air Training Corps fostered your interest.
PG: Yeah, they did when I was a sergeant you know and that sort of thing and and the firm at first well with me I mean other one, other lads older than me were going in ordinarily. Older ones you see. I was fifteen. Fifteen, sixteen then. And so of course, when I would nearly be called up I would get to Oxford. Now, my dear friend who was better than, well we used to go to aero spotter things and win, you know. Ninety, I’d get ninety five and he was a clever Dick. He’d get ninety eight. We were, we were besotted. We used to get aeroplane —
BW: This was aircraft recognition tests.
PG: Well, yeah. I mean you know get the aero-spotting and we were waiting for it to be delivered to the shop. And he obviously should have followed me. He would have loved it. It would have been six months but the firm reserved him. Wouldn’t let him go because I’d gone.
BW: So did you both work at the same —
PG: Yeah. We worked, we went to work on the same train.
BW: And this was when you were working for the —
PG: Working in Bradford.
BW: Swiss company.
PG: The Swiss company. Yeah.
BW: Just to take you back a little bit because you mentioned Oxford University.
PG: Yeah.
BW: So did you leave school and go to Oxford University and then into work or did you —
PG: No. No. Worked first.
BW: Right.
PG: Otherwise, we’d not stopped on at school like you didn’t.
BW: No.
PG: Only, only were they clever. Only three or four out of a whole school would stop on. So I would leave at fifteen and he he was fourteen and a half and he drilled behind me and missed it.
BW: And were you, were you apprenticed at –
PG: Well —
BW: Ciba-Geigy.
PG: Well, kind of. Yes. Yeah. In a laboratory where you got better at it and then they found you jobs out in industry selling their dye stuff you see. It was, it was like, it was better than the school. It was. It was nice.
BW: But you got into the RAF. You both went to join up at the same time.
PG: Oh, he couldn’t at all. He was [back] immediately you know. They solved that.
BW: So how come they didn’t reserve your occupation if you were working in the labs? Do you know?
PG: He was reserved because by then you know —
BW: But you weren’t. I’m just interested how you —
PG: Well, no. I didn’t.
BW: Go into it.
PG: I imagined he was about to follow. I mean he couldn’t wait and the rotters. And it was an immediate selfish boss who did it. I think Swiss people were very good actually and they paid my wage. Fifteen shillings a week all the war actually into my bank account. Well, if I’d had a bank account. And dad bought a motorbike for it for me towards the end. So I had a motorbike at Exeter but that’s, that’s another tale. But –
BW: So even when you’d enlisted and sorry even when you’d volunteered and joined up the company was still paying your wages.
PG: Oh yes. At fifteen shillings a week.
BW: And you were getting RAF wages too.
PG: Oh yes. But of course, I wasn’t getting it because dad being, dad being dad well you know put it into —
BW: Into your savings.
PG: Well, probably my first bank account. And, and then my friend, my dear friend Gordon would have followed on he hoped and he didn’t and then but later on they got in for National Service.
BW: So, so you must have been one of the —
PG: Last —
BW: First. One of the first young men to join the Air Training Corps because they only formed in 1941.
PG: Oh, I were number one [laughs] yeah. Of course we were. We were besotted.
BW: And so you’ve had two years maybe in the ATC.
PG: Well yeah. Yeah.
BW: And volunteered for the RAF. Did you, did you go into their local Recruiting Office? Was it in Halifax or did you get to go, did you have to go somewhere else?
PG: I don’t know. I probably did it through ATC.
BW: Ok.
PG: We couldn’t wait for Sundays, you know. I mean —
BW: And you went in as airmen.
PG: Oh yes.
BW: And —
PG: Oh into —
BW: What did you apply for because I understood —
PG: Well, that, well no —
BW: I understand you worked for the armoury.
PG: Well, you go to Doncaster. First time I’d left home in all my life and do tests and stay a night too which I’d never done before and you know blow balloons up and stuff like that and I was terrified of it because the ATC doctor wasn’t happy about my heart. He frightened me to death. He, he was a grumpy old soul so I spent most of a year or so thinking that I wouldn’t get in. And I got, you know and this Doncaster thing I did get in and, but not air gunner because I was six foot and a half an inch. And that half inch stopped me being an air gunner.
BW: That was what you wanted to —
PG: PNB.
BW: Do —
PG: So I was pilot, navigator, bomb aimer. And I was that all the time. P/N/B. And you were AC2 but you were paid seven and six instead of three and six I think. Something like that you got. It was sort of flying pay.
BW: So when you went to Doncaster for tests.
PG: Yeah.
BW: And at what stage did you get to decide what you were going to do next?
PG: Well, I came, well I came home thrilled to bits you know and dad I can see as though it was yesterday. He was doing the garden over with hens picking at the doings. I said, ‘Dad, I’ve passed. I haven’t got a weak heart.’ [laughs] You know. What he thought about it I don’t know. I mean he was in the artillery. I mean but I was over the moon and I can’t, I can’t think of the machinery that got me from from Doncaster and getting into the RAF proper which you are —
BW: Ok.
PG: And then getting to Oxford. So getting a list. That frightened everyone, you know. they suggested you have and it included a dressing gown amongst this long things for Oxford and of course nobody had one. And all the relations clubbed together for coupons and bought me a long thick [laughs] a long thick dressing gown. And they suggested a bike. They said, ‘Well, by them we’ll stop riding bikes.’ We were messing with motor bikes but so local Ripponden bike shop man made me a bike out of his. But of course, you couldn’t buy new ones so he made me a sit up and beg bike. One pedal was longer than the other you know but, and then we tarred it. We used to call when you painted over rust tarring it. So I took that. So I, and then I get a thing from Oxford. Well, this college business. Now, Keble was one of the newer colleges. A brick college and it was full of MOD ladies. So I was actually sleeping in the University College which is the oldest. Well, claimed to be. But you kept, you kept this Keble [unclear] all the time. And and then of course you got bike rack and, you know you got called sir and you’d have your, you know the post box with, “Peter Greenwood,” written on it [laughs] And a Scout as they’re called in Oxford to make your bed and bring you hot water and stuff like that. Now, the thing being that they’d bring you hot water to shave with but to have a bath or you know, a really decent wash or something you had to go across the quad quite a long way to the mass showers and things like that. So I went obviously I was feeling [laughs] Oh there were loads of public, what do they call them? People who had been to public schools. There were lots of them. Lots of them. All at the same scheme. And they were in their RAF great coats over their pyjamas and there’s me in this. I felt like Noel Coward in it. I only wore it once. I put my greatcoat on like they did then. And I found what was good I was mixing with a lot of public school boys and of course they thought Oxford and or later the RAF was wonderful because public school was horrid. They got bullied, thrashed by, you know and they were used to being starved and left to and they were, they were rich obviously but but public schools. So that we met some quite good friends. The other incredible thing was like I say I went to an unfashionable Keble College which was brick. The public schoolboys went to where they would have gone in anytime. You know, the affiliation between Eton and let’s say Magdalen and they went. They were all just, that was the university interference that would be.
BW: Pre-destined.
PG: You know, when they were, got this pile of names in. They didn’t make them but they were in all the star. They’d gone where they would have gone as civvies. Yeah. And so we’d do [pause] you’d do university. And so it was six months but no playing out so that its worth a year. So the afternoons when regular students who weren’t in a, they’d play games or do nothing. We’d do some RAF lectures of flight because the air squadron had two aeroplanes there. And so it condensed. And we’d have more lectures than they got so they reckoned it was worth a BSc in the end. It was very difficult.
BW: So you, I’m just trying to understand the sequence here. You’d gone into basic service training. Had you gone on to work as an armourer before you went to Oxford or did you —
PG: Oh no. No. You’re going —
BW: Have I got that the wrong way around?
PG: No. No. That’s no that’s first visit in the RAF proper. We’d been whirling around in the training system for over a year.
BW: Ok.
PG: But it’s all down on that.
BW: Yeah. Yeah. So there —
PG: You know the year you’d —
BW: So these, these are places where you’d been.
PG: Well, I’d, am I saying the right things?
BW: Yeah. Yeah.
PG: No, I was lecturing John earlier about it because he’s watched the Battle of Britain on, lately on television. He’s quite taken.
BW: Yes. I can see.
PG: Beaverbrook, I mean —
BW: So at six months of training at Keble, Oxford.
PG: Yeah.
BW: That you did.
PG: And that’s —
BW: And then you went. And then you went to —
PG: Well, if you —
BW: Babbacombe in Devon.
PG: If you, yeah. Yeah. That, that’s right. At Babbacombe. But they were a whole series of holding people. Beaverbrook had cracked it towards the end, you know. As fast as Hitler was downing planes the next day there would be a new one come. He’d got it. And a crew would come on. Not in an MG. A crew that come on the bus. Seven of them you know. Whatever it was. And they could quite well be killed that night. It was. But he got it right. He’d beaten. That’s why we finished up coming home from America but all the war he’d been working on this. So half of these things you were waiting. You were queuing up for the course.
BW: What the RAF called holding posts.
PG: Yeah, lots of them.
BW: Yeah.
PG: So you’re going backwards to some of them. I mean you know I mean we’d done drill at Oxford obviously. To go to Babbacombe was like going on hol, well Torquay but you’d to put up with it and you know it was a lovely place and warm. Palm trees outside the hotels, you know. That was yet another. And then you know that six months of that wasting time. And then getting to know all the naughty RAF tricks, you know. You know living in hotels that are like Fawlty Towers. I probably, I think I probably was in Fawlty Towers. There was one like that you know. RAF beds in the bedroom and that. And then, then we’d go home for Christmas and then another holding to Bridgenorth. That’s a professional horrid holding place in Shropshire where all sorts of people get to, you know to be punished. But you know if you did, if you marched well and you did this, that and the other you could have a pass to go out into Wolverhampton at the weekend. But it always got stopped. Somebody did something wrong. Typically wrong. And we were quite a long time there. And then the posting what came in to, the first of them Full Sutton and the last aerodrome to be built in Bomber Command. And it was —
BW: There was only one squadron there. 77 Squadron.
PG: 77 yeah. You clever Dick [laughs] Yes, I’ve written that down too. And it was in [pause] and we’d done things like I mean British Rail. You know, we’d get on the train with a ticket for what the travel warrant would say. Fangfoss. And that’s the nearest station to Full Sutton. And we got on it shall we say at lunchtime in Bridgenorth, Shropshire and just sat in it all night. It wasn’t a sleeper [laughs] and then the next day somehow or other it managed, the same train managed to go around the corner in Manchester and we were at Full Sutton and we got out and the crew got out. The seven man crew got out at the same time. Not in MGs. And [Will Hay] you’re not old enough to know. [Will Hay] the station master you know they asked him where the station transport was [laughs] He said, ‘It’s two mile up the road there.’ And we all walked. And of course it was in a foot of snow everywhere, you know. Terrible. Awful. And that was the beginning of getting into Bomber Command and and then of course nobody really wanted you but I’d say you got all the rotten jobs and so the bomb dump was an obvious. But I mean they were always almost always in the next village. You know, we found out then the bomb dump, the armourers shot rabbits and things and ate them [laughs] you know rather than walk. And people don’t realise that there was none of this driving about in cars or anything like that. Transport office had it nailed. You know. You could fly aeroplanes but you weren’t allowed to drive in it so you had to walk in it. It was a long way. It would be a full mile to the bomb dump. And then of course I have it is the thing that one of the salutary things that we’d walk there and, and what the ordinary waggons used to bring the bombs on and they weren’t, didn’t have tons of forklift trucks. You rolled them off into the snow, you know, and then rolled them and things like that and it was horrible and it was cold and we hadn’t proper clothes. So one day the armourer sergeant triggered one of these. He took one to bits and he set fire to and lit it. So we had, so the bomb dump, bomb dumps always have dogs so this dog flew away and they never saw it again. But you know that was that day. Well then perhaps if the weather was bad they wouldn’t go and then the next place wanted a different bomb load and they’d always to bring back into this snowdrift. And so the very salutary one. I mean whether a month or something like that was when the order was all incendiaries. And they were horrible. They were held together with bolts with the smaller incendiaries. You know the ones that cascade out inside and the [pause] well, like one of the lads was pushing it rolling one out and it caught under his gloves and he did a complete somersault and handstand and finished up in the snow. Pinned in the snow with one of these and the others, ‘Are you alright, son?’ They always called him Sonny. ‘Are you alright, Sonny?’ And then laughed at him with the other. You know, that was an aside but we’d have to change the load and then the order was a hundred percent. That seemed incredible. Usually you only put two or three of those in. A full bomb load of them. Now, you know the secrecy they got right was really, well we’d no idea. In one of my books, my aircraft books that Julie buys me Dresden was 17th of February 1944 and that’s when I was there. I’m sure, I’m not too proud of it but I’m sure I loaded it. The crews didn’t know of course. It was all kept secret until the last minute and the war ended because of that actually. You know, Churchill was cross with Bomber Harris and you know. So you know you’re killing civilians and all which we’re doing now of course. Yeah. It didn’t struck, well we didn’t know. So it was just a horrible snowy place to be. But that was rough life and 77, it’s the old name and it’s a prison now. Full Sutton is a huge prison [laughs]
BW: Of course it is.
PG: It was a prison then.
BW: Did you, did you get involved in much detail regarding the armour. The armourer work?
PG: No, not at all. We were tolerated.
BW: It was just labour.
PG: Labour.
BW: It sounds from what you’re saying.
PG: Just labour. No, I didn’t. You know, utterly secret. And whatever we were doing and then you’d go back and then we’d go back to the billet and they were of course Nissen huts. Nothing like, and you’d look, you were looking for an empty bed and and the beds were, you walked around with hooks. If somebody’s got a really good hook he’s the senior man in the hut you know. So you worked your way but on the shelves were these what looked like saxophone cases with chromium corners. I think this must be the station band that I’d got to know. But as, but then we sort of found out not only was it not station band these blokes had come from West Africa and they’d all got dysentery and the back door of the hut was open on to this you know drift of snow which was yellow. These blokes were having to get up all night. But I thought they were the station band, you know. So they, you know 44 they’re probably, well there wasn’t any trouble then. They were probably West Africa I think. You know, on Sunderlands or something like that. And they were all, the reason they’d made these boxes themselves because they were all air frame fitters i.e. joiners. And still in RAF fabric you know and then got corners for them in, you know, in York. And it was really, well you’re going on, ‘I don’t know whether I’d really like to do this for real.’ That’s the beginning.
BW: So life on camp was fairly mundane from what you’re saying.
PG: Yeah. And I mean it was a long way. It was ten miles. Twelve miles from York. Local bus would take us. A twenty seater Bedford you know would have nearly sixty in it and still leave some in York. It’s there. ‘I’ll come back.’ And they’d have to wait an hour while they went. It was, it was a big learning curve. I think I’ve still got my, those white socks. [Sea boot] socks for wellies. Our padre issued those as you can imagine. And of course, padres did horrid things like sending pen knives home and things like that, you know. We were watched. Yeah. That was life in the rough.
BW: And while you were working at Full Sutton you were working on Halifaxes. Is that right?
PG: Yeah. The Mark 3s. The Best of them. Yeah.
BW: Did you, did you, were you part of the team that would take the bombs from the dump to the aircraft or were you purely loading the trailers at the dump.
PG: We were nowhere. We just was on the dump and the armourers, you know the professional armourers if you like went with the trolleys and tractor pulling as well.
BW: So you didn’t get involved in fusing the bombs.
PG: No, nothing.
BW: Right.
PG: Nothing technical.
BW: Ok.
PG: We were just useful to them because forklift trucks couldn’t work. We were instead of forklift trucks really.
BW: So you were just manhandling these.
PG: Canisters. Yeah.
BW: Called dumb bombs.
PG: They called them clusters. Yeah.
BW: With the explosives in.
PG: Yeah. Well, there were lots of us as well you see. There would be six plus I would imagine. But it was the beginning. You were sort of thinking you know two years training to be whatever. But it was, you know.
BW: But there were no incidents in the dump itself.
PG: No. No. No. Us doing it. Yeah.
BW: Yeah.
PG: No. No. I but they were in, I then managed to get on, get away from that and get on a searchlight. You know, the Army would have ten people running it. The RAF had one. And the hardest job was starting the petrol engine up. Not the, not the diesel. Every day you had to pull cords. Well, you know. I mean so that got you a flying breakfast. And that’s when I saw Beaverbrook at his best when there was one missing. But then nobody knew. You see they were all dispersed and Halifaxes, you know. No radio. They’d go around and get in a circuit and you said, ‘That’s going to land.’ And then it would. And it taxied up to flying control with me with the searchlight. This was during the day now. And then two pretty WAAFs would get out. ATA. A pilot and then an even smaller one with a brief case was the engineer. You know and you’ve heard those stories like people say, you know, ‘Where’s the pilot?’ ‘I am the pilot.’ But I watched that and an Anson came to pick them up. Just like clockwork. Well, it got I suppose almost the end of the war you see and he’d cracked it. So, you know. So I witnessed that and —
BW: Did you ever get in any of these bombers? Did you actually manage to scrounge any flights at all?
PG: Oh no. No. No. No. I mean not there. I did at, I did at Driffield but I mean they were so busy fighting the war. I mean as you’ll know the RAF are something to be really proud of. I mean a proper peacetime station with, it’s like a town and the flying has nothing to do with it whatsoever, you know. The adj runs that. The transport, police all that sort of thing. But flying is dispersed and the CO of the squadron whatever he was called will go around every morning and speak to the fitters by their first name. The adj runs the station. Everything that moves is his, you know. The station. They were, they were S H I T. They were horrible. They were accountants. Hated. But they ran a very efficient station and the visiting squadrons kept the planes flying but the two never.
BW: Yeah. There was —
PG: Well, the inter —
BW: A separation between operations.
PG: Yeah. That’s right.
BW: And flying.
PG: There right to my brother’s day the flying, anybody to do with flying didn’t do parades and things or dress properly and that was made ok by their CO who was the CO of the station you see. You know, an ex-Dambuster or what have you but it worked. And the night, you know so there was no communication. Nobody would know in HQ wherever they’d been. Ever. It wasn’t talked about.
BW: So from Full Sutton.
PG: Yeah.
BW: You’d been there a few months.
PG: Not long, you know. Just a week or two.
BW: And this is now coming up to the end of the war really.
PG: Yeah. Well, I would say that was Dresden we now know. So that’s it.
BW: How, how did you transfer to flying training?
PG: Well, you’d —
BW: Had you enlisted?
PG: Yeah.
BW: With the aim of being a pilot in the first place.
PG: Yeah.
BW: And you’d —
PG: And you’ve been whirling around then and pushed —
BW: Taken these movements in the meantime.
PG: All over the place. Yeah, well then from the good news was we were called to Heaton Park in Manchester which you’ve probably heard about. It was just a giant huge public park. The RAF had it and you kept going back there to be sent somewhere else and we were called back there to go flying. You know. Wonderful. And the one we got was Kingstown in, near Carlisle and it was my first time I’d ever gone north of Skipton. And what I couldn’t believe is I thought we were going to Scotland you know and we were on the way but it’s softer. Cumbria is softer than where we lived. And that’s where you do your twelve hours.
BW: That was your elementary flying training.
PG: Yeah.
BW: You’ve got here. And then you went, you went solo in a Tiger Moth.
PG: Yeah and that’s another thing you see. Before I did you were in small groups and then so there was always competition who can get solo first. So, I’ll get all of them solo or something like that. Now, I finished. I mean tons of fillings for my teeth. I finished up with a septic one and I had to be taken by a RAF ambulance to what is now Carlisle Airport to a dentist and that’s another. A nice young, proper young RAF dentist was thrilled to have me. I enjoyed every minute of it. I mean he wasn’t a grumpy old, he was a lovely bloke wanting to sort me and he did. But it made me miss an hour or so flying and I was spoiling the average. So that afternoon they found a sergeant instructor who passed everybody and he waited until flying had finished and they had one or two little airfields around about and we went to one of those and it was the best flight I’d ever done. I passed and so we were all out. So every night of course every time anybody soloed you had to go out into Carlisle which was very near and drink horrible beer because it was, it had been requisitioned because in the First World War drunkenness, a lot of munition still there and so every pub was the same brewery. You were drinking the same rubbish. So I had to go you know. So I passed somewhere and I have a logbook somewhere. Not a logbook but a leaf out of a logbook somewhere. So I did it in less than twelve hours. Yeah. Now, just to break in. Three other celebrities as they’d now be called at Oxford was Richard Burton, what’s the Warren Mitchell, yeah. Warren Mitchell who was, “Til Death Us Do Part” man and then, yes Robert Hardy. You know, in, “All creatures.”
BW: Yeah.
PG: They were at Oxford and so you sort of kind of lose them but the Richard Burton didn’t pass so he finished up being a navigator. So, you didn’t get sent off. You got down a grade. You went down to navigator then. So he somehow or other he never featured. He went to Canada but but the other two celebrities as we call them they stayed with us. Yeah.
BW: And from there once you’d, once you’d finished your flying training —
PG: Yeah. You’d go back to the –
BW: First, first course you went back.
PG: Back to Heaton Park again.
BW: To Heaton Park.
PG: And I don’t, we didn’t get sent.
BW: Down to Driffield.
PG: Went to [Rhyll] to waste time again. And that’s what –
BW: And that’s where the Australian squadron.
PG: Yes. And Driffield had been decimated. They came over from Norway the JU88s and not only bombed it but strafed it. So it had to be rebuilt and it was a grass aerodrome pre-war. So it was they took two years mending it so you know putting runways in and all that so that then the only squadrons on it were those two Australian.
BW: And I believe there was an incident when one of the aircraft landed —
PG: Yeah. Well, that’s another reason for not. Yes. So the week before, we didn’t see it, it was here so it had happened. One of them either taking off or coming back blew up on the runway and so somehow or other we got this time issued to dustbin gang. I don’t know what you would call them. Salvage department or whatever. But once again rotten jobs. But what did hit the spot was that we had all got clean uniforms you see, you know and whatnot and we were smart and tall and all that sort of thing. So we were going to be the people that sat alongside the coffin. So what amazed me was that salvage man, whoever he was suddenly became an undertaker. And so he got these coffins in the sick bay and he'd only, he hadn’t enough I don’t know why. There were only six. His worry was having enough to put in the coffin. I saw it. So there were six coffins on trestles and he was sort of, he was a ground bloke so of course he had his best blue on and he could have been an undertaker he was so, he talked in hushed tones and all that and so on the day of reckoning he then rang for transport to take them to Driffield Station. And naturally the Transport Department sent, there was always WAAFs, sent a fairly scruffy WAAF on the coal lorry. Just a flat. So we’d to sweep the coal out of it. Only gravel in the bottom and then put these coffins in and two forms either side you see. And what was incredible was they had the travel warrants pinned to the coffin as though they were living, you know, with a drawing pin. And so you know we climb in and sit there like this and I must say when he was doing really well we did a sort of, kind of a circle of the camp and then we get outside. The flag would be lowered and the CO was there and the adj and all that and then we Driffield is about three, three miles from the station. And then we sort of we went to the goods yard and started bumping all the lines. Well, where are we going? And we were going to three guards van. One each, sorry. Six guards van and each guard’s van had a little black board you know where it put on where it was going to go. And it would say flying officer so and so, Brisbane. Pilot officer somebody else. And each were going to a different part. Now, can you imagine British Rail today? Well, what we forgot though what you wanted they’d been doing it all the war. This was probably the last one. I think one appreciates they hadn’t learned that day. They’d been doing that well not every day but —
BW: Yeah. It’s a regular occurrence to deal with the casualties.
PG: Yeah. And as I said right down to having their, it was just, it was like a railway warrant. Well, it was a railway warrant with their name on it pinned on their coffin. I mean that’s organisation [laughs] I mean that cancels out the call. Somebody was doing their job right. Yeah.
BW: Yeah.
PG: You know. It would be a good stop now and it was done so well. I’m making it sound frivolous when I talk about this but what it would be this here [ funeral director I’m talking about would have done it a lot.
BW: From there you went abroad.
PG: Yeah, now then.
BW: [unclear]
PG: That really was good news.
BW: You said you sailed over to America.
PG: The next time we were summoned back to Heaton Park again to say we’d got what we could have. Canada. America. South Africa. Rhodesia. Those were all operational, you know. Sorry training places abroad and we got America.
BW: And you went to Clewiston.
PG: Clewiston, Florida. Yeah. So, you could then, you’d get, you know you were in a train going like when you’re going up to Carlisle again of course up to Glasgow this time. I mean I’ve never seen a ship that size. We sort of got on this ship. Well, it was only a tender for, it was Aquitania which was number three and that was fairly horrid because well the wounded Americans going back home. You know, they believe those Cunard lines were well they were they believed they actually owned them they did so much work for the Americans you see. So so we go back on the Aquitania and there were still U-boats about so it zigzagged and managed to take ten days.
BW: And when you got to Florida you were learning at this air base.
PG: Yeah.
BW: You were flying Harvards. Was that right?
PG: Both. PT.
BW: And Boeing Stearmans.
PG: PT 17s first. You know the Stearman first and then Harvard.
BW: What were they like to fly? How did you find that?
PG: Oh, wonderful. I mean well we’ll get on to I have loads of photos. I mean for a start you see Tiger Moths don’t have brakes so you always had to have all men you know in Army great coats hanging on the wingtips you see when you’ve finished. Well, nothing that there. You have to park on spots in a great long line because of course there’s no Germans you see. And your instructor will make you go around again and because you’ve brakes you can manoeuvre so that they’re always in perfect straight lines. I’ve got some really good photographs. So you then do your solo. You’d do sixty hours I think I did there on those. Well, of course Florida is perfect for you know the sort of all the roads were north, south, east, and west you know and if you’re lost you go high enough up and you can see both coasts, you know. So it was super and they were American bush pilots who were there. There were only a few. There would be the CO would be a RAF bloke and an adj of course and then a horrid warrant officer who in the end we got. He was horrid. I don’t know what he did. Some sort of, we didn’t do drill but did as little as there would be less than five RAF people and all the rest were American civilians. And the instructors were bush pilots when they weren’t crop spraying and things like that and they would come in their own aeroplanes and park in a line of crop sprayers. And they were southerners you see so they’d drawl. I used to have a job making out what they were saying. They were real southerner but they were nice blokes. Yeah. And then when you’d done your hours there would be a RAF pilot would get in and ok you. Or which was naughty if you were doing anything wrong and they wanted to get, they’d get in and they’d take you up and fail you and send you home. That was done. That was done when a chap, one of them, not Richard Burton but somebody like him got into trouble on a bus by giving his seat up to a negro because it really was bad at that time. And I don’t know, he probably hit somebody as well admittedly but it was so he was taken up on a flying test and sent home. But he was sent home for not for the flight test. And it kept discipline as you can imagine.
BW: Yeah.
PG: You know, when do anything wrong you’re sent home.
BW: And so you were there months.
PG: Now then. Yeah. There six months.
BW: Six months.
PG: And then this is a salutary thing. Not only had the Japanese war finished lease lend finished the day after. And the day after that we were coming home. It wasn’t to do, they’d plenty of pilots anyhow. It was nought to do with that. It was paying lease lend. We were on a train.
BW: Straight back home.
PG: Yeah. In fact, that warrant officer I’m talking about nearly drowned in the swimming pool. There were a lot of people had been waiting to get him and he finished up in the swimming pool alongside a lot of fire extinguishers. We were a long time and then train to New York where you’d sleep. It is a sleeping job and then Camp Brooklyn which was their staging post for ships. And then we came back which on the Elizabeth which at that time was the biggest ship in the world of course. The fastest ship in the world and it also had never been home. It had lived out in Glasgow in the Clyde. You know, hiding from U-boats. So we, we were the first journey in and instead of having fifteen thousand Hurricanes on it you know to fly there were four hundred of us sailing up the Thames and we got you know ticker tape and [unclear] but it wasn’t for us. It was for Elizabeth.
BW: It was for the Queen Mary.
PG: Going home.
BW: The Queen Elizabeth.
PG: You know never having been at home.
BW: Yeah.
PG: And it did it in I think four and a half you know because it wasn’t zigzagging you see. So that, all these things were wonderful to us.
BW: So as you say this this was summer 1945 now.
PG: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Because the Japanese, the war in Japan had ended or in the Far East had ended in August that year.
PG: That’s it and then you go through a series of horrid holding places again. Nicest of which was Bircham Newton which is near Sandringham and that was a peacetime Coastal Command Station. No planes on it. First World War station but we could have the bikes and things and we drove around Sandringham and Norfolk coast.
BW: It says here you’ve got, you had showers and central heating in –
PG: That’s right.
BW: The accommodation.
PG: And then from there to even worse you go down to Eastchurch on Sheppey and that was where all sorts of horrid things you know where they took you off air crew and things like that and do all sort of horrid things. It wasn’t a nice [laughs] They never did anything nice and it was there we were, I think we remustered as clerks to get out quickly. Clerks were being demobbed earlier than and it seemed —
BW: That’s unusual.
PG: You know by then all interest in being in the RAF was nil and —
BW: So had your interest in it faded at all by that stage?
PG: No.
BW: No.
PG: No because —
BW: You were still enthusiastic about it.
PG: It got reinterested, reignited by getting into Fighter Command which included actually going to Bircham no, Bentley Priory which was their headquarters and they needed, they needed two. I was able to go with my best friend who lived on the Isle of Wight and go to Exeter which of course is you’ve Devon and Cornwall at your hand there and the first jets had just come. 222 had come you know and they were just working them up. We were supposed to, you know we got RAF publications and ring them up. You know. Idiot. And obviously we went to the Isle of Wight from there on the motorbike you see and it was. Then that holiday finished and back to Eastchurch again and then another drudge. That’s back up into Yorkshire to the nearest to my home Marston Moor which was a training bomber base. And that was decommissioning it. Taking it to bits. And then life went wrong. My father was killed going across the bottom of a steep hill with his car and I had to, adj came and offered me a cigarette and I knew. And I had to come home and run the milk round and of course the car was smashed and one thing or another. And I never actually went back. I just went back to be demobbed. But I would have been anyhow about that time. Yeah. So —
BW: I was, I was going to ask about that because I wondered whether it was your choice to leave the RAF voluntarily following your dad’s death or whether —
PG: No. No.
BW: The RAF told you to.
PG: No. It was just fed up you know. Along the way which I haven’t mentioned of course I did have an Oxford friend who hated working in a bank in Leeds. He’d be, he did not want to go back and do that and we were offered to go to Cranwell with a guaranteed commission. Oh, we were aiming for that anyhow. If you’d been to Oxford and what not you were guaranteed a commission. It was a ten year, it seemed ten years seemed in hindsight you could think about it. He carried on training and became a Mosquito pilot. So it was offered but we were all you know ten years seemed inordinate. And he was shot down over Israel the last lot not, when they were fighting somebody else.
BW: Yeah.
PG: When we were fighting.
BW: The late ‘40s.
PG: Yeah. So talking about escape death. You see what I mean. So it was an option but a half-hearted one but there was an option to one of these holding places we might have been to go to Cranwell. We sort of, kind of had enough really then and ten years seems like, it isn’t a long time but it seemed a long time.
BW: You knew him well then.
PG: Yeah.
BW: So you’ve come back and basically taken over your dad’s business.
PG: Yes, that’s right. Only to stop it, you know. If I hadn’t have done it would there wouldn’t have been a business. But you know with so many [unclear] my mother all she could think about was getting milk out for the next day you know. In hindsight if you think back to this compensation today you wouldn’t have attempted. You would have just sort of said you’ve stolen my, you know the insurance company that you know his entire livelihood had gone but you don’t think about that. And it helps you not worry about things but in hindsight was the wrong decision.
BW: You would have liked to stay in in hindsight. If you’d had perhaps time with the family but then returned to duties.
PG: Yeah. Yeah, well yeah whatever you thought you might be in quite honestly we’d seen enough to not want to be anything. Getting back into Fighter Command. Bomber Command was an attrition, you know. It was a numbers game and it was awful.
BW: Was, was that your just thinking back was your aim to be a pilot in Fighter Command or did you think about going into Bomber Command?
PG: Well, kept making it the attrition was so much. I think in the end I would have been, I think I’d have picked Coastal and I think I’d have crashed into the water in the end. That’s what, that’s what that sort. You know, it’s cowardice. Now, since we knew you were coming you know I’ve a library in there. I’ve a shrine in the other bedroom there that you’ll have to look at and there’s books about each station. Nothing to do with being in the RAF. Just interested.
BW: Yeah.
PG: And I’ve turned up the Heavy Conversion Units. It’s frightening. I had to give up reading [unclear] I think, I think it’s and I’ve seen some figures from when. It’s twenty thousand plus just converting to four engine. In fact, our planes –
BW: Yeah.
PG: That’s most of the reason for it. But I have seen like a very official document that is a bit like Dresden. Not mention these here but it’s in it’s twenty thousand plus at these Heavy Conversion Units. And those are the ones we of course went to as ATC and they were beaten up Halifaxes you know that had done their time just flying out to sea and not come back and all that kind of thing. But I mean I got in Fighter Command and they won the Battle of Britain. That’s another ball game.
BW: And eventually you say you went back to —
PG: Back to Geigy then.
BW: I’m trying to think of the base. Was it Heaton Park to be demobbed? And then you went –
PG: Oh, aye you go to somewhere.
BW: [unclear] coming back to the —
PG: Aye. Somewhere you go where they take your flying clothes off you and one thing and another.
BW: Yeah.
PG: And you get demobbed in the end. But still living.
BW: And so after the end of the war and you’ve been demobbed did you continue with your father’s business or did you return to [unclear]
PG: Oh, I just done it only for about twelve months.
BW: Ok.
PG: And then went back to my old firm and then stayed in textiles ‘til I retired. Not enjoying it very much [pause] [I learned a lesson]
BW: And your post war life you obviously met, married, settled down.
PG: Yeah. Yeah. Had my other daughter. And then the elder daughter of the two lives in the wonderful part of the world in Northamptonshire. I think she chooses that as it’s right in the middle. It’s near Stamford which is on the A1 and it also has Shuttleworth twenty minutes away. So either from being nought has been dragged to air displays a lot haven’t you? And dog. All the dogs have been as well and it’s just something. It’s like going back to the ATC really. And I’ve, there’s so much time for these blokes that mend them you know. The —
BW: That restore aircraft.
PG: Credit to them. And Shuttleworth, particularly Duxford I don’t. We’ve been to Duxford but it’s a hassle. They start queuing for Duxford you know ten mile away and police are turning folk away. The only good thing about that is that the one of the big lot at Duxford. I think, “Flying Legend,” they call themselves they’ve all sorts of nice planes.
BW: Yeah.
PG: They’ve sort of fallen out with Duxford and they’ve tried one at Church Fenton near York which was a fighter station and it worked. They were thrilled that they’re going to do it again so we might get to go to one nearer.
BW: Good.
PG: But, but I mean the only thing that’s keeping me away from those is that I can’t drive now so I’m reliant on others and I’m still as interested. I read, “Flypast.” Do you get, “Flypast?”
BW: Not currently. I did read it a lot in the past yeah.
PG: Well, I’ll give you one. A current one. You can be up to date. I read every word. Only about usually about what’s going wrong but you know it’s a fast American jet programme. I don’t read. I have to be hard up to because I can’t assimilate that but I can assimilate somebody you know —
BW: The historical things.
PG: Restoring something that I remember. Yeah.
BW: As regards your family how did how did you meet your wife? Had you met –
PG: Dancing.
BW: During the war.
PG: Dancing. No. After the war. Yeah. Motorbikes and dancing together because your mum, I remember your mum getting on one of the first times in a long dress and she just pulled it up and got on. She loved motorbikes did your mum. And she like aeroplanes as well so that fit. A kind of happy ever after.
BW: And we mentioned before your friend who had been to the opening of –
PG: Open.
BW: Of the Bomber Command Centre. What are your thoughts about it? It’s obviously been established now.
PG: Oh yeah. Ken Marshall yeah. Oh well. They deserve it. I mean the only thing that suits me is it’s in Lincolnshire. I mean there were Lancasters were the best. Lincoln had as many. Yorkshire and Greater Yorkshire had as much Halifaxes in 6 Group Canadian. There was as much Bomber Command in Yorkshire as Lincolnshire but they don’t get their, in turn they don’t claim any part of this. You know.
BW: But I mean in terms of the Bomber Command Centre, the commemoration what are your thought about it? The IBCC.
PG: Well, I just feel there wasn’t [pause] no, it’s a credit all about they should have done, bomber crews should have got a medal. No question of that like. Bomber Harris sort of went back home to Australia in disgrace and Bomber Command the people have had to put up with that and this is absolutely crazy. It’s only a little, the Lancaster was better than a Halifax anyhow but there’s as much flying in Yorkshire and North Yorkshire where the Canadians were as Lincolnshire. But somebody had to do it and credit. And you think about those poor souls that you know went across to France before in Fairey Battles and things I mean.
BW: They were not a good aircraft. I think, I think that’s it. Those are all the questions I have for you. Are there any incidences or recollections you’ve come across?
PG: What time is it now?
BW: That you want to —
PG: No, I’ll show you –
Other: Down there.
BW: Ok. We’ll pause there and we’ll have a look through some memorabilia.
PG: Yeah, that –
BW: Thank you very much for your time.

Collection

Citation

Brian Wright, “Interview with Peter Greenwood,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed November 4, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/49893.

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