1
25
111
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2258/40606/PZoltySP2201.2.jpg
f6c0d58c6584b9e158ebadab445286aa
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2258/40606/AZoltySP220804.2.mp3
d723f8bd89964b7a42f51931b288e357
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Zolty, Peter
Solomon Peter Zolty
S P Zolty
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Solomon Peter Zolty (1922 - 2022). He flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-04
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Zolty, SP
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: Right. This is an interview between Harry Bartlett and Peter Zolty. Peter was a navigator with 106 Squadron in Bomber Command, 5 Group and the interview is taking place at his residence, current residence and it’s the 4th of August and it’s, I wonder what the time is?
Other: 10.47.
HB: It’s 10.45.
PZ: That’s the day, the day when the war broke out didn’t it? 4th of August it was.
HB: Something like that. Yeah.
PZ: I think. Or something like that anyway.
HB: So, can I first —
PZ: Ask me —
HB: Can I first of all thank you Peter for agreeing to be interviewed. It’s important we get your story recorded. What I’d like to do if possible is to start with where you were born and where you sort of went to school and got your first job.
PZ: I was born in, well in Birmingham. In Erdington actually. Lindridge Road, Erdington and we lived then in Speedwell Road and that’s where, that’s where I grew up. I went, there was a Jewish School there in Birmingham. There still is actually but it’s not in the same place and I went there. And I also went to Five Ways School which was at Five Ways in Birmingham but I was removed from there because of misbehaviour [laughs] So that’s all I can really say about that. After that I went to Handsworth Junior Technical School and I never, I never went to university. I never got to that standard.
HB: Did you get any qualifications at the Technical School?
PZ: No. I didn’t. I don’t have any qualifications at all.
HB: Right.
PZ: Other than TBE. Taught By Experience.
HB: I like that. So what, what age were you when you left school, Peter?
PZ: Pardon?
HB: What age were you when you left school?
PZ: When I left school? I must have been about fifteen.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Handsworth Junior Technical School that was.
HB: And did you get, did you get work straight away?
PZ: Yeah. I got a job as a laboratory assistant at, I think it was at Birmingham University in the Chemistry, in the Chemistry Department as far as I can remember. Nothing, nothing very special. You know, first jobs were always fifteen shillings a week in those days.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. So, but you obviously moved on from, from the University.
PZ: Pardon?
HB: You moved on from the University.
PZ: Only, I was only a lab assistant anyway.
HB: Yeah. Where did you, where were you in the ‘30s? 1930s. When it was coming up to the war.
PZ: Oh, I lived at home in Speedwell Road, Birmingham.
HB: Yeah. And were you, were you working somewhere else then as you were coming up to the war starting?
PZ: I’m trying, I’m just trying to think. I can’t remember if I had a job before that.
HB: Was it, would you have got a job at Lucas?
PZ: No. No. Not straight away.
HB: No.
PZ: I was a laboratory assistant. Oh, I was a laboratory assistant to some —
HB: Yeah.
PZ: To some bloke. I can’t remember his name now but he said I was, he said I was useless. I didn’t turn up to time on [laughs] mostly but anyway —
HB: But you managed to move on.
PZ: I managed that —
HB: And eventually —
PZ: Well, my father was at Lucas and he got me a job at Lucas.
HB: Right. What were you doing at Lucas?
PZ: I was, I was in the tool drawing office first.
HB: Oh.
PZ: I later graduated to machine tools.
HB: Right.
PZ: And I worked my way through various levels of machine tool design and various complicated machine tools. I used to, I used to design them.
HB: Right. Right. Very important work then.
PZ: Hmmn?
HB: Important work.
PZ: Yeah. I did try training as a pilot but I think God, God decided I wasn’t a pilot.
HB: Did, how did you, how did you come to join the RAF?
PZ: Well, I always wanted to fly so I, I went along to the Recruiting Office and signed on and things just seemed to hang about so I went and asked my immediate boss if anything had been done to prevent me from going on to do other things. And he said no it hadn’t. Well, I said, ‘Well, if I’m worth keeping on I’m worth another five shillings a week.’ But he said I wasn’t [laughs] and so I, I joined the Air Force and said I wanted to be a pilot. I went over to Canada on the Empire, Empire Air Training School. I got so far but they decided that I wasn’t a pilot so I remustered as a navigator. I remember sending a cable to my mother at home what had happened and I trained as a navigator then.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And —
HB: Which, which school? Can you remember which school you went to in Canada?
PZ: Handsworth Junior Technical —
HB: No, sorry the —
PZ: I went to Five Ways first of all. A grammar school.
HB: Yeah. No, the, the —
PZ: And then I got in a bit of trouble there.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Because I pinched another boy’s, I pinched another boy’s book.
HB: Right. No. I was thinking, I was thinking of the RAF training school in Canada.
PZ: Oh.
HB: Can you —
PZ: The Empire Air Training Scheme. That was at [pause] I think it was, yes I think it was London, Ontario as far as I can remember.
HB: Yeah. Yeah, that yeah that’s great. So you started off as a pilot.
PZ: No. I started off with the intention of being a pilot.
HB: Oh, right. Yeah.
PZ: And they decided eventually that there I was washed out. I wasn’t good enough.
HB: Right.
PZ: And I wouldn’t argue with that. I made a, made a bit of a mess of one or two landings which I shouldn’t do and lost height on turns which I shouldn’t do so I remustered as a navigator.
HB: Right.
PZ: And that I was perfectly capable of doing. I mean modern airliners the pilots don’t navigate they’re just told which direction to fly in.
HB: So you’re the most important man in the aircraft then.
PZ: Eh?
HB: You’re the most important man in the aircraft.
PZ: In a sense I suppose so. Yes.
HB: Yeah. So —
PZ: But the flights used to last up to about thirteen hours sometimes with the same pilot. Nowadays I gather they have to change pilots after about eight hours or something like that.
HB: Yeah. So you went to Canada.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Did you finish your navigation training in Canada?
PZ: Yes. Yes.
HB: You did.
PZ: And then came back here to [pause] what was the name of the place? I can’t remember the name —
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Of the station we were at and and crewing up was a scrappy sort of business. You just, we were, we used to do cross country runs which meant running around the perimeter of the aeroplane, of the airfield. And as we were running around one bloke said he was a pilot and so I said, ‘Well, I’m a navigator’ and that way we crewed up.
HB: Oh right. So you were just sort of a bit of a runaround.
PZ: It’s a bit of an ad hoc.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Yes, being —
HB: So they didn’t put you all in a big hangar and say, ‘Go and sort yourselves out.’
PZ: Oh no. No. They —
HB: No.
PZ: We did more or less sort ourselves out.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. What was the name of your pilot? Can you remember?
PZ: Yes, it was Daniel. Maurice Daniel. He went on to become a group captain and the air attaché in Washington but I don’t know whether he’s still alive.
HB: Right.
PZ: He finished up with the DFC because any crew which finished a tour of operations the captain got the DFC.
HB: Yeah. You see I’ve got it down until I saw your logbook I’ve got it down that you were with 106 Squadron.
PZ: That’s right.
HB: But you actually started —
PZ: I started with 49 Squadron.
HB: With 49 Squadron. Yeah.
PZ: But that was a 49.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
PZ: Yeah, that was just one of those things that happened. I was only with 49 Squadron for a short time and then went to 106 Squadron which I served a complete tour of operations.
HB: Yeah. You flew, you flew your first, it looks like you flew your first proper night time operation in August ’44 with Flying Officer Daniel to Kӧnigsberg.
PZ: Where?
HB: Kӧnigsberg. That was your first operation.
PZ: We went there two nights in a row actually where I was thinking of casually about it sometimes and the flight to Kӧnigsberg was thirteen hours each way. Nowadays pilots are only allowed to do eight hours.
HB: Yeah. That was, so that was a very long, a very long operation.
PZ: It was a long operation. We did it two nights in succession actually.
HB: Yeah. And that was your first one.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: How did you feel after you’d done your first operation and landed?
PZ: Relieved.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: There was always, because, because first of all there was always before going there was an operational meal in the Mess which was always bacon and eggs and on coming back there was another operational meal which was all bacon and eggs. And I remember the, we wore soft leather flying helmets in those days and you took it off and the relief in getting a good scratch [laughs] You can’t imagine it.
HB: So [laughs] Yeah. So the helmet was an interference with you.
PZ: Yes, soft leather.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Not the bone domes that they are now.
HB: Yeah. So obviously your religion is Jewish.
PZ: Yes.
HB: How did you, how did you go on about eating?
PZ: About what?
HB: About eating your operational —
PZ: Yes.
HB: Eggs and bacon?
PZ: Oh, the local minister was a Dr Cohen. A Jewish minister who was a giant among British Jewry and he said, ‘If we found that we were unable to follow the dietary laws we would not be committing any sort of a sin’ and he gave, he gave us the all clear really. Because more often than not the operational meal would be egg and bacon.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And just, that just sort of begs the question, Peter. A lot, a lot of Jewish aircrew were given the opportunity to fly under a different name and have a different religion put on their dog tags.
PZ: I never came across that funnily enough.
HB: No.
PZ: No. Never.
HB: So nobody actually suggested it to you. You just carried on as you were.
PZ: No, I just carried on.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And crewing up we used to go for, just to keep fit to run the circuit around the outskirts of the airfield and it was a casual attitude. I was running around once and one bloke said he was a pilot and I said, ‘Well, I’m a navigator.’ Boom we were a crew.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Can you remember any of your other crew that flew with you?
PZ: Yeah. There was, there was Danny. Maurice Daniel who went on to become a group captain. There was Fred Berry. Nicknamed. Already had a child so we nicknamed him Logan. Ken King was from Gloucester was the flight engineer. Peter Whaight, W H A I G H T, was the mid-upper gunner and John Keating from Ireland was the rear gunner. He went back home to Ireland. Pete Whaight went home to Middlesex and Johnny Keating went to Ireland and went to jail we heard. And that’s it.
HB: Did you, did you keep in touch with them after the war?
PZ: No. I didn’t actually.
HB: Right. Right. I just sort of while you were talking I was just having a quick look through your logbook which obviously you started in August ’44 and you’re flying. You’re flying operations virtually every three or four days.
PZ: Yes. Usually two days in a row and then odd nights it was night bombing.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Mostly night time and it was two nights in a row and then one night off. That would raise it roughly.
HB: Yeah. Because I noticed. I noticed in here you did a couple of, you did a couple of daytime operations.
PZ: Yes. We did.
HB: One to Boulogne and one to Le Havre.
PZ: Yeah, they were. I thought there was one to an island in Holland called Westkapelle. There may have been which I remember putting in the logbook.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: In brackets — very dicey [laughs] because there was, you know there was no danger in it at all. Usually, thought it wasn’t only my name. It wasn’t only bombing. We did minelaying in the Kattegat as well. The island between Denmark and Sweden.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Can you remember?
PZ: The actual water there. The sea.
HB: Yeah. What, can you remember what that was called in your book? In your logbook.
PZ: My what?
HB: Can you remember what those operations were called in your logbook?
PZ: They are. They were recorded in my logbook.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Yes.
HB: Yeah. So —
PZ: You’ve got my logbook there haven’t you?
HB: I just noted —
PZ: That is my logbook isn’t it?
HB: Yes, it is.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: It is and it’s quite interesting. You got an operation [pause] it’s just —
PZ: We did some mine laying once.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: I remember that.
HB: It says on in November 1944 you were attached to BDU.
PZ: Sorry?
HB: BDU for —
PZ: BDU.
HB: For LORAN training.
PZ: Sorry?
HB: For LORAN training.
PZ: LORAN.
HB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
HB: We just had a member of staff just step in for a minute. That’s all.
[personal talk about shower gel]
HB: Okay. Yes, it’s got, it’s got in your book attached to BDU for LORAN training in November ’44 and it’s got your pilot was a Flight Lieutenant French.
PZ: Flight lieutenant?
HB: French. And it says you went to Lyon. You flew to Lyon but you had an early return because the PI died.
PZ: I can’t remember that.
HB: No. I’m just, I’ve not seen PI died so I mean I presume that was probably a bit of kit. Something, some equipment in the aircraft. But it —
PZ: I don’t know.
HB: Yeah. It just says, “Early return. PI died.” So —
PZ: Oh, it’s something instrument that is.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. So what was the other one? Sorry.
PZ: The wireless operator was a Fred Berry.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: We called him Logan.
HB: Yeah. That’s a good one that one. You went, you then went back obviously you were only there for a, for a month. You went back to 106.
PZ: Yeah. And once we, once we’d completed a set of operations like that I become an instructor.
HB: Yeah. Yeah, I noticed that. I was going to ask you actually because you did a daylight raid which has, which has been recorded quite a lot in January ’45 against the Dortmund Ems Canal.
PZ: That’s right. Yes.
HB: Can you, can you remember much about that one? That operation.
PZ: Not really. We were probably trying to burst the banks of the canals or something like that but I don’t really remember it now.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: I served in two squadrons as I said. 49 and 106.
HB: Yeah. I think that was when you were flying with 106 and you did, that was your twentieth operation. How would, how would you be feeling then about twenty operations in.
PZ: Oh they were then said to be thirty operations was one tour. But when we got to twenty six we found we’d got another four on top of that. Thirty four. Because we were a very mixed squadron. We had Australian, South African who were, they were, they were army rather than Air Force and the Australians wore the dark blue uniform. Not the dark RAF blue. But yeah, we all mixed together perfectly well.
HB: Yeah. So was everybody in your crew from the United Kingdom or did you —
PZ: No. The bomb aimer was from Canada.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: The wireless operator was from England somewhere. The rear gunner was from Ireland. When he went back home afterwards he got sent to jail we heard. And the mid-upper gunner was from somewhere in Middlesex.
HB: Right. So you’d got a Canadian in the crew.
PZ: Oh yeah. Joe [Howey] was a Canadian.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: He went back home and married his childhood sweetheart.
HB: Oh right. Did you go to the wedding?
PZ: No. It was in Canada.
HB: Right. Yeah. So, so you’re doing, you’re back to doing operations sort of every two or three days into 1945.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: What did, did you have any involvement in the D-Day?
PZ: No, but we —
HB: Sorry, the crossing the Rhine going into Germany.
PZ: Not particularly. No.
HB: No.
PZ: Not that I remember anyway.
HB: Right. Right. Where are we? Yeah. You got one, you’ve got one here where you flew to Czechoslovakia.
PZ: To where?
HB: To Czechoslovakia. A place called [Bruckes]
PZ: Called?
HB: Bruckes.
PZ: I don’t remember the name to be perfectly honest.
HB: No.
PZ: But if it’s there we must have done it.
HB: Yeah. That’s alright. That’s not a problem. So just tell me a little bit about what you, once you’ve got an operation and you’ve been called in to be briefed. You know, that you’re going to go and fly that night.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Or whatever.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: What was, what was the process Peter that you went through?
PZ: Well, the navigators were briefed with forecasts about the weather and talk about the target and all the rest of it and that was it. But then we did a, we had a talk from the Met man telling us what the weather was expected to be like and that was the extent of briefing quite frankly.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: But as I say we flew operations of up to thirteen or fourteen hours which they don’t do today.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: As civilian pilots.
HB: Yeah. Did you, what equipment did you have to help you do your navigation?
PZ: There was something called Gee. G E E, which relied, it was passive in that it relied on joining up two, two timed signals on the ground and it relied on the difference between them and that told you exactly. It gave you a point on where you were. And there was something we called H2S which didn’t mean anything at all other than the fact that it was a signal generated from the nose of the aircraft. But it was never used because the Germans could hold, could home in on that and just pick you off as it were.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: But we, we finished a whole chain of tours. A whole chain of trips. About thirty four roughly and with one tiny little hole in the side of the, inside of the, on the side of the aircraft. ZNU-Uncle it was.
HB: ZN.
PZ: ZNU-Uncle.
HB: Yeah. You’ve, yeah you’ve —
PZ: [PB] 284.
HB: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I’ve got that one.
PZ: Yes. And H2S relied on us, a signal sent out from the aircraft which was not, which was not done very much because the Germans could home in on it.
HB: Yeah. Did, did when you had a hole in the aircraft was that from flak or was it from some other —
PZ: We think it might have been an odd bit of flak.
HB: Yeah. So —
PZ: Only a little triangular hole. No real damage.
HB: So when you set off from —
PZ: It was Metheringham.
HB: Metheringham.
PZ: And Fiskerton previously. I think it was.
HB: Yeah. When you set off from Metherington [sic]
PZ: Yeah.
HB: You were sort of —
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Your pilot would climb you up.
PZ: We all cornered in. We all hove to over Reading so that we then, that we then flew together as a complete, as a block. As a bunch giving some mutual defence.
HB: Yeah. Yeah, and that, so that was so you sort of gathered up at Metheringham and then made your way gradually to Reading.
PZ: Reading. And then we all flew together.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: It made you know allowing for instrument error and so on but it was one big bunch of aircraft flying at the same time then.
HB: Yeah. Did you, did you ever, did you get attacked by night fighters or anything like that?
PZ: No. The only time I was frightened it was a psychological thing and that was when there was another Lancaster flying directly above us with his bomb doors open and I was truly frightened by that until he moved away apparently from us.
HB: I think you were right to be frightened.
PZ: What might have happened.
HB: Yeah. So, so that would be on the bomb run coming in to your target.
PZ: Yeah. We did one or two easy ones I’d say like some over Holland and the Zuiderzee and that sort of thing which were, which were a doddle. And we did mine laying as well on the coast on the sea between Denmark and Sweden.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Did you have, I didn’t notice in here if you ever did a operation to Wessel [pause] Wessel.
PZ: Zeebrugge?
HB: Wessel.
PZ: Sorry?
HB: Wessel.
PZ: Doesn’t ring a bell. I’m sorry.
HB: No. It’s, it’s alright it’s just one. I haven’t noticed it in your book but it’s one that the squadron was in. One that the squadron was involved in. That was, that was getting across the Rhine into Germany.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: That was the bombing just in advance —
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Of that.
PZ: I remember because we had South African members of the squadron as well. They were, they were part of the army. The South African army. It wasn’t the Air Force at all.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And they used to put [unclear] about bigger and better operations and so on. Captain [Pecci] was the officer that particular one. And that was it.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: We had a feeling that other people get shot down we don’t. That was, and that was how you protected yourself in a way.
HB: And so obviously you had a lot of faith in your pilot as well.
PZ: Absolutely. He was very good. I say he, he was flying he was promoted to group captain and he went to, he went off to Washington DC to be the air attaché. I don’t think he’s still alive now.
HB: No. No. The, one of the things we mentioned Metheringham when you were stationed at Metheringham.
PZ: Yes.
HB: Metheringham is quite famous.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Because they they did some experimental stuff there didn’t they for when you were coming back?
PZ: Yeah. We were at Metheringham and Fiskerton.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Two stages we flew from.
HB: Yeah. Metheringham. Didn’t that have these the thing for when when it got foggy?
PZ: Sorry.
HB: When it got foggy. When you were coming back in fog didn’t Metheringham have that experimental system?
PZ: Oh, FIDO. Fog Intense Dispersal Of. If it was on —
HB: Yeah.
PZ: If there was any fog they were along across. One alongside and one along each side of the runway and they got fuel burning in those and it generated enough local heat to lift the, to lift the fog so you could just see down. And we had a special arrangement of, for 5 Group aircraft who would get into what they called the funnels. That’s coming in towards where you were landing and the pilot just, I used to call out to the pilot you know first of all height and direction and then later on funnels as we got down on the ground.
HB: So you were still involved in the, in the landing process.
PZ: In that. In that sense, yes.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
PZ: We had, there were the, an instrument called Gee. G E E. Never ever knew what it stood for but it was a means. It was an aid to navigation.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And you could, you could use that to guide the aircraft.
HB: Did you ever land using, when they were using FIDO?
PZ: I think we were, we were once. We were diverted. Diverted to Croft up in Yorkshire just once.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: That was presumably because of the landing conditions at Metheringham.
HB: Yeah. And you said at, you said a little while ago that when you came to the end of your tour and yeah you did thirty four, thirty five ops, when you came to the end of your tour you went to operational training.
PZ: Yeah. Just to become an instructor. That was all that it was.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And we, when we and that was what it was. We instructed future navigators or future crews.
HB: Can you remember where? Where you went to?
PZ: I’m not absolutely sure but it might have been a place called Fiskerton but I’m not certain.
HB: Well, I’ve got in your book here it says 6th of April ’45. On the 6th of April 1945 you were posted to Number 29 Operational Training Unit at Bruntingthorpe.
PZ: Oh yeah.
HB: In Leicestershire.
PZ: That was in north, that’s in East Anglia as well.
HB: Yeah. Leicestershire. South Leicestershire.
PZ: Yes. I can’t really. I can’t really remember that. I remember when there were supposed to be thirty tours in an operational life.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And we were sitting in the Mess one night after having done twenty six and I said, ‘Only four to go.’ And one, then they suddenly announced over the tannoy another four operations to go on top of that. And I remember one of the South Africans guys saying what we want is bigger and better tours.
HB: Which I don’t think you wanted did you? By then.
PZ: No. No way.
HB: Yeah. So what, the whole experience of flying on operations. What sort of effect did it have on you Peter?
PZ: I I can remember at the time, I mean we used to get leave fairly regularly and we were at some relation’s house in Birmingham somewhere and I remember sitting at a table like this. That was the only visible evidence ever.
HB: Drumming your fingers.
PZ: Yes. Yes.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: And when we stopped flying that stopped as well.
HB: So, so that was something you.
PZ: It was a bit of nerves I suppose.
HB: Yeah. Where you just drummed your fingers on on your hand on the table.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. So what, what do you think? What do you think your contribution was in Bomber Command then?
PZ: My contribution?
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Well, we tried to be as accurate as we could. Can’t do more. We weren’t the Dambusters and, but we did, we did, well we dropped quite large bombs in to one or two canals which threw them out of action and flooded the countryside underneath at the same time.
HB: Do you think what you did had a, had a big effect on the war itself?
PZ: I suppose it must have done. We liked to think it did anyway.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And so coming up to the end of the war you’re in 1945 coming up in to ‘46.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: When did you leave the RAF? Can you remember Peter?
PZ: Yeah. Well, I remember going for [pause] the crew split up and that was that and I remember going for a training course on photography and then I became photographic officer in Italy for about a year. Then I came out after that.
HB: Did you? And what, what was your process for finishing? How did they manage your coming out?
PZ: Oh, it was just being photographic officer in Italy was just a piece of cake really.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Just decided go out. And I was very disappointed that they didn’t fly us home. We came home by train. Called Medloc Mediterranean location overseas. It was. It was —
HB: Yeah.
PZ: We came out and that was that.
HB: Can you remember where you went to be demobbed? Where you got your suit and your trilby hat?
PZ: I can’t actually.
HB: No. That’s fine. That’s fine. I know most of the guys I speak to talk about the demob being a little bit of a, almost a bit of a joke.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: Well, I was demobbed. I went back to work with Lucas’ where I’d been before.
PZ: Yeah. Had they kept your job open for you?
HB: Oh yes. They were, they were under obligation in those days from the government to give people back their jobs once they came back from military service.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: And you were still a single man then.
PZ: I’d, I had a pretty good job in Lucas then. I was, and you know I served out my time and then I opted for early retirement.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just going back to when you were at Metheringham when you were flying operations what did you do for entertainment?
PZ: We used to go to the local pub and have a sing song. That was the main thing.
HB: Did you ever have any shows at the, at the airfield.
PZ: No. No. No. It was self-provided so to speak.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Usually the singing of dirty songs.
HB: Yeah. And, and did you go to the local dances?
PZ: Yes. I couldn’t dance.
HB: Oh, so you didn’t get the opportunity to mix with the young ladies then.
PZ: No. Not really. No.
HB: Oh dear. Right. So, when you look back on your time now, you know you’re a hundred years old now, Peter. You don’t look it I have to say but you’re a hundred years old. You look back on that time of your life. What, what do you think it contributed to your later life?
PZ: Well, it made me thankful to be alive I suppose. That’s the main thing.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Yeah. And I’ve got a, and I have a family now as well. I lost my wife about ten years ago.
HB: Oh right.
PZ: We were married for what, fifty two years. But you know the Jewish community everybody knows everybody and that and, and my wife came from that community and we had Natalie.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s lovely. Well, I think Peter we’ve sort of come towards a bit of a natural end to the interview and I just want to say thank you very much.
PZ: Oh, you’re welcome.
HB: You know, your contribution is there now forever.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: You know, and people can look into and listen to your interview and they can look into your logbooks and they can do it all on the computer nowadays.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: You know, but it is looked after by Lincoln University.
PZ: It’s only recently I gave my grandson my logbook. That’s a fact.
HB: Yeah. Well, I’m going to stop the interview now Peter. It’s [pause] well we’re nearly on forty minutes so we’ve done quite well and can I thank you on behalf of the Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive.
PZ: Yes.
HB: And thank you personally.
PZ: Yeah.
HB: I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s really been interesting.
PZ: Eventually I did go to the Memorial. The Memorial at Erewash in North Midlands. In Staffordshire I think it is.
HB: Yeah.
PZ: Where there was a, there was a Memorial specifically mentioned Bomber Command and I remember going there. And I remember also a group of four of us were in, in London by Marble Arch.
HB: Green Park.
PZ: The arch.
HB: Green Park.
PZ: Green Park. There was a Memorial there and we had, we had the photograph taken there.
HB: Yeah. That’s, that’s the one that the Bomber Command veterans helped to get off the ground. It was —
PZ: I remember standing there while a photograph was taken.
HB: Yeah. That’s lovely. Well thank you, Peter.
PZ: Oh, you’re welcome.
HB: Thank you for that.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Peter Zolty
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harry Bartlett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-04
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:39:07 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AZoltySP220804, PZoltySP2201
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Peter was born in Erdington, Birmingham. He joined the RAF and was trained at the Empire Air Training School in Canada. He re-mustered as a navigator and was with 49 Squadron for a short time. Peter then joined 106 Squadron and did a tour of 34 operations. Members of his crew included: Maurice Daniel (pilot), Fred Berry, Ken King (flight engineer), Peter Whaight (mid upper gunner) and John Keating (rear gunner). Flights could be 13 hours each way. It was a mixed squadron with different nationalities. Dr Cohen, the local Jewish minister, gave him a dispensation from following Jewish dietary laws. Apart from bombing operations, Peter also did some mine laying on the sea between Denmark and Sweden. As a navigator, he received relatively scant briefings on the weather forecast and targets. Peter describes his navigation aids, and aircraft gathering at RAF Metheringham before flying as a group to Reading. Peter benefited from the Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (FIDO) at RAF Metheringham. In 1945 he was posted to an Operational Training Unit and became an instructor. Towards the end of the war, he was a photographic officer in Italy for a year and then left the RAF. He returned to his job at Lucas.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Leicestershire
Canada
Italy
106 Squadron
29 OTU
49 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
briefing
crewing up
faith
fear
FIDO
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Metheringham
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2256/40605/PFeltonM2201.1.jpg
897c45b883850d8a0b5e5c3ae1fba82a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2256/40605/AFeltonM221114.2.mp3
0914d71570380c64e084251661234a6e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Felton, Monty
M Felton
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Monty Felton DFC. He flew operations as a navigator with 10 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-11-14
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Felton, M
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
NM: So, today is the 14th of November. I’m with Monty Felton, DFC in his home in North London. My name is Nigel Moore and I’m going to ask Monty about his service with Bomber Command. So, Monty can you start at the beginning and can you start to tell me when and where you were born and about your childhood and growing up?
MF: I was born on the 6th of November 1923. In fact, it was my ninety ninth birthday on Sunday before last. When I was, I was born in Middlesex Hospital. Not Central Middlesex but Middlesex Hospital which was off Oxford Street in London and as I understand it Winston Churchill was born in the same place. Not that that makes me any more famous but there we are. When I was a young baby we moved to Thornton Heath which is a suburb of Croydon and we lived over the tailor’s shop which my dad had opened. We lived in very modest accommodation. It was an old property. We didn’t have a bathroom and to go to the lavatory one had to go around the back. So as you can see my background was not exactly very exotic. Nevertheless, we coped. I can’t ever remember being short of a meal and I was well looked after. We lived there, I went to school just up the road and then I got a scholarship to Selhurst Grammar School which was in West Croydon. Not too far. When I was at school at Selhurst Grammar this was a fee paying school but they took in scholarship boys and I was one of them. If we go through now to the beginning of the war Selhurst Grammar were evacuated to I suppose what was thought to be a safer area but in fact it was Brighton and Hove which I would have thought was even more vulnerable. We went there in the very first day or two of the war and I went to I think it was Brighton and Hove Grammar School. We shared. They went in the morning, we went in the afternoon or vice versa and I took my what was then matriculation exams which is really the equivalent of today’s GCSE. And having taken the exams I got home and I suppose I must have got home around about March April 1940. I then got a job with a firm of chartered accountants in Doctor’s Commons which was a small turning near the Bank of England and was occupied very largely by firms of solicitors and accountants. Doctor’s Commons doesn’t exist anymore but it does get mentioned two or three times by Dickens in “David Copperfield” and in “Pickwick Papers”. I’m a very keen reader of classics. Particularly Charles Dickens. Where are we now? I got this job at accountants and after being there for a very short time I became articled. That means that you had to serve five years articles because there was no other way that you yourself could sit the exams and become a chartered accountant. The procedure in those days was the firm to whom you were articled charged a premium which was normally about two hundred and fifty guineas. Lord knows what’s the equivalent of that today but it’s a large sum of money. My dad didn’t have two hundred and fifty guineas and as I’ve said before I doubt if he had two hundred and fifty buttons. But the arrangement was made that I would pay off this money over the very small salary that I would earn over the five year period. In fact, it didn’t really happen because after about eighteen months I then joined the RAF and my articles ran on and indeed expired before I left the RAF. So we got a bit of a [laughs] a bit of a bargain in that respect. It’s strange because if somebody starts to work for a firm of chartered accountants today they get a decent salary and they receive tuition. When I joined this firm I remember the man I was articled to was named Horace Brett and he never spent one moment teaching me anything. In the firm there was a chap working there who was two or three years older than me and he was flying about in the room and he was going to become an RAF ace and was very sure of himself. He went off to have an interview. I think in those days the interviews were in I think it was Bush House in Aldwych. He had this interview full of confidence and they turned him down. So either he suggested or I got the bright idea that I’d go for an interview entirely confident that if they’d turned him down they certainly wouldn’t accept me but for some peculiar reason they did. So I continued working for a while and then I was sent off for my medical. I think I went to Catterick and it was a very detailed medical and I again I thought well I’ve never been anywhere, I’ve lived a very protected life and I thought they won’t accept me. I’m not the right material. I’m not a big strong fella. But they did accept me. So after the medical I was then called up and I went for the first two weeks of my RAF career if I can call it such. I went to Lord’s Cricket Ground to be kitted up and then I stayed in a block of flats in Prince Albert Road called Viceroy Court which was a rather swish block of flats but not when we of the RAF went there because they stripped out everything of any value including the carpets. The whole lot. And we slept in not double bunks but three in a bunk. We stayed there for a couple of weeks. We had some corporal chap busying us about but we did learn cleanliness. Not personal cleanliness but cleanliness of keeping the room. If he found a speck of dust we were in trouble. We had our night vision test in the next door block of flats called Bentinck Court, I imagine they both blocks are still there and I think there were sixteen images flashed on to a screen. We sat in a dark room and you had to identify them. They were things like a Maltese Cross, a silhouette of an aeroplane, that sort of thing. I think the pass mark was twelve. I scored eight and I think they, they decided I’d have to sit the exam again which I did and the second time I scored seven but it made not the slightest difference. Everything proceeded as if I was an ex, absolute expert. From the flats in Prince Albert Road let me think. I was then sent to ITW, Initial Training Wing in Torquay and we stayed in the Grand Hotel which was near the station but again it was a posh hotel but was stripped out of anything that mattered. And I think we were in ITW for about three or four months. I can’t remember. And the purpose of ITW was number one to teach us the principles of navigation and secondly to get us really fit. All the time I’m believing that I will never get anywhere near an aeroplane. I won’t go into the detail of navigation because people will already know but in essence if you’re flying an aeroplane the wind direction and the speed of the wind carries the aeroplane in the same way as a tide carries a boat and therefore the navigator has to work out what the pilot should be flying. What track he should be flying so that taking in to account the wind he got correctly from A to B. So we used to sit at ITW in what was really a school room and learn on pencil and paper the calculations and the principles of navigation. We also were made fit. We marched at a very much quicker pace than normal. We went for runs and after a run we ended up in the sea and we were really put through it. So that by the time we completed ITW we were in really good shape and as I’ve mentioned so often from that moment onwards we didn’t have any need to have physical exercise and by the time we got to a bomber squadron our condition was probably infinitely worse than before we ever started. I suppose this is typical of the RAF. When I finished at ITW I was then posted to a airfield at Bishops Court, Northern Ireland which was, I don’t know, eight or ten miles or so from Belfast. It was strange because most chaps, pilots and navigators were sent for training either to Canada or to what was then southern Rhodesia. For some reason or another they sent me and I’m not sure, it might have been one other chap they sent me to Northern Ireland. The result of which of course I finished my training appreciably quicker than those who had gone abroad. At Bishops Court we flew Ansons. Comparatively small two engined aircraft. I’d never flown in an aeroplane before. On my first flight I sat in my navigator’s position and was promptly sick which wasn’t exactly very distinguishing. We flew about a hundred hours or so, part day and part night in Northern Ireland. And I don’t know if it’s really of any interest but on our day off we used to go into Belfast and we used to feed ourselves at a store there which was called I think Robinson Cleaver but I’m not certain. What I do know is we used to go there for lunch and have turkey with all the trimmings and then we went back at the end of the day for supper and had chicken and chips. Northern Ireland went all well at Bishops Court and at the end of the course I passed and became a navigator and instead of being an AC2, Aircraftsman Second Class which was known as the lowest form of animal life I then became a sergeant. Every, not just me, everybody who passed became a sergeant. Interestingly enough when I’d finished they marked my logbook, ‘A well above navigator.’ And in retrospect because navigators were much fewer than pilots everybody who entered the RAF wanted to be a pilot. Many navigators were blokes that didn’t pass as pilots but that didn’t happen to me. So I was a well above average navigator which in retrospect I rather suspect that many others were also well above average navigators. But I was then sergeant. Can I break for a moment?
NM: Of course you may.
MF: I’ll get myself a drink of water.
NM: Of course. No problem at all. You’re doing really well.
[recording paused]
MF: Right. Right. I left Bishops Court and I was posted to an airfield in, at Kinloss in Scotland and there we continued our training on Whitleys which were again old two engine aircraft. They were known as flying coffins because that was the something resembling the shape of the fuselage. We flew again day and night. It was a little more dicey because Scotland’s got a lot of mountains. So hopefully we got through alright. One of the experiences I had at Kinloss is we went in to, I say we, individually went into a room which was a simulation of flying a trip. You sat at a desk. You had all the navigation equipment. You were given a target. There was a noise as if the engines of an aeroplane were working and it was hard work because the only difference from normal is the clock went at twice the speed. So you had to do your best to get cracking. That takes into account Kinloss. From Kinloss I was posted I think to Rufforth in Yorkshire where we were introduced for the first time ever to the Halifax four engined bomber. As I’ve said so often we of the Halifax people have always been a bit cross that the Lancaster is the beginning and the end of everything. The Lancaster. The Halifax was the poor relation. Exactly the same as in Fighter Command. You ask fifty people what aircraft flew in Fighter Command forty nine would say the Spitfire. With a bit of luck one might say the Hurricane and the Hurricane did exactly the same job. At Rufforth we started flying with the Halifax and one of the things that happened was our pilot and the crew went on circuits and bumps. What that was is you flew in, you took off, flew in a wide circle around the airfield, came in to land, bumped the wheels on the runway and then took off again and did this circle trip perhaps three or four times. I, of course, you didn’t need a navigator just to circle the airfield, albeit a wide circle and I never believed in flying if I didn’t need to so I used to stop at home. Stop in the airfield and if it was night I would go to bed. After training at Rufford, Rufforth I think the airfield was called we were then posted to Melbourne which was Number 10. Number 10 Squadron. Melbourne being a little village about eight or ten miles from York. The first thing that happened is you had to build a crew. This meant that for the first time ever because so far I’d only mixed with navigators, for the first time we were in rooms where we met pilots and engineers and wireless operators and bomb aimers. The whole thing. And the plan was that you would see people that you thought that you might like and somebody might like you and you’d get together and before you’ve finished you’ve got a crew. I remember I saw a young chap who was a pilot and I thought well he looks reasonably decent. I said, ‘Have you got a navigator?’ He said, ‘No.’ ‘Right.’ We were together. I think it might have been the next day but I’m not sure whether it was any longer I was called into perhaps the adjutants office or somebody’s office and told that I was flying in the crew of George Dark who was the pilot. I didn’t have any choice. What happened was they built a, in all modestly say a rather special crew. George Dark was a man of about thirty three. A very experienced aviator. Had never been on ops but had been a, had been an instructor and he knew how to fly. My mid-upper gunner and my wireless operator were both starting their second tour. My bomb aimer was a highly educated man from I believe Czechoslovakia. A bit older than me. Perhaps four or five years older. Spoke the most beautiful elegant English. A bit snooty because we were all a bit below his level. My rear gunner trained in Canada and he really became top of his class because he was given a commission straightaway as soon as he’d finished training. He, his name was Eric Barnard. He was my best friend and we remained friends until he died which was perhaps five or six years ago. In fact, he was, when he was I think eighty eight and a half he remarried having been on his own for many years. He remarried and at eighty I was his best man. I don’t suppose that happens all that often. Where are we now? We started off at Melbourne and our first outing was what was called a bullseye and that was a flight as if we were going on a raid. We entered into Germany but then we turned back and came home. The idea being that we would be ahead of the main stream and it was thought we might mislead the Germans as to where the target really was. The main problem a navigator had was the direction of the wind and the speed of the wind because if there was no wind there would be no need for a navigator because you would just, the pilot would just fly where he had to go and that would be the end of it. The, the briefing we had before an operation included the Met, the Met people and they would give us a forecast of what the windspeed and direction would be at varying, varying heights up to the time of the target. So if you were flying to Hanover you would be told what the windspeed and direction was going up to say twenty thousand feet. Now, invariably our first turning point from York was Reading and we flew at say two thousand feet to Reading. It didn’t often happen but very occasionally the forecast wind for Melbourne to Reading wasn’t right so we’d then would wonder what it was going to be like at thirty thousand feet but we struggled. We got there, thank the lord and moreso we got back. With George we did a total of twenty one trips. Everything went pretty well. The only trouble was that after several trips George began to get trouble with his throat and a result of that is sometimes when we ought to have been on a raid we weren’t because he wasn’t fit and it got to the stage sometimes that if we weren’t on a raid other crews would all say, ‘Well, George Dark’s crew are not on. It must be an easy target tonight.’ Eventually after we did twenty one trips George couldn’t continue. So I had to find another pilot. Strangely enough I was on leave and I travelled back on the train from Euston to York and I met a bloke whose name, whose surname was Wood and he was a pilot and wanted a navigator. Thank you very much. I thought that the next day when we got to Melbourne we would have a trip or two for the next two or three days to get used to each other. It didn’t happen like that. The next night we were on ops. With George although the discipline in the air was very strict obviously we still spoke to each other in a friendly way. For example, if I saw the pilot was off course by five degrees I’d say, ‘George, you’re off course. Get back on.’ And if I wanted although it was unusual to speak to my friend Eric who was in the rear bubble, in the rear turret I’d say, ‘Eric, how are you doing?’ ‘Fine.’ With Flight Lieutenant Wood he was a very serious man and believed in following the rules exactly. The result of that was that when I flew with Flight Lieutenant Wood if I wanted him I’d say, ‘Pilot to navigator.’ I beg your pardon. I would say, ‘Navigator to pilot.’ And if he wanted me he would say, ‘Pilot to navigator.’ It was very formal. I keep referring him, referring to him as Flight Lieutenant Wood because although I flew with him on eleven operations I never knew his first name. Very odd. Very odd. Anyway, we finished our tour of thirty two trips and as I’ve said so often by the grace of God I did the tour and never got so much as a scratch.
NM: I think that’s a very compelling story but can I take you back a little bit?
MF: Please.
NM: You obviously became a navigator very very early in your RAF career. How come you got identified as a navigator quite so early as the ITW?
MF: Yeah.
NM: Were you, did you volunteer to be a navigator and say that’s what you wanted or were you selected as a navigator? How, how did you get to be navigator?
MF: Well, it’s only that when I was accepted as a member, as a prospective member of aircrew I chose to be a navigator simply because I thought I’d never be a pilot. I mean I couldn’t drive a car, I only used a bicycle and I was very good at maths at school. So I thought a navigator would be the right position for me although in truth you didn’t need any maths at all to be a navigator because it was all calculation and when you were actually flying a bomber you had navigation aids. You had, the most useful tool was called Gee which was a cathode, a cathode ray tube. A round tube where you would get two signals and if you plotted the signals on your map where the signals crossed was where you were. The only trouble was that the Germans used to send up what was called Grass which was like blades of grass covering the lines on the cathode ray tubes so eventually the Grass was such that you couldn’t pick up the signal and then we got the system where we changed the cathode ray tube, the cathode ray tube into another one and it was sort of all cat and mouse but as I said we got there and we got back.
NM: So what was the dates of your tour? When did you start your first operation through to your thirty second.
MF: Now, this is difficult because I’m not, I’m very good at remembering but I’m not all that terribly good on dates. Let me think [pause] I think I finished the tour shortly after D-Day.
NM: So the summer of ’44.
MF: Yes. Maybe a bit later than that. Because of George’s throat trouble we were on the squadron a lot longer than most crews because most crews who were successful in completing the tour took perhaps four or five months at the most and I think we were on the squadron for probably seven months at least.
NM: Ok. So you started late ’43 then. Your, your tour.
MF: Something like that. As I say it’s difficult to remember dates. I’m good at events but not on dates.
NM: So thirty two operations. You must, were any of those stand out operations? What were your targets and what were the, any particular incidents —
MF: Yes.
NM: You can remember?
MF: Yeah. One of the areas that we went to a few times was the Ruhr. The Ruhr was the heavy industrial area of Germany and there were lots of raids on the Ruhr. I think I went twice to Essen and once to Duisburg and once to Bochum and I also went once to Dortmund. And as I’ve mentioned previously my son who is a very keen Tottenham Hotspur supporter his team some several months ago played the Dortmund team in Germany and he went with a group of people and I think stayed a night or two. Now, I remember saying to him, ‘If you get chatting with any of the locals don’t tell them your dad visited here many many years ago.’ Apart from the Ruhr incidentally going off at a tangent there was a chap, I hope Neil it wasn’t you, I don’t think it would have been. There was a chap appeared on the tv programme “Mastermind” and his specialist subject on which he was answering, answering questions was Bomber Command and he was very very knowledgeable and the questions that he was asked I didn’t know the answers to. But there was one question that he was asked that he didn’t know the answer and I did and that is, ‘What was the name given to the Ruhr area where many raids took place.’ The answer is it was known as Happy Valley. He didn’t know this. Another incident of some concern is that at one time we went on a afternoon raid. We didn’t do many, many daylights but we went on an afternoon raid to somewhere or other, I can’t remember where and when we turned to come home we were told that our airfield at Melbourne was fog bound and we were diverted to an American airfield in Knettishall which was in Suffolk. They flew flying fortresses and they’d never had an RAF bomber there before and they were really very generous to us. They made a fuss of us. I smoked in those days and I had an American navigator attached himself to me and I said, ‘Could you get me a pack of twenty fags?’ Off he went to the PX and came back with a carton of two hundred. Life was very different there. We stayed I think for two nights. The reason was that the Halifax had Bristol Hercules engines and one of our engines engines sounded a bit dodgy so we had to wait for an engineer to come and put it right. For breakfast for example we would have scrambled eggs. Real eggs not the powdered stuff of those days. Scrambled eggs. As much as you liked. Maple syrup. It was all very very nice. In the evening they had a dance there. They had, I think they were called, “String of Pearls Orchestra,” who played all the Glenn Miller stuff and they imported a coach load of young ladies up from London for dancing partners for the American aircrew. But it was very proper because the girls were very clearly escorted and looked after. That was Knettishall. The next real adventure was that we took off one night, again I can’t remember the target I’ve got an idea it might have been Hamburg although we did go to Hamburg on some other occasion. We took off one night and immediately lost an engine. Now, normally if you lost an engine halfway on to, on to the target you’d continue on the basis of press on regardless but you wouldn’t set off on a raid with only three engines. The drill was that you then had to fly out to into the North Sea I think for about seventeen miles and drop your load in to the sea because you couldn’t come back and land with a bomb load. So we did this. We flew out, did our bomb drop, turned around and immediately lost a second engine both engines being on the same side. On the starboard side. Now this was where George distinguished himself because he could fly [emphasis] and I think we started back and I think we began to lose a bit of height but he kept, he kept us going. Now, I then planned a course to take us to Carnaby. Carnaby was an emergency airfield in York, in Yorkshire. There were three. Three emergency airfields. One was Manston and strangely enough this is, Manston is where all the boat people crossing the Channel these days are being put in the first instance. One was in Manston, one was in Woodbridge in Suffolk and one was Carnaby in York. The, these airfields didn’t have bombers. They, I don’t think they had aeroplanes at all but what they did have was very long and very wide runways so that if an aircraft was in trouble it would have a much better chance of landing because the pilot had the space. So I plotted a course. A course to Carnaby and when we were getting near Carnaby and I’ve said before I’m not making this up believe me when we got near to Carnaby George said, ‘I think we’ll go on to Melbourne because I’ve got a dental appointment tomorrow.’ So I then replotted a course from Carnaby to Melbourne. When we got there they could see that we were flying on two engines. We got down. The station ambulance and the station fire engine met us but thank the lord they weren’t needed. I think really that takes me to the end of the first stage of all I want to tell you but you may want to raise something.
NM: Yeah. Did you go further afield than the Ruhr? Did you go to places like Peenemunde or Berlin? Nuremberg.
MF: No. I never went to Berlin, I never went to Nuremberg and I didn’t go to Dresden.
NM: No. You finished before. Long before Dresden hadn’t you? That’s right. So does any one of your operations apart from this one where you came back on two engines does any one of your operations stand out with anti-aircraft fire or fighters or —
MF: Well, I know on one operation the rear gunner saw a night fighter and we did a corkscrew which was a bit horrendous and I think he claimed to have shot down the night fighter but it was never verified. That was a bit shall I say, I can say adventurous at ninety nine years old. It wasn’t adventurous at the time. Anything special? Well, I’ve told you about our supposed landing at Carnaby. I’ve told you about our trip to the flying fortress airfield. No. I don’t think anything very special.
NM: Okay. Can you talk me through a day when operations were on? From the time you got up.
MF: Yes.
NM: Through to the —
MF: Now that I can do. On the squadron you’d wake up about eight o’clock or whatever and go and have some breakfast. And if there was going to be ops that night you knew the first call would come at about ten, 10.30 which is when the crew list went up. So if you were on ops that night you knew about half past ten. So there was then an anxious period until about 1 o’clock when you were waiting to hear what the target was. 1 o’clock you would have some lunch and then you would have your first briefing when they advised you of the target. When they advised you of the height you would fly whether you were flying on the first, second or third wave. And one of the points when you went to a target is you never flew straight there. You flew in doglegs. All designed to confuse the enemy. Also in that connection one of the things that bombers did was to throw out packets of strips of metal like aluminium. Aluminium strips which was called Window and that was indeed, on the Halifax that was the job of the navigator because the navigator was in the nose of the aeroplane. Not right in the nose because the bomb aimer was in the nose. The navigator was sat behind the bomb aimer and there were two little steps up to the main body of the aircraft. On one of the steps there was a flap and if you folded back the flap it was open and that’s where you deposited the packages of Window. That was the navigator’s job. Where was I?
NM: Describing your briefing.
MF: Oh yes. Thank you. You see. I don’t remember as well as I should. Yes. So, you’d have your briefing and then you’d go off and have a meal. The meal was always egg, sausage, bacon, chips. A nice meal. Then you would go back for a further briefing when the Met officer would tell you all about what the windspeed and direction would be. And I think one or two other officers spoke to you, gave you information and then you got dressed. Now, most of the crew, I think all of the crew except me dressed in Bomber Command clothing. That was a very thick fur lined jacket, fur lined boots and so on. The nose of the Halifax was quite warm for some reason. I never put a jacket on. I never put boots on. I was comfortable. The only thing I did have is as I suppose all navigators I used to have some silk gloves because you needed to use your hands in maps, drawing diagrams on maps and so on and if you didn’t have gloves your hands would freeze up. For example, if you were flying and wanted to have a pee there was an Elsan at the end of the aircraft but if you went back to the Elsan and came back again you would need to take a oxygen bottle because once you got to over fifteen thousand feet you needed to have oxygen. If you took the oxygen bottle in your hand by the time you got back the bottle was frozen to your hand and that could have been awful. Oxygen was absolutely necessary because after fifteen thousand feet if you didn’t have oxygen you would eventually die. So yes, you had your briefing and conversely when you’d finished your raid and landed you then had a debriefing. You went into a room. Each crew sat, sat a different table and you were, every member of the crew was asked questions relative to the job they did. So I was asked, ‘What was the wind like?’ ‘What was the target like?’ ‘Did you get to the target?’ All of that sort of stuff. I often remember saying that at one debriefing there was a rather elderly chap sitting next to me who I didn’t take any notice of because you know, you’re tired. You want to get home. You want to get back, have a meal and get to bed. He was saying, asking me all sorts of little questions and I was getting more and more irritable and I eventually remember much to my shame saying to him, ‘Well, if you’re so interested why don’t go on the dot dot dot trip.’ He didn’t say a word but somebody nudged me and they told me that he was a high ranking officer with gold on around his cap who was making a survey or making enquiries and he was very nice. He knew I was tired and he didn’t report me. He didn’t say a single word. And after the debrief, well when you got to the debriefing on the table was cigarettes, tea and rum and then you left the debriefing and went back and had the same meal as you’d had before the trip and then you wanted to get to bed.
NM: Yes, I can imagine. I can imagine. What about off duty? What was the off duty like?
MF: Sorry?
NM: What was the off-duty life like at the station when you weren’t flying operations?
MF: Yes. That’s a very interesting question. Off duty people were very laid back. I mean for example halfway through my tour I met somebody when I was walking about. I was a sergeant. Somebody said to me, ‘You’re now an officer. Go and get yourself measured for an officer’s uniform.’ Just like that. No, whys and wherefors. So I became a pilot officer. Now, it was all very relaxed so that if anybody was to salute you on the squadron you’d have a heart attack because that didn’t happen. So I became an officer. The only difference was I lived in the, I dined in the officer’s mess instead of in the sergeant’s mess. I don’t doubt that the food was exactly the same. As I think several of the crew were given commissions at the same time. The only difference was we were allocated a batwoman, a WAAF batwoman and all she did for us was to make our beds in the morning. But as I’ve said previously my mid-upper gunner was a Welshman. A very well-built robust man, a good looking man and he spoke with, he spoke with a Welsh lilt and Rose, the batwoman I think did rather more than make his bed but there we are.
NM: So did you socialise with the rest of the crew? Did you go to pubs? Dances?
MF: Well no. I socialised with Eric. We used to go, you’ve prompted my memory, we used to go when we were on a night off into York. We’d go on the local bus. The first thing we would normally do is go to have a drink. I wasn’t a drinker. I mean one pint of beer was every bit as much as I could manage but we’d go for a drink at what was called Betty’s Bar. Bettys Bar was crowded with RAF, with bomber people having a drink and in the basement of Betty’s Bar was a very big mirror where aircrew used to scratch their names. Betty’s Bar, after the war became Betty’s Tea Rooms and it became very very fashionable with visitors to York. Particularly Americans. It was an expensive afternoon to have a tea there and people lined up to get in. But the mirror I believe was still there although it was badly cracked and I think there were one or two other branches of Betty’s Tea Rooms. When we were in York there was a building not far from the abbey called the De Grey rooms and on the first floor of De Grey rooms there used to be a little dance. Two or three musicians and local ladies and there was dancing there. I never got very successful because I wasn’t a big handsome fella but nevertheless that was the De Grey rooms. Now, Eric and I, I’m rather going off at a tangent if you don’t mind. Eric and I used to go back to York after we’d both been demobbed. Some years after. We used to go back every year to visit Melbourne and we used to go on to the airfield and there was a caretaker’s building at the entrance and we used to ask him if we could drive on because the main runway was still in being. It was, Melbourne was an experimental farm or something of that sort but we used to drive to the end of the runway and I had a fairly powerful car and we used to drive down, get up to a hundred miles an hour as if we were going to take off. Yes. We used to go, oh when we used to go back to visit York we’d go to Betty’s. We’d go to the, Hole in the Wall which was a well-known pub not far from the De Grey rooms and we’d go to the De Grey rooms which on the second, on the first floor instead of being a dance place was a second hand books, book dealers and we went fairly regularly. I mention incidentally my mid-upper gunner the handsome Welshman after some years he lived a very spectacular life. He ended up as a painter in Paris and he also was in South Africa and he’d been married I think about three times but he got ill and he was ended up in an RAF Benevolent Fund sponsored place in, now what was the name of the place? I can’t remember at the moment. It got quite famous this place of some years ago. It was given, it was given some honour. I can’t remember. But he was in a home there and we used to visit him. Eric and I used to visit him once a year and I used to smuggle a bottle of Scotch in for him. But then in due time he died. He became wheelchair bound and eventually he joined the aircraft in the sky.
NM: So, how did you cope with the strains of operations?
MF: That’s again an interesting question. Basically, you coped because you hadn’t got the nerve to pack up. Now, what happened was as a navigator I had a window which I, a little small window. I don’t know why it was there but it was there and I had to draw a curtain across because you needed an Anglepoise lamp to work and that would show a light. Every trip I made I never ever drew the curtain to see what was happening down below. I never saw the fires. I never saw anything. I thought I’m better off putting my nose down and doing my map work and thank you very much. But to answer your question very seldom a chap found he couldn’t go on and he went what was called LMF. That’s lack of moral fibre. If he went out LMF the authorities treated him very badly. He was stripped of his rank and he became a nonentity. Unlike the Americans who apparently if one of their chaps went LMF they sent him back to the States for psychological treatment and then got him back to the UK for flying again. I didn’t feel better or worse for the whole tour. I gave a little chat to the school of my granddaughter when they were seven year old boys and girls. I only chatted for ten minutes just to give them the flavour and of course I was very careful as to what I said. One little girl said at the end, ‘Were you frightened on your first trip?’ And I said to her, ‘No, my dear. I wasn’t frightened on my first trip. I was frightened on every trip.’ And it’s absolutely true but I didn’t feel any worse or any better. The only time I felt better was when I landed on the last trip.
NM: And you knew it was the last trip. Yeah. So you were awarded the DFC at the end of your tour. Was the, was it a cumulative award or was it for any particular incident?
MF: I think the only reason I got the DFC and two or three others of the crew did as well was simply because we were made a special crew as I mentioned at the, earlier in this discussion. As I said the pilot was a very experienced man. We had two chaps doing their second tour. We did our tour. We got there every time. We got back every time. We did what we were designed to do and I didn’t do anything what one would call particularly brave or heroic or heroic. I just did my job.
NM: So what happened when your tour finished?
MF: Well, we now enter a new area. Let me have a drink of water and I’ll go on.
NM: Of course. Take a break.
MF: How far do you want me to go?
NM: As far as you want.
MF: When my tour finished the RAF really didn’t know what to do with ex-aircrew blokes who’d done their tours. They had to do something with them but excuse me [coughs]
NM: Are you alright to carry on?
MF: Yeah.
NM: Are you sure?
MF: They had to do something but we had no skill other than flying bombers. They sent me to an RAF base in Hereford. I think it would be a good idea if you don’t mind shall we stop and I’ll make a cup of coffee?
NM: Yes. That’s absolutely fine. Absolutely. Are you alright to carry on?
MF: Sorry?
NM: Are you alright to carry on.
MF: Yeah. I will be.
NM: Okay. Alright.
MF: Will you have coffee?
NM: Yes, please if there’s one going. Thank you very much.
MF: Yeah.
NM: Its much appreciated.
MF: I get a bit shaky. My hands are inclined to shake.
NM: You’re doing brilliantly.
MF: Help yourself.
NM: I’ll just grab one of those. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. You’re doing brilliantly to be independent at ninety nine.
MF: Well, [pause] life can be a bit difficult these days because my wife has dementia and she’s not very good. She’s very cheerful at times but we have really bad times too.
NM: Yes.
MF: And I spend, we have a carer comes in for an hour every morning but I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to continue.
NM: I understand. My mother in law’s has got dementia.
MF: Really?
NM: So I know. I know what you’re going through. Yeah.
MF: I say to my kids you know all the problems that we have now will be solved is if I pop off and my wife can go into a nice, a very nice care home. But I don’t plan on popping off any sooner than I need.
NM: Very glad to hear it.
MF: Help yourself please.
NM: I’m fine. I’m fine. Thank you.
[recording paused]
NM: Okay. Yes. So, yes, you were sent to Hereford.
MF: Yes. Hereford was not an airfield. There were no aircraft there but it was an RAF base where they trained accountants. That is accountants to work within the RAF. We went there and I met up there with a, I don’t know a couple of dozen also ex-bomber people and the idea was that they were going to train us all as accountants. What happened is that young men who entered the Air Force direct to be an accountant they were given a commission to pilot officers, went to Hereford for their training. When they got there they were all sprogs. All new. They used to on their first day on the parade ground they got together, fall in, left turn, quick march and that sort of thing. They tried to do the same thing with us ex-bomber people but we didn’t do that sort of thing. I mean we used to turn up if we were sent to parade at 9 o’clock we’d turn up more or less, more or less within time. Some of us had caps on. Some didn’t. Some had ties. Most of us were smoking. I was a heavy smoker. But we came to terms eventually but none of us were interested in this accounting lark so we did our course, six weeks, eight weeks whatever, sat the exams and everyone failed. And as I’ve said one bloke only just failed and that was me. So they offered for me to do another three weeks when I would pass but I declined this offer. So as a punishment they sent me with all the AC2s, AC1s working there, all the chaps that were in trouble they sent me with this lot to pick potatoes. I think this was about September. Well, we went to a farm and the drill was you worked in pairs each holding one corner of a sack and the tractor went and threw up the potatoes and we picked them. I was there for I think four days. I had a marvellous time. The weather was beautiful. We used, you can imagine we didn’t exactly exert ourselves but we used to pick some potatoes and have a rest. Pick a few more. Then the farmer owner used to provide us with hot sweet tea, cheddar cheese, as much as you wanted and crispy bread and we really enjoyed ourselves. After four days they called me off this because they could see we were getting nowhere. So they then sent me to an airfield at Halfpenny Green which is near Wolverhampton. When I got to Halfpenny Green there were I think Ansons there and what happened at Halfpenny Green was that navigators who had trained in Canada and had come back to the UK had to have a course, a sort of acclimatisation or whatever you’d call it. So you used, they used to do sort of cross country journeys, I suppose an hour and a half or thereabouts and they made me do the same. And I was very experienced but nevertheless they all, these blokes all took off on their Ansons and I had too as well. Fortunately, the pilots there were also ex-aircrew chaps so I never took this very seriously. I would say, ‘Look just fly over here and fly over there and then fly back and thank you very much.’ So, we were there for about, oh I don’t know a few to a couple of months. Strangely enough one of the navigators who’d come back from Canada who I became friendly with was a bloke called David Hawkins. After the war I qualified as a chartered accountant which I’ll come to later if if you want me to go that far. He also qualified a year after me. I entered the profession. He went in to industry and he ended up as a main board director at Nat West Bank. But we were very matey and he made big bucks but it made no difference. We were good friends. Unfortunately, towards the end he also became a subject of dementia. What used to happen we used to meet two, every couple of months with our wives for a meal and he would say to me, ‘Monty, you play golf don’t you?’ I’d say, ‘No, Dave.’ I was the only person in the world that called him Dave. I’d say, ‘No, Dave. I play tennis.’ During the course of the dinner he would ask me this at least eight times and it was a shame but you know. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
NM: Indeed. That’s right.
MF: I don’t know what’s led me on to talking about, anyway, we went to Halfpenny Green and I finished a course there and once the course had finished again they didn’t know what to do with me. So they sent me to an airfield in, near Doncaster where there were Oxfords, twin engined Oxfords at Doncaster as I say. And this place was where pilots coming back to the UK from abroad, from probably the Middle East or somewhere like that had to have an acclimatisation. So I saw nobody took any real notice of me because as you will have been told time and again provided you had some papers in your hand and walked about looking busy nobody interfered with you. I appointed myself navigation officer of this arrangement for new pilots. They used to do a fortnight, two weeks training flying these Oxford aircraft around about and I used to set as self-appointed navigation officer I used to set the trip for them and when they went off I used to sit in my office and do whatever I wanted and they all came back. After quite a while the powers that be had said, ‘You’ve got to fly once a week.’ Because these blokes used to fly most days. Most days for a fortnight. So I was required to fly once a week which I didn’t really like very much and when the list came in of the next intake I used to have a look at all the blokes and pick the pilots that I thought was most reliable and I used to do a little trip and that was that. So in due course I finished at Doncaster. We’re now getting to about let me think [pause] we’re getting now to about the end of 1945. Perhaps a bit earlier. Perhaps a bit sooner. Perhaps about September ’45. Something like that. Anyway, I finished at Doncaster and they then sent me on indefinite leave which was fine. I was engaged to my late wife then. Her parents had a big flat in Chiswick. Unfortunately, my mother had died in nineteen, I can remember, in December 1941. I was in the RAF of course and after the war my father packed up and went to live with one of my sisters in Southend. Westcliffe. So I stayed with my girlfriend’s parents and they were very nice to me and I was on indefinite leave which went on for a few months. I then, I think it must have been about December, December ’45. Thereabouts. I was on indefinite leave. I then married my late wife in July ’46. She was, I was twenty, not quite twenty three. My grandchildren are amazed because nobody gets married at that sort of age anymore. My late wife was two days short of twenty one and in those days under twenty one you had to get permission from the bride’s father and I was very very fond of my late wife’s father and I used to tell him I didn’t, ‘I got permission from you. I got permission from you. It was a big mistake.’ But we had fun. Anyway, after a few months, about June ’46 I was summoned to RAF Uxbridge and I was given a job which I didn’t really have a clue about dealing with the paperwork of chaps who were being repatriated to their home, home countries Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and so on. Chaps who had finished their periods and were ready to be demobbed. And what I had to do was to look at their papers and I had a couple of rubber stamps which I had to stamp and I really didn’t have much idea what I was doing and I wasn’t very interested either and I banged the rubber stamps all over the place. Off they went. Everybody was very happy. One thing I must tell you when I was at Uxbridge this would have been about September 1946 they had a dining in night. You may know about dining in nights but it’s an evening when all of us, when I married I got a sleeping out pass. All officers had to stay in for dinner that night. Best blues on, all properly turned out and you all sat down and you had a meal and they had port and you passed the port. Took it from the right hand and passed it to the right hand of the chap sitting on your left. All very formal. When I was there they they said to me I don’t know who, the commanding officers or whatever, I shall be Mr Vice. Which meant that either during the meal or before the meal, I can’t remember the chairman appointed for the night would say, ‘Mr Vice. The King.’ Was it the King in ’46? Yes, it was. ‘Mr Vice, the King.’ And my job was to stand up and say, ‘Gentlemen, the King.’ All stood up and had a drink. I think the reason I had this very auspicious appointment was because I was ex-aircrew and they didn’t have these sort of people at Uxbridge. Anyway, got to December I was demobbed. Blow me I was demobbing all these people at Uxbridge and they sent me up to Padgate to get demobbed which I did. Now, that’s the end of RAF. Whether you want me to continue into my private life thereafter I don’t know.
NM: I would very much like you to please.
MF: Sorry?
NM: I would very much like you to continue.
MF: Oh well, right.
NM: Life after the RAF.
MF: Sorry?
NM: Life after the RAF.
MF: Very good. Up to when?
NM: This morning if you want.
MF: What? [laughs]
NM: Up to this morning if you want.
MF: Oh, deary me. Right. In January ’47 I wasn’t qualified of course although my articles had expired. I got a job with a firm of chartered accountants in Oxford Street, Levy Hyams and Co who you won’t need too much imagination well to come to the conclusion they were a Jewish firm and we’re Jewish as you will have gathered. I worked for them but I had to think in terms of becoming chartered myself and I’d previously before I entered the RAF did a correspondence course. But I couldn’t attune myself to the idea of doing a correspondence course while I, while things had changed so much so after I’d been working at this firm for, I don’t know six months I enrolled at the City of London College which was in Moorgate. And I worked very hard in that period because I worked from nine to five in the office and then I used to grab a sandwich and a coffee, go to the City of London College and sit for lectures between about six and 9 o’clock and this happened Monday to Friday. So I did this and then in November ’48 I sat my exams and became a chartered accountant. Of course, by November ’48 I was married to the lady I mentioned to you earlier and my first son was born, I think in the August of 1948. So I continued working once I’d qualified for the firm in Oxford Street and they then put me into a separate office so I didn’t go out doing any auditing any more but I dealt with tax matters and correspondence and so on. After, I don’t know eighteen months or whatever I thought I’m not doing this. I’m going to set up on my own. So I packed up. When I gave my notice in they said, ‘Oh well, we had intended to ask you to join the firm as a partner.’ But it was too late then. So I started on my own. I was living in Fulham at the time. When I got married we got the top part of a house in Fulham which I rented and I lived there until 1951 and for my sins I became a fan of Fulham Football Club and I still am. God help me. So I set up on my own and we, I bought a three bedroomed semi-detached house in Fulham in 1951 because I lived in the flat. Not in Fulham. I’m misleading you. I bought a three bedroomed semi-detached house in Greenford in 1951 having lived in Fulham for five years from ’46 to ’51 and I set up on my own account. All I had was a card table, a typewriter and I was sort of in business and I had one client. So I had to make a living. So I then started lecturing. Lecturing would-be bank people in bookkeeping and so on. I used to go there a couple of nights a week and earn a few bob. I also got to working a job for a correspondence course marking papers of other people’s that were studying and also I got two jobs doing part time stuff for two other firms of accountants. Strangely enough one of the firms I worked for they had a client of big coffee importers and exporters and I did their audit and when the chap I worked for either died or retired they asked me to take the account over as my own client. And that continued all the way through my career. I also worked for a, I think an unqualified chap who had an office in Kilburn and he had a client who was a solicitor and in due course again the solicitor instructed me and eventually there was a firm of solicitors of, I think four partners and various clerks and I had them as clients until I retired. After a while the solicitors had offices in Half Moon Street on the third floor of a quite old building but it was a prestigious address. Half Moon Street, London W1. Turning off Piccadilly. So I got two rooms on the fourth floor. There was no lift and the lavatory was two and a half floors down and mainly I used to visit clients because I couldn’t expect clients to come up this old building for four floors. But anyway, I progressed and I made a living. I then got I was in Half Moon Street for quite a few years and at one time I got my first car and Dave Hawkins who I mentioned earlier in this discussion came with me and picked up this car. It was a Standard Eight from showrooms in Berkeley Square. I was frightened to drive home and he drove the car home to Greenford for me. Subsequently you could drive to the West End. You could park in Piccadilly. You could park in Half Moon Street but it became less and less available. Eventually I used to drive up and park in Hyde Park because you could park in the perimeter there. But after a while I would find I’d park the car in the morning I couldn’t remember where it was in the evening. But we got by. So I then got offices in Wembley Park. It used to be the Prudential and it was basically a shop with one office behind. I worked there and then I got one partner and we extended out the back. And then I got two more junior partners and we extended. We extended again at the back and I continued to work there until I retired in December 19 [pause] wait a moment in December 2090. That’s right. Thirty two years ago.
[redacted]
I then retired in December 2090 and have done nothing meaningful since apart from amusing myself in my office.
NM: And playing tennis I gather. You mentioned that earlier didn’t you? So how have you occupied yourself during your retirement?
MF: Sorry?
NM: How do you have any hobbies you carried on during your —
MF: Yes, I —
NM: Retirement?
MF: Yes. I can’t remember [pause] twenty five years ago before I retired I started to play tennis and I got very committed to tennis because I found it enormously enjoyable. I was pretty, I’d never played before so I had to learn and I was never what you’d call a good tennis player but I played in clubs and I could hold my own. And I played two or three times a week regularly and I got immense pleasure. I played to win but I’d have a lot of fun and I joined different clubs because one club packed up and another one moved. All sorts of problems. Tennis players generally find over the years they’re moving from one club to another but I played and I had great enjoyment for tennis and I made lots of friends. I stopped playing tennis because I wasn’t in good form and I packed up about [pause] let me think. I went into hospital 2013. About 2010. No, that doesn’t. Yes. About twenty no not twenty I’m losing [pause] about twenty one. I retired at 2190. No. I’m getting a bit confused. I retired in 2090.
NM: 1990.
MF: That’s thirty two years ago.
NM: Yeah. Yeah.
MF: I played tennis. Once I’d started and I stopped playing tennis in twenty two.
NM: 2002.
MF: About twenty two o eight.
NM: Okay. Yeah.
MF: The reason being that I wasn’t in the best of condition and in 2013 I went into a hospital. I went into a hospital and I had some surgery which I got over well but, and I was still very active but I’d packed up tennis. And then about a year after that I had a pacemaker fitted because while I was in hospital as a result of the operation I had a mild heart attack which kept me in hospital much longer than we’d budgeted for and I had a pacemaker fitted when I was ninety. And now in two and a half weeks’ time I’ve got to go into hospital. I think just for the day to have the battery replaced. Like you replaced your battery which I’m not looking forward to but I hope it will be pretty simple.
NM: I’m sure it will be.
MF: And I’m told that there are not a lot of chaps who have a pacemaker fitted at age ninety who go back for a refit.
NM: Good to hear. Good to hear.
MF: And that I think my friend more or less brings you up to date.
NM: I think it does. I think that’s excellent. Just one more question going back to your time in Bomber Command what do you when you look back and reflect on your time in Bomber Command what are your main thoughts?
MF: Well, I can answer that. I never have had a moment’s regret at dropping bombs on Germany. I’m conscious of the bombing that the Germans carried out in the UK especially in London, in Coventry, in Liverpool, in Plymouth. Incessant bombing in London in particular with a lot of, lots of death. I’m very conscious of six million Jews dying in the Holocaust. I’ve spoken often about Dresden. I didn’t bomb Dresden and there was big talk of two hundred thousand people being killed there because the place ended up in a fire storm. It wasn’t but I think it’s conceded there was a heavy death roll of about twenty five thousand. I’ve got no conscience about it at all [pause] And I still haven’t today. I took the view my job was to get the aircraft to the target, to drop the bombs and to get home.
NM: And how do you feel about the way that Bomber Command itself has been perceived since the war?
MF: That again is a very pointed question. When the war finished, no. Let me go back. When it was agreed there would be a raid on Dresden and after the raid lots of people complained. Canon Collins I think the man’s name was. Made a big big fuss. The raid was perfectly justified. The Russians wanted it. Churchill agreed to it. It was a big railway place where armaments were moved and that was the justification of the raid. Afterwards, Churchill washed his hands of Dresden. He didn’t want to know. When Churchill made his victory speech after the war in Germany finished he mentioned all of the branches of the three Services, he never mentioned Bomber Command. When campaign medals were handed out Bomber Command didn’t get one. There was a big campaign, I think in the Daily Express which is not a paper I read trying to encourage the powers that be to award a campaign medal to Bomber Command. It never worked. Ultimately and this is only a handful of years ago Bomber Command were awarded a clasp to their victory medal at exactly the same time as the seamen who were doing the north, the North Sea around, around to the north of Russia to deliver them armaments they were awarded a campaign medal. Not Bomber Command. Lots of people have had plenty to say about Bomber Command but I don’t stand for any of it. When Bomber Harris’ statue was erected in the Strand there was a service for Bomber Command people in the Bomber Command church which was St Clement Danes and the late Queen Mother who was Bomber Command patron attended. I went with my friend Eric. I always tell everybody I was probably the only Jewish chap there and I was sitting behind a pillar and I couldn’t see anything. But it was a good service. We then walked across and there was going to be a reception in the hall of the Law Courts which is more or less where the statue was. Some, I don’t use too many profane words but some group threw red paint on to Harris’ statue. But nevertheless we went into the Law Courts, we had a drink or two and it was very nice. And the one regret and I have this regret to this day when I went in [pause] what’s his name? You see you get as old as me you can’t remember. What was his name? He was married to Sue Ryder.
NM: Leonard Cheshire.
MF: Sorry?
NM: Leonard Cheshire.
MF: Thank you. Thank you very much. I went in and Leonard Cheshire who was ill at that time and he was in a sort of almost bed wheelchair and he was close, as close to me as you are and I very much regret perhaps I was diverted I didn’t have the opportunity to go up to him and pay him my respects. And I’m still sorry about it. But anyway, there we are.
NM: So have you been to see in your old stomping ground at Piccadilly the Bomber Command Memorial on Piccadilly.
MF: Yes. Yes, I have been there. The one in Green Park.
NM: Correct.
MF: And it’s very impressive.
NM: Yeah.
MF: It’s very impressive.
NM: Were you involved at all when it was opened?
MF: No. I haven’t been involved in any particular capacity. Only as an old sod of the, of the Command but nothing else.
NM: Okay. Well, I think that’s an excellent place to finish so —
MF: Oh, well that’s very good.
NM: Monty, can I thank you very much for your time and your memories and your service of course.
MF: Well —
NM: Its much appreciated.
MF: It’s been, it’s been very interesting for me. I never thought I’d keep going this long but as you will have gathered from all of this and gathered from the, my talk at Bentley Priory I, I’m not frightened to talk.
NM: With such clarity as well. Excellent.
MF: Funnily enough, Nigel. I’ll say one more thing.
NM: Of course.
MF: And then I’ll shut up. I was telling somebody only a few days ago, somebody who had been to Bentley Priory I’m able if I’m given notice because Bentley Priory I just didn’t just talk off the cuff I’d spent quite a time preparing things. But then I didn’t need any notice because I knew what I was going to say. I could stand up and talk to two hundred people without batting an eyelid. Conversely, I used to be invited because of clients I used to be invited to functions. Sometimes functions when they had a, perhaps a little cabaret or whatever. A little show. In those days, I don’t think it happens these days masonic dinners. They might have a comedian and they might have four young lady dancers and very often these dancers used to come down, pick on a man take them up to the stage and the man would put a funny hat on or something and dance or whatever. A girl would come up to me, I would be if necessary very rude because I would die rather than go up on to a stage and dance in front of people and yet I can go up and talk. It’s odd isn’t it?
NM: Well, we’re all different aren’t we and that’s —
MF: Yeah.
NM: That’s you.
MF: Well, there you are.
NM: Very good. Excellent. Well, thank you very much again for your time.
MF: No. Not at all. I hope I’ve done you justice.
NM: Well I think you’ve done yourself justice brilliantly.
MF: Lovely.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Monty Felton
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Nigel Moore
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-11-14
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:51:16 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AFeltonM221114, PFeltonM2201
Description
An account of the resource
Monty grew up in Croydon and became an articled accountant in London before joining the RAF. Training at the Initial Training Wing in Torquay was followed by RAF Bishops Court in Northern Ireland and RAF Kinloss, which had a flight simulation room. He was then posted to RAF Rufforth in Yorkshire where he was introduced to the Halifax four-engined bomber, before going to 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne. Monty describes his relatively experienced crew, including George Dark as pilot and Eric Barnard as rear gunner, who remained a close friend. He flew 21 trips with George and a further 11 operations with Flight Lieutenant Wood. The first outing was a ‘bullseye’, a flight where they entered Germany and then turned back to mislead the enemy. Briefings would include meteorological forecasts of wind and speed direction at varying heights up to the time of the target. He discusses how navigation was carried out and the use of navigation aids, such as Gee. Monty went on several operations to the Ruhr. He recounts how their aircraft had to divert to an American airbase at Knettishall in Suffolk, which flew B-17s. In another, they lost two engines yet successfully flew back to RAF Melbourne. Monty runs through a typical operations’ day, including the briefings and debriefings. He depicts how they would fly doglegs to confuse the enemy and the navigators would throw out packets of aluminium strips, code named Window. He goes on to describe his off-duty life, including trips to York and ‘Betty’s Bar’ (precursor of Bettys Tearooms) which had a mirror inscribed by aircrew in the basement. There were dances in the De Grey Rooms. Monty was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, which he believes was just because they were an experienced crew. Monty contrasts the American and RAF treatment of Lack of Moral Fibre. After his tour, Monty was sent to a number of RAF stations before being demobbed in 1946. He qualified as a chartered accountant, setting up his own accountancy practice. Monty finishes by discussing his attitude to the war and Bomber Command, and disappointment over the lack of recognition given to it.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
10 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
B-17
bombing
briefing
coping mechanism
crewing up
debriefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
Gee
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Oxford
perception of bombing war
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Carnaby
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Kinloss
RAF Melbourne
RAF Rufforth
RAF Torquay
RAF Uxbridge
training
Whitley
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2257/40604/PEdwardsF2-2201.1.jpg
725fb23cfcf3869419f2d279f4c4d56c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2257/40604/AEdwardsF2-220811.1.mp3
dc20b7b226f6d219e3f962d3c59d659c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Edwards, Frank
F Edwards
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Frank Edwards (b. 1937). Originally from London, he was evacuated to the Lincolnshire/Leicestershire border. Has written a book about his experience.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-11
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Edwards, F-2
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: I’ll just introduce you. So this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Frank Edwards at his home on the, what’s the date today [laughs] hang on. The 11th of August 2022. So if I just put that down there.
FE: Yeah.
DK: If I keep looking at it I’m just making sure it’s still working okay.
FE: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. So put that there. So if you just talk naturally.
FE: Yes. Talk naturally to you. That’s alright.
DK: If I ask you first of all. Whereabouts were you born?
FE: I was born in London on the 28th of the 10th ’37. I was born at St, not Stephen. Wait a minute. I’ve put it down. I never can[pause] St Leonards Hospital, Shoreditch.
DK: So it’s Shoreditch. So you’re a Shoreditch man then.
FE: A Shoreditch man. I was born within the sound of Bow Bells so they call me a proper Cockney.
DK: A proper. A proper Cockney. A proper Cockney. Well, I’m originally from West London so —
FE: Oh, was you?
DK: So people refer to me as being a Cockney but I can’t claim that.
FE: No. No. No.
DK: Originally from Hounslow.
FE: Oh yes. Hounslow.
DK: That area.
FE: That’s more on the outside.
DK: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all West London and near to Heathrow Airport.
FE: That’s right.
DK: Yeah. So what was, what was it like then? Shoreditch in those days.
FE: Well, I was only four years old so I can’t remember a lot but what I can remember is the Doodlebugs coming over and the sound and the silence and then the explosion and my mother used to grab all of us boys because there were four of us and a sister and used to run us down to the Underground.
DK: The London Underground.
FE: The London Underground.
DK: The London Underground. Yeah.
FE: And we used to stop in there overnight if the raids were still going on.
DK: Can you remember which Underground station you went to?
FE: No. No. I can’t.
DK: So you stayed on the platform there.
FE: No, we went to the Underground.
DK: Oh.
FE: And laid all on the platform. There were all the sheets and blankets and everything there. Us boys thought it was good fun because we was running up and down.
DK: Yeah.
FE: With all the other children. Thought it was good fun and, yeah —
DK: So that would have been 1944 then.
FE: That would have been. Yeah. It would.
DK: So you would have been, well seven at the time.
FE: Wait a minute. ’37. No, I was just over four year old.
DK: Oh, right. Okay. Okay.
FE: Yeah. Just over four. And one time we heard the Doodlebugs coming and my mother grabbed us and we was running down to the Underground and there was the explosion and we sort of turned around and we could see the end of our house caving in. So it didn’t actually hit it. But it was —
DK: Yeah. From the blast.
FE: Very very close and —
DK: Do you actually remember seeing the Doodlebugs in the sky?
FE: No. No.
DK: Yeah.
FE: No. I can’t remember seeing them. We used to hear the noise of them coming and then there was a big silence before the actual explosion.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. As they dropped.
FE: As they dropped. And —
DK: So, what, was there much damage to your house then?
FE: Well, not a lot. No. It was just more or less one end of the sitting room had gone out.
DK: So —
FE: And we carried on living in it because I can remember the boards.
DK: Right. I was just going to have a look. Yeah.
FE: That they had put these boards up at the end.
DK: Can you remember what sort of house it was? Was it a terraced house or a semi? Or detached?
FE: I think it was a terraced house.
DK: A terraced house. Right.
FE: Yeah. And my youngest brother he was born under the kitchen table in an air raid.
DK: Wow.
FE: And how I know that because my mother told me that that’s where he was born.
DK: Can you remember what year that would have been he was, he was born?
FE: He’s two years younger than me. Yeah. Yeah. Two years younger. That’s right. So that would have been what ’34, ’37. That would have been ’40. wouldn’t it?
DK: 1940.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
FE: Yeah.
DK: So that would have been during the Battle of Britain as it were and the Blitz.
FE: Yeah. That’s right.
DK: The Blitz. Yeah.
FE: She was, he was born under the kitchen table and a neighbour came and grabbed all of us because there was an air raid going on and she took us down to the shelter and somebody came around to look after mother while she was giving birth.
DK: Wow. So I don’t suppose you really remember the start of the war then. You just really remember towards the end.
FE: That’s right.
DK: The second part. So were you actually evacuated at one point?
FE: Yes. When I was practically five all I knew was we were suddenly going somewhere with my mother. I didn’t know where it was or anything about it. But anyway, we all got loaded up on the train at Kings Cross and big excitement I suppose for us boys.
DK: So, so —
FE: We’d never been out of London.
DK: Yeah. No.
FE: In our lives. In fact, we’d never been out of the street I don’t think and as I say we got loaded up on the train and my mother came with us.
DK: So was your, your brother as well was he?
FE: Yeah.
DK: So it was just you and your brother and your mother.
FE: Two. Two brothers.
DK: Two brothers.
FE: Yeah. Two brothers and —
DK: So altogether three.
FE: Yeah. Three.
DK: You and two brothers plus your mother.
FE: And my sister.
DK: Oh, and a sister.
FE: Yeah. No. My sister went to Somerset.
DK: Oh okay, okay.
FE: Yeah. Now why she went to Somerset I never found out.
DK: No. So where did your mother and the sons go to then?
FE: We all came down here to Grantham Station.
DK: Oh. Right.
FE: We got off at Grantham Station. There was a coach waiting for us. Brought us all down to Croxton Kerrial where the water spout is.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: On this side of the road and anyway we had to line up outside the vicarage. All in a line. I’d got a label as everybody else with your name on it and I had a little suitcase with a gas mask.
DK: Yeah.
FE: I had a gas mask.
DK: That was a child’s gas mask was it?
FE: That’s right.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: And anyway, we all stood outside the vicarage and people from neighbouring villages came and said, ‘I can take one.’ ‘I can take two.’ And anyway, with us three boys and my mother we was the last ones —
DK: Yeah.
FE: To get picked. And there was a kind lady, Mrs Shipman, she said, ‘Well, I’ll take the three boys until we can find somewhere else for one or two of them.’ And so my mother came with us to get us settled in but after a couple of months probably she got so she wanted to get back to London. She was a proper Londoner.
DK: Yeah.
FE: She didn’t like it in the countryside.
DK: No. No.
FE: Couldn’t settle.
DK: Do you know, can you recall what your mother was employed doing? Was she, did she have a job at the time?
FE: No.
DK: Right.
FE: No.
DK: So she was just a housewife.
FE: She’d got four children so, so —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: I presume she never —
DK: And can you recall what your father would have been doing?
FE: He was a firewatcher.
DK: Okay. So he remained in London.
FE: He remained in London.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And my mother said that she wanted to get back to him you know. His eyes wasn’t very good so that was the job he was doing. Fire.
DK: Right.
FE: Fire watching. And anyway, we went to this very kind lady. She was a farmer’s wife but her husband had died and we really settled in well except my mother as I say.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Which she went back to London.
DK: Can you recall the lady’s name that you stayed with?
FE: Mrs Shipman.
DK: Mrs Shipman. Sorry.
FE: Yeah.
DK: So was she living on a farm or —
FE: She was on the farm.
DK: Right.
FE: A lovely farmhouse.
DK: Can you remember whereabout the farmhouse was?
FE: It was in between Branston and Knipton.
DK: Right. Okay.
FE: Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I think one of the boys Shipman still lives in the farmhouse.
DK: Oh, okay.
FE: And we settled in quite well us boys. We thought it was great running all around.
DK: Looking back it must have been a bit of a cultural shock coming from London.
FE: Going to —
DK: And a terraced house to all this open countryside.
FE: That’s right.
DK: Does that really stand in your mind then?
FE: It does.
DK: Open and —
FE: I can remember when the door was open because of course we wasn’t very old. We used to run. Run out and go all around the stackyard and everywhere and they used to come looking for us to get us back into the house and yeah it was great. Really really enjoyed it and anyway after a time Mrs Shipman found that she couldn’t deal with three. Three of us.
DK: Would you know how old she would have been roughly?
FE: She was getting on. Wait a minute. Let me think.
DK: In her fifties or sixties or perhaps a little bit older.
FE: I should say she was.
DK: I know it’s difficult looking back.
FE: Probably sixty.
DK: Sixty. Yeah.
FE: She seemed very old.
DK: I was just going to say.
FE: Yeah. But they would do to boys.
DK: Must have seemed ancient to you.
FE: That’s right.
DK: At the time.
FE: Yeah. But she was definitely getting on a bit.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: And what stands out in my mind really was the lovely meals that she cooked and she used to lay the table with all the silver and all the rest of it because they were a little bit on the posh side. And yeah that sort of stands out in my mind when the table, called us in for dinner or whatever and seeing the table all laid out which at home I suppose we just sat around an old table.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: And that was it.
DK: So how long were you evacuated for? How long did you spend at the farm?
FE: Well, she found she couldn’t deal with the three boys so at the end of the lane from the farmhouse was the farm worker’s cottages. There was two. And one of the farmworker‘s wives said she’d take one.
DK: Right.
FE: The cleaning lady from Croxton Kerrial she said she’d take me.
DK: Right.
FE: So we were split up.
DK: Split up. Yeah.
FE: My younger brother he stopped with Mrs Shipman.
DK: Right. Okay.
FE: Yeah. That was the one that was born under the table.
DK: Right.
FE: And —
DK: Just for the record recall your brother’s names? Your younger brother was —
FE: My younger brother was John.
DK: John. Yeah.
FE: My eldest brother was Terry.
DK: Terry. And your sister who’s gone to Somerset.
FE: Lily.
DK: Lily. And your parent’s names?
FE: Alfred and Lilian.
DK: Lilian. Okay.
FE: Yeah. Yeah. And —
DK: So you’re now being looked after separately.
FE: That’s right.
DK: In the —
FE: And as I say I went to Croxton and soon settled in. Very very good people. Treated me like a son. Just like a son and I started calling them mum and dad because well more or less forgetting about my parents.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: And as I say they looked after us very well and there was no problem. No problem at all. Mr Woods died and of course she had to look after me on her own. Her son and daughter they was in the forces.
DK: Right.
FE: So they was away.
DK: Yeah.
FE: From home.
DK: Do you know what they were doing in the Forces? Can you recall that?
FE: I think [pause] I think she was in the ATS.
DK: Right.
FE: Yeah. I’m not a hundred percent about that. I don’t know where he was or what he was in but when he came home after the war he was that thin and always said he wasn’t treated very well. That’s all I can remember what —
DK: So he may have been a prisoner of war then.
FE: Could have been.
DK: Yeah.
FE: A prisoner of war. I don’t know.
DK: You don’t know. No.
FE: But yeah, I can always remember looking at him and he was that thin.
[telephone ringing]
DK: I’ll stop there.
[recording paused]
FE: That was my daughter. And where had I got to?
DK: The son came back after the war.
FE: War.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Very thin.
FE: As I say I grew up in the village and went to the village school and got on well at the village school.
DK: Was it, was it, I’m imagining, I’m assuming it was quite a small school then.
FE: Oh yes. It was. Probably thirty pupils in the school.
DK: Right.
FE: There was a big room and a small room as we called it. Two teachers and we lived next door to the policeman and the schoolteacher lived next door to the policeman. So she was one side.
DK: Yeah.
FE: We was the other. And yeah, had a great time living there. Started to get into the countryside ways with a lot of farmers. Spent a lot of time on the farm. And blacksmith. There was a blacksmith, a village shop. There was everything in the village. A bakers, a butchers.
DK: So though although there was rationing at the time you don’t really remember —
FE: I don’t.
DK: Needing to struggle produce wise. Yeah.
FE: I don’t think that we struggled quite obviously because —
DK: It was all locally produced stuff.
FE: We had a big garden.
DK: Right.
FE: We grew a hell of a lot of vegetables.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And we kept a pig in the pigsty at the top of the garden. When you had your pig killed you shared.
DK: Yeah.
FE: With your neighbours.
DK: Yeah.
FE: When they killed —
DK: Shared.
FE: They shared with you.
DK: Oh okay.
FE: So really I don’t think we really struggled. No. I think we was alright for food and Mrs Wood was a very good cook and bottles in the pantry. There was all these bottles all on the shelves full of all the whatever. Blackberries, plums and all the rest of it. Yeah. She was very good. And anyway, I grew up in the village. Had a great time. Got on with all the children. There wasn’t football. We never had a football in those days.
DK: I was going to say you had sort of toys and things to play with. What, what were you —
FE: Well, we didn’t really because there wasn’t a lot.
DK: No.
FE: We used to have a hoop and a stick. Used to run around the road with this hoop and stick. Conkers when it was conker time.
DK: Yeah.
FE: No. We really didn’t have a lot to play with. We had a tennis ball. I can remember having a tennis ball throwing about. But as for a football. No. Whether there was a football in those days I don’t know.
DK: Did you spend a lot of your time during the day then out in the fields and —
FE: Out in the fields.
DK: Running around. Yeah.
FE: I started to get in with the keepers a little bit. There was a keeper in the village and I used to go across to him and he was going on his rounds so I spent a lot of time with him and the farm seemed to be very small in those days.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Just a matter of you know fifty acres that was.
DK: Yeah. They were then weren’t they? Not like the big —
FE: That was the farm.
DK: Farms you get now.
FE: And just up the road there was a farmer. I used to spend a hell of a lot of time with him. He used to let me drive the horse and the cart.
DK: Right.
FE: And of course that was a big thing for a boy out of London to drive a horse [laughs] a horse and cart. And yeah, I spent a hell of a lot of time in the hay field and that sort of thing. And anyway by the time I got to the age of ten my mother wrote a letter and said all the boys had got to go back to London. They could get a council house as long as they had the boys back.
DK: Right. Right. What year would this have been then?
FE: I can’t. Ten years old. ’37. 1940. ’46. ’47. Is that right?
DK: ’47 yeah. So this was after the war then.
FE: This was.
DK: So you were an evacuee then from the period after the Doodlebugs.
FE: Yeah.
DK: So the Doodlebugs ’44.
FE: Yeah.
DK: You’re then evacuated and you were there until 1947.
FE: Seven.
DK: So two years after the war in fact.
FE: Yeah. ’37, ‘38, ‘39, ‘40, ‘45, ‘46, ‘47. Yeah. So I’d be ten year old in ’47 wouldn’t I be?
DK: Yes. Yeah.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Right. Okay.
FE: That’s when I had to go back to London.
DK: Right.
FE: And of course I said I’m not going back and —
DK: I’m not surprised.
FE: And all the rest. I was a country boy.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: A proper country boy. Grew up running in the fields catching rabbits. They bought me a dog and I used to use that a lot rabbiting and I used to catch these rabbits. And coaches used to stop at the Peacock Inn in the village, that was a public house and I used to make sure I was down there as they was unloading the coaches. Used to say, ‘Anybody want a rabbit?’ ‘Oh, I’ll have one.’ I’ll have two.’ And just used to go with my running dog across the road, into some fields, catch these rabbits and wait there until they came and they’d give you sixpence, a shilling or whatever.
DK: Wow.
FE: And hand over to you.
DK: You don’t do that sort of thing in London do you?
FE: No. Crikey. No. No.
DK: Just, just going back to the period of, of the war while you were up in this area. Can you recall anything of the war? The aircraft or anything going on. The troop movements.
FE: I can remember a plane crashing.
DK: Right.
FE: Along the Saltby Road. In fact, the fence is still there where it went through.
DK: Oh, okay.
FE: There was a hedge.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And then I think it landed one side, came across the road into the next field. That’s where the first fence is. I can’t remember seeing the plane.
DK: Right.
FE: No.
DK: You saw the damage afterwards.
FE: Saw the damage. That’s right. And it wasn’t far from the village in fact.
DK: And that’s out at Saltby.
FE: Yeah. On the Saltby Road.
DK: The Saltby Road.
FE: Yeah. And —
DK: Was it, was it a large aircraft? Do you know? Or —
FE: I don’t know —
DK: No.
FE: Anything about it. No. It was just that people said a plane had crashed.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And the only other thing really I can remember was the Yanks.
DK: Right. Okay.
FE: When the Yanks came.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Because they used to run after the vehicles and shout, ‘Any gum chum?’ [laughs] and they’d throw you candy or —
DK: Yeah.
FE: You know, chewing gum.
DK: Do you recall them being quite flamboyant then?
FE: Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s right.
DK: Did you, did you get to speak to any of the American soldiers at all?
FE: Yes. I did because they used to stop and say, ‘What are you doing?’ And all that sort of thing and yeah it was their accent that sort of baffled us a little bit being boys. But yeah, that was quite interesting with the Yanks —
DK: So they were —
FE: Because they had these open jeeps.
DK: Right.
FE: Yeah.
DK: So you saw them in the jeeps and they’d sometimes stop and chat to you.
FE: In the jeeps. That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Yes. But anyway, we had to go back to London and I cried and cried and half the village turned out to say goodbye because I got on with everybody in the village.
DK: Yeah.
FE: They used to make cakes for me and God knows. Give me sweets and —
DK: Did you and your two brothers all go back at the same time?
FE: Yes.
DK: Right.
FE: Except one. One brother went back. The other one stayed on the farm.
DK: Oh, okay.
FE: And he never did go back.
DK: Oh right. And he was your older brother.
FE: He was the youngest one.
DK: Ah. Right.
FE: That was born under the table.
DK: Right. Right. So he never went back to your mother then.
FE: So we went back.
DK: Yeah.
FE: To Chingford in Essex.
DK: Just the two of you.
FE: Just the two of us.
DK: You and one brother. Right.
FE: And my sister from Somerset.
DK: Yeah.
FE: She also joined us. But I hated it. Couldn’t settle at all because we were used to country life and —
DK: Presumably you went back to school in Chingford did you?
FE: Went back to school in Chingford. In fact, I’ve still got two or three of my old school books. Yes. Went to the school in Chingford.
DK: And was this a bigger school than—
FE: A massive great school.
DK: Yeah, and you —
FE: Massive great school.
DK: You didn’t settle in I assume.
FE: Didn’t settle at all. My accent was country as you can tell and I used to get bullied. Started getting bullied.
DK: Oh dear.
FE: Anyway, one of the teachers one day he said, ‘What’s the matter?’ Or something. And I said, ‘Oh, I’m getting bullied,’ and all the rest of it and anyway he told me to go to the gym and start boxing.
DK: Right.
FE: So that’s where I used to go three times a week and started boxing and I wouldn’t say I was good but I got quite good and one day I decided. Right. This bully. I’m going to have him today. And he came along the corridor and as he went by you know, like that. And I called his name and he turned around and I got stuck in to him and really gave him a good hiding. His mate stopped me in the end and the teachers got to know and they said, ‘You did a good job there.’ [laughs] I was chuffed to bits.
DK: I’m not sure teachers would do it that, sort that out that way.
FE: That’s right.
DK: Today. Would they, no.
FE: But —
DK: Suggesting or say boxing lessons and [laughs] whack the bully.
FE: That’s right. Boxing lessons.
DK: But sorted the problem out then did it?
FE: That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Sorted it out and I never boxed again.
DK: Right.
FE: That was the last time —
DK: Okay.
FE: I ever did. And we couldn’t settle. We used to go my brother and myself we used to go out, for long walks. Epping Forest. We used to go to Epping Forest and spent hours in Epping Forest just walking through the wood and all the rest of it. And one day we came to this public house and outside was a massive great tank. And it said on the wall above it, ‘Pull the chain and see the otter.’ So of course we’d see the otter. Pulled the chain so we pulled this chain out very very gently and there was a kettle at the end of the chain [laughs] Isn’t it funny how things stand out.
DK: How bizarre.
FE: In your mind isn’t it?
DK: Do you think then that your walks into Epping Forest you were trying to recreate living in the countryside?
FE: I think we was, you know and it was to get away from our parents as well. We could not get on with our parents.
DK: No.
FE: No. They was completely different to Mr and Mrs Woods. I couldn’t get on with them. My brother, he started to get on with them a little bit and my sister did. But no. I couldn’t get on with them at all. And —
DK: Did you think you were perhaps a little resentful then that you had to go back to the, I suppose your parents are strangers now aren’t they?
FE: That’s right. They’re complete strangers. In fact, I didn’t even recognise my mother.
DK: Really.
FE: No. No. I didn’t know her at all.
DK: That’s sad.
FE: And anyway we had to stand it. We went to the, to school and when I got to, we used to come down here for holidays back to Croxton and really enjoyed it. Never wanted to go back but had to go back and —
DK: How did you get up here in those days? Did you come by train or —
FE: Came by train.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Yeah. And I used to get pocket money while I was down here to pay to get back and also pay for me to come back next time. Summer holidays. And when I got to fifteen I decided to run away —
DK: Right.
FE: And to come back down here. And I told me brother and my sister and anyway I packed a few things in a case and when my parents were wherever out the door I went and away I went. I knew the way roughly because I’d done it a few times. Got to King’s Cross. Got on the train. I thought it stopped at Grantham. It went straight through Grantham to Doncaster.
DK: Oh.
FE: So of course it was panic stations.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And I got off at Doncaster. Didn’t know what to do. Saw a policeman and I went to the policeman and said, ‘I want to get back to Grantham.’ And of course they started enquiring, ‘What are you doing?’ I told them that I’d run away from home. I wanted to get to Coxton Kerrial on the way to Melton Mowbray and anyway after a while they loaded us up in the police car. Took me back to Grantham to get on a bus. Put me on a bus to Croxton Kerrial.
DK: So the police didn’t think about sending you back to London then.
FE: No.
DK: No.
FE: No. They was going to get, well in fact they did get in touch with a police station in London —
DK: Yeah.
FE: And said, ‘We’ve got your son here.’ What they said I can’t imagine but anyway, I ended up at Croxton and walked through the door because in those days you didn’t knock at the door you just walked in. Everybody’s house you just walked in. Walked in and they were sitting around the old black lead grate. I can see them sitting there now. A big fire. A kettle on and anyway they looked and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I’ve come to stay. Can I?’ And they said, ‘Of course you can but what about your mum and dad?’ I said, ‘They don’t know where I am but the policeman’s rung them and I think he’s told them.’ And anyway, they got in touch with my parents or the police or whoever and my parents knew that I couldn’t settle with them so they said, ‘Alright. He can stay with you.’ So that was the start of it. I soon settled back into country life again.
DK: So you never went back to London to live then.
FE: Never went back to London. Never saw my parents again.
DK: Really?
FE: No. I just did not like them.
DK: Oh wow.
FE: And I made sure that I didn’t see them again.
DK: Right.
FE: My father died crossing the road in London. He worked as a cabinet maker.
DK: Right.
FE: And he was crossing the road in London got knocked down and killed and nobody came forward and said, ‘I saw what happened.’ And all those people yet nobody came forward. And yes, my mother I think, I think she, I’m not a hundred percent sure but I think she did die of cancer.
DK: Right.
FE: And no, as I say I never saw them again. So it came to time to think about work and of course, with being on the farms as much as I did as a boy I thought, ‘Right. Farm work.’ You know, that’ll be the thing for me.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Although I did spend a lot of time with keepers. And anyway I started on the farm. I had to be there at 7 o’clock in the morning ‘til 5. Six and a half days a week.
DK: Can you recall where that farm was?
FE: That farm was the Shipman’s farm where I was—
DK: Oh right.
FE: First evacuated to.
DK: Right. Right. So you’d gone back to the farm you —
FE: Gone back to the farm.
DK: Where you were evacuated to —
FE: Evacuated.
DK: Right.
FE: As a start —
DK: Yeah.
FE: That’s where I —
DK: Yeah. So you knew the people working there and you knew everybody.
FE: Oh, knew everybody.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: That’s right. And yeah, loved it really because it was still the old binders and horses and the odd thrashing drum with the tractor or whatever attached to it. Still all the old machinery. But of course, as time went on things was changing and the horses began to disappear and the tractors was taking over which I didn’t like. I liked the horses. And [pause] alright?
DK: Yeah. Okay.
FE: And yeah, I got on very well there and I decided to join a handbell team which was in Croxton Kerrial. Mr Farnsworth used to run it. He was a farmer. And joined this team, got on well with the handbells and we was playing at the vicarage and in the distance I could see two girls and I thought she looks alright as you do.
DK: As you do. Yeah.
FE: Yeah. So after we’d finished I went down and said, ‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ And that’s my wife.
DK: Ah.
FE: There.
DK: Well —
FE: And she —
DK: A very attractive lady.
FE: She says, ‘I will as long as long as I can bring my friend.’
DK: Yeah.
FE: I thought bugger. That’s done it. [laughs] And anyway, we did. We went for a walk and that was the start of the romance but I wanted to go into the Army.
DK: Right.
FE: So I, we’d been courting for probably a year or so and I told her I was going to go in the Army and I thought well that will be the end of it. She’ll [pause] but anyway she decided. She said, ‘Alright, I’ll wait for you.’
DK: Okay.
FE: And I went in for four years and —
DK: Was that —
FE: In the Coldstream Guards.
DK: Oh Right. Okay.
FE: Yeah. Coldstream Guards. And spent most of my time in in London. Did a lot of the Guards. Did the lining of the Mall and all those sorts of things which the Guards did.
DK: So —
FE: And Trooping the Colour and —
DK: So would this have been the 1950s or the 1960s we’re looking at when you were involved?
FE: I went in in ’56.
DK: ’56. Right. Okay.
FE: In the Army.
DK: So late 1950s then.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Yeah, and got on very well. No problems at all. Never got made up which I hoped I would but never did but doing a lot of the Guards, Tower of London and Bank of England. We used to do the Bank of England. The Tower of London. Oh, I can’t remember the names of them now.
DK: So how many Trooping the Colours did you do then?
FE: Two.
DK: Two.
FE: Yeah. Yeah. We used to be outside the Palace on guard. In those days you was outside. You used to have your sentry box. Two of you. And outside the railings and you had the signal when you was going to march you up and down to the other one at the other end. Tapped your rifle.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Two, two taps and then you’d both start to march up and down. And then when you was going to go back to your sentry box you you were swinging your arms and did two. That was the signal.
DK: Yeah.
FE: You used to get a lot of dates. The girls would come up and, ‘Meet me at —’ so and so and you’d put them up your sleeve.
DK: Oh right.
FE: So when you got back to barracks you shared them out with your, with your mates [laughs] and yeah sometimes you know I was being faithful. Yeah, some nice girls. No doubt about it but there was quite a few rough ones. And —
DK: So you got married then after you came out the Army.
FE: After I came out the Army I got married more or less straightaway and soon a daughter was on the way. And —
DK: Did you go back into farming then after that? Or —
FE: I was going to I thought I’d end up back on the farm where I originally worked but he’d set somebody else on in the meantime because he didn’t know how long I was going to be.
DK: Yeah.
FE: In the Forces or whatever and he said, ‘I’m ever so sorry. I can’t give you a job.’ But anyway, word got around that I was looking for work and a farmer in the same village I lived he came and offered me a job. And which I accepted and there was a house with it.
DK: Which village was this then?
FE: Croxton Kerrial.
DK: Right.
FE: Yeah, so anyway I accepted the job, a decent little house along the Saltby Road and enjoyed it on that farm. It was very good. I took a lot of responsibility because he was getting old and did a lot of the, a lot of the work no doubt about it. But I was getting in with the keepers a lot. Helping keepers. I was very interested in keepering and anyway one day I was hedge cutting and this car stopped on a Tuesday morning and he was watching and then he drove off. But the next Tuesday he was there again and so I got out and I went across the road to him and I said, ‘Do I happen to know you?’ And he said, ‘No.’ But he says, ‘I know all about you.’ I said, ‘Oh yes.’ And he said, ‘You spend time with the keepers.’ He said, ‘Are you interested in a keeper’s job?’ So of course, I wanted to know all the details and he said it meant setting up a shoot at Londonthorpe.
DK: Okay.
FE: That was Belton Estate.
DK: Oh right. On the Belton Estate. Okay.
FE: The Belton Estate. And it was a syndicate that wanted to set up this shoot and offered me the job.
DK: Was that before the Belton Estate became National Trust then?
FE: Yes.
DK: Right.
FE: Before then. Yeah. And anyway, I accepted the job. I had a hell of a job to get there. When we moved it were, oh my God snow. I don’t know how deep it was but it took a long while before it went. But eventually we moved in.
DK: This wasn’t the very bad winter of about 1962.
FE: No. I don’t think it was.
DK: The next one.
FE: No.
DK: So this would have been the 1960s then would it?
FE: It would have been the ‘60s.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And settled in. It was a big farmhouse. Cold. Very very cold in the winter. Beautiful in the summer. Set up this shoot which was a big thing because I’d never.
DK: Yeah.
FE: You know I’d just been with the keepers and then just suddenly —
DK: You were in charge of it all.
FE: I was responsible —
DK: Yeah.
FE: For a shoot.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And we was rearing with broody hens in those days. Used to put the eggs twenty, twenty two eggs under one hen and used to have a row of sitting boxes with all these broody hens in and got on very well. And then of course it got more modernised and we, I started having Rupert Brooders. You could put a hundred chicks under one of these.
DK: So what type of people that came out on the shoots then? Were they from the estate or were they from outside or —
FE: No. They was from, from all over. Some, some were farmers. Some were businessmen.
DK: Right.
FE: You know. Those sort of people.
DK: So you had to organise their visit and the shoots.
FE: That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
FE: My wife used to do their lunches on a shoot day.
DK: Right.
FE: We used to have ten, ten day shooting. She used to do the lunches but the only trouble with, with them they stayed too late at night drinking. Oh God. They was in my house because they had a room in my house.
DK: Right.
FE: 10 o’clock at night they’d still be there.
DK: Oh dear.
FE: And —
DK: They liked their drink did they?
FE: They liked their drink.
DK: Oh dear.
FE: Of course, in those days the police wasn’t about.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Or bothered or anything. And they used to get in a fair old state some of them. I can remember one day one of them was driving out and he went up on my grass and took the clothesline with him as he went out [laughs] Out the gate.
DK: Oh dear.
FE: And then they used to go down to Londonthorpe village and have another session there with somebody. So God knows what they was like when they got home if some of them got home.
DK: Yeah.
FE: If some of them got home.
DK: So were they were they sort of regulars then that you tended to see that came on these shoots?
FE: Yes, it was mostly rich people.
DK: Yeah. I was going to say.
FE: Rich people.
DK: And you tended to see the same ones again.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Each time.
FE: They could invite guests.
DK: Right.
FE: Yes. They could. Which several of them did. If they couldn’t get it for business or whatever.
DK: Yeah.
FE: They’d let somebody else —
DK: Else go.
FE: Go in their place. But there was one funny thing happened because there were still poachers in those days and of course pheasants was worth five pounds a brace where now you can’t give them away.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And that was a lot of money.
DK: Right.
FE: In those days. And anyway, I had a phone call saying there was poachers up in such and such a wood. Belmont Wood. And we all helped each other, the keepers. So got we got radios, got in touch with the keepers because I knew they’d be out on their rounds and we all met and went up to this wood where the poachers was and we decided we’d walk straight down the side of the wood. There was a sort of a ride and we walked down this ride. We could see these two chaps and we got within a hundred yards of them and this Alsatian came up and smelled one of us and the other one turned and run. I thought that was strange. Alsatians. Still never clicked. But anyway, we decided we was going to surround them and jump out on them with the sticks and what have you and we jumped out and shouted, ‘Stand still.’ Which they did and it was two policemen dog training. Of course, we all started laughing like mad when we found out it was two policemen and one of them said, ‘Please don’t tell anybody at the police station will you.’ [laughs] And yeah that was very funny that was. We had a good night that night after. But —
DK: Was poaching in those days a real problem then?
FE: It was for about two years and then it began to ease off because I was only a matter of what two miles from Grantham.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And the poachers came from Grantham.
DK: Right.
FE: They could walk you see or bicycle and hide the bicycle —
DK: Yeah.
FE: Under the hedge somewhere. We knew who the poachers was. We knew their names and where they lived and everything.
DK: Yeah.
FE: But it was one of those things. You had to stop out at night and hope that you caught them or they didn’t come because they found out that you was out. One night I did get poached. And I was feeding in the wood and I thought that the pheasants seemed a bit, a bit wild, a bit spooky and I started having a look around and found some feathers. And then walked a little bit more and found some more feathers and I knew that they had been. It must have been the night that I wasn’t out or something. And anyway, in those days we had alarm guns. And in fact, I had mine made and made for me. And you put a cartridge in and you had a trip wire that went across and when you tripped the wire it set it off and bang! In the middle of the night that would be a hell of a noise.
DK: Right.
FE: And anyway, I set this up on the place where I thought well if they come this is where they’re going to walk. Not walk through the thick briars. It was just a little track and I went the next morning and had a look and I could see that it had gone off and I had a look around and couldn’t find any falls at all. And then I saw a cap laying up.
DK: Right.
FE: It must have gone off.
DK: And he’d —
FE: Frightened them that much.
DK: Lost his cap and run.
FE: Set off running or something.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And left his cap behind [laughs] you know.
DK: So, so were you still working at Belton House then at this time?
FE: At Belton.
DK: Belton Estate or something.
FE: Yeah. It was nothing to do with Belton Estate. It was their land.
DK: Right.
FE: But they rented it. The shoot actually rented the land.
DK: I see.
FE: For the shoot.
DK: Right.
FE: Yeah. But it was still Belton Estate.
DK: So how long were you there for then?
FE: Well, suddenly one day one of the syndicate came to me and said, ‘I’m ever so sorry. I’ve got some bad news.’ I thought, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ He said, ‘Belton Estate is going to the National Trust and they don’t allow shooting.’
DK: Ah, so —
FE: So I was —
DK: So you actually lost your job because the National Trust had taken over.
FE: I was out of a job.
DK: Oh.
FE: Because of the National Trust.
DK: Oh right.
FE: And anyway —
DK: I bet, I bet you weren’t too pleased about that at the time.
FE: I wasn’t. No.
DK: No.
FE: But there you are. One of those things. I thought well I’ve got to start looking for another keeper’s job somewhere but we had another shoot day and one of the syndicates said to me, ‘Don’t worry about losing your job. I think I’ve got another one for you lined up.’ So he said meet me —’ so and so and we’ll go to where this which was at Burton Coggles.
DK: Right.
FE: Just down the road.
DK: Right.
FE: And Sir Monty Cholmeley. So we met Sir Monty and I said, ‘Well, I’d like to look around.’
DK: That’s Sir Monty Cholmeley.
FE: Yeah. Sir Monty Cholmeley.
DK: Right. He was the local landowner presumably.
FE: Yes. Well, he owned the estate.
DK: Yeah. Right.
FE: A small estate.
DK: Right.
FE: Easton Estate and anyway we met Sir Monty. He took us for a ride all the way around and showed me the woods and what not and told me that they had twelve shoot days a year and all what I wanted to know about the shoot and I took the job. Accepted the job.
DK: Right.
FE: He was a very very good boss. No problem at all. You meet him when you was on your rounds. He would always come and talk and offer you a drop of whisky out his bottle and yeah got on really well with him. Had some good shoot days. Things seemed to go well.
DK: So are we in to the 1970s now then? About that time? Just so —
FE: It would be. It would be about the ‘70s wouldn’t it because I was at Belton ten years.
DK: Right.
FE: So that had, let’s think [pause] Went in to ’56 in the Army. It would be ‘60 when I came out. Ten years. That makes it ’70. It would be.
DK: 1970.
FE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got on very well. Had some good shoots. Decided to set another keeper on to work with me. Got on very well with Barry. He was a good keeper. Got on very well with him and we made a nice, a nice shoot and anyway decided to retire at the age of sixty, sixty seven.
DK: Okay.
FE: Decided to retire and the boss was having a meeting. He said he wanted me at the meeting and I went and he said, ‘Right. You are retiring. This is what’s happening to you. I’m giving you a house rate and rent free for the rest of your life.’
DK: Wow.
FE: And that’s this one.
DK: And it’s this one. Right.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Wow.
FE: And so I’ve been here [pause] oh God. About eighteen years I think.
DK: Eighteen. Eighteen years.
FE: Eighteen, something but yeah. Crikey where has that time gone? I can’t believe that.
DK: Well, we’ve come full circle around to your retirement home so I’ll stop the recording now.
FE: Yes.
DK: Because I think I’ve got everything I need. It’s got your story about your evacuation and what you did after the war.
FE: Yeah.
DK: So thanks very much for that. That’s been most enjoyable and most interesting but I’m going to switch this off now.
FE: Yeah.
[recording paused]
FE: Mind really I just did it for friends.
DK: So this was the book that you wrote.
FE: Yeah. And sold. Oh, I don’t know what it was. Fifty in the first week.
DK: So was it a privately published book then, was it?
FE: Yeah.
DK: Right.
FE: And anyway, all the books went and somebody said, ‘Oh have you got a book left?’ And I said, ‘Well, you can borrow mine.’ I can’t remember who it was. Never got it back. So I’m the only one without a book.
DK: Without a copy of it.
FE: Without a copy of the book.
DK: Can you remember what it was called?
FE: “London Evacuee to Countryman.” You can still get it.
DK: London Evacuee —
FE: “Evacuee to Countryman.”
DK: Country man. Okay. What, I’ll see if I can get hold of a copy.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
FE: You’ll be able to get a copy.
DK: If I get two I’ll —
FE: I’ve also been.
DK: Send one on to you.
FE: I’ve also been in two magazines.
DK: Right. [pause] So that’s the “Sporting Shooter.” [paper rustling]
FE: Yes. And I’ve also been in the “Lincolnshire Life.”
DK: In, “Lincolnshire Life.”
FE: I think it was, “Lincolnshire Life.”
DK: Yeah. So they did an article about you there then.
FE: That’s what I got it off when I came out of hospital.
DK: Very good.
FE: Good isn’t it? That’s it.
DK: Oh right. So this is where are we? So this is, oh it’s quite recent then. August 2022.
FE: That’s right.
DK: Oh, so I’ll just make a note of this. August 2022 of the, “Sporting Shooter.” What are we? Page thirty four. Page thirty five. Okay.
FE: I’ve also got the other one in the cupboard behind you.
DK: Oh right. So this, this covers your story of the Doodlebugs.
FE: Yeah.
DK: And going out to [pause] on page thirty six. I’ll have a look at that. Oh right. So do, do you still shoot at all or —
FE: I packed it up probably ten years ago.
DK: Right.
FE: I found that I couldn’t swing the same.
DK: Right.
FE: The old joints with arthritis.
DK: Not quite as good.
FE: I thought well now’s the time to —
DE: To give it up.
FE: Give it up. So —
DK: Just put this back on again. Its rather odd that in some ways because you became an evacuee and came out here it totally changed your life and the direction you would have been taking.
FE: Completely.
DK: So in some ways, well in almost all respects it was actually a good thing that you became an evacuee. Saw a different life outside London.
FE: That’s right.
DK: And then had a life and a career from that.
FE: That’s right. What if I’d stayed in London what would have happened? I could have been killed. Just don’t know.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: What would have happened.
DK: Well, your career would have been totally different wouldn’t it?
FE: Totally different. I would have probably been with my father cabinet making or whatever.
DK: Yeah.
FE: You don’t know do you?
DK: No.
FE: What could have happened.
DK: Okay then. I’m going to stop this again now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Frank Edwards
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-11
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:56:16 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AEdwardsF2-220811, PEdwardsF2-2201
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Melton Mowbray
Description
An account of the resource
Frank was born in London. He describes V-1 coming over and taking shelter in the London underground.
Frank talks of his evacuation to the countryside near Croxton Kerrial when he was nearly five. He was accompanied by his two brothers and initially his mother. His sister was sent to Somerset. He enjoyed his time in the countryside and shares memories about the people who looked after him, his school, mealtimes and leisure time pursuits.
Frank reluctantly returned to Chingford in Essex two years after the end of the war. He missed the countryside and was bullied at school. At the aged of 15, he ran away to Croxton Kerrial, to which his parents subsequently agreed. He never saw his parents again.
He started work on a farm and met his wife. After four years in the Coldstream Guards, he married and worked on another farm in Croxton. Frank then moved to Londonthorpe to set up the shoot. The shoot rented the land from the Belton Estate. When the estate was bought by the National Trust, no shooting was permitted. He was taken on as keeper by Sir Montague Cholmeley. After retirement, the latter let him live rent free.
Frank has written a book, “London Evacuee to Countryman” and appeared in Sporting Shooter and Lincolnshire Life magazines.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
home front
shelter
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2255/40603/ADaviesPO221106-AV.2.mp3
1ca7c1beab74b249f4baf7566e71aa2b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Davies, Peter Offord
P O Davies
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Captain Peter Orfford Davies (b. 1922). He served with a Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment of the Royal Artillery at various RAF stations. He later retrained as a glider pilot and flew during the Rhine Crossing.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-11-06
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Davies, PO
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TO: So, you know how last time you told me how you’d seen the, was it the R100 airship when you were younger?
PO: Oh yes. The R100. Yeah.
TO: Did you, were you interested in other airships in the world like the Hindenburg?
PO: Not, not really. No. I mean what age would I [pause] I would only have been eight or nine you know, sort of thing. The Hindenburg. No. No. I mean I think I’d probably be aware of it but you know, we had the R100 and the R101, you know. We had two airships but as for the German aviation no. I think the first thing I ever became aware of of German aviation other than sort of First World War sort of aircraft were the Junkers 52 which of course it was a triplane and unusual and was you know sort of the leading aircraft at the time I think, you know. We hadn’t anything comparable with it as far as I know. No. No, it, I mean I heard about the Zeppelins in the First World War from my mother you know and that sort of thing but yeah my own, my interest in aviation was such as we saw of it and heard of it. That was it. No, no great depth of, you know I must look into this or I must look in to that sort of thing.
TO: And did you think that airships had a future for travelling?
PO: I don’t know. I mean you know we were very naïve I think in those days you know. A bit early in my life really to have an opinion as such I think. Yes. I was just a, I mean what you’ve got to remember is that I mean the children I deal with in school they’re five and six years old. Boy they’re so up to date and with it. We were very naïve you know. I mean it was almost sort of well I mean my early life was horse and cart sort of you know. That was the method of transport. And buses with solid tyres and stuff like this, you know. Yeah. Oh yes. Very different childhood to today. So when you look at today’s children they’re very streetwise in some cases. They’re well-travelled. I mean kids I deal with you know they’ve been to South America. They’ve been here, they’ve been there, all over the world and they think nothing of it. It’s their world. A totally different world to my childhood world. Totally different.
TO: And what rations did you have in the Army?
PO: Well, it depends where you were. I was never ever in a big camp so our rations were brought to us generally once a week and it was down to I mean a lot of my, at the early part of the war well the very early part of the war of course we were living on basically on stew. It was the breakfast was porridge which invariably was burned and the main course in our mess tins we had two. A mess tin with, a deep mess tin and a shallow one and the lid went on, you know. Not the square ones they have today. These were half round and you’d get tinned tomato and bacon and that was with bread and that was your breakfast. Lunch was stew. Teatime would be bread, butter and jam and tea of course. And that was it. But when I was in charge of my twelve fourteen guys and our gun and computer our rations were brought once a week and it was down to our cook whoever the cook was as to what you what you got. But generally speaking we were never hungry. Never hungry. Never hungry. No. I mean you know we used to forage at times or even steal potatoes out of a field or something but we weren’t beyond, we were typical soldiery I suppose. You know, when the devil drives the needs are must. Yeah. Oh yes. No. No. The rations, the only shortage I ever remember was sugar. Sugar and onions. Onions were in, were like gold. God knows why. I suppose we imported so many and they weren’t high on the list of freight to be carried across the state, from the States or wherever.
TO: And what do you remember about the blackouts?
PO: The blackout [pause] That’s a good question. What did I think about the blackouts? I mean it really it is never really dark. It’s amazing. I mean it depends on the cloud cover I suppose as to whether you got light from the stars or the moon. I mean we used to hate the moon because it was like daylight so you were more likely to be bombed as it were in in the the moonlight than on a black night. But I think, I think the civilians suffered more. There were more probably more casualties in the civilian population then there were in the, certainly in the Army population through people getting knocked over by vehicles or walking into things that weren’t there sort of thing, you know. Falling down holes. God only knows. No. The blackout. We used to sing a song about the blackout and the moon but no no but I don’t think the blackout bothered us. No. It certainly didn’t seem to bother me from recollection.
TO: And did you meet or see any evacuees?
PO: No. No. The only thing that I ever saw was the people sleeping in the Tube in London and that really did shake me when, I don’t know where it was but I remember getting out of the Tube somewhere in London and there were people all still sleeping on the platforms and stuff like that. I believe during the night when trains weren’t running they were sleeping down where the tracks were but they were certainly on the surface of the, you know of the platforms and stuff like this. And they weren’t just females and children either. They were adult males. Yeah.
TO: And are there any bombing raids that you remember?
PO: Raids? No. What do you mean by raids?
TO: Well —
PO: I mean if you talk about sort of a Fokker Wulf coming screaming down at zero feet and dropping a bomb and firing its cannon at the same time I remember that. I remember, I mean we were, I was in, at the time I was in a light anti-aircraft, a mobile light anti-aircraft unit and we got sent from Derby to Hull. To a place called Paull and we had there we found there were two three inch 1940, 1914 ack ack guns. Real old things and we knew nothing about them. It was a question of getting the book out and learn. And one day on a pleasant afternoon we were standing to, there was a raid forecast and along came a single Heinkel 111 and we stood and looked at it and did nothing to it and it shot down a couple of balloons and went safely on its way and you know we never fired a shot. Then another day we had a raid and the weather was clamped down like billy-o and we couldn’t see a darned thing. But one night I remember there was a raid on and it was night time and the bombs were coming closer and closer and closer to us and as he let his bombs go sort of and it was approaching where we were the bombs were coming down close and they stopped just before they got to our position else we would have been the recipients of maybe his last bomb. I don’t know. But no, I mean another time an aircraft came up in northern Scotland actually and very very low down, dropped his single bomb and it skidded along the ground and bounced over our hut and lay there inert in the field for about a week before the Royal Engineers came and took it away. But as for bombing raids again as I say I mean the night my hometown was being blitzed I was in, we were guarding a radio location station in Lincolnshire. Quiet as anything. My parents were at risk and I was safe as houses. The civilians caught more of the Blitz as it were than well than I did anyhow. Yeah.
TO: And what else do you remember about being in anti-aircraft units?
PO: Well, we were as I say I had you know sort of fourteen guys and a gun and that was our little world and we ran it. I ran it and you know the officers would come maybe once a week or an officer if only to give us our pay and go away, you know. We were very autonomous in that respect. As long as the work was being done and when they came you know we were all sort of proved to be efficient that was it. Again, you see I didn’t belong to, I’ve never belonged to a big unit ever. I mean after the war I certainly didn’t belong to a big unit. You know. The work I was doing was very specialist in one way and another. No. It’s, I mean even on the squadron you know I really only knew the people in my flight you know. But it, it was we were just doing a job. I mean it sounds silly doesn’t it? Fighting a war but my war was very different to somebody in the infantry who was plodding through mud and eating when they could and all this sort of thing. I had an easy war. I really did. Looking back it was very easy.
TO: And did the Army ever interact with the Home Guard?
PO: No. No. I mean when in ’40 when invasion because of course one night we did get Cromwell was the code word. In fact, I’ve got some papers here that say all about it in one way or another. Original documents I’ve got here believe you me. But we used to regularly see the Home Guard putting horse, putting carts and things across the road as roadblocks in the distance where we were but we never saw anything or had anything to do with the Home Guard at all. No.
TO: And can you tell me about when you were stationed at RAF bases?
PO: Yes. The food was good. We had, we were on aircrew rations of course which was different to other people’s rations. I mean the one thing we used to get was we used to get milk which wasn’t available to the normal RAF guys you know. Engineers or whatever. Plotters or whatever they were. And we used to get a ration of, a weekly ration of raisins or you know dried fruit and we certainly had a ration of eggs so you know it sounds [laughs] but the food was good. That was the great thing and of course we, we slept in beds and we didn’t have sheets there. We only, the only time I ever had sheets in the Army was when I was at EFTS. Elementary Flying Training School and there we did nothing. I mean we used to have civilian women would come in and clean the billet and lay the fire and you know we were cosseted like nobody’s business at EFTS. But other than that on squadron we just used to troop along to the mess and get our meals and you know night flying suppers and stuff like that. It was good. Yeah. I’ll tell you [laughs] I had a good war. Yeah.
TO: What was your everyday routine at these bases?
PO: Well, we used to parade and basically find out more or less what we were doing that day. I mean you know we spent our time in the main flying, you know and that was sort of we’d, doing circuits and bumps and stuff like that. I mean we didn’t have many lectures. I’m sure we did do. I mean we learned or were taught all about booby traps and stuff like that you know and different sorts of warfare I suppose. No. It was just almost a 9 till 5 job to us really. Very uninteresting.
TO: And can you tell me about your flight training please?
PO: Yeah. My first flight was the same for everybody I suppose in that I was taken on a flight in an aircraft, in a Tiger Moth and shown where the controls were and one thing and another. As I say I was at Elementary Flying Training School there and then one day the, my instructor we landed and he got out of the cockpit and did his straps up and I thought what’s he doing? And he just said to me, ‘Right. Off you go.’ And that was it because we had to solo. If we didn’t solo within ten hours then you were out and in actual fact I soloed at about eight hours twenty minutes or some damned thing that seems to lodge in my mind. Yeah. I mean some people just couldn’t, couldn’t do that so of course they left. I mean you know they really were very gung-ho on who they kept and who they didn’t. I mean, but at Elementary Flying Training School I mean we used to do run marches. You know, i.e. could be ten miles in an hour and forty minutes in full kit once a week. You know. We were, we were fit and reasonably tough I suppose. On one occasion a guy called Geoff Higgins and I decided it was, it was bitterly cold and I think we’d come out of a lecture and we were going back to our huts to get all our kit on to go on a run march and he and I decided it was too miserable and cold. We weren’t going to go so we sneaked off into a hangar where there were men in aircraft and one thing and another and had a cup of tea with the people who were there. And then eventually of course we got caught out. We weren’t on parade and we got hauled before the camp comm and put on a charge actually. The only time I’d ever been put on a charge and we got away with it. The guy thought that we were very near the end of our training so he said, ‘Well, report to the police at extra times for the next seven days.’ And that’s what we did but that was flying training was good. I mean we did it. Yeah, we did all the things that one would do at Flying Training School including aerobatics and stuff like this to make you into something that was more or less a pilot. But and then left there as I say and went to glider training at Stoke Orchard and flew Hotspurs. I’ve flown in every military, every military glider there is. I’ve flown Hotspur, Horsa, Hadrian or Waco and Hamilcar. Yeah. So I’ve quite, quite a few memories of different places and different things you know but I didn’t like the Wacos. They were cheap and cheerful. I wasn’t happy with them I must admit.
TO: So, do you remember your first solo flight?
PO: Yes. I did. I took off and I was talking to myself like nobody’s business and the only thing that I do remember is that as I came into land because the instructor’s weight wasn’t in the aircraft the aircraft was a lot lighter. I mean that was a bit [laughs] I landed first time at least so I taxied back to where we came from. But the following day I had a CFI, Chief Flying Instructor test and that day I took off with him and as we came in to land I thought right I’m going to land just at the edge of that the airfield. It was a grassed airfield. I thought, yeah I’m alright here. And I was on the glide path and there was a cottage at the end of my approach and as I got lower and lower I thought I’m just going to miss the top of that cottage. And I thought no. This sounds daft, I thought no, I’m going to hit the chimney. And it got to where I thought no I’m going to hit the, hit the cottage and the chief flying instructor said, ‘I’ve got it.’ And you know put full power on it and climbed away and went around again and I thought oh I’ve really, I’ve shot it there. I’m, you know, I’m for the chop now. But no, it didn’t happen. But that was funny. It was almost as if I was transfixed by this cottage. You know the cottage was safe on the ground and I wanted to be on the ground safe. It sounds silly doesn’t it? But yeah. God knows what I was thinking really. Other than that I remember once hitting an air pocket in oh it was in [pause] it was in a Waco. Yeah. We hit an air pocket and must have dropped about fifty feet and all the muck and everything was flying through the air there. You know, the bottom dropped out of the world on that one but we recovered in the normal way you know. Yeah. It was just flying. Just flying.
TO: So had you, when did you volunteer to be in the airborne?
PO: In 1942. The end of 1942 was when I volunteered and at the beginning of ’43 was when I went for my aircrew medical and you know, all the theory. All the maths and you know common sense questions that these people asked one way or another but so it would be, I mean I wasn’t accepted until the beginning of ’43 so it was fairly early days you know. And then I went from there to depot as I say. We lost people at, out of all the volunteers you know on the initial thing we lost people. Then I went to depot where there were a hundred of us and only thirty of us left there to be in the airborne forces. And then to Flying School where we lost other people who couldn’t fly or hadn’t got the wherewithal or couldn’t stand the discipline and you know so we were being, our numbers were decreasing. Well, you could almost draw a graph of the numbers of us left. It was just pure luck I think. I was just bloody minded and you know tried to keep my nose clean and be the grey man as it were. Yeah. Yeah.
TO: And can you tell me about the combat training for airborne troops?
PO: Well, I think that I suppose it almost broke into two. I mean we carried, the glider pilot regiment carried more troops into battle than parachuted in. There’s no two ways about that. Their training would be very different to ours I suppose. I mean we, we were almost like just delivery drivers in a way. I mean okay we were you know on the ground we became basically infantry so I mean but there wasn’t, I don’t think there was many weapons that we couldn’t, you know we were taught enemy weapons as well as our own weapons you know. So you know if you lost, if you lost your canon you could go and pick up somebody else’s canon and know how to use it sort of thing. But tactics and stuff like that I don’t recall. We did do urban fighting in one of the derelict areas of London where we did [pause] I think putting [mouseholes] through walls and stuff like this so you could get from one place to another without exposing yourself and street fighting sort of thing. You know. Tactics. But never had to use them. But I suppose it was just building our knowledge up and our confidence in ourselves and the system. Yeah.
TO: And what do you remember about the street fighting?
PO: It was good fun [laughs] It was good fun. Okay, we got dirty a lot of running around and one thing and another. I don’t remember any debriefings or anything like that. I really don’t. It was we just went up to London for a day and a half and, you know and got stuck in. Yeah.
TO: And do you remember the first time you fired a weapon in training?
PO: That would have been before the war. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. They made darned certain that you had your rifle stuck well into your shoulder because it was the kick of it and that was it. Yeah. I would be about nineteen, I suppose the first time I fired a weapon. Would be ’39. In 1939. Yeah. Yeah. I never fired a weapon as a boy soldier so it must have been 1939. Yeah. And that would be on a rifle range, you know. At Wedgnock in Warwickshire. Yeah. That’s where it would have been. I mean I can’t say I honestly remember it you know bang on but that must have been the first time I ever fired a weapon. But as I said you know the weapon of my choice was a Bren gun because you could fire that from the hip or anywhere else. I mean it’s the same with the Thompson sub-machine gun. That was quite a cumbersome weapon but you could you know aim it or you could just squirt it as it were from the hip. It was quite a, quite a weapon that. Yeah. But I never did fire well we had in the battalion we had an anti-tank platoon and they had what was known as the boy’s anti-tank rifle. That had got a hell of a kick on it I believe but I never fired that at all either. I wasn’t in that platoon anyhow. No. But yeah. You know, as I say it was just how life was I’m afraid. You know. I mean it must be boring for you in a way and well [pause]
TO: Can you tell me more about when you were at RAF bases and went on flying the bombers?
PO: Well, again I, I was a little subunit in a big unit and around an airfield would be you know probably four or five guns. Where my canon was was on the almost on the perimeter track outside the airfield actually but almost on the perimeter track. And you know that’s when I used to sort of sneak away and scrounge flights. I mean I don’t know how many other people that ever did it but I certainly did. I mean the one flight I remember we were coming in to land. It was in a Whitley bomber and as we approached the airfield around the perimeter track was somebody on a bicycle and the pilot said to me watch this and we were coming down to land and this guy was on his bike and he looked up and looked at us and saw us coming in to land below and of course he was cycling along and we edged along with him [laughs] So the next time he looked we were still aiming virtually at him. And in the end when we flew over him I’m damned certain he fell off his bicycle because believe you me we were only probably ten feet above his head when we, when we actually crossed on to, on to the grass airfield you know. If there had been a runway there would have been a certain length of time when he would have been at risk but because it was a grass runway as he was cycling along we were drifting with him. So that was funny that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh dear oh dear. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was just life I suppose you know. I mean good God. I mean I’ve had a tremendous life. My wartime life and post wartime you know. Good God. I’ve done everything from dining with royalty to I’m a Freeman of the city of Coventry. I’m an honorary alderman of Cheshire and I’ve got I’ve had a great life. I really have. Yeah. Yeah. As I say the Army Air Corps have turned up trumps one way and another. Yeah.
TO: And the crews you flew with were they just doing training flights?
PO: What? When I was flying in the Whitley’s and that? No, it was all night flying tests. You know, the aircraft were being prepped for, for night flying for these are Operational Training Units. One was at Kinloss and one was at Lossiemouth. I think it was 19 and 20 OTUs. I seem to recall the numbers but you know, I mean they were clapped out aircraft in the main you know. They were ex-operational aircraft that had been downgraded because I mean the number of crashes and malfunctions that took place we seemed to have funerals every week of people who had either flown into a hillside or had crashed or the aircraft had let them down or they made pilot error nonsense. It was when I think back it was a bit dicey really. I mean they’d all got parachutes. I hadn’t got a parachute and I just would have gone kneel out between the two pilots and look at what was going on and enjoy the ride. Yeah.
TO: Did any crews object to you being on board the planes?
PO: Oh no. I mean I think anybody who would have objected would have said no to my request you know. ‘Can I come along with you?’ Sort of thing. ‘No.’ They’d be very definite I think. Whereas the others would say, ‘Well, yeah. Okay. Get in.’ That sort of thing. Very casual. Very casual you know. Not like today. Good God today you couldn’t get near the aircraft today I reckon.
TO: So where did you sit when you were in these bombers?
PO: I didn’t. I knelt or stood between the pilots or knelt between them and whatnot. I didn’t just sit in the fuselage. I wanted to see where we were going. You know. Oh yes. Yeah. Oh yes. It’s, I mean it wasn’t a lot of room and it wasn’t exactly comfortable but you know I was flying. I was, you know I was getting this free ride sort of thing out over the sea and then over parts of Scotland here and there sort of thing you know. Over the mountains. Yeah. Oh yes. It was good fun. Good fun.
TO: And do you remember any other times when you were in the bombers or any other stories from there?
PO: Not really. No. Not really. No. No. No. I think as I say I did it so often one way and another. But as for incidents. No. As I say the funny one was being in the Whitley and drifting along with this cyclist. He was a sergeant actually because I could see the badges of rank on his, on his uniform you know. It was just so amusing and obviously the pilot whether he was a sergeant or an officer I don’t know but the first pilot as I say he said to me, ‘Just watch this.’ [laughs] Yeah. Mischievous. Mischievous.
TO: And can you tell me about the first time you flew a glider?
PO: Well, the first time I flew a glider would be a Hotspur and the only thing I really recall about it was that the amount of noise on tow and the silence when we came off tow where we were no longer being dragged along by this Miles Master aircraft. We were in free flight and it was just so quiet and then sort of that was, that was it. That was my first recollection of flying in a military glider. Yeah. Yeah.
TO: And how did the flying a glider compare to powered aircraft?
PO: The only difference is if you make a mistake with a powered aircraft you can open the taps and go around again. With a, with a glider you’re committed. The minute you come off tow whether you like it or not you’re committed. It’s a question of sort of well you, how can I put it? You know where your landing zone is and it’s a question of getting into it. How you do, how you do it is down to you but there’s no, no ooops I made a mistake here or, I could do with a bit more height because you ain’t going to get no more height. It’s you’re on your way down. You really are. Oh yes. Yeah.
TO: How much room did a glider need to land?
PO: Well, I mean at one stage we were flying the Hamilcar and the, at the end of the runway there was like a bit of a cliff and we were flying over the cliff you know to land and that was the direction of the landing and there were probably five or six Hamilcars you know. We weren’t the only one flying that day and at the side of the runway was a caravan that controlled the take offs with an Aldis lamp and we started, I don’t know how it started but we started to see who could land in the shortest possible time and we got to the stage where we were banned because we were almost landing right on the end of the runway at Fairford. Yeah. Was it Fairford? No. It wasn’t Fairford. That must have been Tarrant. Yeah. So I mean we would land and put the brakes on and as I say we finished up being coming to a halt before we got to the caravan which was controlling the runway. It got it was, it got dangerous shall I say I mean because we were beginning to drop down. Get as much speed as we could and drop down below the level of the airfield and then just pop up and plonk it down. But normal landing I don’t know. A hundred and fifty yards maybe and that was it you’d come to a grinding halt and of course you’d got brakes. You got brakes on you know on both the Horsa and the Hamilcar. They’d got brakes so you know you could slow yourself down as it were.
TO: When you were flying a glider during the Rhine crossing was it possible to steer away from anti-aircraft fire or did you just have to keep going?
PO: Well, on, on tows you’d no choice. It’s down to tug aircraft and your attitude towards where you are on the end of the rope as it were. So there was no choice. In free flight yeah. You could I suppose go left or right or you know try to avoid anything but frankly there was so much of it anyhow that you know you could go from the frying pan in to the fire if you started trying to get clever I think. We were, we were more interested in trying to get down onto our proper landing zone which we’d identified you know and get down and get the load out of the aircraft. But it didn’t happen of course because then we got clobbered.
TO: So during the Rhine crossing was it an anti-tank gun your aircraft was carrying?
PO: It’s the seventeen pounder, yeah anti-tank basically anti-tank. It was a quite a weapon. It was a big weapon. Yeah. A big weapon. Yeah.
TO: And did you meet the tug crews before you took off?
PO: We, yes, oh yes we’d meet them at both the briefing and you know just immediately prior to the op you know. We wished one another all the best sort of thing and you know, ‘We’ll see you back at the airfield in a few days time.’ Sort of thing you know. But that didn’t particularly happen. But yeah. I mean but we didn’t live with the aircrews. We lived totally separate from the RAF. We were, we were under a different sort of discipline almost you could say where the RAF guys were both officers, warrant officers and sergeants and whatnot, the aircrews and they lived their lives. The only time we’d come up against them really other than you know hooking onto their aircraft would be at meal times and you know in the RAF mess as it were where we ate of course. We weren’t segregated for eating or anything. We used all the RAF facilities but we lived separately from the RAF. I supposed that way we were almost like an attached unit as it were. We were bolted on to the aerodrome as it were. I mean we could have lived anywhere really but we lived on the RAF station in Nissen huts and the usual facilities as it were.
TO: And were you towed by a Halifax during the Rhine crossing?
PO: Yeah. Yes. That was the only thing that would pull us off the ground. Yeah. I mean a Dakota couldn’t possibly manage it. It hadn’t got enough power by any manner of means. I mean, as I said to you earlier we never flew with less than nine thousand pounds of ballast but I think take-off weight was about thirty seven thousand pounds when, when we were loaded. It was you know quite a heavy load. Yeah. We were. We were overloaded. There’s no two ways about it. You know. People would pop in extra ammunition or you know half a cookhouse if they could sort of thing you know. So our weight was in excess really of permitted weight but you know, it was the aircraft was strong enough. I mean it was well built. My God they were well built. Well, the floor was well built. Let’s put it that way. Yeah.
TO: Did you enjoy flying gliders?
PO: Yeah. It was. Yeah. It was a good job. You know. It was a good job and you know we were young and we had a lot of life. We were alive and life was good. And I suppose in a way we almost worked on the principle of you know tomorrow you may die sort of thing so you know we’d do things you wouldn’t. We’d enjoy life to the maximum in the position that we were in. Flying was that’s what we got paid five bob a day for. So you know keep flying and keep taking the money sort of thing. Oh yeah. Yeah. Enjoy? I don’t know if that’s a word I would use. It was just something we did and you know that was it, you know. No. It might sound strange to you that but yeah.
TO: Did you ever wish you were doing a different role?
PO: Oh no. No. No. No. I can’t ever say that that ever, that has ever happened to me in military or civilian life. I’m a great believer in if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing get out. I wouldn’t wish I would do something about it which in my civilian life I have done. You know, I’ve just told my superiors in one place I wasn’t going to work for them anymore and I just walked out. No. My desk was left and I just walked. Completely walked out. Yeah. Oh no. I didn’t hanker to do anything else. What I was doing was what I wanted to do and as long as I was happy doing it that was me. Yeah. Oh yes.
TO: And what, what regiments and division were you in?
PO: Well, we were because we were a heavy lift squadron I mean there was a 1st Airborne Division and the 6th Airborne Division. We lifted both. So we were that way we weren’t in either the 1st or the 6th. I don’t know frankly where we fitted in to that you know. Sort of we lifted whatever. Whether they were Poles or what. I mean you know I mean [pause] what was the question sorry?
TO: Which regiments and divisions were you in?
PO: Oh well, I mean as I say we lifted Royal Artillery guys. So others would lift Royal Engineers or whatnot you know but we lifted as I say Royal Artillery or an armoured regiment you know. Tank. So that would be Royal Armoured Corps but I never flew a tank so I wouldn’t know.
TO: And what did you think of the tanks that would have gone in the Hamilcars?
PO: Well, they were made, they were sort of modified so they could get them into the thing. Getting them out operationally was you were supposed to come to a halt. I mean this is only what I know now. You’d come to a halt. Open the nose, lower the, lower the oleo legs and let it drive out. In actual fact what did happen was the minute they were on the floor they drove straight through the nose anyhow. They didn’t bother to hang about sort of thing. Yeah. But as I say I never flew, never flew a tank. I never came in to contact with the Armoured Corps at all. Never.
TO: I think you mentioned yesterday you were, were you something like interacting with Americans at some points.
PO: Yeah. Oh yeah. I was with the 9th Air Force. Yeah. With Troop Carrier Command 9th Air Force. That was, that was quite a jolly that. There were five. Five of us and I mean I went to more than one mass drop prior to D-Day. I mean I can’t say I was in, had knowledge of secret stuff but there was so much the Americans would leave papers about that we would covet or we weren’t supposed to see and their security at times was pretty grim or pretty poor. I mean the day that we got a whole delivery of Purple Hearts and you’d think I mean and I’m talking about a box about four foot by four foot by four foot full of Purple Heart medals. Who’s going to, who’s going to be the recipients of these because every American who got wounded of course got a Purple Heart medal. That sort of thing. But, yeah. It was, it was good. Yeah. Yes. I mean I flew all over the place. To Greenham Common. Oh God. You name an airfield that the US troops were on and I’ve been there. I really have. I mean if we couldn’t get, if we couldn’t get there by jeep in, I mean we would say to somebody ‘Where are you?’ And they’d say thirty or forty miles away from where you are now and we’d think well forty miles. We could do that in an hour because we used to thrash our jeeps. We really did. There was only one speed with a jeep and that was flat out. They were great fun to drive. But yeah, and then as I say Gale came, Windy Gale and Browning came at one time. But as I say Eisenhower was at one of the big drops just prior to D-Day. But life with the Americans was, that was a real sort of, well I mean we just seemed to do things. You know. Nothing particularly outlandish. We seemed to do more travelling than anything else. That was good and the food was good.
TO: And can you describe the inside of a Hamilcar?
PO: Well, to get into the cockpit you went into the, into a door I’ll call it on the port side. You went across the cargo hold which would be about nine feet I suppose. Ten feet wide I suppose. Up a wooden ladder that was on the wall opposite you on the, on the starboard side. Get out on to the top of the fuselage. Walk along the top of the fuselage and get in the cockpit and it was a tandem cockpit so you know one pilot and then another one with both with the same controls and instruments such as they were and that was it. They were cavernous. They really were quite big. I mean they were big. I mean I don’t know if you know the dimensions of them but oh yeah. I mean the cockpit was about nineteen feet above the ground. Well, you know people think of gliders, you say, ‘I flew gliders.’ And they see sail planes. Nothing like it. Nothing like it at all. They were huge. They were a huge beast. They really were. They were the biggest military, British military glider. The Americans had nothing like it and the Germans I think at one time produced one that was about twice the size but it never was used. It was, you know just a dream I suppose almost. I mean I suppose we could have carried a hundred odd soldiers quite happily in a Hamilcar if it had been designated troop carrying but it wasn’t meant for troops. It was meant for bulldozers and tanks and guns and heavy heavy kit as it were. As I say it was the only heavy lift squadron we’d got.
TO: And did you hear about other events of the war like Pearl Harbour?
PO: No. No. No. No. We’d got enough to do with our own war I think. The war in the Far East didn’t certainly with me didn’t register at all. That didn’t register until after the European war had finished. Then we started getting worried about going to the Far East with what we were being told one way and another and as I say at that time we were then converting onto these Waco gliders which of course were out in the Far East. Yeah.
TO: And did you hear about the Battle of El Alamein?
PO: All that I remember about Alamein was that that was probably the first battle that we seem to have won. And that’s where you, like the question you asked yesterday that’s where sort of Montgomery came to the fore. You know. We’d actually won something, you know. Before that it was I mean the war in the desert used to go up and down the coast of Africa like nobody’s business you know. We’d win a load and then we’d retreat. Go back again and retreat. Oh dear oh dear. I mean we were aware of Tobruk and stuff like that and I met the odd guy who came home on leave from Africa but no. The war, I mean the only involvement that the regiment got was of course was invading Sicily and that was a debacle. That really was. I mean some of the guys were in the water for hours. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, you’ve got another five minutes so make the most of it.
TO: Okay. Did you hear about battles happening in Russia?
PO: No. No. No. No, the only, I had two [pause] I had what was it? I was in Edinburgh and the Usher Hall at an orchestral concert and a load of Russians came in there as guests. Those were the first Russians I ever saw. And then I was in Goch in Germany and I met a Russian female. She was the size of a brick toilet. She really was. She was massive. She’d been a slave labourer but the Russians, no, had no, I mean everybody was aware of Stalingrad and stuff like that you know but it was somehow that wasn’t our war, you know. The Russians were fighting the Germans over there. We’d got them on our doorsteps so to speak you know. The Germans. The Germans were enough for us let alone fighting the Russians. Although it looked like we were going to fight the Russians after the war finished I must admit. That didn’t go off thank God. No.
TO: What’s your best memory of the war?
PO: I suppose looking back I was very very privileged to meet some very brave men. Just ordinary guys who were really [pause] you know I’m a mere shadow of those guys. It was a privilege to have lived and served alongside some really super guys. They weren’t warriors but boy when the dice were thrown they were there to pick up the bits. No. They were great. They really were. Yeah. I was, I was privileged to know these people and to say that they were friends of mine sort of thing you know. Or compatriots at least, I mean. And so many of them went on in civilian street to make real names for themselves too you know. I mean one became the chief of the Thames Valley Police Force. Another one, Potts he was a professor of, he worked for one of the massive companies you know. Another one became the COE, CEO of another multinational you know. They were great guys. But as far as the soldiery was concerned they were all friends, friends shall I say but yeah. I was just privileged to even rub along shoulders with them and that’s really my biggest memory I suppose. Nothing specific as it were. No particular point.
TO: And what’s your worst memory of the war?
PO: I don’t have one. I don’t have one. No. No, I mean I know people they’re dead now I must admit but I’ve known people who have flashbacks to incidents and things like that and you know disturbed nights of and I’ve never had any of that you know. It just washed over me. I’m either too thick or my pain threshold is just so high that I don’t recognise anything. No. I’ve no, no terrible memories. My memories are of meeting some lovely people and you know you tend I suppose in life you tend to put the horrible things into a separate box in total you know and we’ve got enough problems of today without harping on yesterday’s problems anyhow. Yeah. So there you go. Right. Well, you’ve had your time so is there anything else you really want?
TO: Just one last question. What do you think of war films?
PO: Of war films? Well, there’s a thing on telly at the moment called, “Who Dares Wins,” and I saw the first bit of it and I thought what a load of rubbish. Because the SAS, I only know two guys who were in the Special Air Service and it’s very very different. What do I think of these war films? Okay, I certainly [pause] there are some. I mean. “A Bridge Too Far,” which was the story of Arnhem basically. That was very very true to life without a shadow of a doubt with the exception that you know there was an American influence which didn’t happen in actual fact. But that’s so they could sell it to America of course. But some of the war films are, they are just so gung-ho and impossible. Impossible some of them. They make money for somebody I suppose.
TO: Is there anything you want to add about your experiences that you feel is very important?
PO: No. No. As I say I’m, I’m just one of thousands who I’ll say survived the war. I never got wounded. I never got hospitalised or anything like that. I just was the same as thousands of others. I was just very lucky in the units I went to and in my own little world I was happy and I look back and think how lucky. Well, I am. I’m an extremely lucky guy. But in total, in total I really am a very lucky guy. If I were to die tomorrow I couldn’t grumble. I would because I’ve got too much to do but, no. Life has just been very kind to me and I’ve survived. I’ve met some lovely people. The world is full of lovely people. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve met some super folk. That’s been a privilege. Yeah. So there you go sir.
TO: Thank you so much. Thank
PO: Not at all.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Peter Offord Davies. Part Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tom Ozel
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-11-06
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:08:45 audio recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADaviesPO221106-AV
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
British Army
Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Peter volunteered in 1942 and was accepted early in 1943. He outlines the combat training they received. Talks of the rations he received early in the war and on the RAF station. He describes the autonomy of his anti-aircraft unit. Reflecting on bombing raids, he feels civilians suffered more than he did. He never belonged to a big unit.
Peter describes his daily routine, flight training at the Elementary Flying Training School and glider training at RAF Stoke Orchard. He flew every military glider: Hotspur, Horsa, Hadrian, Waco and Hamilcar. Peter recounts his first solo and sneaking flights with aircrews carrying out night flying tests at RAF Kinloss and RAF Lossiemouth. He also describes his first glider flight and the interior of a Hamilcar.
They met tug crews prior to operations, sharing the mess, but living separately. The Halifax towed them on the Rhine crossing when they carried a 17-pounder anti-tank gun.
As a heavy lift squadron, they lifted both the 1st Airborne Division and 6th Airborne Division, lifting Royal Artillery or Royal Armoured Corps.
During his time with the United States 9th Airforce with Troop Carrier Command, Peter went to more than one mass drop prior to D-Day. He saw “Windy” Gale, Browning and Eisenhower.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Dorset
Germany
France
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
aircrew
bombing
Halifax
Hamilcar
Horsa
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
perception of bombing war
pilot
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2255/40602/ADaviesPO221105-AV.2.mp3
24c21d41f52c2fb363f1a02d61a5a2d5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Davies, Peter Offord
P O Davies
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Captain Peter Orfford Davies (b. 1922). He served with a Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment of the Royal Artillery at various RAF stations. He later retrained as a glider pilot and flew during the Rhine Crossing.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-11-06
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Davies, PO
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TO: Good morning, good afternoon or good evening whatever the case may be. My name is Thomas Ozel and the gentleman we’re interviewing is Mr Peter Davies and we’re recording this interview on the 5th of November 2022. So, could you tell me a bit about where you were born, please?
PO: My home town is Coventry. The city of Coventry in Warwickshire. I was born in a company house. My father worked for a company and we lived on the company’s estate. I went to a normal sort of school. I was never brilliant as a student. I failed my Eleven Plus but I did manage to get through an art examination and I went to the city’s Art College for two years prior to joining the forces at sixteen.
TO: And when you were growing up were you interested in the Army?
PO: No. Not at all. I mean okay you know we were children. All our fathers invariably of course had been in the First World War and there were First World War relics knocking about. I mean in a garden, one of the back gardens on the company estate one person had the fuselage of an aircraft. Steel helmets were commonplace. We used to fight battles and things like that but as for a military my first brush I suppose with the military would have been I was taken by an aunt of mine who lived in South London and we went to Woolwich on a Sunday morning and on the Parade Ground there there were the horses and all the troops lined up and one thing and another. But I can’t honestly say that the military appealed to me at that time. I suppose like most children I didn’t know really what I wanted to do and I lived in a fantasy world. It really, yeah.
TO: And was your father in the First World War?
PO: Oh, yes. My father was. My father actually joined the volunteers before the Territorial Army was formed before the First World War and he served. He was in the Royal Army Medical Corps in actual fact and he served throughout the war you know. I think he came out of the forces in 1919. But after that there was no [pause] nothing. I mean he didn’t talk a lot about it. He had, you know a normal traumatic experience like most people in the First World War which was absolute carnage you know. I mean he talked about tying people to tree stumps to stop them harming themselves and that sort of thing. You know, it really was a terrible war that the First World War. Oh yes. The Second World War was nothing like the first. Although having said that before the war we were all our training because I joined the Army in ’38 it was second, it was First World War based. You know, we were digging trenches and doing things which were ludicrous really for the age that we were in at that time. There we are.
TO: And when you were at school were you taught about the First World War?
PO: No. No. All that I know is one of my masters at school was, he had been in the forces and I I quite admired him but I mean absolute childish way, you know. He’d been in. He’d been in the war and he was a big man and he was, he was a kind guy and as such I took to him and, yeah. But no. Really the First World War wasn’t talked about. I think it was too raw really.
TO: And were you taught any other military history though?
PO: The usual thing about the Romans and stuff like that but it, it went over our heads you know. It, it was, it was just, I mean my schooling, a lot of my schooling was learned by rote. There was no discussions and things like that. It was this is it and that’s it. You absorb it or you don’t sort of thing, you know. I mean the funny thing is that, you know sort of you look back and you think gosh, you know what a load of rubbish we were being taught at times. I mean the Empire was the great thing you know. We were great believers that Britain was the greatest country on earth and that we were kind to all these people who we ruled over and in actual fact of course we were anything but. We were taskmasters and slave masters. Yeah. Oh gosh, yes. No. Funny old life. Funny old life. Looking back you realise what. what was true and what isn’t true and I don’t know. Life just goes on.
TO: And were you interested in aircraft at all?
PO: We were. In Coventry there was a company called Armstrong Whitworth and we had an aerodrome called Bagington which is now Coventry. I don’t know what they call it now. But there, from there private aircraft flew and when I say private aircraft we used to get lots of, well no, not lots but an Autogyro or helicopter come over and we used to shout to them sort of thing as children you know. And then the first time I flew Alan Cobham’s Air Circus came to town and I emptied my money box and paid five shillings for a flight. So I was, my first flight would be, I’d be ten maybe. So that was my first flight. Okay. Looking back I suppose I sort of boasted about I’d flown as it were because that was unusual and five shillings was a hell of a lot of money in those days. It was to me anyhow. But that was the first time I flew. But after that I can’t say I hankered to fly, you know. It wasn’t, it didn’t grab me as such.
TO: And what do you remember from being in the air?
PO: The thing that I remember actually was that we, the aircraft we flew in would be, we’d got about eight seats in and there were just cane chairs bolted to the floor sort of thing you know and you just got in and I sat on the what I now know as the starboard side. But, and as we flew around the city we banked and the people on the port side could look down at the town and the city and I was on, all I was looking at was sky. So I did get up to have a look and I got screamed at by two old ladies who said I’d turn the plane upside down and made me sit down again. So it was rather disappointing in some ways. But that’s the first time I flew but after that I can’t say I hankered to fly as such you know. I mean we’re talking in the days of the R100 and the R101 airships which of course the R101 I think it was flew over our school one day. That was, that was quite something to see this leviathan of the air floating by almost silently as it were you know. I mean it really was ginormous. Yeah. Oh yeah. But no, flying I can’t say particularly was to the fore of my thinking as a child.
TO: And did you hear about when the R1, was it the R101 had crashed?
PO: Oh gosh, yeah. That, that crashed at Beauvais in France. Yes, oh yes. A friend of ours was an artist and he actually did a painting of it which he sent off to London hoping it would be included in an exhibition. It didn’t make it but it still went to London this. But I remember this painting of the R101 in its crashed state as it were. Oh yeah. Gosh. Yeah. A long time ago that. Everything is a long time ago with me.
TO: Do you remember what kind of plane you were in on your first flight?
PO: All that I know it was a biplane. I mean the, the Air Circus that came had various I presume, it is a presumption that they were Bristol fighters and stuff like that. Maybe the odd Fokker. I don’t remember. I mean all that I know is that it was magnificent. These guys flying around and throwing the things about but you know. It was. It was just exciting. Yeah. But as for type. No. No. The first type I remember is I used to scrounge flights in Whitley bombers and in Wellington aircraft on night flying tests and stuff like this. Although I was in the Army I was, at the time I was stationed on RAF airfields and you know I used to sneak off and go and scrounge flights. Why I did it I don’t know. It was I suppose it was, A it was something different and B, I was fed up anyhow. But yeah, but I can’t say it ever really grabbed me as such. It wasn’t the apogee of my sort of, it wasn’t that important to me. I did it and that was just fun. God knows what would have happened if we’d of crashed because everybody else would have been on the, on the documentation but my, my remains would be a mystery to somebody or other. Oh yeah. Because regularly these aircraft regularly came to the ground in the wrong place. Oh yes. Yeah. I suppose looking back it was dicey but you know, so what?
TO: And when you were, how was it you arranged with the crew to be aboard these bombers?
PO: Sorry?
TO: How, how did you arrange with the crew for them to allow you on the bombers?
PO: Well, I would just go up and say, ‘Hey,’ you know. I was sort of, ‘Could I have a flight with you?’ And so I suppose I did get rejected on occasions and others they said, ‘Yeah. Go on. Get in.’ Sort of. It was I mean it was just so casual. I mean it really was casual but it was, it was good. It was good. Yeah. Yeah, the old Whitley bomber. Gosh. Made in Coventry and there I am flying in the damned thing. Yeah. Oh, it was good. Yeah. That was my first sort of well that was my first war time flying shall I say. Oh yeah.
TO: And can you tell me about when you joined the Army?
PO: I, well I joined the Army. I originally joined the [pause] the county Infantry Regiment, the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and when the, we’d just come back actually from annual camp when the war broke out and my battalion went to France. But I was at that time I’d just become a private. I had been a boy soldier up until my birthday, my seventeenth birthday. So at seventeen I became a private but I was still considered too young to go to France so I got put into another battalion and we were doing guarding vulnerable points and things all over the UK. And then that battalion I don’t know quite why but I then got transferred into the Royal Artillery and so I became a gunner and that was considered by the War Office as my parent regiment. God knows why because my parent regiment really was the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. But I, we guarded airfields and power stations and stuff like this. I had twelve guys. I mean I became an NCO in promotion sort of thing and I just had twelve or fourteen guys and a forty millimetre Bofors gun. I was part of the defence of various radar stations and stuff like that from the north of Scotland down to the south of Devon. And one day I saw a thing on Orders about the Army Air Corps and I think the real come on as far as I was concerned was there was flying pay on top of my meagre normal salary as it were as a, as a bombardier which is equal to a corporal. And so I applied to join the Army Air Corps. I went to London and did my aircrew medical and all the educational stuff and whatnot which I duly passed and found myself on Salisbury Plain as part of the Army Air Corps which it was then. My cap badge is an Army Air Corps cap badge. But I was in the glider pilot regiment and so that was the beginning of my sort of wartime flying shall I say such as it was. My wartime flying. I mean I went to EFTS of course and learned to fly powered aircraft first because they’re easier to fly than a glider which flies like a brick and then eventually I found myself in a squadron. We had, they were Horsas. The, you know the one everybody thinks was the wartime glider and then I found myself posted or attached to the 9th US Air Force on liaison work and I was flying, flying in Dakotas and whatnot all over the country one way and another. And then after Arnhem when we lost so many people I went back to squadron and I found myself flying Hamilcars which we had one squadron, C Squadron which was a heavy lift squadron and so I flew a Hamilcar glider. And then when the war finished we found ourselves at Fairford and we were converting on to the American Waco CG-4As to go to the Far East. Then lo and behold they dropped the atomic bomb and we all cheered and knew we were going to live as it were. But it was a very free and easy life in so many ways. Highly disciplined I can tell you but boy it was, it was good. Yeah. We were a happy lot, you know. The Army you know was just sort of an average sort of guy’s experience I suppose. I mean [laughs] and that’s how it went. I’m sorry. It’s not very interesting really is it you know? Yeah.
TO: And in the late 1930s did you hear about Hitler in the papers?
PO: Oh yeah. I I remember as a child hearing my father talking to somebody who said that they thought that war was inevitable. I know my father before the war he was in the ARP. He joined the ARP and he used to go once a week for training as it were and he became an ARP warden. But that’s the only, I mean it meant nothing to us as children you know. That was life I suppose like life out there today is you know. I mean the kids out there today you know they’re all nipping around with their I-pads and one thing and another and their thumbs are going like nobody’s business on their phones. It’s all, all strange to me but it’s their world and that was our world, you know. We were, we were very innocent really. I mean we relied entirely on really as much as anything on newspapers for information whether it was slanted one way and another by the government or political parties just that was it that was life. Yeah. Yeah.
TO: And do you remember the Munich Agreement?
PO: Oh yes. I remember Chamberlain coming back and waving his bit, piece of paper about saying, ‘Peace in our time.’ I mean in 1938 there were I remember them digging trenches and covering them over and making, you know air raid shelters of sorts. I mean in my home town I remember them building a huge shadow factory for producing you know, well aircraft and bits you know sort of thing. It was everything was pointing towards war but I mean it sounds silly but that was just how it was. You know. We were very subservient I think looking back. We didn’t question as the young people today would question the authorities shall I say. Oh yeah. Yeah. As I say to me it’s just how it went.
TO: And what do you think of Chamberlain?
PO: Well really, I looking back I think in some ways he was weak but you know I suppose he did, with the aid of the civil servants who really run this country he did the best he could do to try and placate Hitler and you know keep a peaceful world as it were because the alternative was pretty grim as it turned out. Yeah. He did his best and failed I suppose in some. Well, no. Perhaps he didn’t fail. I don’t know. I really have no great opinion of him one way or another. You know, as I say I just roll over and accept it.[laughs]
TO: And what do you think of Churchill?
PO: The right man at the right time. He could have been full of bluster and everything else but he he came on to the scene. I mean when you look at Churchill’s background I mean gosh there’s a man who changed sides so often one way and another. He was very astute in that respect but as a wartime leader I think he appealed to the populace, the general populace and you know he really sort of put a bit of fire into the belly of the nation and said you know this is it. We’re going to beat these guys and we all fell in line behind him and did what we did. Oh yeah. He was okay. I just wish he hadn’t have put his name forward and got beaten at an election. He should have left when he was at the top of the heap sort of thing. But yeah, I mean some of the things that have come out since I don’t know. They don’t do him any service I think but he was, he was a man of the time without doubt. Oh yeah.
TO: And can you remember the day the war started?
PO: Oh yes. I was blancoing my equipment at the time and polishing my brasses [laughs] yes. I remember that. The sort of, it was I think it was 11 o’clock in the morning on a, I think it was a Sunday morning. I think it was a Sunday morning and yeah I was actually blancoing my equipment. So yeah I remember that but again there was no great panic or anything. It was just, ‘Right. This is it.’ You know, sort of thing. Because we honestly thought when we came back from camp that you know war was inevitable. That all the, all the signs were there you know. You didn’t have to read the runes to a great degree to realise that you know we were going to fight these guys who wouldn’t behave themselves so to speak. Yeah. Oh yes. I remember that Sunday well and truly. Yeah. Yeah.
TO: And were you in the Army already when the Munich Agreement —
PO: Yes.
TO: Happened?
PO: Yeah. The Munich Agreement.
TO: Yeah. When the Munich Agreement was signed were you already in the Army then?
PO: I joined the Army in October 1938. Now, when the Munich Agreement was signed I don’t know.
TO: Around about that time I think.
PO: Yeah. It was. It must have been fairly close. A month either way. September or November so to speak. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes. But you know it [pause] we just obeyed the rules. I mean I lived in a regimented sort of environment and did as I was told and kept my nose clean. Or did my best to keep my nose clean. Yeah.
TO: And do you remember was the Army making preparations for war when you joined?
PO: Our training basically was for the First World War. Okay, I mean when I think about it they said aircraft would be doing reconnaissance flights and attacking us and things like this and that we were to sort of budge together as if we were shrubbery sort of thing. But what a load of rubbish, you know [laughs] The thing to do as if you were being attacked from the air is to scatter. You stand more chance of living instead of being in one lump as it were. Oh yeah. I mean digging trenches and stuff like that okay they have their place. And scrapes and fox holes and stuff like this you know became the thing but you know looking back we were being taught to fight the last, the First World War and, you know it didn’t work out. I mean when you think of the speed of the Blitzkrieg across France I mean, and Dunkirk I mean we really got our backsides kicked. Well and truly. We weren’t, we weren’t really ready for war I don’t think. I mean okay everybody knew it was coming but nobody sort of we’re not I don’t think as a nation we’re aggressive in that sort of way or we get that worked up about things. I think we, we tend to sort of be very resilient to how things are and just accept them. I could be wrong of course. Well and truly wrong. I so often am.
TO: And did you do any training with tanks?
PO: No. Oh no. Good gracious me. No. We, in my battalion we had two Bren gun carriers. That was our armour. Yeah. That was it. I mean we were chuffed to billy-o when we got two, two Bren carriers. Things with tracks on you know. Oh yeah. This was the latest thing. But yeah, pathetic when you think about it. No. No. Tanks were, well of course the cavalry regiments turned over to tanks and became the Royal Tank Corps or the Armoured Corps but we didn’t see any signs of them. Oh no. Very sort of us and them in a way I suppose. Yeah. There was no sort of cooperation in any. We were in it and they were that and never the twain shall meet sort of thing. No. Looking back I mean what a different world we live in today militarily. Yeah. No. No. Funny old life. As I say it was good. I mean it suited me and you know I was happy and I had an easy war really and here I am an old man.
TO: And did you do, did the Army do any training with aircraft at all?
PO: No. No. None whatsoever. Not prewar. No way. Oh gosh no. Whether the budget wouldn’t allow it or what I don’t know. It was as I say the thinking of the War Office as it would be I suppose and the politicians didn’t sort of, I don’t know. I mean you know you’ve got to remember I was a teenager and as such you know I was malleable and obedient and did what I was told and didn’t do an awful lot of thinking I suppose. We were living day to day and you know today is the important day and tomorrow will look after itself sort of thing. Oh yeah. No.
TO: And what was the process for you joining the Army when you were sixteen?
PO: I saw an advert and I thought hey that’s great. And that was it. Yeah. That just fired me. I thought that sounds good. So, you know as simple simple as that. I remember I had a piece of paper that on it said that the Army won’t make you rich in monetary terms but in terms of friendships and whatnot you’ll be one of the richest people going. And it’s true. It’s true. The Forces, the pay is, it’s different today but in my day I mean I started out on what was it? Eight shillings a week I think it was, you know. But the friendships I’ve got I mean as I say when the turn out that I got on my hundredth birthday from the Army Air Corps really makes you realise that you know you belong to a big family. Yeah. Oh yes.
TO: And did the Army know you were under sixteen?
PO: Oh yes. I had to get permission from my parents to, to join at sixteen. I couldn’t just walk in and say to a recruiting office and say I wanted to join. I had to go home with a piece of paper to get my parent’s permission to join at sixteen as a boy soldier. Yeah. Oh yes. My, my mum I don’t think it was, in retrospect I don’t think she was very happy about it but my father eventually signed my papers for me. So you know but it, I as I say I couldn’t just walk in to a recruiting office and say, ‘I want to join.’ And they say, ‘Right. Welcome. Here’s a shilling. You’re now a member of the Armed Forces.’ Sort of thing. Oh no.
TO: And were you the youngest soldier who was there when you joined?
PO: I would say I was. Yeah. Yeah. I was. I don’t remember any other boy soldiers. I mean I just got thrown into C-Company and was, that was it. I became a runner. In other words, I became a guy who sort of was at the beck and call of the headquarters office sort of thing. Take this message here. Take that message there. Do this. Do that. That was my life originally until such time as when the war broke out of course things changed then. Suddenly as I say I was by then I was a private anyhow. I mean I went on to fourteen shillings a week then. But my life as a boy soldier was very much I mean there was no I wasn’t allowed into the licensed bar shall I say. When we were in camp for example down in Arundel just before the war there was what then knew as a dry canteen and a wet canteen. The wet canteen they sold beer and spirits and stuff. I wasn’t allowed in there. I could drink tea and cocoa or coffee but I couldn’t drink ale as it were. I couldn’t gamble whereas all the others were gambling like billy-o on housey housey and what’s known as bingo today and or poker and all these games they were playing for money. Oh no. But then I hadn’t got any money so [laughs]
TO: How did the other soldiers treat you with you being younger?
PO: Just, just the same as anybody else. Just the same. They obviously in retrospect I mean I’ve written about it but in retrospect I mean when we went to camp for example there were I don’t know how many of us in, in a bell tent. You know a pointed tent with a pole in the middle and you slept with your feet to the pole and there were panels in the making of the bell tent and you got a panel and a half or two panels if you were lucky depending how many were in the tent. But the old soldiers of course got furthest away from the, from the opening of the tent but muggins here [laughs] where was his bedspace? Right where the opening was. So anybody coming in at night or a lot would put their feet on me or if it rained I was the one who was going to get wet sort of thing. But I don’t know. They just treated me as, maybe they treated me [pause] I don’t know. I mean, they were a rough tough old lot. They weren’t, they weren’t sort of how can I put it, parental in any way shape or form or [pause] I don’t think they made any sort of difference to them. I was just another squaddie. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you know I used to get into all sorts of mischief one way and another and they’d say, ‘Oh it’s PO.’ Because my initials were PO and they’d say, ‘It’s young PO’s done that.’ And I, you know I’d get away with murder at times obviously doing daft things but the guys in the platoon just treated me as one of themselves. Oh yeah. Oh, it’s [laughs] it was a happy life as far as I was concerned.
TO: And how did the officers treat you?
PO: Cor that’s a good question. [pause] Well, the officers in the battalion I suppose would treat me just as a private soldier. No demarcation. ‘Oh, he’s young so we’ll make allowances for him.’ There was none of that. But after, when the war was on I mean our officers were mainly people who had been in the Territorial Army or came in from and were created officers for all their Army experience was zilch. And then I mean on one occasion I went to sleep on guard. I should have gone on guard and I said to the, it’s so casual they gave me the rifle because we had one rifle and five rounds of ammunition and nothing else sort of thing. And the guy who came off guard came to me, woke me upon and said, ‘Right. Your turn now.’ So I said, ‘Okay. Put it down there and I’ll get up.’ And I went to sleep and it was 6 o’clock in the morning when I woke up and said, and we were, the whole unit were moving that day and the officers discussed whether they could put me on a charge and they said they couldn’t put me on a charge because it was a Sunday. And you know I knew more about the Army than they did. That they were fielding. I suppose these so-called officers would be grammar school guys and not even university guys. Just guys who had done well at school or got the right connections and they became officers. No. I really had little to do with officers. No. Not until much later on. Then I was instructing officers then. Sandhurst guys and one thing and another. Oh yeah.
TO: And can you tell me about when you first starting working on gliders?
PO: Yeah. I went to a place called Stoke Orchard where there were Hotspur gliders. Now they carried nine guys but they were never used operationally. They were considered a waste of time I suppose and I [pause] our instructors were RAF pilots. Presumably either they’d done a tour of operations and were resting or, but I mean my instructor was a Sergeant McCain. I remember him. He was mad. And we were being towed by, off the ground by a Miles Master aircraft and I don’t know how long it was before I soloed on the gliders. But one day I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t grab it one day and I picked my parachute up because we all wore parachutes when we were flying the Hotspur and I picked my parachute up and got up, left and went and laid down on the grass and told them I wasn’t doing any more. I’d had enough. And I really blotted my copy book there but nothing was ever said. The following day I went back to McCain and we got on with the job as it were. But it that was my first experience of when you come off tow there’s no sound of course and it’s a bit like the Hotspur had got a wingspan big enough that you could use thermals and stuff like this. So it was a bit like being a bird. It was quite something. So that was my introduction and when I left GTS then went to Horsas which were far bigger and being towed off the ground by Dakotas and I mean the Hamilcar of course could only be towed off the ground by a four engine bomber. Halifaxes of 38 Group. They were our towing squadron. But you know the hardest work I suppose of flying a military glider is making certain that you’re in the right position in respect of the towing aircraft because you could get the towing aircraft if you went too high on tow you’d pull the nose of the towing aircraft down you know. And if you went too low you’d stall the, unless they chopped the connection of course. But yeah, it was, well it was just different I suppose. It was, it was just flying and, you know we were doing circuits and bumps day in and day out during the night night flying and stuff like this. Night flying was good because you got a night flying supper which amounted to bacon and eggs and that was great. I’ll tell you there’s a profit in everything if you look for it. Yeah. But yeah. Flying as I say the minute you came off tow there’s only one thing and it’s down. And I mean we never flew a Hamilcar without nine thousand pounds of ballast in it you know because the wingspan was so great that you’d just float and float and float, you know with that. But the Hotspur was as I say was very malleable. The Horsa you could do, put the big flaps down and do dive approaches and things like that but the, the Hamilcar was I mean it was bigger than the towing aircraft so you know they were, they were big. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a picture of a Hamilcar. I’m sure you must have done. But yeah. Yeah. Now, if you’ve got a tank underneath you you know you weigh quite something. I know that we were overloaded on the Rhine crossing that’s for sure. On the Rhine crossing of course like so many others we got we lost all our flying controls as we were being hit by anti-aircraft fire. That was interesting but all that we were left with was the tail trimmer and we were lucky actually because we’d just come off tow and got into sort of our optimum gliding speed and then we lost a great chunk of wing and all our flying controls got severed with the exception of the tail trimmer. So we were already at the right attitude but direction you know we had no control over which way we were going and we were going the wrong way. We weren’t going towards friendly territory. We were going into the enemy territory [laughs] big time but we could do nothing about it. But there you go. When we hit the ground eventually it was, it went to stand on its nose and I got thrown through the Perspex canopy. And I remember I got out, I picked myself up, shouted for a Bren gun which I’d, was my weapon of choice. And one of the gunners I’d got a seventeen pounder gun and truck in the glider and I remember the guy saying, ‘The sergeant’s trapped.’ And I said, ‘Never mind the sergeant being trapped throw me down my Bren gun.’ And I found myself sitting under a dyke with some angry people one side the dyke and me the other trying to eat a Mars bar. [laughs] I mean it’s crazy isn’t it? Talk about adrenaline flowing you know. I just sat there eating a Mars bar. We were getting mortared of course. Oh yeah. It was, I spent the rest of that day running away. How’s that for a big bad soldier [laughs] running away. No. Where was I? It was, it was a good life you know. I was happy in the Army. Yeah.
TO: And what else do you remember about the Rhine crossing?
PO: Well, the first thing I recall we were third in the, in the stream, in the Hamilcar stream and the glider on my port side carried a tank. And to load the tank they would back it in to and shackle it down. And I remember seeing the back end of the glider break open and the tank come out backwards with the guys, the crew a couple or three other crew sitting on the outside of the tank falling off and the tank turning over and going and crashing to the ground or into the Rhine. I don’t know where it went. It made a bloody big hole wherever it went because it was, it was at three thousand feet so you know a tank at three thousand feet wouldn’t bounce. That would really make a good hole when it hit the floor. So that was my first memory of it. Then the smoke which was being generated on the west bank to cover the invasion by, or the incursion by troops on the ground obscured an awful lot of what we were trying to look for to get ourselves, make certain we were landing in the right place and as I say then getting hit. And getting hit was that was funny because I remember looking at the port wing and thinking ‘My God that’s a bloody big hole’ because we lost a great chunk of port wing. We really did. How we kept flying God only knows but you know, we did. As I say we lost all our controls and got hit again well and truly and that was it and then as I say we had no choice in our direction. That was being dictated by where the controls were set and the whims of the wind or what have we. I don’t know. Yeah. I’m sorry but it’s so, you know in retrospect I look back and think how lucky I was but you know I can’t say at the time there was I suppose the adrenalin is flying like the clappers you know. Let’s face it. You know, you don’t think you’re going to die. No way did you think that you were going to die. You just thought, ‘Hell’s bells, that shouldn’t have happened,’ sort of thing. That was it. I’m sorry to disappoint you but you know that was how life went.
TO: And were you badly hurt when the plane landed?
PO: No. Not at all. Not at all. No. No. As I say I got flung. As the aircraft, as the glider tipped up it threw, the cockpit as you know is on the top and it flipped up on to its nose. I thought it was going to turn over and that happened more than once with others where they and the pilots just got crushed. You know, because the load would be on top of them. But it flipped up and I went through the Perspex canopy onto the ground as I say. Then I must have shaken myself and shouted for a Bren gun and then went and scurried very quickly on to the shelter of this dyke and got my Mars bar out [laughs] I’d have given pounds for a drink of water at that stage I can tell you. Oh dear. But oh. I don’t know that I can tell you any more about how I felt you know. I mean I don’t know about your bomber guys but I mean they they thundered on for hours and hours and hours the, on an operation. The real exciting bit if you can call it exciting is when you get there and that lasts what two minutes maybe you know sort of thing maximum you know off tow and you’re going down you know. Oh yeah.
TO: When you were in the cockpit —
PO: Yeah.
TO: When you were coming in to land were you wearing a helmet?
PO: Do you know I don’t know if I’d got a steel helmet on or not. I know I very very quickly put my red beret on. That, that [laughs] sounds daft doesn’t it? But yeah. Yeah. I must have done. I must have done. If I hadn’t had, if I hadn’t had a steel helmet on I’d have really hurt my head. Yeah. So I must have done. Yeah. I’m fairly certain I did thinking about it. But as I say I quickly discarded it and put my red beret on and there I was a big bad airborne soldier so be careful because you’re dealing with the crème de la crème of the British Army so to speak. Yeah.
TO: Did German soldiers attack your glider?
PO: Oh yeah. They mortared it. They obviously they could see the tail of the aircraft sticking up like a signpost so they knew and they’d see it come down. I mean without a doubt they’d know. I mean it’s big enough to see it isn’t it if it’s a little thing and we were getting mortared straightaway. I mean the earth was jumping up and down all around the place like nobody’s business. Of course, we left. We moved from there and joined up with some Irish guys and some of the Ox and Bucks thing and we decided they weren’t the best people to go with. Beauman and I the other pilot in the glider. It was a question of somebody an officer say sergeant so and so sergeant so and so is dead sir. Sergeant so and so. Corporal so and so. Corporal so and so is dead sir. We thought we don’t want to be with this lot. This sounds a bit iffy. So we left them and ran ran away somewhere else and joined up with some others and then eventually we sort of fought our way back to where we should be as it were which was quite some distance actually. We were quite a way from the Hamilcar. Yeah. But oh no. I mean the, I remember the Americans coming in as we were I’ll call it retreating [laughs] and a glider landed twenty or thirty feet from where we were and not a soul got out. The Schmeissers just ripped the glider apart and not not one person got out. So that would be what? Twenty two guys just dead before they’d even had a chance to get out of the glider. I mean it was. It was quite hairy in the initial stages. Then we obviously had total control of the area and that was it. Yeah. Just hid in German foxholes and stuff like that.
TO: Had the Germans installed anti glider obstacles?
PO: I can’t say I saw any. I can’t say. Well, you see we we landed in the wrong place. We landed where we shouldn’t have been so to speak. We, our, the aircraft I was in lost total directional control so we went probably I don’t know probably way past where we should have been as I say. We were out on a limb you know. So, so no, I can’t say I saw any, any anti-aircraft landing posts and stuff like that that they seeded the grounds within some areas because obviously I mean the first German I took prisoner he demanded to know where we’d been. He said to me in good English, ‘Where have you been?’ and I said, ‘What do you mean where have we been?’ He said, ‘They tell us English flying troops come and we hide in the woods and wait for you. You not come. Where have you been?’ [laughs] Yeah. So we weren’t unexpected. But no but that’s it as I said. Very sort of ordinary experience I suppose.
TO: And the I think you said there was a seventeen pounder gun in the Hamilcar.
PO: Yeah.
TO: Did they manage to get it out?
PO: God knows. I never [laughs] I don’t even know what happened to the gun crew. I really don’t. Presumably they’d get their sergeant out who was trapped. How he was trapped I haven’t a clue, you know. It’s, I don’t recall seeing any of the gun detachment that was there. You know, getting out. I mean how many of them would get injured God only knows. You know. Whether the quad truck that was the towing vehicle whether that set forward I mean it would have been chained down but you know when you hit the ground at a fair old rate of knots and you know, the shackles and stuff would probably get pulled out of the strong points anyhow. So, but I mean I never saw any signs of the, as I recall of the gunners or I mean certainly the seventeen pounder no that never as far as I know never came out. Never came out.
TO: And how long was it before you met up with other allied soldiers?
PO: I suppose it would be maybe twenty minutes. Something like that. I mean we were skulking along and trying to keep out of the way of these angry people. I mean two guys [laughs] Two guys and a Bren gun and a rifle I wasn’t going to take on the Wehrmacht.
TO: So was it only mortars landing it at you or soldiers shooting at you as well?
PO: Yes. It was my memory is of mortars. Yeah. Being mortared. Yeah. Yeah. And certainly there was certainly plenty of that. Yeah. And as I say it wasn’t until we got with some other troops that we as I say the guys in the American glider they just got, I mean we were sort of trying to keep out of the way and these guys with their Schmeissers and MG 42s boy they really ripped into these Americans. I mean they were landing all over the place. But the one that really did I remember vividly is this thing came skidding to a halt. Made a beautiful landing he made but nobody got out. Nobody got out. They all got killed before they got out. Yeah.
TO: How far away from you was that glider when it came in to land?
PO: Twenty feet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s all. I mean we were shouting. We shouted at them daft as it sounds, ‘Get out. Get out.’ But it was too late. The Germans were there just the other side of where these Americans were landing. Again obviously in the wrong place really and yeah they just got killed. Yeah. Oh yeah. And my I suppose my other memory is the first night I went to find some tea. Find something to drink and I found a field hospital sort of. Not a posh place by any means. It was just a house that had been taken over as a field hospital and I was outside and a surgeon came out. He was covered in, in blood and one thing and another and there were all these dead guys lying lined up outside and he said to me, ‘Have you ever seen [pause] have you ever seen a man’s brains, sergeant?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And he said, and he lifted the helmet of one soldier and his whole of his cranium was in the helmet and in the bowl of his head was his brains. Yeah. I mean it could have been it looked just like meat to me because I didn’t know the guy or anything you know. But it was there must have been thirty or forty bodies all laid out by this field hospital sort of thing. But yeah, funny old [pause] God. Yeah.
TO: And as a sergeant what were your responsibilities once you were on the ground?
PO: We were supposed, supposed to get to Hamminkeln where the headquarters was. That was our, I mean you know sort of the basically of course we were quite valuable in the time and money that had spent on training us as Special Forces in a way. That’s gilding the lily a bit but you know sort of thing. I mean at D-Day for example. Guys who landed on D-Day they were back in the UK within twelve hours. Glider pilots, you know. Arnhem of course was a very different ball game. They didn’t come back until well the battle was over basically. The guys from Arnhem because we were planned to go to the Far East you know. Oh yeah. So that’s it. I’m sorry. It’s so mundane really. There’s no great heroics or anything like that in it whatsoever. I was just doing a job that I was trained for and you know it was my memories are good. The only thing is all the guys I knew have all fallen off the log. I think I’m one of the last ones. I don’t know of any others at the moment I must admit. There must be the odd one somewhere or other.
TO: What was your unit’s objective for the Rhine crossing?
PO: Basically to get this seventeen pounder gun and whatnot in the, to the right place so they could take part in the battle order or whatever. And we failed miserably because we wrecked it. Yeah. Nothing more that. Nothing more than that. To get it there safely. I mean the hard work really was the tow, you know. It was a long tow and you know if you’re fighting the aircraft all the way. The glider all the way it just doesn’t, it just didn’t sail along on its own. You know, you’re working all the time to keep the thing in the right position and you know talking to the tug crew as it were. Yeah. I mean it’s like your bomber boys. I mean the minute they take off Lancasters haven’t got automatic pilots and stuff like that. They’re working all the time and their objective is to get to the target and get back. As for the bombing and all the rest of the navigation and whatnot that’s not their responsibility. The pilot’s job is to the get the aircraft there safely and get it back safely if they can. And that was, that was it. Yeah. No, there’s some very brave men and I can’t say I’m one of them [laughs] I just knew some very brave men. Believe you me.
TO: Do you remember anything about the briefing for the Rhine crossing?
PO: About the —?
TO: Briefing before you left.
PO: Yes. We were promised total aircover which didn’t appear. We had some air cover because I remember talking to the guys down below. They couldn’t see anything and I remember telling them what I could see. And I could see aircraft either getting shot up or parachuting down and I sort of gave them a bit of a running commentary of what was going on as it were. But other than that the flight was pretty uneventful you know sort of thing. You could see an awful lot of the ground. We were at three thousand feet. Just over three thousand feet and of course at three thousand feet you see an awful lot of the ground so I could tell them, you know, ‘We’re just wide of Calais at the moment.’ Because of course Calais was still in German hands so we sort of went around Calais and whatnot and then like I say I could see four Thunderbolt aircraft on our port side or whatever and sort of its whether whether they listened or not I don’t know.
TO: And did you talk much with the co-pilot?
PO: Oh, well I suppose we must have. Bert and I must have sort of talked to one another but I don’t recall it to be honest with you. I really don’t. We were just flying you know.
TO: And what did you say to the tug crew on the radio?
PO: Well, the thing I do remember is we thanked them for the tow. That was, that was about the size of it sort of. When we got to the other end I mean we probably had a couple of words with them during the tow you know sort of thing because there was a sort of a telephone wire inside the tow rope which was a damned big rope I can tell you [pause] But yeah. No, that’s about it I’m afraid.
TO: Looking back how do you feel about the airborne operation on the Rhine?
PO: Well, it was the biggest operation there was without doubt. I mean I’m glad I was there. As I say it was part of my education [laughs] as it were. No. I was just proud to be a member of a regiment that covered itself in a reasonable amount of glory and my real feeling I suppose is that I felt privileged to have known so many brave men and I really did do you know. And I mean as I say the friendships that resulted from being in I mean I know I knew more people after the war who were in the regiment than the Royal Artillery Regiment I was in or the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, you know. And now as I say the Army Air Corps have, you know taken over the modern Army Air Corps and they’re very shall I say friendly towards me sort of thing. Yeah. Oh yes.
TO: And when did you hear about Operation Market Garden?
PO: I was with the American 9th Troop Carrier Command at the time and my boss was one of the original parachutists that went to Bruneval and he was a sergeant at the time of Bruneval and his name was Luton. And I remember Luton saying to me he was, he was very upset about the losses at Arnhem. He knew there was a battle going on. We knew there was a battle going on but he was very upset because of course he was, they were mainly paras at Arnhem and you know he was sort of, as I say quite upset at the thought of all his mates fighting there and A he wasn’t there or B he was you know sort of feeling sorry for them losing their lives. I don’t know. But that’s my memory of Arnhem. As I say the minute Arnhem was over I found myself very quickly back into a fighting unit as opposed to living high off the hog in the, with the American Air Force. Oh yeah.
TO: And were you worried that the Rhine crossing would end like Arnhem?
PO: No. No. Oh no. No. No. We couldn’t lose. That was the attitude. We couldn’t lose. I don’t know if that’s the time that we were told two of us out of three would probably die but you look at the other two guys either side of you and think oh I’m sorry for you. But no. I don’t recall it. No. I think the briefing probably took an hour. Maybe a bit more than an hour and of course we talked to the tug crews you know and that sort of thing but [pause] funny old life.
TO: And do you think the Rhine crossing could have gone any better or do you think it was that was just how it would have gone regardless?
PO: I, the first thing that happens to any battle plan is it‘s going to go wrong. Now I can’t say that it went really wrong. It went wrong as far as I personally was concerned because of what happened but I think in the main it was to a large degree I think an awful lot of the Germans knew the writing was on the wall. I think, you know they could see that the amount of, of forces against them were totally overwhelming and where we’d got everything I think they’d got very very little. I think it was, yeah. I think you’d put it down as a success. I don’t think the losses were anything as great as they thought they were going to be. I mean I don’t honestly know what the percentage of losses was but yeah I think it was, you know a success. Especially after, after Arnhem. I mean that really was carnage that. Yeah. The battle for the bridge was well it was hopeless wasn’t it?
TO: And what did you think of the airborne generals like Gale or Urquhart?
PO: I actually saw Urquhart at one of the big, as I saw Eisenhower at one of the big demonstrations or practice jumps and stuff like that when I was with the 9th Air Force and they came across as being very very competent guys. I mean Windy Gale and, you know [pause] I think that this sounds silly in a way but I think we had the best officers that you could possibly have. They were. They were really all, they weren’t that gung-ho that they’d walk into the Valley of Death willingly. But they’d make bloody certain that if they had to walk into the Valley of Death you got the impression that they were going to take an awful lot of people with them. Yeah. I mean Gale yeah. Yes. Our leadership was good. Our leadership was. I think we had the crème de la crème of officers without a shadow of a doubt. Very very strict but very human and skilled in what they were doing. They really were. I mean a lot of them of course never went to Sandhurst or anything like that. They were wartime people but boy they were the right guys in the right place. Yeah. I mean when you think when I joined the glider pilot regiment in my intake there were a hundred and thirty of us got through the selection. I mean we lost a hell of a lot in the selection in London on academic or physical capabilities you know and then as I say a hundred successful candidates from that. From the aircrew medical and all the rest of it thirty of us finished up and out of the thirty of us I think probably eighteen, twenty of us actually went flying you know. They couldn’t hack the basic training. You know I mean all that you’d got to do if you didn’t, if you couldn’t do it you could just say, ‘I’m leaving.’ And they’d give you a railway warrant back to your parent regiment. There was you know if you can’t do it we don’t want you. And they made it very very obvious. I mean you’d just got to be very very determined to stay in the regiment and and meet their qualification requirements as it were. So yeah. I mean it was, it was a regiment full of course of people from all regiments in the British Army. I mean I’ve made great friends with a guy who had been a schoolteacher but he was Armoured Corps driver operator and when we were doing exams he’d sit next to me and I’d help him with, with my answers and he’d help me with his answers. So we got through that way sort of thing. But it’s I mean some guys as I say got flying and just couldn’t fly. I mean it sounds silly but they just hadn’t got the aptitude. Others managed to kill themselves. You know, it’s [pause] No, it was a super super regiment. A super regiment. Of course, it got disbanded after the war. No, no requirement. Yeah. So that’s it. I’m sorry but you know it‘s probably not what you wanted but that’s what you’ve got.
TO: This is amazing. Thank you for telling me.
PO: Pardon?
TO: This is amazing. Thank you for telling me.
PO: Oh, I don’t know about that. It’s just that it was just how life was I’m afraid. Yeah. Yeah.
TO: And what did you think of General Montgomery?
PO: Never had anything to do with him. Again, I think when he went to the 8th Army after Auchinleck and those failed miserably in the desert that he was again the right man at the right time. He was, he’d got sufficient common sense that he could despite what he might feel internally he appealed as one of them to the troops under his command and sort of said, ‘Right. This is it. This is what we’re going to do.’ And do it. And I mean good God with the desert Army. I mean they’d been battered by losing Tobruk and even, I mean good God Rommel even got into Egypt and along comes this guy with his old peculiar ways and attitudes and one thing and another but as far as the troops were concerned this guy knows what he’s doing and we’re going to you know we can do this and we’re all together you know. He’s with us and we’re with him. So his PR was extremely good. But I mean I never met the man or he never impinged as far as I know on my, my military life as it were. Oh no. No.
TO: And did you have any popular songs in the Army?
PO: Oh gosh. Yeah. Before the war we used to march and sing songs. One was about a boxing match. “Have you heard of the big strong man who lives in a caravan?” I mean crazy words but not, not popular songs. Not not popular. Very, very much sort of Army songs and of course an awful lot before the war. Of course an awful lot of the soldiers were, had been up on the North-West Frontier you know. In Afghanistan and places like this so they were all hardened. Quite a lot of the real hardened tough thick soul guys you know. What is said in the book was absolute and you didn’t query anything and they were just tough guys. I mean when I think about it at sixteen I got thrown in with guys old enough to be my father and life just, that was I just accepted it you know. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end but I mean I look at some of the young people today at sixteen and good God it would kill him. Whereas with me it just that was my life. Oh yeah.
TO: Did you have any favourite wartime entertainers?
PO: Wartime?
TO: Entertainers.
PO: I only ever once saw an ENSA concert. My biggest regret is that I was at the time at Exeter and Glenn Miller came and I didn’t go. I wish to God I’d gone because he was at, he came to Exeter with the US Air Force Band. Yeah. But other than that I saw one ENSA. No, I did see an American entertainment once. Yeah. So I saw one ENSA concert and one American one but my biggest regret is I should have gone, why I don’t know but Glenn Miller. Yeah. But there you go. What’s past is past. You can’t alter the past.
TO: So what happened after you’d met up with Allied troops at the Rhine? Did you start advancing with them?
PO: No. We got we were, the glider pilots got taken out of the line. We went back to a transit camp and two days or three days later we were flown back from [unclear] to in actual fact we went back to Brize Norton. We landed at Brize Norton and then from there we dissipated to our various squadrons. So, oh no. We didn’t. We didn’t do an awful lot of fighting believe you me. As I say I did more running away than fighting.
TO: Did you ever actually use the Bren gun in combat?
PO: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A bit. Yeah, it was. I mean on one occasion we were with a group of about eight or nine troops. What regiment they were I haven’t got a clue but they were there were two young officers with them. I remember that and we were there in this wood and lo and behold about forty Germans went across and these guys stood up, put their binoculars up to their, and said, one said to the other, ‘Jeremy, there are some Jerries over here.’ And I thought you don’t need [laughs] I’m on the floor I can tell you keeping my head down. I could see them. Didn’t need to stand up with binoculars to look at these Germans but we we let them go. You know it was over. We knew it was over. You know. No point in killing them. We’d done our fighting. As I say we were on our way back to the transit camp to be flown home. Yeah. So as I say I had a very easy war. I really did.
TO: Was the Bren gun a good weapon?
PO: Yes. I was happy with it for all it [pause] I mean when we were running away around my waist I had got a lanyard and the barrel catch would occasionally catch on to this and the guts of the Bren gun would fall out and I’d have to stop. Now, I was in a, there were about I don’t know about fifteen or twenty of us sort of sneaking away and I’d stop and put the Bren gun together again very quickly. But every time I stopped somebody would pass me and I think I nearly finished up at the tail end of this little, little group who were running away. Yeah. Talk about, but it was, it was a good weapon. It was a good weapon. Very slow rate of fire when you consider that like the Germans I mean their weapons, automatic weapons were, were like sewing machines you know. Zzzz zzzz zzzzz where as ours went bang bang bang sort of thing. Yeah. Oh yes. Very. I mean, I forget what the rate of fire of a Bren is at the moment. Something like a hundred and twenty a minute or something. But yeah, it‘s, it was a good, a good weapon. It lasted throughout well. Lasted well throughout the war and beyond. Yeah. Yeah.
TO: And can you tell me about the training you did in gliders? Like when you were practicing landings.
PO: Well, yeah. I mean the skill in flying basically is landing. Taking off is pretty straightforward and easy really as long as you obeyed the rules. Landing is, is always the problem but you know the more you do I mean we would do maybe with a Hamilcar for example we would do if we were flying we’d probably fly for ten minutes on a circuit and then land and roll to a stop. The tug wagon would come out and pull us back to the start and we would, and we just did circuits and landings. I mean the clever bit is landing it in one piece and well that was it, that was it you know. I mean landing a Tiger Moth is far harder. I found far harder because you basically do a three point landing you know. You’re virtually at a stall whereas with the glider you flew in at whatever the airspeed was and plonked it on the floor and it was a very, very forgiving aircraft really. I mean okay you could have some hard landings but in the main you know you just fly them straight on to the floor.
TO: When you were heading towards the landing site —
PO: Yeah.
TO: Did you have to be on the look out for things like tall trees or power lines?
PO: On transit no because we were flying above any possible obstructions. Our landing sites were usually I mean operationally our landing sites were fairly open land. I don’t honestly recall being warned of any. The only obstructions I think we were ever talk about was sort of hedges or barbed wire fences type of thing. Other than that pylons and stuff where we were I don’t think anything like that existed to be honest with you. No. No. Oh no. If there were I don’t recall it I must admit. I can’t even recall seeing a pylon. Okay. You’d get the telephone wires and poles like that but you know they were on, on the road as it were as opposed to being in the fields. Yeah. I mean there were some big fields in Germany believe you me.
TO: And was it a field you landed in in Germany then?
PO: Well, it was we actually landed in a very small field I can tell you [laughs] yeah. It was without doubt we were running out of space big time but once it dug into the ground you know as I say we had no control so once we hit the ground the ground was very soft and we pulled up a bit smartly and as I say then it stood on its nose. Yeah. Yeah. But [pause] yeah.
TO: And before the Hamilcar crash landed in Germany did you, were you telling the, everybody on board to brace for impact or —
PO: No. I didn’t. I doubt, once we were hit I think we were a bit too busy to talk to anybody down below. I mean we were already in in free flight when we were hit so we were you know looking for where we ought to be and then we were hit and it was just a question of fighting the aircraft. I mean when you think the tail trimmer was only about that size on a Hamilcar. That’s the only control we’d got and that only altered attitude. Directional. We were just sitting tight and you know our buttocks were very tight together [laughs] and hold on. We’re going to hit the ground boys. What they thought down below I haven’t got a clue. In fact, I don’t honestly know whether the actual fuselage where the load was I don’t even know if that was ever hit with ack ack fire or small arms fire or anything. I really don’t. I just know that we lost this great big chunk of port wing and then all our controls. We got hit in the fuselage and all our controls went out the window. And that was it.
TO: And do you know which, what kind of guns were shooting at you?
PO: Just about everything. I mean when we got on the ground there was an immediate resupply by a Liberator aircraft and they came over at about two hundred and fifty feet. That was all. With their bomb doors wide open dropping all the resupply kit and near us there was, must have been an anti-aircraft battery. They were good. They shot down about four of these Liberators just like that. Bang bang bang you know. Lots of noise and whatnot but whether they were eighty eights or forty mil or thirty mil Oerlikons or what I haven’t got a clue. But lots, there was lots of ack ack fire believe you me. Oh yes. I mean, you know what a lovely target. A great big glider flying along slowly. I mean if you can’t hit that you shouldn’t be in the shooting game. Oh dear.
TO: And did the, you, did you or any of your men manage to pick up any of those resupplies?
PO: I didn’t personally. No. No. In fact, I lost quite a bit of kit. I mean I came out of that with my Bren gun and one magazine. That was all I’d got. A Bren gun and a magazine and that was all I came away from that aircraft and as I say as for the gunners I don’t know what they did. I mean whether they, whether they got mortared and you know were sort of damaged or what I don’t know. I really don’t know. I should have. Not that I say I should. I know an armoured regiment spoke to me about this tank falling out of the glider but as for the seventeen pounder guys I don’t know what happened to those gunners. I really don’t know. Yeah.
TO: So did you only have one clip of ammunition when you took the gun away.
PO: Yeah, I just I just had one. One magazine in the Bren gun and believe you me if the rabbit had have popped it’s head up near me it would have got the lot I can tell you [laughs] yeah.
TO: So did you use the ammunition at all or did you not?
PO: I used some of it. Not all of it because you know targets don’t stand still sort of thing. You know what I mean. I mean it’s so easy. You see some of these things on television these days where they’re letting off their AK47s and they seem to rattle it out and its cost is no no consequence to them. They’re not bothered. No. There was no resupply as far as I was concerned at the time. Oh no. I mean we went to clear a wood and as I say it’s [pause] I don’t know.
TO: So did you join up with a group of other soldiers and eventually met up with other allied soldiers?
PO: Yes. Eventually yeah. We, yeah we, we met. Now, again I don’t know if they were Irish Fusiliers or whether they were Ox and Bucks. I know that we were, we were told or asked to go and clear a path to a wood across these open fields and all the way across. Beauman and I joined these guys and I I think they must have been Irish guys because all the way across these other guys were saying, you know, the effing Ox and Bucks. We’ve got two effing glider pilots here but none of the effing Ox and Bucks want to come with us so to speak. But we hared across these fields and got to the wood as luckily there was nothing in the wood which was just as well. But all, and I just remember going across a barbed wire fence and dashing across this field in the open and I thought this is a bit dicey but, you know. Oh yeah. All part of life’s gay pattern.
TO: Did you feel relieved though when you met up with the allies who’d crossed the Rhine?
PO: I must have done. Must have done. Yeah. The first troops I think I met that I can recall were a Canadian armoured regiment and they, they were quite happy. And then we met some troops that had come over the Rhine and they couldn’t believe that we’d left the UK only the day before and that we’d be back in the UK within a week because they’d been there since D-Day. Yeah. I mean some guys had a really rough war. They really did. I mean you know gosh just as well I didn’t stay in an infantry regiment.
TO: Do you happen to hear, be familiar with the name Koppenhof Farm at all?
PO: No.
TO: Okay. Just asking because there was a soldier I interviewed ten years ago who had been in the Royal Ulster Rifles. He landed in the Rhine crossing.
PO: Yeah.
TO: In a place called Koppenhof Farm and because he well it must have been relatively close to Hamminkeln.
PO: Yeah.
TO: Because he said his commanding officer died when his glider, when their glider crashed near there but I just wondered if maybe you had been in a similar area but —
PO: Well, I might have been. I mean I know we crossed the railway line a couple of times to get where we wanted. Well we got back to Hamminkeln. That’s where we, I finished up. In Hamminkeln.
TO: Yeah.
PO: But of course on the railway station there there was two wrecked gliders. They’d landed right on the blooming railway line. Right on Hamminkeln itself.
TO: That was one of the gliders though that this man was talking about because he said his commanding officer was a chap called Major Vickery who was in one of the gliders that crashed into the railway station and he was killed.
PO: Ah well there you go. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I remember seeing that glider. Yeah. Equally I saw a Horsa fly in to a tree and just break up like a box of matches being thrown everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Exciting times at the time. Yeah.
TO: And did you happen to see any German civilians when you were there?
PO: Oh yes. Yeah. Actually, I met children rather than adults because one lad he was part of the Todt [?] Labour Association and he said that the Germans had lined them all up and more or less said, ‘What are you?’ And if you said German Jew they shot them. Terrible as it sounds this is what he said to me. But I remember we, I’d got some soap. Don’t ask where it came from. I really don’t know. I must have looted it out of somebody else’s stuff and I gave him this soap. Well, you’d think I’d given him a bar of gold. I mean he put it to his nose and of course the smell of Lux soap as it were. Yeah. I don’t know what happened to that kid. He stayed with us for quite a few hours and then disappeared. Whether he was being street wise or what I don’t know. No. I didn’t of course there was a non-fraternisation ban on so you weren’t supposed to talk to any German civilians but where we were there was only the odd farmhouse and stuff like that you know outside of Hamminkeln itself there was nothing. I mean I went to Goch to look at Goch. By jingo that was, that had been fought over a couple of times. That was a total wreck that town. But no. Yeah. So then we got on. I’m sorry, that’s, that’s me such as it is.
TO: Did you get to talk with any other German prisoners?
PO: No. No. I, I was sent to guard some prisoners. There must have been I don’t know a couple of hundred of them and all I’d got at the time was a fighting knife. That’s all I’d got. My fighting knife. And they were all standing there and sitting there and one thing and another and one of our officers came up or an officer came up. I don’t know if he was one of our officers and spoke to one of the German officers and this German officer spit at him. And I thought he’s going to kill him. I really did. But believe you me there I was with all these prisoners so called all very happy I think to be prisoners but just as well because if they’d have raised up and started to make any trouble I’d have, I’d have been off like a rocket I can tell you on my own with all these guys. Yeah. No. Yeah. That’s it. All little sort of vignettes of memory coming up here one way or the other.
TO: And what happened when you got back to Britain? What were your responsibilities then?
PO: Well, the first thing was when we got to Brize Norton the Customs and Excise people wanted to know what, what we’d brought back with us and of course we’d got nothing basically. We were just us. And then I went back to to Tarrant Rushton which was down near Bournemouth. It was, that’s where my squadron was based so I went back there in the hut. Got in the hut and I think there were only two of us left out of the hut who came back. So we lost, out of, out of the hut we must have lost I don’t know about ten guys I suppose. Yeah. Because we then sorted out all their kit. I remember sorting out their kit. Yeah. I had enough handkerchiefs to see me through the rest of my service career I think out of these guys kits. I wasn’t, wasn’t sending those home to their wives and daughters. Handkerchiefs. They were like gold. Yeah.
TO: And did your co-pilot come back with you?
PO: Yeah. Oh yes. Bert and I came. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes. Yeah. And, and also Bert wasn’t in my, wasn’t in my hut funnily enough. Who was with me? Was it Geoff Higgins? There were two of us in our hut. That was all out of the ones that left only a week before sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
TO: And do you remember the day the war ended?
PO: Oh, very much so. I was at Fairford the actual day the war ended when, because we were converting then onto Wacos to go to the Far East. Being lectured about Bushido and all the rest of it. What a load of rubbish. How to behave if we were taken prisoner by the Japanese. Good God. The Japanese would have just killed us the way it seemed they were inclined to treat their prisoners. But yeah, that was it. We all cheered. We really did and then of course we started getting parties you know. The Australians would be going home so we’d have a party in the mess for them and then the Canadians were going home. You know. And these were RAF people not glider pilots. RAF people out of 38 Group towing. Halifax pilots and stuff like that, you know. Tow pilots. Yeah. Yes. Happy days that was. Yeah.
TO: Do you remember what you did to celebrate?
PO: Yes. Now, let me think. VE Day. VE Day what I’ve just been saying was VJ Day thinking about it. VE Day I was on leave. I was in London with my, my future wife. Yeah. We had a great day. That was a great day dancing like idiots around Trafalgar Square and one thing and another. That was really a super day that. But the whole world was you know celebrating. The fact that there was still fighting going on in the Far East didn’t mean anything. It was, you know the European war had finished. Great. We were going to have a great time and it was [pause] It was. Yeah. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. Then I got married and was married for seventy two years. That’s a long time.
TO: And what are your thoughts on how warfare has changed in the time since?
PO: Oh, it has totalled. I mean the first war if you like was in Northern Ireland and that was terrible. You know. You didn’t know who, who your enemy was. I mean, I was still in the Forces but I wasn’t involved in any way, shape or form in Northern Ireland. I’d have hated to go to Northern Ireland from what I’ve been told by Royal Marines as much as anything. But I mean the war in Afghanistan that was a waste of time and money in so many ways. If the Russians couldn’t do them I mean the Russians had a go at Afghanistan and failed miserably and the Americans and ourselves what have we achieved? Nothing. It’s as far as I’m concerned I might be very uneducated in that sort of respect but I I think that the shape of warfare is so different. I mean I got a letter from a lieutenant general the other day saying that his daughter was currently in the Royal Artillery but she was just flying drones. Now, I mean you know drones. Good God in my day something like a drone would have been [pause] just imagine a drone being over the battlefield in the Second World War. But here now of course young people are sitting in a hut in Lincolnshire flying drones out over the Far East. Warfare has changed just so much. In many ways its frightening. As long as we, these little wars I mean the war that’s taking place at the moment in, you know with Russia and with, what’s the [pause] come on what’s the name of the country? I’ve lost it.
TO: Ukraine.
PO: Ukraine. I mean we’re supplying them with weapons and what are we doing? I wouldn’t mind betting it’s just a proving ground for our latest technologies to see how well it works you know. As long as we keep away from the atomic business. That’s the frightener. That really is the frightener. I mean I remember after the war when I was at a conference and they said the Russians are only two hours flying time away and we were on about going nuclear after, after forty eight hours. We would have gone nuclear and stuff like this. That was frightening at the time. I mean since then, I’m now talking of 1950s and now, now things have got even worse. No. As long as Putin doesn’t go over the top because that could be, really could be terrible. Terrible. What do you think about it?
TO: I just think it’s probably the most as it were filmed, media televised war we’ve seen. It’s almost every action is being filmed on either a phone, a drone or a camera somewhere. It’s probably the first war where you’re almost watching it in real time if you like.
PO: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. True. Very true. Yeah. I hadn’t thought of it quite like that. Yes. It’s so immediate isn’t it today? Yeah.
TO: Have you watched any of the things like the footage that’s been almost live from the front line?
PO: Oh yeah. I, I’ve seen what everybody else sees on on the box you know. Some of these war reporters I mean good God. Talk about putting themselves in to danger but of course it’s such a big country isn’t it? It’s huge. I mean it’s the size of France and Germany I understand. Well, France is a damned big country on its own let alone tack Germany on to it. And here you’ve got to so I don’t know. I mean I can’t see the Russians winning that war. The West won’t let them win it. But the ramifications of it affect everybody. I mean like these grain convoys and stuff like this and taking out power supplies for the civilians and terrible you know. It’s diplomacy failed totally. You know. We can’t talk to you so we’ll fight you. No good.
TO: I’m afraid I’m out of battery on my camera at the moment. Would you mind if we stop there?
PO: Yeah. [unclear] yeah.
TO: Thank you very much for speaking to us. It’s been wonderful.
PO: No, well, I as I say when I think when you, when you screen through that you’ll be very disappointed that my war was a totally different war to almost everybody else’s I think. It doesn’t, there was no great heroics in it. It was just the way it was. Yeah. Well great. Well, that’s very kind of you to be so generous with your comment and I wish you well with your project.
TO: Thank you. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Peter Offord Davies. Part One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tom Ozel
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-11-05
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:57:18 audio recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADaviesPO221105-AV
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
British Army
Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Peter was born in Coventry. Although in the army, Peter was stationed on RAF airfields and joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in October 1938, aged 16, transferring to the Royal Artillery. He then joined the Army Air Corps (AAC) and was part of the Glider Pilot Regiment.
Peter first learnt to fly powered aircraft at Elementary Flying Training School and was then attached to the 9th United States Air Force. He flew in C-47s, then went back to C squadron, flying Hamilcars. When the war finished, Peter went to Fairford and converted onto Waco CG-4As to go to the Far East.
Peter discusses the time leading up to the Second World War, his views on Chamberlain and Churchill, and how prepared the country was for war. He describes his training and time as a boy soldier.
He trained at RAF Stoke Orchard on Hotspur gliders, towed off the ground by Master aircraft. When he left Glider Training School he went on Horsas, towed by C-47s. Hamilcars needed four-engined bombers: 38 Squadron Halifaxes. Peter describes flying these different gliders.
Peter recounts in some detail the Rhine crossing in which they were hit by anti aircraft fire and landed nose down before escaping to Hamminkeln and ultimately returning to RAF Brize Norton and then to his squadron at RAF Tarrant Rushton. He talks about his Bren gun.
Peter expresses his pride and the many friendships made. He also praises several generals for their roles in the war.
Peter discusses the VJ and VE Day celebrations and how warfare has since changed.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
1945-05-08
1945-08-15
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Dorset
England--Oxfordshire
Germany
Rhine River
Germany--Hamminkeln
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
38 Squadron
anti-aircraft fire
C-47
Chamberlain, Neville (1869-1940)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crash
Halifax
Hamilcar
Horsa
military ethos
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Tarrant Rushton
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2225/39901/PTouleK2201.1.jpg
a7b304a9aaeeaae411bbbfca6c4f1c67
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2225/39901/ATouleK221003.2.mp3
839d148588fa0873a8da410e32f7f247
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Toule, Keith
K Toule
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Keith Toule (1934 - 2023). He was a child on a farm at the end of the RAF Skellingthorpe's main runway.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-10-03
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Toule, K
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So, this is an interview for the IBCC Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin. It’s an interview today with Keith Toule. I’m at his home near Doddington in Lincoln and it is the 3rd of October 2022. I’ll put that there.
KT: Yeah.
DE: It is recording. So Keith I’d like you to tell me a bit about —
KT: I was five years old, just turned five at the start of the war and the first memory of we didn’t really know what was happening but they started to cut all the trees down in what’s now known as the farm belt. The wood to the east side of the farm. These trees was all cut down and suddenly it opened a view up. We could see right across which was Hartsholme Estate in those days to fields from Hartsholme Estate right across to the Cathedral. We got a beautiful view of the Cathedral, the Castle and the water tower on the top of the hill and that’s my first memory of what was happening. Now I can’t remember how long it was before the first Hampden took off one Saturday afternoon because all this, well we could see across to the airfield. We wouldn’t be able to see. I’m not old enough to remember actually seeing the runways being put down. The perimeter. But this, I was on the stack one Saturday afternoon with a chap who worked for us for over fifty years fetching hay in to feed the cattle. This Hampden took over, took off. It would only be about twenty foot high over the field at the back of the time and I could tell its engines weren’t running properly so I says to Bob, I says, ‘He’ll not get far.’ And he carried on and I watched him. I was in a position where I could see him and he just cleared the tops of the trees and then suddenly disappeared. Up with a pile of smoke. Now, I’d said he wouldn’t get far and I was exactly right. It didn’t get far. No. We found out since that that crash was never recorded in any Air Force records. I don’t know how important that is. Whether it’s going to help you, whether it’s too far back for you to trace. Trace.
DE: We can have a look. Yeah.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Now the next part was —
DE: You told me earlier before I started recording about where it actually came down. That, that Hampden.
KT: Yes.
DE: And what happened then?
KT: Well, after the war a lot of my friends came with metal detectors.
DE: Right.
KT: And they was finding bits of car, bit of brass and copper that hadn’t burned out. Most of the engines and that I can’t remember too much about the site but a lot of bits of brass from carburettors and that sort of thing they were finding.
DE: What happened to the crew?
KT: Well, the crew was saved, you know. Who they were. There was no communications in those days you see. We never got to know much about the the airfield at all because as I said in the DVD there was the three rolls of wire between the farm and the airfield so I never got any communications or any, with any airmen. Now in 1947 this is another thing that had enabled us with the wood cut down and we could see across and you could see the tankers going around the airfield delivering the fuel to the planes and the dispersal points. Frying pans as they was commonly known in those days. And in ’47, in February ’47 I was going to the City School in Lincoln and in the second week in February the teachers came in and said all the lads in the country could go home early. And we looked. A lovely cold sunny day. We looked at one another. Didn’t know what was happening until I got nearly to Skellingthorpe where the ice cream farm was and we learned that the snow was drifting across the road and it snowed and drifted. We didn’t go back to school for nearly three weeks because all the, all the hedges and dykes on the farm you couldn’t see them. It just snowed. Snowed and blowed and snow and blowing and when we was working in the fields getting swedes and that in to feed the cattle all of a sudden you’d see a black cloud behind the Cathedral. It would disappear and three or four minutes later it was coming across with the east wind and we was in the middle of the snowstorm on the farm ourselves. These storms seemed to last about five or ten minutes and then a lovely sunny, sunny day again and it just kept repeating itself. Repeating itself these storms. Well, I can’t remember in detail how long but I’ve never seen so much snow in dykes. We could walk over every hedge and dyke on the farm and not know there was a hedge and dyke there.
DE: Wow. Was that worse than ’63 then?
KT: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Because that a bad winter wasn’t it?
KT: No comparison to any winters we’ve had since.
DE: Yeah. So you were sent home from school but it ended up being even more hard work than if you’d have been at school.
KT: Yeah. Well, I weren’t old. I weren’t old enough then and I mean the only hard work you had to do then was fetching the food, the swedes in for the cattle. All the rest of the stuff was already in the stack yard. The straw and that sort of thing.
DE: Right. I see.
KT: And oh, one of the things I found out or mentioned about the the sound travels faster and clearer on a cold, or if the colder it is the more the sound travels through the atmosphere. I remember cleaning the bottom field of the farm cleaning swedes one morning we could hear the cathedral strike ten. A strong east wind coming across. No storms. No snow storms that particular morning but you could hear them to one, two count up to ten and then at eleven up ‘til twelve. We’d got what swedes we wanted to so I wasn’t in the field in the afternoon to hear but it was so clear and that’s about three and a quarter miles away as the crow flies.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Never hear it now because there’s a wood between us and —
DE: Yes, of course. So that’s all grown up since hasn’t it?
KT: Yes. Yes.
DE: And there’s the bypass there yeah.
KT: And it’s been replanted with conifers with now.
DE: What were the trees that were originally chopped down then?
KT: There was oak. Mainly oak trees like the wood here. That’s mainly oak trees in there. A few silver birch. A few beech. There was a few beech scattered around the edges of the woods. Whether they’d been planted or what I don’t know but all the beech trees I know was on the dyke side right on the edge of the wood which is an interesting point. But they’ve all died since. They got, I suppose they got that old and they’ve all died with the, with the dryer summers. Can’t see them. Whether the roots aren’t so deep. But they’ve all died. Every one. No, there’s just one. There’s just one up on the drive side up there that’s still alive.
DE: So these, these trees were cut down I suppose some of them because that’s where the airfield were and some would be because they didn’t want trees in between you know on the flight path.
KT: Well, the wood was right at the end of the runway.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I mean when the, where they cut these trees down when the aeroplanes, the Hampdens to start with and I think there was one or two Manchesters. A short period of Manchesters on the airfield. But then the Manchesters weren’t capable of doing the the bombing trips because they hadn’t got this power and the strength of the engines. And then I can’t remember what year it was. Whether it was ’42 when the Lancasters but we was working down on the bottom of the farm one night cutting some low branches off the oak tree ready, getting ready for harvesting and this Lancaster took off and God it looked enormous. A giant of a plane compared to the little Hampdens that we had seen. Well, it would be wouldn’t it?
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: About three or four times as big I suppose. I’ve never forgot that happening.
DE: Yeah. A hundred and two foot wingspan I think. A Lancaster.
KT: Does it? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And when, when they’d got the trees cut down in the winter when there was no leaves on the trees G for George is dispersal point and I’ve got that. It shows you the dispersal points. [paper rustling]
DE: It’s a map of the airfield with the runways and the perimeter track.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So tell me about G for George.
KT: We could see them when there’s no leaves on the trees because of a few silver birches and that started to grow around the frying pans as you might say. We could see them and see all the crew up and down on the wings you know for servicing up and they came back in the early morning. Three or 4 o’clock in the morning. Some of the planes you could hear the engines had been shot at you know. They were misfiring and that sort of thing. So it was always a relief when you heard them shut the engines down. You knew they weren’t likely to crash on the house. You knew they was in line with the end of the runway and they was going to float in to land. I can clearly remember that.
DE: So you got quite familiar with the, with the noises from the aircraft.
KT: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
DE: Could you tell you know which aircraft was which by hearing them?
KT: Oh, you could. You could always know a Lancaster. Yeah. Was it the Merlin engine was it? Yeah. They was different to all the others.
DE: But you say you never, you never got to interact with any of the crew or the ground crew.
KT: We no we never got any contact with one single airmen you know.
DE: Yeah.
KT: No.
DE: So it’s just from what you could see and and hear.
KT: Yeah.
DE: As they fly over.
KT: Yeah.
DE: What about when you know what time of day were they taking off and coming back?
KT: Generally about half past six to 7 o’clock at night. And when, when they was taking off from here you’d look towards Saxilby at night. That was, that was more or less north from here and there was a string of Lancasters coming down from the airfield. Yorkshire and probably further north. I don’t really know. And that would last for three quarters of an hour, up to three quarters of an hour and they’d be coming down and they would take off from Skellingthorpe. There was Scampton, Skellingthorpe, Waddington and surprise I’ve found out recently there was Lancasters at Swinderby airfield. I find that a bit surprising because there’s only one straight runway at Swinderby airfield and it’s not a big airfield. Whether that’s correct or not but somebody said.
DE: I don’t know. I would have to have a look.
KT: Yes. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. But there were more down at Winthorpe near Newark.
KT: Winthorpe was.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Near Newark. Yeah
DE: Yeah.
KT: No. There was Syerston the other side of Newark.
DE: That’s right. Yeah.
KT: But I’ve no details of knowledge.
DE: No. No.
KT: About what they were.
DE: That’s, that’s fine. Yeah.
KT: Then there was Fulbeck. There was an airfield at Fulbeck, I think.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Cranwell.
DE: Twenty seven operational bomber stations in Lincolnshire I think.
KT: Coleby was one of the —
DE: Yeah. Not all, these are not, not all bomber stations.
KT: No. No.
DE: So you would, you would see hundreds of aircraft.
KT: Oh yes. And another thing that when I was at Doddington School on D-Day when they invaded France there was, well I found out since there was seven hundred and sixty odd I think gliders, Dakotas towing gliders. We was out in the playground playing about 11 o’clock one morning and these Dakotas started to come over again going north to south. From the north to south towing these and we’d no knowledge at all of what was happening with these gliders, where they were going and I’m too young to remember whether it was you know heard anything on the radio at night about it.
DE: But it was sufficiently different.
KT: Well, to see so many aircraft and another thing that in those days there was always [pause] I can’t remember what we called them. There was long lorries, forty foot long lorries coming up down through Doddington village from probably the Sheffield area. I don’t know which way and that at AV Roe’s they were the people up at Bracebridge Heath and that apparently with some of the Lancasters. The AV Roe’s made the Lancaster, didn’t they?
DE: That’s right. Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. There was a repair shop up at Bracebridge.
KT: Was it? Yes.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. And they was, you’d see them. They’d always got a big wing, two wings that were wide enough and long enough to hold the wings bringing the wings through. But we’d no idea where they were taking them to and a few hours later you’d see them going back empty.
DE: Wow.
KT: That was a regular trip. So the wings would all of a sudden be constructed somewhere up north and brought here to —
DE: Yeah.
KT: Be assembled.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I suppose.
DE: Wow. Okay. Just going back a little bit about your childhood you have some stories that I have heard about soldiers and boxes of ammunition and searchlights and things.
KT: Yeah. When I first started school in the September the first week in September 1939 I went along the farm drive and turned right to go up towards the village and every twenty yards in the farm belt, sorry the long planting wood, the soldiers or somebody cut gaps in the hedgerow and across the dyke and there was boxes of ammunition about five to six foot all stacked up every twenty yards. And then around about the same time we always used to go to South Scarle for a supply of carrots for the family through the winter. I remember being with my uncle. We went to Newton towards Dunham Bridge turn left for Collingham.
DE: Yeah.
KT: To head for South Scarle and there was piles of bombs every twenty, thirty yards. A dozen bombs all piled up on like pallet forms at the side of the road. And I have found out since that Chamberlain who was the Prime Minister at the time got the war, the start of the war delayed about a year. There was talk with Hitler about starting the war and he got the start delayed. So while he was doing that they was obviously preparing the ammunition and the bombs ready. Getting a good stock in hand before it started wasn’t there?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Were they guarded, these things then?
KT: No. Now, these, this when I walked to Doddington School there was two soldiers at the crossroads and I’d no idea what there was and then they put a little pre-cast concrete hut in the, in the little wood at the corner of the crossroads. And then I found out through another daughter of Wagner that came to live here they were farming up towards Eagle at that same time and she said there was boxes of ammunition in the, what is now the Old Orchard Wood and there was two soldiers in a pre-cast concrete building at that crossroads. So we now discovered they were on guard guarding the ammunition. I don’t know who was going to pinch it in those days but they was the regular guards.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I walked past them every day going to school and back again.
DE: Yeah. You talked about searchlights as well.
KT: Yeah. The searchlight was it was just the other side of the [ Gilbert’s Plot ] with looking up the drive from where we are now and it shows the drive doesn’t it on the DVD looking up where we are there and the, the searchlight itself was about thirty yards from the wood on the other side surrounded by an eight foot brick wall about I would say thirty foot across this circle inside and to prevent the brick wall from being blown down with any nearby bombs they dug a deep trench around the outside and then piled the stone, the soil right up to the brick wall. So it was like a moat around because the water where they dug the soil out it was full of water all the time and then just one opening where they could get in and out to to get to the searchlight. And I mean one or most nights in the wintertime when it was dark you could see these searchlights fanning around all around the sky. There was I would think there was five or six around this area. We don’t, we’ve only discovered possibly one was at Sudbrooke. Now whether there was any at Norton Disney, Stapleford, Pocklington, Navenby we don’t know whether but there would be five, at least five where you could see the torches. The beams of light going up from them and I mean there was one particular night they all homed in on this cloud. You know, it was just like daylight under this cloud.
DE: Wow.
KT: They was, they was obviously there for spotting enemy air —
DE: Yeah.
KT: Enemy aircraft.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And there was a big gun. What you’d call the gun, anti-aircraft gun inside this ring with the searchlight. I never saw that but they talked about it, the soldiers about this big gun.
DE: Did you ever hear it fired?
KT: No. No.
DE: Right.
KT: Well, there was no, never needed to fire but the one night when I was around with my uncle because we lived on rabbits in the war time because meat was so short. We were going around with a twelve bore. On the north corner of the farm this German fighter came over the top of us. My uncle could have hit it with a twelve bore it was that low and it had come in at what they called hedge upping in those days and it had got in and if they had known it was coming the searchlight could have shot it down because it was only about less than a quarter of a mile away from the site of the machine gun and searchlight. But it apparently, we did find out later that it went straight over us, over the airfield and down through what’s the Lincoln gap where the Witham goes through Lincoln. We did hear that they scrambled some fighters and got it shot down before it got back to —
DE: Oh right.
KT: To Germany.
DE: Okay.
KT: So that’s an interesting point which there will not be many people around know much about that I suppose
DE: No. Do you know what aircraft it was?
KT: Junkers 88. That’s what we were told. How I know that I can’t tell you.
DE: You probably didn’t know at the time but you found out since.
KT: No, we didn’t.
DE: Yeah.
KT: We found out since.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: But you weren’t bombed or anything around here.
KT: Yes, there was four.
DE: Oh. Okay.
KT: I can remember being taken out of bed one morning. Woken up. I don’t think I actually heard the bombs drop but my mum, I remember my mum coming and taking me out of bed to carry me downstairs out the back door on to the causeway. And I looked down to the bottom of the farm and the wood was all ablaze with fire and they’d dropped, the Germans had come over first of all with planes and dropped incendiary bombs. The little round, have you seen an incendiary bomb?
DE: Yeah.
KT: And well I wouldn’t hear this so I can’t, but they say when these incendiary bomb there’s a fin at the back that they turn the bomb around to keep it spinning and it whistles. Makes a whining noise. Now the woodman from Doddington had just recently cut a beech tree down on the edge of the farm and one of the incendiary bombs had dropped on the top of this beech tree and it had bounced off and burnt out at the side but it had left the number of the incendiary bomb on the wood. You could read the, the number that was stamped on the bottom of every bomb.
DE: Wow.
KT: There will not be many people who would be able to tell you that.
DE: No.
KT: Sort of a story.
DE: Right.
KT: We did, we did find two incendiaries that hadn’t gone off that they’d dropped in dyke bottoms where there was a lot of leaf mould and that and there hadn’t been enough impact on the charge to detonate it.
DE: Oh okay.
KT: But the wood was on fire but they dropped four bombs just between the farm buildings and the wood across the bottom fields but they didn’t do any damage. If they’d dropped ‘em the other side. I don’t know which way they were coming from towards the coast when they dropped them but if they’d dropped them the other side of the fire the same four bombs would have landed on the airfield. So the, it’s difficult to imagine what was happening in those days on that type of thing isn’t it?
DE: Oh yeah. Definitely.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. I mean right through the war I mean there was just so many aircraft. Lancasters. Mainly Lancasters about but towards the end of the war the Germans sent over I think were they called Stirling bombers? Four engine.
DE: They’re British.
KT: Are they British are they?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: One thing that I can clearly remember after the war was you know when you was working in the fields there were so many aircraft in the, in the sky. All the fighters and all this sort of thing. And we saw one day when from south to north a six engine plane with the propellers at the back of the wings.
DE: Wow.
KT: Now, I have looked this up on the internet on the computer and it was an American plane. The six propellers at the back pushing it forward and at that time there was one of the British companies I don’t know which one it was down in Bristol, probably the Bristol Blenheim and they were starting to make one with six engines with the engines behind the wings but apparently it was never never finished off and —
DE: Interesting.
KT: But it’s a big sight when you see six engines.
DE: Yeah.
KT: At the back of the wings pushing it forward.
DE: Yeah. Mostly, mostly it was Lancasters so you got used to this. The sight and sound of Lancasters. Yeah.
KT: The Lancaster. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So what was it? What was it —
KT: No. The Lincoln. The Lincolns followed the Lancaster.
DE: They did after the war. Yeah.
KT: Yes. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. It was the Lancaster that gets the history still isn’t it? They come back. Fly around with the Lancaster.
DE: Well, it’s the Lancaster that they have with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
KT: That’s it. Yes.
DE: Still flying yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. It used to come over when we was in the strawberry season. On the Sunday when they had the do at Skellingthorpe wasn’t it?
DE: Right. That’s the reunion.
KT: The reunion. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So what was, what was it like? What was life like on the farm then?
KT: Oh, hard work. Everything was manual. There was only horses did the pulling power and everything else it was done manually. Hand picking potatoes. Hand knocking sugar beet to get that clean. Throwing it in carts. Leading it off and then when the lorry came to take it to the factory it’d be brute force and you had to throw it on and that was hard work. On a wet day it wasn’t a very nice job filling a twelve or fourteen tonne load of sugar beet with a coat, raincoat on to keep dry. Sweating cobs you were.
DE: I can’t begin to imagine. Yeah. Did, did you have any help on the farm?
KT: Oh, there was my uncle, myself. Well, I left school in 1950 so it was a bit different then but whatever I was doing in the wartime, whatever was happening I was always helping.
DE: Yeah.
KT: As best I could to the maximum that my strength would allow me to do really.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Were there any POWs?
KT: Yes. This is an interesting story. I think it was the second year of the war, possibly the third the, the most of the potato harvesting the ladies who were from Jerusalem used to come and pick but they had all their husbands was away at war and they’d all got little children, one and two year old children so they weren’t able. There was one year I can remember clearly we had seven or eight probably ten German prisoners of war came to pick the potatoes for us which I was a bit frightened of to start with. But I know we were at war with the Germans but they turned out to be, you know nice and friendly towards us all in the end.
DE: Did they work alright then?
KT: Oh, they was good workers. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they didn’t want the war did they? A lot of them. They were, it would be a relief to be a prisoner of war and come over and one thing that they were very very clever at. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen them when they did this carving of a sailing ship inside a bottle. Have you ever seen one?
DE: I’ve seen the sort of thing. Yeah.
KT: Yeah, and we’d a, we’d a gate post that had rotted off. An eight foot by eight foot square gatepost that had rotted off at ground level and as soon as we took that out the ground and gave them this post they carved that into a fantastic sailing boat. Eight by eight and it was about four to five foot long and we did see that. A photograph of that. Very very clever, weren’t they?
DE: Do you know where they were? Where they were living?
KT: They were stationed down Waterloo Lane at Skellingthorpe in pre-cast concrete buildings and at Aubourn. Haddington near Aubourn. There was a lot of them there and at Wellingore up on the hill. There was a lot of pre-cast concrete buildings where the prisoners of war lived. I don’t know of any other sites around about.
DE: Yeah.
KT: That was three big sites.
DE: Wow. Okay. Well —
KT: Did you know they was down Waterloo Lane?
Other: I did. Yes.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. What were they wearing when they were out here? Were they —
KT: Oh, God. I can’t remember.
DE: No, but you knew they were POWs. You knew they were prisoners of war.
KT: Well, yes I suppose so.
DE: Yeah.
KT: They’d have some uniform on wouldn’t they?
DE: Yeah.
KT: They’d be given some uniform. Yeah.
DE: So, I mean you said you were frightened of them. Were you, were you frightened of the whole, the whole thing of being at war and —
KT: Well, the whole of the war time it was so frightening. I had to carry a gas mask to school. They gave me a gas mask to carry to school and we left school at about a quarter to four or 4 o’clock in the afternoon and I was always afraid that the Germans might come before I got back to my mum because they always said the Germans was going to invade the country. It wasn’t if. It was when. They were so convinced that the Germans were going to invade the country so it was a very frightening time for a young lad to be left in those conditions. And when I was six years old I had to, one of the workers had an accident and couldn’t sit down so I was asked to hand milk one of the cows in the morning and at night. So as a six year old hand milking a cow that was a difficult job. I was barely big enough to get around the teats but I ended up with some very strong wrists as a result of that.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Which has stood me well in the rest of my life in cricket and sport. Yeah.
DE: Have you got any other, other bullet points on there you wanted to talk about?
[pause]
KT: I think I’ve covered most of that there.
DE: What about you’ve mentioned the Hampden? Were there any other crashes that you can —
KT: Oh yes. Now, I saw four crashes when planes came out the sky. We was in the stackyard one Saturday, just come out from having our dinner and a Wellington was flying over from north to south. And they were, they were all around the sky, there was, you couldn’t look up any time of the day then there were one plane or another flying around. And the fuselage from the back of the wings just exploded and we saw it all floating down to the ground and the engine and the wings just took a nosedive straight down to the ground and crashed on the road just opposite this side of the road where the Damon‘s restaurant is now. And apparently a Manchester bomber coming back from a bombing raid crashed on virtually the same site. And there was you went up there was a cinder plot about two hundred yards away I suppose. Two to three hundred yards away and I can remember seeing the, the framework from the wheel. It had blown one of these wheels off. Now whether it was from the Manchester or the Wellington that crashed I don’t know but it’s that part of the scrap thing was up in that wood for years and years. Nobody ever went to retrieve it.
DE: Right. Okay.
KT: Whether it’s still there to this day I don’t know.
DE: Yeah. Possibly not.
KT: Yeah. And then the other one I was walking home from school. This was towards the end of the war and there was a Lancaster coming in over from over Saxilby on the north to south runway and he just crashed straight out the sky on to Monson farm. Immediately crashed and a pile of black smoke goes up so that was my witnessing and the various crashes out of the sky which is there is always a lot of black smoke you know when the smoke from the oil in the engines set on fire. And I’ve got a photograph [pause] That’s the fuel tank. There’s two fuel tanks.
DE: Oh, this is, this is the farm and your house. Yeah.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Two. You got two fuel tanks out of a Lancaster bombers at the end of the war to store the fuel in, the paraffin for when we got a tractor. That was in the mid-50s I think when we got those.
DE: So did you have electricity here?
KT: We didn’t get electricity until 1952 and I think the same year we got on mains water. There was no, it was a hand pump for drinking water. You know, I said about how cold it was in the winter times in the wartime. That hand pump got frozen up with ice numerous times. Covered it with straw and that to keep the frost out but you’d go and pull the handle and it was frozen up. So a kettle full of boiling water to pour down the spout to free it off.
DE: Right. Whose job was it to fetch the water then?
KT: Well, my mother’s. And when they, when they got us on mains water in 1952 they come around and condemned the hand pump. Said it wasn’t fit to use but my mother kept going across. We didn’t like the taste of the mains water pipe for making tea so she used to go and fill the kettle from the hand pump for a year or two after we got on mains water. It tasted better.
DE: Yeah.
KT: It was the hard water you see.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: The tap water unfortunately from here was quite a soft water. And I have been told and how true this is that the bore hole at Elkesley what it must be thirty miles away from us where the water comes from. It’s supplied from by underground stream from Norway. They’ve tested the minerals in the water and it’s the same minerals as in the rocks in Norway.
DE: Wow.
KT: And they did drill for oil after the war at Eagle. A little corner of a field there and they went through the same underground stream of water at Eagle. It comes the same as Elkesley which is probably twenty or thirty miles apart so where this stream goes to or where it ends up I’ve no idea.
DE: That’s interesting.
KT: Interesting point.
DE: Yeah.
KT: When they test for the minerals in the water you can fairly well imagine it’s the same source wouldn’t you?
DE: Yeah.
KT: I do know for a fact a lot of the water from the falls, heavy rainwater in Derbyshire comes up in the, near the Showground at Lincoln. There’s a spring there and that’s the start of the Nettleham Beck. And the water in the Nettleham Beck is always running. Running water. Dry, however dry it is and that’s the spring coming.
DE: Oh right. Okay.
KT: Rainwater.
DE: Yeah.
KT: In Derbyshire.
DE: Yeah. I’ve got just one other question about your wartime experience and then we’ll start talking about postwar. I think on the DVD you mention a couple of other explosions or accidents or there was an aircraft that landed with bombs on board.
KT: Oh.
DE: Something that went up in a —
KT: The timed bombs. The timed bombs. Yeah. There was two timed bombs from memory. We didn’t really know much about it at the time but between us and the Whisby side of the Old Orchard Wood I remember my uncle taking me across to see this and a massive hole. And apparently, it was a timed bomb that penetrates the ground and then the clock inside it and it can have a longer set of time for it to explode and it blows all the soil up. A pile of soil five or six foot high all around the side. But the depth of the hole must have been ten, fifteen foot deep and apparently we was told there was one dropped at the side of Waddington Church which demolished part of the church when it went off.
DE: Yeah.
KT: You might find that out from any old people at Waddington.
DE: No, that’s the bombing at Waddington is quite, quite well known about.
KT: Is it? Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Well, we got to know about it.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. And all right through the war there was a red flashing light on the Waddington hilltop so that was where the planes would find it. And Coleby Church was a very high spire about two miles from Waddington. There was always a red flashing light on that so that our own planes didn’t crash in to the spire. I suppose there must have been one on the Cathedral but I can’t remember seeing that from memory. They wouldn’t want any planes crashing into the towers —
DE: Definitely not.
KT: Of the Cathedral would they?
DE: Definitely not. Okay. So you sort of said half in passing that you played a lot of sport and a lot of cricket.
KT: Yes.
DE: Yeah. Do you want to talk to me a bit about that?
KT: I started, I started to knock about with the cricket bat at Doddington when I was seven or eight I suppose and I was always interested in that. During the wartime there was a, Doddington kept the cricket team going for well I think right through the war because all the farm workers all strong blokes they were all good at playing cricket and I can remember going to watch them one night. This, this Army lorry from RAF Skellingthorpe pulls up into the field and a big canvas van. Eleven or twelve of these airmen got out and one chap was as black as the ace of spades and for an eight or nine year old lad I’d never seen a coloured person. Shiny black skin. Anyway, they, Doddington batted and this chap measured his run out about twenty five yard run, come running in and our batsman never saw the ball and apparently his name was Edwin St Hill. He was a test bowler from, played for the West Indies. And a lot of good cricketers Freddie Trueman he was stationed at Hemswell apparently.
DE: Oh right. Okay.
KT: In the RAF. Maurice Leyland from Yorkshire and England, opening bat from Yorkshire. He was stationed in one of the airfields around about. So, you know there was quite a lot of good sportsmen about. I can’t, I think I’ve heard of another chap who was in the RAF but I can’t tell you his name. But I never forgot this black man from the West Indies. And then when I got to be eleven years old I started to play in the Doddington. Got into the team and started to hold my own. Just bowled a bit slower to start with.
DE: Right.
KT: I was eleven or twelve and when they found out they couldn’t get me out by the time I was thirteen or fourteen I was just as good as the others and getting as many runs.
DE: Fantastic.
KT: I went to play at Lea, Lea near Gainsborough. And on one Sunday afternoon that made fifty not out. So that was the start of my career and I carried on with Doddington and in 1952 Hartsholme, a good club side in Lincoln were short and I went and play for them at Woodhall and got a rapid fifty in my first innings. Fifty not out and that, that led me to be a member of the Hartsholme Club for the following year. And within four years of playing for them the county got interested in me sent me to Trent Bridge for coaching and within four years I was playing for the county side.
DE: Fantastic.
KT: Yeah. First century I scored was playing for the Hartsholme club side against Forest amateurs when I put a hundred and two not out at Trent Bridge.
DE: Wow.
KT: I scored over twenty centuries in my lifetime. Hartsholme I got a century for Lincolnshire. That was the only century I got where I was ever dismissed. All the others were not out. DE: Right. Okay.
KT: The highest one of all was a hundred and fifty two not out playing for Lincs Gents against Burghley Park. So I had a fairly successful season. A career at cricket.
DE: Yeah.
KT: At seventy eight I decided I’d started to play golf and I soon got very good at golf so I packed up cricket and played for Lincoln Golf Club at Torksey. And when I was fifty five I got into the county seniors team. Played off six handicap below for twenty years. So I was just naturally gifted. A good timer of the ball and if you’ve got that natural gift it’s a big help.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Where the natural gift came from I can’t tell you but I always enjoyed the cricket and football. It was part of my life.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Mind you working hard on the farm all the week you looked forward to a bit of relaxation.
DE: Something to do yeah at the weekend.
KT: All work and no play was what they said was made a dull boy. So I was never dull.
DE: Excellent. Yeah. And this was all when you were working on the farm because you came to own the farm. Yeah.
KT: Yes. In the end.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yes. Yeah. And when I was thirteen or fourteen we always used to thatch the stacks in the wintertime to keep the wet off so that all the corn was dry.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And at eighteen I’d thatched this, this stack and made a nice neat job. Trimmed it around the bottom and a rep came in and he said to my uncle, ‘Who’s done the stack?’ He said, ‘Oh it’s my nephew there. He’s only eighteen. He’s done that.’ Seventeen or eighteen at the time. ‘He’s done that.’ And without me knowing he went off. There was a local thatching comp, ploughing, [plashing] and thatching competition up at Whisby and they came and I got second prize in the junior section.
DE: Wow.
KT: Well, that whetted my appetite so I took a lot more attention to detail and when I was twenty [pause] twenty one I won the junior section but then that’s the photograph of the stack up there.
DE: Okay. Right. I might have to take a photo of that.
KT: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Before I go. Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Well, it’s in, but the one thing you’ve got to be careful about is not to get the Lincolnshire Echo bit across the top.
DE: Right.
KT: Because it’s copyright isn’t it?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.
KT: I mean that shows that stack on the, and the report’s on the side so he said to do that a bit cross fingered.
DE: Right. Fair enough. fair enough. Okay.
KT: I don’t think there’s many people around from 1955 is there that’s going to pick that up?
DE: No. I mean the Echo’s archived. I know we’ve got copies of them.
KT: Well, we tried to get a copy in, of it says 1955. September, I think. We went there. They weren’t prepared to look for one for me.
DE: Oh, okay.
KT: So disappointing.
DE: So you’ve always been quite competitive then.
KT: Yes. I always enjoyed the sport. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. [pause] I suppose the one thing which we haven’t played on was mentioned is all the amount of aircraft prior to the start of the war. There was the Bristol Blenheims, Airspeed Oxford, the Lockheed Lightning. That impressed me. That was very similar to the Vampire. Twin fuselages. Just one engine in the middle and it was, it was the fastest plane in the sky. The Lockheed Lightning was. So we were told at that time. And then towards the end of the war when the jet engines came on to the scene there was the Vampire and the Meteor. The Meteor. And they did ops from Wigsley to Swinderby. Up and down practising landing and that and one of the Meteors crashed into a house in Harby village. Killed one or two people.
DE: Oh dear.
KT: I can’t think of anything else. I think soon after the end of the war all the Lancasters, they closed Skellingthorpe airfield where the Lancasters all went to I’ll never know.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I think there’s, is there one at at Winthorpe? In the museum. Or is that the Vulcan? No. It’s the Vulcan isn’t it there?
DE: Yeah. There’s, there’s the one with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and there’s another one at East Kirkby.
KT: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I intend to go to the East Kirkby sometime or other.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. You should. It’s good.
KT: Yeah.
DE: They’ve got a Mosquito there as well now.
KT: Have they?
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Oh that, that was a pre-war plane. Twin engine the Mosquitoes aren’t they? They were quite —
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Quite rapid. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: From memory. The Lockheed Lightning was the one that’s I always loved to see with the twin fuselage.
DE: Twin booms yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. I think I’ve crossed off lots of things on my list here so you know do you want to tell me a bit about your, your life on the farm post-war and some of your successes?
KT: Post war.
DE: I mean it seems to me there’s so much that has happened around here after the war.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Well, I’ve mentioned on the DVD about the party at the end of the war on VE Day. Victory in Europe. That was a big relief that was. And during the wartime and after the war all the farmers they all helped one another which on a thrashing day you wanted about eight or ten men so you all came from the various farms and switched to help one another. The community spirit then was just unbelievable. I know I’ve mentioned in the DVD about the whist drives when I was twelve years old. The whist drives at the end of the war. There was one at Doddington one Thursday night, Harby the next week, Eagle the next and people came on bikes. There was no transport. Everywhere you went on bikes. I mean I biked from Doddington to Aisthorpe one night to play cricket.
DE: Right. Okay.
KT: Which is twelve miles.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And you thought nothing of it you know. There was no other mode of transport so you set off. It took you a fair while but you got there and you played. You did a hard days work, biked twelve miles, played the game of cricket and biked back.
DE: Wow.
KT: I suppose I’d be ready to go to sleep [laughs] when I got back.
DE: I expect so. Yeah.
KT: Kids won’t go five yards now will they without being taken in a car.
DE: I know. No.
KT: A different world altogether. No. Farming. When I left school in 1950 we were still doing most of the work was chopping sugar beet out by hand, hand picking potatoes. Harvesting was all done by hand. Cutting the stack and the sheaves after the binder and leading them and stacking them on the [unclear] them on the [unclear] load at night and teaming them because in those days September was when you did most of the harvest and the, the weather then was so much different to what it is now. Virtually the whole of the September we always considered the best month of the year. You got foggy mornings. By half past nine the sun had got up. All the fog had cleared and you’d get three wagon loads of sheaves at night. So you could put those up the elevator and put them into the stack. By half past eleven or so you’d got them in the stack and then you went off [unclear] before lunchtime and there was enough of us to have two people in the field fetching the sheaves in. Three of us in the yard. One team in. One stacking and one taking the sheaves away, stacking the sheaves around and building the stacks up.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Which was quite a skill. I mean I started to be what they called a binder taking the sheaves from the elevator and my uncle as he was stacking around the outside went around and around. Then I put what they called binders it’s like putting slates on a roof. One sheaf overlaps the others to tie them in to stop them falling apart. And then I think when I got to be about sixteen I started to do the stacking around the side. And there is, there is a big skill in that. You only, you only to get to know that with the experience of doing it. You know, if you’re stacking what as the stack goes up and if you, if you’ve gained that much from four feet down when you get the weight of this the sheaves on the top that area goes to there. So that doubles the angle of it going out. Do you see where I’m coming from.
DE: Yeah.
KT: So you’ve got to keep them only just showing a little bit [unclear] you’ve got the nice shape look at the bottom.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: And it’s you’ve got to go out like that so when the rain comes off the thatch it drops clear of the sheaves in the —
DE: Yeah.
KT: Walls. Yeah.
DE: So that’s why it’s at that angle at the bottom.
KT: That’s it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. Of course, there’s none of that now. It’s just —
KT: No.
DE: It’s just baled and —
KT: It was a sad day when I remember going to a dance at Skellingthorpe one Saturday night. I would be eighteen or nineteen probably. No, I’d be a bit older than that and there was a bright frosty moonlight night when I came back on my bike down the drive and the [rime] on this, on this thatch the golden colour of the straw was like the domes in India when you see these yellow [pause] it’s a pity I never had a camera then because that was once. Once in a lifetime.
DE: Wow.
KT: All, all this straw just showed the golden tops.
DE: Yeah.
KT: With the frost on it. Yeah. [pause] I’m trying to think what else might be of interest to you.
DE: No, I’m just thinking that you’ve seen some changes because I mean you know when you were a little lad there wasn’t the, there wasn’t the airfield at RAF Skellingthorpe was there? And then that was built. And then that closed. And now of course it’s, it’s the housing estate.
KT: Yes. Yeah.
DE: When did that, when was that built?
KT: It would start in the [pause] I think Birchwood was started somewhere the mid-60s possibly. I can’t, I can’t when I first played when I first got my first car to go and play cricket at Hartsholme I used to go across the main runway of the airfield. The nearest way to the Skellingthorpe Road to get to the ground.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And then when they started to build on it you could still get across. And then they took all the runways up. Crushed them up for hard core for making probably the A1 when they did the dual carriageway of the roads. A big demand for aggregate.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: I remember seeing it and the, now then that that plan we can come to that plan because apparently the second frying pan down there is just across the road from Damon‘s. It’s still, still there. They left one frying pan.
DE: Oh right. Okay.
KT: Did you know that?
DE: I know there’s a few bits left.
KT: Yeah.
DE: But yeah.
KT: The main thing which sorry Pete which that’s not on the for those who had failed to return there were six seventy two thousand gallon fuel tanks in the, that’s where they were look. Marked it out there. If you wanted to take this and if you want a copy of this photograph it. Now, we’ve always been puzzled since the war. How did they get the fuel to those tanks?
DE: Yes. Right. Okay. I’ve got you.
KT: For this. I mean there was what twenty odd planes flying from everywhere out most nights. There weren’t a lot of fuel. And we’ve discovered my patent agent, I’ve got several patents and he’s, he was interested in this. He went on, you’ll probably have to do the same and we found out you know the railway crossing down Doddington Road?
DE: Yes.
KT: To the left, about a quarter of a mile to the left there was a siding. He found a map which show where there was a siding came off and the fuel had come with tankers on this siding. The tankers that took the fuel around to their planes on the ‘drome and you could see them clearly all the day backwards and forwards. We think they must have left the fuel from those tankers in the siding and put them in to the six seventy two thousand.
DE: Right. Okay. Yeah.
KT: They were well hidden. All covered over with soil.
DE: Yeah.
KT: But they’ve all been removed.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And taken away.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. No that is interesting because yeah it’s marks as —
KT: But you see, Mick. You’ll know Mick Connack won’t you?
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Who’s done the Skellingthorpe site.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And he said they’ve walked around the bomb dump but there’s no mention. You see I’m probably the only person alive that knows about them.
DE: Fuel storage.
KT: Fuel storage there.
DE: Oh okay.
KT: But we was quite pleased when we found this siding because you had to link one thing with another.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Don’t you. Common sense to —
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
KT: We knew there was no one well nobody I’ve asked various people around about we couldn’t find an underground fuel supply.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Now when they play golf at Torksey there’s a fuel supply pipe goes underground from the Gainsborough side going across towards Newark. Now, whether the fuel was coming from Gainsborough going to Swinderby or Winthorpe or something like that we don’t know but there’s certainly a fuel pipe underground.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. But not necessarily here. That’s interesting.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So how did you feel when they started to, you know rip up the runways and build houses on it?
KT: Well, I can’t. I mean it was progress wasn’t it? I remember them saying on the wireless or on radio Look North probably one night they said the Hartsholme, the Birchwood Estate was going to be the biggest estate in the country. Housing estate. Was there six hundred houses originally planned? Early days. There’s a lot more than that now isn’t there because I think they’ve more or less stopped building now haven’t they?
DE: I think they have there. Yeah. Yeah.
KT: I don’t think they’ve much room left. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. And then there was the ’46 the bypass was put in as well.
KT: Yeah. The bypass. That was ’80, ’82 I think. Damon‘s restaurant was opened in ’85. We have done a bit of research on that. After the, after the war the City Council purchased the airfield from, from the Ministry of what did they call them?
DE: Ministry of Defence. Yeah.
KT: The government. The government wasn’t it? The government. Yeah. They bought the airfield from the government but it was all farmland before the war you see. Stones Place Farm. We, we got to know the game keeper. The [pause] from the, from the Hartsholme Estate and they used to come around what’s now the perimeter of the farm belt and the wood at the back of it. Hospital Plantation I think. They put long nets around there at night after harvest time and they’d get two or three hundred rabbits. There were so many rabbits in those days.
DE: Yeah.
KT: We would have got, I mean we every time you finished an harvest field cutting with the sheaves the gamekeepers used to come with the twelve bore and a gun. When you get to the middle all the rabbits come out. It was nothing for us to get twenty, thirty, forty rabbits from the middle of a field.
DE: Right.
KT: Just scores and scores of them. Every wood was full of rabbit. And if you went out in the car at night it was aim to run over, blinded them in the lights run over them with your car and try to kill them off. But when myxomatosis came I remember going to Skegness playing cricket once and I went past a field Wragby way just between Wragby and Horncastle and there must have been thirty or forty rabbits. They’d had come out of the wood across the main road onto the grass field at the side. Of course, when they got myxomatosis they can’t see can they? They’re blind.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Hopping around and people had run over them to put them out of their misery because they do suffer when they’ve got it.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I shall think of no end of things when you’ve gone.
DE: Oh, of course you will. Yeah. Do you want to tell me a bit more about your, your farming and I know you’re quite keen to talk about that.
KT: Yes, I mean the biggest change was to start with when we got rid of the horses and got one or two, got a little David Brown tractor on the farm. That meant you could, you could do more work in a day with with a tractor and the power then. I got a corn drill that drilled corn and fertilizer at the same time. That helped increase the yields because there was no fertilizer on the farm when I was young. Only the [unclear] manure from the cattle that went to feed the plants. And as, as a [pause] I find it difficult because of my age to put this into some form of pattern for you. We started, it would be mid, late ‘50s when I started to get fertiliser and drill with the corn. That increased the yields quite a lot because you got more plant food available.
DE: Yeah.
KT: But —
DE: Yeah.
KT: And then we started and got a combine in 1956. There’s a photograph of me up the drive here with a combine. A [flash] combine. Self-propelled combine. So that all the hard work that was in the harvest field all was taken away because all your corn was put in sacks.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And then when you got a self-propelled combine it came out of the spout into the trailers and we had to get a proper, to convert the cart shed into a proper grain store.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Where you could dry the grain on the floor. On the floor for drying as they called it.
DE: Yeah. And I suppose you got balers as well.
KT: We had to get a Bailey, yeah. Yes.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. The Dutch and the new Dutch barn which I put up in ’70, 1977 I think because we’d got about nine thousand bales of straw and hay and no means of keeping it dry. So we put six telegraph poles, we got all the telegraph poles off the side of Waddington Hill. From the bottom of the hill right up to the Grantham Road. Bought those off a referee friend of mine for a pound each and put them in the ground and put the roof on the Dutch barn.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And we could, we stacked, put the posts in the ground. Six posts each side. Stacked the bales up to the about twelve fourteen foot high and then stood on the bales to put the frame for the roof on.
DE: The frame of the roof. Yeah.
KT: No health and safety men about in those days.
DE: No. No.
KT: But it worked and thats —
DE: Yeah.
KT: That building is still there to this day.
DE: And that’s yeah that’s just because you’re not you’re no longer doing the —
KT: The thatching.
DE: The thatching, yeah.
KT: When the, when they started to combine there’s no sheaves.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And no stacks or anything. It was a sad day really because it was something everybody took a pride in. In putting the sheaves in straight lines. It was hard work but you you just took it on you know.
DE: Yeah.
KT: There was nothing, no other way. You just accepted it and got on with it.
DE: Yeah. I know as you said the other difference is the tractor and then.
KT: Yeah. The tractor and then.
DE: With more horse power.
KT: Yes.
DE: That’s when you can start doing the things like subsoiling.
KT: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: That we were talking about earlier yeah.
KT: Yeah. That was a big step forward when I found out from, “Arable Farm” was a magazine we used to get once a month and they did a lot of experimental work and I was always keen to read that every month it came out. And we got a [tomb] drill. They found out in Finland that if they drilled the fertilizer instead of down the same spout as the grain put the fertilizer down as a separate spout about four inches deeper than the grain. As soon as the grain starts to grow the roots naturally go down and with by the time they’ve been growing about a fortnight they’re plant food which gives them a better, more strength and higher yields.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And there’s still a [tomb] drill in Hughes’ shed at Jerusalem to this day.
DE: Right.
KT: Harold Hughes, he was always if I was doing any work on the side of the road here he would always stop. ‘Now what are you doing? What are you doing?’ Because I got the reputation of being the first. I was always experimenting and all the time. I was always trying to get better. If you can eliminate a mistake all you end up with is an improvement isn’t it?
DE: Yeah.
KT: Whatever you are doing.
DE: Yeah.
KT: You put out a fault you get better.
DE: Did you, I mean it’s easier to talk about when you were successful. Did you have any times when it went wrong?
KT: I made mistakes. I will admit. I sprayed the strawberries once with some Betanal and it they always said if you spray Betanal you don’t do it when it’s going to be frosty at night. And that was on the sugar beet. It could damage the sugar beet when they were little plants and I sprayed this Betanal on the strawberries but they was big plants. It didn’t kill them but it damaged them and I lost quite a bit of yield. So that was a mistake. I never made that mistake again.
DE: As long as you’re learning from them.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Yeah, I mean if you want me to go through the strawberry season. I mean —
DE: Oh yeah. Yeah. That would be interesting. Yeah.
KT: Well, I found out that [pause] I came down one Saturday afternoon and I decided that if you could ridge the soil up for sugar beet on sandy land you got a lot of you drilled the sugar beet and it was flat and it would blow and it would be drift and it would cut the sugar beet off when the plants got got strong winds. And I thought well if I can ridge this soil up and drill the beet on top of the soil then when it comes through it’s not flat to drift. But not only did you drift it up like that you increased the depth of the quality soil under the seed.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And that, that made me, I got a lot of praise for that because it had got higher yields and I think if you look on that DVD it shows I was getting ten tonne, ten tonne hectare more than the average around the factory. It was all due to the ploughing the fertiliser down.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And getting the, if the plant food’s down in dry weather the roots go down to the plant food. When it dries out that’s the last place to dry out. So you know I was always searching for what if it was plant, leaf feeders and that sort of thing. Trace elements is very important and I was only talking to some friends a couple of days ago, I played cricket. To start with the first sign said of how important lime was with some sugar beet and I was only very young going to school. This sugar beet came through and it was yellow and we got some advice and it wanted four tonne of lime to the acre. We were short of lime. But we were told to put two tonne on this year and two tonne next. Go from one extreme to the other. Too fast and the crop can’t compete. So we did that and I mean I played cricket on several years later on the Ruston Hornsby ground on the Newark Road which I’ve mentioned and went to field the ball on the boundary and where they’d marked the football pitches out with the lime, the burned lime for the line.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Each side of that the grass was green and that told me that the Ph level of that soil was right. It had washed the lime down and the roots of the grass was deeper down and had to get enough moisture just to keep green.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: I was talking to some friends a couple of nights ago from the cricket club and they said that the same thing now all where it had gone to the sports field where they marked the pitch, the white lines out with lime. It’s, it’s they’ve seen it so it shows how important lime is. Particularly in this climate change now.
DE: Yeah.
KT: It’s going to get —
DE: So it’s tiny little things that totally change the balance.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You see nowadays there’s all the farmlands is deficient in sulphur. Now in the wartime when there was coal fires you got your natural sulphur fall out on to the, on to, on foggy days. You never get any fogs now because there’s no sulphur particles going up from smoke from coal fires. Now, sulphur not only is it a trace element it also works as a fungicide. A fungicide, put on a spray fungicides on corn and that to keep the diseases off. The first when I started to grow all my cereals on contract for seed. [Pages] was the plant breeding station at Billingborough I think. The other side of Sleaford. And I went to see these trials and they’d sprayed the the trials, the winter wheat trials with sulphur and that was to keep used it as a fungicide. But now there’s no, no such smoke from coal fires. All the manufacturers are putting sulphur in the fertiliser to correct the imbalance so all people’s lawns [pause] have you got a good lawn at home?
DE: No. I wouldn’t call it good.
KT: No. No.
DE: It’s grass but —
KT: All the lawns around about are poor because they’re short of sulphur and the Ph is, there’s no depth of root. So I’ve always worked. I’ve always been a big user of fertiliser. If any plant, you look after the plant and it looks after you. It’s as simple as that as far as I’m concerned.
DE: The trick is knowing what it needs isn’t it, I guess.
KT: Well, yes. You can do soil tests you see for analysis.
DE: Yeah.
KT: And like I said with the, with the strawberry plants the spray rep, he used to, as soon as the plant started to grow take the small new leaves off. Send them away to a laboratory and do what they called a tissue test. And they come back it tells you. They know what trace elements a strawberry plant needs to give the best results. And if it was, if it was above the level required I mean magnesium was, was quite short on one but of course we got a lot of cow muck from the neighbouring dairy farm. [unclear] on the farm. A lot of magnesium in that. And so that, no. No, copper. If you recycled the straw back into the land it keeps the copper levels right. So they’re all, they’re all forty or fifty parts per million they probably only want but if they’ve got ten they’re thirty short.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: Which is a big amount isn’t it?
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
KT: It’s quite technical to go into this but with the strawberry, with the strawberry leaves it told you what they want and then the advisor that was looking after me told me what to put in the fertiliser. What trace [unclear] are needed to spray on the leaves. And that’s why we got the reputation. We got the reputation of the best strawberries in the country. Which is something to be proud of isn’t it?
DE: Definitely. Yeah.
KT: What have we got from these?
DE: I think, I think we’ve —
KT: Well, I could go on forever and a day but you know just to catch me like that you need a bit of time and a bit of preparation. That’s the [pause] that’s the bypass. No. I’ve got it the wrong way around. That’s, that’s the bypass down near Damon‘s.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Comes across the road there. Ah, now in the wartime because this main runway came over the road there where are we? No. This one. That came over the road. There’s the start. That’s where Damon‘s is.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Came over the road. There was an eight foot wall built in the woods down there to stop any cars or anything and a lot of people that worked from Skellingthorpe worked at Hykeham Malleable they used to go to work on a bike.
DE: Yeah.
KT: So they had to get off the bike, carry the bike around the wood to get around the wall and then —
DE: Oh right. Okay. Yeah.
KT: If there were any planes taking off they would let them get past, I suppose. They wouldn’t bike down the road.
DE: Yeah. Give way to the aircraft.
KT: Yeah.
DE: We’d always advise. Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
[pause]
DE: Yeah, it has really changed hasn’t it?
KT: It has. Yeah. Have you seen that, Pete?
Other: Yeah.
KT: I want to get a few more of those photocopied.
DE: Yeah. I’m just going to press the button on here for a minute.
KT: Yeah.
DE: We can start recording again if you think of something.
[recording paused]
DE: So we’re recording again and we’re going to talk about landing lights.
KT: The landing lights for the east west runway. There was three posts across the ground and they came with the subsoil and subsoil the wiring where it came on to the farm from or not but they would have come from the control tower so that they could switch the lights on. There was three on the farm, two on the next farm and when I played cricket for Doddington there was one in the cricket fields about ten yards off the square and if the cricket ball hit this this fenced off post you got two runs. That was, that was directly in the line with the western, east west runway so that when the planes were coming in, coming in at night they could. They wouldn’t need them to take-off would they? The lights. The landing lights.
DE: No, it’s you know when they’re coming back. I mean before —
KT: Yes.
DE: They had those lights there would be some poor erk out with a truck and —
KT: Yes. Yeah.
DE: A paraffin lamp.
KT: Yeah.
DE: Lighting the little —
KT: Yeah. You see we never got many strong winds from the east so the planes, the Lancasters never, I can’t ever remember one coming in against a strong east wind to land on the east west runway. They was all taking off over the fields and they would be no more than fifteen or twenty foot high the Lancasters when they were taken out. They’d put their hand up and you’d wave to them when you was working in the fields. They’d all wave back to you.
DE: Wow.
KT: Which was a nice thing to happen when you was that young.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Waving to the crews. And I’ve told the story about Decoy Farm. One of my friends he, his auntie and uncles lived there and there always used to be a card school there on a Saturday night and they said it was often sad. You know they have a regular card school for three or four Saturday nights and then the next Saturday night there would be two changes. Two fresh airmen would come and two had been shot down and lost their lives.
DE: Oh dear.
KT: So that was a bit of a turmoil for them to put up with as a young lad because he was about my age. I remember his aunties and uncles telling me that story. And Bob Scarborough he’s a bit older than me farmed at Skellingthorpe. He tells the story about there being a crash somewhere and there was human remains in a tree somewhere. Have you heard of that Pete?
Other: I have.
KT: Yeah. I mean Bob’s ninety four or five now. I don’t think he’s very well so not worth, fair to sort of go and ask him.
DE: Fair enough.
KT: To contribute on that side of it.
DE: I don’t think we’ve got the jam story on the tape either.
KT: Haven’t you?
DE: No, I don’t think so.
KT: Oh, about the strawberry jam.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Didn’t I mention it earlier when I said about Joe Alsopp?
DE: I don’t think it was recording.
KT: Wasn’t it? Oh sorry. The one of the things in the early part of the war while all the soldiers were across at the searchlight they used to go over to Tuxford for the rations every once or twice a week and the one of the soldiers Joe Alsopp whose name was I remember him from Notting, a chap from Nottingham used to come and stay with my Auntie Stella at nights when we were listening to the radio. There was no telly or anything in those days and he said they’d got fed up with strawberry jam. They was going to bury it in the wood. So we told him not to bury it. Bring it to us. And we ended up with three or four tins of strawberry jam and what I can’t understand I mean I always went to school with, with jam sandwiches and we all, my mother used to get pineapple jam sandwiches. Pineapple jam.
DE: Right.
KT: Now, where this pineapple jam came from, whether it was made in this country but I’ve always been a lover of pineapple but the strawberry jam was good.
DE: And there’s a bit of weird circularity with the starting out with eating strawberry jam and then being successful at growing them.
KT: Growing them towards the end. Yeah. I suppose. I never connected that up but I can remember him saying one night when he got out the Army he wanted to go over to South Africa and grow tobacco.
DE: Oh right.
KT: That was one of this aims. We never never, we lost track you see when when they moved on.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Never had more communication with him whatsoever so whether he fulfilled that ambition or what I don’t know.
DE: Yeah.
KT: I haven’t got into pig killing if you do want to know anything.
DE: You can, you can tell me about that. Yeah.
KT: Yeah. Well, in the, in the wartime I mean when meat and everything was rationed we always used to kill two pigs. One in November for the family and one in March and they were about twenty five stone so there was plenty. Never short of meat for breakfast. Cold boiled bacon at breakfast every morning. So we were, and it was my delight when I was old enough when you killed a pig my uncle used to, he had a licence to kill pigs in the wartime. Early part of the war he used to pull the pig‘s head and stick them in the throat. And then the government somebody said it wasn’t humane. So then he had to go and get a little stun gun, put a little cartridge then fire this tube into the brain to knock them out and then bleed them when they was laid down. As soon as he got them on the two wheeled flat cratch to scald them to scrape the hair and the scurf off I used to, my first job when I was about seven or eight was pull their toe nails off. And there was a proper little handle with a little hook on the end. They showed me how to push this hook under the the toenail and work it from side to side and loosen. When you’d got it loosened you give it one sharp pull and I was thrilled to bits with all these pigs’ toe nails off. But for a young lad I’d actually achieved something on my own. We was always trying to do something like that. Something that showed your strength and keener and enthusiasm I suppose.
DE: Yeah.
KT: To do it. Yeah. And Boxing Days in those days was always ferreting rabbits. Go around with ferrets for rabbits and the gamekeeper used to go every Boxing Day morning when I was young and it was my job to handle the ferrets. A little box and a strap over your shoulders. Walk around and you’d come to the rabbit hole. All the hedgerows were full of rabbit holes.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Put the ferret in. Put the ferret in and if he, if he didn’t bolt the rabbit and he got to a rabbit and got eaten then you, know. You’d put the doe ferret in. the female ferret and she would flush them out and if she got down then you had to put the buck ferret in with a collar and a line on. So then you had when you had to dig a hole where the line went from the ferret to find and see which way he had gone.
DE: Right. Okay.
KT: That’s something you probably didn’t know.
DE: No. No. I thought you know I thought they just came straight back out again.
KT: No. You see some of the rabbits was at the dead end so if they, and they’d get tucked up at the end of the burrows and they couldn’t [pause] So the doe rabbit would start to eat the ferret from the back. From its back end. And then once it was eating the meat then it didn’t bother to come out again. It wouldn’t come back.
DE: Right.
KT: But they went in and if they bolted the ferret, the rabbits out you see and they’d come back out the hole to you. Then you moved on to the next rabbit hole.
DE: Oh, I see. Right. Okay.
KT: But it was the buck ferret that went in to find her and then you followed the line. You had to dig a hole about every two foot down to find the hole and you’d put your arm down to see which line the line went and then decide where you was going to dig the hole. You had to keep doing that every two foot until you got to the, to the rabbit.
DE: Crikey.
KT: Down the hole. That was hard work digging.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Holes like that.
DE: The hedgerow with all the roots and stuff.
KT: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve told you the story about the rookery haven’t I?
DE: Rookery?
KT: The rookery.
DE: No. You haven’t, no.
KT: Well, the farm, the long plantation between the farm and the Lincoln Road there was about a hundred and twenty rook nests about every spring and so on the second, 14th of May that was the date when they was just coming out of the nests. So it would be about ten or twelve guns. We’d walk up and down. Walk from one end of the wood to the other and the rooks had just come out their nests so they couldn’t fly see. You shot the rooks and picked them up. We’d get two or three hundred rooks out of these, these nests. And then the following morning the following day we had rook pie for dinner. Now that was a different flavour. Nice and tender. And the following day all the gravy that was in the bottom of this rook pie turned to jelly. We had it cold for breakfast the next morning. Fried potatoes. And rook was different to cold boiled bacon.
DE: Aye. Wow. Okay.
KT: Yeah. That happened for two weeks and by the time you’d got to the next week they could all have come out of their nests and they could all fly so you didn’t get a chance to shoot them when they could all fly.
DE: So that’s a thing that doesn’t happen anymore either does it? Yeah.
KT: No. No. No. No. There’s not the same number of birds about. There is a few rooks about but nothing.
DE: No.
KT: It’s sad really. The change of farming. All the Yellowhammers and all the other birds we don’t get because of the global warming. We don’t get the winter visitors like Siskins and Waxwings, Redpolls, Redwings. What was the other main one? And every winter when you was working in the fields you’d, you’d be working away cleaning the food for the cattle and that and you’d hear the wild geese. Proper sort of flying south. And if you saw them flying south that was an indication there was some cold weather.
DE: Yeah.
KT: They was, they was weather forecasters the wild geese was. You never hear them now because we don’t get the cold weather you see.
DE: I’m trying to think. I saw some flying over my house the other yeah at some point but yeah.
KT: What just recently?
DE: No.
KT: No.
DE: I’m trying got think what it was and if it —
KT: Well, you heard them before you saw them.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Because they was always honking while they was flying.
DE: Yeah.
KT: They were going from north to south. You see it was so cold in those days that the winters was was sometimes it would be freezing all day long. Down to minus twenty degrees of frost in the middle of the night lots of days. And I mean there was ice on ponds from the middle of December right through to the middle of February when it started to become a bit warmer and it started to rain. Rains coming. So global warming as far as I’m concerned is just where they say one and a half degrees you know above normal I mean it’s massive. It’s, I would say the the winters are probably ten or fifteen degrees warmer now than what they used to be.
DE: Yeah. Because didn’t you were say about something freezing over and the teacher testing it and walking on it.
KT: Oh the schoolteacher.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yes. At school. At the back of the school a big pond and she would go. We weren’t not allowed as kids seven or eight years old we weren’t allowed to go on it until she had cracked it. If she stood up and it cracked that was it. It was danger. And she’d go again the following day after there had been more frost and put her foot and if it, if you could see it bending, if it bends it bears. If it cracks it swears. And if it cracked you weren’t allowed on it.
DE: Yeah.
KT: But once it had beared you’d would be two or three months because it never melted again. It was so cold during the day.
DE: Wow.
KT: And at night. Sometimes freeze all day. So this global warming is you know did you see Simon Reeve last night in America?
DE: I didn’t. No.
KT: Did you see it?
Other: I didn’t. No.
KT: It’s brilliant. This global warming it is, it is bloody serious. There’s millions and millions of acres over there and all the icebergs and all the snow up on the mountains are melting isn’t it and it’s flooding areas. Theres’s millions of acres now under water because all this frozen ice and snow coming down and the rivers can’t cope.
DE: No. I watched David Attenborough last night and he was showing glaciers in Antarctica which are doing the same thing.
KT: Yes. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
Other: Right. I’m just going to get some [stone] I’ll be back.
DE: Okey dokey.
KT: Yeah.
DE: I think seeing as we are now talking about the environment and global warming I’ll —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Keith Toule
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-10-03
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:19:36 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ATouleK221003, PTouleK2201
Description
An account of the resource
Keith was five at the start of the war and lived in a farm adjoining the airfield at RAF Skellingthorpe. He describes the airfield and how the trees were cut down in the farm belt. The airfield was closed soon after the war, bought by the City Council and was later turned into the Birchwood housing estate in the mid-1960s.
Keith recalls preparations for war as well as the many aircraft he observed before, during and after the war (Blenheims, Oxfords, Lightnings, Vampires, Meteors, Sterlings and Lancasters). On D-Day Keith witnessed, from the playground at Doddington School, some of the C-47s towing gliders on their way to France.
There were four separate wartime crashes: a Hampden, a Wellington, a Manchester and a Lancaster. A low-flying Ju 88 was also shot down by fighters. Incendiary bombs were dropped at the bottom of the farm. Keith also recollects the impact of two time-bombs.
There were very bad snowstorms in 1947. Life was hard on the farm during the war and the work was all manual, picking potatoes and sugar beet. Some German prisoners of war, stationed at Waterloo Lane in Skellingthorpe, helped to pick potatoes. In 1952 the farm acquired electricity and mains water although they still used the hand pump for drinking water. Keith had success in some thatching competitions. He eventually owned the farm, which became increasingly mechanised. Keith increased yields through experimentation, having particular success with strawberries.
Keith remembers playing sport and describes the impact of climate change.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942
1944
1945
1944-06
1947
1952
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincoln
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
50 Squadron
61 Squadron
animal
C-47
childhood in wartime
crash
Hampden
home front
incendiary device
Ju 88
Lancaster
Manchester
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
prisoner of war
RAF Skellingthorpe
searchlight
sport
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2223/39869/ABuxtonAG220823.1.mp3
5d29db5ab6d80c540b94f6fe7e7beacc
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buxton, Alan George
A G Buxton
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Alan Buxton (- 2023, Royal Australian Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator in 617 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-23
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Buxton, AG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JH: Hello. This is John Horsburgh. I’m here today in Northern Sydney. It’s the 23rd of August 2022 and I have the pleasure of interviewing Alan Buxton here for the IBCC Archives. Good afternoon, Alan.
AB: Good afternoon, John.
JH: Thanks. Thanks for making the time and we’ve just had a brief chat and I think we’re in for an interesting interview here. Why don’t we start off Alan by telling me where you hail from, a bit about your childhood and maybe a bit about your parents?
AB: Yes.
JH: Let’s start. Let’s start there.
AB: I was born in Parramatta on the 4th of December 1920.
JH: You’re an Eels supporter then, are you? Parramatta Eels.
AB: Well, I should be but I —
JH: Yeah.
AB: I’m not all that, you know feisty about different teams you know.
JH: Yes.
AB: Having a favourite team and that sort of thing.
JH: Yes. So did you grow up in Parramatta?
AB: I grew up, yeah my, my, my grandfather owned the Royal Hotel on the corner of Church Street and the Great Western Highway and my father worked in the hotel when he left school. He went to King’s School at Parramatta and he worked for his dad and we lived in Campbell Street, Parramatta. That wasn’t that far away from the —
JH: Yeah.
AB: From the hotel. And my other grandfather, my mother’s father he was the, he was close by at the hotel and he was a produce merchant.
JH: Yes.
AB: His name was William Walter Webb. I, I attended when I was five years of age Parramatta Public School. A little primary school and when I did start there the custom was in those days you had to write with your right hand. If you didn’t write with your right, if you picked up the pen or your slate pencil thing with your left hand teachers would come along and rap you over your knuckles with a ruler. But my mother was a bit sharp and she got a doctor’s letter to stay that I was a left hander and I wasn’t to be made to write right handed. And she produced that to the headmaster and I never ever got a hit on the knuckles because of that letter that my mother submitted to the Head. Lived in Parramatta until I was about six years of age and my dad, we moved to central Concord when my dad got a job as a vacuum salesman. The Electrolux. And he used to go around to the various houses selling Electrolux machines to, you know the various housewives which was pretty good. He was doing very well. It was quite a, you know it was an innovation and he made, he was quite comfortable. He decided he would open up a [unclear] shop.
JH: What’s that?
AB: Well, it’s now they call them a delicatessen.
JH: Oh yes, okay.
AB: And that, this was in Concord West.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And —
JH: Which is now Homebush I think.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: Near Homebush.
AB: Yeah. That’s right.
JH: Yes. I know.
AB: We were going quite, it was going quite well until the depression started and when people then didn’t have the money to be able to buy delicacies from a [unclear] shop or to have afternoon tea or morning teas at the tables because money was so tight and he went broke. And that was when in 1930 and we had a tough time during the depression years. Dad didn’t have, have a job and eventually the war started and then my dad joined up as soon as war started. Joined up the Army again after having served in the First World War.
JH: In the First World War. Yes.
AB: And he put his age back. He was, in 1939 he was forty two.
JH: Yes.
AB: And he said he was thirty four because you had, in those days you had to be over eighteen and under thirty five to get into the Army. When my dad joined up I thought to myself well I’ll join up too. So I, I went and oh prior to that I had seen an advertisement in the paper that the RAF were requiring volunteers for aircrew and there was a five year training course. So I applied for that and I got interviewed. I did tests. English, maths and I managed to pass all those subjects but when I got to the medical they knocked me back. They said, ‘You’re not fit for flying duties.’ Which was the requirement in those days.
JH: Not because you were left handed I hope.
AB: It wasn’t because I was left-handed. They told me that I, my depth perception wasn’t good enough. I wouldn’t be able to land the aircraft safely. So that was before the war started. It was around about, around about the, towards the end of 1938, early ’39. And then when war started I got a call up by the RAAF and I went through the same rigmarole. Did the tests and the result was I wasn’t fit for flying duties.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Which was the requirement in those days. In the early days. So I said to them, they said, ‘Well, you can come in as ground crew and you might be able to remuster.’ And I said, ‘Oh no. I won’t do that.’ I said, ‘I’ll join the Army instead.’
JH: Yes.
AB: So I went in to the Army.
JH: So Alan what did your father say when he, he found out that you’d joined the Army? Did he know about it?
AB: Well, I I put my age up from nineteen to twenty one and of course you didn’t have to produce your father’s mother’s written permission to join you see. So —
JH: Yeah.
AB: So, he was a bit upset about that but he said, ‘Well, what am I going to do with you son?’ He said, ‘If they put you in the infantry I’m going to tell them how old you are.’ He’s remembering the infantry of the —
JH: First World War.
AB : First World War. How crook it was. Anyhow, when I was inducted into the Survey Regiment he thought well that’s a good idea.
JH: Yes.
AB: You’re not going to be stuck in the in the trenches. He was thinking that’s what it was going to be like. And I, I trained in various camps in Australia. Eventually we went to the Middle East.
JH: By ship I presume.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: By ship.
AB: Oh yes. We —
JH: Yes.
AB: I went [laughs] by yeah by, we went to the Middle East by the first trip that the Queen Elizabeth had done as a troop ship.
JH: Yes.
AB: And when we entered, when, as you enter the ship’s doorway on the side of the ship we were handed a card. Each person got a card and on the card was where you were to be quartered and I got a card which says A deck and then a cabin number.
JH: Yes.
AB: When we eventually found out where this was we went up and got in to, inside this cabin and we had this magnificent cabin my mate, Alan [Sear] and myself and it was a luxurious cabin. We had beds. We had our own toilets and showers, a bathroom in this lovely, this lovely cabin. Anyhow, we went in there and started to unload our our kitbags et cetera and a door opened and in comes Captain Reynolds. Our captain. He said, ‘Oh, you two chaps,’ he said, ‘Repack your goods.’ He said, ‘I’m taking over this cabin.’ So —
JH: It sounded too good to be true in other words.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: It sounded too good to be true.
AB: True. Yeah, he was going to take over.
JH: JH: Yeah.
AB: So we talked amongst ourselves and said, ‘We don’t like the idea of that.’ I said, ‘Why does he get to do that?’ So we went up and found the, the ship’s purser and we told the purser who [pause] what had happened and he, he got upset. He said, ‘I decide where you go. You were given that that cabin.’ He said, ‘You’re going to stay in that cabin.’ And he, he over the loudspeaker he called Captain Reynolds into his office and told Captain Reynolds off and Captain Reynolds he was called along with a lot of other officers down to the bowels of the ship and we were in this lovely cabin on A deck. We were a bit fortunate there on our trip to the Middle East.
JH: So did that involve going up through the Suez Canal?
AB: Yes. We went up —
JH: Yes.
AB: Went up through the Suez Canal and then we, when we got to Port Tewfik we got off the ship and transferred to, to rail and we went by train into Palestine and at a campsite called Hill 95 not very far away from Gaza.
JH: Yes.
AB: We did more training there which was tough because it was so hot during the daytime and we had to do all these route marches all over the place. You know all over the sand and hills.
JH: In the footsteps of the Light Horse.
AB: All that lot. Yes. Like that.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And it was tough going but we as I said we had to [fatten our [unclear] stick our legs up] et cetera and build ourselves up and and then when the, it was in July 1941 they started the problem of going in and fighting the Vichy French. Clearing them out of Lebanon and Syria.
JH: Yes.
AB: And we joined that push and we stayed there up around the top of Syria near near the Turkish border around Homs and Aleppo and those places. We stayed up there until we were, we had to come back to Australia because the Japanese came into the war.
JH: Yes.
AB: And we got we left the Middle East in February and we got back to Australia in April.
JH: Was that ’42?
AB: ’42.
JH: 1942. Or ’41.
AB: Yeah. ’42 that was.
JH: ’42. Yeah.
AB: Then we trained in, went up to Queensland and trained to go to the jungles area up to Papua New Guinea and at that particular time the Air Force was interviewing people from the returned soldiers from the Middle East to ask them whether they’d like to transfer to the Air Force into aircrew.
JH: From what you said before I think you jumped at that didn’t you?
AB: Anyhow, a couple of us were down in Brisbane on leave and we found out all about this so we, we went to one of those offices where there were recruiting the people like [unclear] airmen and we were, went in and did the exams and then again to see whether we were good enough to get into the Air Force as aircrew and they knocked me back. I passed all the exams but when it came to the medical then I was, it was the doctors were checking me over and they, he said, ‘Well, we can’t take you. You’ve got a hernia.’ I said, ‘What’s a hernia?’ He said, ‘Well, you see that lump down there.’ He pointed to a lump down in the groin area. He said, ‘That’s a hernia and we could not have you flying with a hernia.’ So I said, I said, ‘How the hell am I to get into the Air Force? I want to get in, get in there in the early days.’ And so the chap said to me there, he said, ‘Well, the best thing you could do is when you get back to camp you go to the RAP.’ That’s the Regimental Aid Post, ‘Bend yourself over, clutch your groin and tell them you’re in awful pain.’ So I did a bit of good acting. I did that and they whipped me straight in to the hospital. Ipswich. At Ipswich.
JH: Ipswich. Yeah.
AB: The place there. And they operated on me and fixed me up. And when I came out of hospital I was sent down to a convalescent hospital down in Brisbane. And then once I got myself fit fit again I went down to the Air Force people again in Brisbane and I said, ‘Here I am. I haven’t got a hernia anymore.’ So they inspected me. He said, ‘Right,’ he says, ‘We’ll drag you out of the Army.’ So I went out of the Army on the 24th of November ’42 and I went to the Air Force on the 25th of November ’42. I was happy as a larry then.
JH: I bet you were.
AB: I was happy to get into the Air Force and we trained at, at Bradfield Park. That’s where I went to.
JH: Yes.
AB: We were posted to Bradfield Park. We had to do a rookie’s course, you know doing marching around the parade ground and rifle drill, you know with shoulder arms and all this sort of business. Slow arms you know. Blokes roaring out at us. Of course, we were being an ex-soldier we didn’t like this at all you know. Pretty grim. Anyway, we had to put up with it and eventually we were posted to Bradfield Park. We were there, we were already there. We were transferred across to the aircrew section and we were straightaway did our exams there. Once we passed those we then went to, they sent us to Canada and we went to a town in Canada called Edmonton which was number 2 AOS. Air Observer’s School. We, we did our training there and we, when we passed out I was fortunate enough along with four other chaps to be given a commission off course and I became a pilot officer after finishing that course. Then we went. They sent us across to England.
JH: Yes.
AB: And then again there was more training. Sextant training at an AFU, Advanced Flying Unit at Wigtown.
JH: Wigtown in Scotland.
AB: In Scotland.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That was a funny old place because we didn’t understand the people in the town and they didn’t understand us.
JH: Yeah. So, Alan when, when did you arrive in in Scotland? This would be I’m guessing the end of —
AB: Let me think.
JH: During early ’43.
AB: Yeah. It was, it was in [pause] No. ’43. No, I was still training in Canada then.
JH: Okay.
AB: Til, til we got, we got to England early ’44.
JH: Early ’44.
AB: It would be January ’44.
JH: Yeah. Yeah. And you had to run the gauntlet of the U-boats.
AB: Oh yeah.
JH: From Canada.
AB: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: To Scotland. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. They were, you know luckily we were, got through okay.
JH: Yes.
AB: By the time we got to Southampton it was a great sigh of relief that we were still around and they sent us up to, over to Brighton where we stayed for a short while. We were given our vouchers to go to, up to London to get measured up for our officer’s uniforms. And then we got posted to AFU at Wigtown in Scotland.
JH: Yes.
AB: After that we came down and went to our Operational Training Unit at Lichfield and that is where we crewed up.
JH: Yes. I’m always interested in, on how the crewing up happened.
AB: It was very surprising. We were, the whole of the intake with all these trainees and we had to go down to to a big hangar. We went in there and there were all these blokes in there. All these fellas getting around. Sergeants and pilot officers and et cetera and other blokes you know. Flight lieutenants. And we were then, we were told we had to crew up and that was a bit of a sort of sort of a thing. How are we going to do that? You know. So anyhow, a fellow came out. A pilot came across to me. Saw me standing there and he said, ‘My name’s Howard Gavin.’ He said, ‘How would you like to be my navigator?’ I looked him over and I said, ‘I certainly would.’ It turned out that he had already done his first tour of operations in the Middle East on on an Australian squadron, you know. Flying Wellingtons. And I imagined we were going to train on Wellingtons I thought well, this is a good idea. I’ll say yes. So then we went around and he went up looking for his bomb aimer and then at each bloke you know. That’s how we crewed up. It was fine.
JH: So, tell me were you looking for the badge they wore?
AB: Oh yes. The pilot. We were looking for —
JH: Yeah.
AB: We were looking to see you know if you were a navigator or whether you were —
JH: Yeah.
AB: A wireless air gunner.
JH: Yes.
AB: Or a tail gunner. A gunner.
JH: Okay. So how long did this, this process take? This crewing up.
AB: Oh, about an hour.
JH: Okay. I had the impression it kind of lasted for half a day [laughs]
AB: Oh, it didn’t take that long.
JH: Okay. Yeah.
AB: Well, my, no.
JH: Yeah.
AB: It might have happened like that for some people.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
AB: We were just a bit, a bit lucky.
JH: Yeah. So once you’d crewed up, you got your crew you then left the hangar.
AB: That’s right.
JH: To go and get a cup of coffee or something.
AB: We went.
JH: And get to know each other. Yeah.
AB: Have afternoon tea.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And you went to the, went to the mess hall of course and had a beer.
JH: Yes.
AB: And the, for our bomb aimer he couldn’t come with us because we were where the officers were and he was, he was a sergeant. So he went, he went off to the sergeant’s mess.
JH: Yes.
AB: So it was a bit, you know. A bit cruel.
JH: Yes. So, then you, then you, so you had your crew and then you were waiting to see where you were going to be posted. To which squadron.
AB: No, not then. That would be at at that place at the OTU.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And you trained there and you did your training.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And then you, in Wellingtons. Then when you finished that training course you went to the Heavy Conversion Unit.
JH: Yeah.
AB: At Winthorpe. That’s where I had all the problem with the with the aircraft. One of our final trips under the instruction of an English flying instructor.
JH: Tell me what happened.
AB: And that’s where, well we went across, this was in 24th of September, forty⸻, ’44. We were doing our, we did many trips night flying, daylight flying in the, in the Stirling and we’d been over to the coast of Holland and we came, this was actually night time.
JH: In a Stirling.
AB: In a Stirling. And we had to fly this course and eventually we, as we came back towards base in England which was at, at Winthorpe.
JH: Winthorpe.
AB: The engine started to catch on fire. So they feathered one and then another one would go out.
JH: This was over the North Sea still.
AB: Over the North Sea. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And we were proceeding along there and then the next one went. So we had one engine and the skipper, the instructor, he was a flight lieutenant he said, ‘We’re going to have to ditch.’ Well, we knew what ditching meant. It wasn’t too pleasant because the chances were pretty slim of you surviving. The North Sea’s pretty cold and you had to make sure you got out and your lifeboat pumped up. You know. They pumped them up.
JH: If you were going to ditch was the wireless operator able to give their position or were they not allowed to give your position if you were going to ditch?
AB: Well, I’d already told the skipper.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That where we were when he —
JH: Yeah.
AB: Gave the instruction and I said to him, ‘We’re not that far away from the coast of England.’
JH: Yes.
AB: ‘And I think we’ll be able to get there, be able to land, turn around and aim the plane out towards the sea.’
JH: Yes.
AB: And we were able to do it ourselves. I looked at where we were at the time. I took a fix and we were on the Gee box and you could get a very accurate fix.
JH: Yeah. Because you wouldn’t want to —
AB: He did.
JH: Want to land on a beach would you? Yeah.
AB: He took notice of what I said.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And we, he took it back over the coast. We made the coast of England. Went for a little while, a few minutes and then turned around a hundred and eighty degrees and gave the order to bale out.
JH: What height were you then?
AB: Two thousand feet.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That was where we had trouble deciding how to get out of the hatch [laughs] both the bomb aimer and myself and eventually I talked the bomb aimer into going first. Which he did do and he was unable to tumble out because of the hatch way and he went out feet first, dropped down and went facing, facing the front of the aircraft and the slipstream got him and smashed his head into the hatchway.
JH: He recovered enough to pull his rip cord.
AB: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: He did do.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And then I decided because he went forward and split the front of his head open.
JH: Yeah. He went out feet first.
AB: He went out feet first.
JH: Yeah.
AB: So I decided I’m not going to get my head smashed like that when I bale. I’ll face the back of the plane to drop out.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Feet first. And of course, the slipstream got me as well and knocked me out in the back of the head. The back of my head was split open and I was unconscious until I heard a voice telling me to open the rip, pull the rip cord. The D ring. The D ring. Pull the D ring which I did do and I had the parachute opened up and I had two swings and I got laid down beautifully right into a potato patch.
JH: How high do you think you were when you, when you jumped out?
AB: About a thousand feet.
JH: Yeah, and but this voice you heard. Tell me about that.
AB: It’s, I heard this voice telling me to [pause] and later on I was, I was on leave down in Okehampton at a couple’s place, an elderly couple and she was a Medium. And we decided to be entertained by joining in the using you know the glass for the table.
JH: A séance. Yeah.
AB: A, yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They were playing around with that glass on the table which was incredible. You could feel the electricity current there. It was a very strange feeling. Powerful it was. And we were sending messages and then we sent a message to ask my grandfather whether he was around. And eventually we had, a couple of days later we had a séance where she went into a trance and when she went into the trance she changed her position. She she spread her legs like that, put her hands on her knees like that and that’s how my grandfather always sat and I asked him to speak. I wanted to talk to him.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And he told me that he was with me a short while ago when I got out of the aircraft. Now, they didn’t know that. They had no knowledge of anything of that nature of what happened.
JH: Yeah. Was she speaking in his voice?
AB: She changed her voice. She changed her voice into a different tone tone altogether. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah, she she sort of changed her voice into a man’s voice.
JH: Yes. Yeah. So it, yeah so it was his voice you heard.
AB: Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That was incredible.
JH: I bet you’ve thought about that a lot.
AB: I have.
JH: Yeah.
AB: I did. I’ve told a lot of people about it too.
JH: Yes.
AB: Whether it, whether they think I’m stupid or not I don’t know.
JH: Yeah.
AB: But I, I was I was impressed by it.
JH: I know my father he, he really believed in that. That kind of thing.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Wow. So let’s, let’s wind forward Alan. Tell me about your first operation. What was that like?
AB: The first operation. Yes. Well, we, when we finally finished with our Lancaster Finishing School we got posted to 617 Squadron.
JH: A famous squadron.
AB: That’s the one. Yeah. We were very lucky. We were the only ones posted there.
JH: Yes.
AB: And we managed to do very well in our flying. We all got high marks as I said so they sent us to this.
JH: The elite.
AB: Yeah. Sent us to this this squadron and at the time Willie Tait, JB Tait, they used to call him Willie. He was the CO.
JH: Yeah.
AB: A very famous man.
JH: Yes. Of course.
AB: He had four DSOs, two DFCs and a mention in despatches. That was his first award in, and that was when he was in a Fairey Battle. Who would want to be in one of those? Our first operation was very early in in November ’44.
JH: ’44. Yes. Got that.
AB: And it was to the, bomb the Urft Dam. The Urft, U R F T I think it was.
JH: Oh.
AB: U R F T. Urft.
JH: Yeah. Where was that located?
AB: That’s in Germany.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We were, when we got there it was ten tenths cloud. We couldn’t see the target. These, these were daylights and of course we couldn’t see the target. We weren’t allowed to drop our bomb. We had a Tallboy on board, the twelve thousand pound Tallboy and we had to bring that back to base.
JH: So you didn’t have a bouncing type bomb.
AB: No, it was a Tallboy.
JH: Yeah. Okay.
AB: A Tallboy was a terrific machine. It, it used to spin around and had tail fins on it. It would turn around and keep straight and keep keep at an angle you know when it left the aircraft and go, it was a concrete piercing bomb. It would go through the concrete and then explode as it got through. It was a brilliant bomb designed by Barnes Wallis.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And so then we went back and did the Urft Dam again. Again it was ten tenths cloud. So we weren’t too happy because we hadn’t had to drop that bomb. Had to bring it back again.
JH: So you —
AB: And no.
JH: Could you still log it as an operation even though —
AB: Oh yes. Yes.
JH: Yes. It did count. Yeah.
AB: It counted.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: Each time you took off and made the trip it would be counted. Yeah.
JH: And let me ask how many aircraft in that operation?
AB: We had about twenty two.
JH: Twenty two. Yeah. Any support?
AB: No.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Just on our own.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We never had any support.
JH: Yeah.
AB: 617 was, sometimes you’d fly with 9 Squadron.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That would have made a bigger target but a few times they went with a bit, we went after the Tirpitz. 9 going with 617 up there.
JH: Did they link up with the Pathfinders on that sort of raid?
AB: We never had Pathfinders.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We were we were our own Pathfinders.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We didn’t need, didn’t have them.
JH: Yeah.
AB: A Pathfinder.
JH: So did you go back a third time?
AB: No.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They decided that they wouldn’t waste our time.
JH: Okay. What about your next operation?
AB: Oh dear.
JH: Can you remember that?
AB: No. Oh.
JH: That would have been a bombing. Another bombing run.
AB: Yeah. Where yes ah that’s right. We went to Ijmuiden.
JH: Oh.
AB: In Holland.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Ijmuiden. And we, we attacked E-boat pens and submarine pens there.
JH: God. Successful?
AB: Yes. Very.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. Oh, the bombs were good.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They went through the concrete supports.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And blew up inside you know.
JH: Yeah.
AB: But then, then we went to another one in Holland the same sort of thing. Poortershaven.
JH: Poortershaven.
JH: Poortershaven.
AB: In Holland. Yeah.
AB: Another one.
JH: Another, another port. Yeah.
AB: The same sort of thing.
JH: Yeah.
AB: E-boat pens and submarine pens. Later on, many years later it was in the ‘90s I got a letter from an historian who was at, he was at Poortershaven and he he told us you know in the letter he said there had been intelligence that told them to get the Dutch out of out of the way and warned them. Get the Dutch out of the way as they were going to come over and bomb.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. And this bloke said, and he said, ‘We commend you. Not one Dutchman got killed.’
JH: That’s amazing.
AB: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: Yeah. That’s incredible attacking those pens because they were real fortresses weren’t they?
AB: Oh yeah. Yeah. They were.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We went up to Bergen as well. Before we went to Bergen they, a group of commandos, Englishmen, red beret blokes came out to our squadron and they were, they trained with us. We were going to drop them. Drop them in the fjord and they had these fabled boats and then they were supposed to be going ashore and attacking the heavy water plants. You know the heavy water plants they had built outside Bergen?
JH: Yes.
AB: The Germans had that.
JH: Yes.
AB: But they decided it was just too risky. They didn’t go ahead with that but we went up and bombed the E-boat submarine pens up there as well. The Germans had them up there as well.
JH: Was this daylight or at night time?
AB: No, we we always left at night time.
JH: Yes.
AB: To get there in the daytime.
JH: Okay.
AB: Because we had to visually sight our target.
JH: Well, you were flying up the fjords I guess towards the target.
AB: But, we, we went up to Lossiemouth to refuel up there.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And then we went off to, flew out to Bergen. We flew just above the deck low flying to get under the radar.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And we then when we got up near Bergen we made height and dropped our bombs on the E-boat —
JH: Yeah.
AB: And submarine pens up there.
JH: By then it was morning. You could see.
AB: Oh yeah.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. You always, you were trying to get to your target in daylight.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah, because you had to sight your target and take your photographs.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And if you, if you, if you didn’t drop your bombs where you should do you when you, it meant that when you the next day or when you got back you’d be up doing practice bombing in the Wash.
JH: Yeah. Good incentive.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: Good incentive to be on target.
AB: Yeah, oh yes.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Good. They were very [pause] and we we we did another one which was quite interesting.
JH: Yes.
AB: Berchtesgaden.
JH: I know that place. I’ve been there.
AB: Been there. Yeah. I know, I’ve been there too. I’ve been there on the ground as well. The, that was on ANZAC Day ’45 and our target was the the big shaft. The air shaft.
JH: Yes. Where the lift is going up.
AB: There wasn’t any lift then. That’s where they put it. And we would put our bomb down that shaft. Well, we flew around that for about twenty five minutes and could not find the shaft. And later on, years later when I went to Berchtesgaden.
JH: Yeah.
AB: I walked up beyond the, out to go up in the lift.
JH: You go up in the lift.
AB: Yeah.
JH: And then you can walk.
AB: And then I walked —
JH: Yeah.
AB: Up the hill a bit. Up the mountain.
JH: Yes.
AB: Looked back on where it was all snowy. All snow. And I said no wonder we couldn’t see it because they had, they had camouflage nets and a cover over the top of the shaft. That’s why we couldn’t find it. So we had to bring our bomb back to England again.
JH: Yeah.
AB: On that occasion.
JH: Yes.
AB: That was the last operation that that was done by 617 in Europe.
JH: That was the last. I believe that was the last Bomber Command operation in the second world war. I’m not too quite sure but that may be so. I read that somewhere.
AB: We led, we led, 617 Squadron led a big main force group. Main force. And about four hundred planes came after us. We had the honour of being the first there to⸻
JH: To Berchtesgaden. Yeah.
AB: Different crews had different targets and they were all targeting where these Nazis had their, a resource they used to go down on.
JH: Yeah.
AB: To spend leave in. Yeah. And then main force followed after we we got there and dropped a few more bombs.
JH: Yeah.
AB: On Berchtesgaden. It’s a beautiful town. But later on when I went and saw it.
JH: Yes.
AB: In 1980 it was, you wouldn’t have known it had been, it had been bombed at all.
JH: Yes.
AB: That was happening all around you. I went back to different places where we, where the place had been bombed heavily and they’d reconstructed it so good.
JH: Yes.
AB: Amazing. They did did a remarkable job of reconstructing.
JH: I was there maybe four years ago and I noticed there was absolutely no Nazi insignia anywhere. Even when they were carved in stone. It’s all been removed.
AB: it’s been removed.
JH: Yes.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah. Okay. Well, last operation. So what happened then? You stayed on in the UK.
AB: What they were doing then the Australian, the RAAF people over there decided they would send a squadron out to Okinawa to bomb Japan. So myself and a couple of other members of our crew volunteered to go, to go out to to Okinawa and the squadron was 467 Squadron and that was, that was located in in Metheringham. And that was an enormous contrast to our location in Woodhall Spa while we were on 617 Squadron. The officer’s mess was the magnificent Petwood Hotel.
JH: I’ve been there. The Guy Gibson Bar.
AB: Yeah. That’s right.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah, that was, we were upstairs. Our quarters were upstairs and they had a not not far from the bar was a billiard room. Is that still there?
JH: I’m not quite sure.
AB: They had a billiard room and my wireless operator and myself we were we didn’t drink but we played snooker in there in our spare time between when we went flying.
JH: Yes.
AB: The rest of the crew would get on at the grog but we, being teetotallers we we played snooker all the time and we got quite good at it actually.
JH: And you cleaned them up.
AB: You see when we got there we got good. Yeah. I took to it quite well.
JH: What a lovely place that is.
AB: It’s a beautiful spot isn’t it?
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. They were I’ve got pictures of it on the computer.
JH: I’d like to go back there.
AB: When I went back to England in ’91 and did did a tour of England. Hired a car and drove all over England and Scotland and Wales. I did not go back to Woodhall Spa. I don’t know why I didn’t go back to show Marie, my wife.
JH: You didn’t want to go back or —
AB: I just for some reason or other it didn’t occur to me.
JH: Yeah.
AB: To go back and have a look at it. I can remember it quite clearly. I remember where we slept and who was in the room with us. We had, there were six of us. Six of us in a very big big room. It had a big balcony and there was a couple of blokes slept out on the balcony. It had a roof over it of course. And there were my pilot and myself and there were four English. Well, English men there.
JH: So, so in your crew in 617 how many Australians in the crew?
AB: Six.
JH: Six. One English.
AB: And one English.
JH: Yeah.
AB: An English flight engineer.
JH: Now, Alan so did you get to Japan in the end?
AB: Ah now.
JH: Yes, sorry.
AB: We we we again trained heavily.
JH: Yeah.
AB: On 467 Squadron and incidentally we were quartered in Nissen huts which was quite a contrast [laughs] to the Petwood Hotel. We didn’t have any, didn’t have any priority about good quarters whether you were an officer or not. We were and we had our final embarkation leave and they dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Then they dropped the next one on Nagasaki. We were, then we were stood down and that was, that’s what was in, that was in —
JH: That was a shock for you.
AB: That was in August I think.
JH: Just as well you weren’t over in that area.
AB: Well, in a way yes because probably might not have been here to tell the tale. It was, it was quite in a way we were a little bit sad but then also overjoyed.
JH: Yes.
AB: You know, we were sort of really keen to go and do something to those Japs.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We’d been reading and hearing a lot about what the Japs were doing.
JH: But that meant starting about going home.
AB: Yeah. Well, we left. We came home on the Athlone Castle and we got home around about February ’46. During the war when I came out of the Middle East I got married. I married my sweetheart and, and while I was away in Canada she gave birth to a son. [unclear] it was quite a, I didn’t realise at the time that when I got married that I was going to have a son.
JH: Yes.
AB: While the war was still on.
JH: When you were in [pause] when you were in Canada.
AB: I was in Canada. Yeah.
JH: Yes.
AB: Edmonton. That was on the 3rd of November ’43.
JH: So you hadn’t seen much of him at all.
AB: Hadn’t seen him at all until he was, until February ’46.
JH: Yes.
AB: He didn’t know who I was.
JH: Gosh. Yeah.
AB: I was a stranger. Took a while to get for him to know who I was, you know.
JH: Yes.
AB: Took a long long while.
JH: Yes.
AB: It was a real bad period really.
JH: Yeah.
AB: I I used to get quite annoyed about it, you know.
JH: Yes.
AB: He’d go to his grandfather all the time.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
AB: He wouldn’t come near me.
JH: Yes.
AB: Yeah. But anyhow after the war the war ended we ended up having another three children. Another son in 1948. Then a daughter in ’49.
JH: Yes.
AB: And then another daughter in ’52. So we had —
JH: Four in the family.
AB: Four in the family.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Two boys and two girls and one of the boys is, both boys, the eldest boy when he was about nineteen he joined the the Army.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And he did twenty one years in the Army. He was in Malaya, Borneo and Vietnam and he was, the youngest boy when he turned, I don’t know what it was he had his name pulled out the barrel to go to Vietnam. They had a —
JH: Yes, I know.
AB: Birthday barrel.
JH: Yes.
AB: Yeah. He went to Vietnam and unfortunately he he passed away when he was sixty three. He had cancer.
JH: Oh.
AB: Caused by his term in Vietnam. The Agent Orange. The Yanks dropped all this.
JH: Yes, I know.
AB: You know, Agent Orange and he he eventually he got this cancer and passed away in 2011. And the other boy and he was actually in the infantry. A young fella.
JH: Yes.
AB: The eldest boy had been in there for twenty one years. He was in the signals. So quite a bit of difference. He was mainly around the base area.
JH: Yes. So he wasn’t exposed.
AB: He wasn’t exposed.
JH: To the Agent Orange. Yeah.
AB: He wasn’t exposed as much as his brother was.
JH: Yeah. Well, that’s amazing that this you’ve got three generations in your family in the Army.
AB: Yes. Dad. Dad in both wars. The two boys. My sisters. Both sisters in the Women’s Army. Both my sisters.
JH: The Buxton’s have done their bit. More than done their bit, Alan.
AB: We’ve had a lot of experience in the Services. Yeah.
JH: You must be very proud of them all. Yeah.
AB: Very much so.
JH: Yeah. Yes. And you were telling me before eventually you found your feet career wise and joined Shell.
AB: That’s right and I worked there.
JH: And was that in Sydney or did you have to go —
AB: No. Sydney.
JH: To Melbourne.
AB: I was in the head, in the Sydney office. And then when they decided to build, or enlarge the refinery that John Fell owned in the Clyde. Clyde Refinery —
JH: Yes.
AB: I was transferred out to Clyde Refinery in ‘19⸻ I moved up. I was living at Narrabeen at the time.
JH: Yes.
AB: And I moved up to Eastwick and I got a transfer, a company transfer which was good.
JH: Were you with Shell all your, all your working career.
AB: No, before, before the war I was with Australian [Soaps] for a living.
JH: Yes. Okay.
AB: We can still see it’s Alexandria.
JH: Alexandria. Yes. You see, I know Alexandria well. Yeah.
AB: Well, I was with them until [laughs] and I was I was actually had the honour of being the first bloke to join the Services and when, when I was going out the gate the managing director Mr Harrison, a lovely old Scotsman he came out to me and he handed me an envelope. He said and wished me good luck and when I opened that envelope up he’d given me a ten pound note. I mean I was only getting one pound seventeen and sixpence a week and I ended up with a ten pound note. I thought I was made [laughs] Ten pound.
AB: It would have seemed like the lottery. Yeah.
JH: At the time because when, you know.
AB: Yeah.
JH: My pay was six pence a week.
AB: What a gesture.
JH: Hmmn?
AB: What a gesture.
JH: Oh, I thought it was wonderful. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. Have you still got the ten pound note?
JH: No.
AB: Okay [laughs]
JH: I spent that.
AB: Of course.
JH: I needed it. I didn’t have any —
JH: Yeah.
AB: Any money. Any money much in those days.
JH: Yeah. Well, Alan I can’t get over this interview. It’s really amazing. It’s quite a story. I need to have a lie down, a cup of tea and digest it all.
AB: Do you want a cup of tea now?
JH: Oh, now that sounds a great idea. I didn’t say that [laughs]
AB: Oh, I’ll see what I can.
JH: But yeah, I wouldn’t mind a cup.
AB: I’ll see if I can —
JH: So shall we, shall we wind it up and —
AB: Okay. Go on.
JH: So, I really would like to thank you for, for doing the interview. So, this is for the IBCC.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Veterans Interview Project and I think that that so that interview your your family can, can go in and listen to it or if anyone visits Lincolnshire they can go and listen to it.
AB: Oh right.
JH: The Bomber Command Centre there is quite something. I was there at the opening. And so Alan thanks very much.
AB: I get the information. You know these lads that found the plane, Stuart [McRory] and his brother Bruce on the work that has been done to restoring the Lancaster Just Jane.
JH: Yes.
AB: You know.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
JH: I’ve seen it.
AB: You’ve seen it.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They’re doing that restoration. It’s going on. It’s been going for years with this restoration.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: They use it. Normally it’s only used for taxi runs.
JH: Yes.
AB: Stuart, Stuart and his brother Bruce they’ve done the taxi ride. They charge fifty pounds to do the taxi ride up and down the runway.
JH: Fantastic. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. And —
JH: Well, on that note Alan I’m going to wind up here. Thanks very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Alan George Buxton
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
John Horsburgh
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-23
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:06:36 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABuxtonAG220823
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943-11-03
1944-01
1944-09-24
1944-11
1945-04-25
1946-02
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Queensland
Alberta--Edmonton
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Norway--Bergen
Queensland--Brisbane
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Alan was born in Parramatta, Sydney, in Australia. After going to the Middle East with the army, he returned to Australia, when Japan entered the war, and transferred to the RAF in November 1942.
Alan was posted to Bradfield Park for training and then to No. 2 Air Observers’ School in Edmonton, Canada. He was given a commission as a pilot officer and went to the Advanced Flying Unit at RAF Wigtown in Scotland, followed by the Operational Training Unit at RAF Lichfield. Alan describes the process of crewing up. He trained on Wellingtons and then went to the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Winthorpe. Alan describes the night they had to parachute from their Stirling after a trip to the coast of Holland.
After Lancaster Finishing School, Alan was posted to 617 Squadron where the Commanding Officer was J B “Willie” Tait. His first operation in November 1944 was to bomb the Urft Dam in Germany but it was too cloudy to release the 12,000 lb Tallboy bomb on board. A second attempt was also unsuccessful. Alan then refers to two operations in the Netherlands where U-boat pens were bombed. Bergen was another operation. On 25 April 1945, their target was Berchtesgaden, their last operation leading a Main Force Group of 400 aircraft.
Alan then went to 467 Squadron at RAF Metheringham. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were no longer required to go to Okanawa. Alan returned to Australia in February 1946 and joined Shell company in Sidney.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
467 Squadron
617 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
bale out
bombing
crewing up
Gee
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster Finishing School
love and romance
mess
military living conditions
navigator
observer
Operational Training Unit
RAF Lichfield
RAF Metheringham
RAF Wigtown
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Woodhall Spa
Stirling
submarine
superstition
Tallboy
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2222/39868/PAlboneJM2201.2.jpg
61544c80dfefd3838ae77117eccf71b9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2222/39868/AAlboneJM220922.2.mp3
dd0b6a60a633b2562eb786b56f3ed0ee
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Albone, Jan
Janet Margaret Albone
J M Albone
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Jan Albone (b. 1930). She grew up on a farm in Lincolnshire.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-09-22
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Albone, JM
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview by Dan Ellin with Jan Albone. I’m at her house in Scawby in Lincolnshire. It’s the 22nd of September 2022 and also present in the room is her son Alex Albone. So, Jan could you start by telling us a little bit about your early life and where you grew up?
JA: I was born at Redmond Grange which is only five miles from where I now live and I lived on the farm there with my parents and sister. Went to school in Brigg which is only up the road. So I’ve always lived in this district all my life except for ten years when I lived at Binbrook. So I know a bit about the local area.
DE: And what was, what was your early life like? What was school like? Your home life.
JA: Oh, my school. Early life was a bit grim actually because I was born on a a very sort of isolated farm in those days. It was still two miles from the nearest village but it was a long way from there. So I was born and brought up and I was very cherished. And I think my first memory was the fact that somebody when I was three, I’d been very protected and loved by everybody on the farm and then suddenly somebody came and took me upstairs and said, ‘You have a little sister.’ And I can remember seeing this thing. That’s one of my earliest memories. This thing in this cot and it was my sister so I was going to have to share things. I didn’t like that much at all. And my mother had been a schoolteacher and so she taught me at her school and I could read and write very early in life. And then it was decided that I would go to school. Well, it was a bit difficult to go to school in those days from there where, and so it was decided that I would go and live with my aunt and grandmother in Scunthorpe and my aunt was the headmistress of a school in Scunthorpe and I would go to school there and go as a weekly boarder with my parents. I hated it. I absolutely hated it because I loved the farm. I loved being outdoors and to go into a big school where your aunt was the headmistress and all the people in the school were children from, well it was a backstreet school in those days. Henderson Avenue. And it was, I just was so lost. I wanted to make friends but I couldn’t because I was the headmistress’s daughter. Anyway, it was then decided after that that I think they could realise that I was unhappy and so I came home and then was sent up to the nearest school, primary school which was at Kirton Lindsey which was two and a half miles away. It wasn’t a lot better I have to say because I was the only farmer’s daughter at the school. The rest of the people at that time were farm labourer’s children. Extremely nice children and I again I wanted to make friends but it was not the children it was the parents saying of course, ‘She comes from the, farmer’s daughter.’ So therefore, then my sister was ready to go to school by then. She was five and I was eight and so we then went to Brigg. To the prep school at Brigg and it was heaven. Absolute heaven then. But we went by bus to Brigg and I had to look after my little sister which I didn’t like much. But anyway, it got better. But I’ve always loved being at home and I can remember so many times going back to school at the beginning of term hating going into school because I wanted to be at home. And it wasn’t home. It wasn’t parents. It was being outside. It was being mainly with the horses. Loved, loved horses.
DE: Did you have many on the farm then?
JA: Well, of course the only work when I was a child there were no tractors. There wasn’t such a thing. Well, there was but we didn’t have tractors ever. All the work on the farm was done by horses and my father grew fifty acres of potatoes and all the work was done by horses and man power. So, but I always loved them you see. I mean I, and I could do things with them that other people, even when I was very small I could go and feed a difficult one when one of the men wouldn’t like doing it because I was quite relaxed of course. So anyway, that was how I started.
DE: Okay. And then, and so and then what happened?
JA: Then I got my eleven-plus and went to the local high school which was a grammar school in those days and that was fine. You know. I was reasonably clever. I loved history, loved reading and writing and everything else. But then I left school at sixteen because you see the war was over. The war finished in 1945 and it was so wonderful to be free and I didn’t want to be at school. I didn’t want to be restricted and of course afterwards I think my parents should have insisted I stayed and did A levels but never mind. I didn’t so that’s that. So it was an interesting life living at Redmond Grange where I was during the war.
DE: So what was that like?
JA: Interesting. In fact, that we, Kirton Lindsey aerodrome was only three miles away and Kirton Lindsey aerodrome was a fighter ‘drome in those days and it was the fighters were, it was mainly a rest home for people that came from the Battle of Britain. And they would come to Kirton Lindsey to rest. And we had father there. We always knew he was there when he came because he would take his plane up on a Sunday night and do all sorts of performances. And my father really got on well with the CO there and it was funny around my father really in many ways but he got on with the CO and he decided, he and the CO whether it was the CO‘s idea or not I don’t know that the men that were coming from, to rest from Battle of Britain they were traumatised. Extraordinarily traumatised, and so father said the worst thing they can do is to sit and mope and of course on the farm we were desperately short of labour. We desperately needed food in those days. And so they used to come down. I don’t know how they got there. It wasn’t so very far away. I can’t remember any vehicle bringing them but something must have brought them and they came and they helped him with the harvest. And they worked on the land and a lot of them hadn’t got a clue about well land work but they soon learned and my mother cooked enormous great meals every day and so in this kitchen there was a huge kitchen table and all these men would be. There would be six or seven and they would change. I remember one particular one. He was so young. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He probably was but he was so young and he was so frightened but I could see even as a child. I was, you know I was only eleven, twelve I could see that hard work, it was a hot summer, the hard work kept, made him sane because he went home and he slept.
DE: Right. Yeah.
JA: But it was, it was terrible with those young men because we never knew them anymore. They became quite friends but then they went. Did they die? I don’t know.
DE: So did that happen just just the one year or was that the —
JA: That was really only the one year of the Battle of Britain but it’s very significant that was for me because all these, I’d never seen young men. I didn’t know what they were like. And I mean I was only [pause] but and they also treated my sister and I a bit like mascots. You see, we knew about the horses and and they didn’t but it I’m I’m sure it saved the sanity of quite a lot of young men.
DE: Excellent.
JA: It was nice. It was good.
DE: Okay. Anything else you’d like to tell me about that, that time?
JA: I think the funniest thing it always makes me laugh now but at the beginning of the war my father, it was the old DV in those days. It was before Home Guard and he decided of course we had again another hot summer that first year of the war and Hitler was going to invade. And I understand later on that Hitler’s soothsayer said it wasn’t appropriate for him to invade but if he was my father was quite convinced if he invaded he was going to land at Skegness on that east coast and actually could have done. Walked across. So my father was in the LDV and he used to go and stand on the top of Waddingham Church which is only two miles away. My father had a twelve bore gun and he always took one of the farm men with him but the farm man only had a pitchfork. My father [laughs] I mean it was terribly serious at the time I mean it was. I can remember being so frightened and father took it so seriously. But in hindsight there was my father with a twelve bore shotgun and a man with a with a pitchfork. They were going to defend the nation. But I was frightened. I was terrified and of course you see in 1939 I was nine when war broke out. I was ten when this all happened and I was so aware then. I was quite grown up for my age actually and I kept, I said to my mother, ‘What is going to happen to me? What will happen?’ Because as a child you only think about what’s going to happen to you don’t you? ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ So my mother said, ‘If the Germans come you’ll be absolutely fine, dear,’ she said, because at that time I was very very fair and I had long long plaits and I could sit on them. It was long and thick as that. ‘You’ll be absolutely fine. The Germans will take you and they will look after you and they will put you on a breeding farm.’ Well, I knew about breeding because I mean I would breed these horses if I had a breeding farm. ‘And then you will breed wonderful fair haired Aryan children.’ I should actually to be honest. You know. At that time she was quite right. But that comforted me. I was going to live.
DE: Crikey. Did, you said you were, you were frightened and needed that reassurance.
JA: It was reassuring actually.
DE: Where did you get your information from? Did you listen to the radio or read the papers or —
JA: Oh yes. The radio was always on you know. And of course, my mother had been a school teacher and father was very sort of articulate and we, we had got contact. We had aeroplanes flying over us all the time and we were all very conscious of the Lancasters at the, you know only down the road there’s Scampton and we knew that a lot of the fighter planes were here to defend them. So we knew what was going, we knew what was going on.
DE: So, I mean yeah you —
JA: I had to take my gas mask to school in its cardboard container.
DE: Did you have anything to do with any evacuees?
JA: Yes, we did. But I can’t really remember very much. I know they were fairly awful. They were two girls and they came from Sheffield and they didn’t stay very long. They were not happy. They were town children landed on an isolated farm. They didn’t like the food. They didn’t really like anything and their mother came and took them home. I don’t think they were, they came to school with us but I don’t think they stayed for more than about three months. But it was, it was interesting. It was the fact that that work on the farm was so hard in those days.
DE: And you, you helped with the horses. Yeah.
JA: Oh, all the time. Yes. I remember sitting when I was twelve sitting at the back of the school, at the back of the class in school in a maths lesson. I hated maths. And early in the morning, it was a September morning when, you know I was at school and they were picking potatoes at home and I wanted to be there with, with the horses.
DE: I see.
JA: I wanted to help.
DE: So you listened to the, to the radio. Did you ever hear what’s his name? Haw Haw.
JA: Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes. We had to listen to him. It was always because father always made, we got to listen to him because it was a joke. Father always said it was. I mean, we had to be amused by him.
DE: I see. Right. What about the, what about the newspapers?
JA: Newspapers. I don’t really remember much about newspapers. I think it was mainly the radio you know. It was the wireless was, wireless in those days of course and of course, father would listen to the news. I was always, I always remember later on when war ended and all the news came out about Auschwitz and you know the camps I always remember my father being so horrified by it and unbelieving to begin with. He could not believe that anything could have happened. There were a lot of people like that. It was quite quite horrendous that, well he didn’t. Well, I didn’t. We did not know anything about prisoner of war camps. Well, the Jews being in camps like that.
DE: Were there any prisoners of war camps around here? I know there was some Italians in Lincolnshire.
JA: Yes, we had. Yes, we had the Germans to start with. Big Hans and Little Hans. They came to work on the farm. They came from Pingley which was the other side of Brigg. A big, big camp there and it was mainly Germans and these two Big Hans and Little Hans they were very poor. A little man. I should imagine they were homosexuals or whatever. They came and they worked for us and they were, they were little farmers in Germany and we got very fond of them because they were just ordinary men like ours.
DE: Yeah. How long did they work on the farm for?
JA: I should think they worked for us for a good year. They were dropped off. Pingley used to take them and drop them off and we were very grateful to have them because we were desperate you see. You know, today on a farm you only have one man. In those days we needed ten because everything was done by hand.
DE: But they were never there at the same time as these British pilots.
JA: Oh no. No. This was towards the end of the war.
DE: Yeah.
JA: No. No. No. No. No. British pilots it was definitely, that was 1939 1940. When we had the prisoners of war was ’45.
DE: Right.
JA: ’50.
DE: Okay.
JA: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
JA: I remember my husband because he lived at Spridlington and they had Italian prisoners of war and he always remembered that they had one officer, well that he said. His boots were always immaculate all the time and he helped him break in a horse and he said he knew how to ride. He definitely was from, you know. It worked.
DE: Yeah. And you got on fine with them.
JA: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
JA: Oh, well yes. Yeah. We were pleased to have them and they were pleased to work.
DE: Did they, did they get their meals around the table?
JA: No. No.
DE: No.
JA: No. No. No. No. It was only the —
DE: Okay. So you said you know you had lots of aircraft flying around because there was, you know Lincolnshire known as Bomber County.
JA: Oh and of course —
DE: There was Hemswell before.
JA: Well there was either a landing ground or or a airport every few miles.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean you’ve mentioned Scampton but in between Scampton there’s —
JA: There’s Hemswell. Yes.
DE: Hemswell and Ingham.
JA: Yes, yes, exactly. And they were mainly sort of landing grounds in case main the main airport had been bombed.
DE: So did you get to recognise the different aircraft flying over?
JA: Yes. I mean we knew the difference between a Spitfire and a Hurricane and a Lancaster and a, and a cargo thing. Yes. I wasn’t particularly interested but but my father was of course.
DE: Did you know of any, any of the Luftwaffe aircraft flying over?
JA: No. We didn’t. I don’t think they, as far as we were concerned I don’t think they ever came. They came to Hull of course because they bombed Hull. But that didn’t mean they came over here.
DE: No.
JA: No.
DE: Were you, were you aware of Hull being bombed?
JA: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. If we stood on the, you know on the farm we could actually see the, you know, what was happening. Very much aware of that. But then you see for when you lived here and you only had horses and you did have a car and a bicycle whatever Hull was a long way off. You know, it seemed, and it was the other side of the river. Yeah. Still in a way it is.
DE: Yes. Yes.
JA: In those days the only way to get to Hull was on a ferry.
DE: Yeah. Or the long way around. I know that —
JA: Yeah. Well, when you went then you always went across on a ferry.
DE: Yeah.
JA: But you did. You had to choose the time of day to go or else you got stuck on a sandbank.
DE: Of course. Yeah. I know the, the Auxiliary Fire Service from Welton.
JA: Yes.
DE: Went to Hull during the Blitz.
JA: Oh, did they? I didn’t know that.
DE: Yeah. I mean it must have taken quite a while to get there.
JA: Yeah. Yes. Well, I think you know because the fires were very very bad you know. We could see that.
DE: Yeah.
JA: Yes.
DE: How did it make you feel seeing the fires?
JA: Well, it just was there. You know when you’re a child, you must remember I was a child as long as you were safe with your mummy and daddy and you were in your own home it was [pause] it was a bit, in a way it was a bit like a film I suppose to us.
DE: Yeah.
JA: You know it wasn’t, it wasn’t reality really. It was very sheltered.
DE: So, what did, what did you do for entertainment then?
JA: Not a lot. I was thinking about it this morning because I thought this was one you were going to ask me. Where? Entertainment. You went, you went to school. I mean we had to leave because we had to catch, we had to leave the house at ten to eight in the morning and we walked for half a mile on the main road to catch a bus. Then we didn’t get home until ten to five at night. And then we ate and did our homework. In the wintertime it was a matter of keeping warm. And the days went by. In the holidays I was outside all the time. We didn’t actually think of entertainment actually.
DE: What about when you got older?
JA: Well, I was fifteen when war ended but that was wonderful you know because we could then, I could then be a member of the Young Farmers’ Club and I was allowed to to go. I had an autocycle. My father bought me an autocycle. That was a bicycle with a thing and I used to come in to Brigg. I was allowed to come to Brigg in the dark, it was safe in those days, to Young Farmers’ Club meetings which were absolute bliss after being caged as we were. But we didn’t know anything else. So it was lovely to be there.
DE: So what happened at these? These Young Farmers’ meetings then.
JA: Oh, that was fun. I mean we used to go to the local pub and I mean we had talks and we had [pause] I can’t remember a lot about the talks but we had competitions and of course we were allowed to go to other farms with with our friends judging cattle. It was so exciting actually, you know when you think of the young people today but it was so exciting having had nothing to have this. That’s how I met my husband.
DE: And do you want to talk a bit about that?
JA: Well, if you like. I mean he, it was exciting because he lived at Spridlington which was on the road to, you know where Spridlington is?
DE: Yeah.
JA: On the road here and all our courtship right up to us being married to come and see me he had to have a chain in the back of the car and the chain was to bring the chain from his father to my father or, and when, when going home it was to take the chain back from my father because you were not allowed to travel with petrol at the end of the war you see. You had to have a reason for using petrol.
DE: Oh, I see. Right.
JA: So to come and to come and see me he had to have a genuine farming reason to come and see me.
DE: Oh, I see. Oh, that’s clever.
JA: So this chain would have lived in the back of the car if any police stopped him he was taking the chain from his father to mine.
DE: I see.
JA: Backwards and forwards.
DE: Right. Yeah.
JA: And then he could pick me up and we could go to the Young Farmers’ Club and then there were dances then. But you see I always think people are not wise enough. When I went into the nursing home to have my first baby who is seventy next birthday I took my ration book with me. Times were so much worse after the war.
DE: Right.
JA: I don’t think people realise that.
DE: Yeah.
JA: How we had to pay back and we were very hungry and rationing was very strict after the war.
DE: And there was, that was worse after the war.
JA: It was. Yes. It was. Everybody was happy and glad to be able to do it but food was so important.
DE: So in one way you had this freedom that you were, you know —
JA: I had the freedom to go. Well, a certain freedom. It felt like wonderful freedom but it was still restricted to the fact that it had to be rural. It had to be, you know it had to be sort of [pause] and then then it became and then you see I was fifteen when war ended. Sixteen I started at the Young Farmers’ Club. By the time I was eighteen then we could have dances and we could go out and be much more social. And tennis parties. And my husband went away. He was older than me. He went away to agricultural college and I was going to go but of course I went but when it was picked that I was to go I couldn’t I couldn’t because all the ex-servicemen coming back from the war they all had priority.
DE: Sure. Yeah. Of course.
JA: And we met some and my husband was there at the Agriculture College at Sutton Bonington with a lot of the people, men who were ex-soldiers. He was a lot younger than most of them because he’d started and they came back and we had some wonderful friends actually who had been in the war. A lot of tragedies.
DE: So your husband was a little bit older than you.
JA: Yes.
DE: What —
JA: He was two years older than me.
DE: What did he do during the war? What were his —
JA: Well, he was a farmer you see. He was a farmer and he was working. He was working on the land to produce food. It was. It was work and sleep.
DE: Right.
JA: And, and that’s what [pause] that’s all we, if you don’t know anything else you accept it.
DE: Yeah. So I’ve mentioned it before we started recording but I believe you had a couple of links to RAF stations in Lincolnshire.
JA: He had a lot more links because he, living at Spridlington they were more or less in the flight path from Scampton and he and his father used to stand and count Lancasters going out at night and then they would count them coming back in the morning. And you know he always said how dreadfully tragic it was.
DE: And I understand your sister in law was in, in the WAAF.
JA: No.
DE: No.
JA: No. No. I haven’t got a sister in law.
DE: Oh, it’s [pause] was there somebody who was a driver?
JA: No, I don’t know where you got this from.
DE: No. Okay. Never mind.
JA: No. No. No.
AA: Guy Gibson’s driver. That’s Fred Albones.
JA: Oh, yeah. That is a relative of my husband’s.
DE: Oh I see. Right.
JA: Yes. Yes. Yes. Which was over there. But it was, it was a strange upbringing but the whole point I’d like to emphasise is the fact that because we knew nothing else it was acceptable and what was so wonderful and we appreciated it so much was the freedom afterwards. When by today people have freedom from the day they’re born we, I now look back and I still think we had some wonderful times when I was seventeen and eighteen which today the youngsters would just think was stupid. But we hadn’t had anything else.
DE: Yeah.
JA: And then of course which was the most exciting I left school and my father decided that because he had no son that would I like to be a farmer you see and take over the farm. So that’s why I really began to work on the farm and so then when I was seventeen, I’d be nearly eighteen he bought a tractor.
DE: Wow.
JA: And I had the tractor and it was a little grey Fergie but it didn’t have a cab but I could go plough where I’d been actually ploughing with horses and I mean ploughing. Not many women of ninety two can say they’ve ploughed a lot of land with two horses. And then I had a tractor to come plough with.
DE: Okay. So I mean you said that you really loved working with horses, you know.
JA: Yes, I did.
DE: What was it like swapping over to having a tractor then?
JA: Well, it was you were just sat on a seat. You weren’t walking behind.
DE: Oh right. So it was —
JA: But it was always cold. No, but I still I love the horses as horses but I realise that I could do a lot more work in a day with a tractor than I could with two horses.
DE: So how, how long did it take before the the horses had gone and —
JA: Well, I don’t know. Gradually tractors, things began to go so quickly when war ended you know because tanks had been in the war and tractors soon were invented. You know from the little grey Fergie we got another tractor, another tractor and within a couple of years it was amazing how quickly —
DE: And I suppose they just kept getting bigger and more powerful and —
JA: Exactly.
DE: Yeah.
JA: And less labour was necessary.
DE: How many acres did you have?
JA: My father had, it was interesting he had three hundred and forty acres and he also had another rented another forty acres of pure grassland which was in those days was a very good living for a farmer. You would need three, four times as much today to get the same benefits.
DE: So, so it was mostly potatoes was it?
JA: It was. It was arable.
DE: Right.
JA: And then we did have cows which were bought for me because I wanted, I liked animals so we had a bit, we had a small dairy herd which was mine which was very nice. I thoroughly enjoyed them but the trouble is I soon found out that cows don’t differentiate between Fridays and Saturdays or Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
DE: Yeah.
JA: And I found it rather tiresome but I had to do it because this was what was decided because when everybody else was going out on a Saturday afternoon I had to milk the cows.
DE: Sure. Yeah.
JA: Good discipline.
DE: So what happened when you, when you were married then?
JA: When I married. Oh, it was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful to be married. I mean I loved my husband but it was so wonderful to get away. I was free. I was free to make my own decisions. Free to decide what we were going to have to eat. Free to decide when I was going to go shopping. It was marvellous. It was a good job I married him because I really needed to get away.
DE: So what happened to the farm?
JA: Oh, the farm. Father carried on of course. I had a sister came in then. A younger sister.
DE: Right.
JA: Whom had got a boyfriend who hadn’t got any land and he came and sort of took over. Took charge. But I was so pleased to get away. It was wonderful.
DE: So where did you live?
JA: I lived at Hackthorn. In the rectory. I don’t know whether you know Hackthorn. We lived in the rectory for a time and God it was cold. There wasn’t such a thing as central heating. But we stayed there and then we went to live up at Binbrook. By then I’d had a baby of course and life moved on.
DE: So, can you tell me a bit more about, you know your life after the war?
JA: Oh, well as I said after the war I got married in in 1952 and then we moved. My husband was a farmer. We lived up at Binbrook. I had another baby. Then then another one and then he came along. That was it. It was hard work but but then I I’d been used to living in the country. I’d been used to being on my own. I’d been used to discipline. So it was great.
DE: Did he ever, did he ever travel?
JA: Oh yes. All the time. As we got, as we got older we got freer when the children were grown up and we came to live down here. We travelled a lot. All the time. And we made the most of it and we still do actually. It was because my husband he got leukaemia. He started when he was only fifty seven and he died at sixty five and so we made the most of those years because he’d only been given three years to live and he actually managed to live nearly ten.
DE: Wow. Okay.
JA: Crossing our fingers. Very good. And so we made the most of it you know. It was each year, ‘Come on. We’re going to go.’
DE: Explored.
JA: Make the most of it. And I don’t regret a single thing.
DE: No. Where did you go?
JA: Oh, we travelled all over. We went, we went to and travelled to and all over been to Australia. We travelled around New Zealand. We went to Europe. We went to America. I went later to the Galapagos. He didn’t go to the Galapagos with me but we did. And we had a wonderful doctor and when we wanted to go to New Zealand he said, ‘Oh, that’s alright.’ We had to see the consultant said, ‘I’ve got a colleague in the Auckland. If you turn ill you can ring him in Auckland.’ So we had a camper van and and travelled all the way around the New Zealand for the month.
DE: Wow. Okay.
JA: Making the most of it.
DE: Yeah.
JA: If you know that the end is near you. So, I’m still travelling.
DE: But you know you didn’t fancy ever settling down anywhere else that you —
JA: Actually, when we went to New Zealand my husband loved it so much the first time we went if he hadn’t, he was an only child and if he hadn’t had elderly parents who were still alive it was like that. I think it wouldn’t have needed much for us to to emigrate because he loved New Zealand. Thought it was the ideal place but there it is. Times change.
DE: So how, how much do you think Lincolnshire has changed?
JA: Oh, well it’s unbelievable how it’s changed. I mean it’s still an arable county and even when I was a child there were, there were cattle but it was beef cattle. Sort of single herds but nowadays it’s now all well of course with the war all the grass had to be ploughed up to produce food for people and so it was never laid down back again and so it is much more an arable county and of course the tracks are just huge. The machine. But the machinery is, it’s enormous. I mean progress. I mean even in this last, even since my husband died I mean the the mere fact of the television and the iPads and all those sort of things I mean he would have a fit if he came back [pause] So life moves on but it always does.
DE: Yes. Yeah.
JA: But and I think every generation has said we’ve seen the best of it. But I don’t know. I’m just in a way I’m just sad that I’m getting old because I want to know what’s going to happen in another ten years. You’ll see it. I shan’t.
DE: I don’t know.
JA: That’s what, I don’t think I want to live to be a hundred and two.
DE: I’ve interviewed someone who was a hundred and two.
JA: Have you?
DE: Last year. Yeah.
JA: Oh, come again in when I’m hundred and two and see what I’ve done in the last eight years!
DE: I just, you know I’m just wondering if you have any other stories that you’d you’d like to tell me that you might have thought about when you heard I was going to come and meet you.
JA: No. Life, I think life has been, it sounds a bit monotonous as though you know I’ve not been almost killed in an air raid or anything like that but I can’t. I can’t think of anything that there are so many bits aren’t there in life. I think the most important thing is to make the most of everything and not to be too critical. [dog growling] That’ll be the post coming. No. I, of course when you’ve gone I’ll think of all sorts of things.
DE: Oh, yeah. But if I switch the machine off you’ll think of something.
JA: That’s sods, that’s sod’s law. I mean I do regret not getting [pause] The only thing I think that I wish that my parents had insisted that I carried on with further education. It’s alright that I loved the horses and I loved the land but I had a good brain and I should have used it. But then my life wouldn’t have been the same as it is today.
DE: And then you couldn’t go to agricultural college because there wasn’t —
JA: I missed out on that.
DE: Yeah.
JA: Mind you I didn’t really mind because by then I I was realising that I was in love with my husband and that we would get married and you did get married in those days you know. You didn’t live together and that sort of thing. You got married and I mean literally I had a baby nine months after I was married.
DE: Right.
JA: And, and that was the way my life went. But I do regret whenever like I said I try to do it occasionally, you know. I loved to read. I love history. I’m interested in in everything that goes on. I wish I’d had more of a trained brain. But [pause] but it’s no good. It’s no good regretting because it’s happened.
DE: Yeah. Yeah. And I dare say you’ve educated yourself.
JA: Yes.
DE: By the things you were reading.
JA: Yes. Yes.
DE: And the places you’ve been and things so —
JA: The places I’ve been and I’ve always been a great embroideress and a great sewer and I’ve done things around the Pony Club for twenty years. I’ve always done things but but not for money if you like.
DE: Yeah.
JA: Otherwise, I’d, and I was also a marriage guidance counsellor for forty years which was interesting.
DE: Wow. Okay. Can you tell me about about those things and the Pony Club? And working in marriage guidance.
JA: Yes, if you like.
DE: That sounds fascinating.
JA: Oh yes. Well, Pony Club I loved because I, I love kids. I don’t like, I don’t like small children very much but I do like teenagers. There aren’t many people that actively like teenagers [laughs] and I used to love running the Pony Club. It was, it was great. Well you know there were kids and ponies and again it was the horses wasn’t it? And when I look back when I I see the rules and regulations now that there are about having children in groups and I mean we used to have Pony Club Camp and I would quite happily have twelve, have thirty twelve and unders sleeping in farm buildings with their ponies and I would be the only one sleeping the night with them but I never thought anything about it but if something had happened. But it didn’t, did it?
DE: No.
JA: So, I loved running that. That was okay. But so many, and even today somebody in the supermarket only last week you know came up to me. She said, ‘I think I know who you are.’ So I said, ‘Oh yes?’ she said, ‘You’re Mrs Albone aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘I was one of your Pony Club girls.’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘I’m fifty next week. Do you remember me?’ Well, I had to talk myself through it but she was slightly different at fifty than she was when she was seventeen.
DE: Of course. Yeah.
JA: And as for marriage guidance well I just, I like people you see and I like people. I like to be able to listen and help people. I mean it worked for me. And you see my generation in those days because I hadn’t got a career in inverted commas so many of my friends if you like didn’t either. They came home from school to help mother or came into their own farm home. So they either sort of played a lot of golf, or a lot of us did a lot of social work and, you know we ran the Pony Club or we did other things for other people because we had to do something that was away from the farm and it’s sad nowadays because but everybody now has a career and they earn money. So that is why I think a lot of social things they find it difficult to get volunteers. So this is why I went in to doing my marriage counselling. Then it became Relate and then I became a sex therapist which was great fun I have to say. It was because there was, no it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t because so many people had so many sadnesses and if you could help them through that it was fantastic. But —
DE: No. But I suppose you had to keep a bit of an open mind and I suppose a sort of farming background would help a bit with that would it?
JA: Well. Yes, well it was just the fact that I mean I had a lot of experience in the fact that I had been, you know I’d been alive. I’d had a family. I’d had parents. I’d had you know. I’d lived in many ways.
DE: So it’s a sort of passing down your experience.
JA: Yes, and actually you know when all is said and done with all counselling work it isn’t what you say it’s, it’s being able to listen. It’s what they say to you is what, you know, or they sound off against you.
DE: Yeah.
JA: Which I found very interesting. Quite traumatic at times but good and my husband was always cooperative. He didn’t want to do it but he was very happy for me to do it. I mean he was busy farming wasn’t he?
DE: Sure.
JA: And fishing.
DE: Fishing.
JA: Yes.
DE: Okay.
JA: Farming and fishing.
DE: So did he, did he not get involved with the Pony Club then either you were saying?
JA: No. No. He didn’t like horses.
DE: Right.
JA: Didn’t like anything to do with horses.
DE: Right.
JA: But —
DE: It was tractors and machinery.
JA: Tractors, machinery and going fishing.
DE: Right.
JA: But no but you see he was fishing and shooting and I was riding horses and hunting and so but we knew the same sort of people so we always used to say on a Saturday night we had an awful lot to talk about because we came from different angles.
DE: Yeah.
JA: I don’t know what you’re going to do with all this.
DE: Well, you know we will if you sign the form saying you’re happy for us to use it we’ll, we’ll put it as part of the archive.
JA: You want to say something Alex.
AA: Well, I was, I was just thinking that you could, you could enlighten a little bit more about, about father’s experience of being in the Home Guard and shooting rabbits during the Second World War and raising enough money to —
JA: Oh yes he did. That’s how we got married.
AA: That, that’s the story you should talk about. I think you could also could talk about having chickens in the, in the drawing room at Hackthorn when you first got married.
JA: Yes.
AA: In order that you had enough money and I think you could expand upon that.
JA: Yes, I certainly, yes.
AA: And also expand a little bit on, a little bit about what community was like during the war years. I think you’ve mentioned it but I don’t think you’ve really talked about how you actually entertained yourself just after the war. How, rural life was up to and around.
JA: Funny boy.
AA: Wartime.
JA: Okay. I, I liked about my husband he had a wonderful dog and he would shoot rabbits and he would take rabbits to market to sell and we actually got married on his rabbit money savings.
DE: Right. Okay.
JA: Yes. We went to local sales and bought furniture. The bed cost ten pounds I remember. But it was, it was a very comfy bed and, but, that’s, that’s how it moved because he had to work. So, you know. Well —
DE: So, what was the going price for a brace of rabbit?
JA: Oh, for goodness sake [laughs] I don’t, not a lot but there again well oh yes one thing is when I first got married I was you see when I, yeah that was interesting. When I, when I did get married I had in my bank account I had thirty two pounds because all my father ever paid me was four pounds a week even when I had the cows and driving tractors. Mind you I did get all my food and everything else. And I’d thirty two pounds in the bank and when I got married my housekeeping allowance was five pounds a week and five pounds a week in 1952. And out of that my husband always paid for the meat. Farmers in those days always paid the butcher’s bill and, but I managed to dress myself and feed a baby on five pounds a week.
DE: That’s inflation for you then eh. Yeah.
JA: That’s inflation.
DE: So, chickens.
JA: Oh, chickens. When we first got married we were desperately hard up and we had this enormous rectory which had a drawing room, a dining room, a sitting room, a kitchen, you know. So we thought what were, what were we going to do with the dining room? So we had, we put an incubator in and we had baby chickens. And then and then put them in the walled garden and produced eggs to help with our income. It was quite interesting when people came to the door when they’d hear the chickens in the dining room but still never mind.
DE: And Alex said something. A bit more about the sort of community life.
JA: Yes, I think the community life as far as we was concerned were dances once a week when there was, you know freedom. Tennis parties in the summertime. Grass courts when we had to cut the grass. You know, lined. No hard courts. We had to line, you know. Do it all ourselves. And that’s how we met our friends. And we did. And of course, the Young Farmers’ dances and then it got to be people’s twenty firsts and in those days it was so funny. I mean we went the ballroom at Brigg we always used to invite [laughs] for your twenty first you always invited the young people but you always invited their parents as well. So the parents would sit around the outside of the room watching the young people dancing you see. We were, we were accustomed to it. That was the way it was but looking back on it you know you couldn’t be a bit naughty or anything else because somebody was going to see. But it was the way it was and what I’m trying to say is you accepted the way it was. And that was it. Where today you know everybody has so much freedom. It’s fine. But that’s today, isn’t it? [pause] I don’t know what else to tell you, you know.
DE: So you’ve sort of painted a picture of of what, what happened in, in the summers. It was tennis and dancing.
JA: Dancing in the winter of course.
DE: Oh, there was dancing in the winter.
JA: We went dancing in the winter. Yes.
DE: Right.
JA: Yes, there were dancing in the winter. There was usually a dance every Friday night, you know. And yes, yes that’s reminded me. And I had a particular way of my mother made me, she was a most wonderful seamstress and she made me some wonderful clothes to wear to these dances because it was very important we had something new all the time. And when the New Look came in I had a New Look outfit which was extremely smart but when it was a dance a lot of the, they were ballgowns you see. Off the shoulder and I had a small pin had been given to me. A small pin of a fly and in the first place Sellotape. I used to manage to get this fly pinned on to my skin with Sellotape so I was always known as the woman with the fly. That was my —
DE: Well —
JA: Different to anybody else.
DE: What an odd thing.
JA: It was.
DE: Yeah.
JA: It was very interesting. Yes. But you had to have, you had to look different. You had to look special.
DE: Right and it obviously worked because —
JA: Oh yes, obviously it worked. Oh yes.
DE: You met your husband. Yeah.
JA: Yes, it worked.
DE: So, I mean you said it was a bit hard when you first got married and you had to have the chickens in in one room.
JA: Oh it was hard but then I was used to hard. Are you with me? I mean we we we were all of us used to hard work but we, we had each other. We had privacy. We were away from our families. And then of course I had a baby and it was a natural process but it was, it was good. It was really good.
DE: Okey dokey. Thank you.
JA: And then my husband got the opportunity of having a farm up at, up at Binbrook and so we moved up there and I always remember he was, whether this is applicable but he was, he was a lovely man my husband and he was very much liked by a lot of people and the local auctioneer who had no sons took him under his wing and I always remember him coming and said, ‘We’re going to get you a farm, Ted.’ And he did. He got this. He got this farm for him and we accepted it. And he said, ‘But you must remember,’ I’ve always remembered this, ‘Always remember you’re going to be successful but you will lose friends.’
DE: Right.
JA: And we laughed about it. Ted laughed about it. He was right. We did. Some of his school friends never spoke to him anymore.
DE: Because he’d—
JA: Because he’d suddenly become successful.
DE: Right.
JA: That was quite a powerful feeling actually in those days because when you’re young you like to be liked don’t you?
DE: So what did success mean then?
JA: Well, success meant that we moved. We moved into a bungalow that was built for us. We had another child by then. Success didn’t necessarily mean a lot more money. I mean we were still always hard up. But it meant that we were, well equity had increased. There was more opportunities. We were making a lot more friends up on the Wolds there. Completely new people. But we were still always hard up. We always seemed to be hard up actually.
DE: Well, I suppose that part of that’s, you know needing the next new tractor or bit of machinery or whatever.
JA: Well, yes. In farming one, one has stuff but you don’t have cash. I think it might apply today in many people.
DE: Yes.
JA: You have things but no —
DE: Yeah. So it’s investments. Yeah.
JA: You have land and it’s worth an enormous amount of money but it’s not much good having fifty acres of land that’s worth ten thousand pounds an acre if you haven’t got enough money to buy lunch is it?
DE: No, I suppose not.
JA: So that’s why I learned to sew and make things. Make things for my home and make things and I’ve sewed ever since. Oh and yes probably the main thing is which is not many people when I was eighty I had an exhibition of all my handiwork in the local village, in the local church because I had a friend, I always said that when I died I didn’t want a particular funeral. I would like to have an exhibition because I’ve always sewed and made things. Cushions. Everything in this house I’ve made. And so she said, ‘Don’t be silly. Do it now when you’re eighty.’ And I did and I had eighty eight pieces of from curtains to wedding dresses to embroidery to whatever that I have done all my life. I’ve collected it and never sold anything in my life but and made things for family and friends and everything else. Collected it all up and had an exhibition. It was fantastic. Raised a lot of money.
DE: Really?
JA: Yes.
DE: What charity did you choose?
JA: I gave it half to the church and the other half to, to Leukaemia Research because my husband died of leukaemia.
DE: Yes. Of course. Yeah.
JA: But he was I was glad I did it because you know, if I’d been dead I should never have enjoyed it should I?
DE: No. No. Were there many people came?
JA: Oh yes. Well, you see all my friends knew it was my eightieth birthday and it was and thanks to Alex he got it publicised in a local magazine and actually so many people have said, it was open for three days have only said to me the other day, ‘Well, let’s do it again?’ I said, ‘No way. Thank you. No way. Thank you.’ There we go.
DE: Smashing. Thank you.
JA: So what, there are lots of bits aren’t there? So what do you, do you put the bits together?
DE: No. We don’t edit anything. Shall I press pause for now.
JA: Yes.
[recording paused]
DE: So just started recording again. Electricity.
JA: Electricity. We, okay even as a child we had only electricity because we had a generator and it had a an engine but it only generated enough electricity for light. It was always going wrong I have to say but we were definitely one up on the local population who only had oil lamps. So electricity would come. I can’t remember when electricity, when we got to be on the electricity but the most important thing was the water because we had our own borehole as children and we dug a borehole. And we had cattle in the, we always had cattle even if we didn’t have cows. But we children kept saying to our parents, ‘This water tastes horrible.’ Because we drank water and those who didn’t drink the orange and this water tastes horrible. We would be eleven twelve. It would be sort of during the war but getting on in the war. Eventually my father decided to have the water tested. Of course, we lived on limestone ground and the cattle in the in the crew yards the water had, the effluent had filtered into the borehole hadn’t it. So we were actually drinking water that should have caused us illness. At that stage father decided right so we had to have water. We had to fetch it from a local bore, a local pipe two miles away with a, with a [pause] and my father and he said, right, we could still bath and everything still in this dirty water but he would never do. So my mother had to carry water from well was boiled in pans on her, the pure water for him to bath in. But we could bath in the dirty water.
DE: Right.
JA: So my father was an odd man. But this how we didn’t get any I do not know because the water was disgraceful. And that is I think both how my sister and I to be honest I wouldn’t like to say but I don’t think we’ve ever had a tummy upset.
DE: Right. It’s sort of inoculated you to everything.
JA: Inoculated us for life. Yeah. We’re both very tough.
DE: Crikey.
JA: And and and I honestly believe that it was because we were sort of —
DE: So when did you get the water better water supply?
JA: Oh, I don’t know, It would be around about, it was towards the end of the war. It would be about in 1943 ’44 when, when we [pause] No. I think we had water right to the end of the war. It would be 1945. Things began to go ever so fast once war was over. When we got mains. Mains water.
DE: What about electricity?
JA: Electricity. About the same time. About the same time we got electricity. But everything seemed to happen together. The war ended and we seemed to suddenly move up into the twenty first, twentieth century. And it was. But we didn’t die did we?
DE: No. And then you had to, you watched the Coronation on a, on your —
JA: Oh yes. A little box set. Yes. And my mother in law had bought it. Terribly expensive at the time I remember. I think about the same price as they are now. It was a lot of money in those days. And so half the village came and sat and watched it. But I was so because I loved clothes and I loved the Queen’s dress and everything else. And then later in life it was only after my husband died my daughter took me to London to see the Queen’s clothes and the Coronation dress was there in this exhibition in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace. I’d never been so absolutely amazed. It was so beautiful because on television it was only black and white and silver but in real life the embroidery on it was all in colour. It was, I’ve never seen anything more exquisite in my life as that dress.
DE: Wow.
JA: A bit disjointed.
DE: No, it’s wonderful. Thank you.
JA: Going from sewerage [laughs] to that dress
DE: Yes. Opposite ends of the spectrum. Yeah. Right. I shall press stop.
JA: Right. I think you’ve had enough.
DE: Thank you.
JA: I think you’ve had enough.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jan Albone
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-09-22
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:57:11 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AAlboneJM220922, PAlboneJM2201
Description
An account of the resource
Jan was born on a farm in North Lincolnshire. She went to school in Brigg. She loved the farm, particularly the horses.
Their farm was close to RAF Kirton in Lindsey which was used as a rest home for men from the Battle of Britain. They worked on the harvest to help them recuperate. Jan was aware of the Lancasters at RAF Scampton. They had two evacuees from Sheffield for a short time. Towards the end of the war, Jan also recalls having two German Prisoners of War from the camp in Pingley, near Brigg, to help on the farm.
When the war ended, Jan enjoyed being a member of the Young Farmers Club and met her husband. There were dances and tennis parties before her husband went to agricultural college and became a farmer. After marrying in 1952, they lived in the rectory at Hackthorn where they incubated chicks in the dining room. They moved to a farm in Binbrook. Jan helped with the Pony Club and was a marriage guidance counsellor for 40 years.
Jan talks about the changes in farming and how change accelerated after the war.
At the age of 80, she put on a three-day handiwork exhibition in the church.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1952
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Binbrook
England--Hackthorn
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
childhood in wartime
civil defence
evacuation
home front
Home Guard
Lancaster
prisoner of war
RAF Kirton in Lindsey
RAF Scampton
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2215/39609/PBurnsDR2206.2.jpg
c6da9dba0490cb19c50b40d6b4787ba1
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2215/39609/AUsherJ220428.1.mp3
526e84be7d98d934079057dd408f9ccd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Burns, Bob
Denis Robert Burns
D R Burns
Description
An account of the resource
23 items. Collection concerns Warrant Officer Bob Burns (1525609 RAFVR) he flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron and became a prisoner of war when his aircraft, Lancaster ND853 was shot down 27 April 1944. Collection includes an oral history interview with John Usher about Bob Burns, photographs, documents, various memoirs of his last operation and captivity. It also contains recordings of his saxophone being played.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Usher and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-04-07
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Burns, DR
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing John Usher at his home in Morecambe Lancashire. It’s quarter past two in the afternoon on Thursday the 28th of April 2022. We’re here to talk about Bob Burns’ story. Bob was a flight sergeant in the RAF but if you could just start off John, please with giving us a little summary of how you knew Bob. What your relation was to him.
JU: Well, I’m John Usher. My, my wife, my wife’s sister was married to Bob so in all the years we went on holidays a lot together most years. So we had quite a close relationship with Bob and his family.
BW: And he had quite a story to tell from his experiences in the RAF in the Second World War. Can you elaborate for us a little bit more about Bob’s background before we go on to his RAF service. Do you know when and where he was born? What his family life was like?
JU: Well, as I understand Bob was born in Sheffield. Went to Sheffield, well a grammar school in Sheffield and he then worked. He had one or two jobs before volunteering for the RAF. One was in a factory in Sheffield. But following that he had, he played, he was a semi-professional musician and played in a local dance band so I think that was his, one of his main sources of income before joining the RAF.
BW: Do you know what instrument he played?
JU: He played the saxophone and the clarinet.
BW: And you say he would go into the dance halls with the band and earn some money playing.
JU: He had, he had a regular, a regular job with one of the local dance bands.
BW: And did he ever talk about why he was interested in joining the RAF? What prompted him to join at all?
JU: Well, I think like a lot of young people in those days he was very keen to do his bit so to speak so he had always been keen on flying. I think he’d, whilst he hadn’t been a cadet he’d been to various shows and anything to do with flying. He seemed to have got himself involved.
BW: So he’d had an interest through his youth and childhood perhaps in aeroplanes and flying and that.
JU: He was very much so. Yes.
BW: And he went in to training at Padgate in Warrington when he joined the RAF. Did, did he tell you much about the training he went through at all?
JU: Not a lot. I just know that part of his training, when he first enlisted the initial aircrew tests were done at Lord’s I think it was. Lord’s Cricket Ground which, he was very interested in cricket. Probably, being a Yorkshireman you have to be interested in cricket I would think. But I don’t know if from a playing point of view. Mainly from a watching point of view but he was, he knew a lot about cricket. Whatever he was interested in he always tended to know a lot about it. He was one of those sort of people.
BW: Do you know roughly when he joined up? Would it be ’41? ‘42?
JU: It was [pause] just bear with me [pause] 1940 he joined up.
BW: So that’s —
JU: I don’t know what date in ’40.
BW: So that’s quite early on.
JU: That, well I say it was called deferred service. He applied to join up and then he had to sit back and wait before they called. They called you. In fact, he didn’t start doing any real training until 1942.
BW: Okay.
JU: And then it was basic training. Once he’d been accepted for aircrew he did training out in Canada 1942 to ‘43 which a lot of aircrew did of course because you weren’t likely to be shot down by anyone in Canada I don’t think [laughs] and it was a good environment for training.
BW: When did he join the squadron because he went on —
JU: He came back home for flying training. The full squadron training in 1943. And then he was posted then to Number 5 Group in ’44 which was where his story really begins.
BW: And he was by this stage a flight sergeant navigator wasn’t he? And —
JU: He was. By [pause] yes.
BW: And he joined 106 Squadron based at Metheringham.
JU: That’s right.
BW: Did he mention any of the guys that he trained with or how he’d come to crew up at all with with the guys he started flying with?
JU: Yes. There was. As aircrews did in those days they seemed to appear, go to a station to select. The aircrew selected their own crews basically. The pilot would see someone he liked and, or who he probably met in the mess over one or two days and liked him so they would get together. They would talk about if there was anyone available that could be selected. And through that process they finished up, finished up with between them selecting their bomb aimer, two, a mid-upper and a rear gunner and the radio operator. Two of the crew were Canadians. I’m not sure of their names now.
BW: One was Harold Brad.
JU: Harold Brad. That’s right.
BW: Another, Bill Stevens.
JU: Bill. That’s right. The crew themselves had quite mixed experiences. One of them, I’m not sure which one had been a gardener on a royal estate somewhere. I don’t know which one it was. Which was quite interesting.
BW: Well, from what I can see Percy Dore was the wireless operator and he was from Sandringham so it’s quite possible.
JU: That’s right. I think he was the one who’d been —
BW: He was the royal gardener.
JU: Who’d been the gardener.
BW: Did Bob ever mention what it had been like in the early days before his fateful flight? Did he mention any of the early raids that he’d been on or —
JU: Not a lot. Not a lot about them because before he was shot down he’d been on, the invasion had started in France by that I think and there were more or less a lot of the early raids were in France but he did have one or two over Germany.
BW: Did he ever say much about those? Did he say how they were?
JU: They were pretty well, the raid before he was shot down over Schweinfurt he’d been on a raid to [pause] I’ll look at my notes. No. The ones I’d done I think [pause] Right. On the 25th of April which was just the day before I think he went to Schweinfurt he’d just returned from a ten hour bombing raid over Munich. But to get there he’d gone over, over via Italy and across. That’s why it was such a long raid. And on the return back they were running out of fuel and had to land at an airfield on the south coast having been down the south as well because of fuel and then fly back. Came back to Metheringham the following morning to be told they were on another raid that following evening. The same evening. So there was very little time between the two raids.
BW: And 106 Squadron had been Guy Gibson’s former squadron before he left to form the Dambusters. Did Bob mention any influences within the squadron from Gibson’s time? Were any guys still around from that time?
JU: Well, he’d made that very very strict was Gibson and so it was. Bob was very surprised how strict it was because Bomber Command was said to be a little bit relaxed because of the of the job they were doing. So they were given a bit more free time but Bob found he was in the first oh forty eight hours he was in the air for nearly thirty of it and when they weren’t flying they were still doing dinghy drill, parachute training, all sorts of flying drills on the ground. And he reckons it was because of these drills that later in life it probably saved his life. His quick reaction to certain, to the circumstances which he met with later.
BW: So you mentioned that his fateful trip was to Schweinfurt on the 26th and 27th of April which is almost exactly seventy four years to the day I think. Is that right? Eighty four. Have I got that right? No. We’re very nearly on the, on the anniversary of that particular raid in ’44.
JU: Yes. Yeah.
BW: Seventy eight. My maths is there now. Seventy eight years. The raid itself was quite disastrous in a way for the, for the squadron. There were a number of losses but just talk us through what Bob’s experiences were. What Bob’s experiences of that was. What he’d, what he’d told you. What, what happened?
JU: Well, I got the impression from Bob that it was one of those raids that I wouldn’t say it went wrong but there were problems from the start in that they were taken on a route which supposed, was supposed to be clear which it was clear of ack ack and that sort of thing but it took them, took them very close to German fighter squadrons on the ground. So they had one or two interceptions en route with with fighters. Not that they were hit or anything but that was one aspect. The main aspect I think was that the forecast winds were entirely the opposite direction to the ones that they came across so that they were delayed. They were about an hour late arriving at Schweinfurt which apart from the obvious problems like that are that the, it was quite a large bomber raid. There was quite a lot of bombers on this raid from other squadrons and you were all supposed to be going obviously going on different heights and if you’re not spot on time you run the risk of being bombed from above by other ones who were on time releasing their bombs. So I think that that was one of the main problems. Bob referred to it that when he finally arrived it was like flying in to hell. There was fires down below. There was smoke being released now we know by the Germans as a camouflage. There were flares going off to identify the particular bombing targets and so all in all as I say he referred it to as like flying into hell. It was one of those experiences that it’s hard to imagine in our everyday civilian life now.
BW: And this was only his seventh operation wasn’t it?
JU: It was, yes.
BW: Not long into his tour and you mentioned the night fighter units that they, or the airfields that they flew past to get to the target and it was a night fighter that shot them down wasn’t it?
JU: It was. Yes.
BW: Did he talk about what had happened in the aircraft at that, at that point?
JU: Well, when they, when they released their bombs over Schweinfurt almost instantly after that they were, they were hit by a night fighter and at the same time the rear gunner shouted out, ‘I’ve got the bastard. He’s going down.’ So he, it was a tit for tat or appeared to be a tit for tat situation. So following, following that almost immediately after that because they were hit the pilot told them to, the aircrew all to bale out because they were going down. So they started to make their way to the various exits. Either the front ones for the front crew or the rear door. Now, Bob had always been told by this navigator training although the RAF recommended that the navigator goes out of the front he was advised if he can get over the main spar which is an obstacle in itself. Bob said you had to be a trained athlete to get over the main spar if you got over the main spar. He got over there and he was making his way towards the rear door when the plane went into a spin and the centrifugal force pinned virtually all the aircrew to the floor and I think Bob had resigned himself to, you know how could he possibly get out of this so that’s the end of it when there was sudden enormous an explosion and he was blown up through the roof of the aircraft. The aircraft must have just cut in half. So he went up through the roof which knocked him unconscious but this was he reckoned at three thousand feet and but the cold night air soon brought him around and this is where all the training which you referred to earlier kicked into practice because he was he automatically pushed the ‘chute away from him, pulled the rip cord and he drifted gently down in to a ploughed field in in Germany.
BW: And was he alright on landing? Did he injure himself at all or —
JU: Well, he’d gone out through the roof of the aircraft which he knew had given him a nasty bang on his, on his thigh. Inside his thigh. But when he felt around when he’d landed in the airfield he didn’t feel any pain but he could feel there was a lot of blood in his thigh. And so what happened really at that stage was he, you’re trained or told you must bury your parachute. Bury it or hide it. Hide the parachute so that the enemy don’t know that you have landed et cetera and were still alive. So that’s what he proceeded to do. He buried his parachute and then took stock of himself. He did make one comment about it. He said he looked up into the air just to see the last of the bombers heading back to England and then he just said out quite loudly, he said, ‘Lucky buggers. They’re going home now and I’m stuck in this bloody ploughed field in Germany.’ So that was his reaction on landing in the ploughed field.
BW: Did he know at that stage whether anybody else had got out from the aircraft?
JU: No. He’d no idea. He hadn’t a clue at that stage. In fact, he didn’t find out until the end. Until the end when he came back. When he was released from a prisoner of war camp what had happened.
BW: So Bob’s on his own in the, in this field in Germany in the middle of the night and he’s bleeding from his leg. What happens then?
JU: Well, as I say, he said he didn’t, he didn’t feel any pain and he could hear this, this clanking of engine, railway engines in the nearby well, marshalling yard as we know them as and they were always taught in the, back home that if there was any, if if you want to escape try and get away by train if at all possible. So Bob thought well obviously he is here now to follow the noise and make for this marshalling yard and see if I can find a train and get away from the, from the site as soon as possible. So that was his objectives but it didn’t quite turn out how the training back in England had said it would because he was making his way across the marshalling yard amongst the trains when suddenly all the lights went on and he found himself looking at about I don’t know ten or a dozen rifles pointed at him because in England apparently railway stations weren’t guarded. Certainly not. Whereas in Germany every station and depending on how, what priority it was, depending on how many guards there were so this must have been quite an important one because as I say he was looking down at ten rifles pointing at him.
BW: So he’s then obviously captured. Did he go straight to a camp or was he taken to hospital? What? What happened?
JU: Well, once the guards realised that it had turned out that his wound was obviously bleeding a lot so it was becoming more obvious and a bit of pain so the guards took him to a local hospital which was run by nuns oddly enough. And they more or less patched him up and he spent a couple of days while they sorted him out and following that he was taken to a military hospital and I don’t think, well it was while he was there or en route that he was then taken for interrogation by the German [pause] the German Army or security people which apparently one member was part of the SSS but asking the usual questions about what were the squadron numbers and one thing and another.
BW: So he was interrogated.
JU: He was.
BW: First.
JU: He was for quite a few days. In fact, he was, he was in a solitary cell for quite a few days during his interrogation.
BW: Did he say what that sort of experience was like?
JU: Well, not very good because he did, he didn’t shave and there was very little facility to wash so at the end of his spell there he was quite dishevelled and in fact some of the photographs we have of him tend to show him as being not the Bob Burns that we know anyway.
BW: So, from solitary what happened to him then? Was he presumably he was taken then to his first imprisonment camp.
JU: No. He went, after the solitary he went to a major hospital. He was, he was there for a few months really while his leg recovered and when it had recovered sufficiently for him to go to, then to a prisoner of war camp they made the necessary arrangements and he was to go to Stalag Luft 7. The Luft being ones which were run by the German Air Force really where he seemed apparently to get better treatment than the general prisoner of war camps. So he was, along with three other prisoners, three of them were taken by two guards but en route they had to change. Change stations. I’m not sure of the place but where they changed stations was that particular town had been bombed the night before. So the local people on hearing that there was some RAF prisoners of war in the local station being transported to a prisoner of war camp all as you can understand headed for the station to register what they thought about that at all. Now, it was quite an interesting situation here because the station was probably about oh fifty, a hundred feet up in the air from the road and at the back of the station it was quite open dropping down to the road below. Now while they stood on the station with the three guards a lot of the local people suddenly arrived on the scene knowing they were there and they were shuffling along the platform obviously with the objective of trying to force the prisoners of war off, off the platform down on to the road below. And the guards seemed to have no control over this so one of the guards quite quick thinking in a way suddenly handed his rifle to Bob because Bob was about six foot four I think so he was quite a towering bloke. And the German propaganda was that the British flyers were horrendous people really. They would, you know murder their own mothers if they had to. So they had quite a reputation so as soon as Bob was handed the rifle the crowd shuffling down the platform they all, they disappeared. So they could carry on with their journey. Also the guards, what reason you think , why would the guard possibly hand the rifle to Bob. One of the theories was that if, it was obviously frowned upon if guards didn’t deliver their prisoners intact and if not one of the punishments was that they would be sent to the front line. They were sent to fight the Russians which none of the German guards wanted to find themselves in that situation. So you can understand why he did this. And then of course Bob handed him back the rifle and things carried on as normal.
BW: So literally a lucky escape for him at that point.
JU: Yeah.
BW: And his first camp I think was at Stalag Luft 7 as you say in Silesia. Did he talk much about what life was like in the camp there? Did he describe any conditions there?
JU: The conditions as I gather were, were quite good. There was a lot of sport. A lot of games played a lot of cards, things like that. But Bob hadn’t been there long when one day there was this delivery. These crates arrived from the Red Cross and amongst them was quite a lot of musical instruments. They were all very good quality musical instruments and going through them Bob found that there was a saxophone and clarinet which were his speciality if you like. They were the instruments he used to play back home in the, in the brass bands. So Bob acquired the saxophone and the clarinet and then there was no sheet music or anything of course but he then trawled around to find out how, what musicians were also in the camp and he set up his own orchestra if you like. I think it was about a ten or twelve piece orchestra I understand. In fact, there is a photograph that will show that. So a lot of Bob’s time was spent writing music for the different musical instruments to play in the dance band. And I don’t think really they hadn’t been there many weeks I don’t think before they had to break camp so to speak.
BW: The, the only other member of the crew to survive was Jack Pickstone. Did Bob come across him in the same camp or did he find out what happened to him?
JU: He never ever saw Pickstone again. Never came across him even when he, when he was demobbed back into civvy street. Pickstone did survive and, but he never ever came across him even though he tried to find him he never, he never, never met up with him again. And the rest of the crew of course were all killed. There was only Bob and Pickstone. He didn’t and he didn’t discover that until he was demobbed. What had, what had happened.
BW: I believe Stalag Luft 7 was quite a large camp for American airmen too. Did Bob mention any interaction with the Americans at the time? Did he —
JU: No. No. The only [pause] not that I can —
BW: They kept to themselves.
JU: No. I don’t think he mentioned anything about the Americans. The only thing he mentioned about the Americans was when, from the camp near Berlin when they were finally released by the Russians. The Russians handed them over to the Americans. That was his main contact with the Americans.
BW: So just going back to his time in Stalag Luft 7 he’s got to that stage where he’s I suppose settled to life in the camp and he’s writing and performing music for and with the band and then at the turn of 1945 the camps as you say were broken in that the Germans decided to move prisoners west and north in his case to retreat from the Russians.
JU: Yes. Yeah.
BW: And this involved a, quite an arduous journey for him. Did, did Bob talk much about that and what did you learn about that?
JU: Oh, it was an horrendous journey because on a particular date they were all paraded at about 5 o’clock in the morning because the Russians were advancing and quite quickly. It was decided they would move the prisoners from Stalag Luft 7 to a camp near, near to Berlin which was oh something like a hundred and, about a hundred and fifty miles. Something like that. And because there was no transport all the transport was required to move German troops to the Russian Front it was decided they would have to walk. At this as I understand was the most horrendous journey imaginable. The day they set off was the middle of the hardest winter they’d had on record. So it was hard frost, snowing and around fifteen hundred prisoners were moved out of camp. This the first one started moving out about I think three or 4 o’clock in the morning and the last ones didn’t leave the camp until mid-afternoon so the line of prisoners moving out must have been well, amazing when you think of the time period taken to move them with enough rations for about two weeks which the Germans had on trolleys or trucks, what have you. But the prisoners were just marching with what they could carry and in Bob’s case having acquired this saxophone and clarinet which he said was very good quality, he said better quality then the one he had at home he said he decided he was going to keep this whatever happened. So he carried this through this horrendous weather across [unclear] into Germany. By the time they got to, well they used to sleep in barns or whatever the Germans could acquire during the, during the journey. I suppose they would have an advanced party go ahead and select a farm or buildings where they could accommodate this crowd. One or two prisoners would disappear on the route but they were mainly people like the Pole, ex-Polish aircrew who had been prisoners of war because they were travelling through their own countryside so to speak. So they could disappear and they could find people to talk to and hide them or look after them. That sort of thing. So one interesting anecdote about the journey was there is always a humorous aspect to these sort of things I expect was that on this particular time every now and again they would stop for one or two nights at these farms whatever they’d taken over. They had taken over, and this was on a two night stay and the German commander paraded them the following morning to say that the previous night the farmer reported that half of his chickens had disappeared from the hen house and if anyone was caught they would be shot. No messing. Just couldn’t do things like that. So that was said. So they then stayed on as I say another night and the commander paraded them again the following morning to say that the farmer now reported all of his chickens had disappeared [laughs] and the hen house where they were housed obviously being used for fuel on the fires. So nothing more was said and on they went. But the journey because of the weather conditions and very little food apparently was horrendous and by the time they progressed more and more they had dysentery, frostbite and by the time they moved on things were getting worse and worse. And finally they ground to a halt after roughly about a hundred miles and still about forty or fifty miles from their destination and were then taken the rest. Those who were still able to stand while they were taken by train to Luckenwalde I think it was. A prisoner of war camp near to the edge of Berlin. Any of the prisoners that obviously a lot were taken ill en route and it would appear that they were dropped off at local hospitals or somewhere where they could be taken to a local hospital if their injuries were considered serious enough. But very few, I haven’t seen a record of how many died but how many did die en route but they were in a terrible condition by the time they arrived at the other end. But Bob was still hanging on to this saxophone and clarinet which apparently had dropped from his fingers many times on the route because of the cold and but good for him he finally brought his saxophone and clarinet back home to the UK and he used it again. Well for the rest of his, for the rest of his life really.
BW: And it’s testament to his resilience really because going back to his experience in the Lancaster. He’d been shot down and the aircraft had exploded. He ended up with a bad wound to his right leg.
JU: He did.
BW: And then although he’s recovered it was still giving him pain wasn’t it so he —
JU: Well, right ‘til, right ‘til he died he still had problems with his leg.
BW: And he’d undertaken that walk while still in effect in recovery.
JU: Oh yes. It hadn’t healed. It still reared a bit. Reared a little bit occasionally, I think.
BW: So when they get to Luckenwalde what happened then? This was the camp you mentioned near Berlin. How long were they there do you think?
JU: I think two or three weeks because it was, the conditions there as Bob said, he said, they weren’t much better than on the walk. There was very, there was hardly any food and it was grossly overcrowded because there were prisoners coming in from all over the place. So the Russians finally arrived when they were in there and well the German guards had disappeared overnight and the Russians moved in. Took over. And then the Russians finally handed them over to the Americans and arrangements were made to send them back home to the UK.
BW: That seems fairly straightforward. Did [pause] did Bob have any issues returning to this country. Was it a quite a straightforward process when he got with the Americans?
JU: I think the process of getting out of Germany as far as I know seemed to be reasonably straightforward. It was a case of getting on planes and getting them to where the different prisoners of war were wanting to head for.
BW: So he would have arrived back in England in probably mid-1945 then. Presumably just as the war is about to end or possibly had ended. What happened to him from there? Did he talk about, you mentioned that he had gone on to any [pause] work again in the UK.
JU: I think he was sent on two, they were all sent on two weeks leave and then I don’t think they did a lot of serious, well serious flying after that. At the end of the 1946 Bob and I had been promoted to warrant officer and at the end of 1946 he returned home. He returned back to his musical career. But it wasn’t what he wanted to do long term I don’t think so he then retrained as a civil engineer. A job that he continued to do until his final retirement in South Devon along with his wife Ann and two sons Peter and Tim. He carried on playing his treasured saxophone. Not so much the clarinet but certainly the saxophone with all its memories. He used to play for families and friends and on special occasions really until he died aged ninety-five in 2015. But —
BW: But he'd been back to Germany hadn’t he? And he’d had a couple of meetings at least with people involved with his, with his own personal experience because he I think he met the pilot who shot him down didn’t he?
JU: No, not the pilot. What happened in 1990 I think it was Bob returned to the site at Arnstein. Arnstein, where he’d been shot down and he met with the residents who had been children at the time of his crash so could tell him a bit about it. And strangely enough he received a very warm welcome and was treated to official lunches by the mayors of Arnstein and Schweinfurt which he found quite embarrassing. Now when the Lancaster crashed the local pastor arranged for the dead crew to be buried in the local church which was very brave of the pastor because Hitler’s decree oh Hitler said that Allied airmen should not have a Christian burial and yet we have photographs showing the flowers and everything on his grave in the German town that he’d just been bombing so to speak. After the war the graves, the crew were reburied in a military cemetery at Durnbach. Now on this same visit to meet with the families who’d been bombed so to speak he met with a German researcher who was seeking information about a German Junkers or a JU88 night fighter pilot called Hauptman Walter Bernschein who had been shot down over Arnhem, over Arnstein sorry during the raid and he thought was probably the pilot who had shot down Bob’s Lancaster. Now, this pilot of course was also killed so it’s supposition but he seems reasonably certain from the fighter pilots that were shot down that he was the one that had shot down Bob’s Lancaster. But that’s meeting with the family who had been witness to the event.
BW: Yeah. As you say the other crew members were all, were all killed with the exception of Jack Pickstone. Did Bob ever get to meet any of the family related to any of the other crew members? Did he get to know them at all or was it just those return trips that he’d made to Germany where he’d met the people from the —
JU: No, he met with [pause] he met up with Bishop the pilot quite a lot. And later, later on when they started to form squadron reunions and what have you but I think Bishop was the only one that I can recall. He might have met up with others that I don’t know about but he was a big man in going to the squadron reunions and he went on to one big reunion in Canada in one year and it was very well organised. Almost a national reunion of for such a lot of aircrew were trained in Canada of course weren’t they?
BW: And he was, he was surprised to have been met by the mayors of this, of the towns that he’d actually been attacking or well Arnstein where he’d crashed but also —
JU: Yeah.
BW: Schweinfurt. That must have been quite a surprise to be received favourably let’s say in those terms.
JU: Yeah. I think we’ve got to appreciate that a lot of people and also Germans had lost their families hadn’t they on bombing raids over England and I think that to one extent is probably why the Luftwaffe set up their own prisoner of war camps. As a, to reciprocate what was going on with their crew hopefully over in England. So I think, I don’t know I can only assume that the feeling wasn’t so much against the aircrew as by then as against Hitler and the, and the Nazis so there probably was a little a little bit of sympathy towards the Allies.
BW: I think that’s, that’s all the questions I have. You’ve summarised Bob’s career and experiences very well. I don’t think there are any other questions unless there’s anything else that you may have recalled during the [pause] our discussion that you wanted to add about.
JU: No.
BW: No.
JU: I think that’s pretty well, well covered it. No. I think in Bob’s case it was almost out of the frying pan into the fire wasn’t it? Having been shot down he then after a few months he finds he has to do a hundred mile walk in the middle of the worst winter on record which —
BW: I guess, I guess he must have been pleased that although it took a number of years for the Bomber Command servicemen to be remembered did he mention anything about the Memorial or the plans to commemorate Bomber Command veterans?
JU: Well, I think, I think he was like most Bomber Command. He felt that Churchill and Bomber Harris, more Bomber Harris I think seemed to abandon them in a way. I think what I find is disappointing is that I’ve been to the Memorial in London to Bomber Command which shows the crew and the inscription of Churchill’s speech which fair enough speaks about how the fighter pilots saved the country but nobody goes on to the rest of the speech which says that it was the bomber crew who enabled us to win the war. And that, that bit of it seems to have disappeared from a lot of with all that goes on now I know people talk about you know how especially with the Ukraine business and the civilians being killed and the number that we killed when we were bombing German cities but I think you’ll agree that was a completely different situation. But no I think like the bomber crews I think they were disappointed in what recognition that they got after the war and I think it’s still there that really. I think it’s still felt whatever. You know there was no war medal for people and that sort of thing as I understand it.
BW: Yeah. It was just a clasp.
JU: Just a Memorial was put up.
BW: Great. Thank you very much.
JU: Okay.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with John Usher about Bob Burns
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brian Wright
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-04-28
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:48:26 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AUsherJ220428, PBurnsDR1806
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Burns trained as a navigator and was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham. His aircraft came under attack from a night fighter and the centrifugal force pinned the crew down and making escape impossible.
Suddenly the aircraft broke in to two and Bob was blown out of the aircraft. He managed to activate his parachute and land but had injured his leg. He was caught and became a prisoner of war.
He narrowly avoided losing his life to an angry crowd of locals at a train station as the German guard gave him his rifle and he was able to hold the crowd at bay, until they were able to catch the train. He gave the rifle back to the guard.
Bob was a musician and played the saxophone and clarinet. One day the Red Cross delivered a selection of musical instruments to Stalag Luft 7 where he was being held, and amongst the instruments there was a saxophone and clarinet, both of which he played. He wrote arrangements for the camp bands and orchestra playing both instruments. He took part in the long march taking his saxophone with him.
After the war he worked as a civil engineer and continued to play his saxophone.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Luckenwalde
Germany--Schweinfurt
Poland--Tychowo
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
106 Squadron
bale out
bombing
entertainment
Ju 88
Lancaster
lynching
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Metheringham
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2140/36880/PBerrillR20220222.2.jpg
62097c03b299cef6924cd09318ad6317
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2140/36880/ABerrillR220223.2.mp3
2088ba7a6b2a22a47d6746c6de108790
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Berrill, Roy
R Berrill
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Roy Berrill (b. 1924, 189888 Royal Air Force). He was one of three Meteorological Officers at RAF North Creake.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-02-23
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Berrill, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Just check it’s recording. So, this is an interview with Roy Berrill for the IBCC Digital Archive. I’m Dan Ellin. It is the 21st of February 2022 and we’re in Easingwold in Yorkshire. I’ll put that there.
RB: Well, actually it’s the twenty, yeah the 23rd.
DE: Yes.
RB: Right. Are you alright there?
DE: Yeah. I’m just, I’m just, I want to just check that this is recording.
RB: Yes. Ok.
DE: So, Roy could you first of all tell me a little bit about your early life and I believe you were evacuated.
RB: Yes. I was born in Northampton and I stayed in Northampton until I was, I think it was twelve or thirteen when we moved. Had to move to London for various reasons and at which time I lived in Becontree and went to school in Barking Abbey Grammar School which was, wasn’t a mixed school. It was a school where the boys and girls were separated. Now, is that ok?
DE: Yeah. That’s fine.
RB: Is it working alright?
DE: It’s going fine. Yeah.
RB: Righto. My homelife was rather restrictive. My mother came from a strict Baptist family so I was really, well we were all very restricted as children but I was particularly restricted because I was a relatively weak child. I was always fainting and this sort of thing and I was no good at sports so there we are. But when I moved, when we moved to Becontree in Essex as I say I went to Barking Abbey School, Grammar School there and on the 1st of September 1939 I became an evacuee. I left home with my gas mask and a few changes of clothes and we went to school and then we were told at 10 o’clock in the morning we had to walk to Rainham Underground Station where we travelled right across London to Ealing Broadway where we caught a steam train which went to Bristol. We got to Bristol about the middle of the day. We had no food or nothing to drink and we still stuck out just outside Bristol Station not knowing what was happening. Eventually the train went on to Weston-Super-Mare and for the next three years I was an evacuee in Weston-Super-Mare where I lived in six different places as an evacuee. I took my, the equivalent of O Levels or what was then called School Certificate and I passed every subject including Latin but I failed at one subject and that was woodwork. I then stayed on at school to take my Higher School Certificate but the snag was that during that time the school was bombed and so the part of the school which we were sharing with the local people from Weston-Super-Mare half of the school got burned down. And there was another school then dumped on the same school so there were three schools in the same building and the night when they, the school, that part of the school got burned down I was supposed to be taking my Higher School Cert and we hadn’t got any exam papers. So they had to collect all the exam papers from the other school which was from London and then sit the exam. I seem to have passed that subject [laughs] and then at the suggestion of one of my brothers I applied to go to Queen Mary College, London which is now Queen Mary University I understand. I never set foot, I have still never set foot in Queen Mary College yet [laughs] But the college was actually evacuated to Cambridge where I was allowed two years to do a three year general degree and at the same time I had to do two afternoons a week with the other Cadet Force to train to be an officer. After one year I decided I didn’t like the Army so I transferred to the ATC, Air Training Corps and that’s how I got into the Air Force. While we were at university as I say we had to do these two afternoons a week and we also had to do fire watching and I spent the odd night on the top of King’s College, Cambridge actually looking for fires. It was a platform with no handrail of any kind right on the apex of King’s College Chapel. So that was an experience. However, I seemed to have passed my degree by the skin of my teeth and I had no sooner finished my exams than the Air Force called me up to see what I was going to do. And I said I wanted to be a Met officer because I was very interested in Met work at the time and they said, ‘Oh, that’s just what we want. Some more Met officers.’ So they allowed me to go and train as a Met officer at Kilburn in London. I did my training there and having completed the training and passed I was then sent to Warboys in Cambridgeshire as a forecaster to see how it was done and what happened. So I had a few weeks at Warboys and then I was moved to the next station at Wyton where I dropped a major clanger at the time. The point being I was supposed to be doing the observations for one night while I let the assistant go and have a bit of a snooze and I didn’t know anything about how you worked out visibility at night in the blackout and thick fog so I assumed that it was still foggy. I got a telephone call later on. He said, ‘Why are you the only station in the area that’s got fog? All the other stations around you are as clear as can be.’ Well, I couldn’t talk myself out of that one because I didn’t know how to do visibility at night. So there we are. But eventually I got transferred to North Creake and I’ve written a piece of paper which tells you about my, what happened at North Creake.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Do you wish me to read that out or —
DE: No. That’s, that’s fine if I can take a copy of that that will be good.
RB: Yeah. That’s your copy.
DE: Yeah. So, so how do you tell the visibility at night?
RB: You have to go outside and let your eyes adjust and you have to be sure you know where things are and you look in that direction. And very gradually your eyes do adjust to the dark and you can just make out what is going on. But it’s a very hit and miss sort of process.
DE: So you look for landmarks that you know are a certain distance away.
RB: That’s right. Yes. Yes.
DE: Right.
RB: So I got to North Creake and a very interesting time while I was there. And one of the interesting things as far as I was concerned was I flew one morning on an air test with a, in a Stirling bomber and the pilot took me up just to have a look around while he was doing his air test and we came back down. And that night he went out with his crew and he was killed over North France by friendly fire. The Americans. His name was Tiny Thurlow. He was a Canadian and he was six foot odd and that’s why he was called Tiny. A nice chap. All his crew from his aircraft managed to get out. He told them to get out but before he [emphasis] could get out the plane blew up. So there we are. One or two other little stories which are of interest to me at least was after VE Day there was a tannoy over North Creake that said, ‘Is there anybody here who can speak German?’ And one chap said, ‘Yes. I can speak German.’ ‘Oh. How well can you speak German?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have a First Class Honours degree from Cambridge in German.’ ‘Oh, you’re just the sort of chap that we want. What are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I have to paint the edges of the coals around the station to stop people tripping over it at night.’ I thought that was an excellent example [laughs] of how to use manpower. The other little thing is that is not recorded on that sheet is there’s, in a photograph there is a what looks like a long sort of covered affair and that is where we used to store the gas to blow up balloons. We had balloons which were supposed to ascend at a certain rate and you fuelled it up to a particular size which was measured with a piece of wire and you released it and it’s supposed to go up at a certain rate and you timed it and there was, you know. Thereby you could tell where the base of the cloud was. So that’s my basic experience of, of North Creake and subsequently after VE Day and VJ Day I eventually got a, this is after the war of course I got posted to [pause] Tilbury and they sent me up to Lancashire to get kitted out for the Far East. I went back to Tilbury, caught the ship, the Strathaird which set sail and we were told we were going to India. We got as far as Gibraltar, dropped the anchor and literally dropped the anchor down a pothole. So we lost an anchor and the ship can’t go through Suez Canal with one anchor. It has to have two. So we waited a week in Gibraltar for a second anchor to be brought out. Eventually we went through Suez Canal and while in the Red Sea I had Vaccine Fever which wasn’t very good in that temperature. And we got to Bombay and when we got to Bombay they said to me, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been sent here.’ ‘Oh, well we’ve got nothing for you to do here. You’d better go to Singapore.’ I said, ‘Well, how do I do that?’ ‘Oh, your ship is being diverted to Singapore.’ ‘Oh, righto.’ But they filled, there were about twelve of us on a ship with only twelve officers on. It was a forty thousand tonne ship and you think what happened to the rest of the ship. ‘Oh, we’re taking people to return home to Singapore.’ So we were filled up with Malays and Indians and goodness knows what. And within a matter of minutes the decks were red where they were spitting all their stuff having chewed betel nuts and what have you and, but as soon as we got out of Bombay it happened to be monsoon season so the ship started to pitch and roll and that sent all these, these people returning to Singapore below. We never saw them again. And I got to Singapore and they said, ‘Who the hell are you? Where have you come from and what are you doing here?’ And I said, I told them and I said I’d been sent here and they said, ‘Oh, well we’d better find something for you to do.’ So they said, ‘Oh, we’ll send you on to Japan.’ ‘Oh, thank you very much. How do I get there?’ ‘Oh, you’ll have to wait for a ship to come in.’ I said, ‘Well, when is that going to be?’ ‘We’ve no idea.’ So they said, ‘’Well, and while you’re here you might as well, we might as well make use of you. You’d better go to Seletar.’ Which is on the north side of Singapore Island and it was basically a Flying Boat base. Well, A, I knew nothing about the weather in Singapore so I didn’t know much about forecasting and I knew nothing about Flying Boats either. Anyway, one day I decided when I was off duty I would go back in to Singapore and down to the docks. Having got to the docks I saw a ship there and a bloke standing on the gang plank swaying, so I said to him, ‘Hello. Are you a British ship?’ He said, ‘Of course we are.’ I said, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Japan.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s what I need.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘If you want to get on you’d better go and get your stuff pretty quickly. We’re going this evening.’ So I dashed back to Seletar, collected all my gear which was at the laundry so wet or not I packed it all in and dashed back to the ship and got on it. Told nobody.
DE: Oh.
RB: Nobody cared. Nobody seemed to know. I got on this ship and we went, we got, we went to Japan via Hong Kong and we got to Kure and we were then taken by train to our station which was a place called Iwakuni. But you had to go through Hiroshima and I got to Hiroshima one year exactly after the atomic bomb. We then went on to where I was stationed at Iwakuni and I was there for just short of two years during which time we had, we had [pause] we were called the British Commonwealth Occupation err Occupying Forces. And on the station where I was were English, well British really and New Zealanders, Kiwis and flying mostly Dakotas and things of that kind. There was, there were two other British stations. One further down the line, one for Australians and then one on the north side of the island which was for Indian Air Force. While we were there I met Lord Tedder who came and he was going to the trials in Tokyo. Also while I was there there was a Japanese being taken to Tokyo to give his record of what happened and he was to be prosecuted. Well, the forecasting place where I was based was next door to a kitchen which was to provide food for people passing through and this chappie had a few minutes left to himself so he picked up a butcher’s knife and committed Hara-kiri actually in that kitchen. So he never got to Tokyo. Later on because all buildings were wooden we had an arson attack and the whole of the officer’s mess got burned to the ground and we lost two people there. I managed to get out in the smoke and we then had to be rehoused in another building which was really basically for the erks as it were. We hadn’t got any clothing and so we went to the stores and they said, ‘Well, here you are. Here’s some shirts for you and some trousers.’ We put the shirts on and they came down to our waist. They were intended for the WAAFs [laughs] So we eventually got kitted out and as I say we were stuck there for the rest of the time. And eventually one of the chaps who was a forecaster at North Creake. He happened to be at the same place Iwakuni so I knew him. He wasn’t a very nice chap but never mind. He went. He was demobbed, sent home and the other forecaster he was sent home. So there was a period for me when they did get another forecaster out when there were only two of us so it was twenty four hours on and twenty four hours off which was a bit of a trial but never mind. I found all sorts of things to do and I met up with a New Zealander who said, ‘You should come and live in New Zealand.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to come and live in New Zealand at the moment. I want to go home and get married to my [laughs] my fiancé,’ who I’d met in Cambridge. And then on one occasion as I say Lord Tedder came. Lord Tedder went on to Tokyo by train and his aircraft was going back to the UK so I got a hitch in Lord Tedder’s Dakota down to Hong Kong and had two or three days in Hong Kong which was an interesting exercise. But of course, how the hell did I get back? ‘Oh, well there’s a Flying Boat going back up to Iwakuni’ So I jumped aboard that. A huge Sunderland aircraft which I got in. I was the only passenger. So it was a very pleasant ride.
DE: Yeah.
RB: And as I say we, all our stuff came via Sunderlands from the UK eventually. While we were there for the first about six months all our food was tinned and then suddenly one day we got an aircraft that came up from New Zealand bringing fresh celery and we went absolutely berserk eating celery which was a wonderful change. However, as I say eventually of course I was demobbed but before I was demobbed they said, ‘Well, you’ve been in the Air Force a fair while. We think you might have promotion. But before you have promotion what else do you do besides weather forecasting?’ Well, as it happened I was interested in teaching other people who were illiterate and I didn’t know anything about illiteracy at the time so I started to teach them about numeracy. So they accepted that as a good reason to get promotion. So I was actually promoted to flight lieutenant when I came home. When I got on board ship to come back I was made troops catering officer. Of course, I knew such a lot about catering [laughs] Anyway, that was my job while I was on board ship. But the ship on the way back was constantly being diverted to places they hadn’t intended to go. For example, having got to Singapore we were supposed to come on home but we got diverted to Colombo first, then to Aden, then to a place called [Misawa] and some other funny place. Port something or other. Then through the Suez Canal and having got through the Suez Canal it was Christmas so as an officer I had to serve the troops with their chicken for Christmas dinner [laughs] Then we got diverted again to Algiers and eventually after, I think it was well over nine weeks I arrived home. I got, got got to the UK on the 5th of January and got married on the 10th of January.
DE: Oh wow.
RB: And I think that’s more or less my story.
DE: Yeah.
RB: For the time being.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Is that enough?
DE: That’s, that’s a brilliant start. I’d love to go back and ask you a couple more questions if that’s all right.
RB: By all means.
DE: Do you want to have a, have a drink —
RB: Yes.
DE: Of your coffee.
RB: Good idea.
[pause]
RB: You may understand of course that I live on my own. Although I have a number of people who come in and help me considerably.
DE: Yeah.
RB: So anyway. What were your questions?
DE: Well, it’s a little bit more about your, your role as the Met officer and forecasting. So you said here that when you were at North Creake —
RB: Yeah.
DE: You had, there were three other officers there with you and you worked shifts.
RB: Well, well, there were three. Three Met officers.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Including myself. Yes.
DE: And you worked shifts. One ‘til ten and then the next day eight ‘til one.
RB: Yeah.
DE: And then 10pm ‘til 8pm and then the third day you were, you were off.
RB: That’s it.
DE: What, and you’ve also mentioned setting the balloons and trying to check the visibility at night.
RB: Yes.
DE: What, what other, what other jobs did you have to do as a Met officer?
RB: Well, we had an assistant of course and it was their job, a WAAF to record all this information. And that information was sent to the [pause] I’ve forgotten what he was called. Sort of the local Regional Met Office and it was they who were required to produce the forecast for the flight. Wherever the Group was being sent. We were not allowed to alter that in any way even if we disagreed with it and I think I have explained in there on one occasion there was a significant difference where they didn’t realise there was a thunderstorm around which we did know and that stopped the flight for that night. I always went. I did the forecast with all the crew there and the officers who were also telling what the target was and all this sort of thing and I also attended the debriefing afterwards just to find out how accurate the forecast was. So does that answer your —?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. What was the atmosphere like at the briefings when you were telling them the weather?
RB: Well, of course, being 100 Group they didn’t do bombing. They were concerned with dropping radar interference. Most of. Window it was called and they were going for them at that time they would go and stooge around for about eight hours, dropping this Window. And of course, flying at the height at which they were which was anything between ten and twenty thousand feet they were very prone to the weather itself including icing which I’ve mentioned in there. So, whereas modern aircraft of course flying at thirty thousand feet and the other interesting thing to me is because I still follow the weather our forecasting was done at two thousand feet. We drew up a synoptic chart on a regular basis every three hours and every six hours for the country as a whole and, but nowadays of course the forecasting is done at thirty thousand feet with a Jetstream. Well, we knew about the Jetstream but we didn’t know anything about what it did or how it worked and we had no idea what it was all about. And we had a wonderful piece of instrument. It was on a pole and it was like a garden rake but with the prongs sticking upwards and you had to estimate what the height of the cloud was in this Jetstream and then you had to time it between each of the prongs. And you then had to calculate how fast that Jetstream was. But having done that nobody knew what to do with it. It was a ridiculous arrangement because you were looking at cloud at anything from thirty to thirty five thousand feet and this made the accuracy pretty hopeless. So there we are. Does that answer your question?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So did you get, did you get intelligence from, from the aircraft as well? I know they had Meteorological flights and some of the crews reported back wind speeds and directions and things.
RB: Yes. There were, I think it was four places that would send up balloons much bigger than the cloud thing and that had a series of each instruments dangling below the balloon which would record air pressure from which you could calculate the height, temperature, humidity, and the drift would tell you the windspeed. So that was, that was useful and mostly they just eventually the balloon would burst and we would lose that apparatus but occasionally they would be found perhaps in Norway or Sweden. So there we are. That was that. What else? One of them incidentally was fairly close to a docking we sent up from there. The other thing was some places at Docking I think it was they would send up either a Hurricane or a Spitfire suitably adapted with a, with a gadget on it that would tell you the height and the biometric pressure and they too would record humidity, temperature and they could calculate the direction and speed of the wind and what have you. So they just circled a way above the station to a certain height and that was it. And that was very useful because being in Norfolk you had that wretched North Sea stratas or haar or whatever you’d like to call it which was absolutely deadly from the point of view of forecasting. We couldn’t, we didn’t know anything about it to be honest and they still don’t know. They still get them. So anyway, does that answer your question?
DE: Yes. Yeah. That’s wonderful.
RB: Anything else?
DE: I can probably, I can probably look through and find something else. Yeah. So you mentioned the pilot, Tiny. How well did you know him?
RB: Oh, only, only socially in the mess. Not, not very well. I didn’t get close to many of the aircrew to be honest because they came and went. I was more interested with my colleagues in the Met office and in the air traffic control because that was all relevant as far as I was concerned, you know. Giving them QFE and QFC and what have you. And so I didn’t get close to aircraft crew. I did one or two of the ground crew. The maintenance people. I got to know one or two of them but I have no contact with them. Not now.
DE: No. No. Have you been involved in the, in the Memorial at North Creake?
RB: Not yet.
DE: Right.
RB: No. I think that’s one of the things that they want me to do. I have joined. I joined this 100 Group Memorial Group but unfortunately of course that’s all based in Norwich and I can’t get. I have no car now. I’ve only got a little electric buggy. I can’t go more than fifteen miles away from here. Anything else?
DE: Let’s have a look, see. Could you tell me a little bit more about your time when you were evacuated and your time at Cambridge? Where were you staying? Where were you living?
RB: Well, as an evacuee in Weston-Super-Mare as I say I had six places that I lived and the last one I lived in was a hotel which had many of the recruits that were being trained doing square bashing on the front. And the hotel was a crummy place. It really was disastrous. Eventually it had to be closed because the conditions that were there were really beyond anything that anybody ought to live with. I was there. There were two of us that lived in the attic but the rest were all Air Force trainees so, and that was it. The other places that I lived in as an evacuee varied enormously. One was where there were two ladies who used to be in charge of some sort of school or other. Very doctrinaire and didn’t think much of us [laughs] Anyway, but you want Cambridge as well?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Please.
RB: Well, I lived the whole time in King’s College, Cambridge. For the first year I was in rooms right next door to the Chapel so I could hear the organ playing and that was wonderful. And it was wonderful too when I had to do fire watching because you could hear the organ coming up through the roof. So that was very good but the conditions were not very [pause] There were three of us in two rooms. We had to share the rooms. We had one little gas fire and we were absolutely frozen the whole time. And, and as far as lectures were concerned for mathematics we had mostly lecturers from London University. For physics we had almost entirely people from Cambridge and those lectures were pretty useless in as much they didn’t tell you about what you should be learning. They were just entertainment as much as anything. For example, we were talking about sound and he had a block of concrete on the front desk and he picked up a piece of wood and dropped it on it. He said, ‘There you are. Noise.’ And then he picked up a series of these wooden blocks and he proceeded to play a tune to demonstrate that in fact noise in fact had got a note to it. Well all very interesting but not much help from the point of view of learning the physics of sound. And the other thing we had to do we were all compelled to do early, early computing.
DE: Oh really? Ok.
RB: We were forced to do one session a week to learn about cathode-ray tubes and what have you which nobody explained and I didn’t understand a word of it. But there we are. We had to do it. And then we had tutorials also in physics which again were quite useless. For geography I had tutors from my own college and they were good. Very helpful. We did a lot of interesting work including experimental survey work and that kind of thing. So that was good. Anything else you want?
DE: I suppose I should ask you what the living arrangements were like at North Creake. I mean you’ve spoken a bit about your time in Japan and on board ship. What was it like at North Creake?
RB: Well, I can’t remember the mess very much but the food was good in as much a lot of it was of course related to rationing as what things of that kind. We hadn’t very little butter or things. Stuff of that kind. So when we got on board ship eventually which had got loads of food from other countries one or two people just went stupid and were eating butter and all sorts of things and they made themselves ill. But what was the other thing? Food and —?
DE: Well, you know what, you know —
RB: The conditions we were —
DE: Yeah.
RB: Actually living. Well apart from being the Met office which was below the traffic control in a brick built place so it was relatively warm but the actual living area which was a Nissen hut which was, there was nothing there. You just had your bed and your washing kit and that was it. So it was very very basic. Oh, one thing I did do while I was there I got very friendly with the chap who did, I’ve forgotten what it was called but it was a gadget which you simulated flying.
DE: Mm Mm?
RB: So I’ve forgotten what it was called and I’ve got a —
DE: Link trainer.
RB: That’s it.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Well done. Thank you. And so I did have a go on that once or twice and which was interesting because I’d also while I was at university did have a flight in a Tiger Moth and that was great fun. We looped the loop and that sort of thing so I enjoyed that. Anything else?
DE: Well, did you fancy becoming aircrew?
RB: Sorry?
DE: Did you —
RB: No. I didn’t. They decided actually that physically I wasn’t really quite fit enough for that. Why I don’t know but there we are.
DE: So a couple more questions I jotted down when you were talking earlier.
RB: Yes.
DE: You said you had Vaccine Fever. I mean in today’s climate I should probably ask you what that was.
RB: Well, at the time when I was a kid all my brothers and sister were vaccinated. You know it was a vaccination against flu or whatever. I didn’t have it as a child so they decided I needed to be vaccinated if I was going out into the Far East. So they vaccinated me on board ship and that produced Vaccine Fever. And boy was I hot because the Red Sea was hot enough and I was sweating it out on my own in the, on board ship. So anyway, yes?
DE: And the other thing that I’ve jotted down you said you travelled through Hiroshima.
RB: Yes.
DE: Could you tell me a little bit about what that was like?
RB: Well, when I eventually I was stationed in Iwakuni it wasn’t all that far from Hiroshima and I went there two or three times. We were given tins of cigarettes. Fifty cigarettes in a tin. I didn’t smoke but boy did the Japanese smoke. They loved them and so I could barter without any money. Barter these tins of cigarettes for whatever I wanted. As a result I had enough tins of cigarettes to buy the material for my wife’s wedding dress and that was great because it was Japanese silk which was embroidered. And it was things of that kind but the actual town or the city itself was in a very very poor state. There were trams but they had managed to get to work but they went across bridges and you thought God that bridge is never going to support this tram but it did. It rocked and what have you and we got through. The people themselves were quite good. They weren’t, weren’t objecting to us particularly but of course there were a group of people who had been caught by the radiation and they’d collected together and isolated themselves on a little island in, in the inland sea. Oh, and one other thing too while I was there I think it was three earthquakes. One while I was in my officer’s mess, one while I was up in Osaka and another one which took place on the island to the south of us. And that was an interesting experience too. The one in Osaka —
[voice calling from distance]
DE: There’s someone, I’ll just press the pause because someone has arrived.
[recording paused]
DE: There was a visitor so I’ve started recording again. Yeah. You were talking about Hiroshima.
RB: Yes. As I say there was a group of people who had been caught by this radiation and had isolated themselves and they weren’t pretty to look at either. One day on my off day I was talking to a group and they said, ‘We’re going fishing.’ ‘Oh, I’ll come with you.’ So I went fishing with them and they complained about other fishermen. Fishermen from another island encroaching on their land, on their territory and so we caught them and we took them back and they were, they were sent to jail for for fishing in the wrong area. So that was quite interesting too. Anything else?
DE: Well, you said that there was an arson attack and the quarters were burned down. Who? Who was responsible for that?
RB: We know that it was Japanese but we have no idea actually who it was. There were actually three arson attacks. One where the fuel for the aircraft used to come in enormous metal barrels they stored there. And there was a whole storage there and somebody set light to that and blew the lot for God knows how long. I mean barrels were shooting up in the air. And there was another attempt to burn down the officer’s mess but that was caught in time to stop it. But it was the second attempt that burned the place down.
DE: So this was some resistance to the, to the base.
RB: Oh, there were one or two people who did object to our being there undoubtedly. The other interesting little sideline, if you can forgive me for this but when the arson attack took place there were certain of the WAAFs who suddenly disappeared from the officer’s mess back to their own quarters at night [laughs]
DE: I quite understand. Yeah.
RB: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Anything else?
DE: I don’t think so. I mean one of my final questions I normally ask is, is what do you think, what’s your opinion on the way the Second World War and the bombing campaigns have been remembered?
RB: Been remembered? [pause] Well, I hesitate to say this. There was a programme on the box the other day, I’ve forgotten what it was called but it followed an American aircraft, it was an American film needless to say who’d gone bombing over Germany and got shot up and all sorts of things and just managed to stagger back. There’s no such film for the British. And I find that you know it was the Americans won the war. It’s that sort of attitude.
DE: Yeah.
RB: And I find that very sad because the number of British people and I include the Australians and the Kiwis and what have you I think that’s a great shame that there’s no appreciation of what went on. I mean we lost a hell of a lot of aircraft. And the design of aircraft too was an interesting issue. I mean the Stirling bomber was a shocker. A terrible thing to land whereas the Lancasters and those they were great.
DE: Is there anything else at all that you can think of that you’d like to, to tell me?
RB: I shall do when you’ve gone.
DE: Of course. Well, I can press pause. If you think of anything else that you’d like to add.
RB: No. I can’t at the moment but little snippets keep coming back but I suppose one thing that did bother me quite a bit at North Creake was the maintenance of the aircraft was always done in the open air and the poor devils who had to service the aircraft must have been frozen stiff at times. How they managed it I do not know.
DE: But you were there ’44 to ’45 and that winter was really really bad. Yeah.
RB: It was a bit grim.
DE: Yeah.
RB: Yeah. Yeah. But there we are.
DE: I suppose as a Met officer you saw that coming and knew quite how bad it was going to be.
RB: We didn’t know how bad it was going to be but there we are. So [pause] No. I really, off hand I can’t remember much more. Oh I remember one occasion as that I was going on leave to see my fiancé and of course at that time there was a railway went right through to Wells.
DE: Yes.
RB: And I got from Wells to the camp of course by van. But I went down to Wells and caught the train to get back to London and I think we got about five miles out of Wells and ran into a snowdrift and the train could not move so we had to get out and walk over the top of the snowdrift to the next station and try and catch a train from there.
DE: Oh wow.
RB: Which we did and the curious thing is we got to Kings Lynn and when we got to Kings Lynn and travelled south there was no snow.
DE: Wow. Ok.
RB: Which relates in a way to something that happened long after the war when I was actually teaching in Guisborough.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
RB: And the staff used to play the Sixth Form at cricket for a day. It snowed in July in the middle of the cricket match.
DE: Wow.
RB: It’s something peculiar to that area. You know, stuck off the North Sea. So there we are.
DE: So you, so you were a teacher after.
RB: I came back home and I didn’t want to stay in the Air Force, in the Met Office because at the time you had to move every three years and I think it was about every ten or fifteen years you had to go overseas and I didn’t want my children if I had any to be constantly changing school. So I decided I’d opt out. I went to London Institute and trained as a teacher. I taught mathematics for nearly twenty years and then I became an inspector of schools for a time and I finished up as the senior advisor for further education, adult education, youth service. You name it. Jack of all trades and master of nothing [laughs].
DE: Yeah. Smashing.
RB: So there we are.
DE: Yeah. That’s marvellous. I’m going to press pause. If you think of anything else you’d like to tell me —
RB: Yes. Righto.
DE: Just give me a nod.
RB: Yes.
DE: And I can start recording again but that’s absolutely fantastic. Thank you.
[recording paused]
DE: So I’ve just started recording again. Yes.
RB: There was one occasion when the group from North Creake was required to fly to North Italy to drop Window to prevent any radar or what have you from the Germans as they were coming back north after the invasion of Italy and Sicily. Well of course that meant flying over the Alps which was a very difficult thing for Stirlings and, but they all got there with one exception and he was a squadron leader. He turned back. He couldn’t face it. I quite understand why because the height they were flying the danger of icing was extremely bad but they made it and they did their job. Ok?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Smashing. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Roy Berrill
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-02-23
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:53:53 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABerrillR220223, PBerrillR2022023
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Norfolk
England--Cambridge
England--London
Singapore
Japan
Japan--Iwakuni-shi
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Roy was born in Northampton and was evacuated from Becontree in London to Weston-super-Mare. He gained his degree from Queen Mary College, London, which was evacuated to Cambridge.
After the Air Training Corps, Roy was called up to be a meteorological officer. Roy trained in Kilburn, and went as a forecaster to RAF Warboys in Cambridge before RAF Wyton and then RAF North Creake.
Roy recounts the death of Canadian “Tiny” Thurlow, brought down by friendly fire in Northern France. There were three meteorological officers at RAF North Creake, working shifts. The information recorded was sent to the regional meteorological office whose forecast could not be amended. He attended the aircrew briefing and de-briefing sessions. The 100 Group dropped Window radar countermeasure. Its aircraft were prone to icing.
Roy contrasts weather forecasting then and now, particularly with reference to the jet stream. He talks about weather balloons and the readings they took. RAF Docking sent up Hurricanes or Spitfires, fitted with new equipment, to take readings.
In 1945 Roy set sail from Tilbury on RMS Strathaird to Bombay, Singapore (RAF Seletar) and then spent nearly two years for the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces at RAF Iwakuni in Japan, passing through Hiroshima. A Japanese man committed Hari-kari and there were three arson attempts by the Japanese.
On his return, Roy was promoted to flight lieutenant. After discharge, Roy taught mathematics, and subsequently became a school inspector and senior further education adviser.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
100 Group
171 Squadron
199 Squadron
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
ground personnel
meteorological officer
RAF North Creake
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
Stirling
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2119/35620/ACurtisL90XXXX.2.mp3
b4ecb6812ebc08febef7b390f7c7545d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Curtis, L
Leslie Curtis
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Leslie Curtis who describes ditching his Wellington into the Mediterranean in 1941.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Matt Phillips and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-01-11
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is property of the Matt Phillips who has kindly granted the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive a royalty-free permission to publish it. Please note that it was digitised by a third-party which used technical specifications that may differ from those used by International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. It has been published here ‘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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Curtis, L
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
LC: Start about July 1941, at a place called Harwell, and Harwell was the airfield at which I had completed my training as a pilot, on Wellingtons, and at a time when we had just been crewed up. Now, by crewing up I mean that you had been given a navigator, and a second pilot, and a wireless operator/air gunner and two other gunners, which means a crew of six in all. And having got that crew and having practiced together, we were then posted to a place in the Middle East, which we weren’t to know until we got there, because we were due to go there in stages. And the first stage of that trip was from Harwell to Gibraltar. Now, there were a flight of eight Wellingtons in the crew, in the flight I mean, and the job really, was for the crews to fly out their brand new aircraft, by stages, first of all to Gibraltar, and then on to Malta and then from Malta on to the Middle East. Well eventually we took off and all went well, and although there was a flight of eight aircraft, we were to make our way individually to Gibraltar and of course at that time you couldn’t fly across France and across Spain to get to Gibraltar because these were countries that were unsafe to fly over, and therefore you had to go on the sea route, which meant you had to fly out to the south west of England, and then right across the Bay of Biscay, right down the coast of Portugal or some fifty, sixty miles off the coast of Portugal, fly right round to the south of Gibraltar and you had to come into Gibraltar on a pre-determined route. You had to come into Gibraltar at a height of two thousand feet and not two thousand and fifty feet, or nineteen hundred and fifty feet, but exactly two thousand feet and on a bearing of exactly due north, coming up to the Rock of Gibraltar. Because as you approached the Rock, you had all the defending guns of the Rock trained on you and if you didn’t come in at the right height and on the right course it was assumed that you were an enemy aircraft and therefore you were liable to get shot down! You see. So you were very careful on how you approached Gibraltar. Which we did, and obviously we didn’t get shot down and eventually we were able to turn in to our landing run to come in and land on Gibraltar airfield. Now, at that time, and this is an important fact in the story, Gibraltar did not have any runways, which it does now of course. The Gibraltar airfield was virtually just an area of sand between the Mediterranean on one side, on the east side, and Algeciras Bay on the other side, and if you landed too short you knocked your wheels off on the kind of wall, that separated the airfield from the beach, and if you came in too high you were liable to run out of landing room and roll down the beach on the other side and finish up in Algeciras Bay. And I mention that point because that is crucial to the story as you will hear later on. Anyway, we got there all right, we landed, and one by one all the other aircraft landed and we taxied in and that was that. And then we had to stay at Gibraltar until we had clearance to take off and fly on to Malta, and there was several days before we were able do that, because there was a lot of naval activity going on around Malta, as you probably know from your history, and therefore we couldn’t take off until all was quiet down there. Eventually we got the okay to take off, and one by one the aircraft taxied out to take off, having refuelled and that sort of thing. [Cough] Unfortunately because, as I mentioned to you, this airfield was just sand, as we were taxying out we hit a rough bit of sand which made the tail of the aircraft bump up and down over the ruts in the sand, and as the tail of the aircraft came down, in one of these ruts, the tail wheel had twisted round sideways and the weight of the aircraft taxying forward broke the tail wheel, and consequently the tail of the aircraft went down into the sand and we were stuck; we couldn’t take off. So whilst all the other aircraft got off safely, we were left stuck behind, on the airfield, with a busted tail wheel. Now, because this was [cough] 1941, there were not much in the way of maintenance or repair facilities at Gibraltar and consequently we were going to be stuck there until either a replacement tailwheel was flown out from England, or alternatively the fitters on the spot could make any repairs or any other arrangements. And what, finally, they managed to do, because there was no sign of anything coming out from England was to wade out into Algeciras Bay, where a Wellington had overshot and finished up in the sea some months before and had been there ever since! And they waded out to this aircraft, and they managed to detach the whole tailwheel assembly from this sunken aircraft out in the sea, haul it back to the land, take off my busted tailwheel and fit this recovered tailwheel on in its place. Alright, so we were okay to take off again. But the only trouble was that by this time, some more naval action had come about out of Malta and it was not safe for us to take off and arrive at Malta during this period. And this naval activity and everything else that went on, bombing and what not, out of Malta, went on for some time, for several weeks in fact, three or four weeks. During which time we were stuck in Gibraltar, and of course as a crew fine, it was a holiday for us, we used to wander off into Gibraltar town, and have tea and coffee and pastries up in the cafes and a few drinks and that sort of thing and buy cheap cigarettes, which you could do then of course, very cheap, and you know, come back to the airfield now and again to see if there was any news, and if there wasn’t, well. Anyway, we had a holiday for about three or four weeks, that was fine. But eventually we got the okay to take off. Now, the next important point to mention is, that all the time that we were stuck there on the airfield waiting permission to take off, the weather was very hot, and it was very windy, and the aircraft was parked on a sandy [emphasis] airfield, right. Now because of these circumstances, what I think [emphasis] happened was that during all this time, that sand got blown into the engines you see, and although from time to time when we went back to the airfield to see if there was any news, we used to start up the engines and run them, it was not possible to be certain that the engines were perfectly all right. So when we finally got the okay to take off, we had to assume that they were all right and so off we went and we didn’t take off until quite late at night. It was going to be a night flight to Malta which was going to be a bit dodgy anyway, because bear in mind we were very young trainee crews, you know, this was the, almost the first time we’d flown any distance from home, we were all very green and the idea of finding Malta, which is only quite a small island as you know, some I suppose, I don’t know, eight or nine hundred miles away perhaps, from Gibraltar. Well this would have been a fairly formidable proposition, even in broad daylight, but you can imagine, in these circumstances, after dark and with only an inexperienced navigator to rely on, it was going to be a fairly dodgy experience anyway, and although the navigator, assuming that it was a clear night, would be able to take star sights through the astrodome and get an approximate fix, as his position was known, that would have been some help, I think we would have been trusting to a fair slice of luck to be reasonably certain of arriving at Malta, because by that time, with any luck, it might have been daylight. I forget exactly what time we took off, we were certainly doing most of the trip, or reckoning on doing most of the trip, in the dark, but it should have been dawn by the time we got to Malta so at least we should have been able to see the island. However, as luck happened, we never did see the island because we never got there! And why we never got there was due to a very unfortunate set of circumstances. One of which was due, in my opinion, certainly with the benefit of hindsight, was due to this business of sand in the engines, because we had only been airborne and on our way for about three hours, two and a half to three hours, when the engines started playing up. Now how you can tell that the engine is playing up are one of a number of reasons. First of all obviously if an engine is in very bad shape it’s going to vibrate very badly so that you can feel that there is something wrong with the engine, but in this case, the first sign of trouble was by what was known as the oil pressure gauges. And of course, being a twin engined aircraft, the Wellington has two oil pressure gauges, and there is a range of temperature on those gauges within which it is safe for that engine to operate, but if the temperature on those engines starts going off the clock as we say, if it’s getting too hot then you’ve got problems. And this is precisely what happened, and it happened first of all with the starboard engine, that’s the engine on the right hand side, as I’m sure you know, and the temperature started going up to a very, very dangerous level, right. So the first thing to do was to try and close down that engine a little, to try and stop this overheating, but when we closed down the engine that side, a little, it obviously needed more revolutions on the port engine to keep the aircraft up, and when we increased revolutions on the port engine, the temperature on that [emphasis] gauge started mounting up and up and tending to go off the clock. So now we were in the awful position that we could not maintain enough revolutions on both engines to keep us flying level. So we didn’t know quite what we were going to do. But then the decision was taken out of our hands in effect, because what happened was that the starboard engine had overheated so much that it caught fire. And when it caught fire, of course we had a real problem because what happened then, was that although you have a fire extinguisher button in the cockpit, which you can press to activate a fire extinguisher in the engine, once you’ve done that of course, you’ve killed the engine. You can’t restart the engine so if you press that button you’ve killed that engine. But in fact, that again was somewhat academic because the fire which had come back from the engine housing, had in fact set alight to the wing surface, and the wing surfaces of a Wellington are covered with fabric, as you perhaps know, they’re not metal wings like on modern aircraft, they are fabric covered and only the control surfaces were covered with metal. And this fire spread to the fabric of the aircraft, not seriously, but, well I suppose any fire in any part of an aircraft is serious. Anyway, the upshot of the matter was that it had now become impossible to maintain height on the power that we’d got on the left hand engine and if we had put the left hand engine up to full power then that might have caught fire as well and that would have been curtains. Because as long as you’ve got some engine power you’ve got some control over the aircraft. When you’ve got no engine power at all you’ve got no control over the aircraft at all and it’s liable to drop out of the sky, isn’t it. So, we reckoned that by our navigation that at this time we were probably only about fifty or sixty miles off the North African coast and if you look at the map and you draw a line from Gibraltar to Malta you will see that at some point you are not very far north of the North African coast. So I decided, and being the skipper of the aircraft you know it’s entirely up to me what decision we make about this situation, I decided that no [emphasis] way were we going to be able to turn round and fly for two and a half hours or more back to Gibraltar, which was nearer than trying to go on to Malta, okay. So in view of the fact that we could neither hope to get back to Gibraltar, certainly not go on to Malta, my thought was, well all we can do is, we’re probably going to have to put this aircraft down in the sea, the best thing I can do is to turn south and get the blessed aircraft as near to dry land, whatever that land happens to be, that I possibly can. So I turned the aircraft south, told my wireless operator to send out a mayday signal, if you don’t know what a mayday signal is, it’s the internationally recognised signal for SOS, for assistance, sent out a mayday signal, we don’t know actually whether that mayday signal ever reached anybody, but we sent it out anyway and I told the crew to prepare for ditching. Now that means they have to leave their normal seats, go back into the body of the aircraft, into the fuselage, and brace themselves as best they can with their backs to the front of the aircraft and to brace themselves as best they can for what is going to be a bumpy landing. You know, whether you land on the sea, or whether you land in the dark on open country it’s going to be a bumpy landing, or a dodgy one at the best of times. So that’s what we did, we headed south, losing height all the time, because by the time we decided that these engines weren’t going to produce any more power, we were probably down to about two thousand feet and we weren’t going to stay airborne a lot longer, so we just kept on going down, and down, and down. And eventually there was just [emphasis] about enough light, starlight or moonlight, I can’t remember which, to see the waves, and so far as I was concerned, flying the aircraft, I was in the rather tricky position because although when you are flying an aircraft you are supposed to have your seatbelt on, in fact, it was hot and uncomfortable to wear a seatbelt, you know, down in the Mediterranean, and I hadn’t put my seatbelt on, in fact I was sitting on it! And because it was so difficult to control the aircraft and try and keep it flying at all, I couldn’t leave my seat or even get out of my seat in order for my second pilot to get my seat belt out from underneath me in order to wrap it round me and belt me in, you see. So I thought well, can’t be helped, I’ve just got to do the best I can. [Cough] So when it became apparent that we were getting near the sea and we were going to have to ditch it, all I could do, in fact, was to put my feet up onto the dashboard and brace it against the dashboard as best I could, and had the wheel, you know, in my hand, the steering column, and as we approached the sea, just to haul back on the, on the stick to try and get the tail to hit first and we just ‘bump’ into the sea with an almighty kersplosh, you see. And because the, as I mentioned to you, the bulk of the Wellington aircraft is covered in fabric, much of the fabric must have been torn away on impact so the sea immediately rushed in everywhere, you see, and I was pretty well knocked out because having had the control column in front of me, as we hit the sea, so it whipped back and forth and the centre part of the control column hit me right on the top of head, above the temple and virtually knocked me out, I didn’t know what the devil was happening, but I became aware of the fact that there was water gushing in everywhere. One thing I forgot to tell you was that, as we were on the last stages before the landing, I’d asked the second pilot to open the roof of the cockpit, because on the Wellington you had, kind of glass doors, which you could open up, for an emergency, and he’d opened up these doors and the water just washed me out of the roof, you see. And I came to in the sea, was sploshing around the thing and that I suppose brought me round to some extent, and I was aware of our dinghy floating in the sea about, I don’t know, I suppose ten or fifteen yards away and the only other thing I could see, and I remember seeing clearly, was the big tail of the aircraft, the fin and the rudder of the aircraft sticking up out of the water over there on my right. Anyway, I floundered and splashed my way across. I’d got my, I’d got my Mae West on, you know, the flotation jacket that you wore anyway, I’d got that on, I didn’t even think of flotating it, you know, at the time, you know, because I was so confused and half unconscious anyway, but I do remember floundering over in the direction of this dinghy which was tossing up and down on the waves and eventually I got there and grabbed the sort of rope going all the way round it, grabbed the rope and hung on to it for dear life, literally, and called out at the top of my voice to the others to tell them, you know, where I was and where the dinghy was, except that I didn’t get any answering shouts, or calls, which I thought was a bit strange, I remember. I thought well the next thing to do, I’d better get into the dinghy and I had the dickens of a job getting into the dinghy because, never having had any proper dinghy drill, I had completely forgotten that there was a little kind of rope ladder which hung down below the dinghy which was supposed to help you climb in, and I’d forgotten all about that, and it cost me nearly all my strength and energy to flounder over the side of the dinghy, eventually, and flop into the bottom of the dinghy where I promptly passed out, and that was all I remember of that stage of it. Well then eventually I came round, I don’t know how long it must have been, I think it must have been just about getting light, so it was probably about, I don’t know, four, five o’clock in the morning, something like that, and there I was in the dinghy which was half full of water, and a horrible sort of yellowy green water and I wondered why it was yellowy green and I wondered if I’d been sick, and if I’d been sick was it that kind of colour? I eventually realised that that was because a thing called a marker, which the dinghy carried, which was a kind of, a kind of chemical, a kind of phosphorescent chemical in a bag, which if you were in a dinghy you were supposed to trail this overboard and it would leave a fluorescent trail in the sea which was visible from a searching aircraft at some altitude you see. Anyway, I’d forgotten all about that as well. Well I came round in the dinghy and there I was all by myself. There was not another soul in sight. There were no signs of anybody floating or swimming round in the sea. Of course no more signs of the aircraft. The Wellington aircraft, incidentally, we were told, that if it was landed well, on a smooth sea, with luck it would float for seventy two seconds, which is not a lot of time, to evacuate an aircraft, and ours, you know, certainly didn’t float that long. However, there I was in my dinghy and to cut a long story short, I stayed in my dinghy, being sick from time to time, and being tossed around in the dinghy from time to time and trying to keep going on some inedible chocolate because there were some what were known as emergency rations attached to the dinghy, and the emergency rations consisted of a tin, rather like a sardine tin, of unsweetened chocolate, which was horrible, and almost impossible to eat, you know, when you’ve got a dry mouth, something horrible, but there were some, some tablets there, I can’t even remember, oh, malted milk tablets I think they were, and there was some chewing gum, and there was also our water ration. And the water ration, and bear in mind the rations were intended for a crew of six, the water ration consisted of an ordinary hot water bottle full of water. I suppose about two pints of water. How long that was supposed to last a crew of six I don’t quite know, but anyway I sipped that from time to time and I sat there in the dinghy and from time to time it got rough and other times it calmed down a bit and I looked round the sky and I never saw any other aircraft or anything like that for about two days. On the third day I thought I spotted an aircraft a way up, very high in the distance, but it wasn’t coming my way anyway, so nothing further happened and I just decided to float around until something turned up. So I floated around and floated around and after the third night, I think it was, three days, no the fourth night I think it was, I was fast asleep in my dinghy and the sea was calm and smooth, it was dark and I was fast asleep, and suddenly the dinghy nearly turned upside down. A great wave woke me up in a start and I clutched the dinghy to stop myself falling out and looked up to see a great big dark shape going past in the night, very close to me. And I thought it’s a ship, it’s a ship, and it nearly ran me down! And I yelled and the ship ploughed on, so I yelled a bit more, I said ‘hey, come back!’ you see. It disappeared into the night and I thought, oh my goodness, perhaps it was a dream, perhaps I’m dreaming this, perhaps it was a mirage, I never saw it at all, perhaps there wasn’t a ship, and then much to my huge relief, I saw the ship coming back and it came alongside me, and I couldn’t tell in the dark exactly what sort of ship it was, but a voice called out, ‘who are you?’ [Laugh] You see. I said ‘I’m the pilot from Wellington Z8773, you’re a pretty sight, can I come on board?’ And they threw a scrambling net, as it’s called, over the side of this ship. A couple of sailors scrambled down this, this net ladder thing and they said ‘are you able to climb out of there on this?’ And I said ‘I’ll get there if it’s the last thing I do!’ Anyway it was clear I was clearly wasn’t able to climb it up, I was obviously very weak by this time so a couple of darned great sailors came down this ladder and they got hold of me and they sort of hauled me on board and happily they also hauled the dinghy on board and then the ship got underway and I went down to the sick bay and they looked after me down there. Oh, and the story could go on and on for a long time but that was really, about the end of the active part of it, I can just wind up by saying that I finished up in hospital in Gibraltar, which was where the destroyer - I’d better tell you a little bit about that. The destroyer was one called HMS Avon Vale and it was one of the civil destroyers which were screening what was known as H Force. And H Force was part of the Mediterranean Fleet, which consisted of I think it was the battleships Rodney and Renown, and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and a couple of cruisers and about eight destroyers, which were known as H Force, which were all on their way back to Gibraltar from all this naval action which had been going on around Malta and Italy which had prevented us from going from Malta earlier than we did. Do you remember? I mentioned that earlier. Anyway, they treated me very well on the ship and they dumped me at Gibraltar and I was taken up to the KG5 military hospital, as it was called, in Gibraltar and I was there for, almost, in the main hospital, for about a week, not much longer, because I wasn’t really very seriously injured and then after that I was sent down to a sort of convalescent place, again still on the Rock of Gibraltar, until there was room on an aircraft to fly me back home. Which eventually there was. There was room on a Catalina, a flying boat, which was leaving for Milford Haven in South Wales. I got on board that, we took off and flew back, landed at Milford Haven in Wales and I got a travel warrant to go back up to London, where I met my wife, somewhat to her relief, and all was well. Except that a crew of six and a brand new aircraft went out and all that came back was a busted up pilot. End of story.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Leslie Curtis
Description
An account of the resource
Leslie Curtis describes how, when flying from Gibraltar to Malta, his Wellington (Z8773) experienced engine failure and he was forced to ditch in the Mediterranean Sea. The sole survivor, Leslie was picked up after four days by the destroyer, HMS Avon Vale, upon which his cousin was a crew member.
This recording was made around 1990, as Leslie recounts the story to his grandson, Matt Phillips.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Matt Philips
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1990
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-07
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Gibraltar
Great Britain
Malta
Mediterranean Sea
Middle East
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Berkshire
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:28:43 audio recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is property of the Matt Phillips who has kindly granted the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive a royalty-free permission to publish it. Please note that it was digitised by a third-party which used technical specifications that may differ from those used by International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. It has been published here ‘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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACurtisL90XXXX
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
aircrew
ditching
pilot
RAF Harwell
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1943/35487/AGuyanS[Date]-01.mp3
18ed3eafa76cc4c5d5761d681cfe81ac
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Guyan, Samuel
S Guyan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-23
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Guyan, S
Description
An account of the resource
40 items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer Samuel Guyan DFC (Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, audio memoir and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 90 and 115 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Andrew Guyan and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Jock here. After listening to George reading about our ops from the official records I realised how bare they were so I thought I’d say a few words about our ops as in the mid-upper turret I saw most of what went on. [radio recording begins] “While US bombers mass raided Germany by day, RAF Bomber Command pounded it by night.” “It was the point of entry in to Germany where the German fighters were under full control in their boxes and by their ground controllers and that’s where they had a sort of first exact knowledge of which way they were coming in and how many were coming.” [pause] “The Germans were waiting with their night fighters and anti-aircraft guns. Prepared for the allied planes coming and going [sounds of gunfire] The crews of Bomber Command flew in darkness to names on maps illuminated by the Pathfinders to drop their bombs. They flew through walls of flak waiting to be attacked by an enemy they could not see. Nowhere else over Europe were such desperate air battles fought [sounds of gunfire] Some would reach home again and some would not.” [radio recording stops] That was just the sound of the action to set the old adrenaline flowing. Butch Harris was one of the speakers there. I’ll start with that mining op at Bordeaux. Coming in from the sea we weren’t sure where we were so we came down low. Five hundred feet Bill said when we met. When we met at the reunion. We came down low to pinpoint some lakes. That was when the light flak guns opened fire at us. Bill lying in the bomb aimer‘s compartment shouted to Gordon and Gordon reacted immediately. ‘Dive to the starboard.’ Yes, Bill and Gordon, you saved our lives that night. I’ll never forget the tracer whizzing by my turret and bursting just above us. I made the joke at the time that I swallowed my chewing gum. I can’t remember whether I did or not. Probably just said it to hide my fear. As I said to Jack, I remembered looking at the side of the aircraft by my turret the next day up at the dispersal looking to see if there were any burn marks. It was that close. If we’d dived a second later I would have been split in two. You needn’t laugh about it Jack because your head would probably have been blown off as you were just up the gangway from me.
[recording paused]
I think that that flak battery probably shot down a few bombers who were doing the same as we were. That op, funnily enough was our first from Wratting Common and our next one was also a nasty one. Dusseldorf. This was the one where we were caught in the searchlights. Twenty four I have down in my logbook and for sixteen minutes. I remember Gordon saying that he was sorry he looped the loop that night. I wouldn’t be surprised Gordon. John and I in our turrets had three or four upside down views of the searchlights that night. By the way that was our first op in P-Peter. A few nights later we went to Krefeld in the Ruhr. I mention this op because this is the op that Peters went missing. He was a pilot I always remember. Tall, red headed. He was very commanding in his Aussie blue uniform. I suppose you knew him most of all, Gordon. I remember walking in to the debriefing room and a voice saying, ‘Peters is missing.’ I can still hear that voice. Later on walking up that narrow concrete path to our Nissen hut I thought somebody would be saying one morning that, ‘Appleby is missing.’
[recording paused]
Wuppertal was a good op. We hammered that one and we weren’t flying all that much above the smoke that night. I’ll talk now about the op when our lives depended on the whim of a Luftwaffe pilot. The pilot of that ME110 when he was faced with the choice of which Stirling he would shoot down. It certainly was a case of eeny meeny miney mo. I am not sure which op this was but I’ve an idea it was Cologne. It was one of the blackest nights ever. Suddenly the sky was lit up by this Stirling catching fire. It was less than two hundred yards in our port beam. The same height and no more than ten yards behind us. I saw this ME110 breaking away to port and then he was lost in the dark. This 110 must have opened fire at very short range and he was less than fifty yards from the Stirling when he broke away. As I said it was a very black night and I doubt that John and I could see more than forty or fifty yards. The pilot in the ME110 of course had us on his radar screen. He had two blips to pick from. Why didn’t he pick us? Was that ten yards that we were in front of the other vital? Or was it because the pilot of a plane was always sat on the port side and breaking away to the port was easiest. We’ll never know.
[recording paused]
I didn’t see anybody bale out of the Stirling which crashed behind a farmhouse. We lost two crews that night so there’s possible that that Stirling could have been from 90 Squadron. Same height, same course. I couldn’t pick up the marking because the flames spread all the way along the fuselage.
[recording paused]
Hamburg. Four ops in nine nights plus a Remscheid in between when we had to turn back because the starboard outer went u/s. The first op on Hamburg of course was when they first used Window. The sight over the target that night was unbelievable. Searchlights were flapping all over the place but also were just straight up in the air. They were completely confused. That was the night that we were diverted to Newmarket when we got back because a plane had blocked our runway. I remember we had to sleep in an empty hut that night. Even had to wait for a van to bring the bedding and make our own beds.
[recording paused]
Our second op on Hamburg of course was the big one. This they say was Bomber Command's most successful raid. Up to forty thousand people were killed that night. I’ll never forget the smoke which was rising away above us. A fourth Hamburg was another nasty one for us. Flying through thunderstorms all the way. The plane covered in a blue light. George said he remembered the ice crashing on to my turret. Most of the crews turned back that night. Why didn’t we? Now Len, never mind that joke you made at the reunion when you said that that sod wouldn’t come back with us meaning Gordon. Good laugh. I don’t know whether Jack picked anything up on the wireless about other crews turning back. He didn’t say anything. In fact, turning back was never mentioned by any one of us. We just pressed on.
[recording paused]
Turin. Crossing the Alps in moonlight. One of my finest memories. We were coned over there but that wasn’t too bad, was it? This was the op when after we just crossed the Alps John and I saw this Wimpy flying the other way. A few seconds later there was an almighty flash. Did he crash in the Alps or did he collide with another plane? We don’t know.
[recording paused]
Peenemunde. Another moonlight op. This was when that unidentified plane buzzed around us. Gordon had thought it was a 110. I thought it might have been a Beaufighter. As I remember it he came out of the moon and flashed across the front of us from starboard to port. He then flew around us and came up behind. I was just going to say to John, ‘Fire a short burst to let him know we’ve seen him,’ when Gordon asked what he was doing. And just then the aircraft turned away to port and we never saw him again. Mind you he wasn’t more than a thousand yards away. Very funny that was. I remember flying over Denmark and somebody flashing the V sign. Peenemunde. We just got clear in time didn’t we before the fighters came into the bomber stream? Remember all these fires in the sky behind us John? [recording paused]
Mannheim, when a piece of flak hit me on the head. I suppose breaking through the Perspex took some sting out of it. It left me with just the tiniest bump. My second op on Mannheim was our last op but we still had a rather shaky do to come, hadn’t we? [recording paused]
Farnborough. After a very enjoyable week there doing the experimental flights with that captured JU88 with the old Spitfire hanging around we took off from Farnborough to fly back to Wratting Common and minutes later bad weather set in. It was so bad that Gordon was really hedge hopping. We skimmed through a tree. John remembers his turret crashing through the branches. When George came to see me he said he remembers this as one of our bad ones. I must tell this story. He said he was sat down by his dials when he realised that the dialogue on the intercom was getting a bit frantic so he thought he’d go and have a look through the astrodome and he said, ‘There we were just flying over the traffic lights in Reading.’ We were alright though because I think the lights were on green at the time.
[recording paused]
Make no mistake it was a tremendous tour in Stirlings 1943. The Battle of the Ruhr, Hamburg, Peenemunde. When people talk about Bomber Command these are the ops they talk about. You have no doubt read that book by Len Deighton called, “Bomber.” He said that one of the reasons he wrote it was because one of his boyhood friends was a flight engineer on Lancs and he told him that during the briefing the Lanc crews had cheered when they heard that the more vulnerable Stirlings would be flying below them. I’d like to mention that I went to a do at the RAF Officer’s Club in Piccadilly in 1975. The Air Gunner’s Association thirtieth anniversary of VE Day dinner. I managed to get a couple of words with Butch Harris of all people and I was saying that I had done two tours. One in Stirlings and one on Lancs. He lifted his eyebrows and said, ‘Stirlings eh? Well done.’ I can understand that more now after reading the book by Max Hastings called, “Bomber Command,” when he quotes Harris saying to Churchill, ‘I want more Lancasters because it is cold blooded murder to send my crews on ops in Stirlings.’
[recording paused]
When I listened to George reading our briefing reports on the Ruhr and bombing from eleven thousand feet some of them that made me wonder. There was I on my second tour, in a Lanc bombing the same targets from twenty one thousand feet. According to George’s missing crew sheet twenty four crews went missing during our stay at 90 Squadron. John, that’s forty eight air gunners. Remember Nobby Clark? He went missing. You swapped his best blue and I swapped a couple of shirts and socks et cetera. It was all part of the game. We told him we’d see him off, didn’t we? He would have done the same to us if we’d got the chop.
[recording paused]
We were talking about lucky mascots at the reunion. [Jack Sherry] made sure he took the same pen every time. Bruce said he had something and somebody mentioned that John took a silk hankie. And I had a scarf. I remember that. And I don’t laugh, this tune which I used to sing. I’m telling this to John really because I mentioned this at the reunion to the rest of you so bear with me. On our second op just as we were crossing the English coast Bill said, as he always did, ‘We’re crossing the English coast.’ I realised that when he said that the previous op I was quietly singing to myself the tune called, “Dearly Beloved,” which was one of the pop tunes at the time. So, I sang it again. Eventually when he said we were crossing the English coast I made sure my mike was switched off and I used to sing it [singing] “Dearly beloved, how clearly I see. Somewhere in heaven you were fashioned for me.” Yes, Jack, you were right it’s a good job my mike was switched off. You may all laugh but it was silly things like that that helped us to cling to survival. By the way I sang it all the way through my second tour as well. Another twenty eight times.
[recording paused]
Bob [Meadows] said that George was always checking and double checking things. This is what survival was all about. We all agree that Gordon did a super job but I would also like to say that we landed lucky in having George as our flight engineer. Thinking back now I realise that he was the best flight engineer in the squadron.
[recording paused]
It’s unbelievable that there wasn’t a Bomber Command campaign medal. I’m thinking of the ground crews as well who worked all hours to keep the aircraft serviceable and they got nothing to show for it. There was a Battle of Britain campaign medal. Bomber Command lost more aircrew in one week than was lost in the whole of the Battle of Britain. Looking through the Stirling bomber book I noticed that Stirling losses were around ten percent on some of their ops. Krefeld, a hundred and fifteen Stirlings — nine were lost. Mülheim, a hundred and three Stirlings — nine were lost. Wuppertal, ninety eight Stirlings — ten were lost. Gelsenkirchen, seventy Stirlings — ten were lost. Cologne, seventy five Stirlings — seven lost. Remscheid, seventy six — and eight were lost.
[recording paused]
I think that Geordie Young going missing on his thirtieth op probably saved our lives as well. If they’d asked us to go on to thirty ops I don’t think we would have made it. We were all feeling the strain by that time.
[recording paused]
[radio recording begins] “Sergeant Brian Bacon was one who did not. He was navigator on a Stirling bomber shot down on May the 13th 1943. His sister Beryl remembers her reactions when told her brother’s remains had finally been found by the Dutch Air Force.” “Oh it was stunned silence at first quite honestly but after that I was very relieved. I can’t say I was happy. That’s not the word I want but I was pleased that at last he had got a, a resting place. We knew where he was and we knew that he’d obviously died instantaneously and that he hadn’t suffered. He hadn’t been a prisoner. He hadn’t wandered the countryside even, you know.”
[radio recording paused]
That was Wesley Morey’s navigator they were talking about, Len. I suppose you knew him. They had dug the plane out of the Ijsselmeer three or four years ago. I believe the tail wheel and other parts of the Stirling are in the basement of the RAF Museum at Hendon.
[recording paused]
[radio recording begins] “Missing. That’s a very big horrible word. It’s, from the point of view of your family it’s worse than being dead I would say.” “You never hardly ever saw anybody die, unless somebody in your own crew was killed. It was just a face there in the morning eating breakfast with you and in the evening he’s not there. And of course, Bomber Command were so efficient that if you lost three or four crews off your squadron you got back at 6 o’clock in the morning, you went to bed. When you got up at lunchtime and went in the mess their replacements were there.”
[recording paused]
“On British airfields they counted the bombers as they returned. Some unscathed, others with wings or tails shot away and inside many the dead, the wounded and the shocked. It was just another day. Another mission.” “Any commander is distressed by losses but of course in any war losses were bound to happen and the heavier they are the more commanders concerned are distressed by them but there’s little that one can do about it.”
[radio recording stopped]
That was Butch Harris saying a few words again.
[recording paused]
We were never attacked by fighters so how John and I would have coped we don’t know. One thing is for sure we were prepared to die for you. As Bill was saying, in the end it was a team effort that counted.
[recording paused]
This is part of a letter which Butch Harris sent to a newspaper in 1949. “To the men and women of Bomber Command, my greetings to the ground staff who kept them flying regardless of the miseries of wet and winter, my salaams to the instructors who kept their necks stuck out, to lessen odds on other necks. But above all my admiration to those too few survivors of our devoted air crews. Happy landings even if the wheels are up. My respect and affection to you all. Butch Harris.”
[recording paused]
I’m quoting Butch Harris again from his book, “Bomber Offensive.” “There are no words with which I can do justice to the aircrew who fought under my command. There is no parallel in warfare to such courage and determination in the face of danger over so prolonged a period of danger which at times was so great that scarcely one man in three could expect to survive his tour of operations. It was moreover a clear and highly conscious courage by which the risk was taken with calm forethought. The aircrew were all highly skilled men, above the average in education who had to understand every aspect and detail of the task. It was furthermore the courage of the small hours of men virtually alone. For at his battle station the airman is virtually alone. It was the courage of men with long drawn apprehensions of nightly going over the top. They were without exception volunteers for no man who was trained for aircrew with the RAF who did not volunteer for this. Such devotion must never be forgotten. It is unforgettable by anyone whose contacts gave them knowledge and understanding of what these young men experienced and faced.”
[recording paused]
Flying over the Ruhr, Happy Valley we called it, one night and then going to the pictures the next night. Killing nearly forty thousand people over Hamburg one night and then having a quiet drink in the Red Lion at Brinkley the night after. Crazy, wasn’t it?
[recording paused]
Gordon, Len, George, Bill, Jack, John. Well done each of you. I’m proud to have been a member of such a fine crew. Thank you for those unforgettable memories of 1943, on 90 Squadron and good old P-Peter. 90 Squadron. Remember we flew on 90 Squadron when it was at its mightiest and its bloodiest. Is there anything stronger than love? No. I don’t think so. But next in line must be this bond. This wonderful comradeship of a bomber crew. People think we’re silly and knock us down a bit but they don’t understand. We do, don’t we?
[recording paused]
[singing] Ops in a Stirling. Ops in Stirling. Who’d come on ops in a Stirling with me? They laughed and they sang as they pranged all over Germany. Who’ll come on ops in a Stirling with me?
[recording paused]
When I finished my tour with 90 Squadron I was sent to Number 12 Operational Training Unit at Edgehill as an instructor gunner flying Wellingtons. The old Wimpy as we called it. I remember a pilot there called Flight Lieutenant Pettit. He was very short on patience. We set off with two or three gunners, fired our air to air firing which is firing at a drogue plus cine camera gun firing. Firing at a fighter who would do a few dummy attacks on us. His patience was very very short. Every trip the guns used to jam and I used to go in the turret and put them right again and then the gunner would go back and finish his work. This used to happen two or three times a trip. One day Pettit said, ‘When the guns jam again, Jock,’ he said, ‘You stop in the turret, fix the guns and fire all the ammunition yourself,’ which was the cine gun camera ammunition. Of course, after a trip or two like this somebody told the gunnery leader and he had me in his office. As I went in I noticed that Flight Lieutenant Pettit was hanging about outside but he needn’t have bothered. I took the blame. I think that Pettit had a good word to say about all Scotsmen after that. Funny thing he went missing on D-Day on his second tour. They posted me to Dalcross near Inverness. Number 2 Air Gunnery School, Dalcross doing the same sort of thing. This time flying in Ansons. I always asked a new gunner if they wanted to sit by the pilot. Their faces beamed. But it wasn’t until we got airborne when they realised that whoever sat there beside the pilot had the job of winding the undercarriage up and down and it was hard work in the old Anson. They weren’t so keen then. Dalcross sometimes four or five, six trips a day flying up and down the Moray Firth with the Scottish Highlands in the background. It was a beautiful war then.
[recording paused]
I think that when the RAF found that you were happy on a station they had you posted. They sent me down to South Wales. Carew Cheriton in Aberporth, near Pembroke. Took me a day and a half to get there. This time I was flying in Martinets and Henleys as a winch operator. It made a change winching over the rocket and gun sight at Manorbier. I let a drogue out and they would fire at it with the flak guns. Or else we would just go up and fly up and down and they’d check the radar. They always said if they hit us with any flak they’d give us a bottle of whisky but I wasn’t that lucky. Or was I?
[recording paused]
The 9th of June 1944. A day I’ll never forget. I was flying with a Polish pilot, Pilot Officer [ Zadonka ] All the pilots seemed to be Polish on Training Units. We were on a silent op in a Martinet flying over the sea. I was taking my flying very casually then sitting at the back of the pilot, reading a book as a matter of fact when the engine cut. I looked forward in to the pilot’s cockpit. He didn’t seem too concerned. Then he started fiddling about and when he put his hands in the air I knew we were in trouble. The pilot looked around at me. I could see he was sweating. I was standing up by now. Thoughts flashed through my mind. Bale out. But the pilot hasn’t said anything yet. He’s not jumping. Clip your parachute on anyway. I realised then it was too late. We were too near the sea. I think I was just about to start screaming when the engine picked up again and we gained some height. The pilot turned around and smiled. Smile of an angel. Later on my room mate Fred who lives in West Bromwich said that when he went in to the sergeant’s mess that day the chap behind the bar had said, ‘Go and have a look at Jock. He’s just come in and he doesn’t look too well. He’s had a double whisky but he’s gone off to his room.’ Well, looking at the face of death when you weren’t prepared for it was rather uncomfortable. I never did like flying over the sea. Given the choice I’d rather have crashed on land and gone up in a ball of smoke than have gone into the sea and drowned. I imagine much of aircrew must have gone to their deaths screaming their heads off when they couldn’t get out of a diving spinning crashing bomber.
[recording paused]
Talking about air to air firing at a drogue reminds me of my gunnery course at Penrhos. Three of us would go up in a Blenheim and we’d fire at a drogue with two hundred yards at our starboard beam. We’d each have about two hundred rounds, different tipped bullets in different colours. It was great to see the tracer going into it. We thought it would be full of holes. When we landed we checked the drogue laid flat out on the ground. It would be about thirty foot long and five foot wide I suppose. You’d be amazed. We only found four, five or six little holes of each colour. Amazing. We all expected to find about fifty. I think my highest percentage on that was eleven point one. Wasn’t too bad really. I noticed the remarks here at the end of the course. The course officer says, “A good sound air gunner. Has done well in theoretical subjects. Will make a very worthy member of an operational aircrew.” He should have said will make a very lucky member of an operational aircrew.
[recording paused]
On the first part of my air gunner’s course which was at Llandwrog, North Wales our billets were five or six miles from the mess. Yeah. Five or six miles. And we used to get transport back every night and in the morning in the RAF crew bus. If you missed the bus at night at 6 o’clock you had to walk. There was one chap there, I hope he came through alright. He used to amuse us. He used to sing umpteen verses of this song. We used to sing the last line. Here are some of the cleaner ones — [singing] When she got them they were fluffy, now they’re faded and they’re scruffy. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. When she sent them to the laundry they were seen by all and sundry. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. We sometimes laughed and grinned when they came up to her chin. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. She daren’t try to sneeze, they’d fall down to her knees. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. She’d say stop it, that’s enough when we tried to take them off. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. She’d be sometimes sick with fright if the elastic was too tight on the old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. She’d run and she would kick us when we’d say, ‘Show us your knickers.’ The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. They were patched with a piece of rag where someone had dropped his fag on the old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. She went out with a second dickie but he tried to take the mickey out of the old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. She liked the band of Harry James, she sewed all their names to the old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. She went out with the soldier, they came back a little bit moldier. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. The night she went with Taffy they were found behind the NAAFI. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. On the line we knew them. You could almost see right through them. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. One day in her vest she stood. They were wrapped around the Christmas pud. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. She wouldn’t go with groupie ‘cause he said they were too droopy. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. They were tattered, they were torn around the bleep hole they were worn. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. One day for a prank someone tied them to a Lanc. The old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. They went off on an op and they all got the chop with the old red flannel drawers that Maggie wore.
[recording paused]
Now, one or two stories about my second tour in Lancasters with 115 Squadron. In my first few ops there I was a mid-under gunner with a .5 Browning machine gun. They fitted this mid-under gun as they had learned that some German fighters were fitted with guns that fired straight up and they were shooting down a lot of bombers without the bomber crew seeing them at all. Then the rest of my ops were as a rear gunner. I had a busy start. Two ops in one day. Duisburg in the Happy Valley again. We took off at twenty to seven in the morning and we got back about eleven in the morning as well. We were looking forward to a nice lazy afternoon and a bit of fun in the mess that night but they said, ‘Get to bed. You’re on ops again tonight.’ We took off at 11 o’clock and got back about half past three in the morning. Plenty of flak both times. We did two ops on Essen. In the Ruhr again. One day off and one night off within three days. I think that finally knocked out the big Krupps factories there. Our next two ops were on Cologne. In the Ruhr again. Yeah. One day and one night. I did six ops on Cologne and on nearly every one got hammered by the flak. I’ll talk about the daylight op first. One thing about daylight raids there were no searchlights to fly through but the flak was more accurate. ‘Bomb doors open,’ said the pilot on the run up to the target. Always a terrifying moment this. A little piece of flak hitting the naked bombs in the bomb bay would have been the end of all of us. ‘Steady. Steady [pause] Bombs gone,’ said the bomb aimer. But they hadn’t. There were still a few stuck in the bomb bay. ‘We’ll go around again,’ said the pilot. This time some more bombs were dropped but still one or two hadn’t. ‘We’ll go around once more,’ said the pilot. I thought he’s mad, as we were being caught by the flak. The third time the flight engineer put his hand through the slots in the floor to release the mechanism by hand. When they got clear of the target we realised that one bomb was still with us.
[recording paused]
The pilot tried all sorts of tricks to shake it loose. I remember I jumped up and down on the gangway above it but it still wouldn’t go. When we got back to base at Witchford he said, ‘We just have to land with it.’ We were all a bit apprehensive. As soon as we touched the runway there was one almighty bang. Our hearts did turn over. Somebody shouted, ‘The bomb has fallen off and is jammed in the bomb doors.’ When we got to the end of the runway the pilot told the control tower and they said, ‘Taxi clear of the runway and abandon aircraft.’ Which we did. Very quickly. It was left to the armourers to sort everything out in the end. Two nights later Cologne again. Another hammering. The pilot got a DFC for these ops. I’ll read part of his citation. “In October 1944 he was captain and pilot of an aircraft detailed to attack Cologne. On his first time over the target the bomb release mechanism became defective and the bombs failed to drop. In spite of considerable anti-aircraft fire Flying Officer Andrewartha made a second and yet a third run over the target from which the bombs were dropped manually. Some days later he made another attack on the same target. Although his aircraft sustained extensive damage when hit by anti-aircraft fire he completed the mission successfully.” I enjoyed a reasonably low level daylight op in a place called Heinsberg. This town was supposed to be full of German soldiers. I fired a few rounds off with my .5 but the place had just vanished in the smoke and fires. I was rear gunner on the raid on Dresden. This was Bomber Command’s most murderous raid. They say that more than fifty thousand people were killed. It was an undefended city. No flak. No searchlights. It didn’t half burn.
[recording paused]
Five days later another real frightener. A daylight op on Wessel. We were belting along the runway on take-off. I was sat in the rear turret when suddenly smoke and flames came by me. They were shouting on the intercom, ‘The starboard inner has caught fire.’ ‘Too late,’ shouted the pilot, ‘Can’t stop. Must take off.’ And we did. Scraping a few hedges we crawled up in to the air somehow and the engine fire extinguisher was switched on and the fire went out. We couldn’t get any height on three engines with a bomb load. The pilot contacted the control tower and they said, ‘Drop your bombs in the North Sea.’ When we got back he was later reprimanded for breaking radio silence and was stopped two weeks pay. He didn’t buy a round in the pubs and we were all glad when the two weeks were up. It was a very hazy day that day. The fire engine and the ambulance, the blood wagon we called it said they were out scouring the countryside for us as they thought we had crashed.
[recording paused]
Next op. Osterfeld. Another hammering from the flak. We had just bombed and were a bit slow getting back in to the safety of the bomber stream. They were all dropping this aluminium foil called Window which upset the flak gun’s radar. We were out on our however when this heavy flak hit us. We went into a dive and I thought we’d had it. ‘It’s okay, boys. I’ve got it.’ Lovely words from the pilot. We came back on three engines. [pause] One day, on our day off I got up and started to get dressed. The lads in the hut said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘Down to the mess to get some breakfast. I’m hungry.’ They said, ‘You’re too late. It's gone 9 o’clock.’ I said, ‘Oh, I’ll try anyway.’ So, I went down and they did say that breakfast was finished. It was flying meals only as there was ops on that day. So, I said very cleverly that I was down as a spare gunner. So, I had my breakfast. I was enjoying it immensely when this WAAF came over and said, ‘Are you an air gunner?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘Will you answer the phone then, please.’ It was the gunnery leader. He said, ‘Who’s that?’ I said, ‘It’s me. Jock.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You’re off today, aren’t you?’ He said, ‘Your crew’s on a stand down.’ I said, ‘Yeah. That’s right.’ ‘Go and see if there’s any more gunners in the mess will you?’ I looked around. I said, ‘No. There’s only me. There’s just me in the mess. Mealtime.’ He then said he was in a jam as a couple of gunners had gone sick at the last minute and he was one gunner short for a crew. So, he said to me, ‘How’s about it? Will you help me out?’ So, I said, ‘Okay.’ And he said, ‘Thanks. Come up to the briefing room as soon as you can.’ I got a bit of a shock when I found the target was Cologne again. And that one to pick for my fiftieth op but this was an easy one for a change. My own crew wondered where I’d got to. They were amazed when they found out I’d gone on ops with another crew. All because I went out for breakfast.
[recording paused]
On one daylight raid we were on the way to the target and there were two Lancs ahead of us. I was in the front turret that day as we had engine trouble on E-Easy and had to use a spare aircraft which didn’t have a mid-under gun so I went to the front turret. I don’t know which op this was but I seem to have put down E-Easy in my logbook. Force of habit, I suppose. Anyway, about these two Lancs ahead of us. The pilot said, ‘I’ll try and catch them up and we’ll fly in formation.’ A minute or two later instead of two Lancs there was a small ball of fire and one Lanc. And then a large ball of fire and a small ball of fire. Then two huge balls of fire. Then smoke. Then nothing. And that was it. One Lanc had blown up and the explosion had blown the other one up. It’s a good job we didn’t catch up with them or we would have been just some more crosses in the sky.
[recording paused]
I remember an air gunner called Bob [Hogman] He was in our hut. I was sat in the mess one night when he came in, just back off leave. I said, ‘Hello Bob, did you have a good leave?’ He said he hadn’t. He said he was very fed up and didn’t feel like flying any more. ‘It’s just not worth it.’ he said. ‘And I see by the battle order I’m on ops tomorrow.’ So, I said, ‘What’s up, Bob?’ He said his wife was six months pregnant so he took her to hospital for a check up. They went on the bus, he said and it was standing room only both ways and nobody would give his wife a seat. He was quite upset. The next day he was flying beside us over the target when his plane got hit by flak, caught fire and dived straight in. As I was in the mid-under I didn’t see it, thank heaven. The other two gunners did and were rather shaken by it.
[recording paused]
On that trip my mid-upper was wounded. Got some flak in his ear. Bob [ Hogman’s ] rear gunner used to have some records. One of them used to give us a laugh when we played it in the billet because one of the lines was, ‘Chop, chop, chop and his head came off.’ I played it once more. Then threw it in the dustbin.
[recording pause]
There were two brothers in the squadron. Two Canadians named Flood flying in the same aircraft. One was a mid-upper gunner and the other one was a rear gunner. Another Canadian named Brown used to waken us many times in the billet by grinding his teeth in his sleep. It was terrible. The brothers went missing. The grinder survived. I wouldn’t be surprised if he and his wife sleep in different rooms.
[recording pause]
On one daylight op about twenty ME109s attacked the bomber stream and shot down about seven Lancasters before the fighter escort sorted them out. That was just in front of us so we escaped once again. I remember one time I had a month off flying as I had damaged my ear drums. Had a week in hospital. On another daylight raid the target was covered by cloud. We were told in that case that if we couldn’t see the target to bomb targets of opportunity so we flew around a bit and then noticed this bridge over the Rhine. So we bombed it and missed. The bombs going each side of it. I’ve often wondered if this was the famous Remagen Bridge which the Germans failed to blow up and that the American Army crossed over. It was around about this time. In films and books about it they said the bridge was bombed but it was still standing. Yes. It could have been us. Another time we bombed a small town. Five hundred pounders went straight up the main street and the Cookie hit the big building at the end. The Town Hall I suppose. I hope it wasn’t a church. Or a school.
[recording paused]
Dortmund. Happy Valley again. This daylight raid was the one where I realised that my nerves were getting the better of me and I had done enough. I could have finished flying two or three ops before this as I had done twenty ops with 115 Squadron and that was the amount you had to do for your second tour. This op was my forty seventh. We were flying in cloud when suddenly heavy flak burst all around us. I couldn’t see it but I could hear it. And when you could hear it it was close. We flew on but the flak kept with us. I realised the flak batteries had got us on radar on and were after us. This lasted quite a while. I said a few words to God that day and made all sorts of promises. When we landed I thought well I’ll do three more to make it the round fifty. And then I did one for luck. Fifty one. Eight more than I should have done really.
[recording paused]
[singing] No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more dicey targets. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more Jerry fighters. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more Jerry flak guns. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more Jerry searchlights. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more P for Peter. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more Peenemunde. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more missing room mates. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more flak for breakfast. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more E for Easy. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more frozen fingers. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more flying heroes. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more Happy Valley. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more tail end Charlie. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. No more ops for me. I’ll live to be a hundred. No more ops for me.
[recording paused]
It used to get rather cold in the rear turret. Above everything else I used to wear a couple of blankets over my head and shoulders. Sometimes I used to take a bottle of good Scotch specimen and throw it out from the rear turret. I painted a bottle yellow one day so that I could see it better going all the way down on a daylight raid and would you believe it? It landed in the river. I was quite attached to an old cap I used to wear until the folks at home said, ‘For Pete’s sake why don’t you lose that old cap.’ So, I chucked that overboard as well.
[recording paused]
A bicycle was always handy at the airfield but at 115 they’d all been issued out so I carried on without one. Did quite a bit of walking. Then one day I noticed one outside the sergeant’s mess. It would be covered up at dinnertime and teatime by fifty or so more bicycles and then it would be left standing on its own again. So I kept my eye on it for a day or two and realised it must have belonged to someone who had got the chop so I claimed it and became the new owner.
[recording paused]
I’ve been asked what was it like over the target. Well, going in to a main German target was like walking through the gates of hell naked. We always felt naked once the bomb doors were opened. Searchlights everywhere and plenty of flak. Lots of smoke where the flak had been. I half expected them to burst back into life again when we flew near them. Sometimes we’d see a plane caught in the searchlights and being hammered by the flak. This was handy because we used to creep over the target unnoticed then. Bombs bursting on the ground everywhere. Huge fires. Now and then a huge explosion and smoke. Always smoke. Photoflashes turning night into day for a split second. The Pathfinder flares horrifyingly beautiful. Sometimes hanging in the sky for sky marking like chandeliers and falling to the ground like huge Christmas trees. Lying there till they were bombed out of existence and a fresh lot were dropped. Gorgeous colours they were. Especially the reds and greens. Sometimes we’d hear a master bomber, ‘Bomb the reds. Bomb the reds. Leave the greens.’ Whichever was the nearest to the aiming point. It was comforting to hear another voice. It made us all feel we weren’t alone. Our mouths were very dry after leaving the target area and had a nice cup of coffee out of the flask. Nearly as nice as the mug of coffee and rum we had when we got back.
[recording paused]
There seemed to have been more incidents on my second tour but I think the first one in Stirlings was the hardest. The most fearful. Probably doing some daylights on my second tour helped a bit. It’s a good job they weren’t vice versa. The other way around. I wouldn’t have fancied doing a tour on Stirlings after a tour on Lancs.
[recording paused]
I was waiting for a train at the local station to take me home on leave one day. We had six days leave every six weeks while on ops but I did enjoy them. I never knew which one would be my last. I got talking to another air gunner who happened to be waiting for transport to the squadron. He was a Scots lad. Nice chap. When I got back off leave I couldn’t see him about. He’d gone missing on his first op. The war was still being cruel.
[recording paused]
Remember this. The BBC news at 1 o’clock three or four times a week. [radio recording begins] “This is the BBC in London. Here is the news. In the early hours of this morning RAF Bomber Command launched a major raid on Berlin. Of the five hundred and ninety six aircraft which took part in the raid forty six are missing.” [radio recording stops] It must have been terrible for the wives and mothers and sweethearts of aircrew to hear that. Then waiting for a phone call or a letter which sometimes never came. We often lost a lot more bombers. The worst one of course was Nuremberg. Ninety three missing.
[recording paused]
On 90 Squadron one day we all had to report to the briefing room. An aircrew chap was telling his story of how his Stirling was shot down and he had to bale out. He managed to get back to England with the help of the Dutch and the French Resistance. One thing he said stuck in my mind. ‘If you have to bale out through the escape hatch don’t just fall out. You must jump out.’ He said, ‘A member of my crew baled out just before me. He just fell through the hatch and scattered his brains all over my flying boots.’
[recording paused]
I finished second on my air gunner’s course. Just a half a point behind another chap. They offered us both a commission but we turned it down. We were too young then to know what it was all about. But that was another stroke of luck. If I’d taken a commission I would probably have gone to a different squadron with a different crew and it’s practically certain I wouldn’t have survived.
[recording paused]
When I was at Benson Aerodrome just after I’d finished my second tour somebody in the mess said the station adjutant wanted to see me. When I went in to his office he said, ‘Warrant Officer Guyan, when I came around inspecting your hut this morning with the CO you were asleep in bed.’ I said, ‘That’s right. It was my day off.’ He said, ‘That makes no difference. On a CO’s inspection you are supposed to be dressed and standing by your bed.’ So for punishment he made me orderly officer twice a week for three months. Whenever anybody else had to do it for the first time they were told, ‘Go and see Jock. He’ll tell you all about it.’ A day or two later I was told the adjutant wanted to see me again. I thought what now? I went in to his office and he said, ‘Warrant Officer Guyan, I wish to inform you that you have been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. You can wear the ribbon as from today.’ Back in the mess there was cheers all round until somebody said, ‘What about the money?’ I said, ‘What money?’ He said, ‘You’re supposed to get some money with the DFC. Didn’t the adj mention it?’ I said, ‘No.’ Anyway, I went down to see him again. He must have been sick of the sight of me by now. So, I asked him if there was any financial reward with the DFC and he said, ‘Yes. Twenty pounds. But officers usually give it to the RAF Benevolent Fund.’ So I said, ‘But I’m just a non-commissioned warrant officer and twenty pounds is more than six weeks pay.’ So he said, ‘Alright. I’ll see you get it at the next pay parade.’ When I did get it we had a nice party in the mess that weekend.
[recording paused]
All this might not have happened if my name had not been Guyan. I’m going back to my air gunner’s course. The big day had arrived, we were going to fly for the first time. We’d been issued with our flying gear weeks before and now at last we put it on ready to fly. Now we were kings of the air. We were going up in a Blenheim for twenty minutes or so to check that we could, that we wouldn’t be too sick. I never was. The instructor shouted, ‘Form up outside the hangar.’ And we all rushed out and started to queue. ‘Come on’ he said ‘Come on, sort yourselves out. Let’s have alphabetical order.’ Which we did. We enviously watched the first three get in the Blenheim. One was a chap called Anderson, I remember. We watched it speed along the runway and take off. Then it suddenly turned over and crashed. They were all killed. So, all the flying these three air gunners did was less than ten seconds. So, Guyan you say. Funny name. Now, Guyan, lovely name.
[recording paused]
I’ve often wondered why I stayed alive when so many other men, better men around me were killed. What have I done to justify it? I haven’t done much with my life. I’ve been good to my dear wife, Helen. My two smashing sons, Andrew, Rob. Will that be enough? I suppose one day I’ll know the answer.
[recording paused]
It’s probably true that if you gave a chap who flew during the war one hour to talk about his life he’d spend fifty minutes talking about his flying days. So, I’ll finish with a touch of the Len [Howards] I suppose and the help of Jimmy Shand.
[recording paused]
[singing] We fly, you and I, in the sky, laddies to fight for liberty. We’d fight day and night in the sky, laddies so that people would be safe and free. We hoped we’d come back over the sea, laddies. For some it was never meant to be. I sighed when they died in the sky, laddies but they still live in my memory. We hoped we’d come back o’er the sea, laddies. For some it was never meant to be. I cried when you died in the sky, laddies. You still live in my memories.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Samuel Guyan comments and memoirs
Description
An account of the resource
'Jock' Guyan comments on his operations. the recording includes audio clips from a documentary including excerpts of Arthur Harris, engine noises and interviews.
Samuel Guyan flew an operational tour with 90 Squadron and a second tour with 115 Squadron where he manned a .5 calibre gun beneath the aircraft. In all he flew fifty one operations. Including one where his crew thought he was just going for his breakfast but found himself flying that night with another crew as a spare gunner.
He sings several songs including 'Ops on a Stirling' to the tune of Waltzing Matilda, 'The old red flannels drawers that Maggie wore' and 'No more ops for me'.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Samuel Guyan
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Italy
England--Farnborough (Hampshire)
England--Suffolk
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Wuppertal
Italy--Turin
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Hampshire
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:28:55 audio recording
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-06-09
1945
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AGuyanS[Date]-01
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
115 Squadron
12 OTU
90 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 110
military discipline
Operational Training Unit
RAF Benson
RAF Dalcross
RAF Farnborough
RAF Penrhos
RAF Shenington
RAF Wratting Common
searchlight
Spitfire
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2096/34806/SRAFIngham19410620v100001-Audio.1.mp3
df75c4e4cf72f2d427bab4d2e174deb9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
RAF Ingham Heritage Group. Zosia Kowalska
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Zosia Kowalska and two photographs.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-14
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RAF Ingham
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GB: The Polish Air Force um, and if you could perhaps just start by telling us a bit about how you arrived in England, and I’ll let you just chat on.
ZK: I was deported to Siberia with my family. My parents died. Then we moved to Tehran. From Tehran I got [indecipherable] no, Minsk sorry, and from Tehran we went to Africa: to Tanganyika. No first we went to India, then from India go to Africa, Tanganyika. From Tanganyika we signed, because it was um, Marshal Sikorsky want Polish, Polish girls to go to work in England, so we signed: five hundred of us. We left Tanganyika about 1943, ’43 that was, yeah. We came, we come to, we come to [pause] South Africa, South Africa, you know South Africa.
GB: Yes, yes.
ZK: Yeah, we come there, we stay there about two weeks, recuperated, and then we go again. We were sailing six weeks to England, six weeks on sea. Imagine: one thousand soldiers and five hundred women, Polish women. [Laugh]
GB: I won’t ask you any stories about on the ship then, we’ll move on from that maybe.
ZK: Some answers there! [Laughter] And we arrive in Scotland, I believe in Scotland, I can’t remember the place where we been to. Then we were loaded to train, we’re going by train to Redcar. You know Redcar, in Yorkshire? We was there during the winter, that was winter when we come to, about March, something like that. And we was issued with uniform, we stayed there two weeks, then we continue down to recruiting, er where’s that place, we were, they were teaching us English, English language. There was English man there, he said - there was Polish couple she who look after us and he said to her ‘why is it in Poland many, many people cannot read and write?’ She said ‘what did you say? Did you read, did you read the Europe history?’ He said ‘no’; she said ‘you must read Europe history, then you find out what happened to Polish people there.’ Yeah. And from there I was moved to, to [pause] Nottingham. What is this station you call Nottingham?
GB: Newton, Newton? RAF Newton?
ZK: Yeah, Newton, yes. I stayed there about two months, and before Christmas we were going to, they moved us to Weston-Super-Mare, RAF station Locking.
GB: Yes.
ZK: There, before Christmas. We arrive there late and we have nowhere to sleep, so we look in town, round to sleep. We find this erm, what you call this charitable place.
GB: Like the Salvation Army.
ZK: Yeah, yeah, that’s it, Salvation Army. They let us in, they give us supper, then we went to bed. Next morning we wake up and they give us some breakfast again and we continued on to RAF station Locking. We come by, no we didn’t catch bus, we were walking all way from Somerset to RAF station Locking, there. We come to there [indecipherable] it was two men standing there, guiding the people where to go. So these two men, was my future husband! [Laughter] And other man was his friend. They took us to this camp, and we stay there, we go for dinner and then for dinner, then there was so much to do, the writing and everything, and the next things, the next morning, they took us to, to er cookhouse, introduce us [laugh] to this big, big thing where you cook thing for the people: huge potatoes, carrots, parsnips, everything. They teach us what, how to make pastry, and there was an exam, we were taking exam every six weeks. The last thing I took I make er, I make [pause] pastry, puff pastry, puff pastry which was very good, [laugh] for first time, and something else for, I think it was like vegetable and meat, beef.
[Other]; Stew.
ZK: Stew that stew, yes. I make that and the colonel of the station come taste, taste with lady woman, she was officer as well. He taste everybody, the next day and the next day, he didn’t say me that I was passed. [Laughter] The next day my friend read in paper: ‘hey’ she said, ‘Zosia you passed!’ [Laughter] I did, and everybody congratulate me, so that’s the end of the cooking practice. And after it was Christmas time, Christmas, evening Christmas that was, we have supper in Poland, we have big supper there.
GB: On Christmas Eve.
ZK: Yeah, Christmas Eve, oh we make presents for boys, oh it was great [laughter], even my future husband got sausages because he like food! [Laughter]
GB: But he was happy with that, yes.
ZK: He like food. That was beautiful night, that. I never forget, it was lovely.
GB: Were you and your husband at that time, were you just friends, or did he like you at that point do you think?
ZK: I don’t have nothing to do with him during the, before Christmas, nothing, and that time, oh what am I saying?
GB: Christmas Eve and the presents.
ZK: Christmas dinner, Christmas dinner and next day officer [indecipherable]
[Other]: Who served you dinner?
ZK: The officer do job for the ordinary people, all the men, yeah, and that was, and the next day, no the next week, I met my husband in the, in the – oh dear.
GB: Was it like the club, or the institute?
ZK: Yeah, in the big room was where everybody was coming, airmen and everybody and he said, he went by and he said ‘can I ask you something?’ I said ‘yes’, he said ‘can you come to pictures with me tonight.’ [Giggle] ‘Today I’m not, I’m not going today, no today, no.’ The next Sunday, the next week again he ask me. I hear, I know that he had woman before me, that she was crazy about him and the next day he said, the next week, he said ‘you come today with me to cinema.’ I said ‘today yes, I come with you.’ And that woman spot him, she got iodine, she put his eyes, it burned his eyes, you know.
GB: Yeah?
ZK: Yes, she was bad woman! Oh dear. But nothing happened to his eyes, nothing, just went to the surgery and they cleaned it out, everything, yes, and since then we never hear of her.
GB: Good job I think.
[Other]: [Whispering]
ZK: She was married too! Before the war, yeah. The next thing is there was this wedding. Mrs, there was two girls with me in the RAF, Mrs Alexander’s daughters, and they invite, they hear about this coming wedding, and they invited us to their house in Somerset. So we went that Saturday, I didn’t speak that much English, and I was a bit shy, and they give, had a beautiful meal there, everything, and they arrange me everything there: wedding dress, beautiful, and after the, after the wedding I had civil clothes, coat and shoes, everything, everything, they gave me, those people. They were beautiful people and I thank them very, very much. And after this wedding, we, they say we going to move to Cammeringham. They told us we are going to move to Cammeringham, oh some time in May we moved there, I think, in May 1944.
GB: ’44.
ZK: Yeah, no, yeah, 1944. Oh dear. No, 1945 we moved to Cammeringham, yes, and um, oh God, [chuckle] something happened and we stayed there until, until the release from the RAF. We release in, it’s there somewhere.
[Other]: ’46.
ZK: Pardon?
[Other]: ‘46
ZK: Yeah. And we still stayed in that Cammeringham village. We got this cottage. This cottage was filthy, filthy, filthy, terrible! We clean, we cleaned, we painted, the cockroaches was singing during the night, my husband got poison, he sprayed, sprayed all over the rooms and everywhere there and in the morning you swept full of these what they call cockroaches and they went, they all die. And it was June, yes June, my brothers come from Italy, my younger brother from Italy came, but he stay in Coventry. The other, the younger brother was here, Janek, he was in the RAF Cadets, you know, and he come as well and um, Jan, Jan was in the RAF, Stacek was in the middle east, he was in school, he was cadet in school, he came, he came during the night, I was sleeping I didn’t hear nothing. He came in the middle of the night, I didn’t know that, he didn’t say anything: he didn’t write when he coming back, no nothing. He throw this stone to the window, to the bedroom window, I didn’t hear. In the morning she was crying, she was baby that time, she was crying. I come downstairs on this concrete, concrete steps, come downstairs, my brother was sleeping like that. I look down and around and: oh my goodness that’s Stacek! Oh God. He wake up, he said ‘I can’t [indecipherable] bed outside.’ [Laugh] Oh dear. And we had reunion in that June, before that, before they went to Matlock to work, my husband found a job there in Masson Mill, my brothers, three brothers and my sister came from Africa as well.
GB: Zosia can I just ask you a question about Ingham at this point because it’s probably easier than going back: did you and your husband have to get special permission to live out? Even though you were married, normally they would expect you to live in the barracks, wouldn’t they, separately.
ZK: Yes, yes. We had this party from camp come friends as well, we had full cottage and in the garden plenty people, I said to my husband ‘how can we provide with food?’ He said ‘don’t worry, I’ve got farmers friends!’ They provided, he went round and got eggs and everything. I bake cakes [beep] I bake everything. He bought some wine, some whisky as well. We had very, very nice time, the last time with some of my brothers. They went to, they went to Matlock, they stay in County Station Hotel there, you know Patrick where it is, yeah, County Station Hotel. They wanted muscle men, my sister and this man who run the County Station Hotel said ‘I don’t, I never understand this language’, [laugh] they were laughing! Anyway, he said, he told them that I manage, I manage, to understand this language anyway. So one by one went to Australia, another brother follow him after six months. The younger brother went to America, to Chicago, he’s still there, he’s still alive, and he got beautiful family, he married to American girl, she was descendent, German descendent she was, and we corresponded. I’ve been there, in Chicago, and then [sigh] I didn’t like my sister-in-law. [Laughter]
GB: Well they always say you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives. That’s very, very true, isn’t it I think, you know. Could you tell us, Zosia, a little bit about your time at Ingham? Your work and what happens day to day, on a normal day.
ZK: I’m coming to that, I’m coming to that.
GB: Okay.
ZK: In Ingham we were living in that, Mrs Franklin cottage, she was she was old lady, her husband worked on the council on the road and she very little, she read very little, she didn’t know nothing about Polish people. She said ‘I think Polish people were black!’ [Laugh] I said ‘no, they’re not black!’ She find out how lovely Polish people are, after that, you know. And we stay there one year, one year, and that time she find this cottage, this cottage we have to clean up. Oh, it was hard work, hard work and I was expecting [indecipherable], I still work, I still go to kitchen, to RAF, working there as well; it was very, very hard that time. We had no washing machine, no hoovers, we had to do washing like that! Now, then, oh what I say, she got, that lady she got three daughters. One was, two was married, the youngest was something wrong with her and she was going to marry, she married that man, we went to this wedding, to their wedding that was all right, was after the war, was nothing, nothing you can buy, yeah. And um, oh so much, so much to say, you forget. [Laugh]
GB: Where exactly in Ingham was the house that you lived, in the cottage?
ZK: It was behind the village, back of the village.
GB: Back of the village, a little cottage.
ZK: It was cottage there, beautiful, she kept ever so clean. She was ever so good cooking. Cook.
GB: Oh right, yes, yeah. So, so from your cottage, to the place where you worked, was just along the street, wasn’t it.
ZK: Yeah.
GB: Maybe two or three hundred yards? A little bit more.
ZK: More, more. Yeah.
GB: So when did your, what, tell us what would be a normal day for you? What time would you get up to go to work? Tell us a little bit about -
ZK: We wake up six o’clock, six o’clock in the morning and my husband went first to job and then I follow him after that. I went to cookhouse and there was these four girls with me, two English and three Polish women and we makes some, for tea. I ask what are you going to do for - I was in charge of the cookhouse then - and I said ‘well we going to do today platski’ – potato pancakes. [Laugh] So we had beautiful potatoes, we grate and put eggs, two, three eggs and flour and mix it and put in pan and fry it up, frying up there and keep them, when the thing come we have to keep hot this platski, and we gave them this and they eat it all [emphasis]. They say oh, what a beautiful meal we had today – they love it, they love it!
GB: And is platski, is that for breakfast or is that or lunch, or dinner?
ZK: Any time you can have.
GB: Any time, okay.
ZK: They ask, the next week ask me are we going to have this the same, this platski, I said ‘no, it’s hard work you know, it’s hard work. Unless you can do you help us, grate the potatoes and peel the potatoes then frying, you can have them!’ Ask but it’s too hard a job, too hard, yes. So, they give up and um, that time, my, I was going to, on um, on um, I finish with about that time, 1940 - 1946, 1945. Yes, I did. My husband stayed still two years there.
GB: So your husband was at RAF Ingham as well then.
ZK: Yeah, yeah.
GB: I know that you said that he lived in the cottage, I thought you said he was at a different RAF station.
ZK: No, we lived together, yeah.
GB: Oh right.
ZK: I have this paper and I stay in that cottage because I was waiting and it was big winter that time, 1947, remember?
GB: It was before I was born, but I do understand it was like 1963 was a very bad winter as well, but I understand ‘47 was bad.
ZK: We were going to Gainsborough, she was born in Gainsborough, during the night. It was snowing, we didn’t know where to go. I nearly have her in the car. Oh dear! Finally we arrive to that hospital, the matron, fat matron come, she was ever so good to me, she said ‘don’t worry lass, don’t worry’ [chuckle], she was wonderful lady, and the next day she was born and I stay in that hospital for one month because it was big snow, we can’t got to our cottage because it was snow up, my husband had to build a tunnel to be [indecipherable] and there was Queen and King going to Africa, with their daughters, that time and we say: ‘oh my goodness we come from Africa, should have stayed there!’ [Laugh]
GB: Wouldn’t it be nice to stay there, yeah, oh definitely.
ZK: And after month I come back home and the neighbours gave us beautiful dinner, Mr and Mrs Hayes, yes, they were lovely people. Everywhere I went I met good people, very nice people; they were very good to me.
GB: We, the only people that we know of that are still in the village of Ingham that have a Polish connection at the moment now, is Margaret Schmietster, she would have been there ’45, ’46.
ZK: Maybe, yeah.
GB: Jan was obviously her husband, he was Polish but she was a local girl, and she, obviously Jan has passed away a few years ago but she’s still, she’s the only person we found: Margaret Schmietster.
ZK: Oh.
GB: So you had the whole, about a year then at RAF Ingham, or two years, with your husband?
ZK: Three years!
GB: Three years!
ZK: 1944, no 1942 I joined the RAF, in Africa, I don’t know if you count that or not.
GB: If you joined, you joined!
ZK: [Falling object] Four years I was in RAF. Long time you know. I want to go to civil street you know, because well, you have enough of this marching and doing thing, oh dear, yeah.
GB: Did you only work in the kitchens that were down in the village or did you work at the kitchens up on the airfield at all, because we had the, I don’t know whether you remember, because the building that we are trying to renovate now is the airmens mess up on the airfield?
ZK: Yes, there I was, yeah.
Int; Oh, you worked in there as well?
ZK: Yes.
GB: Oh my goodness me!
ZK: It was an officers mess as well there.
GB: There is, there was an officers mess up there – a separate building – and a sergeants mess.
ZK: Because my friend, you know Marion.
[Other]: Yes.
ZK: He worked for officers mess there.
GB: Is your friend Marion, is it a he or she?
ZK: No, is a he.
[Other]: A he. He’s died
GB: He’s passed on has he?
ZK: He’s passed away, yeah, he was working there. [Sigh] Oh dear.
GB: It would be interesting for you to actually go back and see Ingham as it is now. A lot of it is still as it was, how you would remember, there are a few small kind of housing builds that have changed, especially, unfortunately, where your, where the Station Headquarters was and where your kitchen was, it’s just, it’s two streets of modern houses now I’m afraid. We’re struggling to find any photographs because most of the buildings there were there through to about the nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties, used for different things: for industrial purposes, there’s a scout hut, but then obviously the developers decided to flatten it, and build houses. So unfortunately we, we’re struggling to find, but on the airfield, the airmens mess on the airfield of course, the shell is there, the shell of the two buildings, so we are renovating that up, and it would be lovely perhaps um, either this summer, when it’s nice and warm, or maybe next year.
ZK: You’re going to finish that?
GB: We are: next year it will be finished. But you know, if you care to, there’s not a great deal to look at this year, but God willing, God willing, you’re obviously kind of like to come down perhaps next year and see the finished thing.
ZK: If I still live!
GB: You will, I’m sure you will, I’m sure you will!
ZK: I’m ninety two! Big age.
GB: I just hope that I am as fit and as well as you at ninety two, so. [Laughter] So, tell me a little bit about your husband if you don’t mind. Obviously, obviously the time that you knew him in the RAF? What kind of job did he do? I know you said he was service police, at RAF Ingham, did he work in the village or up at the airfield? What rank was he please?
ZK: In the airfield, in the, they have house there, Police Office,
GB: In the guardroom.
ZK: Guard, yeah, in Cammeringham. He was very busy. He go on, to Scotland very often, to search, to find out about, he was like um, detective.
GB: Yes, an investigator. Right, okay.
ZK: I don’t understand. He usually go to Scotland. I said ‘where are you going today?’ and he’d say ‘we’re going to Scotland, on business.’ He never told me.
GB: He probably wasn’t allowed to tell you, depending on what he did. In those days it was very, very quiet. What rank was he?
ZK: He was corporal.
GB: A corporal.
ZK: Polish, Polish rank he had, you know sergeant.
GB: Right, and when, when it came to the time of demob, when you came out of the RAF, did you stay in Ingham, or did you?
ZK: Oh yes! We stay, yes. We had chance to go to Canada, my, I have cousin right there, in Toronto, they say we must go there, but we decided, my husband didn’t want to go nowhere, and I think I like England as well, you know. I went to Canada, I been to America as well, see my brothers, and I don’t like America [laughter]. I said it’s best, best to stay in England.
GB: You think so.
ZK: Yes, he said I got relation in Poland where I have to go to see them, he have only one sister left, everybody was killed there. During the war.
[Other]: And his mother. His mother was alive.
ZK: Mhm. That was, that was terrible, terrible. And we stay, we decided to stay in England. I said ‘this is best country, I love England.’ I love Poland because it’s my country, that, you know, but I make lot of friends here, English people, I enjoy. I went, we went that first time, you remember, I was sad, sad story, first time, there was nothing there. Nothing. Oh, and um, what was going to say. It was, everything and Russian there: everything was, they have no clothing, they have nothing, nothing. Poor people; I feel sorry. We went to that camp, [indecipherable] People was looking at our car and I was crying, I said ‘oh my goodness, we have this car’ and they had nothing. Yeah. [Beep] It was bad, and we come back after months. We stay there months, we were going round big towns see the churches, cathedrals, beautiful. All bombed.
GB: All bombed.
ZK: Yeah. We went to Gniezno, where Poland become Christian - first time in thousand years. There were, outside the church there was figure from bronze, bronze, round beautiful monastery, and the Jerries took everything down, everything down for bullets to kill Polish people.
GB: Yes.
ZK: It was, then we went to Chopin, remember Chopin, we went to Chopin place, we went to Niepokalanow as well, where this Franciscan monk was killed by Jerry in Auschwitz. You remember?
GB: Yes, yes.
ZK: We been there. And where were we? In Krakow, Krakow, we come during the night, our car was, we didn’t, there was no light, nothing, it was dark, my husband took the road and there was hole in the road and the car plonk, in this hole. Oh my goodness, children was crying: we never come back to Poland! We never get back to England. About twenty people, Polish people, come and lift the car up. Oh, that was relief! [Laugh]
GB: Out of the hole. Would, would it be just a good idea just to give you a little break for a couple of minutes? Maybe like a drink of water or something?
ZK: Yeah, come on, make cup of tea.
GB: No! I meant from your point of view, just have that because you’ve been talking very nicely too us, but I think maybe.
ZK: I forgot lot, but you should come early I tell you more [indecipherable].
GB: No, you’ve been telling us tremendous stories already and luckily, with the camera here, we can record everything and what we’ll do is we’ll, when we’ve produced it, we’ll give you a copy, obviously give yourselves a copy, on disc, then at least you’ve got. It’s, it’s good to look back at it when you, because things you may forget about in a few weeks’ time you look back and then watch yourself on the television [laugh] and if you’re like me, you get very critical of yourself, and what, how you sit, how you speak to people, and that’s why I sit behind the camera you see! So if it’s all right with you, we’ll just take a short break, now and you can have a glass of water or what have you and then we can carry on again. If that’s all right. Okay?
ZK: [Indecipherable]
[Other]: I will do, yes. While we’re doing this, that’s mum when she was much younger. [Beep]
GB: Oh my!
[Other]: Your facility, the way you were able to say “Bast!”, [laughter], like that. You didn’t’ know English when you came to England. So when you went to Redcar did you have a medical?
ZK: Med?
[Other]: Did you have a medical when you came to Redcar?
ZK: Yes, we have.
[Other]: And what happened? What did the doctor say when he looked at you?
ZK: I don’t know! [Laughter]
[Other]: Oh, this one’s what?
[Other]: This one’s a?
ZK: No!
[Other]: This one’s a virgin. She had no idea what virgin meant!
GB: Oh dear!
ZK: There was a girl there, Rosalia, in Redcar, we were dressed up for morning’s attention, [beeping] I’m stood there and men working on the roof there and Rosalia didn’t put skirt on, [laugh] she was rushing, she was rushing and officers noticed so: ‘Rosalia, you have no skirt on!’ [Laughter]
[Background talking]
[Other]: My mum said that was at Ingham as well.
ZK: That was funny!
GB: Goodness me!
[Other]: With the English. That’s at Ingham.
GB: Oh right!
[Other]: Another one, police one, they had an adjutant at camp, Cammeringham, and when on parade he kept [indecipherable] didn’t notice but all the girls did and eventually Stefan, her husband, went and had a word and he didn’t do it any more.
[Other]: Do you want a piece of cake?
ZK: He chased me round!
[Other]: He said as copper I go tell him!
ZK: The boys: chase me round the cookhouse! [Laughter]
GB: So not a lot really changes in seventy years then, because that still happens! People still get chased round cookhouses and things.
[Other]: And corporal Miehalski, what do you remember about him?
GB: Might want to kneel down a bit Brendan, you’re right in the way of the lens, mate.
GB: That’s fine, for God’s sake, all these cameras.
ZK: We had fun, we had fun: we had good time.
[Other]: And so you should!
[Other]: Can you remember Miehalski?
ZK: Miehalski. Oh yeah, yeah, cook.
[Other]: What did he do?
ZK: He was, he wore big moustache. [Chuckle]
[Other]: And if you’re –
ZK: He, he look after me, he said ‘I will look after you, put weight on, don’t, you have nice complexion’, he give me some cream to drink [laughter].
[Other]: Ulterior motives!
ZK: He was funny man. He was from, where Stefan come from.
[Other]: Potsdam.
GB: Can you remember in the um, headquarters down in Ingham village where you worked, you obviously had your cookhouse, the canteen?
ZK: Yeah, I remember.
GB: But there were other buildings in there. We’ve looked at some of them and it looks like there might have been a shoemakers in, within the RAF?
ZK: Oh yeah, maybe, maybe there.
GB: Did you get a chance to look round any of the other buildings?
ZK: The clothing there, clothing as well.
GB: The Clothing Store was there, yeah.
ZK: Because my friend Stella used to work there.
GB: So did that mean you were able to get a couple of extra bits of extra clothing for the winter, yeah?
ZK: Oh dear!
GB: I’ll have a look at those photographs in a minute.
ZK: I did have the uniform, [indecipherable] I give you that, I don’t want it.
GB: But I presume obviously, working inside in the kitchens it was nice and warm anyway, even through the winter.
ZK: Warmer than Siberia! [Laugh]
GB: But then perhaps in the summer perhaps not so good, working in the kitchens.
ZK: No. Well, in Siberia, when we were deported, all my family, they gave us job on the river, on the river. They built edges, on the river, [paper shuffling] about four corridors, four corridors: A, B, C, D, wood, you get me, catch wood through that corridor. And I caught the wood and the wood, I went under water and I was hearing, and somebody was saying ‘she’s drowning, she’s drowning!’ My God! And I said, I go to that Commandant, our Commandant, Commandant and said ‘no, no, I’m not working on the river give me other jobs’, and for some men, they follow, for some men they gave us this cook, cookhouse job, they were cooking there and for winter we had to go to woods to saw the wood, wood, big wood, casting them for this river, and they send them, they bind them together and they send them in the river – I don’t know where they go.
GB: Probably to the big saw mills or something, yes.
ZK: Hard work. Hard work.
GB: With that many big tree trunks and logs, I imagine.
ZK: Long logs.
GB: Yeah, did people end up breaking their arms and hands and things?
ZK: Yeah, oh dear, I was in hospital there and I went out and that’s why I have that leg now.
GB: Because of the wood.
ZK: Yes, it was so cold.
GB: Can I ask you Zosia, when, going back to your time at Ingham, when you, you say that you were demobbed in 1946, but you and your husband stayed in Ingham, did you carry on working at the, in the kitchens?
ZK: No, I worked until I left RAF, since then I didn’t work ‘cause I was expecting baby and there was a lot of work at home – I had to clean out this house. It was terrible.
GB: And then how long did you stay in Ingham, in that house? Or should we say when did you move?
ZK: About eight months.
GB: Oh right, and then where did you move to after that?
ZK: We moved from that house to Matlock.
GB: Right, yes.
ZK: She was about -
[Other]: Matlock Bath.
ZK: Hmm?
[Other]: Matlock Bath.
ZK: Yeah, Matlock Bath, yeah. Come to Station Hotel and we stay there. All my brothers come with us, yeah, and we had this job and they love it, but they say that we’re not going to stay in England. They emigrated to Australia and since they emigrated I don’t hear from them nothing [emphasis]. Nothing. I don’t know what happened to them. I don’t know. The brother from, after me, he was in Italy, he was in Monte Cassino he had something wrong with him; he always cry. Oh, it was terrible. He was telling us story, he was years falling down. Terrible. Didn’t mention only one word Polish, fighting there, thousands of Polish people that day die there.
GB: At Monte Cassino.
ZK: Yeah. I was watching cemetery this summer, they were, oh, [pause] they had big do there, religion, all religion, you know, different nationalities come together, and there was a mass there as well, I was watching and they say that the scouts, scouts come, about thousands of scouts come with roses, red roses; they lay each roses on grave, these soldiers’ grave. That was beautiful, beautiful ceremony. [Blowing nose] Young people, scouts.
GB: That’s lovely, yes.
ZK: I’m sorry. It’s horrible, horrible.
GB: No, no.
ZK: I remember. I watch everything what’s going on this war, this last war, I don’t want it to happen again, [loudly] it’s happening again!
GB: It does. I’m afraid. I’m afraid people never learn, do they. They never learn from other people’s mistakes, and other big wars, and they keep happening.
ZK: That bloody Putin, Putin.
GB: Yeah, he’s causing problems now isn’t he, yes.
ZK: He’s horrible.
GB: Can I ask you one question Zosia, we’ve looked at these photographs, and do you not have a, no, do not have is a wrong question to ask. Do you have a photograph of you and your husband on your wedding day?
ZK: Oh yes.
[Other]: I’ve got it, at home.
GB: Ah, right!
ZK: Yes!
[Other]: It’s being reframed. I don’t know if it’s there. We found it broken.
[Much cross discussion]
GB: It was just that, yes, I just remember you said at the time about the family were very good to you, they brought you, you know, the wedding dress and the civilian clothes afterwards and I just thought to myself, well.
ZK: Yeah, there’s, got one there. That one.
[Other:] Oh this one.
ZK: Yes.
[Other]: In fact it was the mayor of Weston Super Mare.
[Other]: Sorry.
GB: The brother that was in Monte Cassino. He went in fact all the way through the Italian Campaign and he got a, which is unusual for them, he got a Cross of Valour.
GB: Ah! There we go.
[Other]: On the one I’ve got it’s been sort of coloured, hand painted, so it’s you know, sort of life.
GB: I have to be honest, I do like the black and white ones, I really do. I often think that photographs these days are nice to be in colour, but so many photographs would be nice if they were just left, even nowadays, in black and white, ‘cause I think sometimes colour, colour can be a bit untruthful in a way, black and white is very nice.
ZK: When will that photograph be coming?
[Other]: It’s still at home, it’s still waiting to reframe it.
GB: That is terrific.
[Other]: I didn’t know about that.
[Other]: Very low down on my priority list.
[Other]: And we didn’t know about the naughty ladies!
[Other]: No we didn’t.
GB: Could we possibly just take it out of there? If you don’t mind, you wouldn’t mind if we took a photograph of that one as well would you? Because then it’s lovely seeing you and your husband, it’s nice to see a picture of you together, especially on your wedding day. Have you got any other particular memories of RAF Ingham or thoughts, thoughts that you can now remember about just the everyday things that happened at RAF Ingham, any funny things, ‘cause you’ve obviously, with people chasing you round the kitchens! [Laughter] And I notice in particular, one of the pictures here, this one here, in the dining room, purely because the decoration’s up, it must have been Christmas Day or Christmas Eve.
ZK: That was Christmas Eve. Dinner.
GB: That was Christmas Eve. At Ingham.
ZK: He is there.
GB: Yes. And would this, would this have been the dining room down in the village or up on the airfield?
ZK: Yes.
GB: Which one do you think this would have been?
[Other]: Which one?
ZK: I think that was Somerset, RAF station Locking.
GB: You think it was Locking do you? Right.
[Other]: You told me it was Ingham.
GB: Well, it’s difficult to say, we’d have to look at the building anyway, ‘cause that’s, we’re really sad, Brendan and I, but we immediately look at the building.
[Other]: Oh no, you’d get some anorak coming and saying that’s not.
GB: Exactly, the windows of, most of the expansion period RAF buildings that were done in the ‘30s, 1930s when the RAF built up all of its stations, there were nice big concrete and brick built permanent stations. It’s only the ones that were built during the Second World War in particular that are all single story, with an apex roof and Nissen huts and things like that. So immediately we start looking at the windows and the size because they obviously had much bigger windows then we did, so our first question was going to be we wondered, we knew it was obviously Christmas purely by the amount of the food that’s on the table.
ZK: Good do, Christmas Eve.
GB: Yes, and all the decorations.
ZK: Yes.
[Other]: The one about the English chaps eating the Polish food, that was definitely Ingham.
ZK: Oh they love it, they love it! Our food is good!
[Other]: Zosia would have called that Cammeringham of course.
GB: Yes, because it was Cammeringham from November ’44, they changed it. Funnily enough they found that there was a small village in Suffolk, also called Ingham, and through most of the war years they found a lot of stores were going – there wasn’t an airfield at Ingham in Suffolk – but a lot of stores were getting sent there by mistake. The problem was, in March of ’44, that’s when the Polish bomber squadrons moved to Faldingworth, just across the other side of the A15, so RAF Ingham then reverted to being a training camp – there was still some flying still going on - and then the Air Ministry decided in the November of that year, after the operations had all finished, to change the name of the airfield to Cammeringham.
ZK: Yes, there was Faldingworth, remember Faldingworth.
GB: Faldingworth, yes, yes.
ZK: Was stationed there. My friend was there.
GB: Who was that? Can you remember who that was? At Faldingworth.
ZK: Well she died, long time ago. Mrs Bonner, you know.
GB: Okay.
[Other]: Oh yes, Mrs Bonner, yes.
GB: Because obviously everybody that was at Ingham in particular, with 300 Squadron, they moved over to Faldingworth, on to Lancasters, flying Lancasters, and they had obviously concrete runways there and that’s where they, most of them, spent till the end of the war and after until about ’47 or ‘48 when they kind of demobbed everybody. And obviously just round the corner, we were looking on the map, the site, I think it was number nine site, then became the Polish Resettlement Camp. Each of the Nissen huts had internal walls built, so from what was just basically a long tube they created a little house: two bedrooms, a living and a cooking area and a bathroom, and they were very, very basic and I was half wondering whether you and your husband had lived in there but obviously not because you were in the cottage.
ZK: In private.
GB: Did you [beep] find that, obviously you had food stores next to the kitchen. There must have been small huts or buildings.
ZK: Oh yeah, we had, in that kitchen was special pantry, that was there, we had food there. I arrange what we having next day to cook. I was in charge there. I didn’t wanted the job, but -
GB: And –
ZK: I have to do it! [Laughter]
GB: Obviously you had to be careful because I imagine some of the things, some of the food, was kind of, fairly kind of valuable or scarce. So did you have to make sure you always locked it up so that people didn’t pilfer it?
ZK: Yes, yes, yes, very careful. Yes, ‘cause they’re selling it on black market: coffee and tea.
GB: There’s bars on some of the store windows, there’s still the bars on the windows, so we assume there was something valuable in that area.
[Other]: There would have been vandals?
ZK: I wondered -
GB: Up at the, up on the airfield where the airmens, the other airmens mess is, obviously you had one down at the bottom, the one up that’s up there, there are two or three of the small buildings left around. One of the buildings we found the original drawings for it, and it shows that part was a meat store, but it didn’t have any refrigeration like we have these days, no.
ZK: Didn’t have, no.
GB: There were just, there were bars on the windows and the vents had just got a grill over them obviously to stop flies and things coming in, and then another area within a building was all like for bread and things. The other building we’ve now found, which has been knocked down unfortunately, it says Local Produce Store. So we presume that was all the vegetables and things out of the fields. It goes into quite a lot of detail. When you come down, we’ll show you one of the maps, and it was a copy of the original drawing of the airmens mess. It was a standard thing that they had on all RAF stations, you know, a standard build so you’re probably going to look at it and think oh yes I remember standing there at the cookers, you know. And there are little offices right at the back like catering offices.
ZK: Aha. When my husband was alive we used to go to Peterborough, we go through Lincoln and we go to Cammeringham that camp as well and I said ‘this is where we stayed here’, he said ‘yes, yes, it was’ [laugh].
GB: Well if you would like to come, you know, if it’s possible, and you’d like to come maybe in the summer when it’s nice and warm, we’d be delighted to kind of show you round a little bit of the village as it is now and up on the airfield. It’s up to you all but if you’d like to come we’d love to show you what we’re doing.
ZK: I don’t know who I choose driver!
[Other]: I heard that! [Laughter] I think it must have been what fourteen years ago when we took, when we took the photographs of the cottage.
GB: Jubilee, yes, yes.
[Other]: When we went back with Zosia there and we didn’t [emphasis] look at Ingham at all. Very roughly, that plan there, it’s based like that, where’s the airfield in relation to it, no, just which way?
GB: Right, if the thing’s like that, the village is here, and then the escarpment comes up here, at the side, so it’s over to the immediate east.
[Other]: What, on top of the escarpment?
GB: Yes.
[Other]: Or is it, is it?
GB: If you have a look on, in fact if you -
[Other]: It virtually abuts the airfield, Scampton.
ZK: [Indecipherable] [Background chatter]
GB: The airfield is between - have you looked on our web site at all?
[Other]: Oh, no.
GB: Right, if you have a look on there we have pictures on it.
[Other]: I just wondered where their relation to the map there, so that’s up on the thing.
GB: Oh right. Let me just draw it quickly.
[Other]: If you look on – on our site there’s actually a google map which shows you where it is. You can go out, you can see the fields and the wood and you can actually see just below our site is where the bit where the open fields were, the runways, the A runways, were over that end, on top of what she was saying was the cliff that she used to cycle up to, to get to the top.
GB: Do you have a piece of paper, I’ll just quickly draw it for you.
GB: Is all up on the top there. Down at the bottom of the hill, was some buildings half way down, but the rest was in the village, right the way to the other side of the village so everything was dispersed. So the WAAFs quarters were right over towards Fillingham.
[Overlapping conversations]
GB: So that’s the A15 there, that goes north.
GB: Then you’ve got the top of the village and then actually the bomb dump, before what is now [emphasis] the end of Scampton runway. About a mile or so apart.
GB: [Indecipherable] Do you have a piece of paper and I’ll draw it.
[Other]: That’s to say they were virtually abutting, weren’t they. Absolutely.
[Other]: We went onto an airfield, didn’t we; we went up there.
[Other]: What happened was we were at the back, we were at the back, um, door of Scampton.
[Other]: Oh right.
GB: There is, yeah, a couple of tracks.
[Other]: The Red Arrows were there – a full practice. Several practices. [Chuckle]
[Other]: Just for you, do you remember the Red Arrows laid on a display for you, when we were over there?
[Other]: When we all went over there, when we took those photographs. Do you remember the Red Arrows.
ZK: Yeah, yeah.
[Other]: Frightened us to death, didn’t they! [Laugh]
[Other]: Frighten themselves to death!
GB: There we go, right. Might look a bit complicated. That is the A15, if you think north is to the top of the page and this is the B1398.
[Other]: The cliff road.
GB: The cliff road.
GB: Middle Street, yeah.
GB: That’s the edge of the escarpment which then goes down into the village. This was the airfield basically, this area here.
[Other]: Oh right, right.
GB: It had the longest runway, went over Ingham Lane through the war years, to about there, although they were grass. There’s a shorter one which went about there, like that, and then the other one, believe it or not, went that way, so that was over the grass area. Right back in the middle was a – was it called Cliff House?
[Other] : Yeah, that farm, farmhouse.
GB: It was a big old house, and that’s where the air traffic was as well, [loud noise] slap bang in the middle.
[Other] : Which is strange in itself.
GB: So, obviously you come up the road here, which is the Lincoln Road. At this corner here is where we were talking about the Sick Quarters: there.
[Other]: Yes, yes.
GB: And Zosia’s, the camp, where she was, was down there in the village, there’s obviously buildings and this, this really here is the whole of Ingham village.
[Other]: Right.
[Background talking]
GB: The cottages, Jubilee Cottage is there.
ZK: I remember!
GB: The little church just above it there, and then this is Church Lane, that comes to the top.
ZK: The church is there.
GB: And if you ever drive to the top, you do a quick right and a quick left, no more than ten metres, and that was, I say I’ve offset this so it’s not, that should be down there.
[Other]: There, yeah.
GB: And the main guard hut was there.
[Other]: Oh right!
GB: Which is probably -
[Other]: Where Stefan was.
GB: Where Stefan would have been based, because that was the main thing. Now our place, there’s a wood here.
[Other]: Right
GB: And then there’s a driveway in. Because obviously during the Second World War they had dispersed sites, in case there were German strafing, so, whereas a normal RAF station these days have everybody in and around the parade square or the barrack blocks, everything was dispersed, so there was an accommodation site down here, there were two or three dotted all over. So if that’s the B1398 that goes due north, our site is here. There’s a little guard, a tiny guard hut that’s left, we’re renovating, and then our mess building is literally on here, around the edge of this wood with lots of other, there’s a sergeant’s mess here and the chap, and the farmer keeps his chickens in there, so, but if you have a look at the web site.
[Other]: Yeah, will do.
GB: We have got quite a few pictures on there just to give you, and there is an old aerial photograph isn’t there I think, on the web site somewhere.
[Other] : Should be.
GB: Of 1944, which really is just that kind of picture of the airfield. That really just shows you from this point down to that, the escarpment drops by, I don’t know, is it about fifty feet, or a bit, but it’s a long drop down, it’s about as deep as it is wide, isn’t it. That’s the best way to describe it.
[Other] : It’s got to be, if you’re talking about five metres contours it’s gotta be five metres minimum [emphasis], which is you know, which is twenty five foot plus.
GB: ‘Cause going down, when you go down Church Hill or Cow Lane, either one, you’re going downhill at quite a rate of knots in the car and that one’s obviously a lot more than twisty but. So that’s just a quick artists impression of who it is and what we are.
[Other]: Absolutely!
[Other]: Thank you.
GB: But um, oh fantastic.
[Other]: That’s just for the hell of it, that’s his full name, the fellow whom you’ve come across who was stationed there at that time, that’s the full name spelled out. He later became a friend of the Kennedy’s apparently.
GB: Oh right!
[Other]: Ingham by the way, there’s also one in Norfolk.
GB: Is there really? Well there you go.
[Other]: And you may have seen, you will [emphasis] have seen, Wikipedia or something, refers to, to provoke confusion with RAF Ingham in Suffolk, as you’ve said that there was.
GB: That was, when we first started doing all the research we thought oh well there’s a, but no, unfortunately Wikipedia is good for some things, but!
[Other]: You use your own knowledge and you decide what is right and wrong.
GB: Well, thank you very much. Is there anything that we, we’d love to come and chat to you again some time but we’re aware that obviously it is quite tiring, having us here and strangers and obviously looking back over it all, is there anything else you’d like to tell us about Ingham that we wouldn’t know about but you might well remember?
ZK: No, no, I think I too old, I forget now, you know. If you’d come about five years early I would tell you lots! [Laugh]
GB: It’ll probably be after we’ve driven off down the road you’ll think oh, I should have told them about that or what have you. So RAF Ingham you were not only a WAAF, a Polish WAAF, but you were a married woman and then a mother while you were at Ingham, so that in itself is a lovely story – and here’s your daughter to prove it!
ZK: My daughter and my son in law, yeah, I think they will give me a lift to.
GB: Well that’ll be lovely, well on the back of that –
ZK: Yes Patrick!
[Other]: Sorry?
ZK: You give me lift?
[Other]: If you pay the petrol.
ZK: [Laugh] I pay!
[Other]: That chap may [emphasis] just be of use, again, you have the emails.
ZK: [Bang] Show him this book!
[Other]: Just looking.
ZK: There’s a book here.
[Other]: He is going a bit weird at the moment, that chap, but he was a bomber chap early on, Wellingtons, and was, it is a very interesting story, that’s him.
GB: Yes, we met him. I think that was the gentleman that we met before Christmas?
[Other]: Oh, you might have done, at the thing.
GB: At the Polish.
[Other]: Oh, you spoke to him? Oh good!
GB: We did, and his wife, he’s got a Scottish wife.
[Other]: That’s right. Absolutely!
GB: Yes, we spoke to him, but our conversation was wandering in and out of English and Polish and his wife was having to explain to him.
[Other]: Absolutely. He is a bit wandery now.
GB: Yeah, and the, half way through a sentence he would obviously start speaking in Polish and his wife just had to remind him he was speaking to English people.
[Other]: That’s sad, that’s happened, of course, in the last five years or so.
GB: Yes, but two hundred and sixty six missions I think, he himself said.
[Other]: Do you say missions? Missions? Tsk, tsk.
GB: Can’t I say missions? I’m allowed to say missions. Operations.
[Other]:[Indecipherable] In fact could be fighter sorties, but in fact he was a bomber chap so nowhere near as many as that.
GB: Yes, he did start as that.
[Other]: And it’s a good Polish story, well worthwhile. His early stuff, when he was on Wellingtons.
GB: He was in 304 Squadron?
[Other]: I can’t remember.
GB: I’m sure it was 304 he said he was.
[Other]: Just, and he had rather a disastrous crash early on, and subsequently, that was the -
GB: That’s the gentleman, yes.
[Other]: Absolutely, a very [emphasis] nice character, and his wife is nice as well.
ZK: He’s poorly now.
[Other]: Unfortunately he’s just going a little -
ZK: He’s very poorly.
GB: Yes.
[Other]: But, again, the basis of what you get from him, and the rest, is in there. Absolutely great.
GB: [Pause] Fantastic.
[Other]: And who was this man you spoke to this morning? Remind me what his background was.
GB: He was an armourer with, a ground armourer, with 303 Squadron. Lech -
ZK: Lech.
GB: Lech, and er, yes, he was very interesting. Obviously he’s not, he’s not directly connected with RAF Ingham, but being a Polish ground armourer, very interesting to get his point of view.
[Other]: Well worthwhile. Like [indecipherable], he wasn’t at Ingham.
GB: His perspective was nice.
[Other]: Of Zosia’s three brothers, the youngest one, he was stuck in a, like a Young Army School in Palestine; he was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. The sort of seventeen, sixteen year old, once they left Siberia, which was Archangel, the forests of the north.
GB: Yes, yes.
[Other]: Not Siberia, he went to Halton as RAF Apprentice, where they were doing the two year course, and he joined the RAF, having finished, as an armourer, and her elder brighter, eldest, was the one who went through the Italian Campaign and as I say he got a, I forget what he bloody got, but it was most unusual for the Poles, more unusual - Cross of Valour, Cross of Valour. And I am almost certain just reading about him and having seen his picture, nowadays they’d call it post traumatic stress. Zosia was saying, that on top of his Polish emotionalism, he was also very troubled. Fascinating character but unfortunately, he went to Australia and people lost touch with him.
GB: Touch with him. Did you get a chance to photograph all the pictures?
[Other]: I’m not sure if I got all of them, I certainly got quite a few of them.
GB: What about this, this one from Zosia in er, civilian attire?
[Other]: When the camera started to go.
GB: Oh did it? Is it not working right? Or is it?
GB: It’s on a, what seems to be a mode, but it’s still taking a picture.
[Other]: [Chuckle] Have you suddenly discovered a new mode after all this using it!
GB: No! Actually, to be honest, to be honest all of this kit is brand new, you’re the guinea pigs today, of using the kit. We have to kind of own up to that.
ZK: Ah!
[Other]: Oh that’s interesting.
GB: Which is why, although we’ve had the kit for about a week or two, this is the first real live, yes, today is a live kind of um, [cough], you know, a live outing with it. So we’re hoping all has gone really well. We did have a quick playback from Lech this morning and everything had recorded on it, which was a bonus.
[Other]: Oh good.
GB: If it hadn’t we were going to be messing around at lunchtime trying to get the whole thing working, so.
[Other]: I’ve got that one, but I haven’t got this.
[Other]: Where did you, where have you been in the last few years?
GB: Oh crikey, in my RAF career?
[Other]: You haven’t been doing anything else have you? You haven’t been moonlighting!
GB: [Laugh] I’d never get the chance! Where have I been, well, if you’re talking about ordinary stations that I’ve been stationed at, I started at Marham, Kings Lynn. I then went to Rheindahlen in Germany, for four years. I then go in to Coningsby in Lincolnshire. After Coningsby I went to Northern Ireland, to RAF Aldergrove, did Northern Ireland, oh crikey.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Zosia Kowalska Interview
Description
An account of the resource
After a challenging time being sent from country to country, Zosia Kowalska finally came to England and became a WAAF. After training, she was posted to RAF Locking where she met her future husband whilst she was working as a cook. The wedding was organised by local people and Zosia was most grateful for their generosity. A posting to RAF Ingham led to Zosia living in the local village where she had her daughter. Zosia and her family talk about the people she met, the history of her brothers and visits to Poland after the war. They were all interested in the work being done at RAF Ingham and are keen to visit again.
This item was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Polskie Siły Powietrzne
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:09:16 audio recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SRAFIngham19410620v100001
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Geoff Burton
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Poland
South Africa
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Russia (Federation)--Siberia
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1943
1944-03
1945
303 Squadron
ground personnel
love and romance
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Ingham
RAF Locking
RAF Newton
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2053/33663/PStrattenG2101.2.jpg
fdfe04053597678eaa9dd5e18158cbcc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2053/33663/AStrattenG210722.2.mp3
edf3517ceb815e06abf411f025405566
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Stratten, Gwyneth
G Stratten
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-07-22
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Stratten, G
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Gwyneth Sratten (b.1934). She worked at RAF Rauceby Hospital after the war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre on Thursday the 22nd of July 2021. The interviewee is Mrs Gwyneth Stratten and the interviewer is Mike Connock. The interview is taking place at Mrs Stratten’s home in Lincoln. Also in the house is Mr Stratten. Ok, Gwyneth, thank you very much for doing this interview. What I’d like today, start at the beginning and so tell me a bit, when and where were you born?
GS: I was born in London and I lived there all through the war only leaving in 1949 when my parents thought that we were going to be having trouble with Russia and they didn’t want to be in London if we had another war and that we moved to the country.
MC: Yeah. So, what did your parents do? What were they —
GS: My father. Well, he had to work in a factory during the war but other than that he was always a self-employed electrician and my mother was just mum [laughs]
MC: Did you have any siblings?
GS: Yes. I had a brother who served in the Army during the war and he was, finished up in Germany. Again, he was in the military police and he came out in 1949. I’ve no others.
MC: Yeah. So, your early schooldays. Do you remember much about your early schooldays?
GS: I can, I have actually written about my school days.
MC: Yeah. So, you obviously enjoyed them.
GS: Which, no —
MC: Oh right.
GS: Which I found very useful when my children, my grandchildren at the local school were working on what life was like for children during the war. So my grandchildren delightedly went off with my identity card and my ration book and all the information I had. So, it was quite useful.
MC: Yeah. So, you were born when? Sorry. What year?
GS: I was born in 1934.
MC: ‘34. Oh, right. So, you were, at the outbreak of war you were quite old. Relatively, you know. You weren’t —
GS: Well, yeah. When the war broke out I was —
MC: ‘39. Oh, you were five year old. Yes. Yeah.
GS: I was five years old.
MC: Yeah. So you, you remember quite a bit about the war.
GS: I do. There are certain anecdotal things which I think of will go with the subject we’re speaking about now. I remember in nineteen, I think it was 1944, my mother was a great one for introducing me to like the theatre and museums and all that kind of thing and on this particular day she took me to one of the museums at Kensington. I don’t remember which one. And we were in this particular gallery and there was just she and I there looking at the things when we heard all this noise and a party of seven men in RAF uniform came in accompanied by some very pretty ladies in all their nice summer finery. But the thing that immediately hit you was that all the men were horribly disfigured. There was one young man there, he had no face and no hair or anything. And they were running one of these tubes from his arm to build a new nose. And I mean a ten year old looking at that. But I was always very, sort of, it didn’t shock me. I just looked at them and my mother quickly drew me away and said, ‘I’ll tell you in a minute what that lad is.’ And she told me and she said they were the pilots that had been injured during the war and they were being treated at a place called East Grinstead.
MC: East Grinstead.
GS: And that’s where it first entered my life.
MC: Yeah.
GS: Which was fantastic.
MC: Yeah.
GS: And I never ever [emphasis] forgot it. And then my next experience was I had to go and have facial surgery myself and I went to University College Hospital in London in 1984 and I was due to see a professor there who had got this special programme going for people who had had cleft palates. And I sat in his office waiting for him and on the shelf was a cabinet and it was full of instruments used in plastic surgery and it was MacMillan forceps err McIndoe forceps, McIndoe this. McIndoe that. And I thought that name and I remembered back to then. And then in 1981 I went to Rauceby and discovered that again I was looking at the Guinea Pigs. That’s what those young men had been.
MC: Yeah. They were. Yeah. Of course. Yeah.
GS: And then I had the great honour of meeting a big group of them when they came to Rauceby for the reunion and that was one of the most moving moments of my life because on the day they came we really did put on a really good show for them. And the widow of the man who had been the [pause] I’m just, he had been the plastic surgeon for the unit there all through the war and his name was Squadron Leader Fenton Braithwaite and he went on to become a wing commander and that fascinated me. You know, that there was three jumps in my life and as I say when I met these men they still bore a lot of their scars but the widow of this surgeon had sent down some photograph albums. When the patients were brought in to the hospital they were photographed immediately and then as the treatment progressed photographs were taken on each occasion so that the men themselves could see how they were progressing. And also, it was there for the surgeons. And anyway, we, I remember sitting with somebody else and we were looking and we were both crying just looking at these terribly injured men. But on that day that they came we put a notice in the room where the whole thing was happening to say if anyone thought that they were featured in those books if they came to see me I could arrange for them to view the books and have a look if they wanted to. And one man came over and said, ‘Yes, I —' well several came and this particular one said, ‘I would very much like to see them.’ I said, ‘Right, come on. You come in my office.’ And I said, ‘Would you like me to stay with you or do you, would you like to be on your own?’ He said, ‘I would prefer if you would stay here.’ So I stopped with him and he leafed through and all of a sudden he found the picture he wanted. Oh, I’ve gone all [pause] And he said he’d spent, ‘I’ve laid a ghost.’ And I looked at him and he said, ‘I wanted to see my hands when I had fingers.’ And sure enough he had no fingers.
MC: Yeah.
GS: And he said, ‘I’m so grateful for seeing this.’ And with that he just got, got up and went back to the, to the room. But that whole day it was very very emotional. These men were all, in my eyes, heroes. Can you turn off? I must —
[recording paused]
MC: Yeah. Well, let’s go back to, we’ll carry on with that in a minute. Just go back because you were five when war broke out.
GS: Yeah.
MC: So, during the war were you, you stayed in London or did you get evacuated?
GS: I remained in London until 1944 when the VJ bombers were coming over and I don’t know if you had experience of them but they were terrifying.
MC: The V-1s.
GS: The V-1. V-2s.
MC: Yeah.
GS: And my parents decided that I should be evacuated so off I went to stay with a relation in Bristol. And I was only there five weeks and I wrote home and said to my, and said to my mother, ‘Mum, I want to come home. If you don’t come and fetch me I’m going to walk home.’ [laughs] My mother brought me home and two days after I came home a mine was dropped in the garden up the road and that was the nearest anything ever came. But —
MC: And whereabouts in London was this?
GS: I lived out at near Edgeware.
MC: Oh right. Yeah.
GS: So, but I have many many memories of the war.
MC: Yeah. So, when you left school, so you went to school in London.
GS: No. I left there in ’49.
MC: Oh yeah.
GS: And moved down to Wales and I went to school down there.
MC: Yeah. So, when you left school what was your, what did you do?
GS: Well, when I left school I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I won a scholarship to Art College and this is where the miserable bit comes in. I had no financial backing whatsoever and in the end I discovered it wasn’t going to work. I had no means of making money or anything. I had to give it up. So then I went and joined the Civil Service which was the most boring work I’ve ever done in my life. And it was through being in the Civil Service drove me in to the Army [laughs]
MC: So, when did you join the Army?
GS: I first joined in 1951. I joined the Territorial Army. That’s where I became a qualified radar technician. And I left that and joined the regular Army in ’55 and it was the best thing I ever did in my life. It was, it was the making of, I felt that my life actually started when I was twenty one. It was wonderful.
MC: So how long did you spend in the Army?
GS: I had four years in the regular Army and I went from private to sergeant in fifteen months. So, I must, must have been doing something right.
MC: Something right. Absolutely. Yeah.
GS: And I was also, I did an exam. They were talking about allowing the military policewomen to do SIB work which would, I would have loved. And I took, we did an exam which I passed with ninety eight percent but then of course they posted me to Germany didn’t they? [laughs] So I landed up in Germany where I met my husband and where foolishly I got married [laughs] So, yeah. That was my military experience. But the rest of it was, RAF experience was just as a service wife.
MC: Oh. Oh, yeah. Ok.
GS: And I could write a book about that.
MC: So, so, what brought you to Rauceby then?
GS: We were living at, my husband had been at Cranwell and my, my mother had just died in 1980 and I went through a really bad emotional time and our marriage was a bit shaky and my husband came home and he said, ‘They’re advertising for a librarian at Rauceby.’ And we all knew about Rauceby. Rauceby Hospital.
MC: Yeah.
GS: He said, ‘Why don’t you apply for it?’ I said, ‘No. They won’t give it to me. Why would they give it to me?’ So, I went for the interview and I think there were about seven of us went for the interview and I came home and I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I just made them laugh.’ I said. I knew I wasn’t going to get the job. And we were having our tea and the phone rang and a voice said, ‘Oh hello, Mrs Stratten. Would you be interested in starting work —’ whatever. I couldn’t believe it. And that was giving me my dream job. It was perfect. I was in an old Victorian building. I was among medical things which I was fascinated by, you know. It was, it was just, just perfect.
MC: Yeah.
GS: I was able to, well I was involved in so many things in the hospital apart from the library. I joined the League of Friends. I used to do, oh I did several seminars and exhibitions and all sorts of things. It was the most wonderful job I’ve ever had in my life and as I’ve said before I would have done it for nothing only I didn’t let them know that. But it was a wonderful job.
MC: So, did you get to meet any of the patients there?
GS: I worked with patients as well.
MC: Oh, you worked with, oh I see, yeah. Yeah. Of course, you would do I suppose.
GS: Yes. I mean, you will find that there are things on the internet that talk rubbish about Rauceby. Well, I know for a fact I went through all the records. There were very very few examples of any cruelty to patients and when you read what all these people on this group that people that worked at Rauceby everyone said what a wonderfully happy place it was to work. It was. It was just lovely.
MC: So, what sort of hospital was it then?
GS: Well, it started out in 1902 as an asylum and initially the patients were housed in Grantham while they built the hospital and they moved in in 1902. And of course, it was wonderful. They’d got electric lights which I mean that was unheard of. Albeit the fact it was forty watt bulbs and it was only allowed to have it on at certain times of the day but it, it was just the whole, the whole concept of it. The whole building had been built with the patients in mind so that all the wards faced to the south which was wonderful. And of course, during the war they had, there were two verandas either side of the hospital. These were used for the tubercular patients and I’ve got a lovely picture of some on there with their nurses.
MC: Because weren’t some of the burns patients treated there as well?
GS: The burns patients were not treated in the hospital because in nineteen oh, 1928 Patrick, no not Patrick. Norman Henderson came to Rauceby as the medical superintendent. Then in nineteen, hang on I’m just thinking of the date. Nineteen. Where are we? Oh yes. The Mental Health Act changed in 1930 and it said that some patients could be day patients. They didn’t need to be, you know in all the time so they built a new little private hospital sort of thing away from the main building and that was going to be for the day patients. Well, they all moved in and then of course the war was coming along and the Air Ministry realised that they were building all these airfields they’d better provide some [laughs] some medical care. The hospital at Rauceby wasn’t big enough so they said right we have the day hospital at Rauceby and they moved the hospital from Cranwell. Moved it into Rauceby and they built two operating theatres in there. And then of course as things went on a little bit more it was realised they were going to need the whole hospital. So, on the 20th of April 1940 there were five hundred and twenty three patients with all their trappings. Their beds and everything were moved out and moved off to other asylums around the country and at the same time the RAF were moving in and kitting out the wards and they did the whole changeover in forty eight hours. And by any standards it was considered a miracle of organisation.
MC: It's quite amazing.
GS: And then of course they then progressed to build bomb blast wards around the south facing wards and built the things they required for military operations.
MC: So, when, when did you get to meet McIndoe then? Was that later?
GS: I haven’t actually met Mc —
MC: Oh, I thought you did.
GS: I always wish, I would have loved to have shaken his hand. He was a remarkable man.
MC: Yes.
GS: And anyone you speak to that had anything to do with him would say, and he was knighted of course for his work and he was just so remarkable. I mean for instance when he had these patients at East Grinstead, when men in the RAF were in hospital they had to wear these awful uniforms like, they were sort of grey blue things and they had a red tie and they were hideous. But he said, ‘No. My patients will wear their uniforms. They have got to know that they are still the men they were inside.’
MC: Absolutely.
GS: Even though they were disfigured. Disfigured externally. And I thought for that time that was very very forward thinking and he was really a psychologist in the making. But I thought that was incredible.
MC: So, was it still an asylum when you got there? Or was it not?
GS: Well, the Mental Health Act changed so much over the years. The original Mental Health Act, I mean you read it and it would make your hair curl. It really would but improvements were gradually made and every time there was a change there was a big upheaval everywhere you know. No. Even in, in the comparatively short time that I was there I think it changed two or three times but each time there would be an improvement. And then of course we come to Enoch Powell. The MP. The dreaded Enoch Powell. He came to Rauceby on an inspection and he walked all round and they took him down to the farm. The hospital had its own farm. They took him down to the farm and he just stood there and the people that were with him said you could smell this weird smell and he said it was from the pigsties and he said, ‘That is not right having the pigsties smelling like that when there is a school nearby.’ And anyway, he went away and a fortnight later they were told they had to stop all farming. Just like that. Now, when you think you’ve got these people in a mental hospital the majority of which came from agricultural backgrounds so that kind of work came second nature to them. So, it was good therapeutically and it provided produce for the hospital and everything. So, these poor people, they were, said, ‘Right, you can’t do it anymore. All you can do now is sit in your chair, read a book or whatever.’ There was nothing and so he was not very popular.
MC: I can imagine.
GS: But the awful thing was that they found out that the smell didn’t come from the pigsties. The smell came from a blocked drain [laughs]
MC: But the farming, the farm never restarted.
GS: The farm never restarted.
MC: Oh shame.
GS: Yeah. They did keep some of the gardens going and within the hospital, in fact next door to my office we had the most glorious Edwardian conservatory which, I mean it was just magnificent and so some of the people, the patients that were able to could go in there and work on the plants and that. But to take away that without even considering that he was removing an essential part of those people’s lives was wrong.
MC: So, I mean there was one thing that somebody brought to my attention was called NYDN. Not Yet Diagnosed Neuropsychiatric. Did you ever, was that —
GS: Never. Never heard that.
MC: It was just something somebody mentioned to me about —
GS: No one never. No. I never heard that one.
MC: Never heard. I was going to say so, so, what, what prompted you to write the history?
GS: Well, as I say when I first went there I realised what I was in and I thought this is wonderful. Look at all these lovely old Victorian, Victorian fittings. I mean the interior of that building was to my mind fantastic. It was all these wonderful glazed tiles and the workmanship that had gone in to it. Great big solid oak doors. It was just beautiful. They’d modernised the wards gradually over the years but a lot of the old tiles were there. It was so beautiful and so I wanted to know how they’d come to be there. That set me off trying to find out about the building of it and then, and it just went on from there and then we decided that we were coming up to one anniversary and somebody said to me, ‘Why don’t you organise a reunion for all the, for all the ex, for all the ex-staff.’ And I thought oh, that’s a good idea. Says she. And then of course we had to hunt out all these records. Well, when we were looking for the records we were finding all sorts of old photographs and documents and I said, ‘What’s going to happen when the hospital shuts?’ And the clerk said, ‘Well, they’ll just bin them.’ And I thought, ‘No, they will not.’ So, as I went round I gradually accumulated all these wonderful books and things and one day the porters came down to me. I’d got them on my, my list and they kept their eye open and they said, ‘Oh, Mrs Stratten we’ve found something we think you ought to see.’ So off we went in to the cellars of the hospital and there on a shelf were three great big leather bound books. And when I opened them the first two were all hand written and the third one had typed sheets taped into it and they were the patients’ records from the day the asylum opened.
MC: Goodness me.
GS: And would you believe I brought them all home and I read the lot. It was amazing. It gave me a real insight in to how the medical professional approached, well mad patients as they were.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
GS: And they were the majority of them were considered to be pauper lunatics.
MC: It wouldn’t work today.
GS: So, I thought well now these books they are not going to be dumped. So, I thought, right. I know what we’ll do. We’ll have a reunion and I will do an exhibition in the ballroom and we can have all that there and then afterwards I I will look to putting it all safely. So after we had the reunion which went very well indeed we [pause] I rang the Archives in Lincoln and said, ‘I’ve got something I think you ought see.’ And they came out and said, ‘Oh, thank goodness you’ve got to us.’ They said ‘already the leather is deteriorating’ so they were wrapped up very carefully and put in a box and taken away so I knew they were safe. Some of the books I hung on to because I thought I’ll hang on to it until we close the hospital. Then I’ll hand them over. So, and then that started the Rauceby connection as such and it just grew from there because everyone in the hospital knew what I was doing and as I say after the reunion of the patients I wrote a little book called, “Rauceby Reflections.” About the hospital which we sold nine hundred copies and there were copies sent to Australia, New Zealand, Canada. All. America they went. They went all over the place. I mean we sold them at two pounds each I think it was and the money went to the League of Friends so that they could buy Christmas presents for the patients. So it was win win win all the way round.
MC: That’s excellent. Really brilliant. Yeah. So —
[recording paused]
GS: How did we come to doing this RAF reunion? Yes.
MC: What’s, oh that was the RAF reunion.
GS: No. The one I’m talking about was, was the hospital reunion.
MC: Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah.
GS: And in actual fact we found a lady who had started work there in 1915 and I’ve got some lovely pictures of her and she was fantastic. Is that on or off?
MC: It’s on. Yeah. Go on. It’s —
GS: Anyway, after that while the, while the reunion was in progress I was in the ballroom and walking round and I noticed down in the corner where the little bit of the RAF bit was I could see these, I think there was two couples, a husband and wife couples taking great interest in it and they came over and they said, ‘Mrs Stratten, is there any chance that you could organise a reunion for the RAF?’ Well, I said, ‘Nothing’s impossible if you don’t try.’ But I said, ‘Just leave it with me.’ And at the same time this lady came over. Her name was Mrs Masters and she had been a nurse in the Burns Unit at Rauceby during the war. So, she came over and said, ‘Do you think we can do a reunion for the RAF?’ So, with that I got in, I had a colleague who was interested so he and Mrs Masters and I went up to see the manager at the hospital and said, ‘Look, we’ve had this request. Would you mind if, could we do it?’ And he was very obliging. He said, ‘Well, I don’t see why not. But you’re doing it. We’re not doing it.’ Right. And, but of course we had a bit of a problem there didn’t we? We hadn’t got any old books about, about RAF personnel. Nothing. The only thing we had was this photograph of RAF, RAF men in uniform. And we knew, we knew Norman Henderson who’d been the medical superintendent and who had been with the RAF during the war as a wing commander but that was all. So, of course then we had to try and trace all these men. I can’t remember how long it took me but I did finally get a name for everybody on that photograph.
MC: And how many was on it?
GS: I can’t remember.
MC: [unclear]
GS: Hang on. I’ve got the photograph here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty one.
MC: Twenty one. And you got the names of all of them.
GS: And I got the names for all of them.
MC: That’s quite amazing. So, and then they call came to the reunion.
GS: No. No. No. No.
MC: Oh.
GS: Well, some of them had already passed away.
MC: Oh, I see. That was amazing.
GS: I mean, we were so chuffed. We got all the names and what was nice going into the future over the years we’ve had so many telephones calls and letters and things from people making enquiries about how they can find details of their grandfathers or their fathers or whatever. And this gentleman contacted us and said, ‘I never knew my father. He died just shortly after I was born. And —’ he said, ‘My mother always regrets that she never had a photograph of my father in his uniform.’ And he said, ‘I wondered if you’d got anything in your collection.’ Well, we looked through everything. Couldn’t find anything and then the name sort of rung a bell and I looked and there’s a picture of him on, in that big picture. And we, we did a copy of it and sent it off to him and we had the most wonderful letter back to say that his mother cried when she opened it.
MC: So, I mean it was, I mean in your history that you talk about the number of operations that were done.
GS: Yeah.
MC: You know, it’s quite, quite a busy hospital during the war then.
GS: Well, I mean, I can remember somebody saying that you could come out and you’d get up in the morning and there would be ambulances the full length of the drive bringing patients in and of course the other thing is in the Burns and Orthopaedic Unit you see these planes were going out on these bomber raids and things and sometimes there were accidents on the way out.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
GS: But more often than not it was coming home and then perhaps been injured during the flight. Or the big thing was getting frostbite on their hands. And so of course it was, it was working twenty four hours a day.
MC: A constant flow.
GS: A constant flow. And I know Mrs Masters said that, she said you would just clean up the operating theatre from one thing, she said you just had time to have a quick cup of tea and there was somebody else in there. She said it just didn’t stop.
MC: So you, this story you wrote after you’d finished at the hospital then or were you still at the hospital? I suppose you started it at the hospital.
GS: Well, I started it. I did write an edition of it some in 2000 I think it was. I was never really happy with it but in between 2000 and 2021 we had so much material come back because we’d sold so many books and people were then remembering things that I thought oh, but then when I was ill last year I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I was just so ill. And I sat here one day and I thought I’ve got to do something and I want to get this Rauceby thing sorted and I remembered that I had a half-finished manuscript somewhere. So I hoicked this out of the cupboard and went through it and then sat down and I concentrated solely on writing this one.
MC: Yeah.
GS: And it helped me. It just got me back to functioning. The only problem was that never having done such a thing before I had no means of getting people to tell me what I should be doing. I wanted someone to come and help me put things on the computer because I was doing things I’d never done before and it was awful. I just had literally no help at all and it was finally at the end I just got to the point where I found a publisher who was interested and I thought I’ve got to get someone just to help me to finish it off. A gentleman up the road is a IT specialist and I said, ‘Look, blow the Coronavirus thing,’ I said, ‘I’m over it and,’ I said, ‘You’re alright.’ And he came down and he sat for about an hour just, just tweaking it to get it right, you know. But I thought oh no. But then the publisher. They were in a state of chaos because when I’d initially put the book forward they were changing their operations. Then Corona came along. Half their, well most of their staff were working from home and I landed up with that version and then there’s a smaller version which is the one on, on Amazon with the code on it. And they published both [laughs] so you take your choice.
MC: Still the same story.
GS: Still the same story.
MC: Right.
GS: So, that, that one there I just that came out the blue really because —
MC: This was just of the war period.
GS: So, I thought no I’m, the other thing that made me cross as well I went to the museum at Hendon some years ago and that was very interesting. I even found something about my son’s activities on there. And I said to them, ‘Have you got anything on the medical side of, you know, hospitals and that during the war?’ ‘No. No.’ Anyway, I gave them a copy of the original little pamphlet thing which they were pleased with and then I was thinking when I was looking at all this I thought flip, I’m doing this for Bomber Command. I’m going to do another copy and send it down to Hendon because it should be there.
MC: Yeah. Quite right. Yeah. I mean in one story I was going to say that you mentioned that obviously Rauceby was nearly destroyed in a fire. In a fire.
GS: Well, yeah because that was after the war when it was still in, in being occupied by the RAF. Now, they had a beautiful ballroom there and of course during the war they used to have dances and that which was very popular in the local population. Especially the girls. And they would go down to the dances. Well, underneath the stage there was a room where they used to stack all the old bits of furniture. Anyway, this particular night they’d had the dance and it was over and somebody must have been in there and left a cigarette burning and the whole, because it was all pine panelling and the floor was all highly polished and it had great big, great big like stained windows. And the whole lot just went up. And fortunately, the wind was blowing in the right direction that it was, they could get everybody out but the fire just destroyed all the old ballroom and I’ve looked and looked and looked to find a picture and I did find one but it’s a very, very scrappy drawing of the ballroom.
MC: Yeah.
MC: But it gives you some indication of what it was like. But yes, and that was 1945 1946. Around then.
MC: Yeah. You say it was 1945.
GS: Yeah. Yeah.
MC: Yeah [pause] Yeah. Whit Monday 1945. Yeah. So when, so did you go back to Rauceby? You know for the closure when it was closed or —
GS: Well, I was one of the last people there.
MC: Oh, really.
GS: It was, it was awful really.
MC: So, were you still working there when it closed?
GS: 1997.
MC: Oh, you were still working there. Right.
GS: I was still working there. Yeah. And what I’m, I should have retired three years beforehand but I thought no I’ve started all these libraries and I want to be here at the end. So of course, we had to get everything out and on the last day I was officially opened my boss came from, from Pilgrim and there was somebody else there. And I, when I went to work I always used to dress formally because I thought you’re in the public eye, you know you dressed neatly but that morning I went to work wearing trousers and a jumper with a funny teddy bear on the front and my boss said to me, ‘Well, I’ve never seen you dressed like that.’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘It’s the last day. I’m doing it for that.’ Anyway, while they and the other two were doing something or other and they weren’t around I just quietly slipped away. But then it was arranged that I should go back there. Just after Christmas it was. No. No. Sorry. Just before Christmas and I should check, there was a big box in the hall where people used to put books in. So I, they said, ‘Would you go back just check see the books in there.’ There was nothing in there anyway. But it was very strange going in to a —
MC: Quite eerie.
GS: I had on the last day walked all around the hospital on my own.
MC: Yeah. Very emotional.
[recording paused]
MC: You was going to mention something else.
GS: Yeah.
MC: What was that?
GS: Well, when I talked to, when these people were coming in to see me at the hospital from our ex-RAF people several turned up wanting to have a look around and having a chat with me and this man came in and he’d got a book with him. And in the book he’d written, and he had been flying in the Hampden aircraft and apparently he’d had quite a hair raising time and they sent him in to the Psychiatric Department. And he’d only, he said, ‘I’d only been in about ten days and —' he said there was one of these big inspections that the RAF love having when bigwigs come down and all the rest of it. And he said, ‘There was this rather elderly sort of high-ranking officer there in charge and —’ he said, ‘He stood by my bed and said, “What’s this man in here for?” And they told him, you know. He said, “He looks perfectly fit to me. Discharge him. He can go back. Man up. Man up.” Anyway, they sent me back to my unit and then a week or two later my MO on the station sent me back to Rauceby.’ I thought that just shows the attitude of some of the —
MC: Did he say what his problem was?
GS: It was only through all these people were under intense pressure.
MC: Absolutely.
GS: All the time. And although they were, there was a degree of fun and they had to have this outlet with all the activities they did and the, and the silly things they did because they wouldn’t have lasted another minute.
MC: Yeah. Are you aware of the term LMF?
GS: No.
MC: Used in the Air Force. Lack of moral fibre.
GS: Oh well, I know about that from, from the first one. Well, from the First World War when they took people out and shot them.
MC: Yeah. Well, I mean the MO at the station then would have likely sent that young man to the hospital.
GS: Yeah.
MC: To avoid him being declared as lack of moral fibre. That’s the, you know, that was, it was one of those things during the war. I just wondered whether you’d come across it.
GS: No. I’d not come across that. I mean most of the people that other than that I’d spoke to a lot of them were people who actually worked at the hospital and RAF people.
MC: Yes.
GS: But as I say a large, a large proportion of the people that came to the reunion were people who had actually had the treatment at the hospital. I mean, like Gus Walker. Wing, wing, well I can’t remember what he was then. He was the commander anyway. At Scampton.
MC: Yeah.
GS: And he’d, he’d been talking to another man standing outside and he noticed there was a Lancaster bomber and the bomb doors were open and there were fuses dropping that were not, not alight and he knew there was a big bomb on board and he went to run towards it. He went to run towards it and the bomb went up. The plane completely disappeared and Gus Walker was blown seventy feet backwards fortunately but he left one arm behind.
MC: Yes. I know the story of Gus Walker. Yes.
GS: Yes. I only know because when we were in Holland he was in charge out there and my friend’s father was the, husband rather was his driver and we met him at various functions that we went to. So I felt very privileged you know but yeah I mean —
MC: Was Gus Walker treated at the hospital then?
GS: What they did, they happened, they went rushing out. This Mrs Masters went and she and two surgeons and that rushed out there and then brought him back. And then he, while he was in there, God, what was his name? The Dambusters man.
MC: Oh, Gibson.
GS: Gibson.
MC: Yeah.
GS: He was, apparently he was very close to Gus Walker.
MC: Yeah.
GS: And he used to come in practically every day to see him. And that’s when Mrs Masters and Gus, and that young man started an affair but —
MC: Ok [laughs] Which young man are you talking about? [laughs] Oh so we’re —
GS: What did I say his name was?
MC: Gibson.
GS: Gibson. With Gibson.
MC: Really?
GS: In fact, Gibson was her son’s godfather.
MC: Amazing. Amazing. Yeah.
GS: But, but no it, no one who, I mean you’ve been in the RAF so you will realise you know but you can’t possibly realise what it was like. It’s only by talking to these people that you realise what pressure they were under. It was immense.
MC: Yeah. Yes, it was.
GS: And when, when I hear about these people nowadays moaning and groaning about doing a bit of extra work I really get —
MC: Yes. They certainly did go through a lot.
GS: They did.
MC: They did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s been lovely talking to you, you know.
GS: Do you think that’s alright?
MC: Oh, it’s brilliant. It’s been brilliant. It’s superb and I thank you very much for doing this interview.
GS: Well, as I said now I can put it all to rest and I can just shut my mind away from it because I’ve lived with it for all these years and I just wanted to make sure that it was available on the internet about Rauceby itself and I wanted Bomber Command to have something about it.
MC: The beauty of this is of course, the recording is, it will be on the archives.
GS: Yeah.
MC: People can listen to your story.
GS: Probably bore them stiff.
MC: Thank you very much.
GS: Are you sure you don’t want a drink?
MC: No, thank you Gwyneth.
GS: That’s alright.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Gwyneth Stratten
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mike Connock
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-07-22
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:52:28 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AStrattenG210722, PStrattenF2101
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Gwyneth Stratten was born in London in 1934. She was briefly evacuated during the war but wrote to her mother to say if she didn’t come and collect her she would walk home. On a visit to a museum in London with her mother she saw a group of badly injured airmen visiting the museum. This was the start of her fascination with the men of the Guinea Pig Club and their surgeon Archibald McIndoe. Gwyneth joined the Army in 1951 and was very happy in her role. She married an RAF serviceman and returned to the UK. Years later she became the librarian of Rauceby Hospital which after being a mental institution had become a military hospital during the war. When the hospital was due for closure she began collecting items to build a picture of the history of the old hospital and organised a reunion of ex-RAF patients.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Guinea Pig Club
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
RAF hospital Rauceby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/504/30541/ADavisR[Date]-01.mp3
72e2792125ec47af1195ffe013eef4ea
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Davis, Ronald
Ronald Samuel Davis
R S Davis
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Davis, R
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. Collection concerns with Ronald Davis (1922 - 2017, 1231181 Royal Air Force). He served as ground crew with 49 and 617 Squadrons. Collection contains three oral history interviews as well as photographs of people and aircraft.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
RD2: When you, when you first joined. Why you joined for a start.
RD: Right. I joined because I was mad keen on air. As an eighteen year old I was mad keen on aeroplanes and I knew I was going to be conscripted and I was determined that I wasn’t going in to the Army so [pause] yes.
RD2: If you actually just say I joined the RAF.
RD: Yeah. I volunteered for the RAF originally in about September October of 1940. I was very interested in aeroplanes and aircraft models and what have you although I couldn’t afford to buy any at those times, at that time. And I knew I was going to be called up eventually so I decided that I would volunteer for the RAF and I went to the recruitment depot at Euston Road and there I went on to, for assessment at Cardington in Bedfordshire. And they sent me home for a couple of weeks and I was eventually called in December 1940 where I, where I was kitted out at Cardington and then transferred to Bournemouth for square bashing. And I was at Bournemouth for about six weeks staying in a boarding house. Funnily enough it was the first time I’d ever had a room on my [laughs] of my own because until then I’d always shared with my brothers and sisters and so that was the first time I ever had a bedroom to myself. And after square, square bashing at Bournemouth I was posted to Halton which was number 1 School of Technical Training where I stayed for six months training as a fitter air frame. And immediately we finished in August I was posted to 49 Squadron then stationed at Scampton flying with Handley Page Hampdens which was a twin engine bomber. Not very well heard of these days but anybody that does know anything about aircraft know it was a twin boomed strange looking aircraft. The crew sat in the middle of the wings and there was a pilot, a navigator, second pilot. There was also a bomb aimer and a wireless operator who was a mid, who was a top gunner and the rear gunner who sat in a cupola for ten hours with his legs in the air freezing to death. I mean, when they used to come out at the end of a bombing trip we used to have to defrost them to get them going. It was atrocious conditions. As far as I remember the navigator also used to double up as the front gunner. There was a fixed gun position on the front, you know. But these were very slow aircraft. Very slow aircraft. They did about two hundred and twenty miles an hour downwind and if they went on to a bombing raid it would be six, seven hours. When we went to, went to Italy once when we bombed Milan and, and strangely enough the nearest airfield in England to Milan is down in Cornwall, navigating the shortest distance. So we were all flown down to Cornwall in a Handley Page Harrow and set, they set off from there and we waited ‘til they come back and then we all came back to, to Scampton. But that was a very interesting exercise and on that raid they were away for ten hours.
RD2: So, just going back a little bit. Just did you have any ambitions to fly?
RD: I I volunteered for aircrew very early on in my, when I was at Scampton and I was sent down to London for aircrew assessment. And I stayed at Abbey Lodge or one, one of those houses in Abbey Road, there was blocks of flats in Abbey Road for two days and it was clear from the moment I got there that I was unsuitable because of my eyes. I I always operated on one eye. I had good sight with, but only on one [laughs] only from one eye and so I was rejected for aircrew and I went back to ground crew.
RD2: Right. So just if you don’t mind me asking.
RD: Yeah.
RD2: The odd questions.
RD: You, I’d prefer you.
RD2: Yeah. Ok.
RD: Because then I know what you want then. Yeah.
RD2: Yeah. When you arrived at Scampton was it the first time you’d been on a large RAF airfield?
RD: Well, I’d seen, I’d seen Hendon from the outside but I was very excited to be in the front line as it were and I knew immediately I got to Scampton that I was in the front line. There was, this was an operational squadron and not, and not playing, playing games like most servicemen were doing at that time. I was very excited being on it. I was very proud to be there. Very proud. I mean I I was a nineteen year old. I was streetwise. I wasn’t, you know I was brought up in the East End of London. I was streetwise but a nineteen year old in 1940 was a very unsophisticated individual. I had never bought any clothes for myself before I went in. My mum bought my, my clothes. If I had to have a suit for work she used to come to the shop and my mum chose it and my mum paid for it. So, I was very unsophisticated but I knew I was in the, in the front line and I admired the pilots very much. I mean, some of them were well decorated. We also, Scampton had a VC. A guy called Sergeant Hannah. He wasn’t actually with 49 Squadron, he was with the co-squadron at Scampton at 183 Squadron and he’d won a VC crawling out of a burning Lancaster in the air to put out a fire to stop them crashing. And he succeeded but to this day how he did it I don’t know. But I used to see him regularly and I was always very very proud to just to have a look at him and he was a Scotsman from Glasgow and just an ordinary sort of a guy and, and I was very proud to be with them. I liked the crew. The aircrew. But the one occasion we had this Australian pilot. Holt. Aussie Holt he was called. Very very nice fellow and one very funny story he was very superstitious as most aircrew were and they used to do strange things before flights. Operational flights. And his particular crew used to stand against the rear, rear wheel of the Hampden and have a pee together before they took off. And a couple of days later there was a DROs, Daily Routine Orders with the words I can remember to this day were, “Promiscuous urination against tail wheels will cease forthwith.” [laughs] Which I decided was very funny though I don’t think it stopped him [laughs] And so —
RD2: So, what was your, you arrived at Scampton these obviously were the first warplanes that you’d had to —
RD: Yes. These were the first ones —
RD2: You trained on what? Things like Battles or —
RD: We trained basically on, I think there was an Avro [pause] our training was all theory at Scampton except for the last two weeks when we went on the airfield at Halton where there were various aeroplanes. Not much. A Battle, an Anson and, and that was the only time we saw aeroplanes. When I got to Scampton they were overcrowded with crew because the Technical Training Schools were churning out. So, when I got to Scampton and I was posted to Flight 1, Flight 1 or Flight C. Flight 1, I think. And on each flight had four aeroplanes and there were three flights so there was twelve in a squadron. On the four planes that I was on, my flight there were probably eight engineers per aeroplane which was much too much but the idea was to put guys like me with the people who knew what they were doing just to, in effect train us on the [pause] and my job as a fitter airframe was everything in the aeroplane except the engine where there were fitter engines and that was their job. But the fitter airframe dealt with the hydraulics, the pneumatics. Everything.
RD2: Did that include battle damage?
RD: Battle damage was done in the hangar which is not on the flight. Flight was merely maintenance. Battle damage was done in the hangar. Serious battle damage went to a Maintenance Unit but, but the hangar at Scampton, as far as I remember there were three hangars. Or four hangars. Three or four hangars and you know little bits were done there.
RD2: Was one, did each flight have a hangar or was it just whichever was available?
RD: Whichever was, was available. And eventually as people were being posted, particularly abroad, mainly abroad the numbers of the crew were reduced and towards the end of my time at Scampton there was probably only two flight engineers on per aircraft. We had to do a daily maintenance. That’s check everything on the aircraft that we, that was, that we could by sight. And then there were certain other checks that were done regularly and ground crew used to move the aircraft in those days as well on the ground.
RD2: How was that done?
RD: Well, the engineer used to just start up and move them around. Yeah. Yeah. That, that stopped very quickly but when I first went there you know your ground crew used to move aircraft on the ground and we had to deal with the wheels and tyres and things. A big job always was if a plane burst a tyre on landing. Then we had, used to have to get out there with jacks and planks and planks of wood because there were no runways at Scampton at that time so if a bomber came off in the mud you had to really lift it up to get, get the wheel on. I remember we used to have to put out planks of wood and then we had these jacks we’d lift, put under the wing and lifted them up to change the wheels and that was a big job in, in all weathers. And it was pretty cold there too. I remember how bitterly cold it was.
RD2: What, what months were you there?
RD: I was there from September. August. August September ’41 to April ’42 when they threw us out to [pause] and I went to Winthorpe and they threw us out to put in, put in the runways.
RD2: So, you were there right through the winter.
RD: Right through the winter. Oh yes. And it was a tough winter. I can remember on the night of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau bombing when we, when we lost half the squadron. It was a very very sad time standing out on the runway until 1 o’clock in the morning waiting for aircraft to come back. And there were no Drem lighting in those days because it was grass and if there was snow as there was at that time we used to have gooseneck flares and there were probably twelve or fourteen gooseneck flares along the runway with one airman on each pair of flares on either side. So, you would light your gooseneck flare when an aircraft was, you were told an aircraft was coming in. You’d light your gooseneck flare with great difficulty with a match that kept blowing out in the wind and then run like a lunatic across the other side to light the other one before the aeroplane arrived. And, and once he landed then you had to put your gooseneck out and wait, wait for the next one because you couldn’t disclose your your your situation. But that was probably the saddest night of my life when I was out there. It was so depressing in those conditions and knowing that, that they hadn’t got back. And my particular aeroplane P for Peter went down on that Scharnhorst and Gneisenau raid with that Sergeant Aussie Holt as the pilot. Yeah.
RD2: So, could you describe that in a bit more sort of general terms because there were a lot of aircraft lost weren’t there?
RD: Yeah. There were a lot of aircraft lost. We used to do a thousand bomber raids in those days and the thousand bombers were made up of aeroplanes from here, there and everywhere. And although a large number were lost the number per squadron was small. We, we had lost aircraft on raids on many occasions. One, perhaps two but six or seven out of the squadron is a big big toll and unusual. I mean I’m told other squadrons had similar experiences but I didn’t experience it at 49 at that time. But Scampton was a very comfortable station. It was a pre-war, purpose built blocks. There was nothing skimped about it as there was at [Skimpton?] where we were in Nissen huts and outdoor toilets and washing houses and things of that sort. We were in two story brick built billets with proper bathrooms and toilets you know.
RD2: They would be the sort of the H Blocks. H blocks.
RD: Yeah.
RD2: Around, around the parade square.
RD: Basically. Not [pause] As far as I, no I don’t think, they were near the square but not round it. Yeah. They were all in that part of the airfield but I can’t remember being around the square. The parade ground was immediately behind Station Headquarters as you came in. Station Headquarters was at the right and, and the square was just beyond that and then these blocks were distributed around the beginning and the airfield was further down. Down the road.
RD2: So, you were what? What rank were you at this time?
RD: I was, went as an aircraftsman second class when I qualified. Then I was promoted and then I became AC1 and then I became a leading aircraftsman, LAC which was the most senior before [pause] I had no ambitions to, to —
RD2: You would —
RD: I would have —
RD2: You would have gone on to be a corporal, wouldn’t you?
RD: Yes. Yeah. The next jump up would have been a corporal but I had no great ambitions because I wasn’t that great an engineer. In fact, knowing my capabilities now I’m amazed I coped at all [laughs] Coped at all. But had I been a flyer obviously I’m sure I would have been a lot more ambitious than, than I was.
RD2: So, your, your sort of off duty moments would have been spent mainly in what? The Airmen’s Institute?
RD: No. We used to, we used to work twenty four hours every third day because remember all operations were at night. I mean, we did very few daylight raids. The Americans did all the daylight raids but of course they weren’t in the war yet but 49 Squadron only operated at night and therefore you had to have a crew on all night if, if there were operations. As there were on most nights. So, when you worked there were no days off. When you worked twenty four hours you came off duty at five or six in the morning and the rest of the day was yours. So I, we used to go to bed for a while and then get up and get the bus in to Lincoln to have something to eat or something to drink and perhaps go to a dance or a movie, the cinema and then walk back from Lincoln. Five miles [laughs]. Of course, the buses never ran, ran after 6 o’clock and we certainly couldn’t afford a taxi in those days. But I always liked my food and whereas most of the boys would go drinking I preferred to go and find myself a little café and get something to eat and tuck in that way.
RD2: I take it from that that your opinion of the RAF food wasn’t that great.
RD: No.
RD2: No.
RD: We, we used to have it was good food ruined by bad cooks. It [laughs] we used to have rice pudding for dessert every day. Seven days a week. And rice pudding was unsweetened. There was a shortage of sugar so you used to get a dollop of raspberry or strawberry jam in the middle of the rice pudding and then mix it up until it looked like mud and then eat it. That was sweet. And the day I was demobilised I took an oath that I would never eat rice pudding again and to date [laughs] I haven’t broken that.
RD2: Yeah.
RD: But no. I was not terribly impressed with, with the feed. Even though, even though there were proper cookhouse that we had. Every facility was there. I remember I got jankers on one day, on one occasion for having my hands in my pocket or something of that sort and a warrant officer, station warrant officer told me to go and get my pocket stitched up and report back at 5 o’clock to let him see. Which I did. And I showed him the pocket that I’d sewn up. He said, ‘What about the other one?’ I said, ‘Well, I only had one hand in my pocket.’ [laughs] And he said I was impertinent and I was on a charge and I got three days jankers where I had to go to the cookhouse. Do some, some work. And there was a lovely lady cook who I had a nice chat to and she made me some mushrooms on [laughs] or some, some food on toast and we had a good chat and I did some of the washing up but not, not a tremendous amount.
RD2: Brilliant. So, do you remember, I mean was there, I mean, two aspects. One, was there a lot of square bashing? Was there a lot of marching about?
RD: No. No. On, on an operational squadron it was very informal. You have to remember that at Scampton there were two squadrons 49 Squadron, 183 Squadron. There was discipline but there was no what they call bullshit. Right. But at Scampton there was also the administration headquarters at, at the top by the gate and there they tried to enforce discipline which they did in the case of, I mean if I’d have been out on the Flight with my hands in my pocket with my overalls they’d know I was trying to keep my hands warm to do some work. But if you were up around headquarters and you had your hands in pockets then you were in trouble. No. There was not a lot of discipline on the squadron because we were all doing a job that was far more important than the, than the discipline.
RD2: On the other side of that was there a lot of social life on the base?
RD: Yes. Mainly through the NAAFI. Mainly through the NAAFI where we all used to meet in the evening. Occasionally there was a concert and we used to have our own singsongs and things of that sort. One thing that I would like to, to mention at this stage was we had a Salvation Army van used to come around to Scampton every morning. I think every morning. Rarely in the afternoons but every morning without fail and no matter what the weather these two girls used to arrive with hot tea and what we used to call wads which were little buns. And, and no matter what the weather, I mean in thick snow they used to come out. And to this day I’m a great supporter of, I say to my wife what we ought to send and she said, ‘You know, it’s too much now.’ I say, ‘It’s not too much.’ I remember the wonderful work they did. They were a Godsend and they used to come out on to the Flight every day. They obviously had to come through the front gate so, you know I was trying to think how they got out on to the flights but they obviously came through the front gates and used to go to the three flights in turn. They were wonderful girls. I remember. I’ll never forget the Salvation Army.
RD2: So, on the [pause] were you on the base for Christmas? At Scampton.
RD: Yes.
RD2: Can you describe that?
RD: Yes. At Christmas the officers, we had turkey and the officers carved the turkey. Used to have the officer come round every meal for, ask if there were any complaints but you didn’t complain. I don’t know why. I know some of the older ones didn’t ever complain but nobody ever complained despite how bad it was. And it may well have been that some of them were quite satisfied with the, with the adequacy but I always had difficulty in coping with, with getting enough food. But the officer used to come around, ‘Any complaints?’ Every day. The duty officer. And then at Christmas operations were always suspended and this was one of the reasons why we were caught out with the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. We were bombed up with armour piercing bombs for a raid before Christmas and then we were stood down and they had to be de-bombed and then after Christmas it happened and we had to get our aeroplanes off in a hurry and I don’t wish to make a song and a dance about it but I do think that we probably had the wrong bombs for, for the job. On the day we didn’t have the armour piercing bombs on the aircraft simply because they, we had been caught out and they came through when they didn’t expect them. But that would have been the Christmas and we did have turkey and as I say the officers served it. It was very enjoyable, very lively and you know there was great camaraderie in the, in the squadron and there was competition between the various flights as to who could get their aeroplanes out ready for take-off first and things of this sort. But there was a great camaraderie in the squadron.
RD2: So, you were, you’re, I’m trying, if you work it into sort of like a working day for you.
RD: Yes.
RD2: You would have been out on flights. The aircraft were dispersed out —
RD: Yeah. Although there were no concrete runways there was a concrete strip around and, and off the concrete strip there were these little arms with the, with the round at the, I can’t remember what we called them.
RD2: Dispersals?
RD: Dispersal Unit. That’s right. Dispersal Unit. And in the middle of that Dispersal Unit was the flight sergeant’s hut and the flight sergeant was the senior NCO in charge of that flight where we used to get our orders, and various stores were kept there and the aeroplanes were walking distance from there. Now, we were probably then a mile to Flight 2 which was around another part of the aeroplane so we never saw them very much. There was just our four aeroplanes around the hut where we, where we worked. So we would get down there at 8 o’clock in the morning and we would get instructions from the flight sergeant to do either daily routine inspection or tow the aircraft down to the hangar because it had a bigger inspection or tow it to the compass swinger where the aeroplane had to be swung regularly to be sure the compasses was alright. And that was all our, all our duty or the actual compass was an instrument, instrument mechanics job but we used to have to see to the [pause] and, and then we were told later in the day whether there was going to be operations and if there were then armourers used to bring out the bombs and load up and we, we would assist with that.
RD2: Did the armourers also arm the guns?
RD: Yes.
RD2: At that same time.
RD: The same. Yeah. And armourers would come in during the course of the day either to put them in or change them or exchange them or whatever but, but armourers were at, were not on flight because there would only be a couple of armourers for each flight. Three or four armourers for each flight. Bombs weren’t heavy at that time. The biggest one was either a five hundred or a thousand pound but if they were doing long raids they only had two hundred and fifty pound bombs and we had, and they could be manhandled up by, by the guys themselves. And then at, we’d have our lunch and we’d go back for lunch I think and then we would work through ‘til 5 o’clock unless you were on duty and then you would stay or go. Go and get some supper and come back and see to seeing them off and bring them back hopefully.
RD2: So, seeing them off did you, was there was there a point where the aircrew would come out and talk to you before —?
RD: Oh, when they came out they used to come out in a bus. They would always chat to us. Always chat to us and know, anything special about had gone on with the aeroplane or anything been touched or anything of that sort. And then we used to wait and service other aircraft if any that were on the ground that hadn’t gone off whilst they were away. And once they came back then the crews would come off and go back on the bus, go back for debriefing and we would just wrap up and go home unless there was something wrong with the plane. Then we would get to deal with it there and then.
RD2: Would the, would the aircrew talk to the flight sergeant and say you know this engine is running rough or something like that?
RD: Oh yes.
RD2: Or would they come directly to you and say its hydraulic —
RD: No. No. He would go, go to the flight sergeant because [pause] yes, they they would always report to him. If it was something simple like something had come detached inside the plane they’d say something’s come off. Will you, will you have a look at that?
RD2: So you had a long interim period there where if the planes were away for six or eight hours.
RD: Yeah.
RD2: What did you do during that period because that was overnight apparently?
RD: Yes. That was at night. You could sometimes get, get your head down for a little bit in in the flight office.
RD2: Which was where?
RD: Where, where the flight sergeant was. Yeah.
RD2: The [unclear] Yeah.
RD: Yeah. That was the flight office. Yeah, and [pause] but invariably there were things to do on perhaps another aeroplane that wasn’t there but if there was nothing around then we would play cricket or football and things of that sort if, if it was light enough during the, during the summer and, and then we used to just find somewhere to get your head down. There was no such thing as beds or, or anything of that sort.
RD2: Yeah. So, I’m just trying to think. When, where there, where there were periods where the crew were sitting out at the flight hut on standby?
RD: No. Remember we’re bomber crews not, not fighter. Bomber crews were at headquarters and, and there was a sergeant’s mess and there was the officer’s mess and they would be there being briefed or perhaps training themselves. I mean, frankly I didn’t know what they were doing in the course of the day. Mainly if they’d been on ops they would, they would be sleeping. But then they would only come out when it was, it was time to go. Perhaps be out there for a half an hour a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes something like that and yeah, we always used to chat to them at that time. Because you would never ask them anything about what was going on because wherever they were going was secret. So that, I mean as it happened through the grapevine we knew.
RD2: Yeah.
RD: Basically where, where they were going and when they got back we used to just, you know, get it confirmed. Yeah. That’s flashing now.
RD2: Yeah. That’s ok. It just means the tape is coming to an end.
RD: Right. Right.
RD2: It’s got another five minutes.
RD: Right. Ok.
RD2: I’ll carry on if you don’t mind.
RD: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
RD2: What was I just going to say? Yes. The procedure if you knew, how did you know an aircraft was coming back either battle damaged or [unclear]
RD: Well, we knew from the, from the conning tower. From the air control. That we used to get a word through the office that they were on their way and then you would just watch. Watch them land. As I say when, when they had to use the gooseneck flares and we used them I would have thought on six occasions when I was there to, to bring them in. The number one guy next to the air control tower would be told to light his and as soon as he started you did it all the way along but that was the most awful experience. Standing out there at night hours on end. I can’t tell you how cold it was. It used to blow across Lincolnshire straight from Siberia. How cold it was. And, and the sheer boredom. You couldn’t, you couldn’t read and you couldn’t sit and you couldn’t talk to anybody. You were just standing there and I mean occasionally we used to, we’d get halfway and shout to each other. But there was nobody to talk to because he was like two, two hundred yards away, a hundred yards away and —
RD2: But then —
RD: But they were good days. I only remember the good things.
RD2: Yeah.
RD: I don’t remember much of the, of the awful things that happened.
RD2: Yeah. But I know the, if, would you know if an aircraft was coming in and had possible damage?
RD: Yes.
RD2: To its undercarriage or something like that.
RD: Well, air control would know but we wouldn’t know until we saw. The extraordinary thing is when, when you’re on a squadron like that you can hear your, the engines of your plane as opposed to any other aeroplane and you know a stranger merely from the sound of the engine. And you were used to looking at aircraft and even when they were in the air we could tell if one, I mean, at night obviously you couldn’t but during the daytime if somebody had a flat tyre or the undercarriage hadn’t come down properly then, then, then you, you could tell because you could see but other than that the first thing we knew was we could see it come down and go over on one side.
RD2: And presumably on the airfield next to the control tower was the fire station and the —
RD: That’s right. The fire tender and the crash crew on the fire tender were at the side of there. One, one occasion that I perhaps can mention that one of the bombers came back on one occasion and when they stopped on the dispersal we used to sort of do that to open the bomb doors and it wasn’t my aeroplane but it was on, it was one in the squadron. As they opened the door a bomb that had come off the attachment but hadn’t fallen was trapped in the door, dropped and exploded and some of the ground crew were killed there and it was not, not a pretty sight. It was not a pretty sight. It was pretty awful.
RD2: Were the aircrew out of the aircraft at the time?
RD: They were under. Underneath it. So the ground crew and the aircrew, or some of the aircrew were there. I think there were some survivors. And then we had another time when an aeroplane crashed coming in to land in in to a field just outside the airfield where when we got there you couldn’t tell humans from cows and it was, that was an awful awful thing. An awful thing. But those things I’ve tried to wipe —
RD2: Yeah.
RD: Out of my mind. Yeah. Yeah.
RD2: I’m going to just stop and change —
[recording paused]
RD2: Like that then. This has been, whereabouts well I mean we’ll go back just to repeat what you were saying.
RD: Yeah.
RD2: You’d hitch a lift.
RD: Yeah.
RD2: In the —
RD: Yes. In those days it was quite easy if the crew were on a non-operational flight if you’d, and you got permission you could go and have a flight round if they were on circuits and bumps or if they were going to another station to do something and come straight back. I flew quite on, I wouldn’t say a regular basis but on a large number of occasions I flew in the, in the, in the Hampden.
RD2: Where did you, I mean which position did you take on this?
RD: I would normally either sit next to the pilot or as a second pilot or I’d go down in the nose where the bomb aimer was, would be. Or I would find myself a position in the mid-upper turret where, where the wireless operator whilst he was wireless operating wasn’t in his cupola he was sitting down by his radio. So, the upper gunner wouldn’t be doing any wireless work whilst, whilst they were in a position where they might be finding —
RD2: It must, it must have been quite exciting to be —
RD: Oh, unbelievable. Unbelievable. Particularly in those days where just nobody but the very, very wealthy flew anywhere. Oh no, I was always very, very happy to have a flight. Even if I had to work late or something of that sort to, to make up time and —
RD2: Where, where what sort of places did you go?
RD: We never landed but we used to go on, I remember flying from Lincoln up to, up to, north west towards Wigan Pier. And then they, we used to also go, they did bomb aiming practice out on, in the Fens in East Anglia somewhere. I went on a few of those. Never had a full crew because it was only one member of the crew who would be training and they would then need a pilot and a navigator so there was probably three crew and they would take one or two ground crew. In fact, on an occasion I went I think I was the only one. But they were very very enjoyable trips. And then, I mean this is long after Scampton but at the end of the war I did a trip over Germany to show the various towns where we had dropped bombs. That was, that was a very exciting episode as well. I went in a Lancaster on that and we did a tour of all the towns that the squadron had bombed.
RD2: Yeah.
RD: And that, that was very interesting.
RD2: So just going back to the Hampden itself.
RD: Yeah.
RD2: Hampden. Hampden or Hampton.
RD: No. Hampden.
RD2: Hampden. That’s it. Yeah.
RD: Yeah. Yeah.
RD2: I’ve heard various reports. I mean, some, I heard some, one aircrew called it a flying coffin but from what you said it sounds to have been quite a reliable aircraft.
RD: In my opinion it was a reliable aircraft. There were, there were very few accidents that weren’t, that were caused in my [pause] as far as my recall goes very few accidents where aeroplanes went down because of a fault. There were a large number of accidents where there was human error, I mean. But I can remember being told by a number of crew that that thing flew itself. You know. It needed very little control. So, I’m a little bit surprised to hear that the crews called it a a flying coffin. But I I was not aware of it. No.
RD2: Whether that was in reference to being able to defend itself.
RD: Ah. That, that of course is another thing, you see. Bearing in mind what did it have. It had one fixed gun in the front, a gun at the top controlled by the wireless operator gunner and the rear gunner who was in a cupola underneath the aircraft at the back sitting there with his legs up like this. Fixed all, all night long so that he couldn’t see anything above him. He could only see stuff below him. So, from that point of view, yes. I could see it would be a trap but in those days there weren’t that many night fighters. Most of the aircraft were taken down by anti-aircraft guns.
RD2: I think, going back to Scampton were you, was the station ever attacked by the enemy?
RD: Yes. One afternoon. One afternoon Jerry came over and machine gunned one part of the airfield but not a lot of damage was done. The other thing that happened as a result of that was that the aeroplane, the aeroplanes they thought were vulnerable on the ground so they decided that of the squadron six of the aircraft would be dispersed to another airfield just a mile or two or a landing strip a mile or two away so that if Jerry did decide to come over and have a go again he could only get a half the squadron not the whole squadron and —
RD2: Was that Ingham?
RD: Possibly. I, I know that name but I can’t remember if it was the name but it was just a few miles away. We took off at Scampton and straight down on to this airfield and every night six aeroplanes would go over there with two ground crew. You would have six pilots and two ground crew. And then we used to button up the six for the night and come back in another aeroplane and the next morning go back and bring them back again. Now, the story goes that after a while somebody had the bright idea that instead of, it was a waste of time and you know the effort of getting six aeroplanes on to another field was really not worth it but after a while somebody had the bright idea that they’d make up six mock Hampdens in wood and, and put them at this other airfield. And the story goes that two days after it happened Jerry came over and dropped a wooden bomb on that airfield [laughs]
RD2: [laughs] That’s brilliant.
RD: Yeah. I dined out on that story for a long time.
RD2: That’s fantastic. That really is. Thank you. That, it’s brilliant [laughs] Great. But the airfield itself was never bombed at Scampton.
RD: Not, not that, not that I remember. Not that I remember. No. What would they bomb? There were no, they were trying to get the aeroplanes obviously and I think this is what, this what do they call it, strafer, ground strafer. The aeroplane came over and just machine gunned. I think he did damage some aeroplanes on that raid and that’s why they decided to disperse half the squadron but other than that I can’t recall anything at all. I can’t recall anything of that sort.
RD2: No. I mean, you don’t recall whether because I mean that must have been, really made you feel very much on the front line.
RD: Oh yes.
RD2: Yeah.
RD: Well, I’d felt on the front line when I was on the square bashing at Bournemouth because we used to parade on, on the lower promenade at Bournemouth and one afternoon Jerry came in straight off the sea. And after that we used to [laughs] we used to do our training in the side roads around, around on, on the East Cliff around Meyrick Park. We used to go on the side streets there. So, I’d seen some of that when, when I’d been at Bournemouth.
RD2: Yeah. When [pause] a slightly aside point. You obviously had WAAFs on the station.
RD: Yes.
RD2: At that time. Were they very much segregated?
RD: Yes. WAAFs were mainly in air control and had nothing to do with us in in any event. There were, there were lots of and lots of officers that were far more attractive than than erks like [laughs] like us. But later on when WAAFs came in as, as mechanics but that was very very much later there was no segregation. I mean they did the same job as we did. We used to, we used to tease them unmercifully but, but, but —
RD2: And at Scampton were they billeted off station?
RD: No. Remember that was a permanent station so there would have been quarters for WAAFs. In fact, trying to turn my mind back because it’s not something I’ve thought of I think the WAAFs might have been in wartime huts as opposed to the H blocks distributed around but but basically there was, there was no, no problem. There was no problem as far as I remember. There was no, no problem at all.
RD2: And did you have much to do with other neighbouring stations? Hemswell or any of the others?
RD: Not really unless your aeroplane landed somewhere else because of fog or, and then you’d have to go over there just to see that they got back alright and you’d come back with them. The one interesting thing I remember at Scampton very early on. An American aeroplane landed at Scampton because he, he was in trouble and they sent a ground crew over to see to this aeroplane. And we were amazed, amazed is not the word, at the equipment that each American engineer had that we didn’t have. If we wanted a special set of spanners we had to go from the Flight back to stores, sign them out for the day, use them and take them back. The Americans had the same tools around their belt and we were very very conscious of how even in those days very early on in the war how much better equipped the American serviceman was to, to us. I mean we had a toolbox, you know. A hammer, a chisel and a screwdriver but anything more sophisticated than that used to have to be borrowed because there weren’t, weren’t enough to go around. There were obviously a few sets of spanners in the stores but not enough for —
RD2: Yeah.
RD: To leave out on the Flight. That was one thing that we noticed very much. That how much better equipped they were than, than we were.
RD2: So, after you were at Scampton and then you moved because they were building a runway.
RD: Runways. Yeah.
RD2: Was there any notice of that or was it just —
RD: We weren’t just told that we were. I think we were told a while before that the squadron was being broken up. I think it was broken up. 183 went somewhere else. To another, I think they went to Waddington or somewhere like that but 49 was broken up for some reason or the other to make 1664 Conversion Unit. And we were all, that’s ground crew and aircrew were transferred to Winthorpe whilst the builders came in to put these runways in and of course after the runways were put in then the station was reopened with 617 Squadron. The Dambusters Squadron. But as I say from Scampton I was sent with 1664 Conversion Unit to Winthorpe which I don’t know whether you’ve heard of it or seen any sign of it but that is, no longer exists. I think I told you I took [laughs] I took my son up there on one occasion just to show him where [laughs] where I won the war and we couldn’t find the airfield. Eventually I went on some private land and it was all farmland and the hangars were being used by the farmers as, you know for storage of their grain and materials and vehicles and things of that sort. But that just appeared but but Coddington Hall which was the officer’s mess at Winthorpe is a house that still exists I believe and I don’t know —
RD2: Yeah.
RD: Whether anybody knows anything about that. I couldn’t find it.
RD2: No. No, I know the name.
RD: Yeah.
RD2: Yeah. But what was purpose of the Conversion Unit?
RD: Well, well to convert them from these much smaller aeroplanes to the large. Remember the Hampden only had two engines. And, and to convert them to the larger Manchester which was the Lancaster with two engines and, and the Lancaster with four Merlins. The Manchester as far as I remember had two very large radial engines whereas the Lancaster had four. Four Merlins. And it was an entirely different animal to fly. Much faster. More powerful. Carried much more weight than the Hampden. The Hampden carried very little for, for its size really. I don’t think it carried anything over above a thousand pound bomb and it had one thousand pound bomb. That was not very much whereas the Lancaster carried a much bigger load and it was an entirely different thing to fly. More up to date in in many many respects.
RD2: More difficult to work on from your point of view?
RD: No. Not really. It was better to work on because it was more accessible because, because of the size. I mean in the Hampden you used to have to squeeze in everywhere. It was alright for me. I was small. But some of the big guys had, had difficulty.
RD2: Just going back sorry. What sort of engines did the Hampden have?
RD: A Hampden had [pause] I can’t remember.
RD2: Were they Bristol? Were they radials or —
[pause]
RD: I think they were. I think they were. I think they were. The other story I’ve just thought of about the, and when we were on the Conversion Unit was when Gee came in. This was the radar. The first radar was Gee and when they put those in all the aeroplanes came with Gee. One of the ground crew used to have to sleep in it all night in case somebody, somebody tried to [laughs] with a gun, with a gun, used to sleep in it at night with a sten gun, I think. In case anybody tried to come along and take it. And this went on for, for quite a while but I couldn’t believe [laughs] sleeping. Sleeping in —
RD2: Did you ever have to do it?
RD: Oh yes. Sleeping in the fuselage [laughs]
RD2: Not very comfortable.
RD: No. Well, as it happens it wasn’t that bad because you had the main spar running through and a little guy like me could, could lie, lie across there. And —
RD2: So, you stayed on.
RD: Yeah. One more thing. Maybe not. I don’t think it’s too crude to tell you the story but when we had the first WAAFs on the plane they were coming around and we were having to show them what was what. Where the, in the middle of the Lancaster fuselage was the main spar where the wings were where we used to have to walk up the, you could walk up the fuselage and cock your leg over the main spar which was like a seat on the other side and we used to tease the WAAFs to tell them to sit in the seat lay back and look for the golden rivet [laughs] up, up at the top of the aircraft. But not too, not too naughty. Yes. The golden rivet.
RD2: Yeah. So, are there, is there anything else that sort of —? Oh, I know, you did, before we started recording you were telling me about the old hands who were at Scampton.
RD: Yes.
RD2: When you first arrived.
RD: Yes.
RD2: You know, both the ground crew and in aircrew function.
RD: Yes. They were. When I first arrived in at Scampton in August September ’41 there were a number of ground crew who were regular airmen as opposed to volunteers or conscripts as it were who’d been in the Air Force before the war. Now, in the old days aircraft engine fitters, I think all fitters, aircraft and, engine and airframe fitters were also qualified gunners, air gunners and used to go. When I first went there they used to go on operations as a rear gunner which I found very exciting and I wouldn’t have minded having a go myself but by that time it was only aircrew that would be permitted and they only used them on rare occasions when there was somebody sick or they were short of a gunner or something of that sort.
RD2: Yeah.
RD: But as I say these guys used to look after the engines during the day and then go off on a, on a bombing raid.
RD2: Yeah. So, from when you left Scampton just sort of in sort of broad terms how did you finish the war? The next years.
RD: Well, when, I carried on with 1664 Conversion Unit. We were converting all the time. And then when we got to VE-day they decided that squadrons were going to be sent out to the Far East because there had been no heavy bombers in the Far East ‘til then but I can’t remember where the runways were going to be. Probably India or somewhere like that. And they were going to get squadrons to go to the Far East. When that ended, when the Conversion Unit ended which would have been 1940, be in ’45 I was transferred to Number 1 Signals Depot at West Drayton where I joined fitting parties to fit radios and radar in to aeroplanes all, all over the country. So, although that was, that was my last year it was a good year because I travelled all over Britain with a small fitting party of six. And we used to, air frame mechanic, a couple of radio engineers, electrician, and, and a sergeant in charge and we used to go to various aeroplane, airfield, aerodromes over the country. I went to a number. To Leuchars, I went to in Scotland for a while. I went with a Polish bomber squadron on detachment and they were at Bury, Bury St Edmunds and there was a Polish bomber squadron, I can’t remember what number and we we did some work on their aeroplanes. I also did, fitted at an air, at Cambridge, Marshall’s Airfield, Cambridge. I was sent on detachment there with a party to fit a radio for the first time in a biplane.
RD2: A Tiger Moth.
RD: A Tiger Moth. And it was, until then it had the speaking tube and, and I fixed this. I did the work fitting the actual thing whereas the wireless engineers get it connected up. And when I’d finished this Tiger Moth belonged to the station commander there so he said, ‘Come on. Let’s go and test it.’ So, like a shot I got a parachute and sat in the rear seat and we used this intercom in the, in the Tiger Moth for the first time ever. This would have been 1945/46. And oh, that was the most exciting ride ever when he started doing some stunts because the station commander was showing off a little bit and he said, ‘Well, come on. Let’s go home,’ and he pulled the [unclear] and went straight over and did a, you know, I’ve forgotten what they call it now when you do it.
RD2: Loop.
RD: Loop the loop, yeah. You know, did the loop the loop, said, ‘Let’s go home.’ And he pulled the stick back and we did the loop the loop and that was it. But that, that was very exciting but that of course was right, right at the, towards the end of the war. And then I was demobilised in July or August ’46 having done five, five and a half years. Generally speaking I think I can say I had a, a very exciting war. I survived with two arms, two legs and all the rest of it. And it was a busy war. I was never ever bored as a lot of people told me they were when they were waiting for things to happen. Being on an operational squadron from day one I never ever had anything of that sort. I don’t, I don’t think I was ever bored.
RD2: Did you look back when you went to what was essentially a very temporary airfield from a permanent station did you look back and think —
RD: Yes.
RD2: God, I miss that.
RD: Yes. Yes.
RD2: Can you, can you compare them?
RD: The biggest comparison, personally the biggest comparison not from a work point of view but from a personal point of view was having to get up in the morning and walk across the field you know, in rain or shine to the ablutions. You know. That, that was the biggest thing for me. And the ablutions didn’t have the showers. The showers were somewhere else and that, that I found although I accepted it because I knew it was a temporary station. But for the other facilities I was not too conscious because where Scampton was four or five miles from Lincoln Winthorpe was only less than a mile from Newark. So, we, we had the convenience of being able to walk in to town most nights if you had the money to do it. And from Newark it was easy to get to Nottingham which was a very big town and where we used to have good nights out and lots of girls. The prettiest girls in England were from Nottingham. And, and there were two, two very big dance halls there that we used. We used to go to one or the other and, and by an amazing coincidence I’ve had an association with Nottingham ever, ever since. I’ve still got a friend that, that lives there and we go up occasionally and I always said if I didn’t live in London I think I’d like to live in in Nottingham. Do you know Nottingham?
RD2: I don’t know Nottingham very well. No. I know Newark slightly better.
RD: Newark. Yeah. Yeah.
RD2: Now, that’s a nice town.
RD: Oh yeah. It wasn’t. It wasn’t. I mean it’s improved no end because Pat and I were there recently and it’s improved no end. I mean other than Ransome and Marles I can’t remember much else in Newark. Ransome and Marles were the people who made ball bearings. You used to have to pass their factory from, on the way from the airfield in to, in to Newark.
RD2: Oh. The airfield you were at that isn’t what is now the Newark Air Museum is it?
RD: The —
RD2: The Air Museum at Newark.
RD: No. That’s on the other side.
RD2: Yeah.
RD: Yeah. No, this was, the Fosse Way ran from Newark to Lincoln and we were just off. In fact, one side of the Fosse Way was the edge of the airfield whereas the other side was behind Newark past Ransome and Marles.
RD2: Yeah.
RD: So, if you got that road to Lincoln. I can’t remember is Lincoln north of Newark or east of Newark?
RD2: Lincoln is sort of due east.
RD: East. Right.
RD2: Yeah.
RD: So, you’ve got Newark and that’s the Fosse Way and then there was another road coming out of Newark apart from Ransome and Marles up to the airfield and the airfield went from that side road to, to the Fosse Way. It was between the two. But no, I was happy at Winthorpe. It was, it was a nice station. It was very good camaraderie there and although crews were coming in and out all the time for their conversion training.
RD2: Well, is there anything you’d like to add? I —
RD: I think I’d just like to thank you for giving me the opportunity of remembering these things.
RD2: No. No. No. Thank you.
RD: I thought I’d forgotten.
RD2: Thank you.
RD: And, and I hope, you know I can see something of what you’ve done.
RD2: Yeah. Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ron Davies
Description
An account of the resource
Ron Davis talks of his joining the RAF and early training at Cardington, Bournemouth and Halton. He trained as fitter and was posted to RAF Scampton on Hamden with 49 Squadron. Tells many stories of life as groundcrew at Scampton including his experiences of working and living conditions on the base. Includes John Hannah VC, losing aircraft on operations against Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and talks of battle damaged aircraft. Mentions flying as spare on air test and training as well as Cook's tour at end of the war. Mentions how American engineers were much better equiped that RAF. Moves to RAF Winthorpe on conversion unit when 49 converted to Manchester/Lancaster.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form: no better quality copies are available.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
R Davies
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:11:48 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Dorset
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Bedfordshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Bournemouth
England--Lincolnshire
England--Hampshire
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADavisR[Date]-01, VDavisR[Date]
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
49 Squadron
Cook’s tour
dispersal
fitter airframe
Gneisenau
ground crew
ground personnel
Hampden
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Manchester
military discipline
military service conditions
RAF Cardington
RAF Halton
RAF Scampton
RAF Winthorpe
Scharnhorst
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1762/30389/PSmithJJ2001.2.jpg
5af2792c8819245dd9c0ec38c9afc30c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1762/30389/ASmithJJ201227.2.mp3
0a602ddff875a9df408937afc9059a58
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, John James
Jim Smith
J J Smith
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Jim Smith (b. 1929, 2481850 Royal Air Force).
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-12-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, JJ
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
NM: So, my name is Nigel Moore. I’m recording this interview on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln. It’s Sunday the 27th of December and I’m in my house in Bushey, Hertfordshire. I’m going to be interviewing John James Smith, known as Jim who happens also to be my father in law. Jim was born in February 1929 in the village of Gretton where he still lives. Gretton is in the northern part of Northamptonshire and very close to the border with Rutland and Leicestershire. It is also located at the top of the southern escarpment overlooking the valley of the River Welland. So, Jim, tell me about the first ten years of your life before the war. What was life like in the village?
JS: Very quiet. You know it was a small village. Only about six hundred people and we just carried on a farming life really. Though with Corby so close Corby was a steel town making tubes. In fact, it made the tubes for the Pluto and most of the men either worked on the farm or at Corby in the steelworks.
NM: So, what about schooling in your family?
JS: Well, we all went to Gretton Primary School and at thirteen, I got a scholarship to go to the Corby Technical College which is about five miles away. Used to have to cycle that every day. Night, night, night and morning.
NM: So, what, what, what changed in village life when war broke out? Because you, you were ten when war broke out
JS: Yes, well —
NM: What changed?
JS: Well, suddenly about forty children came on the train from London and they all went, issued out to various people. And the people opposite us, an elderly woman she had two boys and she said, ‘Oh, no. I want two girls.’ But she had to have two boys. Two boys. And these children hadn’t seen any green fields at all. They came from inner London and hadn’t seen the countryside at all and the first night, first day the two, two boys went down to the river and on the way they came to across a field of sheep and it started to rain. So they tried to get the sheep to go in the hovel but the sheep wouldn’t cooperate with them so they took their coats off and put them over two sheep, two of the sheep and got wet through themselves. They came back up and the woman said, ‘Where are your clothes?’ They said, ‘Oh, we couldn’t get the sheep to go in the sheds so we put our coats on the sheep.’
NM: So, did, did you village children mix at all with the evacuees?
JS: Yes. We did. Yes. They brought two, two teachers with them but one of them quickly disappeared and the other one he was a bit odd. He used to cycle around the village with his tin helmet on and his trilby on top of that and he was an odd sort of a character he was. So we suddenly had these thirty or forty children came into the school and of course we, our education suffered. And the men in the village came up to the school and dug trenches in the garden so we would have somewhere to go when, when the air raids started but of course we never, never went in the trenches at all and we all, the school issued, was the issuing centre for the gas masks. So we all had our gas masks from there and most of the people in Gretton had their gas masks from there as well. And the children, the very small children had a container with the, they put the children in and that was their gas masks.
NM: So did you all have air raid drills at school?
JS: Not really. No. We, they built blast walls around the cloakrooms and we went and sat in there but they were the only air raid precautions we took.
NM: Did you get the Anderson shelters to dig in your gardens?
JS: No. But there was a few in the village and they, they built above ground shelters but nobody ever used them. We used, we used to sit under the table downstairs during the alarms, when the alarm went off. And we had two radio, aircraft air raid sirens. One was at Uppingham which was always going off that was. We didn’t take any notice of that one. And then the one at Corby and we always took notice when that went off. But there were some ack ack guns at Corby. But they only fired about once or twice. Corby itself was a steel town and had Bessemer converters which were open to the skies and it’s a wonder really that they didn’t come and bomb them. But we had smoke cannisters all around Corby and they were lit and the smoke came out when the air raid sirens went.
NM: So, were there air raid wardens in the village?
JS: Yes.
NM: Firewatchers.
JS: Yes. Fire watchers. My father was an auxiliary policeman and there used to be about four or five of those used to walk around the village every night telling people to put the fire, put the light out if their blackout curtains weren’t good.
NM: Can you remember the night that Coventry was bombed in November 1940?
JS: Yes. We, we could see this glow in the sky and we wondered what it was. The planes were droning over us and in fact one was shot down but you could see the clouds of, well the sky was lit up with the explosions over Coventry and this plane was shot down by a Defiant and it was shot down over the village. We were outside and we saw all these tracers going over and in to the German plane and that landed, well crashed about five miles away at another village. All the people were killed in it.
NM: So, at this point you weren’t under the table in the kitchen then.
JS: No.
NM: You were out watching.
JS: That’s it [laughs] it was mid-evening that was. So it wasn’t, we hadn’t got up and gone under the table. We were standing outside and you could hear the drone, the planes droning over all night long. But that was the only action we saw.
NM: Were you aware that night that it was Coventry?
JS: No. No. We didn’t know what it was. We could see this glow in the sky and we didn’t, somebody said, ‘Somebody’s getting it.’ And we didn’t know who it was. But I had an uncle. He lived in Coventry and he said they went out and stood on a hill overlooking the town, city and they saw this parachute coming down and three or four of them said, ‘We’ll go and get him.’ And they went running towards it and suddenly found themselves on their back. It was a land mine. But no, it was very disappointing the next morning. Very depressed to see the city in ruins.
NM: So, you saw German aircraft that night.
JS: Yeah.
NM: What about other occasions during the war? Did you see any German aircraft at all during the war?
JS: Well, we didn’t, no. There was a lone raider, raider came over during the day and that machine gunned some farmers in the, in the valley but it was shot down near Peterborough. And one night we were all laid in bed and we could hear this plane going over and mother was saying, ‘That’s one of theirs.’ And father said, ‘No, it’s not. It’s one of ours.’ All of a sudden the bedroom lit up and he dropped about forty incendiaries in the valley below us and luckily all in the fields. If that had dropped on Gretton which had a lot of thatched cottages it would have been really serious. But the next morning I rode down to the valley to the site and collected a lot of bits of incendiary bombs. I’ve still got one somewhere in the house.
NM: So, were you the only child there or did you all, all the boys —
JS: No.
NM: From the village go down and all the girls as well?
JS: There were a lot of boys went down but you know it was scattered over two or three fields and we collected all the bombs, bomb bits we could find. All the fins at the bottom of the bombs. Some of the, one or two of them fell in the river itself but they didn’t go off. Or didn’t do any damage.
NM: So, did the Corby steelworks themselves get any damage at all during the war?
JS: No. That was very lucky really. No. Only once. Had got a new post office in Corby which hadn’t been opened and the bomb, one bomber came over dropped a series of bombs and one of them dropped outside the Post Office and opened the Post Office up for them. But the steelworks itself didn’t have a bomb dropped on it at all which was unusual because, you know these Bessemer converters going straight to the sky.
NM: Was there an occasion when one crashed in to the steelworks?
JS: That was an American.
NM: Oh, ok.
JS: A Lightning which, at that time I’d gone to the Corby College and we were at lunchtime and we heard this bang and looked up and the Lightning was coming down. Falling out of the sky. The pilot had parachuted out and it fell on, fell on the steelworks but fell in place with nothing there. Didn’t do any damage. And the pilot, he landed at Great Oakley which was about three or four miles away.
NM: So you’ve no idea why. Why he crashed.
JS: No. No. The plane exploded. Came from [pause] what is it? I can’t think. I can’t. About, an airfield about five miles away. We were surrounded by airfields. American and British.
NM: Yeah. So, in fact, the nearby airfields to Gretton were Cottesmore, Wittering.
JS: Yeah.
NM: North Luffenham and Spanhoe.
JS: Yeah.
NM: Can you give some description of the aircraft traffic you saw during the war? Those airfields.
JS: In the early days of the war they, at North Luffenham and Cottesmore they’d got Lancasters. No. Hampdens and Whitworths and they came over. Took a long time to get over from one side of the, one side of the sky to the other. Just limped over but we didn’t really see many. We saw more of the Yanks when they came to Spanhoe and they had gliders there and they used to take them up. When they got over Gretton they used to let them go and the gliders used to glide down to Spanhoe Airfield. And during, during the D-Day landings and also during Arnhem the roads were all closed round, around Spanhoe and we saw the gliders going off and saw masses of Flying Fortresses from various airfields, you know. Quite a few airfields and Flying Fortresses. One Sunday morning I was at work and suddenly there was a big explosion and one of the Flying Fortresses had failed to take off. All the crew got out, got out and the plane exploded and that evening I cycled over to Deenethorpe which was the airfield and got a belt of .5 ammunition. The police were there but they didn’t say anything to us. I flew away with, I come away with about a dozen .5 ammunition which my father took the bullets out, tipped the gunpowder out and lit that and that just flared and then he put the cartridges in a fire and they went all they detonated. Blew up then. So that was only the only real excitement we had.
NM: So, can I take you back to Spring of 1943 when the Lancasters with 617 Squadron were practicing —
JS: Oh yes.
NM: Over the Eye Brook.
JS: Yeah.
NM: Although, of course you didn’t know who they were at the time.
JS: We didn’t, we didn’t know what it was even. We didn’t know there was a reservoir there but you know in those days we didn’t know what was happening in the next village let alone five or six miles away. We could see these Lancasters coming low over about five miles away and as they come over they fired Very lights at them and we certainly knew afterwards that they’d been practicing at the Eye Brook Reservoir for the Dambusters. That was one of the two reservoirs they trained at.
NM: So, how often did you see them? Was it frequent or was it —
JS: Well, we saw them for about a week. Every night for a week or so and then suddenly they stopped and we realised afterwards what they were all about.
NM: So, they’d come over at night would they?
JS: Well, it was, it was dusk sort of thing. We could see them. That was the other side of the valley from us. So we could see them coming over and these Very lights being fired as they went over.
NM: So, moving back to 1944 again and D-Day and Arnhem. Did you see the gliders go off as it were?
JS: Yes.
NM: [unclear]
JS: We saw a lot of gliders going off. We didn’t know anything about it off course until afterwards. All the roads were closed and you weren’t allowed anywhere near Spanhoe. And the gliders went off and of course they didn’t come back, a lot of them. There’s a memorial at Spanhoe showing all the people who died on the various raids. On various operations that took part.
NM: It must have been an impressive sight. Was it?
JS: Yes. It was. Yes. Most impressive was the Flying Fortresses. Masses of them going over. I don’t, as I say there were four or five aerodromes around us and there were masses of these Flying Fortresses flying over. We didn’t, didn’t know at the time what it was all about but you soon found out of course.
NM: Now, during the war of course you went from being a ten year old schoolboy to sixteen by the end of the war. So, tell me —
JS: Yeah.
NM: Tell me about your development during, during those six years.
JS: Well, at thirteen I left Gretton and went to Corby Engineering College and I used to have to cycle there morning and evening. We didn’t see a lot. We saw all these smoke cannisters but never saw them lit. But one night, one evening when I came home from school the ground was covered in these plastic, white plastic pictures of foil. We didn’t know what that was about but of course it was practising the radar and they were all over the place they were. Had bits of foil all over the hedges everywhere.
NM: So, this was Window was it?
JS: Yeah. Windows. Yeah.
NM: So, at Technical College you were training for what? What was your —
JS: Engineering training.
NM: Engineering training.
JS: Yeah. Yeah. And of course, most of the people there went in to the steelworks or part of the steelworks.
NM: So, by the end of the war you were still going to that Technical College.
JS: Yes.
NM: What, what can you remember about VE Day itself? What happened in the village? How did you feel about it all?
JS: Well, everybody was very pleased of course and they had a big bonfire in one of the fields and a greasy pole. I’ll always remember that because most of the men would try and climb up this greasy pole and not succeeding. And in the end they pushed this chap up with two poles under his feet. And when he got to the top and got the flag he got a small pig and piglet and that’s the only real thing I can remember really about the VE Day.
NM: So after the end of the war I know you did National Service. What happened between you, the end of the war and you doing your National Service?
JS: Well, there was one other thing with regard to the Americans they decided, well with their, with our Army cadets they said they’d take us all up. And they took two Dakotas. We sat in the Dakotas. No seats of course. We sat on the floor and they took us up on one Sunday afternoon for about half an hour and flew around and then we had our tea up there. Had cakes which I hadn’t seen before and it was very very very good of them. And then when the rationing was on you had to cycle to Corby every Saturday and get cakes which weren’t available in the village.
NM: Was there any other impact of rationing on, on the village life?
JS: Well —
NM: Were allotments and home grown —
JS: Yes.
NM: And all that?
JS: There were a lot of allotments there taken over. My father had what? A ten pole. Twenty pole. Which was quite a big bit to dig and grow mainly potatoes. And then we had a Pig Club in the village and well a lot of people kept a pig in the back garden and every Sunday they used to go around looking at everybody’s pig and having a drink in everybody’s cottage and they finished up finally the worse for wear. My grandfather, he kept a pig and as I said we had some people from, lived in Coventry and when they used to come down my father, my grandfather used to hang their hams up in the, in the living room and when they, when they came down from Coventry they always wanted to take one of the hams back. So, in the end when he knew they were coming he used to take his hams down and hide them in the other room.
NM: So, when did you graduate from Technical College?
JS: Well, when I was fifteen, fifteen and a half, sixteen and started work straight away and spent five years as an apprentice. And at the end of the five years, on my twenty first birthday when I got on top rate of, for the money I had my calling up papers. I always remember when I started as an apprentice. I got twenty nine and nine pence a week for forty seven hours and when I’d just got on top rate, on the same day I got my call up papers to go on National Service and spent two years, well eighteen months but due, due to the crisis, Suez I think it was it put up two years. But I, I was lucky. I got posted to an aerodrome near Rugby which was only about forty miles away and I used to come home every weekend.
NM: So, you did your National Service with the RAF.
JS: Yeah.
NM: From 1950 then when you were twenty one.
JS: Yeah.
NM: So how come you ended up in the RAF as opposed to the Army?
JS: Well, we had, we went to Northampton to have our medicals and while we were there they had an Army and a Navy and an RAF chappy there and they asked you where you wanted to go in. I said the RAF. They said, ‘Why?’ I said ‘I don’t like marching.’ That was good enough. I got in the RAF. But a lot of, a lot of them went in the Army which they didn’t like at all. And one or two got in the Navy. But most of us went in the RAF and I went to Padgate to do National Service training and after six weeks had an interview and they sent me to a training college. At Weeton I think it was. Near Blackpool. And we had an eighteen month course in six weeks there and after we came out of there they posted me to Church Lawford near Rugby and I spent the rest of the time there.
NM: And what was your role at Church Lawford?
JS: Well, I was on the maintenance side of the earth moving equipment and I used to have to go out to various sub-contractors to sign off the work they had done and I always used to arrange for it to be on a Friday so that I could go straight off to, on leave for the weekend.
NM: So you could go back home for the weekend.
JS: Yeah. I was, by that time I’d been made up to a corporal and there was a, you had a security patrol every six, seven weeks and you had to spend all the weekend on the camp. So I used to arrange it so that on the Friday I used to be away from there to another civilian place. One of them was at St Albans and we stayed at the RAF camp there at, at somewhere. On the De Havilland site I think it was. And I used to arrange so that I went on Friday. So, they used to, when they used to ring up seeing where I was they’d say, ‘Oh, he’s on detachment.’ And by that time you’d be on detachment for seven or eight weeks before I’d be sent somewhere else and they realised I was still on the camp and so I didn’t do it. I only did security patrol once.
NM: So you spent the whole two years at RAF Church Lawford did you?
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
NM: Were, were any other trips involved? Did you get any flying at all?
JS: No. No. I didn’t see any aircraft at all while I was in there. Oh, I went, I went, they sent me up to Acklington to repair a tractor. RAF Acklington and they said, ‘We’ll take you to an airfield in in Birmingham and a plane will come and pick you up.’ So, they dropped me at this airfield. All the hangars had, all the control places windows had been smashed. I stood there wondering why, what was going to happen and all of a sudden this Avro Anson dropped out of the sky, picked me up and took me up to RAF Acklington. And after repairing the tractor I come back on a lorry all the way from there to, to Rugby. Stayed overnight at, in Doncaster. At the airfield there.
NM: So at the end of your National Service you went back to the, back to the steelworks?
JS: Yes. Yes.
NM: At age twenty three. Yeah?
JS: Yeah. I went back and they put me straight in the drawing office so I didn’t actually go to do any work in the workshop itself. I just stayed in the workshop, in the drawing office for six or seven years. Then started doing various, started building various things outside and I used to go and look after those.
NM: Such as? What were you —
JS: Well, the —
NM: Mostly involved in?
JS: Well, the most, the biggest one was the ropeway aerial ropeway which was six miles long from Rothwell to Corby. And I was a clerk of works on that so I oversee the work on that to get that working.
NM: So, this was to try and get, is this is to get the ironstone from the quarry —
JS: Yeah.
NM: To the steelworks.
JS: Yeah.
NM: This six mile ropeway.
JS: They were going to build another big dragline but that, and this ropeway was going to provide the iron ore for it but they cancelled it. The big dragline. So really it was surplus to requirements the ropeway. But it stuck around for four or five years and then they cut it all up.
NM: So, you were involved in all the, how many quarries were there around Gretton and Corby that you were working with?
JS: Oh I don’t know. About eight or nine I should think. Yeah. With large draglines in four of them and various smaller ones in the others.
NM: And how long did you take, take on that role for?
JS: Until, well until I was made, after about six, seven years I was made engineer in charge of maintenance of all the various areas and I stayed there until I was made redundant in nineteen [pause] I don’t know what it was now. No. I can’t remember.
NM: Was that when the steelworks closed?
JS: Yeah.
NM: Right.
JS: That was ’59, I think.
NM: And what did you do? What happened after that?
JS: Well, I got a job. Well, I knew one of the chaps in the steel, in the tube works. Used to go on the same manager’s mess tables as him and he said, ‘What are you going to do when you’re made redundant?’ I said, ‘I’m going to go on quality assurance. Come back to haunt you.’ Because he was in charge of quality assurance for the two works and he rang me up and said, ‘Were you serious?’ I said, ‘Oh yes.’ He said, ‘Well, Lloyds Register of Shipping want somebody and would you be interested?’ So I said, ‘Yes. Yes, I would. Yeah.’ So, he said, ‘Go to Birmingham and see the chief, chief surveyor there and he’ll take you out to lunch.’ And I went to the Birmingham office and he said, ‘Oh, I’m too busy to see you today,’ he said, ‘Can you start next week?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And that was my interview for Lloyd’s Register of Shipping. Somebody else had joined from another area at the same time as me. He said, ‘How did you get on at the interview?’ I said, ‘I didn’t have one.’ He said, ‘Oh, I had terrible one,’ he said. ‘They grilled me for about an hour,’ he said [laughs] So mine was just, ‘Can you start next week?’
NM: So, your last part of your career then was with Lloyds inspector.
JS: Yeah. Yeah. Lloyds. Yeah. And then I had a stroke when I was fifty nine and so I didn’t work after that. That’s been thirty odd years ago now.
NM: So that just about covers everything.
JS: Yeah.
NM: I had on my list.
JS: Yeah. And me.
NM: Have you got anything else to —
JS: I don’t think so. No.
NM: Add to that.
JS: No.
NM: When you look back during the war what was your overall impressions of growing up between those formative years of ten to sixteen and then with such major events going on around you. What was your —
JS: We didn’t really know much about it. As I say we lived in a village and we didn’t really know what was happening in the next village let alone what was, what was happening in the world. I remember on D-Day I was doing a trig lesson and I put in the top of the page, “D-Day.” And that’s really all I knew about it. So it didn’t really affect me much at all.
NM: Ok.
JS: Yeah.
NM: Very good. Thank you very much.
JS: Thank you.
NM: We’ll finish the interview there. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with John James Smith
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Nigel Moore
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-12-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:34:46 Audio Recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASmithJJ201227, PSmithJJ2001
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
John Smith grew up near Corby surrounded by aerodromes so he was used to the sight of aircraft. He observed Lancaster aircraft practicing for the Dambusters raid over Eye Brook Reservoir. He also witnessed glider practice and was impressed by the sight of the Flying Fortresses flying overhead. He also witnessed the German aircraft flying overhead to bomb Coventry and witnessed a German aircraft shot down. After the war he spent his National Service in the RAF at Church Lawford.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-11
1943
1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Northamptonshire
England--Corby
England--Coventry
England--Warwickshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
617 Squadron
animal
B-17
bombing
childhood in wartime
Defiant
Eder Möhne and Sorpe operation (16–17 May 1943)
evacuation
home front
incendiary device
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
P-38
RAF Church Lawford
RAF Spanhoe
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1720/28756/AMaxwellMI190904.1.mp3
140988a4844426fd04d1e0c366915bd9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Maxwell, Margaret Irene
M I Maxwell
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Margaret Maxwell. She was a child during the war and remembers the bombing of London and Coventry.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-09-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Maxwell, MI
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MM: I can’t remember the date.
[recording paused]
DB: This is an interview with Margaret Eileen Irene Maxwell at her home in Coggeshall in Essex. It’s the 4th of September 2019 and it’s 14.20 hours. Also present is her daughter Ann Maxwell. Margaret, can you tell me more about your experiences during World War Two?
MM: I was just about to turn twelve when World War Two was declared. It was Sunday morning and mum and I were sitting on the back doorstep of our house at 98 Parkside Avenue, Romford in Essex. The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain was scheduled to speak to the nation on the radio at 11am 3rd of September 1939. As soon as we received the news a siren sounded. We later found out it was a false alarm. I went across the road to see my friend Barbara. I knew it was a serious situation because the year before we had had the Munich Crisis and Chamberlain had declared peace in our time. However, by the time war was declared we had already been issued with gas masks which everybody had been instructed to carry with them at all times. I detested my mask and recall the awful smell of rubber when I had to try it on. We all carried them religiously to start off with but we got a bit lax about later carrying oh sorry a bit lax about carrying them later when it appeared there wouldn’t be a gas attack. The first year after the declaration things appeared to be quiet. We continued in our daily lives including going to school. At the outbreak of war cafes, restaurants and cinemas all closed but as the war progressed they started to open up again. I was too young to worry about the closure of cinemas, restaurants and theatres but I remember the local church never closed and put on social events every day. We had table tennis, shove ha’penny and card games. The Wykeham Hall next door to St Edwards Church held a dance every Saturday and as I got older I used to go there with my friends. We also went to Warley near Brentwood for dances. As it was all barracks there were many servicemen there. There were no preparations to speak of at our school Romford Intermediate, Park End Road apart from a trench which was dug in the middle of one of our playing fields. We knew that we had to use the trench for protection in the event of an invasion. If Hitler had invaded at this time the general consensus was that we would have been overrun as we were ill prepared. Later brick shelters were built on one of the playgrounds and each shelter could take a class of about thirty five children. There was no electricity and I remember spending hours in the gloom knitting. We also had many singsongs to pass the time. Our lunch break was changed in order to allow us to go home earlier but at the start of the war we were not allowed to leave for home until someone appeared to accompany us. Before the war no one living fairly close the school was allowed to cycle to school but the war changed that as we all needed to get from A to B as quickly as possible and for many people the bicycle provided that speed.
[recording paused]
MM: Prior to the war we all had a one third of a pint bottle of milk a day. During the war this milk was delivered in large quantities and especially appointed milk monitors were tasked with decanting it into metal mugs. The milk was often warm, especially during the summer months as there was no refrigeration and as the metal mugs were frequently not washed properly we had to get used to it tasting rancid as well as tasting of metal. It was a disgusting experience. Our education was disrupted in other ways. One of the first casualties was the science department. The chemicals contained within that department would have been a hazard if fire had broken out with an incendiary or a bomb. Incendiaries were specifically designed to start fires whereas the bombs caused massive damage and immediate loss of life.
[recording paused]
MM: Domestic science was taught on a rota basis. One term cooking, one term needlework and one term laundry. Rationing made a huge difference to the cooking lessons as we had to take our own ingredients. As a direct result of the war we were taught to cook in a [haydocks] A large box would be lined with hay, a casserole would be brought up to heat on a cooker and then transferred. Transferred to the box, covered in hay, closed in and left for a number of hours to cook in its heat. Rationing had an effect but we never felt hungry. For most households cooking was done by the mother and rationing forced people to be more inventive. An example of rationing would be one egg, about two ounces of sugar, two ounces of butter per person per week. Dry egg powder was more available. Eventually we surrendered our egg ration in exchange for chicken food called Balancer Meal which we fed to three hens. We got many more eggs that way. I used to spend hours queuing up in the market for any food that wasn’t rationed like offal. We would visit the cornfields after harvest to glean what we could to feed the chickens. We also had an allotment which my father hated tending. It was my mother who liked the gardening.
[recording paused]
MM: One of my most vivid memories was of Hitler’s concerted effort to raze London to the ground known as the Blitz which was fought during the period of 7th of September 1940 to the 10th of May 1941. Shortly after it started I was in Romford marketplace on my bicycle like many thirteen year olds. The air raid siren went and I knew I had to get home. It was a Saturday and the market place was very crowded which was usual. However, as soon as the siren sounded the marketplace emptied in an instant. Just like rabbits disappearing down a burrow. I pedalled furiously up North Street to get home. It seemed an age as my bike was only small. There were anti-aircraft guns being discharged somewhere nearby and it seemed to me that as I was racing to get home these guns were following me and I was absolutely terrified. When I reached home I threw my bike in to our small front garden and dived in to the house through the already open door. My friend Joyce was bombed out of her house three times so her family frequently had to be found somewhere else to stay. On one occasion the roof fell in and Joyce was in her bed at the time. Our house shook very badly one night when a bomb exploded nearby and shrapnel came through the windows. I still have a coffee table which was damaged in that raid. At that time we did have, didn’t have an Anderson shelter. The criteria for being given a shelter by the government was that the head of the household should not be earning more than £5 a week. My dad did earn £5 a week so did not qualify for the shelter. Our next door neighbour’s head of the household George Lambert was only earning £3.50 so they qualified for the shelter despite that fact that four other adults were all earning reasonable wages. George’s wife Hetty was a school teacher and his three daughters Dorothy, Hazel and Kitty were all working so that they certainly pushed up the household income well beyond £5 that my family of four had coming in. It was very unfair.
DB: Okay.
MM: When they got their shelter they did invite us to share it with them so sometimes there were nine of us in one shelter in their garden. The three girls drifted off. I was too young to realise or to be told where they had gone but I assumed some sort of war service. This led my family to share this shelter with the parents. Unfortunately, there were wooden floorboards, wooden boards on the floor and after one particularly wet night in the shelter my mother woke up on the boards and they were floating with her on them. She vowed never to spend another night in it and my father decided to have a brick shelter built at the top of our garden. I recall feeling much safer in our neighbour’s Anderson shelter than in our own brick shelter although I cannot say why. During the Blitz I heard bombers going over us as most of the air action took place at night. We had no street lights which older teenagers felt useful if they had a boyfriend and didn’t want their dad to see them kissing him goodnight. Later I had an American boyfriend and my dad was not happy about it. The Americans were disliked but I realise that it was mainly because they didn’t seem to suffer the same deprivations as us. They always seemed to have enough clothes, lovely food and the luxuries we couldn’t get like chocolate. Some relatives who lived in Warwick invited my family to stay during the Blitz so we travelled up by train. We travelled at night so I couldn’t see very much. Later on during that night Coventry was hit badly and in the morning we went on our hired bikes to survey the damage. I walked through the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and I thought it looked so much like London. There was destruction everywhere. I had an uncle who lived in Leigh on Sea and although it would have been lovely to visit him at the seaside we weren’t allowed to go there. It was only residents who were allowed in to seaside towns. Obviously because they were important to our defences. With the benefit of hindsight I realise that my teenage years were very different from what they would have been if I had been able to live a more normal life. As the years passed we all got used to it. My father had served in the Machine Gun Corps in the First World War and had seen active service in the trenches in Ypres, Belgium. He developed nephritis as a result of being up to his waist in water day in and day out and was discharged from the Army. He was only aged thirty nine at the outbreak. You ought to put in there out the out [pause] Sorry.
[recording paused]
With the benefit of hindsight I realised that my teenage years were very different from what they would have been if I’d been able to live a more normal life. As the years passed we all got used to it. My father had served in the Machine Gun Corps in the First World War and had seen active service in the trenches in Ypres, Belgium. He developed nephritis as a result of being up to his waist in water day in day out and he was discharged from the Army. He was only thirty nine at the outbreak of the Second World War hostilities. However, as men were called up for military service by age starting with the younger men by the time my father’s turn came he was too old so became an air raid warden. He worked full time as an office manager for Marks and Clerk Patent Agents in Lincoln’s Inn Fields during the day. It was the only job he did until he retired after fifty years with the same firm. He would come home and after dinner we would wait for the 6 o’clock siren to sound as we knew that would be the signal to go to the shelter.
[recording paused]
MM: Sorry. Okay. Dad used to go out during and after an air raid to assess the damage and make sure people were safe. I remember seeing a huge bomb crater in the middle of the town after one raid and when dad looked in to it heard a ticking sound. It was an unexploded bomb and we had arrived before the defence services. We got away pretty quickly. The nose of a V-2 rocket fell into our neighbour’s garden and I remember being surprised at how huge it was. Another bomb made a crater outside the Parkside Hotel and a bus fell into it. There was a furniture shop called Henry Haysom’s in North Street and during one bomber raid it was completely burned out. A land mine ended up in a tree, also in North Street but that was safely removed and diffused before it could hurt anyone. I’ll stop now
[recording paused]
My brother Ken joined the Navy and he was on the bridge of HMS Lawford when she sank in the English Channel. Although the facts of the sinking were kept quiet we later discovered that the vessel was the first casualty of a German aerial torpedo. My brother gave his lifejacket to a chap who couldn’t swim and as a result of the time he spent in the water and the shock he spent six months recovering at Milford Haven. When he came home he refused to sleep in the shelter saying if his name was on a bomb so be it and he slept in his own bed. On those occasions mum stayed in the house too. I was too frightened and I stayed in the shelter. When I left school I was almost seventeen and I used to travel to London by train each day. I could then see the number of buildings that had been destroyed as you get closer to London. So many of the tenement buildings had been burned and damaged by bombs and incendiaries.
[recording paused]
MM: My first job was as a secretary for a firm of stevedores and master porters. I had to sign the Official Secrets Act because we saw copies of bills of lading for goods which were going from Tilbury and obviously they all related to our war effort and were top secret. I later worked for Mr Charles William Hill, the senior partner of [Bronden] Hill Solicitors in Gray’s Inn Square. I was getting used to the legal terminology and had to learn the shorthand for these words. Although Mr Hill was a perfect gentleman most of the time I remember him telling me that my shorthand was, ‘No bloody good,’ because sometimes I couldn’t read it. Part of the building had been bombed but the staircase remained and I had to walk up these stairs to access my office every day. My future husband Jim was working on a balloon site in Primrose Hill when he was blown up by the blast from a bombing raid. Most iron railings had been removed but where Jim was working the railings were still in place. The blast threw him up in the air and he landed up on these railings pinned on spikes which entered his body under the arm and through his leg. He was hospitalised for a time recovering from his wounds. Although it seemed quite exciting at the time the war had a profound effect on me and even now I cannot hear an air raid siren, an air raid siren without it triggering some awful memories of the death and destruction. By the end of the war I found it very difficult to sleep and could only get a good night if my father stayed with me until I fell asleep. I would have, I would have preferred to have grown up without the trauma of war but we all made the best we could of it. I made some good friends and despite the circumstances we had a great deal of fun. We all looked forward to a better life when peace was declared.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Margaret Irene Maxwell
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Denise Boneham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-09-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:16:09 audio recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMaxwellMI190904
Description
An account of the resource
Margaret was almost twelve years old at the outbreak of World War Two and living in Romford, Essex. She remembers the announcement made by Neville Chamberlain on the radio on September 3rd 1939. Margaret recounts being issued with a gas mask and how cafes, restaurants and cinemas were initially closed. Her local church, St Andrew’s, remained open and provided daily social events such as table tennis. Her school, Romford Intermediate, made some preparations for the war including a trench dug in a field. Later, brick air raid shelters were built on a playground which could house up to thirty children. She also recalls rationing, but never felt hungry and feels that rationing made people be more inventive with cooking. They kept hens for eggs and also had an allotment.
She experienced the Blitz shortly after it started as one Saturday she was in Romford market when the air raid sirens sounded. She recalls how frightening it was, and how she cycled home as fast as possible, as the aircraft batteries began firing. Her friend Joyce was bombed out of her house three times. Her family did not qualify for an Andersen shelter, but the neighbours invited them to sleep in theirs. Later, her father built a brick shelter in their own garden. She travelled by train to visit family in Warwick during the Blitz. That night Coventry was heavily bombed, and Margaret witnessed the damage the next day, including walking through the ruins of Coventry cathedral. Margaret recalls landmines, a V-2 rocket in the neighbour’s garden and unexploded bombs, as well as details such as a bomb crater outside the Parkside Hotel which a bus fell into. Just before she was seventeen, travelled to London every day on the train and could see the bomb damage. Margaret worked as a secretary in the cargo industry and due to the nature of the work had to sign the Official Secrets Act.
Her father had served in the Army at Ypres during the first World War. He became an Air Raid Warden during the Second World War. Her future husband Jim served on a balloon battery at Primrose Hill, and survived been impaled on iron railings by the blast of a bomb.Margaret’s brother Ken was in the Royal Navy and his ship HMS Lawford was sunk in the English Channel, by a new aerial weapon. After helping other crew members, he was rescued and spent the next six months recovering at Milford Haven.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Andy Shaw
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Warwickshire
Wales--Pembrokeshire
England--Essex
England--Warwick
England--Coventry
England--London
Wales--Milford Haven
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939-09-03
1940-11-14
1940-11-15
1945
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Balloon Command
British Army
Royal Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Air Raid Precautions
bombing
Chamberlain, Neville (1869-1940)
childhood in wartime
civil defence
fear
home front
shelter
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1719/28737/AHattG180817.1.mp3
dfc189f8996872b70ef5d9432c50c913
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hatt, Gladys
G Hatt
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Gladys Hatt nee Parkes (b.1928). She was evacuated but later lived and worked in Manchester during the war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hatt, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: My name is, my name is Denise Boneham and I’m talking to Gladys Hatt on the 7th of August nineteen, sorry 2018 and the time is now 13.58. Gladys, would you like to tell me a little bit about your life before you left school in 1942?
GH: My father was a sergeant in the Home Guard and I used to do a lot sewing, stitching stripes on uniforms because he had a section, you know in the Home Guard. I was a machinist at fourteen and I worked in Sparrow Hardwick’s and I worked on delicate underwear. Expensive underwear. And because I was good at that as the war started I was put on uniforms because I worked over where the Army and the RAF were billeted and we’d done the RAF uniforms. I won’t tell you what we put in them. A lot of notes. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then when I was eighteen the war was still on. I lived more or less in air raid shelters from being young to being eighteen, nineteen. And I don’t know. I just worked on uniforms for the Army. Army uniforms. I was a good machinist. The only thing I didn’t like was trying to sew a glengarry because I, that’s what I called them, course they’re not that, I used to get told off. I got told off a lot because I cursed and I liked fancy work not heavy great coats and uniforms. Stars and stripes because we had the Americans over then and they used to come in the factory and ask would we do this and could we do that? Oh yes. ‘Would you like to put these stripes on for us?’ ‘Well, you’ll have to ask my manager.’ ‘Yes. That’ll be alright.’ I was on piecework so they were taking my money away from me. Anyroad, and there was blackouts so we used to finish work at five. Then I had a good hour, nearly an hour’s walk home. Bombs were falling, sirens were going and I had to go through an underground station which is Mayfield railway station and I worked above it so I had to go under it to go home. I had to walk home. Sirens would go and I’d have to go in to the nearest air raid shelter regardless. I lived in air raid shelters. I fed in the air raid shelters. I’d probably sleep in the air raid shelter and go to work the next morning in the same clothes I had on. One particular week we got bombed out so I had no clothes. People used to bring you stuff, you know and send stuff and, well it was a hard life then but I was still working. And I worked at, what’s it called? Walmer’s. They were the people that made the uniforms. Walmer’s. I remember that because they were the ones that made the uniforms. And there was not much life after that because you’d go to work, you were either in an air raid shelter during work. You’d go home. You were still in an air raid shelter. You’d go back to work. And that’s how you lived. Well, there was not much life at all really. My dad was in the Home Guard. He was a sergeant because he’d been in the forces and was a regular serviceman. I was born in barracks at Aldershot. But that’s another.
[recording paused]
GH: And I hadn’t got much life really at fourteen, fifteen with the war. And well, I can’t tell you much. Oh, and by the way I was the first Rose Queen in Manchester at St Pauls Church. I was the first Rose Queen in forty nine years to be Rose Queen and I held that for three years. Dowager and then retiring Queen. Yeah.
[recording paused]
GH: We were, we couldn’t tell anybody what you do. I’d done the trousers for the RAF and we’d done the, what do they call them now? I forget. What were the [pause] the battledress. They called them something. Not windjammers. Oh, I forget what they called them. I used, I’d done that. And we used to put letters in. ‘I’ll be your girlfriend.’ ‘I know who —' You know. A bit of fun. And yeah, it was really nice. I enjoyed myself.
[recording paused]
GH: And no. No. Oh, do you mean from the lads that was billeted underneath. Oh, sometimes you’d get something like, ‘See you tonight doll.’ Or, you know, and that but no. I, we didn’t, you didn’t do like you do today in them days [laughs] My dad would have had my guts for garters. Don’t put that down. He was very strict and, seeing as he was a sergeant. Yeah. But it was, it was the life because there was no pictures or theatres because if you went the sirens would go and you would finish up in air raid shelter so you never got anywhere really and that was it.
[recording paused]
GH: Then after that when I was, I was the Rose Queen in Manchester, I was confirmed at the Manchester Cathedral for the first Rose Queen of Manchester and I stood that for three years. That was just after the main part of the war if you know what I mean. And yeah, and of course everything was coupons so where they had five or six children my mam had to go and borrow coupons to buy the stuff for me to have for my, all my rigmarole. And that was it. Then I met my boyfriend. Well, we knew one another. We were at school together. We were in the same class. He was the same age as me and he went in the Army. He was in the Royal Corps of Signals at Catterick. And we got engaged. We got married when all the rationing was on. We’d be taking coupons from different, where they had big families for my wedding outfit and that. We got married in, he was in uniform. I think he was. Or he got a suit off his brother, I think. But anyway, that’s so, that was my life. I didn’t have much as a youth if, like they have today. Nothing like that. And I was still on work at the Army. I used to do the parachutes then because that was when they had a big training camp at oh, what was the name of the place? I can’t. The names of the place. Anyway, I was still on parachute so seeing as everything was on coupons and I was getting married so I made my wedding dress out of the off bits of the parachutes. I got permission off my forelady and when the photographs were taken I was [stripped half naked] because they weren’t [laughs]
[recording paused]
GH: That’s how it went and then I, well he was in the Forces, he was billeted out in Germany. I don’t, I do now but I didn’t know then where he was and he was in Glückstadt in Germany. Then I had my girl. Yeah. But that’s more or less my life. I mean during the war you lived from day to day because you couldn’t, I mean we got bombed out. The bombs were dropping all round you. You were going to work while they were dropping. When you were in work the sirens would go you had to go in these shelters. So that was my life really when I should have been out like they are today. No. No make-up. No nothing. Plain Jane.
[recording paused]
GH: We were rationed. You were rationed with clothes if you got any because you lived in a siren suit like the RAF have today. Them zip ups what they fly in. We used to do them and finished up with one of them. But there you are.
[recording paused]
GH: Not really. But we used to, all the bits and all the dead ends we used to make up for ourselves. Yeah. We got permission but wear cut offs and that you know but we used to put notes in. In the pockets. ’Hope to meet you.’ ‘Hope you are there.’ You know. Being teenagers. But for [pause] yeah. it was a, it was an existence life really but it was an enjoyable one what you made yourself. Not like they have today. Yeah.
[recording paused]
GH: You worked in sections on them because they were big and I used to be on the cords that come from the top. You know, they went like that. Well, them cords had to be fastened in. Well, I’d done that part. It was very tedious. I think [pause] Yeah, but we didn’t know much about that because you were under, you know what did they call it?
[recording paused]
GH: Sort of thing, you know because they used to come in packs and we, we had girls at the end of the row. They’d pack them. Pack them and then there’d be trucks outside taking them because they were, they’d want them straight away sort of thing. But it was very hard work and your fingers were raw because the material was so [pause] I can’t tell, explain it to you. It was soft, the parachute but it was like a waterproof as well. It was. I can’t. It was, it, and we used to have to sew it and put all the rings all on. Oh, your fingers used to be raw but there you are. We got, I think they got six, oh I don’t, old money. You know. You had half crowns. Two half crowns was, four and a half crowns to a pound. That’s what we got. So I was on about three pound a week which was then a lot of money. But security. We hadn’t to tell anybody what we were doing. Where we’d be. What we were doing. How we got it. Nothing. And if a lot of them were torn or anything went wrong they used to, I don’t know who the persons were who used to come with a lorry, say, ‘Can you mend these and do —' And that’s what we done. And that was my life.
[recording paused]
GH: Yes. When you are thinking names my best friend was Una. Una Whitaker and Doris. Oh, what was her sur —
[recording paused]
GH: We was always together. We worked together and we went out together and I can’t remember the other names. ‘Course you used to have to have a permit in them days to go to the pictures and you used to have to queue up because they’d show a film for two hours and then they would come out and you could go in so I don’t really think of, but you were permit. Yeah. And if the air raids went of course you had to leave and go in the shelter. Well, you’d be in there all night but back at work next morning regardless of whether they were bombing. You still had to go to work. So, but that, that was the, really it was a, it was a hard life. Not like they’ve got today.
[recording paused]
GH: I don’t. No. My dad would have never had let me go. He was already a sergeant in the Home Guard and he’d been a regular serviceman. No way would he have let me go because I wanted to go when I was eighteen. Oh yeah. I wanted to go in the RAF. Yeah. But no. No. No. We were on permit. We couldn’t tell anybody what you’d done. How you’d done it. Where you’d done it. Nothing. You never told anything like that. No. The only thing you could say I went to church. That’s about the only thing. You didn’t because them days everything was you don’t tell anybody. Everything was rationed. If you got it. Yeah. But I don’t know. But we used to get a lot of black market off the Forces because they were issued with chocolates. They weren’t very good chocolates. Very chewy [laughs] You went to the toilet after you’d had it. Yeah. We used to get a lot off the Yanks because they were billeted above us. They used to give us chewing gum and that stuff. Yeah. But I was never allowed to go with them or anything. I had to be a good girl. My dad was very particular. And he was the type who was in the Home Guard because he’d been a regular serviceman long before. I was born in barracks. Aldershot.
[recording paused]
GH: Yeah. Well, that’s another story. My mother and father had this friend and they had a pub and it was built on the canal banking. On the bridge where the canal went under. Of course, they used to transfer the glass, all the stuff from the electric works, the gas works, the gas man all on the canals. Of course, you hadn’t to tell anybody that you see and they used to go under the bridge and under the next one to the station which was in Philips Park where, oh that’s something else. I daren’t go in to all that but yes. It was a hush hush life if you know what I mean. There was no like they have today. I had to be in say 8 o’clock. When I was older I had to be in at eight. Used to kiss him goodnight on my step while my dad was at the back of us. But that’s it. That was my life.
[recording paused]
GH: Air raid shelter and back at work. Them were your three. You were either at work, air raid shelter or [laughs] going to work.
[recording paused]
GH: That was a two up two down and I was, the park, the gas works and the electric works. That’s why we got bombed out. Didn’t know where my mum was, my dad was in the Home Guard and I was in sat in an air raid shelter. Twenty four hours a day.
[recording paused]
GH: Into a prefab. I was married. The first one out of a prefab. Yeah. That was in the paper. I don’t know where that went. Yeah. Well, we got bombed out so they gave us a prefab. Well, you know what they were like. Two bedrooms, a bathroom and a living room, a kitchen. I got married from that. Yeah. I had nothing. Nothing. Because everything, my bottom drawer had all been, well it had gone. Yeah. So, I had to start from scratch from there. Oh God. Well, where they had, we were lucky because in where we lived there was a lot of families had four or five children where my mum only had me. So you were sort of really tight rationed then. And of course, they’d have the blue books for babies and that. They couldn’t afford to buy all that stuff so they used to sell your ten shilling for a coupons. And that’s how I got my wedding cake. Through somebody else having eight or nine children and my mother kept buying the coupons. It wasn’t the money, it was rationing. To get my, for my wedding cake.
[recording paused]
GH: Oh yeah. We had a canteen. Yeah. And ENSA used to come play because you only got a half an hour break so they’d play and in the other part they had a stage. Well, not a stage. It was the canteen, you know and they’d do us a table. Yeah. We had that. ENSA. Yeah. And we, a lot of the Yanks were billeted in Hardwick Green so they used to come because we was above them and they used to come in even then, the Yanks. And of course, they’d got all the stuff. Chocolates. Sweets. You name it they had it. Cigarettes. Bacca. And we used to swap for them to come in. They’d give us whatever, you know. I tell you it was all black market in them days. Yeah.
[recording paused]
GH: If they didn’t come in to the, where we were they’d probably be with management if you know what I mean. We’d be in the machines you know. It used to make your fingers raw that parachute stuff. Oh, it was horrible stuff because it was waterproofed and it was, how can I explain it? It was hard to work with. The cords you know. And then somebody else had done the rip cord, somebody else done something else but I done the stitching. The sewing of the pieces. It was all piecework. Yeah. But when they’d finished I made my wedding gown out of all the bits and of course I was stripped jack naked wasn’t I?
[recording paused]
GH: No. Not to my knowledge. We didn’t know where they went. I mean no idea. I couldn’t tell you ‘cause I know underneath where I worked there was a lot of Italian servicemen and across the way, across the Green was the American. Yeah. They used, you know in Manchester that was Hardwick Green when, you know, they used to come in to the canteen entertaining the troops. But you didn’t go home, you stayed and if the sirens went you had to go in the shelter. Then you had to make it up when you come back. Yeah. It was a hard life at fourteen to be. It really was because it wasn’t all sit about, you know. No. You always had to be one ahead all the time. Yeah. And of course, when you were I started my period. Not that often. My periods, well it weren’t things that you could just go like you can today and we used to have a machine in the factory and our head forelady used to get them to come and put packs in. We used to have to pay tuppence. That’s another story.
[recording paused]
GH: Streets all lit. Oh yeah. And everybody had electric which wasn’t a lot had electric in them days. Everything was lit up. Christmas trees. Anything. Yeah. Banners everything. Yeah. They danced in the street. I danced from where I lived through Manchester. Piccadilly. That’s where it was all. Everybody. Thousands of people. We walked and marched playing drums, banjo, everything. Yeah. Of course, my, well my family when I got married they were all musical so they were all the big entertainers. Danced all the way from where I lived in Bradford Manchester all the way to Piccadilly, Manchester. Hundreds and hundreds. Banners, fireworks, you name it. Yeah. I even had clogs on then. We had to wear clogs because you couldn’t have shoes. Couldn’t have coupons for shoes. You had clogs. Do you know what clogs are? Yeah. Mine were blue. They were my best ones [laughs] with pink ribbon. Yeah. So that was my life then.
[recording paused]
GH: I was the first Rose Queen in Manchester. Yeah. Manchester Cathedral. Yeah. And at my church, the parish church, that got bombed. Yeah. Because I, my thing was from that church, you know. They used to have the board. Your name was on that. That all went. Yeah. The cathedral got bombed. Yeah. Because I was confirmed at the Manchester Cathedral when I was first Rose Queen in Manchester. Them were days.
[recording paused]
GH: Oh, the story. But my husband then was my, well we weren’t girlfriend and boyfriend. We went to school together. We lived near one another and he, I was in the Girls’ Brigade. He was in the Boys’ but his father made him go in the NFS. Well, that, that’s another story because he was such a man that he’d never sit still and he said, ‘You don’t go from there ‘til I tell you.’ And this night he said, ‘I’m going with my mates,’ because we were always together. Families. In the air raid shelter. ‘I’m going with my mates.’ And he went and he got the worst leathering he, and he come back and he leathered him. I mean hit him with the belt. He’d joined the NFS because his other mates. Well, of course, do you know what that is. The Fire Service. Of course, he was out in all the Blitz. And his dad worked down the pits. At the pits. They still carried on work and this particular time he didn’t go to work. He waited for him. He got the big, I always remember. I weren’t married then. We were just schoolmates. He give him the biggest good hiding and he pinned him to the chair, ‘You don’t move from there ‘til I let you out.’ Yeah. This was during the war, you know. Yeah. And then as I say he joined with all the other lads and he was in the NFS and of course then he was a very clever man. Very clever. He joined the Army and he went in the Royal Corps of Signals during the war and he was billeted at the somewhere in the Pennines. Under the Pennine thing. I didn’t know where he was then and he was on the Morse Code. He was very very clever our dad. Very. Always top of class. Of course, he was on the thing and of course he was censored all the time. He hadn’t to speak and do anything tell anybody what he’d done. It was only since. We knew what he was doing. He was in the underground on the whatsit. Yeah.
[recording paused]
GH: Do it because you only had outside toilets them days and if you had them they were bombed [laughs] They don’t know they’re born today.
[recording paused]
GH: My mam, oh she was in Ferranti’s. She was doing the shells. All the things there what they’d done with the shells and bullets and what have you. Yeah. And the other gran, my mother in law she was on the same. Yeah. She, she was the wire. Wire work. All her fingers, the barricades and all that were red raw and they’d get gloves two or three times in the day and they were raw, her fingers with the barbed wire and the wire. Yeah. If got caught with someone else oh she had terrible fights. Yeah. This was all going on during the war.
[recording paused]
GH: I’d got, they had, we had a wardrobe with a drawer at the bottom and my dad said, ‘You can have that drawer.’ Well, I thought I was anybody getting my own drawer you know. And of course, being, going with my husband I used to put a couple of pillow cases. Different things for when we got married and of course that all got, that went because we got hit and all I could say were, ‘They took all our bottom drawer.’ It was only like that but it had all my things in and being a machinist any cut offs I used to make things. If it was only an ironing glove or something I’d make it for my bottom drawer. Tea towels and pot towels. Yeah. So, I wasn’t very happy about that when we got bombed because then I went, ‘Oh, my bottom drawer’s gone.’
[recording paused]
GH: Now, that isn’t a sixty four dollar question because the rooms were big. I’m not talking of, I’m talking of a big area. You could set a bomb off. A bomber could go up. And underneath we went in the shelter. Jewsburys and Brown had that floor and they had to give these other floors up because when you were on parachute you had a high stool and you used to have to put your hand up if you wanted to go to the toilet. Somebody behind you would come in. Never stop. And you know they were big tables and all the rip cords and you were stitching. You couldn’t stop, take you out, because you were on a conveyor and you’d go on to the next one and then you put your hand up to go to the toilet and somebody behind steps in and it were oh, they didn’t know you were born these days. Brought them in because what was that place called? Not the [unclear] Oh.
Other: What —
[recording paused]
GH: You had to do it. God. Choose? I was, I made my clothes out of pieces of parachutes, you know. When we done them you got bits off. I made it, and I was stripped jack naked because I didn’t know it was, what did they call it? On you. Yeah. You’d go. You’d go. You’d go. I, I had two friends. Eunice and Joan. They were, oh I think they were the, they were a bit older than me and I I relied on them if you know what I meant. What they didn’t have to follow. Of course, my dad didn’t like that because they were older and I was following in their footsteps and I went and bought some high heeled shoes. What he did? [makes noise] Put me in my [unclear] shoes again with the button in the middle.
[recording paused]
GH: With thirteen other people and two mothers. Your parents didn’t know. They just put you in a van and off you went. My husband. Well, we lived together. We worked together. Parents were friends. Everything. He was put on a, with an elderly couple and they had a little farm holding. Well, he was in seventh heaven wasn’t he? Here’s me in this big mansion with about thirteen in one bedroom and fourteen in another and you had to put your hand up to go and have a shower or, not shower, a bath and three had to use the same bath water. First in. God I was always last in [laughs].
[recording paused]
GH: But it was just, I can see it as fun now because you didn’t really know at like today at fourteen they’re grown up. We weren’t. It was fun but when you think about it it wasn’t. Now, it was a hard life. Because, I mean even soap, you know how you go, ‘Watch it. Turn the water off. Don’t use all the soap.’ Because you got one tablet for a family. Is that going on there?
[recording paused]
GH: Well, my dad’s brother he was a tailor. He said she’d be a, thing and he used to have me doing little bits you know because them days families worked together and it was my dad’s youngest brother and he was magical with the sewing machine. That’s how I got started. Yeah. He used to run a pair of trousers up and a coat for me in a half an hour. Yeah. Hard times them were.
[recording paused]
GH: Called them windsweeps, you know. And at work they used to say, ‘Come on. We’ll do your hair for you,’ because I was younger than them and we’d go in toilets at dinnertime. Have our dinner and then go in and I had long blonde hair and they’d done it all up. My dad, he used to come to work and wait for me, take me home and he took one look and he got psst right across my ear hole, ‘Who done that?’ Well, it were at work. They’d done it all in wind, you know sweeps and oh that was the end of my life.
[recording paused]
GH: Well, they used to get cigarettes as you know and being with the servicemen below, oh they’d throw you twenty Piccadillies. You know. Of course, they were all smoking. I had to. He made me chew it. ‘Don’t ever let me cop you smoking.’ ‘I said, ‘Well, they all do it.’ ‘You don’t do what they do.’
Other: But I think, I think you did that because you were very young weren’t you? I mean you were the youngest in a factory. I used to go. When I was younger I remember going to the factory where mum still worked and you were still the youngest then weren’t you?
GH: Yeah.
Other: So, oh, I think there were some younger ones in there. Do you remember the [unclear] —
GH: It’s a well-known factory now. You’ve probably heard of it. Sparrow Hardwick. They do all the high-class underclothes. Night clothes.
Other: Used to. I don’t think they do now.
GH: I don’t know whether they do now but they used to do. We had these turbans. You know. Yeah. On account of the machinery when we were on parachutes, because they used to hang and you’d sew and they used to go along your thing, you know. We used to have to wear, oh God yeah turbans they was called. Yeah. It was, oh and we wore you couldn’t wear shoes. You had to wear these pump things. Something similar to a slipper today. Pump. We used to call them pumps.
[recording paused]
GH: They were in the middle of something and then the management the man he’d switch the mains off because you had to turn the electrics off. Then we went to the thing and bombs would be dropping and we were still going down in to the shelter.
[recording paused]
GH: This was my mother in law now, or then, she adopted Walter, this man and he went in the RAF. Of course, he was [pause] what was he? A warrant officer. He used to come home on leave and all this and that but he was actually a Canadian.
GH: And it was through my brother in law he knew him and that. Anyroad, that was another story and he was a warrant officer in the RAF. I’m trying to think. DFC. Now, I should have had that but my mother in law got robbed and they took it and we’ve never been able to find that. We had the police. We had everybody. Because the names, you know what they are don’t you? And the names are on when he was warranted and all that but we never ever got it, did we? His DFC. That’s a shame because I could have passed that on to my children. But there you are. We never know. Somebody’s got it somewhere. But how do you find them? I mean his rank. Everything’s on it. I mean my mother in law adopted him. Yeah. His parents went out to Canada, I think. They got killed or something. He had, but I don’t know, I don’t know all the story to that. But anyroad where that DFC went I don’t know.
[recording paused]
GH: I did too.
DB: What was he? What did he fly?
GH: The Hurricane. No. Bomber.
DB: The Lancaster.
GH: The Lancaster. Yeah, oh I can’t. Yeah. Lancaster. Yeah. Yeah, but he was on Bomber Command and all wasn’t he?
Other: Yeah. He was.
GH: Yeah. I’ve got nothing because we got bombed out, you see. I lost a lost a lot of stuff when we got bombed out. Because you know we used to work with siren suits. Yeah. And they were a horrible stuff. They were imitation nylon and it was, oh God. But you had to wear them. And the hood up. When you went out you had to have the hood up like a lot of monks. It’s not funny.
[recording paused]
GH: Because if my dad had seen me putting lipstick on he’d have painted my face and a kick up the bot. So we used to hide it in us pocket and then go out. Go outside. Yeah. Them were the days.
Other: [unclear] was. Yeah.
[recording paused]
GH: Yeah. Well, I don’t know where they were stationed. Did you?
Other: It was an airbase.
GH: I mean they could go from Ringway and get bombed and they would be somewhere else. You’d never know where they were, do you? When he come home, yeah wasn’t often then in them days like they do today. Yeah. When he come home he was all full of the joys of spring because my mother in law adopted him and I wasn’t married then to my, but I knew him because we all lived next door but one to one another. Yeah, he was oh he was a lovely lad. He really was. Yeah. He was adopted. Yeah. Yeah. He got, he joined the, Eric went in the Army, Bill went in the Army and he went in the RAF as a, and he was a warrant officer. I don’t know what that covers. I’ve never found out. Do you?
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Gladys Hatt
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Denise Boneham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:44:02 Audio Recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHattG180807
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Gladys Hatt was working in Manchester as a teenager when it was bombed. She recalls her life was a sequence of work, shelter, work and there was no teenage life for her. She worked as a machinist sewing uniforms which was a big change from her original fine needlework she had done before. She then went to work sewing parachutes which hurt her hands. She was the first Rose Queen in the city for forty nine years. As she was preparing for her wedding she collected her items for her bottom drawer but her house was bombed and she lost everything.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Manchester
England--Lancashire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
bombing
civil defence
entertainment
evacuation
home front
Home Guard
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1693/27257/POtteyRA2001.1.jpg
9ee64dbe9ab0542740b596e866ecc868
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1693/27257/POtteyRA2002.1.jpg
69156e7f973ccaecf24c03376e4537d7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1693/27257/AOtteyRA200828-02.1.mp3
ac2d571b9dcac92e36e4c3a82fabcbb4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ottey, Ralph Alfrado
R A Ottey
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-08-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ottey, RA
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. Three oral history interviews with Ralph Ottey (b. 1924) and a photograph. He was born in Jamaica and volunteered for the RAF. After training in the UK, he served as a driver with 617 Squadron at RAF Coningsby and RAF Woodhall Spa.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HH: Okay.
[pause]
HH: Over to you.
[pause]
RO: Yeah. My name is Ralph Ottey and I served in the RAF at RAF Tattershall Thorpe from nineteen forty — 1945. And one incident that remained with me I was, we used to go to the village of Kirkby on Bain to village dances on a, on a Saturday night. And my friend Roy March and I got friendly with two, two girls in Kirkby on Bain. And one of them was the, the pub landlord’s daughter. And one day I went back to Kirkby on Bain in the afternoon to see my girlfriend that I, we generally met at the pub and when I went there she wasn’t there. And the landlord said that his daughter who was a friend of my girlfriend who was down in the river, the River Bain was having a swim at a place called the Weir. It was a thing like a swimming pool where the water pitched down from a height, from a pool, then carried on the River Bain. And when I went there she was having a swim and swimming towards where the, where the water was coming, dishing down. And she got in the middle and panicked. And I, I like a young fool jumped in the river to fish her out. Then I found out that it was very deep. And I can still remember was the water spilling over my head. However, it didn’t matter. I did what I went in to do. I got hold of her, turned her back on the stream and the stream took me down to a level where we could stand up. Of course it soon became well known in the village that I, I saved her life. I don’t know whether I did or not but I know I fished her out of the, the water. And her father offered me, at that time I didn’t realise how much money it was. He offered me fifty pounds to save his daughter’s life. Of course, I refused it to my credit. And some years later on when I, when I was manager at GM Limited and we had a supermarket in Oldrids this young lady, she, the young lady who I’d fished out had now married and was now a nurse and she saw my [pause] she saw me and my wife in, in the supermarket and she told them the story that I, I saved her life. And I haven’t seen her, I haven’t seen her lately but she eventually married a Polish gentleman and they had children. I don’t know where she is at the moment. But that was my excitement in life. And when I went back to the camp I always remember I was wet. Wet through because I went in with my full uniform on and I was fun. Provided fun for the boys that I’d jumped in the river. Of course what I should have done, I should I have reported it to the powers that be. But I didn’t. I kept quiet because I was laughed at by my friends in the village and I didn’t want to tell anyone. Later on they said, ‘Oh, well what you should have done, you should have reported it because you would have perhaps been perhaps rewarded as a life saver in the RAF.’ But that’s how it is. At that time I was a shy, a shy young man. I didn’t want to have any publicity. Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ralph Alfrado Ottey. Three
Description
An account of the resource
Ralph Ottey recounts an occasion when he came to the rescue of a local lady who found herself in difficulty while swimming in the local river.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Heather Hughes
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-08-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:05:52 Audio Recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AOtteyRA200828-02, POtteyRA2001, POtteyRA2002
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
617 Squadron
ground personnel
RAF Coningsby
RAF Woodhall Spa
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1693/27256/POtteyRA2001.1.jpg
9ee64dbe9ab0542740b596e866ecc868
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1693/27256/POtteyRA2002.1.jpg
69156e7f973ccaecf24c03376e4537d7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1693/27256/AOtteyRA200828-01.1.mp3
add2263ef2aa4a1fb329d6f03c44dabd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ottey, Ralph Alfrado
R A Ottey
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-08-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ottey, RA
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. Three oral history interviews with Ralph Ottey (b. 1924) and a photograph. He was born in Jamaica and volunteered for the RAF. After training in the UK, he served as a driver with 617 Squadron at RAF Coningsby and RAF Woodhall Spa.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HH: Okay. So, today is Friday the 28th of August 2020 and I’m Heather Hughes and we are continuing our discussion with Ralph Ottey about his war memories and his life in Boston after the war, for the IBCC. Ralph, it’s lovely to see you again and thank you for agreeing to meet us and to talk some more because you were such a wonderful storyteller. Before we move on to your life after the war were there any other war memories that you wanted to tell us about?
RO: Well, I didn’t, I forgot to tell you about one of the squadrons of Mosquitoes was, were Pathfinders were based at Tattershall Park. And one that comes to mind was 109 Squadron and the leader was a New Zealander. Wing Commander Scott. And I remember that. The other squadron I just can’t recall what squadron it was but there was another squadron of Mosquitoes there. But I never had anything to do with them.
HH: And, and how did you get to know Wing Commander Scott?
RO: Well, because I think there might have been an emergency. Perhaps they wanted a driver to drive a tanker. Somebody didn’t turn up and I was loaned to just drive a tanker and fill, fill the aircraft up see. That was one of my jobs.
HH: In your capacity as a driver did you ever go and fetch fuel from a depot and then take it to the RAF stations?
RO: No. No. We had a big [pause] that place. A big tank. A big [pause] I don’t know what you would call it but we filled it with — they had, they had private company’s tankers that came and filled up all.
HH: Right.
RO: Yeah. And I would go to [pause] oh I forget what you call it but we would go there and, and get it from there. Yeah.
HH: Thank you for that.
RO: Yeah.
HH: So, we’ve, we went, last time we talked about the training that you were able to do. Bookkeeping and accounting in Staffordshire before your return to Jamaica and then you returned to Jamaica.
RO: Yeah.
HH: And you worked for a while.
RO: Yeah.
HH: In Jamaica and then you decided that you wanted to come back.
RO: Yeah.
HH: To, to Britain.
RO: To marry my girl. My fiancé. That’s what I came back for.
HH: Okay. So, tell us about your fiancé and how you had met.
RO: Oh yes. Well, this is a story that can be told a thousand times. There was a place called the Gliderdrome which still exists in Boston and it was where all the young people went to dance. There were dances on. It had, it had a roller skating some nights but dancing was definitely on the Wednesday night and on a Saturday night. And the world and his wife as young people went to the Gliderdrome if you were a serviceman. You‘ll find in Boston today there would be people who married and settled like myself who met at the Gliderdrome. And it still exists. The Gliderdrome. But not, not as a dancing place now. I think they play bingo. I think it’s a bingo hall. I think there’s a whole possibility that one of the younger people might take on and bring back dancing and concerts at the Gliderdrome. We’re hoping. But it still exists.
HH: And that’s where you met Mavis is it?
RO: That’s where I met Mavis. Yes. I met her. Well, what you used to do you had, because she was only about seventeen and she was there with another girl. Her friend. And I went up and asked her to have a dance. You can ask, you see. And it started from there. I’ve, and I asked her what her name was and she said her name was Mavis. And I said, ‘Oh, I’ve got a sister called Mavis.’ And she laughed and she said, ‘Oh, I bet you have an auntie called Daisy,’ because she had an auntie called Daisy. And I said, ‘Fortunately I have an auntie called Daisy.’ And she lived to go to Jamaica and met this Auntie Daisy so I’ll tell you that I wasn’t —
HH: How wonderful.
RO: It wasn’t just a chatting up line.
HH: Yeah.
RO: And, you know, and that was that. I met her a bit afterwards as I say. I like a dance and then it became a habit. I’d seen her at dancing and then it became that she expected me to come and see her and I expected to see her. Then after about three or four months of seeing her one night she said, ‘There’s somewhere I want to take you.’ So I said, ‘Alright.’ So we left the dance, the dance hall and we walked for about fifteen minutes and she took me to meet her mother and father. And it started from there. And then her mother and father were —
HH: And you got on well from the start?
RO: Oh yes. We got on really well there. You know, I didn’t, and I think it wasn’t that she was my girlfriend then. It was, it was later on because I was on camp and I couldn’t go. Couldn’t go over there every week because on a Saturday night I was on duty. Then it got so that if I’m not on duty, if I’m not at the Gliderdrome and I’m on duty I would ring her up, you know. It began to get like that. Then during the week if I can’t get down on the Wednesday night to the Gliderdrome then she’d perhaps ring me up. Because once I was stationed for briefly in the fire, the fire section. You see we can’t — as part of my training I could drive a fire engine. And so I was on duty at the fire engine and if I’m there I couldn’t — she’d ring the fire, I told her [unclear] she’d ring the fire station up and I would speak to her, you know. It got like that and it gradually get serious. And then —
HH: And then you took her to Scunthorpe, didn’t you?
RO: Oh yes. The people who befriended me at Scunthorpe [pause] I told them about this girlfriend and they said, ‘Oh well. Why don’t you bring her over to meet us for a weekend?’ So I said to her parents, ‘It’s alright?’ ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘Oh yes.’ So we went and spent a weekend with Aunt Lil and Uncle Arthur and we get, you know it’s, I met her in 1945. Nearly [pause] oh no. We were 1945 and we didn’t marry until early when I came back in 1949 so you know it was a long courtship. It wasn’t a shot gun period.
HH: Yeah. A long time.
RO: Yeah. I used to be at her parents’ house at Christmas in 1947 when it was a terrible winter. They had to close the camp down as I remember. I spent a few days with them in their home in Boston. And then when I went to college when I, it so happened that I used to come back to Boston every fortnight and I used to stop there and we used to go to the Gliderdrome. And it became [pause] and then when I realised that I had to [pause] when I finished college and I was going home. We talked about getting engaged because, so I said, ‘Oh, yes I will. But what I’ll do, I must go home and see my grandparents,’ who were, you know. ‘And we’ll say if, if we are still on for say six months or something like that and I can’t see my way to bring you out to Jamaica and get married out there,’ we had decided we were going to get married. I had given her an engagement ring and so on, ‘I’ll come back and and get married.’ So that’s what I did. After I was out there for about six, six months. I got a job out there but I wasn’t, I wasn’t happy. We wrote letters and there I’d got piles of letters she wrote to me. And piles. That’s right.
HH: Have you still got them?
RO: No. As a matter of fact I did a silly thing. When I left and came back I didn’t bring them. My sister got hold of them and kept my letters. And they disappeared. But I have looked because she used to write to me about two or three times a week and all that kind of thing.
HH: Yeah.
RO: Because there wasn’t any, I wasn’t able to telephone her.
HH: No. So you arrived back and then you were married. And where did you get married?
RO: Scunthorpe.
HH: In Scunthorpe.
RO: Yes. And the funny thing about it is that there was a little church that we used to pass and we’d say, ‘Oh yes. We’ll get married here.’ So we told Aunt Lil that we’d like to get married at that church. And she said, ‘Alright. You can think of us as your parents,’ you know. We’ll do all the, they did all the arrangements and everything. Then we found out that we couldn’t get married there because this was just outside the parish. So we got married at the Scunthorpe Parish Church much to, you know we didn’t really, we wanted this little church that was there but we had to get married. And it’s funny that I applied to get married and we, I was over there with, with Mavis to adhere to — and the the vicar or the priest came and to check us out that, that address we were at. From that address there. And we were there so we were alright. So we got married at the Scunthorpe Parish Church.
HH: And once, once you were married you obviously had to do something about finding a job.
RO: I think I did.
HH: And I was really interested that your, the final volume of your autobiography was called, “You’ll Never Get a Job in Boston.” So tell us about your experiences of trying to establish a career.
RO: Yeah.
HH: In Boston.
RO: Well, I, at that time war regulations were still on so you had to go to the labour, they called it the Labour Exchange at the time. You had to register as being unemployed. Right. And I went down to register and tell them who I am, you know and my qualifications I had [at the time] And I had a letter which was, I still, I think must be somewhere in my archives from the headmaster at the college, you see. And I, I showed the chap who interviewed me the letter and he looked at it and he said, ‘Oh. Was this given to you by a white man?’ So I said, well, facetiously I said to him, ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. He looked just like you.’ Whatever a white man being a surly, ‘He was just just like you.’ He said, ‘Oh well, I haven’t got anything against you, you know. But I don’t, you won’t get a job in Boston that suits. That befits your qualification.’ He said, ‘No, no Boston businessman will ever give you a job to look after their accounts.’ He said, ‘I haven’t got anything against you,’ he said, ‘No. I can see you have a first class, a HGV 1 for a driving licence,’ because of the RAF you see. ‘Oh, I think you’ll get a job as a, as a driver, you know. You’ll certainly get one.’ And I said, ‘Well, to be fair if I wanted a job as a driver I wouldn’t bother to go off to spend time at college to train as a bookkeeper. Accounts.’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I’ll try my chances with that.’ So I did. So, and I, there was a chap who used to be with the British Legion who I spoke to him about it. And he said, ‘Oh. Oh, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Do your own thing. Apply for a job.’ He said, ‘There’s plenty of jobs in the paper. You apply for one.’ he said. So I applied for this job. Somebody wanted a bookkeeper cashier. And I thought I’d never been a cashier before but I, but I know about accounts. So, I’ll take my chances. I just applied. And lo and behold the next couple of days I, I got an invitation to to to see Mr [Buehler]. The company was called GM [Buehler] Limited to go on the Thursday to see him. Lovely. I thought that’s the first step. So I drive in. Made sure I was on time. Looking, dressed, you know presentable for interview. So when I went there Mr [Buehler] said to me, he said, he said as we were talking, ‘You didn’t, in your, in your letter to me you didn’t say you was a Jamaican.’ So, I thought to myself well that’s a funny thing. I said, ‘Well, Mr [Buehler] you didn’t ask if I was a Jamaican. You just wanted a bookkeeper and I fancied my chances.’ So he said, ‘Point taken.’ And he was with another director of the company who was the vice chairman. He was the chairman, the vice chairman and this chap, he didn’t say very much but I could see his, his eyes. They were like his eyes tried to catch my eyes. That was very, you know but he was his brother in law who was the chairman of Oldrids. The big department store in Boston. Mr, Mr Gus Isaac was his brother in law. And then they spoke to him, everything, he said, ‘Oh well, you said you had —,’ [pause] I can’t [pause] ‘Some papers from the college.’ You see. And a recommendation from the headmaster. And he said, ‘That’s quite good.’ And he said, ‘Can you excuse me?’ He had, for a minute. So I actually went in an adjoining office and within two minutes they come back and they said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what. We like, we like what we see and if you — I’ll offer you the job on the basis that for three months and if we like you we’ll make you permanent. And if you don’t like it you can leave and we’ll leave as good friends.’ You know. That type. I said, ‘Suits me fine. Yeah.’ And I came and I, he said, ‘When can you start?’ That was on a Thursday. I said, ‘Oh, well tomorrow.’ He said, ‘Oh, well not so quick [laughs] Monday. Monday will be alright.’ So, so I turned up on Monday and he introduced me to the other members of the staff and he introduced me to the chap who was leaving. The chap who was retiring and who was going to take the job and he said, ‘This chap will stay with you for a week and show, show you the ropes. What you have to do.’ When I had my first, my first responsibility was that I was the last there. There was a, there was a grandfather’s clock and I had to see to it that it’s wound up.
HH: Wound up.
RO: That was my first responsibility to start [laughs] because I was the last there. So, so I turned up on Monday on time of course and introduced me to the members of the staff [and I started from there.
HH: And how long did you stay with Mr [Buehler]?
RO: Well, this is a long story but what, what’s important is after about being there about three weeks Mr [Buehler?] called me in and said, ‘Come in. I would like to have a word with you,’ he said. I thought, ‘Crikey, I can’t imagine me doing anything out of line.’ He said, ‘Oh, well I did say to you that three months [pause] but I’ve seen enough and if it’s alright with you it’s permanent.’ So, I said, ‘Alright. It’s certainly alright with me.’ So I got the job. And I spent forty years.
HH: Gosh.
RO: I started there as a bookkeeper cashier and when I retired at sixty five I was the general manager. I became a director and I became a shareholder and that kind of thing. I grew in the company.
HH: So, tell us about the company.
RO: Well, the company was a family. A well established family business in Boston and [pause] but it was old fashioned and everything was based on the war. To survive the war. And when I came things were easing. And fortunately, when I was at college I did a lot of visiting businesses and I kept my eye open and see things that I could easily apply. So although I wasn’t part of the management I was able to say to Mr, Mr Buehler, you know. They took as improvement. And then Mr Gus, Mr Gus Isaac, the Oldrids one, he used to come. The one who used to keep an eye out watching me. He used to come and talk to me. Really friendly. And he said, ‘Now, I know you’ve been to Business College and you must have seen things and so on. And if there’s anything we can do to, you know improve and though you’re not part of the management yet, you know, you talk to Mr Gerald,’ that’s what he was called then, ‘And talk to me and we’ll look at it. We’ll look at it.’ So, I did that and Mr, Mr, Mr Isaac said to me one day, he said, ‘We’ve seen. I’ve seen enough of you and I’d like you to stay in this company. And I promise you that you will get as far in this company as your talent will take you. We’ve seen enough of you and we want you to stay.’ And that’s how it went on. And I changed the whole, although at the time I wasn’t seen as part of the management I was part of the management because the things, I mean the whole system we had these big ledgers. Big ledgers like that. Leather, leather bound and, and all that thing and I changed that to a loose leaf system and I brought in adding machines and so on. I suggested these things to Mr [Buehler] and he, yes. Then I found that I began, began to get additions to my job. You know. He was telling, Mr [Buehler] found me and, ‘Well, you know Ralph all these things you’ve brought in and you seem to have more time to do things. Would you like to take on? I’m getting older,’ because he used to do the salaries and wages. He said, ‘Do you think you could take that on?’ ‘Oh yes.’ So I take it. Then I brought in a new system. I mean he used to have these checking the calculations for paying tax and so on and I brought a slide rule. A slide rule in. I do it on every four weeks. You check with the, you know.
HH: Right.
RO: And because I’d seen that as a visitor so —
HH: Very useful.
RO: Yeah. So I got on. So, the more I am the more things I did for the company. Like, for instance I thought the office was upstairs. They had to climb the stairs and they, they used to have a machine to do the, to do labels. So the machine used to, chaps used to come up from the warehouse with, to do labels to put on the goods and they used the same machine to do the post you see. And I said to Mr [Buehler] I said ‘You can save a bit of money here.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Well, what you want is a little machine up here to do the, the post and save the chap having to climb the stairs.’ I said, ‘You’ll save the costs by getting them, give them their own machine. Another little machine for the office.’ He said, ‘If only, why didn’t we think of that?’ So it was implemented. And, you know, things like that I, I did.
HH: Lots of improvements.
RO: Yeah. So he, they begin to depend on, kind of depend on me to to — so to cut a long story short I brought in [pause] by the end machine accounting and that kind, and that kind of thing. And we start getting, running out of space and so on. So he decided, yes Mr [Buehler] he hadn’t any sons. He had four daughters. So he brought in a nephew. One of these to come to succeed him. That’s what it was. And Mr [Buehler] was quite honest about it. You see, he told me, he says ‘You’re a very bright young man and, you know but I can’t, I won’t be able to offer you the job as a number one here because it’s a family business, established for long and my nephew who is just leaving the services he’s coming in and he will eventually take over from me when I retire. When I retire.’ So what he was telling me if I didn’t fancy staying I could look elsewhere for advancement. But I was quite happy. Quite happy. I said, you know, ‘We’ll see how we get on.’ And fortunately, his nephew and I we got on like a house on fire.
HH: Fantastic.
RO: And we together pulled the company from when I got there it was doing five thousand pounds a week which was a lot of money in 19’ you know, at that time. Mr [Buehler] had four daughters at public school so it must have been doing, doing alright. You see. And when I, to cut a long story short when I retired as a general manager forty years after that well we were doing, all of the businesses three quarters of a million a week.
HH: Wow.
RO: We had five cash and carries. We had a new set of businesses. We had one in Boston, one at Skegness, one at Grantham, one at Scunthorpe and one at Wisbech and one at Fakenham. Six. Six cash and carries and four or five supermarkets.
HH: Incredible. That’s, that’s huge growth.
RO: Yeah. Well, yes. So that’s when I, when I, when I retired because we, we got to the stage where Mr [Buehler] died and his nephew took over as the, as the managing, as the managing director. His wife became the chair. Became the chair, the chairperson and she didn’t want, she wasn’t keen in the business and he had no, they had no sons so she decided that we got another person who wanted to invest. To come in the company. A chap. And with him, and David Issac and myself we pulled the company. We pulled the company. So when Mrs [Buehler] decided that she’d rather sell unfortunately at the time Mr Isaac who had all these sons didn’t have the wherewithal to buy the company because it was a big company now. So we sold out to a much bigger company. A massive company. I was its general manager then and Mr [Buehler’s] nephew he joined the head of, he joined the, became a director at the big company and then he left to go and set up his own company somewhere down in Bristol. So, I, I was left with the running the, running the companies.
HH: Gosh.
RO: And I stayed until I was, did forty years.
HH: Incredible. That’s a long time.
RO: Yeah. Yeah.
HH: Tell me, Ralph so you were very successful in your career. And tell us about family and trips back to Jamaica. You had a daughter. Is that right?
RO: Oh yes. Oh yes. My daughter. My daughter Lesley. One child we have. This girl.
HH: And when was she born?
RO: She was born at the end of November 1945. That’s right. And she — no. 1949.
HH: ’49. Yeah.
RO: Yeah. 1949. And [pause] oh my daughter. She’s done exceptionally well. She didn’t, she didn’t at the time pass the eleven-plus at all. I don’t know. Everybody was surprised why she didn’t. I don’t know why she didn’t. She went to the secondary modern school called Kitwood and she was quite, quite bright. And I used to see the head mistress on the quiet to find, I never used to go to the school to see her to find out how my daughter is getting on. And she, she said to me, she said, ‘Your daughter is very bright. She could [pause] she could go far,’ you see. And I said, ‘Oh, that’s alright.’ Because my daughter was part of the young team, she didn’t, she was just dying to leave school and, and so on. So the head mistress, Miss Scorer said to me, she said, ‘Don’t you follow what she says.’ She says, ‘She will take you right down to the wire to see how far she can get.’ So when the time came for her to leave this school Miss Scorer said, ‘Her place is to go to Boston College,’ because they didn’t do A levels there, ‘And let her do her A levels there because she is quite bright and she’ll get on.’ So, when the time come my daughter said, ‘Ah yes, dad. I’ve got to leave school. I’m going to get a job.’ So, I said, ‘Yes. Is that right?’ She said, ‘Oh, actually I’m going to get a job. There’s a chap. There’s a company that sell records. I shall get a job there.’ I said, ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Oh.’ Remembering what Miss Scorer told me, ‘Don’t worry. She’ll take you to the wire to see. Testing you.’ So I said, I said, ‘Well, of course the other side of the coin is that the headmistress says that you should go on to Boston College and do A level. Your A levels.’ She said, ‘Oh, well she would say that wouldn’t she?’ I said, ‘Yes. And I think that’s what’s going to happen.’ ‘Oh’ she says and she stomped off, you know. But she did it. She went to Boston. Then she was doing alright. I’d never been, all the time I’ve been here I didn’t have a family in Jamaica. My grandparents had died and my mother and father were still out there and some brothers and sisters. And she, they only knew her through letters so I was determined that I wouldn’t go back to Jamaica until I could afford to take my wife and daughter. And in 1966 I think I reached that stage. Just when Lesley was at the college. And so I said, ‘Alright, we’re going out to Jamaica for Christmas. Spend a long holiday.’ Six weeks. You know, out in Jamaica. I said to Lesley, ‘You’re going to meet your grandparents and your cousins and so on.’ So we went, went out and met her cousins and so on. And she, she said to me, she says, ‘Dad, I know you are worried and concerned about how I’m going to do.’ She said, ‘I’ve been out to Jamaica. I’ve met that side of my family out there,’ and she said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get my A levels. I’ll do it and I’ll become a teacher.’ I said, ‘Well, If that’s what you want. That’s alright.’ So that’s what she did.
HH: Did, did she enjoy Jamaica?
RO: Hmmn?
HH: Did she enjoy Jamaica?
RO: Oh yes. She was, because there were quite a number of her cousins of her age. And I think that ⸻
HH: It must have been a lot of fun for her.
RO: Yeah. And one of them, because she’s a serious thinker and most of her cousins out there was at college and she wasn’t going to be bettered. She said to me, ‘Dad, don’t worry.’
HH: That’s great.
RO: So, she came, she got back and she got her A levels and so on and went to college in Bradford. St Margaret [unclear] College. And she, she said that, at first she said that she was going to do linguistics. Then when, after she changed her mind. She said, ‘I’m going to be a general teacher.’
HH: So, did she teach in primary or high school?
RO: Oh, Lesley. She got through her training as a teacher. And she said she wanted to teach in an area where West Indians are. I said, ‘That’s alright. ’And I think I’ll go to London.’ I said, ‘Oh London.’ Fortunately for me I had a cousin. My uncle’s son who was a minister of, an Anglican priest who’d got trained over here. He went to college at, you know. A college at Cambridge. That’s right. And he, he was there and he had a [pause] he had room that if she got a job in London she could stay with him ‘til she [pause] so she applied for a job in London. At, [unclear] near Wilson High School. Secondary Modern School for Girls in Brixton. And she got it.
HH: Fantastic.
RO: So she went. Got set up in London. Fortunately for Lesley after a while she was, she was doing alright. They said to her, they said, ‘We see one of your subjects you did was drama and we haven’t got a drama — ’ What do they call it?
HH: Department.
RO: Department. ‘Would you like [unclear] to set one up?’ So, she said, ‘Of course I would.’ So she set up this.
HH: Great.
RO: And after about two years they said, ‘Now, what we want is a head of department. Do you fancy that?’ she said, ‘Of course I fancy that.’ So, she, in a short while she was a head of department and she never looked back.
HH: Amazing.
RO: After a while there was a job at St-Martin-in-the-Field High School for Girls as a Deputy Head. And my daughter applied for it, got an interview and got it.
HH: She’s done well.
RO: Yes. After about four years the Head retired at St-Martin’s-in-the-Field High School for Girls and she among ten people applied for the Headship. She got it.
HH: Fantastic.
RO: She became head of department and she changed it. She changed the school because it didn’t have a sixth form and so on. And one day she rang me at work. She said, ‘Dad, I’ve done it.’ I said, ‘What have you gone and done now?’ She said, ‘I’ve been trying to get them to give me a sixth form so that I don’t have to send my girls to another school.’ And I said, ‘What do you do now?’ She said, ‘They give me six million pounds to set up a sixth form.’ So she —
HH: Fantastic.
RO: She set up —
HH: That’s wonderful.
RO: She set up a sixth form.
HH: So, so is she still working, your daughter?
RO: Oh, no. She retired.
HH: But she retired as a head teacher.
RO: She was Head. But not only that she did so well with this school she was awarded CBE.
HH: Oh really.
RO: Oh yes.
HH: How very wonderful.
RO: Oh yeah.
HH: You must be very proud of her.
RO: Oh, yes.
HH: Do you see your family quite a lot? Do they come up to visit you?
RO: She always used to come up but since this virus she hasn’t been up.
HH: No.
RO: Since then. But she did. Oh yeah. She, she was awarded for her, and the citation is for what she did for her school.
HH: Wonderful.
RO: And for education in general. But she is still busy. She’s governor of two. Two schools now and though supposed to be retired she’s busy with that now.
HH: That’s a fantastic career she’s had.
RO: Yeah.
HH: But talking about retirement. I mean, Ralph because you since your retirement you have done such a lot. Because you retired from your, your general manager’s position at [Buehler] in 1989 was it? But then you became quite involved in the Chamber of Commerce.
RO: Chamber of Commerce. Yes.
HH: And, and then you started this other career as an author.
RO: Yes.
HH: So, you know, I mean you have been quite busy yourself.
RO: Well, yes. Yes. I [pause] when I did things I thought, I always said one of my plan to retire was not to have a plan. Do you get what I mean? I was going to see. And what I didn’t want was to have a plan to be in management. I’ve had my forty years of management but I’d want to be involved. And then one of the, you know Mr Isaac’s son who, he was [pause] he became the head of Oldrids then. And he said he, during the time he became a director of J [Buehler] Limited so I got to know him very well and he, he said to me, ‘Oh, well the Chamber of Commerce in Boston is in a bit of a [pause] [unclear] . It could do with somebody like, you, you know.’ So, I said, I said, ‘Well, I’ve got, I’ve got a, I bought a house in Jamaica now to go on holidays and I want to go spend three or four months in Jamaica on holiday. I really don’t want to.’ But he said, ‘You know, you could really jazz that thing up, you know. Put some life in it.’ So I said, ‘Alright. I’ll do it for a couple of years.’ He said, ‘Oh, we can’t pay you. Pay you much.’ I said, ‘Well, no. It’s alright. I’m not on the breadline,’ you know. So I took on a job at the Chamber of Commerce. I said I would do it for two years as their membership officer. That’s what the title was. Turned out to be something completely, almost different. I did it for twenty years.
HH: That’s a long time.
RO: Yeah. Yes. I did it for twenty years. At the same pay.
HH: But it must have made you quite well known in Boston.
RO: Oh yes. Yes. That is it. That is the reason why I, I did this book about Boston. You know the Boston Marketplace and Bargate.
HH: Bargate.
RO: Because I knew every shop. Every [pause] every manager. Almost every director [unclear]
HH: That’s wonderful. But what interested me about those, those books that you’ve written on Boston what was interesting was the way in which you remembered your early life in, in Jamaica was almost the same. You remembered all where the houses were and then all the people who occupied the houses and it was almost like you used that same model to, to write your books on Boston.
RO: Yeah.
HH: It’s a lovely way of doing it.
RO: Yeah.
HH: Was there a reason why you chose to do it like that?
RO: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes. Well, I was, I’m interested in people. You see. Because I realised which I learned at Business College is that a business is people. It’s alright having workshops and machinery. Without people there’s no business.
HH: Yeah. That’s true. Ralph, there’s something else I wanted to ask you in addition to all the other things that have kept you so busy. Did you ever sort of link up with other veterans who had served in the RAF? Have you? Have you kept in touch with any of the people that you served with? Have you?
RO: Well, yes. I had a friend named Roy March. We met at [pause] when we were learning to be, to be drivers at Training School in 1944. That’s right. Yeah. At, down in Wiltshire. Melksham. And we remained friends until he died about, he was two years older than me and he died about three, three years ago.
HH: Okay.
RO: And we’ve been friends all — he’s the nearest, he’s the nearest thing I had to [pause] outside my family. We had a thing that we, we developed. He never sold me anything and I never sell him anything. If I had something and he, and I can do without it I gave it to him. And the same with me. We never. There hasn’t been anything that I’ve ever bought from him in all those years. And neither, if I had something and Roy liked it and I can part with it he had it and the same.
HH: Wonderful. In, in one of your volumes of autobiography you noted that some other Jamaicans who had served in the RAF also married Boston women.
RO: Yeah.
HH: Now, why didn’t they settle in Boston? Where did they go?
RO: Well, not, none of them really. This friend of mine, Roy March he settled for a while in Boston. When I came back and got married he was in London. He was a, he at that time he was working as a motor, motor engineer. That’s what he went to learn motor engineering. The fellow from — at Scotland Yard. That’s right. And he was at Scotland Yard. And then he left. When I came back to Boston he left. He’d married and came back to Boston for about three or four years. But he didn’t, he couldn’t settle in Boston because he was, he was a town man. He was brought up in Kingston. He went to school in Kingston. I’m a village boy. Very much a village boy. Boston pace suits me. It didn’t suit him so he was always rushing off to London and so he went back to London and joined the Civil Service. And then he retired and went back and set up and became quite a good business man out in Jamaica until he died. Yeah.
HH: There’s a last question I want to ask you before we conclude because I think it’s time for you to have your photograph taken. Which is, all the way through your volumes of biography you talk about how you were learning. ‘I was learning. I was learning.’
RO: Yeah. Yeah.
HH: ‘I was learning.’ And what I want to ask you as a final question is you’ve obviously learned a lot in order to survive and to have a successful career. What do you think you think you might have taught people though? You learned a lot but what do you think you taught people who came in to contact with you?
RO: Well, I don’t know whether I I have. In Boston I had many acquaintances but I’ve, well truly I have real friends, both male and female. They’ve always been kind of long term people. Not many. But they’re long term. For instance I have a friend [pause] Mrs Hopkins. And she was the one who kind of pushed me. She’s a solicitor and I met her when we did a job for the Chamber. She was President of the Junior Chamber. She’s much younger. She’s forty years younger than I am but we seem to get along. We did this job and she’s never done [pause] in the Chamber of Commerce while she was President of the Junior Chamber she never got on with anybody as she got on well with me. And from then on it’s just been a friendship. And between you and me she gave, she knew that I like books and detective stories and I always know what Christmas present I’m going to get, or whatever present is going to be. A detective story. A detective story. So I’ve got piles of books [laughs]
HH: Well, perhaps that’s a very good point to to conclude this interview and I would like to thank you again so much for sharing these memories and these stories of your quite extraordinary life.
RO: Is that right?
HH: So, thank you very much.
[recording paused]
RO: Leave you know, I told you about [unclear] Yeah, who told me that if I behaved in England as I would behave in Little London where my uncles and cousins and grandparents was, how things would be alright because by and large he says most English people who he has dealt with are fair minded people. Fair minded. And he said that although he had had to take a hotel to court because of his colour. He said that he doesn’t say that people in England are all colour prejudiced. He said no. By and large people are fair minded. And if you behave in England as you would behave in your village you’ll be alright. And I’ve done that.
HH: And did it work for you?
RO: Oh yes. It worked for me. I’ve, I’ve got lots of acquaintances and friends and people. I mean the Isaacs and [Buehlers]. The family. I’ll tell you I, when I was writing this second book, a book about Bargate we thought we’ll go a bit upmarket and have a nice book presentation and so on. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to go, get myself, as it were indebted. To take the risk. And I was talking to one of the Isaacs who, and I told him I said you know [unclear] for that money out to make sure that I [pause] And he said, he didn’t say anything and I went home. And about a couple of hours later he, the doorbell rang. And he turned up with a cheque for a thousand pounds.
HH: Fantastic.
RO: Towards it. Yeah. He said, ‘I think you need help.’ And that’s —
HH: Great.
RO: No problem. A thousand pound.
HH: A nice story.
RO: And another one of the Isaacs said, ‘I’m selling a business.’ He had a business, ‘When I get the money in July,’ he said, ‘I’ll send you a cheque towards it.’ He sent me a cheque for two thousand pounds.
HH: Very generous.
RO: You see. I had the money to do that book.
HH: I’m pleased that you did because it’s, it’s lovely that you produced all these books.
RO: Yeah.
HH: And we hope that it won’t be stopping any time soon. We’ll help you to get some more done.
RO: Oh yeah.
HH: Thank you Ralph so much.
RO: You see, you keep me talking.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ralph Alfrado Ottey. Two
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-08-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:59:28 Audio Recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AOtteyRA200828-01, POtteyRA2001, POtteyRA2002
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Heather Hughes
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Jamaica
England--Lincolnshire
England--Scunthorpe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1947
Description
An account of the resource
Ralph Ottey joined the RAF from Jamaica. After the war he returned to Jamaica. However, he had met the woman he was to later marry while based in the UK and returned to the settle here. He settled in Boston and had a long career with a local firm. On his retirement he worked for the Chamber of Commerce and wrote a number of books about Boston.
617 Squadron
African heritage
entertainment
ground personnel
love and romance
RAF Coningsby
RAF Woodhall Spa
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1419/25209/PWeltonB1501.1.jpg
7fdce2de7a332cd161cd7b8236bae9c4
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1419/25209/AWeltonB150604.1.mp3
595bcc016e786922ddc517ce96f6d4fc
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Welton, Betty
B Welton
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Welton, B
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Betty Welton.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: My name’s Betty Welton and I was born in 1924 and I had a good childhood and I joined the Land Army when I was seventeen and a half. Dad wouldn’t let me join the Forces because he said they’d got a bad name. So I said, ‘Well, what about the Land Army?’ And that seemed alright so I joined up. And I went up, I got my papers and everything and went up to Westgate Station at Wakefield where we lived, got on the train and went right down to Bletchley and then we got transferred to Amersham, in billets there. And it was hard. And we were all, we had bicycles where we had to go to work. But apart from that the airmen used to come from the camp not far away to dances at our hostel and then we used to go there to their dances which was good.
PE: Do you want me to ask you some questions? Is that going to be easier for you?
BW: You ask me questions.
PE: Yeah. Okay. Fine. [Pause] What school did you go to?
BW: I went to Lawefield Lane School at Wakefield. First of all I went to the Church School, sorry and then I went to Lawefield Lane School and left when I was fourteen and got a job straightaway. But sadly, mother died just after I had started work and she was only fifty eight. But I kept working for about two years at a dress, in a dress shop. But dad couldn’t manage so I had to leave the job and stay at home and look after dad. And that’s how I learned to cook and everything and house work. And then eventually after years went by he got married again. So, I wasn’t very happy and I said, ‘Well, I’m joining the Forces.’ But then he said, ‘You’re not going in the Forces. They’ve got a bad name.’ So, I joined the Land Army and it was the best time of my life.
PE: Why did you particularly want to join the Forces?
BW: To get away. To get away from cleaning and, being a young girl again.
PE: What attracted you to the RAF?
BW: I don’t know really. It was just I used to love aeroplanes. There weren’t so many then but I used to love aeroplanes and I thought I’d love to join the Air Force but it wasn’t to be. But it did run in the family later on because my son joined the Air Force when he was old enough and so did my daughter. So that was lovely for me.
PE: It’s alright. Just a sec. I’m just going to shut this window. We’re getting a bit of traffic noise through. That’s made a big difference. It’s alright. Don’t worry. You’re doing fine. When you went to Amersham, in the billets there —
BW: Yeah.
PE: What sort of work did you do on the land?
BW: I was shepherdess, and a milkmaid but more a shepherdess. And I loved that. That was really lovely being with the lambs when they were born.
PE: Can you sort of describe what you did?
BW: Well, I used to have to be there when they were lambing and help the lambs out. And I think it was there that I was doing the milking and a cow kicked me and it sent me agin the boards and I sprained my wrist so I had to go home then on leave. I was on leave about three weeks and then I, when I was all fit to go back I joined up again and I was sent to Grantham. Little, Little Ponton, in private billets which was nice. Nice family. But it was hard work getting up early and fetching water from the pump down in the stackyard and such things. Fetching the cows up. Never thought I’d do things like that but yes, it went alright. And then they used to kill a pig which was horrible. I used to have to help with that with the lady. And I remember the only cooker she had was a metal cooker about a yard wide and long and it was paraffin heaters underneath it. Two paraffin heaters. But she used to cook some lovely meals, especially pastry. I remember the big pies we used to get. And, and then my dad, as I said he got married. Met somebody at Ropsley and got married again. But I didn’t used to get home much to Wakefield I’m afraid. There was nothing there for me.
PE: When you, sorry I’ll start that again, when you sprained your wrist and you went home for three weeks were you sort of happy then?
BW: Not really. No. I was eager to get back. Really eager to get back and I soon got in to it again. Got a few blisters like but —
PE: So originally you went to Amersham.
BW: Yes.
PE: Which is in Buckinghamshire.
BW: Yeah.
PE: And then you sprained your wrist and you went back to —
BW: Yeah.
PE: Wakefield.
BW: Yeah.
PE: Or near Wakefield.
BW: Yeah.
PE: And then you were reallocated to, to near Grantham. Is that correct?
BW: Yes. Yeah.
PE: Yeah.
BW: Yeah
PE: Yeah. Did you see a big difference in the way that you looked after animals in Amersham compared to Grantham?
BW: Well, I liked the people more in, at Little Ponton and around about, you know and the animals were taken care of. We had to care for them more there. Myself, I had to, you know washing them down before they were milked. We had to do everything and then, you know with the milk as well. And I used to help them make butter. I’m trying to think. I had something else on my mind and I can’t think now.
PE: Well, normally what happens when I interview people they usually remember something that isn’t very nice. So I don’t know whether you saw any of the —
BW: Oh yes.
PE: Saw any of the action.
BW: I have.
PE: Over Amersham, you know.
BW: No. This is over at Little Ponton, not Little Ponton, at Grantham. At Ingoldsby. The worst thing was being a town girl I wasn’t used to country ways and the toilet. Shall I put this?
PE: Yeah. Carry on.
BW: The toilet was right down in the stack yard and you had to go through geese and all sorts to get there. It was shocking. And when you got in the toilet it was buckets underneath and there was three holes in the wood. The mind boggles but I never had any company [laughs]
PE: At the time that you were in Amersham it —
BW: Oh right.
PE: It, it it’s possible that as you were near the south coast you might have saw some of the aeroplanes going in and going out. Did you remember anything like that?
BW: Not such a lot there. No. It was more at Little Ponton where they got to know all the aeroplanes. The Lancasters. They used to be going over our house.
PE: Yeah. So, at that time were you living at Stainton le Vale?
BW: I was at, I was at little, at Binbrook. No.
PE: Right.
BW: I’m getting mixed up.
PE: You were at Grantham.
BW: I was at Grantham.
PE: Grantham.
BW: Yes.
PE: And you described —
BW: At Branston.
PE: At Branston.
BW: At Branston. That’s right.
PE: And —
BW: Yes.
PE: You were very close to the end of the runway at Binbrook.
BW: Oh, that was Stainton le Vale.
PE: Right.
BW: That was at Stainton le Vale where we lived, yes.
PE: Yeah.
BW: Yeah.
PE: I’m just trying to —
BW: Oh sorry. Yes.
PE: I’m just trying to follow the sequence of events.
BW: Yeah.
PE: So, we have you at Amersham.
BW: Right. Yes.
PE: And then you go to Grantham.
BW: Yes.
PE: And then at some point you’re watching Lancasters.
BW: Yes.
PE: Going over the, or coming in and out of Binbrook.
BW: Yes.
PE: So, can you just sort of describe that?
BW: Well, when we, when I was at Binbrook in private lodgings we used to hear the Binbrook, hear the Lancasters going out bombing. And we used to count them. There was another Land Girl and we slept in the same bed which wouldn’t be allowed now would it? [laughs] And we used to hear the Lancasters going over and count them. It isn’t often we heard them coming back. I suppose we’d be asleep. But one night we were in bed and the German planes came over and it was a, it was a row of cottages at Branston at, in the top of the village and he went right down the row of houses machine gunning and the bullets came through our bedroom ceiling and they were just showing through. I think there was quite a few because they, and of course the girl I was with we wanted to keep some of the bullets for souvenirs but the police wouldn’t let us. We had to, they had to take them or whoever. But that was quite frightening.
PE: Did you ever see any crash landings?
BW: No.
PE: At Binbrook.
BW: No. I didn’t. No.
PE: Okay. So how long were you at Binbrook then?
BW: My first daughter was born there. We were there about three years, I think.
PE: Right.
BW: My first husband was one for moving about. It came to April the 6th, moving day on the farms and from there we moved to Darlton, near Newark and my youngest son was born there. From there we moved to [pause] oh where did we go then? My family have all been born in different villages.
PE: When did you meet your husband?
BW: I met my husband in the Land Army.
PE: Can you, can —
BW: He worked on the farm.
PE: Can you describe that? How you met?
BW: Yes. Well, they used to come, my husband used to come with two or three more to work on our farm in busy seasons and of course the Land Girls used to be talking to them and took us out a time or two when we got to know them to the dances and it went from there and we decided to get married.
PE: What year was that?
BW: Would it be ’44 or [pause] no. No. It wasn’t. Forty, yeah ’44 and my first daughter was born in ’46.
PE: And where was that?
BW: At Stainton le Vale. That’s right. Got that right.
PE: Good. So, you were at Grantham.
BW: Yes.
PE: And was and you met your husband there.
BW: Yeah.
PE: Yeah. And then you moved to Stainton le Vale.
BW: Yes.
PE: Which is where that put you at sort of at the end of the —
BW: Yes, that’s —
PE: Effectively at the end of the runway.
BW: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
PE: For Binbrook. And that’s where you saw all the Lancasters —
BW: Yes.
PE: Coming in and out.
BW: Yes.
PE: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: And we used to walk up through Binbrook to the village and we could see the planes all stood there you know but you used to be able to walk through. Just like that. You wouldn’t now.
PE: When you were walking through did you ever speak to any of the pilots?
BW: No.
PE: Or the crews?
BW: No.
PE: No.
BW: I’d got a pram with me then. I was in a hurry to get there and back. It was a long way. I hadn’t time to chat. No. I never saw anybody. Not [pause] but I know at Binbrook, not that we went, the airmen used to go to one of the pubs there. I forget what they called it. Very popular it was for the airmen. They more or less took it over. But no, we never went there. Couldn’t afford it.
PE: So, what did you do after the war?
BW: Where did we live then? Stainton le Vale. Then we went to near Newark as I said. Worked on the farm there. And then we went to, we came to Caistor. Sorry, Swallow. We came to Swallow then and my husband worked on the land. And of course, I’d got a family then so [pause] but unfortunately, he died when he was fifty eight. He got a disease. They were spraying on the land and they never used to wear masks then. He worked for a Mr Bingham and he got this spray on him. And it started here and he went to hospital and he never came out. It spread over him. He died at fifty eight and I had four children.
PE: I’m sorry to hear that.
BW: That was sad.
PE: Yes. It is.
BW: I’m still here and they’re all lovely children.
PE: And they look —
BW: They grew up and got their own children.
PE: And they look after you —
BW: Yes. They do.
PE: Good.
BW: They all live away but they do come and see me.
PE: Is it fair to say that because you joined the Land Army then working on the land became your life after the end of the Second World War?
BW: That it — ?
PE: I’ll say that again. When you joined the Land Army that was something you were very interested in.
BW: Yes. Yeah.
PE: Did that sort of encourage and inspire you to carry on working on the land?
BW: Oh, it did. It made my life joining the Land Army. It brought me out. I was very shy. Well, I still am a bit shy but, it never leaves you but I was awfully shy ‘til then and it just made a woman of me I suppose. A lady. And I enjoyed it so much.
PE: And that inspired you to carry on working on the land.
BW: Yes. Yes, it did.
PE: So, in effect —
BW: Yes.
PE: You were in farming weren’t you?
BW: Yes.
PE: Yes.
BW: Yeah.
PE: In agriculture.
BW: Yeah.
PE: Yeah. During your time, you know as somebody who was in the Land Army can you remember anything that was particularly amusing?
BW: Well, more or less only that at Branston. When the bombers went over. And, well we thought it was awful at the time but then we thought it was funny after but the lady we lodged with she was very very strict and we had to be in a certain time and if we were late the door used to be locked.
PE: So, when you were at Branston you were working on the land.
BW: Yeah.
PE: As a Land Girl.
BW: Yeah.
PE: But you were actually living somewhere else in these digs. Is that right?
BW: Yes. In private billets they was. Yeah.
PE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, they were all private billets then.
BW: Well, that house we were in was that the Land Army, you know. She would get paid well for having us there. And we used to have to cycle to work.
PE: How far did you have to cycle?
BW: A mile and a half or two mile. Yes. It was hard work.
PE: Did you enjoy it?
BW: I did. Yeah. We got over it. It was hard work but yes we enjoyed it.
PE: So, do you think you made a valuable contribution to the war effort?
BW: I’m sure I did. I’m sure I did. Yes. Because the people that we were billeted with at the private billets they’d never seen town people before you know. They took a bit of getting used to my ways. And if it thundered the lady when I was at Ponton, in private billets rather she, the children that she had used to have to go under the table and pull the tablecloth down. And I used to sit there. She was annoyed with me because I wouldn’t do it but that was funny.
PE: Is there anything else you can particularly remember about your time in the Land Army?
BW: Well, when I was shepherdess I, as I say I used to have to take the feed out in a little pony and trap. And that was lovely going on the main road with the bags of feed and then you know putting it in the troughs for them. And that was a lovely time. I can’t remember anything much else.
PE: Did you ever think while you were in the Land Army did you ever think about what was happening, you know in London and some of the other big cities?
BW: Oh, I did. I did.
PE: When they were being bombed.
BW: Yes. I did. But it was, there wasn’t a lot of news then was there? You know. Radio. I think she had a radio but we didn’t get a chance to listen to it so we didn’t know. Only when we saw the bombers going over and things like that. We weren’t well informed. But we did wonder what was going on.
PE: Did you ever manage to get to a cinema?
BW: Yes. We did now and again in Lincoln but we had to cycle in. But yeah, there was the news on then. Oh, that would be it. That’s where we got the news. Yeah. Pathe Gazette. Yes. So, it was quite alarming that was. To think that we were safe like we were and what was going on there. It was hell wasn’t it?
PE: Did you ever worry about your family back in Wakefield?
BW: Not really. But when, when I was at home it was, before mother died and we had, did I tell you, we had to down in the cellar.
PE: Carry on.
BW: And we used to have to go down some stone steps where there was a big gantry where you kept food and then the next door you went through was the coal place where the man used to put the coal through a thing on the street. Drop the bag of coal through and we used to have to sit in this cellar. Well, the [pause] the siren went to say it was all clear and there was a bomb dropped at the end of our road where I lived. In the allotments.
PE: And that was in Wakefield.
BW: That was in Wakefield. Yeah. Did I say I joined the ARP?
PE: No, you didn’t.
BW: Oh. I did. Yeah.
PE: Well. I’ll ask the question then. Did you join the ARP?
BW: I did. Yes. That’s a thing I did want to do and used to go, wear a gas mask when we were at school. Little cardboard boxes. And of course, we had to take them up there to the, in to Wakefield and we used to be on duty. Night duty. Sleep in a little bed with a stone water bottle and if you were lucky you were agin, agin the stove. A big black stove. Freezing cold. But yeah, we’d some good friends there and I got to know a lot of people.
PE: So, you were doing firewatch duty.
BW: Yes. Yeah. I was trained for St John’s medical things. I got my certificate and everything but I never had to use it, thank goodness.
PE: So, when you were an ARP warden presumably you did that as well as your ordinary job.
BW: Yes. I did. Yes. Yes.
PE: So, did that mean working at night a lot?
BW: Not in my job. We finished at seven. We finished at 7 o’clock on a weekday in the shop and then sometimes I used to go straight to the ARP instead of going home. Take my things with me and go straight up there.
PE: Yeah. So, you were working. So, you were working during the day.
BW: Yes.
PE: And then you were doing your ARP duties.
BW: Yes.
PE: During the night.
BW: Yes. I did.
PE: Is that right?
BW: Yeah.
PE: You didn’t get a lot of sleep then.
BW: No, didn’t. Didn’t. But it wasn’t every night I was on duty. Just so many nights. Maybe two nights a week, and you could sleep if you could get to sleep but, yeah I’d forgotten about that.
PE: Yeah. So, did you see much bombing in Wakefield?
BW: Yes. Yes, we did and we could hear them going off. Terrible. Wakefield was hit quite bad but not, as I say there was one at the end of the garden. It was an incendiary bomb so [pause] but I didn’t know much about, I can’t remember much about anything else with the bombs but I knew they were going off.
PE: Is, is that what inspired you to want to join the RAF?
BW: It is. Yeah. Yeah. I, I just liked the thoughts of the RAF. But then dad wouldn’t let me so I never got in there.
PE: Did your father do anything during the Second World War? I mean was he —
BW: He was a blacksmith engineer. He was a very busy man. He, at Sydney Raines at Wakefield. He went there from school being an orphan as I told you and they trained him and he was there while he retired and I remember he, he came home and he said he’d been offered would it be a pension? Not a pension. Money. He could either have it, some every month or a lump sum and he had a lump sum and I think it was eighty seven pound. It was a fortune then. Something of that, that figure. Yeah.
PE: Was your father involved in the First World War?
BW: No. No. He wasn’t. No. No. He wasn’t, he wasn’t old enough for that. But they had a brother that was in the army, Uncle Herbert and he went to France. He was in the bombing. He went to Germany. Was it Germany? And he got shot. That’s right. And he came back to France to the hospital there where they used to go, didn’t they? I think it was France. No. It wasn’t. It was Jersey. Sorry. They sent him to Jersey to the hospital and he was there a long time. He was quite ill. But then he recovered and the nurse that had been looking after him they got engaged and got married and he decided to stay in Jersey. They lived in there. So, and his family, my cousin Eric, he is the, a Chelsea Pensioner now. Virtually the same age as me. So we keep in touch quite a lot.
PE: Do you see him very often?
BW: No. I would love to go down to London but I just can’t make it. My daughter and granddaughter went but I wasn’t fit enough to go. Not, not there and back in one day. But I’m going to do. They’re going to take me and we shall stay overnight at Chelsea, in the barracks so Eric said. Which would be lovely.
PE: Well, that’s lovely. Thanks very much for taking the time to talk to me.
BW: Oh [laughs]
PE: As I say. Is there anything else you can remember or —
BW: Yeah [pause] I can’t remember such a lot except when we [pause] where was it? At Swallow I used to drive a little Fergie tractor. I was so proud of that tractor. Have I told you that? And my youngest son David, he was only, it was when I was left on my own and I used to take David with me and there was a seat at the back of the tractor and I used to pad it up and tie him with a big scarf around me and he used to go to work with me on the tractor. Work with the, in the fields. Tractor and trailer and the lot.
PE: How old was he then?
BW: It was before he started school. He’d be four. Three and a half. Four. But I had to go to work because I needed money. A widow’s pension wasn’t much then and a family. And then I didn’t report it that I was working and somebody reported me. So I gave up then. Some kind person. I didn’t make, didn’t get much money.
PE: No.
BW: Not, you know, on the farm.
PE: No.
BW: But that was a horrible thing.
PE: Yeah.
BW: But I never looked back after. Yeah.
PE: Good. Well thanks very much, Betty. That was —
BW: Oh, you’re welcome.
PE: That was wonderful. Thank you.
BW: I hope I’ve done it right.
PE: That’s alright. As I say it, I mean sometimes people will just tell their story from start to finish.
BW: Yeah.
PE: And sometimes it means that —
BW: Yeah.
PE: You know, whoever I interview we have a conversation like we’ve done.
BW: Yes. Yeah.
PE: But it doesn’t matter. We’ve, we’ve got —
BW: Yeah.
PE: Some really nice stories and some information from you.
BW: Oh good.
PE: So, that will be really helpful.
BW: Oh good.
PE: I’m sure everybody will be pleased with that so thank you very much.
BW: Thank you anyway for taking the time as well to do that. It’s quite an honour.
PE: It’s a pleasure. Alright then, Betty.
BW: And as I said I’m going to a tea dance this afternoon. I’ve never been to one before.
PE: I’m sure —
BW: It’s only in Caistor.
PE: I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
BW: My friend said, ‘I’ve, I’ve got two tickets and we’re going to a tea dance.’ My goodness. I said, ‘I can’t dance now. We used to.’ And she said, ‘Well, we can shuffle our feet.’
PE: Did you do a lot of dancing in the war?
BW: Pardon?
PE: Did you do a lot of dancing in the war?
BW: Yes, I did. When we went to Spitalgate and they used to come to us at Branston. I used to love dancing.
PE: Yeah.
BW: But as I said dad would never let me dance. Never go to a dance at home but I made up for it after [laughs] And I behaved myself [laughs]
PE: Well, that’s very good. It’s interesting really that of all the people that I’ve spoken to whatever happened during the war, whatever tragedies occurred they still carried on with life.
BW: Yeah.
PE: As it was.
BW: Yes. Yeah.
PE: And from your point of view I remember interviewing people who were in London and whatever bombing took place they always made sure they went to the dance.
BW: Yes.
PE: On a Saturday night.
BW: Yes. That’s right.
PE: And they went to the pictures on say a Wednesday night.
BW: All times of the year. Yeah.
PE: The Blitz spirit truly survived.
BW: Yeah.
PE: And the good old British public.
BW: That’s right.
PE: Would not be beaten.
BW: No.
PE: And they had a great, great strength and great bravery —
BW: Yes.
PE: I think, to, to continue with it, you know so —
BW: And I remember at, when I was at Grantham I’d never had much money, you know. I didn’t get a lot in the Land Army but I used to save it up and when I went in to Lincoln I bought these new shoes and they were red and, bright red and bright green and they were like clogs. That was the fashion then. You won’t remember them, will you? And I went home in them. My dad nearly had a fit. I think he nearly burned them.
PE: What year was that then roughly?
BW: Oh, what year would it be?
PE: It was during the war, was it?
BW: Yeah.
PE: That was very brave [laughs]
BW: [laughs] Yes, it was. That was funny really. It was awful at the time but [pause] Oh, and another thing I’ve remembered. This girl I was with in lodgings she had a blonde, they used to have a, like a, I forget what you called it like a fringe but turned under. So I got mine done. And hers was done blonde so what did I do? We got some bleach and she did mine for me. Went home on leave once. My dad nearly threw a fit. Anyhow, he says, ‘What have you done?’ I said, ‘I haven’t done anything.’ I said, ‘It’s the sun because I wear a scarf and the sun’s bleached it.’[laughs] I don’t think he believed me though. He took it in but that was one of the funny things. So, yes. I had a blonde fringe.
PE: Oh, that’s brilliant. Thank you very much, Betty. That’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. I’m going to switch the camera off now. Okay.
BW: Oh [laughs] I thought you’d switched it off before.
PE: No. No. No.
BW: Oh dear.
PE: No, that’s, that’s brilliant. Thank, thank you very much, Betty. I’m going to switch it off now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Betty Welton
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Paul Espin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:35:19 Audio Recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWeltonB150604, PWeltonB1501
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Betty Welton was born in 1924. She left school at the age of fourteen, and at the age of seventeen and a half joined the Women’s Land Army. She saw this as an opportunity to escape her home circumstances. On receiving her papers she travelled from her home town of Wakefield to Buckinghamshire, where she was billeted in Amersham. Her job was shepherdess, and milking the cows. On one occasion she was kicked by a cow, sprained her wrist and went home on leave. When she rejoined she was sent to work at Little Ponton near Grantham and stayed with a family in private billets. When she was billeted near RAF Binbrook she used to hear the Lancaster bombers and count them as they flew over, and remembers cycling to Lincoln to the cinema. She was also a volunteer for the ARP.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Grantham
England--Wakefield
England--Yorkshire
England--Caistor (Rural district)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
Air Raid Precautions
animal
civil defence
entertainment
home front
Lancaster
RAF Binbrook
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1418/25208/PMackayWJ1501.2.jpg
bac5d489d01fcbabd6b139b45b8ea409
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1418/25208/AMackayWJ150527.2.mp3
fade94a1fbdc51da1006bfe0f8d75e48
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mackay, Jeff
William Jeffrey Mackay
W J Mackay
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mackay, WJ
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Jeff Mackay (b. 1922). He flew operations as a navigator with 460 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
My, my name is Jeff Mackay. William Jeffery actually and I was born in 1922 in Ballarat, Victoria in Australia. My parents were Australian although my father was of Scottish ancestry and my mother English ancestry and we, born in Ballarat but I really grew up in suburban Melbourne, a suburb known as Caulfield where I went through the normal education process. I went to the local state school and later to Melbourne High School and at the age of sixteen I started working as a cadet engineer in a local suburban council as a, as a cadet engineer. By the, the war broke out in 1939 after I’d been working about six months and the, after a few months I joined the Army and found myself driving trucks in Southern Victoria until the Japanese entered the war in nineteen, on December the 7th 1941 when the situation in Australia changed and people who were, went in to the Army and Navy et cetera voluntarily it became more of a compulsory effort because of the threat of the Japanese. So, after a short break I joined the RAAF and found myself being trained for aircrew although at the time a cousin, a New Zealand cousin of mine who was in Britain wrote to my mother and said, ‘I’ve heard that Jeff has joined the Air Force. Tell him on no account to get in to Bomber Command if he can help it.’ But of course, once I was in the Air Force I I had no option. I had to go where I was sent. The, so we trained at the, in Sydney and at the end of our training they split the number of trainees in to, some were being sent to fly in northern Australia and the other fifty percent were sent to Canada to train to fly in Europe. So as, as it happened I was in the section to go to Europe and before long I found myself in a boat called the, I’ve forgotten temporarily the name of the boat but it was loaded with German Afrika Korps troops in the holds who’d been captured at El Alemein and were taken to prison camps in America to be incarcerated for the rest of the war. We had been sailing out of New Zealand away across the Pacific. It wasn’t long before the German Africa Korps members who were being led, led up on deck morning and afternoon for a period for air began jumping overboard and this was a cause of concern. I suppose in total there were probably about a dozen of these troops who didn’t, who were reluctant to go to America. Probably because of their Nazi training. But the German commandant approached the captain of the ship and asked if anything could be done to stop this. So it was the advice to, the idea was that they’d have a concert in the holds of the ship and the call went out to the Australian recruits who were being taken to Canada to be trained. The call went out did anyone have musical instruments they could lend to the Germans to put on this concert? As it happened, I had been learning the steel guitar shortly before I left, I joined the Air Force and I was taking along this steel guitar with me so I I said yes. Well, they could borrow my steel guitar and there were several other members amongst the Aussies who had different musical instruments. They offered to make these available. So in due course the Germans arranged the concert and they invited any, anyone who had lent them a musical instrument to come along as guests. Well, this was early in 1943 at a time when the German, the German enemy was regarded as such and the five or six other blokes who came with me to the concert which was in the bowels of the ship we went down and the Germans had arranged a raised stand for us to stand on at the back of the, the back of all the troops. There must have been in all about three or four thousand who were closely guarded. But the, the concert went on. One song I remember was Lily, “Lily Marlene”, which was played and sung by some of the German troops and it was remarkably good quality. It stuck in my mind for a while. But at any rate we, at that time as the German was the enemy a few of them were turning around and looking at us and funny looks, a few of them grinned at us because the, I suppose they were glad to have us. It was a change from just being locked up. But the concert passed without them bashing us up and we were glad to get back to our, our end of the ship. But it was an interesting little incident on the way over. Another, another incident that happened with the German prisoners while we were sailing across the Pacific was the British troops who had been guarding them since they were brought round from North Africa were getting a bit sick of their job and they thought that some of the Australian trainees should have a turn at guarding the troops. So, as it happened I was given the opportunity to guard, to stand in the mess room when they came through to eat in the morning and afternoon and I was stationed up at the one end of this vast old, vast dining hall where the, where they came. Now, they gave me a sten gun which I’d never handled before. And I was standing at one end and there were several other Aussies along the walls of the hall and the, while the, when the troops were coming up the stairs and pouring in to the room I thought gee I don’t want to shoot any of them, I’d better uncock this gun which I used to do with my P rifle on the farm. But when I tried to uncock it it had a much stronger spring than the little P rifle I used to have and so the gun started going off and I I sprayed the walls and ceiling before eventually it stopped. By this time there was panic in the dining hall and the Germans, some of them had been trying to get out. But I was grabbed by the, we had, actually it was a Dutch boat, the Niew Amsterdam was the name and I was grabbed and marched off and the sten gun taken off me. Taken back to explain why the gun, why I had done this and I was put in the brig for a day in punishment. But those are the incidents which stuck in my mind and the sort of thing that happened [coughs] pardon me. When we got to America and did our, did our training as navigators in the plains of Winnipeg. Around Winnipeg and Minnesota. That was another experience. And when that was completed we were put on the ship for a quick race across the Atlantic on a ship with a name, I can’t recall that either at the moment. But we were crammed in this boat and they relied on speed to get us across so that German submarines wouldn’t get us. So [coughs] pardon me. We, by the, by the time we reached Britain we were put in, Britain was in the middle of the war. Our first impression on getting to Britain was how pale everybody was with the lack of sunshine and that’s the remaining impression I had. But it wasn’t long before we were marshalled in the, separated in to the different groups depending on what we were, we were intended, what was intended for us and we went through the process of advanced flying. Learning to fly under British conditions from a, an aerodrome in North Wales at a place called Llandwrog. From there we were processed to a place in Staffordshire called Hixon where the different category, trained as navigators, gunners who’d trained as gunners et cetera et cetera. We were all brought together at this aerodrome in, at Hixon and formed in to bomber crews. The process consisted, I was approached by a rather dapper looking fella with a, not very big in stature but very self-confident in the air and he said, he came up to me and said, ‘Are you Mackay?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well, we’re forming a bomber crew. I’ve got a gunner, I’ve got two gunners and a wireless operator. Would you be interested in joining the crew as a navigator?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ It was a time of quick decisions. I glanced at him and the others and said, ‘Yes. Yes. I’ll, that’ll do, I’ll join.’ So he took me over and introduced me to the other members of the crew. One, one was a, one gunner, the mid-upper gunner was a thirty year old ex-taxi driver from Sydney. A tough looking bloke who played in the front line of a rugby team in his spare time and, well actually he was the mid-upper gunner. The rear gunner was a nineteen year old boy from, Snowy Johnson from Perth. The wireless operator was a, another young fella, about twenty from Sydney, Logger Dowling. The bomb aimer was a Scotsman with another little black moustache from Glasgow. And there was me. That was the six. Six of us. The captain said, ‘Right. Well, we don’t know each other. To get to know each other we’ll go down to the pub tonight.’ So, before, the taxi driver looked at me and said, oh, you know, ‘Do you drink?’ and I said, ‘No. No. I don’t drink.’ ‘Do you smoke?’ I said, ‘No. I don’t actually smoke either.’ He said, ‘How do you feel about women?’ I said, oh I could see that I was really getting the right answers as far as he was concerned, so I said, ‘Oh, I like women.’ Which I did. So with that he sort of accepted that there was no further worry. He said something like, ‘Oh we don’t want any too good fellas in the crew. They say only the good die young so we need a bit of rough stuff.’ So that was the method of forming a crew and it turned out to be a really good crew. Very laid back, very casual but very loyal to each other in the air so a good crew spirit developed. Well, we went to the pub and I thought I’ll have a drink. There was no, there was never anything really against. So, it was only a little pub in Staffordshire called the Barley Mow and there was only, it was too small place to have many people but in the corner of the, one corner of the bar there was an elderly gentleman with a bowler hat. And there was no, the entertainment, you had to entertain yourself in those days and as I remember it the, the apart from chatting to each other and telling stories the bomb aimer, the Scotsman, the Scots bomb aimer said he could sing. So, we said, ‘Righto, Jock. Well, give us a song.’ And so, Jack, err Jock approached the elderly fellow with the bowler hat and said, ‘I’m going to borrow your bowler hat to give a song.’ And his name was Jasper. I remember it well, and Jasper lent Jock the bowler hat and Jock got up on the table and sang a song. I think was called, “The Wife,” which we all applauded. It wasn’t much of a song but it was a bit of fun and [cough] pardon me. The next night, the next time we went for another drink Jasper was there again with his bowler hat and Jock again borrowed Jasper’s bowler hat to give a song. And we went several more times and each time Jasper would lend a hat and Jock would give his song about the wife and, until the day we were getting near leaving. We told Jasper, ‘Well, we won’t be borrowing Jasper, your hat soon Jasper because we’re being posted to another, another training place and the next night will be our last.’ So on our last night Jasper arrived at the pub with his hat in a brown paper bag and said, ‘Look boys,’ he said, ‘I’ve enjoyed the, your company and the singing.’ He said, ‘Would you take the bowler hat as a keepsake?’ So, the reason I’m telling this story is that that became our sort of talisman that when we were on our bombing trips when we could see the lights of the target ahead the crew would say to the skipper, ‘Have you got the hat on, Tich?’ Who was the pilot’s nickname, and Tich would say, ‘Yes, the hat is now on.’ So we, we would say hello to the target with the skipper, with the bowler hat on his head and we all felt a bit safer. So, it was something and of course we hung on to the bowler hat and it came back to Australia with the skipper who has since died but actually the hat is now in the Australian War Museum in a glass case with a little insignia below explaining the significance of it. So that’s the story of the bowler hat. The, well the, I should say something about our bombing missions that I can think of. One [pause] one occasion which was a bit embarrassing for me was when we were bombing Hamburg on a daylight raid and I had to leave to go to the toilet which was a container at the back of the aircraft. And I I told the skipper over the intercom that I’d have to go back and had to unhook the oxygen supply. I was in a flying suit which had to be lowered down when I went to the toilet and had to reconnect my intercom and when I was there and I reported to the skipper that I was back where I was suddenly the aircraft dropped in a, in a dive which they call a curve of a pursuit which was a manoeuvre that bomb, Lancs had to go in to if they were attacked by enemy aircraft. They would go down in a fast spin off course and go down and then like that and weave and then come up again to get back on course to throw, to make it difficult for the attacking aircraft to hit the bomber. In this case I didn’t know what was happening apart from the fact I was, I was rising off the seat when he went in to the dive and of course when he climbed again I sat down on the seat and stuck to it because it was about minus forty on the metal seat. I remember thinking if I get out of this I’ll never be scared of anything again [laughs] But I got out of it. And later on there were a few smirks on the face of the rest of the crew so, they said that we’d been attacked by a German aircraft but of course, I was in the dark. I couldn’t tell what was happening and I was always a bit suspicious but that was one incident I remember happening. What else should I relate at this? I’m afraid I’m running out of —
PE: If I can just ask you, you really are doing well, Jeff. Thank you for that. If I could ask you a few questions. When did you arrive at Binbrook?
JM: It would be February 1945.
PE: Right.
JM: I remember years.
PE: How many missions did you fly?
JM: Eleven. We flew eleven before the war ended. The last one was at Nuremberg.
PE: Yeah. So, I was, I was going to ask you which, you know where did you fly? Where did you go? Where were your operations?
JM: The [pause] I’m not sure if I can remember them all. The first one was Nuremberg. Hamburg.
[pause]
PE: Don’t worry if you can’t remember.
JM: I’m struggling to remember at the moment.
PE: That’s alright. It’s alright.
JM: Hamburg [unclear] I’m sorry, it’s just —
PE: No. Don’t worry.
JM: It’s a bit hard to.
PE: When, when you were flying the missions were you ever frightened about what you were doing?
JM: Frightened? Not, no, not frightened although on, when we went on our first operation I remember going to the plane and saying, sort of going, ‘Oh, Nuremberg and back,’ to the rest of the crew. So I was a bit, a bit optimistic. But when the, we were approaching the target the bombs, the mid-upper gunner suddenly said, ‘Don’t look at that ahead.’ There were a couple of Lancasters, it was a night mission, blew up. Burst in to flames near us and I remember the mid-upper gunner, the tough taxi driver making the remark, and I remember I was entering my log and my hands started shaking a bit but I wasn’t scared but I just couldn’t control it for a few moments, control my hand. That’s one thing I remember distinctly. But I don’t think, I think we thought we had a feeling of resignation that if it happens it happens and the fact that we were all together gave, gave a certain amount of confidence. The fact we were together as a crew. I think we did. We tended to strengthen each other. Yeah.
PE: I mean obviously a lot of your other squadron members were lost during the, during these missions. How did you feel about that? Did that affect you at all?
JM: Sort of numb really I suppose would be the expression. We would, for instance in the, in the nav, when we were plotting our course in the nav room before we went on a mission there would be, you know the fellas on the other tables that were plotting their course then on the map and then the next night the fella that was next to you at the seat there would be someone else there. And you were [pause] you were sort of aware of that. But the other, the main feeling was we can’t do much about it. We can’t do anything about it. The mid-upper gunner, the fella, over thirty year old, after the first trip said, ‘I’m going LMF,’ which was lack of moral fibre and that involved being stripped in front of the squadron on parade. Stripped of your, your insignia and then, and then being put in jail and put in the thing for a few days. And he said, ‘Well, I’ve had enough of this,’ you know. ‘I’m not doing that again.’ He said, ‘I’ve got two children at home in Sydney and I’m just, whatever I’m going to go through I will.’ But something happened when he came out after the interview with the, the senior officer that interviewed him. He said, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’ll keep going.’ And I think because we were only in our very early twenties you tended to think I don’t think it’ll happen to me. That’s as well as I can remember. I think we were a bit resigned and you couldn’t, you couldn’t face the humility of, with the other people saying, ‘Yes, I’m not doing it any more.’ I think it did happen to odd people but not much. And so I think it’s a fairly, resignation. Well, we’re here. We’re in it. Do the best we can.
PE: How did you feel when you were bombing cities and towns in Germany knowing full well that places like London were being bombed here?
JM: Yes. Well, to be, well generally we sort of you don’t like the thought of what was happening down there but the, while you were actually, while you were doing the job your main concern was doing your job. I had to get to the target. I had to get them there on time and that was the main concern while you were doing it. Naturally, the thought of women and children, you know, in another country that really hadn’t affected you directly you didn’t like the thought of what you were doing but you didn’t think really about it. You thought, oh well, I’ve got to survive. I’ve got to. The job has got to be done. One day, one morning, early one morning we were flying back from one of our raids. I think it was one when we went to Nordhausen which was another place. The dawn was coming and there were, were flying over part of rural Germany coming back and the, the mid-upper gunner said that, ‘Look, we’ve had one or two hangups,’ Bombs that hadn’t released, ‘There’s these places there. We’ll let them have it as we go past them because we could see that they would do it to us.’ But the rest of the crew said, ‘No. No. We won’t do that at all. They, they haven’t hurt us. We’ve, we’ve done what we’ve dropped the bombs on the towns.’ So there was a bit of [unclear]. One of, one of our group would have let them have it. So I think the feeling was in the crew was that there was no real hatred or anything like that. No. It was a case we had to do the job and if possible survive. That’s as I remember it.
PE: That’s good. Can you remember when you left Binbrook?
JM: When I left Binbrook?
PE: When you left Binbrook. When did you go back to Australia?
JM: Well, when the war in Germany ended they asked for volunteers to go on in what they called Tiger Force which was they were going to reform 460 Squadron and were going to go out to Okinawa and bomb Japan and they asked for volunteers. The rest of my crew said, ‘No. We’ve had enough. We’ll go back to Australia.’ And I, for some reason decided no. Well, I was prepared to go to another crew. So they formed us in to a second crew. We started training to go. Go out. But then the war ended in, early in August and the whole thing was finished so we never had to. But that was August 1945. It was a very nice summer and we were suddenly free of the, the threat of being killed and so it was a case of just relaxing and enjoying yourself. And by this time I’d met my wife, Olive a couple of months before and so we spent a bit of time together taking her to the pictures and that sort of thing. One incident, I took her to the pictures one, one afternoon and I said, ‘I’ll get you an ice cream.’ So, well at the interval I go to get her an ice cream and the lights went out. Well, I had the two ice creams but I didn’t know where Olive was so I had to eat the two of them. When the lights came on I was sitting a few seats a few in front of her which she, she thought I’d run out on her but, one thing I remember. But then as it was September I was working with other jobs to do flying. We were flying. We were given the opportunity to fly troops back from Italy which was rather touching. They were very emotional as some of them had been away from England for ten and eleven years. And, and also we dropped, there was the Dutch were starving so we dropped food in the Operation Manna, I think. We had a few trips dropping food to the Dutch. And then that was it. [coughs] Pardon me. Sorry about that.
PE: It’s alright.
JM: My parents, my parents were, by this time were writing saying, ‘When are you coming home? Johnny Hodson in the next street, he’s home. He’s home. Why?’ But I was having, I was enjoying England. At any rate the, the order came back. I had to go back to Australia so that’s what I did. Got on the boat with all the rest of them and came back to peaceful Australia. Landed, when we landed at the wharf there were people all waving to see us. To see you all back. Quite a quite nice seeing my mum and dad and the family were all there along with thousands of other people and it was quite a happy occasion.
PE: Did Olive go back with you at the time?
JM: I beg your pardon?
PE: Did Olive go back with you at the time?
JM: Oh, no. No. We, we wrote to each other for four years after I came back. And I I was doing a course to study civil engineering at Melbourne University and I kept thinking I’ll, I’ll go back to embarkation and propose to her. I kept writing but the bald story is my sister said, ‘What are you going to do about that girl in England?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m going back in embarkation to her.’ She oh she said, ‘Don’t be silly. You’ve waited too long. Write to her and ask if she’d like to come out and hurry. Hurry up and she can stay with me.’ It was rather intimate I suppose as a part of our life. But any rate I wrote to Olive and said will you can come out [unclear] about matrimony. She said yes. And, and that was it. That was in 1952 she arrived at, because there was a shortage of shipping space and at any rate we came out and everything’s has been pretty good since then. We’ve got three sons. They’re men now in their fifties. And we’re still getting along well together.
PE: Yeah. Yeah. So you’ve had your golden wedding.
JM: Yes. We’ve been married sixty two, sixty two years.
PE: Sixty two.
JM: Sixty two years.
PE: Right.
JM: Going on sixty three.
PE: So, what’s that? Is that, that’s diamond isn’t it?
Other: Diamond.
PE: Diamond wedding is it? Yeah.
JM: Olive’s a bit [unclear] deaf.
PE: Yeah. Congratulations.
JM: Could you hear what I said, hun?
OM: Yes. I heard you.
JM: Oh.
OM: Sixty three years.
JM: Yeah.
PE: So, is that diamond wedding is it? Sixty two.
OM: I think so. Yes.
PE: It’s in the sixties anyway. Yeah. Yeah. It’s the diamond wedding. Yeah.
JM: Yes.
PE: Well, thank you very much, Jeff.
JM: Yeah.
PE: That was really good. Have you got any questions you wanted to ask?
Other: No. I mean you’ve covered most of the questions I was after anyway.
PE: I think you got a story in there anyway.
JM: And can, can you scramble out the coughing?
PE: Yeah. Yeah. No, we’ll edit all that out.
JM: Yeah.
PE: Don’t worry about that.
JM: Yes. Yes.
PE: You did remarkably well. Can I just check one thing?
JM: Yes.
PE: You’re in your mid-nineties now.
JM: I’m ninety three.
PE: Ninety three.
JM: Yes.
PE: That’s what I thought. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you did very well to remember all that and you actually told a story which is quite unusual. One of the things that I like to do is find unusual stories in what anybody tells me. We know about your activities in 460 Squadron and the contribution that you made but the interesting thing was your voyage over to America with the German prisoners of war.
JM: Yes.
PE: Now, I’ve never heard that story before.
JM: No.
PE: And that’s very interesting in its own right. So, thank you for that.
JM: Yes. Yes. Well, that’s true. That’s, that’s how it happened.
PE: Good.
JM: Yeah.
PE: Well done. You did very well, Jeff. Thank you.
JM: Oh, thank you.
PE: Thank you. It’s been an honour to meet you. A privilege to talk to you. Thank you very much.
JM: I like to talk about myself [laughs]
PE: Most people do [laughs]
JM: Yes [laughs]
PE: Nothing wrong in that.
JM: Yes.
PE: Well, thanks a lot. That was brilliant.
JM: Yeah. Okay. My pleasure.
PE: That makes quite a good interview—
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jeff Mackay
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Paul Espin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:34:45 Audio Recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMackayWJ150527, PMackayWJ1501
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Jeff Mackay was born in 1922 in Ballarat, Australia and was working as a cadet engineer. He joined the Army but when the Japanese entered the war in 1941 decided to join the RAAF, and after boarding a ship he trained as a navigator in Canada and then went to the UK to commence operational training. After flying training at RAF Llandwrog he was sent to RAF Hixon where he crewed up. It was at a local pub that he and his crew met a gentleman who wore a bowler hat and he befriended the crew and the singer of the crew would borrow his hat to sing songs. When they announced that they were being posted away he gave them the bowler hat, and his skipper would wear the hat on operations. He and his crew were posted to 460 Squadron at RAF Binbrook flying Lancasters and flew eleven operations, the last being on Nuremburg.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1943
1945-02
1945-08
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
United States
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
Germany--Nuremberg
Wales--Gwynedd
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
460 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
entertainment
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
military ethos
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
prisoner of war
RAF Binbrook
RAF Hixon
RAF Llandwrog
superstition
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1421/25207/PBarkFJ1501.1.jpg
60b4b2601044bddb92c66024495846bc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1421/25207/ABarkFJ150527.1.mp3
0d58da1f7b29e39f9914115fef16193b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bark, Frederick James
F J Bark
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bark, FJ
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Fred Bark.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
FB: I’m Fred Bark and I was born at Riseholme two miles north of Lincoln and I, at the beginning of the Second World War I was approximately five years old and I was about two miles from Scampton RAF camp so I noted. We used to watch the aircraft and later in the war they became Lancasters and as they took off they were so low you could wave to the crew and they would wave back. And so also then Sobraon Barracks, the headquarters of the Lincolnshire Regiment was about two miles away and they used to come into the parkland around my bungalow and as a young boy they more or less adopted me and I used to go with them when they were doing their exercises. They showed me how to use a Bren gun and mortar guns. We did map reading which I was useful because I knew the land and took them around. And so I gradually grew up and towards the end of the war I had one sister, Beryl who engaged and later got married to an airman. He was at Hemswell then as a ground crew engineer. He trained to be a flight engineer and that’s when he moved to Binbrook and in Binbrook he did thirty three ops. Fortunately, he came back and in latter years, he was about a year before he was demobbed and then he went to Finningley where he was in a crew that tested aircraft that had crashed or been repaired at Avro’s. And they accepted him back into the RAF so he had one year more or less test flying. Then when he left he went into the Fire Service at Birmingham and later as an officer, a fire officer at a group of hospitals in London. So all my sort of early life was connected with the military. We also had a searchlight battery in the field about a quarter of a mile away. The other thing about RAF Scampton it was a lovely park where I lived and there was a lake and for recreation the flight crews when there wasn’t flying in the evening used to come fishing in the lake. I think for relaxation and then in the evening they would go up to the hall and have late night drinks and go back. So all my life in the early years was connected with the military. Either the Army and the RAF chiefly but now I’ve got a son in the Navy.
PE: I’ll just ask you a couple of questions, Fred. When you were at Scampton and you saw the Lancasters flying out and flying in, when they were flying in did you see any that were damaged?
FB: Yes. I did. We had two actually crash within half a mile of our bungalow and it wasn’t a nice sight. The thing I can remember it seemed to hit the edge at one end of the field and all the debris flew backwards and covered an area at least as large as a football pitch. And so there was one to the north of me and one to the south. And the other thing that used to happen was we used to try to count them going out in the evening and I believe I don’t know if it was short wave or long wave but on the radio you could pick their talk as they came in to land. Some would say they wanted an emergency landing, they’d got people injured on board and so we had an idea, a good idea what the losses was for that evening. And, but the things that you did you just took things that are serious now more an everyday life. And one, when we was fishing and I was talking to some of the crew I was saying, ‘Where’s Bill —’ such and such and the reply was, ‘He’s gone for a burton.’ And then you didn’t say any more then.
PE: And as a child when you saw the Lancasters flying out and then coming in did you find that sort of exciting?
FB: No. I think we took it for granted. It was four or five years of the same thing. Obviously the weather made a big difference. You would be, they were scheduled to fly and then over the target it would be cloudy. So that evening they had to do something that they hadn’t got planned and my brother in law who flew from Binbrook would bring them and they would have supper and then they would hitchhike back to base. So I think the whole country was at war and you just accepted these things happened.
PE: Your brother in law when he was flying out of Binbrook do you know what sort of missions he was flying?
FB: No. They didn’t talk too much about it but he was in the latter part of the war in ’43 ’44ish which was the thirty three ops and he would say, ‘Oh, it was a long one,’ or a short one but they, I think they just tried to live a normal life. I think the biggest worry we had, my sister who was obviously married at the time lived at Grimsby but the worry of the people left behind while the crews knew perhaps every eight trips one wouldn’t come back. I think the people, the crews was always cheerful and I don’t know if it would be to help them but I think the worrying people was us watching.
PE: So, do you think it had a big impact on your family like your parents and —
FB: Well, it had. I’d no brothers. Just the one sister. He had a big impact on me because he was such a lovely person. He was well respected by everyone. When he was a young man he came from Birmingham and he run the local football leagues. He went into the Birmingham Fire Service and after a number of years there there was a vacancy for the hospital as a fire officer. And after a severe accident they found out, the hospital people had nobody qualified so he was ideal to go in a hospital environment sort of thing. But one thing, he was very good at sort of taking things down. Literature, and his logbook I understood was sent down to St Athans as example of an aircrew from taking off, over the bombing area and back. I can remember looking at this book when it was handed to him at the end of the war. You couldn’t see any tremor or anything. Just it was normal and he was a good, but he was an extremely likeable person. One other thing I can remember now. One of these evenings when he wasn’t flying he brought a friend back and he was a member, he was called West and they was a very big garage and sales people in Lincoln and he was piggy backing me on a lovely summer’s evening in the park and pretending to throw me into some nettles and that. I can see it now. And I asked Sid next day how was Mr West and he had gone for a burton. These are the things I really remember.
PE: Was your sister married to your brother in law at the time? Or were they just boyfriend and girlfriend?
FB: No. He was, I think met at a dance at Lincoln I can imagine when he was at Hemswell and after two or three or perhaps two years they got married when he became aircrew which a lot did. And so all his ops from Binbrook he was married to my sister and she went to lodge in Grimsby so she was nearby.
PE: Did that affect your sister a lot? With her knowing that he was flying these ops?
FB: I think it did. But you learned in the war years not to show too much because it was every family had an event. My neighbour, her son which was a little bit older than me he went in for aircrew and he didn’t make the eight trips. So it was all around you. It’s a thing you didn’t talk about but as you get older you do think about it.
PE: So you feel you are able to talk about things now where you didn’t at the time.
FB: Yes. I think because I was young at the time it was exciting for me to have all these people around me. And I think being a young boy and the soldiers and airmen had families of their own it was a bit of comfort to them. But me at the time it was just a way of life. And my families being, my mother had five brothers in the First World War in France and one in the second one. My father had a brother. Both of them was in the First World War so it was just natural really that we just wanted to win.
PE: Can you think of anything that happened during the Second World War that you found amusing?
FB: Not really. The thing I think I notice more everybody stuck together as you would say in Lincolnshire. Everybody helped each other. I don’t think anybody was really miserable because you thought if you was miserable well the enemy was winning. It’s comradeship. And I think that went right through the whole country. London had their bombing. We had something else but it was, I think they could do with a little bit of that spirit now.
PE: Okay, Fred that was great. Thank you very much. Thank you. There are some nice little snippets in there.
FB: Yeah.
PE: One of the doors squeaking away.
FB: When you finish you think of other. No. But —
PE: No.
FB: Yes.
PE: I mean the camera’s still live. If you can think of something else that’s fine. But no, you did really well. There’s some interesting things in there.
FB: Yeah.
PE: That —
FB: Thinking about it.
PE: You wouldn’t normally hear you know.
FB: No.
PE: So that was good, you know. So —
FB: It does make me feel old.
PE: Sorry?
FB: Makes me feel old.
PE: Oh, well you sort of lived through it.
FB: Oh, yes.
PE: That’s how you get to be old. You live through things, you know.
FB: I did two years National Service.
PE: Yeah.
FB: In the RAF at Marham and, but my son he’s made a career of the Navy and thirty years in it. Thirty one now. That’s gone quick as lightning really. I can remember him just joining up sort of thing. And so I think like my mother coming out of thirteen children, my wife’s family fifteen children everybody turns out well and are good civilians. It does make me wonder what the country is coming to now when you’ve got to have handouts if you got two or three children. People were a lot more better organised than they are now.
PE: Yeah.
FB: I find technology I think can be helpful but I’ve always looked at that as a tool to use the best parts of it. Don’t let it, I mean what annoys me is that the people who walk out of the store and the first thing is they look at their phone. And they’re, you sit in a bus and they’re tip tapping about and I think well haven’t you something better to do than that? Sort of thing. So, like when I was young you used to think well older people are talking a bit silly but now I am older you can look back on a lot wider spectrum can’t you. You can see that everything has moved on in say ten years then you have to alter with it. But technology I think we think it will look after us but it will ruin us if we don’t.
PE: Yeah. That’s fine. That’s lovely, Fred. Thanks for that.
FB: Yeah. Rightio.
PE: Now what I’ll do is I’ll switch the camera off now.
FB: Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Frederick James Bark
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Paul Espin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:17:24 audio recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABarkFJ150527, PBarkFJ1501
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Frederick was born near Lincoln. He was five years old at the beginning of the Second World War. He grew up about two miles from RAF Scampton. He recalls waving to crew as they left. He also recalls going with soldiers from the Lincolnshire regiment headquarters and being shown how to use mortars and Bren guns and do map reading. Frederick’s brother-in-law was an airman, originally used to fly out at RAF Binbrook in the latter part of the war, and had been in the Birmingham fire service. Frederick explains the effect that the anxiety of waiting for aircrew to return that his sister went through.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Birmingham
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
Civilian
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
William Evans
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
aircrew
childhood in wartime
RAF Binbrook
RAF Scampton
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/22529/ASmithRW190325.2.mp3
d4141e837d5350df08734bd3233cd24b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, RW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
LC: Okay, this is an interview with Robert, Bob, Wally Smith 425992, navigator, 15 Squadron, Royal Air Force. The interview is being conducted at the residence of Bob and Alma Smith [redacted] Boulevard, Queensland, on Monday 25th March by myself, Wing Commander Lee Collins of People’s History and Heritage Branch. This interview will be recorded and may be transcribed and will become property and part of the Historical Collection of the Royal Australian Air Force and Bomber Command and be available to future researchers. So Bob, thanks again for agreeing to be interviewed. It’s my privilege to interview you and to obtain your personal account of your experiences of service in the RAF and particularly as a navigator on ops with RAF Bomber Command during World War Two. So, I’d like to maybe begin the interview by, if you go back to your early childhood and upbringing, and your family and schooling before you joined the air force. So, your early life, so where were you born? Where did you grow up?
BS: Well now, I was born in Brisbane, back in 1924. My father had been in the World War One, he was a, wounded three times, and he was original in the 41st Battalion.
LC: 41st Battalion, okay, yeah.
BS: He came back and he, when he got married to my mother, you know, she was also in that, from that district, they rented a corner shop, at the corner, a corner shop, was at the corner of Ipswich Road and Victoria Terrace in Annerley in Brisbane.
LC: Yeah, yeah, yep.
BS: Now, well we grew up there, normal thing, and started school I think it was 1928, at the Junction Park State School. Now his mother had another daughter and a son-in-law who were managing the farm for her, the old family farm known as Greenwood, in Harrisall.
LC: And where was that?
BS: Harrisall, ‘bout two and a half mile, or a couple miles south east of Harrisall on the Malara road, on the road to what they called Malara, or on through to Kalbar, and Boonah, you know.
LC: Boonah. Yup.
BS: Well at the end of 1932, he had to, he sold the business and we went back to the farm. Went to, took up the farm, so the family, we went, while he was arranging transfer, my mother took the family, myself and my two sisters and young brother, went on holiday up to Maleny while dad organised the thing and he, he drove the horse and cart from Annerley up to the farm.
LC: And how far was that?
BS: Oh all day. And we come up, take it after there, well of course then we followed, we went up to the farm then and settled in with Granny Smith. Now we thought at the time, woah great, Granny Smith, you know, she must be famous, she’s had an apple named after her!
LC: Exactly!
BS: But we soon found out, but she was a wonderful person, mum, granny; she was an original. Between Granny Smith and myself, Granny Smith, migrated to Australia as a young girl in 1855 while Queensland was still part of New South Wales, you know. They moved to Queensland then a couple of years later and with her father she moved up to the, near to the district what they call the Pink Mountain Holding in about 1858, ‘59, something like that. They were then since at Churchill, a place called Churchill down where there was a cotton ginnery established, ‘cause cotton was the main thing in those days, you know. And that’s how they, the Smiths had to, worked up to Harrisall ‘cause they were given a grant and land to grow cotton. Now we started school then at Malara. In 1932 get on and I did a, went through there and did scholarship at the Malara School, at the Malara School and now by virtue that dad was a returned Digger, I won a Naracelle scholarship to attend the Ipswich Boys Grammar School as a boarder for two years, so ‘cause dad couldn’t afford to be, at the end of that, I did, I finished and while just before -
LC: What years were that, your last two years of high school?
BS: ‘38, ‘39.
LC: So that was your last two years at high school.
BS: Yeah, ‘38, ‘39, the, and when we finished, ‘39 just before we finished the junior exam, war had been declared over Britain, you see. Now, I came back with the scholarship and with the tertiary education opened up room for me to apply for work in the public service or the bank or thing, which I did, I applied to commence work in the bank in Harrisall, and I was accepted. Accepted as a temporary clerk on probation I think it was, whatever it was, and I was still a temporary clerk on probation when I went to join the air force two years later!
LC: So you are what, about seventeen, seventeen years of age at this stage?
BS: Yeah, now where, I went into the bank then. Now just after I joined the bank, I got a communication from school and from the air force, we were given notification to apply, if we were interested in joining the air force, ‘cause I always stated I would be, we could apply to be registered as air cadets by correspondence.
LC: Okay, yes, yes.
BS: So I took that offer up. I asked, got my parents’ permission do that there. Dad was quite happy that I go in to the air force in a way, although I realised what, what strain I did put on him, to go in, but not into the army, you know.
LC: So did you have any, what was the reason you were more interested in the air force than the army? Your dad was a Digger in the 41st Battalion.
BS: The air force, so I did that, I did the courses with the air cadets, get this thing, when I finished the tests each, as each step went along, the air tests, took ‘em to the headmaster at the Woolora School, he ticked them off, that okay and advised the air force, the air cadet training system okay, see me right, carry on.
LC: And that’s that exercise book you showed me.
BS: Now, when Japan raided Germany, raided -
LC: Pearl Harbour.
BS: Pearl Harbour then in December ‘41, there was a bit of a panic among the air force, because all of us, we couldn’t join the air force until we were nineteen, that means you, in those days to be, you had to go into initial training at about two months before your nineteenth birthday, so that you were ready then for flying, you couldn’t fly till you were nineteen, you know, or go overseas anything like that, volunteers, so and then also on the reserve at that time were a lot of unprotected occupations, school teachers, a lot of school teachers had applied and they were very keen to get school teachers to do the course and they could go on as instructors ‘cause they needed them for the Empire Air Training Scheme you know. The air force jumped at the crews then, that they would form what they call air crew guards and that means that we could go in and that avoided us being called up into the militia. It was quite good. So with that I then had to apply to the bank for leave then and that was granted and so in May 1942, it didn’t take ‘em long, air crew guard callups were held in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne to bring up a lot of these, make sure the militia didn’t get us, you know, the army didn’t get us at that age. Although some blokes did, were called up for the militia apparently and, but they then told the militia to go to hell. They went in to the air force.
LC: Can I just step back one? You mentioned where you were when, you were at the bank when Germany, we declared war on Germany in ‘39 and then when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941, do you remember those times well? Do you remember sort of, you know in September 1939 when war was declared do you remember what you were doing or did you have any particular thoughts what were you thinking when something was declared? What was Bob Smith thinking?
BS: Just put the thing into working, getting organised in the bank, you know, winding the office clock every Monday morning, getting out the fresh blotting paper, gradually working in, getting on. No, but that was right. Still carried on, played a bit of sport around Harrisall, lived on the farm, where you learned a lot.
LC: What about December 1941, when, so, Australia had already been at war for a while-
BS: Yeah, that’s right.
LC: So in, suddenly you hear Japan has attacked Pearl Harbour, do you remember where, what you were doing when you heard that news?
BS: No, no, not much, we just thought ah, well things are coming and then of course we found out on the news about it, this going on and coming out and then it was all in the papers, conscription was gonna be brought in.
LC: Was there much an awareness before that of any concerns about Japan before war was actually declared, for a number of years?
BS: Yeah, there was, bit like, in 19, back just after we went to the farm there was a bit of concerns going on about Germany, you know, because we had German occupations and I remember an old German farmer that lived near us, we used to meet him now and again and ‘Oh you’re joining the air force eh, you’re going to go over there, good show, that Hitler he bad man’, you know things just sort of rolled one thing into the other. Then when we, when the call came up and we went in to, in May 1942 we were called down to Brisbane, to the recruiting depot. Went through all the jazz there, then that evening given our numbers and whatnot, told us to take the oath and all this business, and sign up and shoved on a train that night up to Maryborough.
LC: Right. So then when you then signed on do you remember where exactly in Brisbane that was? Where did you actually sign on?
BS: Eagle Street in Brisbane.
LC: Eagle Street, okay.
BS: Recruiting Depot. Number, number whatever Brisbane number 3 Recruiting Depot in Eagle Street in Brisbane.
LC: Now that stage, you were going in the air force, but did you actually have confirmation that you were going in as aircrew or were you just joining the air force and see what?
BS: No, we were going to be training as aircrew under Empire Air Training Scheme.
LC: Right, so you knew that when you went and put your hand on the bible.
BS: I asked that earlier about the thing there at that stage when you went in air crew were you aware of the dangers of flying over in Germany, things like that, you know, I said, well we were. Because I had two cousins from, who lived up in Maleny, they were both shot down in England, one in 1940 he was in early in a Blenheim, flying in a Blenheim, the other one, no he was in a Whitley and the other one was flying out of Libya, he crashed, he was shot down off Tripoli, rescued by an Italian ship, navy ship and taken to Italy. When they came down into the sea, he was badly damaged, these reports as they say, in Germany, in the German reports for the thing ‘received in damaged condition’, but he couldn’t walk, okay. Now he thanks the German doctors for getting him back to walking. Their spinal treatment, that was way above. They came, he was shoved from hospital to hospital in Italy and one night a Luftwaffe officer came in there, looked at him, and looked and he says we’re taking you back to Germany, I we think we can fix you. To a German Luftwaffe -
LC: Hospital.
BS: Which they did, and they got him. I think the bloke was a bit like Douglas Bader, I think they might have been sorry they did fix him up.
LC: [Laugh] So he caused more trouble after they fixed him!
BS: I tell you what, he caused them a bit of trouble! He was that sort of bloke.
LC: So he’s wonderful. What was his name?
BS: Cuthbertson. Guy Cuthbertson.
LC: And the other guy that was shot down in the Whitley?
BS: The bloke was Bill McLean.
LC: Did he survive?
BS: No, no he was killed. He was killed. They shot down, they’ve since found out the pilot that shot him down and got a rough idea of where he crashed into the North Sea. That’s all right.
LC: Okay, but you knew about this.
BS: Then my others, my brother’s, my mother’s other sister that lived in Ipswich, she had a son who was in the navy, he was in, he went down with the Perth, actually didn’t go down with the Perth, they found out later that he did get off the Perth, and they got ashore and they were murdered by the Indonesians who thought they were Dutch.
LC: Is that right? Okay. You know a lot of the survivors of the Perth were captured by the Japanese.
BS: Yeah, yeah. We more or less knew the dangers we were going in to, you know.
LC: So knew, all this occurred when you, before you enlisted. Okay, so you put your hand on the bible, you’ve gone up to Maryborough. So what happened at Maryborough?
BS: Route marches in the morning. First thing out, you’re up, got issued with your dungarees and stuff like that and a route march first in the morning, quite try to remind them we didn’t join the air force to march.
LC: What was that unit called?
BS: Eh?
LC: Do you remember the name of the unit?
BS: No, just Recruit Depot.
LC: Recruit Depot, okay.
BS: No, no, in that thing there, Maryborough, yeah, at the Maryborough airport, yeah.
LC: Okay right. Fair enough.
BS: We quick learnt to go into town, get a, probably walk in to town or get a, don’t know how we got in to town half the time or something, but to come home at night all you do was pick a, outside the pictures grab a bike, ride it home and leave it the main gate. Of course Maryborough soon got used to it I think if your bike was missing you went down to the base and there it was the next morning!
LC: You went down to the base. It was like an honour system.
BS: It was quite good. So when we finished our course there we were assigned to guard duties and I was posted through to Cootamundra, Number 2 AOS at Cootamundra.
LC: Cootamundra?
BS: Yeah. They, they looked upon the Queenslanders quite freshly, they gave us an extra blanket, we used to say they should also give us a WAAF, but they wouldn’t be in that.
LC: No, no, no!
BS: No, no. So we decide the better thing there was a newspaper in between the two blankets and that was quite warm enough, you know. Down to Cootamundra.
LC: It gets a bit nippy down there doesn’t it!
BS: It was a bit nippy, yeah. We found out. You could go on guard duty at least, but at least you could take a, have a heart or an ice cream, type of thing out leave it on top of a post or something it stayed frozen for the night, you know. Bit cheeky, you could crawl up in to an Anson or something now and again, and have a bit of a sneak look or if nobody was around, nobody looked around.
LC: What was that school there? What was Cootamundra, what was the purpose?
BS: Air Observer School, Number 2 Air Observer School and also 75 Squadron was formed there at the time. Now when we were at Cootamundra, a couple of things happened there, that’s the first experience we had of death in the air force, crews from the training unit, one of I think it was about 76 Squadron, or something like that, in a Beaufighter come in and they landed at Cootamundra, but must have done a tight turn in the thing and stalled and then crashed on take off. Well we were called out to the scene and I’ve got to thank an old, he was a fatherly sort of a corporal in charge of the guards or something like that, when we got out there he said to us young blokes, he said ‘Now listen you young fellers, don’t take this to heart. There’s nothing you can do for these fellers now, they’re gone; death is death. Accept it. That’s it.’ And it was wonderful advice, for what we.
LC: Yeah. Because they’re beyond suffering at that stage.
BS: We sat out there at the beginning of that and it was, it was a mess.
LC: You were guarding the aircraft were you?
BS: I can still remember the pilot, he was thrown out of it and his body was, what was left of it, was about well probably a couple of chain away. The second officer, it’d be his observer, was just a, every bone in his body had been smashed, he was just a lump sitting in that, in there, and they moved it out and what struck us then too was they come in, they picked up the pilot, bits, they come in and they looked out and on the thing and to make up a bit of weight, put in a bit of a sand bag, to make it look okay and that. So they’d get it back to the thing.
LC: To go for the burial later.
BS: While we, while we sat there, we, while there, time passed during the day with, I can still remember once, we had a young bloke from, he was from Sydney or something, looked out and he saw these rabbits running around over there, he’d like to shoot one. He said, ‘Well there’s one under the fence over there’, but we looked out and said ‘No, can’t see a rabbit there’, but there was a fair size of a stone, a stone there. ‘No, I’ll have a shot.’ Well he did. He was pretty good: he hit it, but the bullet ricocheted off that stone, and the whine of the bullet, well what was the funny part of that was, just after that whine there was the sheep all over the place, scattering, the whine then sheep going everywhere.
LC: Didn’t have to account for the bullet? He didn’t have to account for the bullet?
BS: Then also at night they’d have to occasionally send us out to the fuel dump which was about a mile out of town or something on the road and we’d live in a tent there, and unfortunately, we’d take a bit of fruit out or something and we trained the possums to eat out of our hand which we regretted later ‘cause they’d get up on the top of the tent and bash up and down and make a hell of a racket! They were a nuisance. Then to fill in a bit of time one night, we get on with things that, oh this is boring and whatnot. I’m to blame for this, the, I don’t know what it was that flew overhead us, something went overhead, but I upped with the rifle, had a shot at it and missed. Well it wasn’t long before boy they heard it back at the station, come flying out and we had to report to the CO the next day. So I told ‘em at the time, I said, ‘No, no’, I said ‘Look there’s a bloke coming along the fence there, and he was trying to get through, I gave him the order, halt or fire, and I fired a shot in the air, there were two shots and he didn’t get, so I fired another one’ and ‘Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, okay, righto, well you better get out the range tomorrow, you blokes, the company.’ So went out to the range. I don’t know what the report was I think, ‘cause when we come to the range they put us on two hundred yards. I got two bulls and three inners, and four inners with me six shots!
LC: That’s all right.
BS: When he said to me, ‘Oh’, he said ‘Don’t worry, that bullet wouldn’t have gone too far off him.’
LC: Excellent.
BS: I got him. But they tried to look through the fence to find a bit of clothing, and wander round the fence, but nothing was there.
LC: Yeah, yeah. Of course.
BS: That was all right. But that went off and then eventually came before, a few months to go we were called up to Number 2 ITS at Bradfield Park for initial training school.
LC: Where’s Bradfield Park?
BS: Bradfield Park at Ipswich, in Sydney.
LC: In Sydney.
BS: Linfield I think it was, the name, it was a, it didn’t have a very good name, old Bradfield Park apparently.
LC: Can I just ask a question first before you go there. You mention when you went to Cootamundra was the Air Observer School, now at what stage, did, how did they make the decision, you knew you’re going in as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, at what stage was the decision made which guys would go off as pilots and which ones would go off as navigators?
BS: At the initial training school.
LC: Right. How do they make that decision?
BS: That’s the idea of the Initial Training School, you go through all this training, various things, you know. They used to have a thing like a pilot, like kicking around to adjust your thing and I, I came through that when we went to the selection committee for the, after that, they just looked at it and say, they looked at it and say, ‘Oh, you’re a pilot.’ God. You’re above average at everything or something, like that you’re going to be a pilot. I said ‘I don’t want to be a pilot’ because not long before this came out rumour was getting around that those who were selected as navigators and air bombers were to go to Canada for training and then to go on to the new four engined aircraft that were coming in to operation over in England, you know. I said, boy go to Canada, that sounds all right to me. I said ‘No, no I want to be a navigator, my thing’s set on being a navigator’. ‘Why do you want to be a navigator?’ ‘Well I’m just interested in maths’, you know. He said ‘Well you got a good high score in your maths stuff like that. All right’, he says. So I went off happy as Larry.
LC: There you go.
BS: So we went off on leave then, home for pre-embarkation leave. And we had to be back at the embarkation depot number two it was, in Sydney, wasn’t it, embarkation depot, on the 10th of January. That was my nineteenth birthday.
LC: That was ‘43. January 1943. Yep.
BS: Yeah. 1943.
LC: That’s pretty quick from you know 7th 8th of December when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour to early January, that’s very quick.
BS: 19, yeah. So we got sorted out then. So that was us at the embarkation depot. While I was at home, of course naturally our farewells and whatnot, moving around and the normal things, you know, and I suppose one of those things but I was, somehow I never doubted, that I’d, that I’d be killed; I’d come back. It was just there, something, something told me and I believed it. So that stood by me.
LC: Yeah, yeah. Well it worked obviously.
BS: Never knew fear when I was operating, we never worried. We had a crew that, all the while, we only had one, but had a pilot, I can tell you more about him later on, but he was excellent and he always believed in: “you’re not in trouble till you’re hit”. You just carry on as normal; things are normal. There could be flak flying around you, could be fighters looking, lurking around. Until he hits yer, you just carry on, then you treat the position as it is.
LC: That’s right.
BS: That’s well, and he, I suppose this is what stuck to us when we, when we went into Canada, forgot now, oh where were we there?
LC: You’re at the embarkation point. Can I just ask one further question? At the Air Observer School, was there any flying training there or was that all ground school? At the Air Observer School did you do flying training there at Maryborough or was that-
BS: No, no, no.
LC: That was all ground school.
BS: No flying training, we weren’t allowed to fly, until you’re nineteen. Through Initial Training School at Bradfield Park, there’s no flying training there, anything like that.
LC: That didn’t really start till you got to Canada.
BS: It’s not till you go to, then if you’re a pilot you go to what they call an Elementary Flying Training School.
LC: Then on to the, you know, Tiger Moths and that sort of thing.
BS: Or a navigator to a nav course, to a bomber, to a bomb aimer’s course, to WAGs course, or wireless operators course, that sort of thing.
LC: So you’re at embarkation, so at this stage so you’d had some period on leave, some embarkation leave. So you got back to Queensland.
BS: Yeah, yeah, got back to Queensland and I went, caught the train then went down to Brisbane on the train and down to Sydney and while we’re at, attached to the embarkation depot at Sydney, we were allowed, leave was pretty good, lot of sports and that. A few, they put us through a bit of a experiment there. We were called up one day to go out to the University of Sydney, they were doing experiments on sea sickness.
LC: Okay.
BS: And what they, what we done, we were strapped to, we were put into stretchers and they were swung from ceiling to ceiling.
LC: Are you all willing volunteers for this?
BS: Out we went, oh, we’re given a lovely dinner, roast lamb and peas and whatnot sort of. Mine didn’t last too long I can tell yer! [Laughter] But we had one bloke there, they couldn’t make him sick. That was this.
LC: And that was handy training before you jump on board the ship.
BS: Yeah, and a lot of other things you could do, you could go on, there were lessons in sailing and swimming and all various things you get to do.
LC: So how long was this period?
BS: And then a few lectures during the day from blokes that coming back from England, that had completed all the latest on the war, or something like that, you know, intelligence reports, various subjects going through there while you’re on embarkation, but leave was pretty good, over weekends.
LC: So how long was that period, you know, of embarkation?
BS: We were there not all that long, about a month I got. We, I embarked on the 10th of February.
LC: 10th of February.
BS: On the Hermitage.
LC: The Hermitage.
BS: On a ship called the Hermitage. It was an Italian ship that had been, when war broke out in England and it was in the Suez Canal port and it was interned there, so it left.
LC: Okay, yeah.
BS: When Japan bombed Pearl Harbour the American government commandeered it, they took it over, moved it to the east coast of America to a place called I think it was Norfolk or something.
LC: Norfolk, Virginia.
BS: Yeah. For it to be converted to a troop ship.
LC: Okay.
BS: Armed, armed with guns on the rear and stuff like that, you know, it could do about, travel about twenty four knots or something like that I think and was regarded, it could zigzag a course and fast enough to dodge submarines, you know, so we ended up on the old Hermitage.
LC: Right.
BS: Now, get on the Hermitage, landed there, Woolloomooloo on the night, on the day of the 10th I think on the 9th, it might have been the 9th of February and sailed on the 10th anyway, of February.
LC: Did it sail on its own or were you part of a convoy?
BS: Eh?
LC: Was there any escorts or did you sail on your own?
BS: No, we sailed on our own. We, out of, the first day out of Sydney, we sailed from Woolloomooloo, the first day out of Sydney we were escorted by two destroyers. One was a Dutch destroyer and they get out but the next morning they’d gone.
LC: Yeah, ‘cause there was the submarine threat.
BS: More or less the zigzag course, then they got, put us on to lectures during the day and stuff like that, you know.
LC: Were you aware of the submarine threat, of the submarine threat while you were on board the ship?
BS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
LC: Did they have special, any drills?
BS: They did because they, on these lectures and that, we thought well this is a bit of a gem of an idea, the lectures, I thought, and I went round once on the deck, we’re allowed the deck space, you’re on a Yankee ship, now you only got two meals a day when transit, the American ships, you know, and I wander around looking, I’m on the deck and didn’t have a life jacket on, you see so I’m nabbed, Oi! No life jacket on the deck, down to kitchen duty. Three days kitchen duty but I tell you gee this turns out all right.
LC: All right!
BS: You can have three meals a day, you cart hot stuff around and although that’s where I got to like sauerkraut and saveloys and of course baked beans, typical Americans. And then after the three days, we get on, get up to wander round the deck, [unclear] I got nabbed again, back down the kitchen duty you see. But then we’re getting to on then, was on the last day of that when we called in to Pango Pango.
LC: American Samoa.
BS: No leave there, and word got around then the next stop would be Honolulu, we’d be given leave there, we would be stopping overnight you know, Pango Pango we stopped overnight. So I said well no after this we won’t worry about this ‘cause you know we better have a bit of leave in Honolulu, when we get there, if we get there. But just before we got to Pango Pango, I think it was about two days before, we drifted for quite a while one night. Now what it was there was some rumours around they think there was a sub in the area and they shut the engines off, something like that, but the next day we get going again and whatnot, if they’re worried about a sub or leaving any remark, then woke up during that day that it had taken on a lot of supplies for the north, to take the troops over for the North American landing and they had a lot of supplies on board, you know, but they had a lot of chocolates on, Chorley’s chocolates, and they’d gone bad in the Tropics, stuff like that, so these Chorley’s chocolate bars, they were leaving -
LC: Leaving a trail of chocolates.
BS: Leaving a trail of Chorley’s chocolates out, oh god.
LC: I can just picture that, a Japanese submarine following a trail of chocolates to the Hermitage!
BS: But they wouldn’t have caught up with us anyway ‘cause they were doing twenty four knots and that, they cruise along pretty well, it was not a bad ship like that.
LC: So when you’re not getting nabbed and doing kitchen duty, what was the standard routine on, you had lectures, training, PT?
BS: Yeah. You were on training or you could be assigned to gun duty at the back, but they soon gave that away to the Aussies, ‘cause they used to have to put up a weather balloon every so often, if Aussies were on the gun crew they shot at it.
LC: Took pot shots out of it.
BS: They popped at it. They’d get it. So we were out of favour. [Laughter]
LC: So the crew was all American were they?
BS: Yeah, but they had the canteen was open for an hour a day, you could get sandwiches there, and we’d generally get on. Now, while we were going across there, we had a group we called the Bunduck club, I don’t know how they got that name, but they used to, they sat around the deck. Well I never had much to do with them ‘cause I got sent down for kitchen duty. But this bloke had a gramophone, only had one record, it was “In the Mood”, and of course by the we time got down there and get to Pango Pango and going off on this one record the needle had had it, you know, [unclear] so when we go on the leg up to, going up to Honolulu they reckon they’ve got to, on back on the Bunduck Club, they reckon right we’ve got to get a gramophone needle when we get to Honolulu, you know. So we cruise along to Honolulu all right, with odd lectures and stuff like that. We managed to get by.
LC: So how long was the cruise?
BS: Eh?
LC: How long did it take to get to Honolulu?
BS: Four weeks.
LC: Four weeks to Honolulu.
BS: Well no, three weeks, we got the, we got six days, it was a week to Pango Pango, another week to Honolulu, another week to, or just about a week.
LC: Okay. So your time in Honolulu did it that, you said you had some leave. Did the ship go in to Honolulu Harbour or did it go in to Pearl Harbour?
BS: No, into Honolulu Harbour. Now we were split into two, one lot were given leave the afternoon we arrived there, it was about midday we arrived there about then, they were given leave till about eighteen hundred hours or something like that, then in the morning we were also given leave till 23:59 hours. So away we go, few of us, and this bloke out chasing this gramophone needle, you know. Now that’s the first time I’d ever struck traffic driving on the wrong side of the road.
LC: Oh yes, of course you did.
BS: So my mother went close to receiving that telegram!
LC: Oh dear!
BS: You look right and step out and the next minute, this thing come phoom, great negro driving this truck, bloody hell! Oh boys we got to look the other way! So we go round looking for this gramophone needle. Well, we’re getting shown everything: bloody knitting needles and darning needles and sewing needles, and all sorts of needles, you know. We had this bloke Russ Martin, Russ was a bit of a wag, real outgoing bloke, so we go into one place, and of course what we couldn’t understand, what we noticed also there was the large Japanese population in all the stores, and guards on every door, on every shop door.
LC: American guards.
BS: Yeah. And of course If any, they they stuttered they get shot, no muckin’ around. So we go in to this place, and old Russ no, no gramophone needle, you know, you’ve got to think thing you turn round and round and you put the thing down – ah you mean a phonograph needle!
LC: Oh right, yes!
BS: So then we’re right, we got our phonograph needle.
LC: Once you know the American lingo you’re all right.
BS: So we got that and another bloke and myself, Noel Hooper, we come out, and we’re wearing our tropical uniforms, Noel came from Nambour and he was shot down too, but evaded capture and died not long after the war, but he, we’d come on back and this Yankee bloke come and talk to us, what you got to do, would you like come and have a look at Pearl Harbour? He was a Yankee officer. Well, that’ll be great, but he took us to, we went through two check points, now at the last checkpoint we’re looking down on Pearl Harbour and now at this time it was about half past eleven, you know, we said to him ‘Listen we can’t go on we’ve got to be back on the ship by 23:59’, ‘Oh okay’, he said, no, no but we’d got that far, you know, he was quite willing to, take us down there. Generous, so he took us back to the ship then.
LC: But you didn’t quite get to Pearl Harbour.
BS: We got a chance to look down on Pearl Harbour. Just to look down on.
LC: Oh, you looked down on it. Could you see the damage?
BS: Yeah, yeah. So that, that was a bit of an experience.
LC: Well it would have been, yeah, only months after.
BS: Then we went, went back on to board the ship then sailed. And as for sitting out on the deck playing the gramophone record that was out of the question, ‘cause God it was cold! The seas were rough and cold eh, once we left Honolulu, oh, just lousy. Fortunately at Honolulu they must have anticipated this, we were issued with sheepskin jackets those, from the Australian Comforts Fund. They come in handy.
LC: Yeah. They would’ve. So where were you sailing to now?
BS: Going to San Francisco.
LC: San Francisco, okay.
BS: So we met then, came into San Fran after a couple of days of that, getting the seagulls around and whatnot, come in to San Francisco, under the Golden Gate Bridge, coming up the Golden Gate Bridge, the ship’s not going to go under there! Look that! But there was tons of room.
LC: Oh yeah, just a bit!
BS: Oh what a sight, you know. Pulled up opposite Alcatraz, the prison camp, and we were unloaded pretty quickly and put on to ferries to go over to Oakland, where we were put on to a train, we got a meal and put on to a train and then sent north to go up to, through, Oregon, Seattle and Vancouver. That was a⸻
LC: You didn’t get any—
BS: So on the train--
LC: So you didn’t get any time off in San Francisco, just normal movements.
BS: No, no, we caught the ferry across. We were away that afternoon on the train from Oakland, you know, and just with our wanted on voyage luggage or something, you know, not wanted on voyage would have been unloaded, it was following us somewhere. So we get, and that was an experience ‘cause to get on to the train then oh god it was comfort, it was warm and negro walking around, magazines, ice cream, anything, oh god everything, you’re whipping through, the damn thing’s going that fast you couldn’t count the telephone poles going past, you know. Boy this is not like the Queensland ride! [laughs] What a great trip that was.
LC: Did you do any stops on the way to Vancouver, did you stop on the way?
BS: Yeah, couple of stops at Salem or something.
LC: Or Seattle.
BS: All the meals were on the train. One thing we sort of noticed a lot, no fences between buildings, and a lot of them not painted, you know really a difference you know, different, fir trees right on up till we got nearly to Seattle and then we couldn’t get over, that’s when we first sighted Mount St Helens, blew up later there.
LC: That’s the one, yes.
BS: All the snow on top of it.
LC: Yeah, yeah.
BS: And then in to Seattle and then moved on then up to Vancouver.
LC: Right.
BS: Got to Vancouver and then, that was early morning, the meal, breakfast at the station, issued with Canadian currency and given the leave for the day. Now that was my first contact with Rotary. A bloke, a Rotarian, said you blokes come round, you like to look around? So he drove us around town and out to the Capilano -
LC: Yup. The Narrows.
BS: Where it is, the park out there, you know and looked out at about mid-day, he says ‘What I’ll do’, he says ‘I’ll take you round’ and he went away, come round, then he arranged to come back and pick us up, ‘You go out and wander around the park there, you know, I’ll come back and pick you up at about three o’clock or some [unclear] and take you back to the station, give you a look around town and take you back to the station so you can meet, you’ve got to be there at 1800 hours or something and head off up over the Rockies to Edmonton.’ So he did that.
LC: And he was with the Rotary.
BS: We had a pretty full day.
LC: So you’re back on the train again heading to Edmonton.
BS: That was one of the greatest days out, that trip up through the Rockies.
LC: Yeah. It’s still winter isn’t it?
BS: Yeah. The middle of winter, go outside, and all the rivers frozen.
LC: At this stage were given you any extra clothing? Had they given you any extra cold weather clothing at this stage?
BS: Oh no, the trains were air conditioned, we were warm as toast in there. We were just sitting there in our dungarees more or less, looking out, getting over and some of these blokes, the waiters on the train there too, looking out, look all the snow cover and down between the trees there’d be a clean line of snow, down, you know. And they’d tell us: oh the bears keep that clean so they can skid down. I don’t know whether they were pulling our leg or not, might have been. But we believed them anyway.
LC: Oh yeah well, why not.
BS: Then we got to this place called Avola, and they had to stop there, we had a couple of stops before that, you know, going past Mount Robson but we couldn’t get over not a tree on them, you know, just bare rock and snow. What a great water, water resource that is, you know, we could do with that here, just then it melts quietly during the summer and sends it all down through the Prairies and whatnot, and down through the Mississippi and whatnot. So I did, we eventually got to Avola, got there into things, fixed it up in camp and then we set off from Jasper to Edmonton. Now, there’s a bit of a hold up just outside of Edmonton when we get down a bit, and then we arrived at Edmonton. I tell you, you blokes are lucky, the temperature’s twenty six below, now you’ve gotta get out, there’s trucks here to take you out to what they call the Manning Depot at Edmonton, you know, M Depots, they don’t call them reception depots or anything, it’s like the embarkation depots were called Y depots, I don’t know what the Y stood for, but the Manning Depot. I get this, the temperatures this side and they’re gonna get the trucks out, I said the best thing to do is make sure you’re about the first on. I’m grabbing the back and everybody else piles in behind you, they went out and they told us there the truck driver said there, if you were, if the temperature was two degrees cooler, that was twenty six degrees Fahrenheit, minus twenty six degrees Fahrenheit, if two degrees further and everything would be closed, everything would stop, okay so. Anyway we got out, we got us to Edmonton all right. We back down, put into some barracks there. The first barracks we were in, they were older barracks and the ablution blocks and that were, oh, about a chain away or something, you know, twenty, thirty, forty yards away, something like that.
LC: In the cold weather.
BS: If you had to race across to ‘em, you know, if you did, you had a shower or anything like that and you’d come out and your hair was wet, time you got back to the barracks it was all ice! You got back in a hurry. But not long after we were transferred to new barracks just across the road and they were all air conditioned and the toilets, everything was inside all in the one building, you know, and then we got issued first of all at the Manning Depot got called and then to issue our battle dress and our instruction books, text books and that on various, meteorology and navigation and whatnot, you know, and the first day like that, we didn’t get, another bloke and myself we didn’t get our battle dresses that day because they’d run out of Australian battle dresses there, so we had to go back oh, about a week later and get ours, back to the Manning Depot.
LC: So this would have been the dark blue.
BS: So this was out of the aerodrome, yeah. This was out of the aerodrome. So we settled in then.
LC: So your course was starting there then?
BS: Settled in to lectures.
LC: And Go!
LC: Oh yeah, right on, you know. It was on.
LC: Almost the day you got there, you went right into it.
BS: Right into it, yeah. They didn’t muck about. They get on and you did certain amount of lectures before your first flight, you know and they had to be ready for that and got issued with flying gear and whatever. And all various things and that’s where I had, I mentioned to you there before, where one of our blokes, the three of us that were good mates and stayed together we, and one of them had gone out and met this girl or something, we went into the, what we couldn’t get over there, we went into the YMCA, the YWCA rather, no YMCA over there, YWCA. Terrific facilities, you know, indoor heated swimming pool, dance floor, bowling alley, cafe, you know, dining facilities, dance floor and all, oh, terrific, you know. And Eric, who met up with one girl there too the first day and tied up with and we were invited then to be the, there was a group called the Twentieth Century Club, this girl was Italian and she used to organise hikes and that of a Sunday and we would go on them you know and that, Eric must have been out somewhere and he met this other girl, and just on the lectures a couple of days later this, the phone rings, wanting to speak to Eric Sutton or one of his friends, and this is this girl, ringing up, going oh yeah, well look Eric’s told me about you two friends look I’ve got two lovely friends too she says and they’re quite interested in meeting, how about come out and come meet us and we can go shagging one night. And you know shagging. I come back to the instructor and of course after the haw-haws about the shagging and whatnot going on, the instructor explained that shagging in Canada is dancing! So we said yeah.
LC: That’s all right though still. [Laughter]
BS: So we went out. They were great kids, they put no pressure on us, they were just - we were brothers, and that’s the way it was. Now the girl I went with, her father, told us when we left, he come out, he couldn’t thank us enough, now look, I can’t thank you boys enough for what you’ve meant to our, these three girls. He said none of them have got brothers, and they’re good friends, you’ve put no pressure on them, apparently, well it’s, I don’t know whether he explained, there’s never any pressure like this, they couldn’t attend all the things, they couldn’t come to our passing out parade because they were occupied, one was away, on holidays, one was a schoolteacher, you know they had their thing, but they were great kids, and their parents.
LC: So the locals were very happy, very happy to have you around.
BS: Yeah. He was great. When we left, when we had to go on to embarkation depot when we left from there, he come out to the train, we went to his place, to go along, thing is he said ‘I’ll drive you all to the train. I’ll take you in to the train’ then, but the girls didn’t come with us. They just, well, said goodbyes at the house.
LC: So you’re training at Edmonton, so now what aircraft was that on? What aircraft are you on?
BS: Ansons.
LC: Ansons, yeah.
BS: And you did, you flew in pairs, you had two, you had a flying mate come in. The second one, the first one did the navigation, you did practical navigation, you’re on set courses. There were a number of set courses which you flew by day then you flew the same course by night. And they were all bush pilots, Canadians, leased out, the bush pilots and they, they flew by the seat of their pants, I’ll tell you that, they were good pilots.
LC: Was this medium level, low level navigation?
BS: No. Very, very seldom went above two thousand feet.
LC: Okay, right, so it was very much visual.
BS: Yeah, bit of cloud that forced you up, but no, down low.
LC: So what you are learning is primarily visual and dead reckoning and that sort of thing.
BS: Yeah, just dead reckon navigate. The second bloke, the second nav on that trip, you’d do the first trip and he’d do the second. Second nav sat there, he did map reading. He practised his map reading and the old Ansons there didn’t have automated wind up the undercart, he had to wind up the undercart, hundred and thirty six turns.
LC: Oh bloody hell!
BS: Bloody. They were good. The er, we had a couple of trips there I think were, were memorable. The first trip we went on, well, our first flight, we had a bloke, his girlfriend was a schoolteacher at a school just outside of Edmonton, something business well did he do that turn up, I was starting to get a bit airsick by the time we was finished, he’s getting [unclear] was down there looking through the window of the school.
LC: Is that right? Beating up his girlfriend.
BS: That poor old Lanc he must have thought it was a Spitfire I think, the Anson, you know.
[Other]: I’ll give you two minutes. I’ll give you two minutes.
LC: Okay. Alma’s just entered the room and we’re being told to take a break in a few minutes.
BS: Right oh.
[Other]: [Unclear] we haven’t even left Canada yet!
LC: Yeah, we’ll get there, oh we’ll get there!
BS: That was, you know, gave us the two minutes. Then we had a trip later on, which is a, which a pilot, one of the few pilots who didn’t, who was not always on course ‘cause the thing there, for training and for navigation over in England was a bit rich ‘cause you go, your first leg’s to Ellerslie, well Ellerslie, that’s the three wheat silos down the line there, so you see it, and of course they know it’s there. But we had a trip, we had to go to a place well down, was a long way down and we were over ten tenths cloud and a lot of them pulled back, they came back. We had to go to two thousand feet to get above, I said ‘No we’ll carry on’ [unclear] and the pilot gets there, I said right we should be over, oh hang on [pause] no, I just, oh Coronation, a place called Coronation, and he looks around, he come down, there’s a break in the cloud there, yeah, we went down. ‘Oh’, he said ‘We’ll have a look at the railway station there and see, should be there’s a railway station there’, so he gets down. So he runs along, I think he damn near ran the wheels along the train track, Coron-wheesh, just went like there, no chance, so he goes round again and we shot off a bit, yeah, Coronation, he said ‘Righto, we’ll climb back up.’
LC: You’re reading the signs on the station were you!
BS: Yeah, yeah, read the name on the station to make sure. ‘Oh’ he says, ‘That’s good.’ Well I think I got brownie points for that trip, come back the old nav kind of thing. You’ve got to thank the pilot, he flew the course you gave him, you know, not tracking it, you know. Well he had to, he couldn’t see the ground anyway.
LC: So how many training trips did you, flights did you do on the course before the end?
BS: I think, I think the course was about twelve days, twelve or fourteen day trips and twelve or fourteen night trips.
LC: Okay. And how many a day, was it sort of you know, fly, day off, fly, day off?
BS: Oh we finished there the end of July, it was only over a couple of months, it was solid.
LC: Okay so you’re flying almost every day?
BS: Yeah yeah yeah yeah, quite a few, weather’d stop you quite a few days stop you, then you’d have catch up, night time and whatnot.
LC: Okay, we might take a break in a second, but so basically we’re up to, you’re coming to the end of the, coming up to your passing out parade so when we come back after the break we’ll go from there to Halifax and then we’ll get stuck in to operations in the UK.
BS: To Halifax. We’re going on holidays to New York [unclear].
LC: Okay, this is part two, we’re reconvening at half past twelve after a very, very nice lunch and a cup of tea. Okay welcome back, Bob, okay, now we got to, we’re talking about the time at Edmonton on the Ansons, the, so at the end of your training there, so was that the stage where you passed out, with your passing out parade. Was that the stage where you actually, did you get your wings, your brevet at that stage.
BS: Wings, yeah. Navigation brevet and then we get on, [cough] and after we left as I said with, we had that, spent the last day with the families of the girls, the three girls we were friendly with there. One of the fathers drove us to the station so then we left Edmonton then, by train, at night, all across the prairies, down through Winnipeg to somewhere got off, changed trains then to go on down to New York, via by Niagara Falls had a few hours at Niagara Falls and a couple of days at New York, looking around there sort of. And then Noel Hooper, one who along with myself were commissioned off course, we came back early from New York to Montreal to pick up our pilot officer ribbons and that, you know, we were given our slip on the pay parade, last pay parade at Edmonton, here’s your commission, sort things out yourself, something like that. Then we decided there in Montreal no, we’ll just take that, we’ll just do the pilot’s thing hang on to our present uniforms and wait till we get to England to be issued with officers uniforms, you know [cough] and then we caught up with the rest of the crew, the rest of them coming back from New York, coming up to Montreal and then we head off by train then again and along the Hudson river to Halifax, arrived at Halifax at the Y Depot.
LC: Right, that’s embarkation depot.
BS: Yeah, we were, completed our clearances, as they say in Canada they’re clearances whether you’re arriving or going, they’re all clearances. Completed there and settled in to officers quarters and whatnot, you know and pretty well straight away the first day, the first couple of days exercises in the decompression chamber. The Y Depot, the air force’s Y Depot emigration there, was situated on the naval station so they had those facilities so we did the decompression chamber and then a bit of practice or what to do, how to get into a dinghy from off the wing sort of. Generally leave was pretty good, mucking round there. After a few weeks we suddenly got the call yeah, go on parade: we’re on to the Queen Mary.
LC: Right, okay.
BS: So right, get on to the Queen Mary and we were billeted, there were twenty four of us, we were up on A deck, A24 and run by the, under the Americans [unclear] sort of thing and as you know on the Queen Mary the top decks were reserved for Commonwealth troops, officers and even men, you know and non-commissioned officers and the ship’s crew and American officers like that, and I think they went down to about the first four or five decks and below that you were then below decks where the main force of Americans, ‘cause after we boarded the Mary, the Queen Mary we went then straight to New York to pick up Americans. They, and I believe on that trip we go, there were fifteen thousand personnel on board the Queen Mary for that trip over.
LC: Bloody hell! Oh dear.
BS: So you can imagine the Americans, particularly the negroes, and that who were confined to below decks.
LC: Yeah.
BS: Conditions there were rotten.
LC: Because it had been refitted, it wasn’t like normal passenger cabins.
BS: No, no, they were rotten. At our deck we had, we soon learned that we had to follow the yellow line down to our eating, our mess as you call it sort of is, and I think it was the green line down to the big cinema where they showed pictures at night, the entertainment area and stuff like, and another red line to go somewhere else. But it was sort of colour coded where you go.
LC: So how long was that cruise across to?
BS: So we arrived in America late one afternoon, they loaded all night I think, and got away late the next afternoon. Then for three days went on a zigzag course across to -
LC: And you’re with a convoy as well?
BS: No, no, no, on your own, the Mary was on her own, see the Mary operated, from, its regular run at that time was from Gourock in Scotland, across to Halifax to New York back to Gourock. I think the Queen Elizabeth was also on the run but I got an idea the Queen Elizabeth operated from Southampton, and come down south of Ireland, you know, across there. We come in to north of Ireland. Then coming in to north of Ireland we cruised in lately and we were greeted pretty well by few low flying aircraft coming in to meet us round the north of Ireland and in towards the, the Ayrshire coast, moving up into the Clyde into Gourock and the most moving part of that was the Band of the Royal Marines which was aboard, down on the open deck, just below where we were standing, thing we were standing on, played Land of Hope and Glory.
LC: Oh, okay, for the Yanks, for the Poms.
BS: Well you can imagine, the Americans, there were tears in their eyes because Britain then was the land of hope and glory, there’s no doubt about it.
LC: Hope and glory, yeah that’s right.
BS: Anyway, so into Gourock lined us up on to lighters straight into, early in the morning, ah, that was about midday when we came, straight on to lighters, over on to the railway station. I think we got a meal and stuff like that, waited there, then set off that night down to England.
LC: So what was your first -
BS: So that was, travelled all through the night and then in the morning woke up, we’re getting in to the outskirts of, down past the Midlands a little bit and the first evidence of bomb damage I think, and what struck us most too, was we sped through the Crewe railway junction, that train just rattled through there at a reasonable speed and you suddenly realise in those days all the signals that were probably operated by hand, no automatic stuff or anything like that. Rattled down and then further on after we come into the real bomb damage and into London and on down to Brighton where we were accepted. The officers in Brighton were taken in to what they called the Red Lion Hotel, along and then the NCOs were billeted up in the, the Metropole and one of the other hotels further up, bit west. So we settled in there for a while, then about the second night come in, I’m suddenly given the job on duty, officer in charge of one of the guns on the front. Right, on the front, go down to this gun and a couple of other gunners come there, sort of looked at it, what do we do now? I says ‘Well I hope they’re working. Well, we’d better fire a couple of shots just to make sure’, you know, so bang, bang bang, ‘Oh they’re right’, okay. Well of course it wasn’t too long before some officious looking English sergeant major of some sort came flying, ‘What’s going on here, what’s going on here? You’ll have to be court martialled’, I said ‘What’s the sense of us being here if we’re not out testing the guns?’ We’ve got to make sure they’re working.
LC: This is on the main, when you say the front, that’s that main area on the foreshore.
BS: That’s right, the long the esplanade. Along past the main, what do they call it? The pier. So anyway he settled with that, it was all right. You can do that. Then with, we’re on to lectures that day on the pier, and I think one of the lectures on the pier, we’re on there one day, and all of a sudden there’s, you had to go up a plank on to the pier and all of a sudden there’s an unholy explosion, something happened. They were mined and one of the mines on the pier had gone off.
LC: Oh bloody hell!
BS: Got off there okay, that was all right and then it was only a few days later most of the crew we went, suddenly got their transfers, a couple of us went to London to organise our uniforms, officers uniforms and stuff like that and get to know the Boomerang Club and what it meant, had a look around.
LC: Where was the Boomerang Club?
BS: Eh?
LC: Where was that?
BS: In Australia House.
LC: In Australia House, okay, yup.
BS: I opened an account at the National Bank there as I was a bank officer, and it was then all the, the bank was all boarded up and that, there was a bit of bomb crater damage across the road with the St Martins in the Fields and that is now the official air force.
LC: Certainly is.
BS: Organised the Boomerang Clun and got the way, air force headquarters were up in Kodak House, Kingsway. We’d come in to Kingsway on the train up and come down to Boomerang House and then do the runs around, did the run up through there, to Buckingham Palace and around, got to know a bit of the area sort of thing.
LC: So getting your uniforms, were there tailors there just did standard work?
BS: Yeah, uniforms were fitted, in Oxford Street I think it was.
LC: Was that one of those places like Gieves and Hawkes or Johnsons?
BS: One of the great ones, yeah, all made to measure, beautifully made and got that settled. [Cough] It was only after a couple of days then Noel Hooper and Johnny Honeyman and myself were transferred to an Officers Training School down in Sidmouth.
LC: That’s, where’s Sidmouth, what’s close, where’s that, that’s down on the south coast?
BS: In Devon.
LC: Devon. Right. Yeah.
BS: So right, we got shot off to there, that means we then got shot behind the rest of our blokes who went through the course with us, they all got, while we were away there they nearly all got transferred to advance training schools and round about. So down to the Officers Training School and that was an absolutely solid four weeks training, in air force history, protocol, everything, you know. Run by the RAF Regiment and largely designed to train you to, if you were shot down to escape. Now, first day there, we’re put through an obstacle course. Now I’d been doing a lot of work as an, because before we left the squadron to, to go to Halifax, no wait a minute, no that’s later on, no, and in Edmonton you know, that’s the next squadron, [unclear] group there, and the, I got through the, I did the whole course within the time.
LC: Yep. That’s the obstacle course.
BS: The obstacle. But only one thing the, one thing was two pine tree poles something long enough with bars across, you had to climb up one and go over the top bar, come down, I looked when I got up there and I thought I’m not going over bloody top of that: I went underneath it. They spotted it!
LC: Oh bugger!
BS: They got it. Now there’s only one other bloke that was within the time. Now about three days before we left, the course finished, we were still there, the whole course did that course and they all completed it, in time and everything, so it showed you how they built up our fitness, the fitness of all those blokes. We would do, get on this training course was how to avoid - if you were shot down and somebody shot at you - to avoid so you go through all this drill all using live ammunition.
LC: Oh, okay.
BS: So you had to know what a 303 bullet felt like that whizzed past you a foot or two away, you know, from the rear. No mucking round.
LC: Health and Safety wasn’t very big there.
BS: So right we go on a route march one day, come along, there’s a bang, crack, crack, bang! You‘ve got to, bang! Now I get back, tell us on that route march what did you hear, what was that first one as you were coming up? Oh, some bloke, somebody let off a couple of double bangers. Oh that sounds reasonable. The second one? That was a rifle. Where was he? It was behind us, to our right. Now, if you think he’s going to shoot again, what do you do? Which way do you go? He says you go to your right, you don’t go that way, to avoid the chance of hitting you again, you go this way, right, and down, that, and down. So do that. What was that? A grenade. You’ve got to know a grenade. So we do grenade practice, get in a sandbag area, and the blokes get in, and of course half way through the grenade practices you’re told what to do, if grenade falls, you get out. Half way through, what does the instructor do, oh shit! I dropped one! Your reaction has to be straight away. Boom. Out!
LC: How long did that course at Sidmouth go for?
BS: Four weeks.
LC: Four weeks and then straight from there to -
BS: Now when we, they give you an exercise to go on, on that practice. Now you set off at the, at the school or you go to a place just outside Sidmouth, there, set off to go to school, start from here, now you got till three o’clock this afternoon to arrive here – told you where you had to go – up was a place about oh, I suppose ten or twelve mile up to the north east. So right, away you go! And we get off, you can go individually or you can get into a group, this is, you’ve got to use your own judgement, you’re own, right. Well Noel Hooper and John Honeyman and myself, the three of us said okay, she’ll be right, well we were, of a Sunday morning we’d all go, the three of us would go on hikes around, we knew a place with a bit of a cafe up just north of the thing and that and talk in there and we’d hike, we’d do twenty or thirty mile of a Sunday; we were pretty fit. So we go to this cafe and Noel, John Honeyman come up with an idea, he said, ‘I’ve got something, I was up talking to a girl the other day and I’ve got this woman’s hat’, Noel takes out a woman’s hat, thought about it, so we go to this, cafe, sitting there, do you think we can get a taxi, can we get a taxi? The taxi says, ‘Yeah, I think there’s a bloke’, organises this, this taxi turns up, so we explained to him what we wanted, oh, you beauty, says, I can do that for you, we probably gave him five months of [unclear] we get it so we worked out, we get in this taxi. So Honeyman sits up in the back seat of the taxi like they do in English taxis, come in and you sit in the back seat not beside the driver, I’m in the front seat with the driver, lying down, Hooper’s in the back seat, lying down. So we’re driving this taxi round, up they get, gets along, we knew the route, we had a fair idea where this instructor would be too, you know, so we’re coming up, up along a road and there’s a ditch along this road and a tree up along there and Honeyman looks over there: there he is, over against that tree over there, look, oh yeah, okay make a note and we just, we kept going. And the taxi let us off, went up, went up to a place and dropped us off about two mile north of where we had to go and we walked that last two mile, came out of there so we’re coming in as a group. So three o’clock comes about, it’s about a quarter past two, a bit before three o’clock, he turns up, to this point, this instructor, and a couple of others. ‘Now right, are they all here? Who’s not here – the three Aussies.’ Next minute we walked in – ‘Where the hell did you blokes come from?’ Ah. ‘How did you get past me?’ ‘Oh we got past you all right, oh, we’re coming up this road and there’s a bit of a ditch along there, we’re coming up this road and we looked and we see and there you are up against a bloody tree we lie down again and we said oh no we can’t go on past there, look around, so we crawled back down the ditch and went down further along, along past a tree, there’s bit of a dip in the road went up past there went, come a bit past and a bit north again and then come out.’ Oh bloody hell, fair enough. ‘Well’ he says, ‘Bloody amazing how these Aussies always seem to put it over us in these things isn’t it’, he said, ‘But you did, get you went together, well okay you used your initiative.’ The day later he found out what happened.
LC: Well, it’s still initiative.
BS: And he still accepted it.
LC: Good! Well you used your initiative!
BS: That ended up, so anyway we ended up, passing the course and getting out. Got pretty good. The course had a screaming skull, there was, you gave certain duties. They felt sorry for me because, I know now why, but one was Sergeant Major of Parade or yeah, Commanding Officer of Parade and Reviewing Officer of Parade: they were Colour Parades. Now, what bloody happens, but who’s, when this time when they come on, Commanding Officer of Parade one week, who’s Commanding Officer of Parade the first? Me. You’re sort of the drill sergeant of parade, you see, sort of. Now, you’ve got to parade, you’ve got to be awake here, this is parade ground drill this is, ‘cause now you’re here and the parade’s there. Now, this is advancing, that’s retiring. That‘s to the right, that’s to the left. Now, if they’re advancing if marching, if they’ve to move to the right they’ve got to do a left turn, to the left of the, you know a left turn to the right of the parade, you’ve got keep your wits about you to get right turn, parade off, [marching commands] retreat or something like that there, about turn, there, quick march, come on, yell out, they’ve got to bloody hear you! [Laughing]
LC: You’ve got to make sure you got your left and right turns right.
BS: The, get down there, the parade will advance, about turn! Come on. Parade will move to the left, or to the right, left turn. You got it right, you got it right, that same instructor. And he was, yeah, that’s all right. There’s the same as CO on parade, you’re doing other things, Commanding Officer on Parade with bloody nothing to do but stand round.
LC: Exactly.
BS: He gets on, we trained a couple of those, one day before this, we were out when he was teaching us how to yell, you know. How to, you’ve got to throw your voice, now come on, get out here now. You’d get the blokes out, line up, march them down the road, he’d hang on till they’re about eighty to a hundred yards away. Right, give ‘em, tell ‘em about turn, about turn, well of course your voice wasn’t too good, they wouldn’t do it. He’d show you. Come on, I’ll show you how to go. Right, he’d get up, he’d get one of the other blokes there, up about turn so we’d head off this day, we’re going down, there’s three of us there and then another bloke, he was a Canadian I think, he said listen, us and the ones in front hesitate. All you blokes behind do an about turn, the other blokes in the front there the three four ranks in front keep going, so he’s there, well, about turn! well back he bloody comes. You buggers, I know what’s going on here! You organised that, didn’t yer! He knew bloody well. Oh yeah, there’s a good YouTube thing on the return of the Black Watch to Glasgow and that’s got, that. I’ve often wondered why one unit of the Black Watch carries the shoulders on the right arm and other one carries them on the left arm, you know that screaming skull there, it was a screaming skull there, you bloody heard his voice, they threw that voice. Bloody terrific.
LC: Amazing. So that was, was that all practice for your passing out parade, was it?
BS: That was all the thing. And they said review, now I found out later towards the end, find the thing it was, squadron, the CO after we were in training to bring the squadron back here, that I was supposed to be navigator of, and be promoted one above substantive rank, you know, which would have been to squadron leader. Now, when my report comes back was recommendation about if ever approved for rank above or substantive rank by wing commander or above to be approved, without further question.
LC: Okay. Is that right?
BS: Yeah.
LC: Oh, that would’ve been right.
BS: Now, none of that records on your things. It’s like those records come through, it’s like the nav records from training. I’ll get to that when I get, when we got to the squadron. So we got that, we come back then. And then when I got them we were transferred up to Scotland, to West Freugh. I was with a course, blokes that went through, also went through Edmonton but they were two courses behind us.
LC: Yeah. Because they didn’t have to do the officer training.
BS: Eh?
LC: Because they didn’t have to do officer training?
BS: No, no. They didn’t. Not too many did that. There were a few Aussies on it. A couple were there for disciplinary reasons.
LC: Okay!
BS: Well, one was a bloke had pranged a Wellington on take off at an OTU. He was sent there for disciplinary reason for some reason or other; I suppose he wiped the bloody aircraft off, you know. But he was only there for a few days, he was recalled back to the Operational Training, to the OTU because he was upsetting the staff, his crew, see they’d already had a crew organised he had his crew so he didn’t last too long. He went back and there were others who were called off the course back to squadrons or back to courses or something like that, yeah.
LC: Okay.
BS: But it was an excellent course on the history of the, the psychology of the British Army, the British and the history of the air force, protocols and whatnot. I was set up. So you know you benefited a lot from it. So we went back then, so we went to West Freugh and then that’s where you started training with staff pilots. They were air force pilots, not like the -
LC: Bush pilots.
BS: Bush pilots in Canada, yeah, they were air force pilots and so on. The first courses there were set courses too, on the navigator, they also had set courses that you flew at day and flew at night, about a half dozen courses.
LC: What aircraft was this on?
BS: Most of them were over the Irish Sea, back out, over to Northern Ireland, back of Bangor, or across to, towards Newcastle from Ingham, where they were allowed, they didn’t interfere with operations or you know.
LC: So what aircraft were you flying?
BS: So they were sort of training areas for flying schools and that. So right, we did those, we and in the old Anson the main things there was the, going on Anson once we had to watch the hills round Dumfries and that, Scotland, something there called Criffel, which was a fairly high peak you know it claimed if you had flown into it you know, like around Wales there and the old Anson wouldn’t fly through a hill.
LC: Not real well.
BS: We set off one day on a flight, actually I think it was to, to Newcastle. We had two flights, we had trouble to Newcastle. We, we start off, all of a sudden, the met winds were supposed to be about, I think only about twenty five knots or thirty knots or something, but they got up to about sixty or seventy knots, you know, bloody hell we’re flying along we, and suddenly they woke up, no, no, we were recalled, we’re gonna get there too soon, you know, recall. Well by that time we were, what the hell we were getting pretty close to round about Gretna Green or somewhere, round Dumfries there, something like that, we had to come back. Well, we’re going, coming back that bloody Lanc we had a ground speed I suppose, of twenty mile an hour at the most.
LC: Yeah, with that wind, yeah.
BS: Twenty miles an hour. We come back, now we come over couple of these high peaks and you could have damn near jumped out. And then on our night exercise to go to, we had a, go to Newcastle. That was to combine the Newcastle anti-aircraft with a practical exercise, you know.
LC: Okay yes, so they can have, they can see an aircraft.
BS: They get, do a thing, probably do a camera thing or gawd knows what. So we head north, but we had the same thing, getting pretty well along about Carlisle something, we were recalled - Newcastle was having an actual.
LC: Oh okay, having a real air raid.
BS: Air raid, a proper air raid.
LC: So the anti-aircraft guys having some real practice, okay.
BS: Then we had another interesting flight which was, one of our flights used to take us -
LC: And this is still on the Anson. This is still flying the Anson.
BS: On Ansons, these were on Ansons, nearly all our navigation exercises from West Freugh would start from Ailsa Craig, that was a well known landmark, off the coast of Ayrshire, you know, Ailsa Craig. You go there, and of course they’d take off, they get over Ailsa Craig and away you go, down to Anglesey, Wales and across and come back to Ballyquintin Point or somewhere in Northern Ireland. Now on that leg you’re flying straight over the Isle of Man. This day, crew one, mates the, one of the crews they were over cloud on this, they flew that, and coming down, coming back to the Isle of Man they’re over cloud and the Ballyquintin Point had to be back below under cloud at a certain height, you know, do something, and the, come down through cloud, what do they do, straight into the mountain on the Isle of Man. Killed.
LC: Oh dear.
BS: That was the first, first accident of on that crews in flight now on that course. Then when we got to, when we finished that course, okay -
LC: What was that course called?
BS: Advanced Flying.
LC: Advanced Flying Course.
BS: Over there, yeah, and flying and bit of conditions you get over there, crook weather and half the time you can’t see the ground. Now, I’d say the six, it was about five or six weeks we were at West Freugh we only saw the sun about for a couple days, on the ground, [emphasis] at twelve hundred feet, or fifteen hundred feet you’re up in sunlight.
LC: Was that just fog or low cloud?
BS: So we were then transferred to Chedburgh so that was the first indication that we, we’re heading for Bomber Command. Because Chedburgh’s Number 3 Group’s training, training, Operational Training Unit and where crews are formed, you know.
LC: Starting to feel a bit real now was it.
BS: Settle in to Chedburgh, went down, got in, settle into Chedburgh, settle in to officers quarters there, as they, so called, and straight on to a few exercises and a crews, and to train crews, instructors, fly with other pilots and stuff like that, you know. We’d be under as a navigator, they’d check your nav courses on the bomber, do a couple of exercises, nav you know. Come back and your logs would be checked, same as the pilot, he’d be under instruction or something like that. To do, that conversion on to Wellingtons, they’d be doing circuits and bumps and you’d be doing with odd crews circuits and bumps, navigator.
LC: On the Wellingtons.
BS: And then after that they’d say right, all passed, you passed, everybody’s passed the thing. Now, into that hangar and by tomorrow morning sort yourselves out into crews. It worked. It was the best, it was the preferred method. So I go along, get on a crew and next minute Ron Hastings come up to me he says, he says you got a crew? No. He says I’ve got two, two English air gunners here who’ve been through courses together and want to stay together, they were all right and another bloke was there which the name of the bomb aimer [unclear] bomb aimer, he hadn’t been taken to a crew, Bobby Burns, we take him, and then there was another, older bloke there Vic Pearce, nobody’d take him, came up to Vic. Vic had come off, an instructor, been an instructor for quite a while so he didn’t come through with crews that had been training, you know, so he didn’t have mates or anything get him sorted out with others going through. Now Vic said - oh God yeah, Vic, Vic had so many hours experience, so we formed a crew. And they said we’d be right.
LC: Okay, so it was basically as you said, that you’re just put in the hangar, and just sort it out amongst yourselves.
BS: So we set out. Then once you’ve got a crew, and then you’re under instruction out to the, out to the satellite ‘drome to do a few circuits and bumps with the pilot on his own you know.
LC: That’s still on the Wellingtons, still on Wellingtons.
BS: Still on Wellingtons, then back to the squadron, back to the squadron. Now the first exercise we had to go on, nav exercise, bombing and high level bombing and nav exercise supposed to be, you know, from that, from Chedburgh, we were in this aircraft – it was U Uncle the same as the first aircraft we had in the squadron. And so it was, the first thing Ron on his own and that, us all as a crew, so right we’re taking off, and I’m sitting as you do in the Lanc, you know looking at the runway flying past and all of a sudden the runway goes wheet, what’s that, the runway didn’t do that, the aircraft did that, the wing dropped. The fuel tank flap on the port wing flew open and stalled that wing.
LC: Oh god.
BS: And that wing stalled. And how that wing didn’t touch the ground, if it had touched the ground we would have been killed, would have piled in, probably gone up in flames, you know.
LC: Fully loaded aircraft.
BS: No, no bombs.
LC: No, no. But full fuel load.
BS: Right, and it took the pilot straight away, we get a call for [unclear] Uncle, that was our callsign [unclear] Uncle you’re in trouble, yeah we can see that, we’ll hand you straight over to a pilot, to a trained pilot, an instructor pilot to guide you in, guide you now from now on, you know. So he come on to Ron. Now Ron at that time, and he needed the, the bomb aimer to help him hold that stick right, right over down here, low, hold that stick to get that aircraft flying level ,to keep that wing up, you know. And I’m standing up at this time and he said, ‘Smithy, see that strip ahead of us keep your eye on it and guide us around to it will yer?’ So I, looking at it, yeah, yeah, she’s right, keep going, we’re right now, we can see it okay, get back to crash positions! So I get back and I crawl past the wireless operator. Now this is where I learned something. I should have tapped him on the shoulder and told him come down to crash position, but I just walked past, and got down to crash position, sat on, the two gunners were sitting there and I sat on the edge over beside the fuselage, out on the starboard, or the port side and there we go, next minute down, down, down, come in there, landed, you know. That instruction was to come around again. Now what we didn’t know, and I didn’t know, till thirty, forty years later until another bloke that was on that second nav course that went to, went to Chedburgh with us, they weren’t flying that morning, and the word had soon got around, ’cause all the sirens went, the fire brigade had to get out, the ambulance everything out on to the runway to meet this aircraft coming in to crash land you know and it soon word got around that it was Hastings’ crew and of course Keith Dunn, there was a navigator, this navigator that I met thirty years later, he knew, he knew Brian Hastings, our pilot ‘cause Ron’s father was in the Union Bank of Australia, and Keith was in the Union Bank of Australia, and they both worked at the [unclear] Hunter Street Branch of the Bank of Australia at the time you see, so he knew of Ron. And they thought oh god, don’t tell me it’s Ron, it’s Ron and Bob Smith because we’d become good friends and next minute goes on, we land. Just as we land of course, the land, the sometime, my son said to me at the time he says, and the pilot, the plane swerved, because the rear gunner left go of the, and the pilot couldn’t hold the stick there again, we’re still at flying speed and the son said to me once, that wonder the undercart didn’t collapse I said no, no weight on the undercart, that’s still at flying speed, the weight’s still all on the wings. You know. But it swung. Now, I felt the wheels touch the ground, [unclear] and went to stand up to get out, and the rear gunner had done the same, and he was a big bloke, and of course when we swung, when it swung there, he fell against me and bashed my head against the - well I got a blunt trauma.
LC: Is that what that scar is?
BS: Led to all my troubles later on, you know. Yeah. So, I’d been knocked out, I know that, ‘cause they told me then, they were laughing, what you laughing at, they said the field ambulance had just come back, Chedburgh, just came back [unclear] Uncle, if you pancake you haven’t pancaked here! So Ron took a look around, he looked around and he, and oh no, took a while, the wireless operator looked around said what’s going on, ‘cause wireless on, sitting on, listening to some bloody -
LC: So he didn’t know what because you didn’t tap him on the shoulder.
BS: No, no. He’s away in another world, what’s going on, so with the joke and I’d got up then too and we looked out and I could get up stand up well I said we’re back at Honington, this is, we recognise the screen, went out, so we told them then, they worked out, they sent a crew out to take us back, we had to go straight to the medical guy to get checked. A feller there told me there, he says well you’ve got a bit of a bump there, you got and, bit of a bump there and oh god, that eye’s bloodshot, that should come all right, if you get a bruise come out and a bruise comes out probably okay, but he said if it doesn’t you might have trouble later on and that’s what did happen. It had damaged the optic nerve as well, you know, and caused pressure and also caused that cancer, meningioma core something, which didn’t happen till I retired, you know, just after. I never mentioned, the bloke treating for me glaucoma the ophthalmologist in Brisbane, I never mentioned to him that I’d had a trauma there and he couldn’t work out why I was getting, you know. And with the, about three days later the skipper said to me, he says ‘You’d better go and see about that eye again, it’s still bloodshot’, I said ‘Oh it’ll be right, we’re not bloody losing you as a pilot, the way you handle this.’ So it just went on. It never worried me then till oh, 1960, oh about twenty years after, when I was at Cumbria, you see I noticed driving that little smirr in the vision of the eye, you know, so I went to the optometrist. Oh he said I’ve got to send you to an ophthalmologist, a specialist down in Brisbane he says you know, you’ve glaucoma, high pressure, glaucoma there, if I’d mentioned it then he might have said, you know, he said yeah, he did that, put in a bit of a valve up there, which was supposed to last, only supposed to last for twenty five years but was still going fifty years later!
LC: Bloody hell! That’s all right.
BS: But it looks as though, no, he says it’s been damaged under that optic nerve and he says it’s gradually getting worse, he said no, you’ll gradually lose sight there, then when I come up and got out, that tied the two together and went, put in for disability with it, you know, with the, the Vietnam boys got on to me, they went through with it and then they said that could see no evidence of sharp trauma or something, we’re not talking about a sharp trauma, we’re talking about a blunt trauma sort of thing, but the he come in had me allowed, traumas, these traumas they can move too and also are allowed that can form non-malignant growth, tumours can form, you know, on the skull if the skull’s been damaged slightly somewhere there.
LC: But at the time though that didn’t preclude you, obviously didn’t preclude you from flying after that.
BS: No we had, the old bloke, the, Ron always reckoned we disturbed the medical officer and his WAAF assistant, he couldn’t get rid of us quick enough!
LC: Okay.
BS: So we got that out of the road anyway and we kept going and completed the tour there, went on and had a few quick trips in the old Wimpeys, good experience, get on, nothing more greatly unusual, just the usual thing, lectures and stuff like that.
LC: So that point then -
BS: And of course a lot of lectures from blokes that’d already completed tours or had escaped, been shot down and escaped given a few clues on what to do, what happens over there you know and the present position [unclear] shot down and whatnot. Then from from Chedburgh then we were shot through to what they call 31 Base at Stradishall. That attached us to Chedburgh which is Stirlings, we were flying Stirlings to convert on to four engines and they, we also picked up a flight engineer there, you know. That was our first flight engineer that we had the problems with. Our troubles with, or Ron’s experience, unusual experience with aircraft went, now Chedburgh was on a plateau and it happens there one day they’ve got to do a take off, they’re doing the engine failure on take off see, so right, taking off and the old the instructor cuts an engine. What happened then? So Ron, put a little bit of extra revs on, not getting anywhere, couldn’t start the bloody thing again.
LC: Oh dear.
BS: But fortunately it’s on the plateau, the ground fell away from us.
LC: Of course, ‘cause you’re on the plateau
BS: So the ground fell away from us to give us a couple of hundred feet to do a bit of a dive to get up speed, get a bit of flying speed and then the engines would, so that, that worked out all right, you know, so he had a go, so he, he had a, so the instructor said well you handled that all right he says you might as well try a three engined landing. So righto, I know I’m no [unclear] right now, so he’s got’d to do a three engined landing, that was good experience. So that was a great, we got the [unclear] of Ron.
LC: How flights did you take?
BS: So we weren’t going to let him go.
LC: How many flights did you do then on the Stirlings, four engine on the conversion.
BS: Oh, between circuits and bumps and I wouldn’t know, probably about twenty. It’d be quite a few.
LC: Okay. Over two or three weeks.
BS: Quite a few various ones. We, one day there we had to deliver, we had a, got an instruction out just Ron, Ron and the flight engineer and the wireless operator, I think there’s only three of us. Ron come, said ‘Come out here we’ve, we’ve got to go out, we’ve got to do an air test,’ he said to me, ‘The CO’s taking us out’, so we get out to the Stirling, we’re told there, you got to go to Stradishall, well we knew Stradishall you can do a pub crawl to Stradishall. So we got in. There’s this gorgeous looking girl sitting up in the Stirling, on the nav seat. You’re to go over to Tuddenham.[pause] Don’t fly over five hundred feet, so Ron didn’t take any notice that extra nought, that means fifty feet, so right we go over, in your log book you don’t say landed, and then took off again, just come back and land back here, you’ll be met over there. So over we go, landed Tuddenham airfield, this girl to come in, she’s to be dropped over France that night, one of the Special Duties Squadrons, you know.
LC: Okay, so she’s one of the SOE agents.
BS: Yeah, yeah. Whether she’s parachute, or drop her by parachute or drop her or a Lysander or something, jumps in and jumps out, you know, well of course she was a lovely girl, could speak perfect English and French I suppose.
LC: Was she French was she?
BS: What?
LC: French was she?
BS: She was French, I think, I think she was French. I’ve got an idea she was. Yeah, yeah she was, that was an experience on the old Stirling, get on, and then once we got the flight engineer then, he’d come off straight on, well he was just straight to the crew come in from the course somewhere, plumped on and well I don’t know what good he does on Stirlings, on Pratt and Whitney engines or whatever they had, I don’t know, but then we went across to the Lancaster Finishing School at Feltwell for a few days and that was just circuits and bumps with the pilot under instruction. We get on to and a for a, oh I think about a few hours each, a couple of days up. That’s when I first met Keith Miller, cricketer. Ray Lindwall was there at the time and I think that’s where they met and Keith came over, something to do with the cricket, or something like that, and yeah, we had a game of cricket and get on and then we come along, we’re told then right you’re appointed to 15 Squadron. We pack up, there’ll be a, get your clearances, called round here, there’ll be transport, there’s a couple of other crews, I think there was one other crew went to 15 Squadron and another one came from another Lancaster Finishing School or something I think at the same time you know. So we moved across to 15 Squadron, got settled in.
LC: And where was that at?
BS: Went round to the nav section.
LC: Where was 15 Squadron located?
BS: At the nav section, that’s where these, where you realise how the training under the Empire Air Training System and then with the RAF was pretty damn thorough. Now, I walk into the, I go in to the nav section and our flight lieutenant, the nav looks at my things, oh you’re the sort of nav bloke we could do with, good on yer, we’re not going to have any problems with you, okay, so led away. There was another navigator there who’d just finished school, a bloke called Flying Officer Johnny Moore. He was the first Australian that finished a tour with 15 Squadron. He said ‘Well now listen, you blokes should be right. I’ve just broken the hoodoo on Aussies on 15 Squadron, I’ve finished a tour, I’m the first Aussie that’s finished a tour on 15 Squadron.’ And of course the two English blokes that were with us, they thought that’s a bloody good idea, if he’s got, finished a [unclear], we’ve got a fair chance of getting back too sort of business. But and [unclear] sort them out, but now.
LC: That was at Mildenhall.
BS: Yeah. Now at Mildenhall. On that, on that report it comes in for the flight engineer must have been a report to the flight engineer as well, there was some concern about our flight engineer, ‘cause in our first op the flight engineer came with us as a instructor. See the, on the squadron the nav officer can’t fly with the crew for some unknown reason, don’t know what that is, the, the COs can, I don’t think the flight officers can take a sprog crew, but the gunnery officer can take ‘em, the wireless officer doesn’t need to I don’t think [unclear]. So right, so we had the nav officer, the flight engineering officer, now which was fortunate, ‘cause change of wind, we were on the short runway, which comes out and goes in, went pretty well over the officers quarters, the old Mildenhall officers quarters, you know, and, on the short runway, now this is the first time that a pilot takes off with the full bomb load and full petrol load and we’re just starting to take off and he says ay, ay, ay get those things through the stick we’re on the short runway you’ll never take off, you’ll never get off if you don’t, so he rammed it full through, we got off.
LC: But this was your first operation.
BS: Yeah, yeah, this was our first op. But after that things were pretty good, was down to flying bomb base there, a good trip down, individually, flew in, we were on the second wave on this flying bomb base, dropped our bombs, light bit of, there’s a bit of light flak, no fighters things like that, they had a turn off down to the right and dive, go down towards where the troops had landed after D-Day, you know, and then go out over, that’s our first sight of the Mulberry.
LC: Oh yeah, Mulberry Harbour was it. Aramanches.
BS: What a sight, so we got down, good sticky at that and back to England.
LC: Now you mentioned to me earlier on that you did a sortie supporting D-Day. While you were still on your training, on Lancasters.
BS: Yeah, we went to north of France, that was down up off the north of France, went to, had to fly down and stop five miles short, well Gee set was operating good, and it was all right so five mile short, if you were out, if the navigator was out and he overshot by five mile, he could have been in trouble, he would have been in the defences on the coast, you know, but no, it was all, we just cruised along the coast dropping the Window out there. So then on the, after we did, there, that was in Uncle, which was a brand new aircraft, oh it was a great old aircraft, first one and our next trip there in Uncle, we did a couple of trips after it that Ron came with us, he was all right, he went in to to Fleurie de Louche, was an oil dump in the north of France and that was okay, no flak or anything like that. Then we went to Chalon sur Marne a railway marshalling yards just north east of Paris, or north west.
LC: Yep. And this was in support of the D-Day landings.
BS: Yeah, yeah and it was a pretty solid trip for navigation dodging the defended areas and stuff like that, and the, got over there, bit of flak, fair bit of flak, got back and the flight engineer, Ron, that flight engineer Ron then, he, he reported sick the next morning and he was still sick when we, when we were, went to Kiel. Now Kiel was an unusual target, the place we only got flak and searchlights, were a problem, you only got, the flak there was what they called flaming onions. Now it wasn’t the anti-flak gun, you know, the 135mil or the 128mil, it was rocket propelled 38mil because the rocket was over Peenemunde you know where they experiment with the rockets and that, Peenemunde, rocket, and this thing, and we took, and so we get to Kiel, now just as well when we arrived, Ron wasn’t with us - we got caught in searchlights.
LC: Ron Hastings
BS: Yeah. We got caught in searchlights, and these flaks, they’re amazing things, you’re looking at it, you get a light pinkish sort of a glow, and looking at it from the aircraft they just seem to go “deeee, wheest”, explode a few hundred feet above you. Right, we got out of that, got out of the flak all right, got back, okay, well, and then the next trip, one more trip I think was okay, he was all right with us, down to, that might have been Falaise, down to the Falaise Gap or something like that then we were sent mining down to the Gironde river.
LC: You’re dropping mines?
BS: Sea mines, into the sea lane of the Gironde river.
LC: Okay. I actually didn’t realised Lancasters did that.
BS: This was where Uncle’s, that Gee set in Uncle was a terrific Gee set. And I only used Gee, like most of us did, on, where you had a coastline. There were a couple of blokes could use it inland, they could pick up a lake, or a town or a slightly different signal from a forest, but I never got down that, picked up a Gee set, you know.
LC: That’s just, gives bearing doesn’t it.
BS: And so we go down, we had a fly over ten thousand feet over the Brest Peninsula ‘cause the Yanks were in there then, then drop down to eight thousand feet, down fast, the estuary of the Gironde river, bit below the estuary, cross the, cross over the river then, go on to a course 010 into the shipping lane, you know, now I’ve got the, the old Gee set was good, looking out and as soon as we crossed the coast a bit there, the bomb aimer gave the skip, said righto skip go on to 010 now on to the thing to drop the mine. And I looked at this if we’re on that we are going to be over the narrow part of the thing we’re gonna drop on the narrow lane, we’re not be on the thing, no, I said no, no, no, no, we can’t do this, we’re not in the lane, we’ve got to go round again. So round again we go. I said I’ll tell you when to turn. We went across, I watched it on the Gee set, and then this is it, righto, now, so right, we’re on course, beautiful, with the Gee set one thing we were right on target with it, you know. Now up we go, drop the Gee set, and it went, the instructions were there, to, on the last, on dropping the last mine to turn sharp to port and dive at two hundred and forty mile an hour, now, that’s what it is, sharp to port, and that’s what happened, just after we dropped the mine, the bit, they couldn’t get this straight away but when they did, we must have, there must been a hill, or were defending that gun position at Royan to the aircraft, where we were to drop the mines. By the time he was up, we were on a dive, and we had oh, tracer and that’s going, that only seemed to be going that far above the aircraft, but I suppose it was a bit higher, you know, but he couldn’t get down quick enough, we were driving too fast for him, and got out of his range, you know, and now by the time we got out through the estuary, Hastings was just about down in the mists of the waves. [Laugh] And of course when we get out there, I got cursed at, Smithy, you don’t do that again.
LC: Was that go round again?
BS: Now, what happened, [unclear] will know that either, when I was doing those cruise ships there and going through the history of there was a raid on Royan in January that cost five aircraft. Now, and the position of Royan, what it is, now if we had been on that first round, we were flying straight at that garrison, at that, he couldn’t have missed us. We’d have been straight at him, straight for him, at eight thousand feet and then when we turned on the thing, he couldn’t have bloody missed us. We’d have been gone for sure, you know. And at Royan, it’s very interesting the history on Royan, cost five aircraft, that garrison. A German, a French officer committed suicide over it. He got word to the Yanks that this Royan, they should get a message to the Bomber Command, they should bomb Royan, the garrison at Royan, is the only, the only French are left there favoured, on the side of the Germans see.
LC: Collaborators.
BS: Yeah. They were collaborators, yeah. Now what happened is, they did two, did two raids on that, the first raid went, bombed it, did bloody lot of damage, not too many civilians were killed, they were all, the warnings were given, they were all in air raid shelters stuff like that come out, and then when that stopped, they all come out of the air raid shelters, the guns are quiet, next minute another raid comes and a lot of them think, and a lot of them were still the old French, the German garrison’s still all right and of course a lot of in that area of France they were, they supported the Germans a little bit, round Bordeaux and that, ‘cause they provided employment, you know, bought their fruit and their vegetables, and the farmers, so. And those, in the second wave they were [unclear] by time the second wave, the a lot of the aircraft, I think there were five Lancasters went down, a couple of them collided and a couple didn’t make it, they had damage over the thing and had to prang [cough].
LC: Amazing yeah. [cough] So could you -
BS: Amazing. But what, see what happened there, when the, when the Yanks took over, when they took over Paris, and the Vichy French, you know, sort of come in and de Gaulle’s troops, the Free French forces up in the Brest Peninsula, they were given control of that area but they were not given the equipment to go and bomb, go and get stuck in to these other units at Royan and those places, you know, they just held back and held back and held back, they didn’t have the equipment. So when we came back we had to climb back over ten thousand feet over the Brest Peninsula again.
LC: Oh, bloody hell.
BS: Because at night time, the Yanks, anything up there’s not theirs so they just shoot at ‘em!
LC: So could you give me a sense then, of a, could you just run through a typical day if you’re on ops, how your day would start or [unclear].
BS: If you start like this. Well, I’ll give it you like this then, the, yeah, well after that we had no in flight engineer for a while, you know we got to do so – I’ll cover that in a minute - and then one day this engineer turned up, a Jock Munro, a Scottish lad, he turns up, Jock comes and straight into it. Well there’s, now Jock’s first flight was a trip to Stettin, nearly ten hours, in old Uncle again, and with its good Gee set, we got wonderful fixes all along the north coast of Denmark and that, you know, and down across Malmo and over Sweden, across Malmo, what happens over Malmo, anti aircraft sets up a fair dinkum, shot down about five of us, but there’d been a bit of story something before that they were, the Yanks had got stuff in to the Swedes about they were shooting and they were shooting going too low and not being fair dinkum and the searchlights were pointing towards Germany and all this sort of whatnot, but they and the Swedes must have thought they’d better do something about it, you know. So they shot down a lot, they were Sweden now.
LC: They were Swedes, okay, Malmo of course.
BS: Over Malmo. Yeah. So Jock sitting there, this is all right, we get over Stettin, and over Stettin was another target, the flak was heavy, searchlights again, searchlights got us, we got coned there again, it’s an experience being coned in searchlights, oh god, you just, you just, but they weren’t quite as severe in Stettin as they were in Kiel, ‘cause the atmosphere was pretty clear and stuff like that. In Stettin, by the time we’d bombed, I think we were on second wave, you know, and time we got there there was a fair bit of smoke down the ground, it was cloudy over the target area, the searchlight were rendered a bit ineffective, you know, so anyway then we got back, and when we get back over Stettin, over Malmo, there’s quite a few had held up one of their thousand pound bombs, was quite obvious, now and again boom, boom, and then all of a sudden -
LC: Oh dear.
BS: I’m looking out, I’m looking out and next minute this bloody almighty explosion, now, that was more, either that or he hit an ammunition dump or something down there or, or somebody saved his cookie.
LC: This round by Malmo, this is Sweden.
BS: Somebody saved his cookie, there’s this almighty explosion. What’s next? A blackout. [laughs] So now we go, now we’re headed out across over Denmark, down low over Denmark and that’s where we come out over Denmark, out, no we’re still a fair height then, we had to drop to two hundred and forty mile an hour down across the North Sea, to beat the sun, you know, so right, Ron sets the must have set it on Gee set two forty down to eight thousand feet, so right down to eight thousand feet, seven and a half thousand feet, seven thousand feet, oh look at Ron, give the old flight engineer a ring, see if Ron’s asleep – he was! Flight’s on Gee.
LC: Oh no! Single pilot too. Bloody hell!
BS: So what does that do? That, that gives us, puts us ahead of the rest of the squadron or anybody else that wanted to do the same, get back, you know, anyway, back we get and get back and I’ve got a note on one of those log sheet of mine, you’ll see the notice by the nav assessment officer - good trip spoiled by uncontrolled speed on the way home. But we arrive back a bit before the rest of the crews, which was, did happen a bit later, [unclear] but old Jock, Jock just stood there, as calm as you like, we said well, boy, this is the flight engineer we want on the crew.
LC: Oh, brilliant.
BS: And he did, he proved himself, another one Ron then, just after that was, we were on, was it more or less, wasn’t a typical day, out of typical day, one day we were on the battle order to bomb Stettin in the morning, a m raid on Stettin in the morning. Wake up at two o’clock for, get out of bed, get down to the mess and have a meal at three o’clock, half past three four o’clock, be at briefing at four o’clock, you know, over to briefing, stuff like that, get all that down. So away we go, this is all right, and we’re on the second wave here, this is on the second wave on Stettin, on Duisburg, Operation Hurricane, on the morning raid, the Yanks were following us, after, they bombed after us, and so we come in, old Jock’s carry on, but Ron this time, time we come up, our turn to bomb, just before we released our bombs, the Master Bomber gave the code word for “bomb at your own discretion,” ignore the, don’t worry about the thing, the target area’s been hit hard enough and bomb at your own discretion and now as soon as he said that, Ron come out, I can still, I can still hear it: he didn’t call the pilot, the bomb aimer by bomb aimer, ‘Hey Burnsy don’t bomb, don’t bomb a residential area!’ Just screamed like this, you know. Now, Burnsy, oh Burnsy said ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a target ahead the same as this aircraft that’s just up in front of us, there’s a ship berthed beside a dock up on the Ems canal up just ahead of us’, I can see him, and this bloke I think has got the same thing, he did, and both our sticks of bombs get in there, but I can still hear Ron with that -
LC: Don’t bomb a residential area, yeah.
BS: Now I didn’t know till fifty years later when we met Ron over in Perth, went over Ron in the 1990s, to meet him: he was German descent.
LC: Okay, yeah.
BS: His father was, his family name was Hohenzonberg, it’s in the thing there, he was in the ANZ Bank, and had been transferred to Dubbo I think it was, well one of those places in New South Wales, in 1936. At the time when Hitler was starting to get a bit unpopular and the Germans, and the ANZ recommended to him that he anglicised his name, the family anglicise his name and Ron picked the name of Hastings, he was at high school at the time, Ron picked Hastings. That just explains it. I can see a lot of German in Ron: he was methodical, very methodical. The German methodical business. We’re not in trouble till we’ve finished. Old Ron. So there we are. And then we get back from, from Duisburg, what happened, about midday, get up and go and have dinner, you know, after debriefing and dinner, there’s another battle order out: we’re on it to bomb Duisburg again the same night.
LC: You’d only just finished!
BS: Back at, back at the darned briefing again at about seven o’clock or something, and too late to go to bed, just going, so we hung on kind of thing, go to briefing, get sorts out, and away we go.
LC: Did that happen often that you’d -
BS: No, no, no.
LC: It was just a mistake in schedule.
BS: Just the way it was, yeah, just the way, we had to catch up a bit I suppose. There were a couple did the two trips, maximum efforts, you know. It’s a saturation raid, and on we go. Over on the night, well of course going down no trouble finding it that night, the fires are still burning, you carried on and carry on and you look down on there and say how the hell would you like to be in Duisburg tonight, today, come back out, then on the way back out, it was bloody cold night, I think that might have been the night we got to a temperature about thirty five degrees centigrade outside, you know Lancs, the instruments, the temperature instruments were in centigrade, the speed, that was in miles per hour!
LC: Just to confuse things.
BS: So we’re on the way out, at twenty thousand feet and cloud tops and whatnot come out, and just I suppose oh, ten, fifteen minutes later, out of the Ruhr and then by that time, getting over probably over you know the top of Belgium, France somewhere, out of the Ruhr anyway, going, over France and there’s these cloud tops and all of the sudden there’s a bright moon shining on the cloud and this great canyon between the two clouds and the moon, you took one look and said what beauty. Now you look back there, now there’s what man has made, and look at that: what God has made.
LC: Yeah, yeah. Contrast.
BS: Just hits you, it just hits you, you know. You’re not meant to, and the Lanc with the purring you know old engines didn’t seem to interfere with it. You just sat there. You’re sitting on a platform and a lot of people never got the chance to see that, only now you know, night time. Beautiful sight. We got back to bed I think, got back to bed about two o’clock, four o’clock in the morning. We had to get over it, it was a long way, bit of a route out, come out four o’clock in the morning, we had to, we held up, no we weren’t held with briefing or anything. See a lot of, you’ve probably seen in a report with ninety five aircraft were shot down over, over Nuremberg one night, you know, the greatest loss in one night and somebody, they come out on the record books and operation books, ninety, over five hundred aircraft reported no problems; didn’t see anything. They won’t use their nous like. Now, you’re about a seven or eight hour, nine hour trip, you know, by the time you come back it’s got to be something bloody important before you tell these these interrogation, intelligence blokes, ‘cause when they get their teeth into something, they hold you up there for about a flamin’ hour, you know! No, nothing to report.
LC: Exactly, just want to get to bed.
BS: No, nothing to report, bombed on the markers, we think they were out a bit, but we bombed on the marker, get out and get back and get your cup of tea and get back into bed! [laughter] You’ve got to be practical. You’ve got to be practical.
LC: Yes. They probably knew it too.
BS: That was Bomber Command.
LC: Bob, do you want to take a short break?
BS: See that was a short, like a typical day, would be up, you’d be on the battle order, when you’d have to report for meals, then your briefing, then out to the aircraft and go and some things. Intelligence was quite good, we were always warned, after, some book I read once after the thing they went back to the mess and the hotel for a couple, [unclear] that was out, no way in the world would we go, ‘cause we’re always warned the old Bird in the Hand Hotel, they had ears in the walls and this was proved a couple of times, blokes would come back that were shot down they told us, we’d only given our name and numbers but they told us who our new CO was and he’d only been there a couple days.
LC: Is that right?
BS: Intelligence, we were put on to a target one night there when we flew in Sugar. Now Sugar was, Sugar’s dispersal point was out right against a sugar beet block, a bit of an old wire fence against it, so we get out and just as we’re ready to go out intelligence bloke comes flying in. Hold on, he says, time on target’s been put back an hour, word had just come through that Jerry’s changed the changeover, changed the shift an hour. So the idea was and then he woke up after a while, that if there were the shift coming on didn’t come on till half an hour later till that other shift had gone, the two shifts weren’t there together, that’s the idea [unclear]. So we go out to Sugar and we’re killing time you know, that’s when I took that photo that’s on the, and walked over to the fence to have a yarn to a couple of Land Army girls there and these two blokes, I don’t know where they come from, Cornwall or something I think, chipping the sugar beet - you boys flying tonight? Yeah. [Rural accent] You won’t be coming back here in the morn, be foggy. They were right too. Now this was, now what happened this night we got we went, on the way back we got recalled to - Mildenhall was closed for fog - and we were diverted to Honeybourne, down near Devon somewhere or some thing, Honeybourne, Honeybourne. Now you might realise Mildenhall is nearly on the Greenwich Mean Dateline, you know, and this night took us all, we’re never going west anyway, so you had nothing west on your chart, that was, so soon as that comes up, everything lines up greatly and sweetly must have lined up around Bomber Command, where the hell’s Honeybourne, what’s the lat and long of it, you know? But fortunately they came back with a Gee set, with the Gee reading for it, you know, so you got to a Gee on a certain channel, on 18.2 or something 18 02 or something, and follow that till you come to and you see the pundit, so that that worked out you know.
LC: Okay. You got in there and were okay.
BS: Yeah. So we got it and then we flew back the next day, you know. And then the last op, when we thought we were on the last one that was Dortmund. We come back, I, I got called up, the skipper come to the, down to the nav section, we’re on a bomb, on a battle order again to go to I think it was Gelsenkirchen I think it was, on the battle order that night, to go there and in this, after Uncle was shot down I didn’t tell you about the one we had the trouble at Homburg with after Uncle was shot down over Hindburg, you know, we got given another new aircraft: N Nan. So Nan, we’re in Nan for this to go to this event in to Dortmund in Nan, and get back, the skipper comes to us: we’ve got to go up and see the CO. He said well listen, you blokes, you’ve done your thirty trips, you’ve done one more as a matter of fact, he says now will you do another two to see the mid upper gunner finishes his tour? And Ron, that night over Hamburg when we got badly hit, Ron wasn’t in the best of things for that, that’s why he didn’t, wouldn’t take the, I think the CO could see, didn’t want him, want us to take him to as the Master Bomber to Hindberg, you know, so he Ron said no, no, no I can’t do any more, and I backed him, ‘cause I could see he was no good and also we had to consider three of the others, there were three others in the crew had completed.
LC: That was it then.
BS: Anyway, they, they saw their crew out and anyway, it was getting to a time when the risks weren’t all that great. Just, just the odd one, where the petrol became available to the thing, or the weather went against or something. weren’t all that great you know, or that unlucky shot, which does happen. Does happen, yeah.
LC: So when you’re officially told okay your tour’s over, what then happens, what then happens to you, once you’ve done your tour what do they do with you?
BS: Well, I was, we were given a fortnight’s leave, fourteen days leave. So I went back up to Scotland, moved around about, then when you came back, we were, I was posted as a navigator to a place called Husbands Bosworth, great name.
LC: They’ve got some great names in UK, don’t they.
BS: Husband Bosworth. So went and got our clearances, another bloke: Jim Claresbrook, he finished his tour. We used to fly together, we were the two lead navigators. There were three of us who were appointed what they called wind navigators. After a couple of trips when Met winds were out to billyo, they decided they’d have, get their main navigators to send back their wind, their wind speed what the wind they’d calculated at, and give it to the wireless operator and he would transmit it in code, right. So he was another wind navigator and the two of us always led the squadron on DH raids over the last few, last few six weeks or so. So Jim and I come in, so we go up to the CO’s office: he’s not in! But his offside is there, you know the old adj, he said oh the adj’s not in, but I’ll, just take a seat there if you want. He said there’s a bit of, bit of a mess, signal in from Bomber Command that might interest the two of you, better have a look at it on the table. We read it and this read two commissioned navigators who have just completed a tour of operations are to be retained on the squadron. One as a navigation assessment officer and one as a GH officer. Well Jim used to usually be at the GH lead, so we looked at them, so the adjutant comes in, we looked at him, and said look hey that job’d suit us, well you bloody beauties, he said, that solves a problem for me, doesn’t it, he said, I’ll cancel your postings, get back to the nav section!
LC: Okay!
BS: So Jim and I went back to the nav section where Flight Officer Webb couldn’t have been happier. Oh you beauties! I can do with you two back here so he’s laid down what he wanted. We could go, as long as one of us was there, that was right, the other one could be on holidays or do whatever he liked, as long as he was doing his duty wherever he was wanted somewhere else, that’s all right, and as long as we didn’t disturb him, he would, we could do briefings that he might not be, but he’d be there when the crews returned from operations, he’d pick up the turn, he would do that and he would always be in his room for an hour, an hour and a half after meal time, after meals, after he had his meal every day, he apparently he stood on his head behind the door or something and he had some separate yoga system or some bloody, he was an odd bod in some ways, very good bloke, but boy was he pleased to see us back there. So that was, that got him good.
LC: All right, okay well we might take a break now and then we come back just for a bit more final session and then maybe just cover the last stage of the war and the end of the war and demob and return to Sydney.
BS: That won’t take long, I’ll just cover that.
LC: Do you mind if we just take a quick break?
[Other] I’ll make another cup of tea, cheers.
LC: Okay, this is now part three, at twenty to three. So where were we Bob? Just sort of you’d done the end of your tour, you’ve gone back as a -
BS: Finished the tour, yeah.
LC: You’d been back there as one of a couple of navigators working back on the squadron.
BS: Yeah, yeah.
LC: So I asked you earlier on, what was your feeling though, when you, when you landed after that final mission on your tour how did you feel? Was it just, did you get out of the aircraft and sort of just -
BS: No well we didn’t know.
LC: Oh you didn’t know!
BS: The last time. We didn’t know until the CO told us, no.
LC: So did you know, did you know at the beginning how many missions you had to do to complete the tour or did they change that?
BS: Thirty. Though they lifted it at one place at one time to thirty five. Yeah.
LC: Okay,
BS: But that didn’t last long, they withdrew that.
LC: Okay, all right. So you hadn’t, had you been counting your missions as you went along, number eighteen, number nineteen.
BS: Put them in your log book, op one, op two, op three. Better not call them missions!
LC: Oh sorry. Ops, sorry! [Laughter]
BS: So we went down and then six months in I was called in to, after we settled in to the nav office with the nav officer outline what he’d be happy for us to do. Got tied up in a couple of enquiries about, one about a WAAF who had been promoted but it didn’t work and then another about an Aussie aircrew who had more or less referred to one of the girls in the Parachute Section as a Malvern Star who lodged a complaint when somebody explained to her what Malvern Star was in Australia!
LC: Oh dear! [Laughter] Oh dear.
BS: Called in all sorts of things, you know, but quite interesting, kept going, you know, kept up our our athletic training, we had a good athletics team there that sort. [Cough] At the end of the war after the end of the war when the, when the British Games were back in, the News of the World British Games at White City were on we entered a team for the 4 x 880. We come fourth in that, we should have won it, but we came fourth, we made a bad blue in the order of the runners, that worked out all right.
LC: Wonderful.
BS: Just with filling in time more or less, waiting, coming out here, you know. And then I, we got, eventually got called, they called down to Brighton then at about the end of May or something it was, time went around, at that point gave us leave weeks to do, up to Scotland a few times, round, just just more or less time was your own, got a bit boring as a matter of fact ‘cause you’re more or less waiting for a draft for a ship to come home.
LC: So at this stage, was the war in, Germany hadn’t surrendered at this stage, it was still the war in Europe’s still going.
BS: Europe had finished, yeah.
LC: Europe had been. So did it at any stage look like you may be posted or 15 Squadron deployed to the Pacific?
BS: We were, when we were called back I was in line then, 15 Squadron and 622 Squadron were forming a squadron of Lancasters and be supplied with Lancasters designed to carry the larger bombs, you know, to come out here to Australia, but when the RAAF or the Australian Government recalled us all to Brighton you know, that fell through.
LC: Okay.
BS: So if, if it was a decision made at the time without knowledge that the nuclear bomb was on the way, it was a very risky decision.
LC: Yeah, yeah. So would you have potentially then, so you said you were waiting for a draft to get on the ship to come back to Australia, was there any, was it definite at that stage you would demobilise or would you then come back and be part of the Royal Australian Air Force in Australia and go on operations with RAAF in the Pacific.
BS: You could do, some of them re-enlisted back in the air force, but no I, I wasn’t at that stage.
LC: So which stage, you mentioned earlier on you went up to Scotland when you’re sort of biding your time there, is that where you met Alma?
NS: Oh no, I’d met her before locally but then it wasn’t till we came back till, I was, after the tour and then, oh, a few month before we left home and was on leave, we sort of realised we had soft spots for each other.
[Other]: Ah!
BS: And agreed and worked out then, if when we eventually got the call to, on to the troop ship to come home, agreed that we’d correspond for a year, just give a year, kind of thing, and if we still felt the same way after twelve months we’d announce our engagement.
LC: There you go.
BS: And then get married. So that stuck to it, you know. Come back and got stuck into the war, I went back and we got married.
[Other]: Courted by correspondence for two and a half years.
LC: Two and a half years!
BS: Went through a heap of dry gullies and whatnot since, up and down like everybody else does.
LC: Yeah. Outstanding! So how many years have you been married now then?
[Other]: Seventy!
LC: Seventy years!
BS: A bit over seventy years.
LC: You’ve got your little card from the Queen and the Governor General and all that. Sixty.
[Other]: Sixty and seventy.
LC: Sixty and seventy, yeah.
BS: I got that from Queen Elizabeth, Bessie. When I got transferred to the squadron, I didn’t mention there before, but just a few days after we were there, the Royal Family paid a visit, that was one of the most interesting days I’ve had in my life.
LC: Yeah, is that right. Young Princess Elizabeth.
BS: When we found out that the old King he was, well, how he enjoyed talking to us, no errors in his speech, something like that.
LC: No stuttering?
BS: After he had visited the squadron and made an investiture over in the, in one of the hangars, and after lunch, we’d course we had all been given the protocol we had to follow with the royal at lunchtime: we couldn’t finish our meal before the King and we had to address him as Sir, the Queen was Ma’am, strict rules and tried to hide ourselves in the, in the lounge area after meal, till the visitors came in, was about three or four Aussies together, stood together over the side, the window near the main entrance to the officers mess, and when he come in to it he made a beeline straight for us.
LC: Did he!
BS: Yeah, straight for the, come over, how‘s it going, seemed to be very interested in what we were doing and whatnot, and one of the fellers said to him ‘You seem to be interested in something outside the window there, Sir.’ He says ‘I’m just looking-‘ where we’ve had that thing out there, I said ‘In that garden bed over there, they’ve whitewashed all the stones’, he said ‘I’d like to go over there and see if they’ve been whitewashed underneath!’ And that’s what his aide de camp told us, he says he’s with it all the way. He just get on, and when he explained a few things to us, to about Elizabeth was, made some remarks about one of the fellers gone up, we said to him well she could have come up and talked to us, he said oh no, there are -
[Other]: Are you recording this?
LC: Yes, yes.
BS: He says, there is a restriction he said, that made the Queen mother with the restrictions, but better not mention that.
LC: Not at all. Okay.
BS: But he was, he enjoyed it, and we gained the impression from him and from the aide de camp - that he’d given specific instructions that Elizabeth was not to be commissioned, she had to be, go through the ranks, and both her and, both him and her mother, were quite aware that since she’s been in the army and as a driver, she was learning quite a lot about boys. She had a real, he gave the impression she had a real fun attitude about her I can understand why she married a bloke like Philip, who’s the same as [unclear] tells things as they are.
LC: Yes. Exactly.
BS: The situation as it is.
LC: They only got married a couple of years later.
BS: Eh?
LC: They only got married about what, 1947.
BS: Yeah, yeah, you know just before that. Good on.
LC: So can I just get a general question then? You experienced some initial time training with the Royal Australian Air Force in Australia, and then you did the Empire Training Air Scheme, training and Canada, ops then, do you have any general observations of the efficiency of it all? The Empire Air Training Scheme?
BS: The whole, the general idea I think of the whole training was tremendous, it was really well thought out, it was tremendous. A Bomber Command squadron was a unique family: ground crew, aircrew they depended on one another and they treated it that way. I was on the squadron, there were two COs, the commanders of both squadrons made it quite clear that we were a family, [emphasis] we were brothers and sisters, the WAAFS. Now probably, might realise in all families now and again there is a black sheep brother and a black sheep sister, accept them, but that’s it. The ones that are, you’d treat them as sisters and I’d like to think that Bomber Command in particular goes down as one of the main factors in winning the war.
LC: Yup. That was going to be my next question.
BS: Because they tied up, they tied up so much of the German defences protecting their cities, that great heaps of guns and ammunition and manpower was not available to fight on their other, the African front or the Western Front., you know, gets on. When you look at it and I think some of their leaders recognised this at the end of the war, they suddenly realised that if they’d had this equipment available on the Russian front, or on the, down in Africa and the Middle Eastern Front, they’d have come out on top there. But they didn’t.
LC: So the, looking back at it now, while you were there on ops, did you get, you saw the sort of the targets you were bombing on a, you know, on a regular basis. Did you get much, were you given the opportunity to get much appreciation of the overall campaign? You got briefings on this is the way, this is what we’re trying and this is your part in it.
BS: At the time, the overall campaign particularly after D-Day and with the American Air Force bombing, we, we could see whether Montgomery and Churchill, or whoever was behind it, or Bomber Harris of Bomber Command, who had a definite strategy, don’t worry about the tactics, the strategy, you know. It was quite obvious to us that the Eighth Army Air Force had adopted Bomber Command strategy of area bombing, and by some great spin as I suppose you might call it, they somehow still got the word back to America they were still tactically, tactical bombing. ‘Cause we know some of their, some of their blues they were well out.
LC: Yeah. Well they bombed primarily, they decided to go mainly daylight bombing while the RAF -
BS: Well they only bombed daylight. Some of the things we‘re aware of, they’re well documented now too, in in histories of Bomber Command and the logs and that come in, the, bombed wrong targets, missed targets all together, didn’t take easy way out of things, you know, sort of. Yeah, yeah. Just got on.
LC: So have you got any observations about general command level, you said you had a couple of COs on 15 Squadron, other levels of command up the chain, did you have any observations and thoughts on, were they good commanders, from Bomber Harris down, were they, did you find them good commanders?
BS: Not really, no. That all seemed to work.
LC: Yeah, yeah. Okay.
BS: The general strategy, they had a good strategy, like I think Bomber Harris’ strategy: right, we’ll fight them on their terms - they started it, they get the same terms back, and that was it. And we backed him, his crews backed him.
LC: And now his statue is outside St Clement Danes.
BS: He never wavered from it, he never wavered from it, he never wasted time going round looking for photoshoots, making things for COs like politicians do today and COs and stuff like that, he had a job to do and he stuck to it and he never wavered.
LC: And was that generally, was that the general feeling on the squadrons at the time? Everybody had a deal of respect for this guy?
BS: Yeah, yeah. With us being the [unclear] squadron, yeah. I’d say so, yeah.
LC: So at the end you’re down there, down at Brighton, you’re waiting for your draft to get on the boat back to Australia so how did that all, that process all go, you eventually obviously?
BS: That’s good. ‘Cause we’d met a lot of blokes that had been taken prisoner of war, and coming back, you know and blokes that served on other squadrons so you met them again.
LC: Comparing notes!
BS: Went through along, yeah yeah. Made up for things. Then we could run around on the beach again, ‘cause the mines had been taken off, and all this sort of business, go to a few shows, and up to the Boomerang Club, a lot of blokes had ended up out in the Mediterranean too, see they’d come back to there, no.
LC: So how did the process work then? Suddenly you would have got a message at some stage, you’d got your slot, a spot on a boat to come home.
BS: At squadron there was a parade every morning at which Daily Routine Orders came out on, on that was, if a draft or duty the Daily Routine Orders who’s the officer in charge of the parade the next day and whatnot, sort of is, and you look at that and quite often you’d see the officer on the parade the next day is Flying Officer Joe Blow or something and you know Joe Blow is going on holidays up to some relatives and he’d be away for another three days so you or somebody else would stand in for him, that’d do and you knew darned well if you went away like that, and you got a leave pass, nobody worries about that sort of thing, and if you were away you’d send back a telegram, want an extension of two days, it was always granted. We’d go in to the Boomerang Club, we had our, collect mail and also we’d collect our pay there, going on your pay would accumulate, you’d go into Boomerang Club and get your pay up to date and then take it around and put it into your bank account at at the bank, you know round in Australia House, National Bank at Australia House. We had our contact, contacts in Australia House who would say to us there was no troop ship available for at least six weeks. So you knew right then any application for leave was going to be approved.
LC: Okay.
BS: No. But it was wasted time. And then when we got, when we did get out, I got home, I got on to the, we were told got to go on the Stratheden to come home, we came home via, through, called at Gibraltar and then at Port Said and Suez and then come around through the, straight around the corner down to Freemantle, you know, then up to Sydney. We had to wait, we had to slow down a bit after Freemantle ‘cause the Andes was coming, it left after us, but it had Queenslanders and New South Welshmen on board as well but the Andes was taking crews through to New Zealand and we had a few New Zealanders on as well that we’d picked up in the, coming through the Suez Canal and Al Quattara so the Andes caught up with us and that docked ahead of us in Melbourne so the New South Wales blokes and the Queensland blokes that were on the Andes got off and come on to, on to the Stratheden and that’s when my pilot, I met my pilot again, coming out, he’d come on the Andes and a couple of other fellers, you know, so we had a good yarn with Ron for a couple of days. We come on then up to Melbourne, shot out of Melbourne the next day up to Sydney, In the morning into Sydney, all on deck again to come through the heads, on to Sydney, into Perth at Woollamaloo again. The Queenslanders and that were the first off there and they got to shoot off out to Bradfield Park again, and told us what we had to do again, we had to be back and to be on the up at the, Gordon, to entrain to go on through to Newcastle and up to Brisbane, you see.
LC: So you did the rest of the way by train.
BS: Yeah, yeah. So when we get there that’s all right. When we come out it, I was, it was a bit confusing in a way, ‘cause when the draft come out, I was still on the draft as Flying Officer R W Smith, you know, but on my pay book and all, my war substantive rank of Flight Lieutenant had been, what they say, had been promulgated.
LC: Promulgated, yeah.
BS: Yeah, and they woke up to that just before I got on to the ship, you know, so right, but that didn’t make it, I didn’t worry about that. We get on to the train at Gordon to come home after killing bit of time. I raced back and saw an old lady I used to made her home available to me before we left, you know, and tell her I’d met a Scottish girl, she was a bit disappointed, she thought I’d pick a good Aussie girl, [laughter] but she said whatever you find probably right. So we got on the train, got in to Newcastle, [pause] Newcastle that night, yeah, that night and this Warrant Officer comes up, looking for Flight Lieutenant Smith, Flight Lieutenant Smith, yeah that’s me, you’re officer in charge of this contingent you know, no I said the first I’ve been told, he had a great heap and wad of papers that he kept to himself anyway, went and gave me through a bit of a run through what had to do sort of, you know, he’d go and then the next morning was the casino or something for breakfast and he come up and he turns up again he said now what’ll do is, we’re to be met, there are cars, RAC are providing cars to take us from the end of what was the junction – Clapham Junction, no - Brisbane -
LC: Brisbane, Run street?
BS: No, no, it stopped at South Brisbane, it stopped before South Brisbane, some there, maybe [unclear] airfield that it was, there was a some junction there, they’d be taking us from there, into the city and out to Sandgate, you know. Now when we get to Sandgate, they’ll take you right through to where you’ve got to congregate. The parents are all be up at this area here. Now I’ll parade them all, line them all, tell them up, call you up in to the front and give the order to quick march up to there and then when you get up to there we will be dismissed. I said righto, fair enough. So right, we get up to and do this: Quick march getting along, quick march, okay, there the parents there, I said well if I’m in charge of this bloody parade, I’ll just dismiss the damn thing! So we get up to court area, Squad Halt! Squad Dismiss! The bloody war’s over! Well I heard, I heard somebody say to dad waiting up there, my sister had said god, dad there he is up front. I heard some bloke say to my father – who was in the army you know in the army - is that your son, yeah, dad said to him I wouldn’t call the King my bloody uncle today. [Laughter] This old Warrant Officer looks over, he just sort of wandered off with a heap of paper.
LC: Brilliant!
BS: That’s what I said to dad, the war was over, the war’s just finished.
LC: The war is [emphasis] over. So what stage -
BS: They picked me up with my cousin who was in, had fought in Woolang Bay and got the, come out, wasn’t too good, and, ‘cause my younger brother now, couldn’t get over how much he’d grown. But now, my cousin Daniel Pampling, before the war Danny and I were great friends, ‘cause Alec was, quite a few years between Alec and myself, you know, a bit, eight years or something and Danny and I, actually we were close, we were as close as brothers, even after the war, we could talk to one another, about experiences, he’d tell of experiences with Japs, he was, he was hooked up all day in a heap of guinea grass with Japanese on the other side of it, they didn’t know, you know, and we could talk to things about that sort of, you know, Danny and I and get on now. When we came back Danny drove us down, he come back and on the way back, Dad used to take the cream into people in Harrisall, a Mrs Fresser, they were German, Karl Fresser and his mother, their son was in, was shot down and killed, about a year before I operated, you know, he’d only done a few trips, but he ended up on a, on a Pathfinder squadron and he was shot down on one of the Berlin trips, you know, in the winter of ‘43 ‘44. Well after that, she used to, I think she more or less adopted me as a son, she said to dad, she was always asking after me, you know. Now before we went home, back to Greenwood, to the farm, we come through Harrisall, dad wanted us to call on Mrs Fresser. [pause]
LC: Yeah. Oh nice, you popped in there did you?
BS: When I think about it I cry.
LC: So how did you -
BS: She was crying.
LC: Yeah. It’s a very, very emotional experience. Very emotional.
BS: Always called on Mrs Fresser. That’s how things change, never called her Pauline; and she always called him Mr Smith. You know, isn’t it amazing. Two sisters that, hey.
LC: So how did you find, you mentioned you were able to, your mate you were able to talk, your experiences with, how did you find communicating with other friends and family who hadn’t been, experienced it, was communicating was an issue or?
BS: I found that hard [cough] Mrs Fresser, but another great mate of mine, Jimmy Cossett from Boonah, Jimmy was shot down too, but he was murdered towards the end of the war, to meet his sister, you know, to meet the sisters or the close relatives of boys that had been killed. I had about three or four of them waiting to meet. It was a bit sobering.
LC: That would be very sobering, very, very emotional too I’d imagine.
BS: Little bit sobering. Anyway, we got, like Bomber Command blokes, we’re trained in the worst place to, it’s a game of life and death. There’s only two things we’re given to by our creator: that’s birth and death and death is it. That’s it. It’s like old Grey’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard: once they’re in there, all their joys are gone that’s it, the disappointments they had, well, and as Napoleon said what’s an honour or can any, any worth mean, what’s a posthumous award mean to the recipient?
LC: Exactly.
BS: Nothing. that’s why they cut out the posthumous awards.
LC: The French Army.
BS: Even with the Croix de Guerre and stuff like that. And they, of course they cut out all the Imperial awards too, like Distinguished Flying Crosses [unclear] and stuff like that. So you settled down there and that was it.
LC: So you were demobbed. Did you, did you have any sort of follow on support from the air force or the government?
BS: [unclear] I settled back into the war and then went back and got married. When we came back, after I married, we married, we shot to, Alma come to a different world, you know. And when we arrived was the best dust storm I’ve ever seen at Harrisall, when we got back to Harrisall to the farm, you know. And dad come in from the Territory, you’d better go into the bank they got a message for you, yeah, they want you to come back. I went back in, yeah, they wanted me to open a branch in Upper [unclear]. I did that, I went down and saw them, I opened that branch with a feller called Paul Gardner and he was a Rat of Tobruk. Now, and with a couple of a, couple of reunions we’ve had with our aircrew guards over later years there, come in, you realise in a way the bloody futility of, wars are not, not between two blokes, the people of the country. Now this Paul was a Rat at Tobruk, now at [unclear] on the corner of Kessel’s Road now where the Garden City or something, I had a relation bit further on had a strawberry farm there, but there were two blokes worked in the Department of Primary Industries as it was called then, you know. One was a, don’t know what he was, the other was a feller called Harry Warnenburg. Now, Harry come in to the bank one day to open an account something, and he’s sitting down talking to the boss, and Harry, he said to the boss, I’ve come out, no, I came out, I applied out here after, I think I was, came out from Germany after the war, and the war I was in Rommel’s Panzer Division over there. Paul said I was a Rat of Tobruk, he says oh we were around at Tobruk and they suddenly started talking to one another and they could remember things that both happened and seen there.
LC: Absolutely fascinating isn’t it, that’s incredible.
BS: Now there’s two blokes, ‘bout ten years before that, eight years before that they were fighting one another, or they weren’t fighting one another. They eventually come to the agreement, you found out the safest place on the war was on the patrol at night. Now, what you do as a patrol at night, if you’re coming round, you know the German’s there, so you maybe whisper something, you want them to overhear it, give ‘em a bit of false information, the German’s not going to let you know that he’s there, so he’s, he’s going to keep quiet too, get right so, and he said that happened on one particular incident that’s been well recorded with the Stuka shot down, with the one ack-ack gun that was there, got him fair and square first shot but it was a fluke, and they they immediately thought hello, hello, they’ve got a secret weapon and they stopped that raid and there were no raids for a couple days after till they worked out, somebody’d worked out for ‘em what it was. But there they are, two blokes, and then that blokes that meet at these things, that were prisoners of war, they’ve had their, over in England now at Bomber Command for quite a number of years there were get-togethers for trips down the Rhine every year. The blokes that shot ‘em down once they found out who shot them down.
LC: Have you every had the opportunity to meet any of the, any Germans?
BS: Only that feller.
LC: That bloke there.
BS: No German. I nearly did have one that had come over but he had gone back.
LC: Well Bob, I think that probably covers it, very comprehensively. But it’s been fantastic sitting down with you and hearing, hearing your experiences, but those, and your records that you’re graciously allowing us to copy, they will be a great complement to the recording of this interview so thanks again, thanks again for that.
BS: If you want to have a copy, a whole lot of those I’ll have a yarn with my sons, where to put them, you know. I happen to be a lad that comes from Harrisall which was on the doorsteps in Amberley, where my things’ll rest up there, with my grandmother that came out, between her and myself, the two of us, we’ve seen the whole development of that district. We overlapped by eight years on, on. But she was a girl, oh some of the stories, she was, she’s a wonderful woman, not like her two sisters. No, dad, bit like her father, they were get on. She had a way of telling you, if you did something wrong, she wouldn’t just chastise you, she’d say you know you’d better think about it, it might be very wise not to do that again.
LC: Yeah, just give you a hint, yeah.
BS: She’d make you think about it. It might be very wise not to do that again you know. I had a, made sure dad, mum sent us to Sunday School every Sunday morning, walk across the paddocks. I had a a Sunday School teacher, he was a Scotsman out here, he was killed later on out here, but you did something wrong in church or Sunday School he’d take you round the back behind the water tanks and give you a clout behind the ear.[laughs]
LC: Well it was effective. It was very effective!
BS: Well my dad gave me effective thing for being bullying. When I was a young lad, the bloke on this place next door, his father was a, was a champion rifle shooter, you know, the Queen’s medal, the King’s Medal they used to call in those days, go over to England, this feller annoying hell out of me, annoying things, I came to dad, said next time he does that heck, sock him one on the nose. Which I did.
LC: Didn’t bother you again?
BS: No, didn’t, not beat me. No, I got stripes in Ipswich Grammar. I’ve always been like that as a lad. Blokes’d have a go and I got caught Ipswich Grammar School having a fight in the in the thing one day, the old Dean come up and no ‘cause I, nobody would pick a fight with me because they thought he’s a bloody boxer! This bloke, when I came, I come in one day, I can still remember this like, how old would I have been ‘bout six, something, covered in bit of blood, so mum cleans me up, you know, I’m getting a hell of a dressing down, stop fighting, then all of a sudden it wakes up to mum that it’s not my blood: it was his out of his nose.
LC: What’ve you been doing!
BS: And of course dad, what you do? I just cuffed him one on the blood, on the nose. Dad said it was the best thing you could have done! I agree with that. Mum had the other one.
LC: Well seeing like Bomber Harris’ strategy, you started it, we’re gonna finish it!
BS: Yeah! Bomber Harris, he used to -
LC: Well that’s probably a good way to finish it Bob, so thanks for, thanks for the time, it’s been an absolute pleasure sitting down and talking about your experiences.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bob Smith
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Lee Collins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASmithRW190325
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
03:30:53 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Smith was born in Brisbane, Australia. He recalls moving to the family farm in 1932 and being a member of the Air Cadets during his school years. Upon leaving school, Smith undertook training as a bank clerk. Following the events of Pearl Harbour, Smith registered for the Royal Air Force as an air crew guard on the understanding that once he turned nineteen, he would train under the Empire Air Training Scheme. In May 1942, he was called up for initial training. He describes his first experience of death, while stationed at the Air Observer School in Cootamundra, and persuading the selection committee at Bradfield Park to alter his crew role status from pilot to navigator. On the 10th February 1943, Smith embarked from Sydney on the USS Hermitage. He recounts the details of the five-week voyage to San Francisco including kitchen duty on the ship, hunting for a record needle in Honolulu, and observing the damage at Pearl Harbour. Smith trained on Ansons in Edmonton, Canada, before traveling to Britain, where he attended Officer Training School in Sidmouth and the Advanced Flying School at RAF West Freugh. He describes the formation of his crew at RAF Chedburgh, training on Wellingtons and Stirlings, and receiving blunt head trauma on a training flight (which he traces health issues in later life back to). While stationed in RAF Feltwell for the Lancaster Finishing School, Smith recollects supporting D-Day by dropping Window along the coast of France, and using Gee during a mining operation over the Garonne River. Smith’s crew joined 15 Squadron, stationed at RAF Mildenhall, where he carried out 30 operations and remained on the squadron as a wind navigator. He details the events of his first and last operation, the process of morning and night-time operations, and flying over the Ruhr, Arromanches, Malmö, Duisburg, Stettin, and Dortmund. Finally, Smith describes demobilisation, reuniting with his family in Australia, and visiting Scotland to marry his wife, Elma.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tilly Foster
Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
New South Wales
New South Wales--Cootamundra
United States
Hawaii--Honolulu
Hawaii--Pearl Harbor
Canada
Alberta
Alberta--Edmonton
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
England--Devon
England--Suffolk
Scotland--Wigtownshire
France
Europe--Garonne River
France
France--Arromanches-les-Bains
Sweden
Sweden--Malmö
Germany
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Dortmund
Poland
Poland--Szczecin
Hawaii
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1932
1942-05
1943-02-10
Language
A language of the resource
eng
15 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
debriefing
demobilisation
Gee
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
mine laying
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
observer
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Feltwell
RAF Mildenhall
RAF West Freugh
recruitment
searchlight
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1360/22528/PRobertsM2001.1.jpg
8807da74335bcda436a16157b4b0b803
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1360/22528/ARobertsM200219.1.mp3
4c037fe59803bd6d7d0272b3b5beb8d7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Roberts, Maurice
M Roberts
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Maurice Roberts (1920 - 2020, 1095576 Royal Air Force), who flew with 51 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-02-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Roberts, M-2
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is an interview with Maurice Roberts whose service number is 1095576, who was a sergeant pilot and later a pilot officer during the Second World War with, he did his operational tour with 51 Squadron. The interview is being conducted by me, Harry Bartlett on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre at Mr Robert’s home address on Wednesday the 19th of February and the time now is 11:15. Mr Roberts, or can I call you Maurice?
MR: Yeah. Maurice.
HB: Thanks ever so much for agreeing to this interview. It’s, it’s a pleasure to be here to do this with you. We’ve had a bit of a chat before the interview so I’ve got a fair idea and I’ve obviously got your logbook but before we get to the actual war can you just, would you mind just telling us just a bit about yourself Maurice?
MR: Yeah.
HB: Where were you born?
MR: I was born in Manchester actually. And when I was twenty years of age I joined the RAF. That was in 1940.
HB: Yeah.
MR: When I joined the RAF. I never went back to Manchester because I met my, we used to, I was flying at which is now an industrial estate, was a flying field at Braunstone and I was flying Tiger Moths there. Met my wife and we got married in ’45 after I finished my tour and I, you know I’d known her for many years, but I decided that I wouldn’t marry. We wouldn’t get married until I finished my tour. So we married in ’45. So we’ve been married seventy five years now.
HB: Wow.
MR: And I went to South Africa. After I, after I’d met her and we became friends I went to South Africa and did my EFTS and SFTS there.
HB: Can I, can I just stop there Maurice?
MR: Yeah.
HB: When you, when you were in Manchester.
MR: Yes.
HB: Obviously you, obviously you were part of a family.
MR: Yes.
HB: What, how big a family did you come from?
MR: Well, there were five children. I was the latest one out of the five. They’re all dead now. And my eldest sister who was the first was twenty years older than me.
HB: Wow.
MR: And I have a niece now who’s over ninety, still living in Manchester. I’m in touch with her by telephone and I’ve been to see her, and we get on well together. We have a big family out there.
HB: Yeah.
MR: But I’ve no family here in Leicester.
HB: Yeah. What about schooling Maurice?
MR: Well, I went to Manchester Central High School, a grammar school and I was, I was a scholarship boy.
HB: Right.
HB: I was a bit out of my depth really socially because they were all fee paying members of this school and I was a scholarship boy.
HB: Right.
HB: And there was two of us actually who’d got to school, eleven plus. And, I presume I did very well in the eleven plus and I went to this school. But I didn’t go to university. I left at fifteen and got a job and started work really.
HB: What, what did you do for a job before the war then Maurice?
MR: Well, before the war I was, I was in, I worked for a firm called Salford Electrical Instruments. They were part of GEC.
HB: Right.
MR: It was a reserved occupation, but because I volunteered for aircrew I could get out of this, this you know being a reserved occupation. So I, and I left. Left the firm.
HB: So, yeah what was your process then for, because obviously you’re in a reserved occupation and you’ve decided you want to do your bit, or you want to join the Air Force, I presume? So what was your process for joining?
MR: Process? Well, I —
HB: How did you come to join?
MR: Well, I just wanted to, you know. Young men did.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And I went to the Recruiting Office and said I wanted to join. I wanted to go into aircrew and they accepted me.
HB: Right. Right.
MR: Twenty years old and I was only a clerk actually in this firm of Salford Electrical Instruments.
HB: So, so you’ve gone down and you’ve joined the RAF.
MR: Yes.
HB: Right. And you’ve, you’ve got to do some training somewhere.
MR: Right. And my first training was at Babbacombe. Well, I joined up. Seven days I spent at Warrington.
HB: Right.
MR: Where you got a uniform and all that but what they call Initial Training Wing, ITW, I went to Babbacombe near, near Bournemouth.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And I was about, there about six weeks, I think.
HB: Is that, was that you all square bashing?
MR: That’s right.
HB: And marching and all that sort of thing.
MR: Yeah, and getting our, yes there was no flying. It was just —
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
MR: It was just as you say square bashing.
HB: Yeah. And then you went from Babbacombe. Did you do an assessment for flying or —
MR: No. I, no I had a medical exam.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And I had an interview by several men. About five I think. I was interviewed for aircrew and they asked me questions like, ‘What is seventeen multiplied by thirteen?’ And I had to think about it in my head, what the, what the answer was, you know. Mentally.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And then they found, obviously they found out I was pretty, my mental ability was quite good and they, I, I passed the exam.
HB: Right.
MR: I had a medical exam apart from that. That was sort of to see that you were quick mentally I suppose.
HB: Yeah. So, so where, where did you, where did you progress from there after your interview? You’ve obviously been accepted for aircrew training.
MR: Yeah.
HB: At what stage did it become apparent you were going to be training as a pilot?
MR: Well [pause] well, at ITW. They were all potential pilots at ITW. Had the little flashes in your beret.
HB: Right.
MR: A little, little white flash in your beret so that you were, you were potential aircrew people.
HB: Right. And you went from the initial training wing, the ITW —
MR: Yes. I went to Canada first of all. To Canada.
HB: How did you get to Canada?
MR: Well, we went by ship.
HB: Wow, from, from —
MR: From, well the Gourock in Scotland. Gourock, I think.
HB: Right. Right. So you go off to Canada.
MR: Yeah. And then from Canada down to Florida.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And I had some training with a civilian because they weren’t at war then. The Americans weren’t. And I had, and I spent some time flying with the Americans. Didn’t go very well though and we came back via Canada. Had to go back to Canada and then I came back to this country.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And I had this Braunstone Aerodrome where I met my wife. My potential wife.
HB: Yeah. So when, when, when you first went to Canada did you go to one of the flying schools there?
MR: No.
HB: Before you went to Florida.
MR: No, no no. I went to just outside of Toronto.
HB: So you went to Toronto first.
MR: Yes. And then, and then from there to America.
HB: So just within a matter of weeks.
HB: That’s right. Yeah.
HB: You were off down to America. Yeah.
MR: And they were all civilian. Civilian pilots.
HB: Yeah.
MR: The instructors were civilians. And nobody was in, it was an American Air Force base but they were civilians who were, who were instructing you to fly.
HB: Right. What sort of aircraft were you flying Maurice?
MR: Well, the PT17s they were. They were like a Tiger Moth. Overgrown Tiger Moths they were.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. So you were down there learning your flying skills.
MR: Yes.
HB: And you said it didn’t go all that well.
MR: Well, they used to curse and swear and things like that, you know. So some of us went, went, some, I have a friend who was an air commodore. He died only last year actually. Lived in Glenfield, and we used to play golf together and he, he was there too and he went on the Empire training. He went to Canada to train. He went from Canada to Florida. Then from Florida went back to Canada and was trained in Canada flying. Real, real flying in Canada where I went, I came home and went to South Africa.
HB: Yeah. So, so when you did your basic flying training in America.
MR: Yes.
HB: Whereabouts in America was that?
MR: In Lakeland. A place called Lakeland in Florida.
HB: In Florida.
MR: Lakeland. Yeah.
HB: Right. And that was all in civilian clothes.
MR: They were. Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
MR: They hadn’t gone to war then.
HB: Yeah. And then you went back to Canada. Did you do any flying training in Canada?
MR: No. No. I didn’t. No.
HB: None at all.
MR: No. No. I went to a place called Moncton.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Under canvas.
HB: Oh blimey.
MR: Below, under forty degrees. Ten degree temperatures. Terrible. And then I came back to England and I did some more flying in, as I say Braunstone Aerodrome which is now an industrial estate. Braunstone isn’t, is no longer an aerodrome. But in 19 — I forget what year it was I met my wife in a tea dance.
HB: Right. I’m just curious. When you went [coughs] you went to Moncton and Trenton.
MR: Yeah.
HB: From, well according to your book —
MR: Well, Trenton —
HB: You were only there [pause] you were only there for two months.
MR: I forget what Trenton was really.
HB: Yeah.
MR: The name sounds familiar but it’s a long time ago. I don’t know why I was at, I remember Moncton but Trenton I don’t.
HB: In, in your, in your logbook it says something like if I’m looking at this right Riccall. R I C C A L L.
MR: R I C P?
HB: Ah. Could be P. Yes. Could be P.
MR: I don’t know.
HB: And that’s, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just, it just sort of, just for two months.
MR: Yeah.
BW: There. And then you came back and you went to, you went to Bournemouth.
MR: Yeah. That wasn’t near Bournemouth.
HB: Right. Because so when you first came back. Is that when you went to Braunstone?
MR: Yeah. Probably. You know, I can’t remember really very well.
HB: No. No. That’s fine.
MR: It’s a long time ago. It’s seventy years ago.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And I remember being at Braunstone Aerodrome and meeting my wife.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And then from there we went to [pause] Where did we go? I went to South Africa. To Clairwood where we were under canvas there. We had about three months there doing nothing. Not doing anything really. Then went to Potchefstroom for EFTS. From Potchefstroom to Vereeniging for SFTS. And I got my wings when I, at Vereeniging.
HB: What was, what was the SFTS?
MR: SFPS?
HB: Yeah. SFP?
MR: In what context was that?
HB: Sorry. Oh sorry. I thought that was just initials. I do apologise. I thought that was just some initials you’ve given me and I hadn’t heard them before. Yeah. I’ve got Clairwood, Lyttelton, Potchefstroom.
MR: Vereeniging.
HB: Vereeniging.
MR: Then I came home.
HB: Yeah. Came back via Cape Town.
MR: Came back with my wings.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Got my wings there. Came back. Then I went on to, well, we went to Airspeed, to Chipping Norton flying Airspeed Oxfords.
HB: Right.
MR: Twin engine aircraft. And Wellingtons. And later on Wellingtons. Then Lossiemouth four engine aircraft. From Lossiemouth I went to the squadron when I picked up my crew. And then went to Lossiemouth trained up there on four engine aircraft, on Halifaxes. Then I was posted to a squadron. 51 Squadron.
HB: So your crew formed up at the Operational —
MR: No, before.
HB: Conversion Unit.
MR: Before I went to Lossiemouth.
HB: Right.
MR: I, I, you formed a crew. You went into a room with navigators and gunners and pilots all in this room and you chatted to people and eventually you got a navigator and a couple of gunners and a bomb aimer.
HB: Right.
MR: And then you went up to Lossiemouth and we all trained together on these, in Lossiemouth on these four engine, four engine Halifaxes.
HB: Yeah. So, so the crew that you ended up doing your tour with was that same crew that you formed up with?
MR: Well, apart from one young chap who came. He was, now what was he now? A flight engineer. That was it. And he was only about eighteen and we were only twenty, in early twenties but he was eighteen but somehow he seemed much younger. And he put me, on the Halifaxes, the first Halifaxes you had to go back and change the engines. You had four, four, four fuel tanks, you know in your wings and when one was empty it had to be changed to a full one on your trip. And this chap had to go and you used to say, ‘Right,’ Well, I told him to go back and change. Well, we’re on our way back from a raid and he put me on empty tanks and all engines cut out. We dived down. And he was too nervous. Ever so nervous this chap was. So, I said to him, he went back and I said, ‘This chap is no good. This flight engineer.’ And he went back to training school, this lad. But other than that I had the same crew.
HB: Right.
MR: Other than that one.
HB: Yeah.
HB: I got another flight engineer.
HB: So you went to the Conversion Unit and then you were posted to —
MR: 51 Squadron in Snaith, South Yorkshire.
HB: Yeah. I just had a quick look in your logbook and the, we are starting in —
MR: Well, I go. The first trip was I went with another crew as a pilot to see what it was like on a trip to Germany. That was the very first thing. I went with another crew to see. The very first thing and then I came back and then I flew an aircraft with my own crew.
HB: So I’ve got, I’ve got you down as 25th of October 1944 and that was with a Flight Lieutenant Ripper.
MR: Right.
HB: And you went that, well it’s in black, it’s in black ink so it looks like a daytime thing to Essen.
MR: Yeah. Well, I think —
HB: And you were second pilot as you say.
MR: Yeah. That was it. Well, I went —
HB: Yeah.
MR: Just to see what it was like, you know.
HB: Yeah.
HB: It was part of the training really.
HB: Yeah. Because, because I was interested in this. It’s one thing and again it’s something I’ve not seen before. On the 30th of October you’ve got yourself as the pilot. And then where it says second pilot or passenger you’ve got six people in there.
MR: Well, the bomb aimer used to act as second pilot. The bomb aimer.
HB: Yeah.
MR: He was a Canadian actually. And he acted, when you took off he acted as second pilot when you took off.
HB: Yeah.
MR: When you opened, when you open the four throttles he put his hand behind them to hold them firm.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Not to slide back when you took off. But —
HB: Because that was —
MR: But he wasn’t a second pilot. He was a bomb aimer. That was his job was bomb aimer.
HB: Because that was an operation.
MR: That was an operation.
HB: To Cologne. And it just says landed away.
MR: Landed away.
HB: Yeah. It says landed away.
MR: One, there was one thing where a lot of fog was on when we came back and we landed at Manston where they had a, they had three in the country, great long, a hundred, a hundred yards wide flare path. Yeah. You know, where you took off on the, on the flare path.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And a hundred yards wide, it was great and about a mile long and they had, when you had the fog they had a long on the edge of each side of the flare path. They had burners with the heat so the fog would rise you know with the heat.
HB: Right. Yeah.
MR: And that’s when you couldn’t land at your own airport.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And there was one time when I landed at Manston which was south of, I forget where it was. In Kent somewhere, I think.
HB: Yeah.
MR: At Manston. They had three around the coast for people coming back where you couldn’t land on, or if the aircraft was damaged so badly you could, you could land on this thing because it was so, it was so big. The flare path was so big. It was a hundred yards wide.
HB: Because you got I mean you’ve, you are really in to, you know November.
MR: Yeah.
HB: 1944. You’re really into a lot of operations there.
MR: Yeah.
HB: And on the 2nd of December you, you did an operation to Hagen.
MR: Yes.
HB: And all you’ve got in your logbook is mid-upper injured.
MR: Well, we got back from a raid and we’d been, we’d been hit several times but this chap was a mid-upper gunner sitting in the thing, and the hydraulic behind exploded because —
HB: Right.
MR: It had been hit you see. It exploded. This, the hydraulic thing. Cylinders of hydraulics.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Where the crew sat on your landing because we all left our stations and sat in the body of the aircraft. The crew did when we landed. And it blew the top of his head off.
HB: Oh blimey.
MR: The mid-upper gunner. And he never came, he went to, he was in hospital for twelve months but he survived. They put a plate in his head and he lived ‘til he was about seventy. I met him again two or three times after the war in 51 Squadron reunions. Yeah.
HB: What, can you remember what his name was?
[pause]
MR: He was from Manchester actually.
HB: Oh right.
MR: No. I can’t. I can’t think of his name now.
HB: No. I understand. So, and yeah and then you, as I say you really did do an awful lot of operations then. You’re going through what six, seven, eight. And you’ve got January the 2nd 1945. You’re going to Ludwigshafen.
MR: Ludwigshafen. Yeah.
HB: And you’ve got in your plane you’ve got Sergeant Brown, Warrant Officer Stone, Flight Sergeant Swan, Sergeant Haywood, Sergeant Tovey and Sergeant Smith.
MR: Say them. The last three. Sergeant —
HB: The last three. Sergeant Haywood.
MR: Yes.
HB: Sergeant Tovey.
MR: Yeah.
HB: And Sergeant Smith.
MR: Well, Smith was the rear gunner. The mid-upper gunner must have been Haywood, I think.
HB: He’s the one that replaced the guy who was injured.
MR: No. The flight engineer was replaced. Not a gunner. A flight engineer.
HB: Right.
MR: Oh yes. Sorry.
HB: Yeah.
MR: You’re quite right.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
MR: He replaced the gunner. Yeah.
HB: So I’m, you see that, that one gives the list of the names. And then from then on again we’re back to just saying crew. So —
MR: Right.
HB: So would that have been your crew then for the next —
MR: Yeah.
HB: Set of operations.
MR: That would be. Yes. Yes.
HB: Right.
HB: That would be until the end of my tour. Yes.
HB: Right. Sorry about this. The pages are a little bit on the sticky side.
MR: Yeah.
HB: And you get through to February and you’ve, you’ve again you’ve landed away after you’ve done operation in March to Chemnitz [coughs] excuse me.
MR: There’s one —
HB: In your crew here you’ve got a Flight Sergeant Brewitt.
MR: Who?
HB: Brewitt. Brewiss.
MR: He was the, must have been the flight engineer I think.
HB: Right. Right. But, but as I say you then you really do a lot of operations in a very short space of time.
MR: Yeah. Well, there was one time when we came back from a raid, had a meal and went off again.
HB: Blimey.
MR: And we slept for, the rear gunner slept for thirty six hours after we got back. And they gave me wakey wakey pills when we, yeah we went off again. We did two trips.
HB: Blimey. So —
MR: A meal in between that’s all.
HB: Tell me about the wakey wakey pills then.
MR: Well, every time you went. Before a raid you had a good meal. Egg and bacon and chips or something like that.
HB: Yeah.
MR: We had good food. I know that the country as a whole didn’t do very well for food but they fed us very well and before we walked in they always gave us a wakey wakey. I think they were benecon or I forget the name. Benedrine. But the wakey wakey pills were so when you went on a trip you were wide awake you know.
HB: Yeah.
HB: They kept you going. The wakey wakey pills we called them. And as you went in for your meal before the trip there was a girl there used to give you these two tablets.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And we called them wakey wakey pills.
HB: Did you always take them Maurice?
MR: Oh yes. You had to.
HB: Yeah.
MR: You had to have them. Keep you, I mean one time I went to Chemnitz which was near Dresden. It was an eight hour trip.
HB: Yes. Yes. A long trip that one. Eight hours thirty five.
MR: Yeah. Eight hours.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And the funny thing is coming back from one of those trips we went between Ludwigshafen and Mannheim and Ludwigshafen was full of searchlights and Mannheim was full of searchlights but if you went in between them going to Chemnitz the searchlights couldn’t catch you. On the way back I was, my navigator was, my navigator was a good one and we were on track in between these two. But on the left hand side I saw a bomber, another bomber, this was in the dark but I just saw him and he was going over Mannheim and all of the searchlights swung through and caught him. This chap.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And you couldn’t get out of this. There were about thirty or forty searchlights and they were harnessed to the ack ack and we, they used to have then what they called flaming onions. Not your normal ack ack gun. These flaming onions were like five things that rose up briefly and they were harnessed to the, the searchlights. But this chap, I saw these bombs explode on his height about thirty yards behind him and I saw another about fifteen yards and a third lot caught him and the aircraft was just blown sky high. And when, everyone inside it. Seven. There were seven, they were off track. And you were talking about the Germans. You know, they got their technical, Dresden and that. These the technical thing. They were just as good as we were in their technical ability.
HB: Yeah.
MR: The Germans were.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And they didn’t, if they could, they got the height speed and direction of the aircraft from the searchlights attached to the end, and the bombs you know the flaming onions caught you, you know they were sent up to catch you. And I was caught in searchlights over one target but fortunately the, after the bombs went there was some cloud and I went over the cloud and the searchlight lost me. I was fortunate to get away.
HB: Yeah. So in, as I say you flew an awful lot of operations in a relatively tight sort of time.
MR: Yeah.
HB: What, what, what would you think when you, when you think back, what do you think was your worst, your worst operation?
MR: Well, the one that really stuck in my mind I was, I had several bad ones but the one that really stuck in my mind I got back to the base, to Snaith in Yorkshire after a raid, and they said we’re, the fog, ‘You are diverted to Lincolnshire.’ To RAF so and so. I said to the navigator, ‘Give me course for this air base.’ And there was a bit of silence. Then he said, ‘I haven’t got the maps for it.’ So, oh dear. We’re in trouble now. So I thought, well we, I went due east towards Lincolnshire from Yorkshire and towards the North Sea and when I felt, and it was all black down below you know with the blackout and I thought now what’s going to happen now? I called up, ‘Hello Darkie. Hello Darkie.’ And somebody answered down below but that didn’t help me [laughs] And I thought now what am I going to do? Am I going to get the crew to bale out and then I’ll bale out and I’ll set the aircraft for the North Sea and when all the fuel runs out it’ll drop out in the North Sea. And as I, as I was thinking this I was, you know I was in a bit of a state really and I saw a light. One light. So I went, I flew towards this one light and as I got near it there was three lights and what it was I don’t know if you know but during the war all the aircraft, the aerodromes they had hooded, they were all hooded so you had to be in the right position to see the lights.
HB: Yeah.
MR: If you came the other way it was black because they were, there were all these lights around the aerodrome were hooded, hooded lights. And anyway, when I got to this one light I was telling you about I saw two others, and what it was it was a ring of light around the aerodrome. They put their lights on for me, this aerodrome. It wasn’t the one I was supposed to be [laughs] but it was one near there. So I followed the lights around the aerodrome and they took me down to the flare path and I landed and we were okay.
HB: Yeah.
MR: But it was, it was a terrible, because you’re in a situation where you don’t know what to, you don’t know what to do really. I mean the obvious thing was to bale out and send the aircraft in the North Sea.
HB: Yeah.
MR: But it was a bit drastic. But I happened to see this one light and having seen this one light I saw the others and then I saw the, the circle of lights around the aerodrome and they took me onto the flare path.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And we landed.
HB: So you obviously, you obviously as you say you’d had a bit of a rough going over on that one and, and —
MR: Well, you know I had one trip when I had a two thousand bomb wouldn’t, wouldn’t release in the body, or the incendiary and the wheel went off but this this two thousand pound bomb wouldn’t go. So I was a bit worried about it because I tried to shake it off over the North Sea coming back but it wouldn’t go. So I had to land with it. And I thought now landing it might set it off. I told them when I, but fortunately we had a very good, good, in fact the crew said it’s the best landing I’d ever done [laughs]
HB: I think there was an incentive there.
MR: A two thousand pound bomb on board on landing. It didn’t go off.
HB: So so you’d got that bomb hung up and you said you tried to shake it off.
HB: Yeah.
HB: How did, how would you have done that Maurice?
MR: Well, just shake the aircraft. You know. With the wheel. Just shake it. You know, shake the aircraft and let it go. But it didn’t go.
HB: So whose job was it to take the bomb off?
MR: The armoury when we got back. The armoury took it off. The ground staff. Armourers.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And it, it must have got tied up somehow. I don’t know. I don’t. I didn’t ask.
HB: I’ll tell you one of the things you mentioned earlier on Maurice was you said about coming in to land.
MR: Yes.
HB: When the crew gathered in —
MR: In the centre of the aircraft.
HB: In the centre of the aircraft.
MR: Yes.
HB: Would that be where the main spar went through on the Halifax?
MR: Well, the main spar was just behind the pilot.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And the two pilot’s seats. Then, then the spar, the main spar. Then there was a seat on, a seat for three or four on this side and a seat for three or four on that side. And then the door to get out of it was a bit farther down and a chemical toilet somewhere.
HB: Yeah.
MR: You know.
HB: So, so obviously I’m presuming that at some stage you’re fully in position in the aircraft. Everybody is in the right place.
MR: Yeah. Yes.
HB: And at some stage you’ve got to decide that it’s safe for the rear gunner and the mid-upper gunner to leave their positions. When would you —
MR: We were home. We’re home now. We’re going around the, around the perimeter.
HB: So it’s, so it’s as you were doing your circuit to land that you would do that. Yeah.
MR: Something like that, yeah. I’d tell them, alright we’ll be landing in about ten minutes or five minutes or something like that.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Will you, now you can go. I’d instruct the crew to go and sit down.
HB: Right.
MR: As we landed. Yeah.
HB: And that was a safety thing I presume.
MR: Well, it was a thing we had to do. We were told that’s what and, yes.
HB: Yeah. Yeah, so —
MR: You wouldn’t want the rear gunner sitting in the rear, when you landed, would you?
HB: No. No. No. So you, you’re doing your operations. You’re based out at Snaith.
MR: Yeah.
HB: In Yorkshire.
MR: Yeah.
HB: Because you weren’t far from Goole.
MR: Well, Goole had got the lake. That was, Goole was the, that was a big lake there near Goole and that was a very good spot to follow you to get back to.
HB: Oh right. Yeah. As a obviously as a sighting thing.
MR: Yes.
HB: Yeah. So, what, I mean you’d met your wife or your future wife some time ago so, what was your social life like when you were on, on at Snaith? Did you have much a social life?
MR: No. We had, we had what they called a stand down, and you had to leave. You could, when you had a stand down you could leave the aerodrome until midnight.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And you would probably get a lorry or something to take you in to Pontefract which was nearest big town. We used to go and I think we had two. Two stand downs in my nine months I was operating. Only two. Other than those two we were stuck in and when there was a raid on, because my wife used to, she was in Maidstone in Kent. She used to ring up actually. She wasn’t my wife then but she used to ring. Yes, was she? I don’t know. Anyway. She used to ring up and to see if I was alright you know. And if, if she couldn’t get through she knew there was a raid on because when there was a raid on they, they stopped all the communication with the outside world. The station did.
HB: Right.
MR: The bomber station. And then she’d ring the next day and when we’d, to see if I was alright. If I’d got back alright. You know.
HB: So, it was quite a bit of a long distance relationship then.
MR: Oh, yeah. Well in —
HB: Yeah.
MR: Mind you she was in the ATS for two years.
HB: Yeah.
MR: She was called up actually. She had a choice of either munitions or the ATS because the WAAF and the WRNS were full and so she only had the ATS to go in.
HB: Right.
MR: So she went in the ATS.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Rather than go in munitions. Yeah.
HB: Yeah. So you, so you’re coming towards the end of your tour.
MR: Yes.
HB: We know you’d lost a flight engineer.
MR: Yes.
HB: Which is probably understandable from what you’ve described. You’ve lost a mid-upper gunner.
MR: Yes.
HB: So the bulk of the crew were still there towards the end of your tour.
MR: Oh yes.
HB: So how, how close had you become by then?
MR: Well, fairly close but then of course like many things in the RAF you, I go to 10 Squadron on my own and I pick up another crew.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Of four.
HB: Yeah.
HB: Different people, you know. And the RAF is like that. You don’t, it’s not like the Army where you’re with them all the time and you’ve lost them. They’ve gone. Although strangely enough I went out to, I think it was India. I met my navigator. He’d been posted to a place in, in India too as a navigator. Teaching you know. Something like that.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Yeah.
HB: So that was, that was obviously that was the follow on question Maurice.
MR: Yes.
HB: Was did you manage to keep in contact with all of them?
MR: Well, after the war the navigator was a member of the 51 Squadron Association.
HB: Yeah.
MR: And I and I joined it too so we met there two or three times with our wives. We came to dances and all that but now of course when, I three or four years ago I resigned from it because all the people were new. I didn’t know. They were all young people.
HB: Yeah.
MR: All the, all the old people that started this Association in 1944, this 51 Squadron Association you know for ex-people and they were all wartime people and we used to chat and all that. But now, later on, they’d all, they’d all died and — [laughs]
HB: Yeah.
HB: There was no point so I resigned from it.
HB: Yeah. It’s sad. So, so you’ve had your contact with your navigator. You’ve just mentioned there you then moved from 51 Squadron to 10 Squadron.
MR: Yes.
HB: But before you actually went there and this intrigues me because again it’s something I’ve not seen before. In May 1945 you flew two, four, six, eight, ten. You flew twelve operations in May from the 13th to the 21st and all it says is bomb disposal.
MR: Yes. Well, what happened we used, we went out and dropped bombs, the bombs that we had in the North Sea. The war had finished so we spent a lot of time carrying bombs out to the North Sea and dropping them in the water. In the North Sea. Bombs that they didn’t want.
HB: Right. And that was, was that just from where you were or did you have to go and sort of pick them up?
MR: No. Driffield or somewhere like that.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
MR: I was posted to, I think it was Driffield.
HB: Yeah. And then as I say you moved, you moved across to 10 squadron at Melbourne in Yorkshire.
MR: Yeah.
HB: And you were still, you were then flying. You changed in the June ’45.
MR: Yeah.
HB: To the Dakota.
MR: Yeah.
HB: Did you have, did you have to do a conversion course?
MR: No. I—
HB: Or was it just a case —
MR: Well, I went down to Witney. No. I didn’t have a conversion course. Only the fact that this itself was a conversion course flying these Dakotas. We just got in the aircraft and flew them. Twin engines aircraft. They were ever so easy to fly and out of the four engine bombers they were very easy, the Dakotas were to fly. Twin engine little, they weren’t very powerful but they were a very, very good aircraft and the brakes were much better. Brakes, than on the old four engine bombers.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
MR: And we were, we were flying paratroops, and towing gliders. We were training, we were all training, both the paratroopers and we were training for going out to the Far East, you know.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned that to me before we started the interview about going out to the Far East because you know it’s, we’ve got to September.
MR: Well, the war finished I think very soon after.
HB: Yeah.
MR: The Far East war.
HB: Yeah. But you did actually get out to —
MR: I went out there because, we went there because it was all laid on to help the 14th Army but they’d driven the Japs out and we spent most of our time, well first of all we carrying troops back home to Karachi where they we were picked home and taken home on demob. Then we, then we all went to [unclear] where we dropped rice. Free drops. We dived down. They made a dropping zone with the aircraft and we dived down on a free drop. Couldn’t put them in parachutes because they might go into the ravines you see. So we had to, down to about fifty feet. The crew threw the half-filled bags of rice out of the aircraft then we, when they’d gone we had to climb. I had to climb like mad to avoid the peaks around. And we lost three aircraft actually the squadron did on that.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Because, you know it could be a bit dangerous really.
HB: So you went down to how, how low?
MR: To where?
HB: How low were you when you were dropping them? Fifty feet?
MR: Yeah. Well, they had, the crew had to drop them on a DZ. Dropping zone.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
MR: Throw them out. Yeah. Throw them out because we couldn’t, they couldn’t go in parachutes because there was ravines, deep ravines and they’d never get them.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
MR: So we had what we called a free drop. We had to dive down, the crew threw out the bags of rice and then we’d, when they’d thrown them all out we’d climb like mad to avoid, and go back.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Turn around and climb. But you couldn’t, couldn’t turn around because of the peaks on either side. We had to go over the top and turn. They were sixteen thousand feet high these peaks.
HB: Yeah.
MR: In the Himalayas.
HB: And as a pilot was it, was it a difficult flying experience?
MR: Well, that was but that was only six weeks dropping that rice. But other than that it was quite an easy job. It was just taking troops back to, well, we picked them up from the east, Madras and at an aerodrome called Arkonham. Flew across to Poona and then took them up to Karachi in the north and they were picked up in Karachi by some other aircraft and taken home.
HB: Yeah. And you, and you were doing that all the way through until you ended up in Burma.
MR: Well, yes and when I got back. When we finished in Burma I went back to Poona [pause] and what happened then? Oh, I was on a troop ship. My demob came up fairly soon but they, I had to fly an aircraft back. A lease lend. On a lease lend the Americans in Munich. So, a little twin, a lovely little aircraft. They were used as like taxies for the important people in India and that you know. They didn’t, they didn’t go by rail and that. These marshals and generals and people like that. So they had these aircraft the Americans supplied. Then they had to go back to the Americans after the war in Munich. And I flew an aircraft across India, across the Indian Ocean, up the Persian Gulf and then across, across the Med and across to Marseilles and then to Paris. Then Paris to London to Munich. And I got in there, I think I’ve got it somewhere, one Dakota one aircraft, you know signed for by an American staff sergeant. One aircraft delivered.
HB: So, then that would have been, that would have been May 1946.
MR: Yes.
HB: Was that the Beechcraft?
MR: That’s right. Beech.
HB: It was a Beechcraft.
MR: I can remember the aircraft.
HB: Yeah.
MR: It was a Beechcraft.
HB: Yeah.
MR: A little twin engine, twin engine Beechcraft. A lovely aircraft.
HB: I can just, just about read it. It’s the one, it’s the last page.
MR: All electric. The undercarriage, you just put a switch up and the undercarriage came up. You didn’t have to put a lever down or anything like you did in the old Halifaxes.
HB: Yeah.
MR: You just switched up. Knocked this switch up and the undercarriage came up.
HB: Yeah. Because it, because it’s on this page here and it’s the only page you’ve done in pencil and it’s just starting to fade a little bit.
MR: Yeah. When I, and it’s not in the logbook but this trip I made from, from, I went up to north west India and flew this Beechcraft home. Well, I didn’t fly it home. I flew it to Munich. Not in. It’s not in there.
HB: Oh no. It’s in here.
MR: What? All the trip?
HB: It went, you went from Chopta.
MR: Where?
HB: Chopta to Bahrain. Bahrain to Kuwait. Kuwait to Haifa. Haifa to Cairo. Cairo to Tel Aviv.
MR: That’s it. Yeah. That’s it.
HB: Tel Aviv to Castel something.
MR: Castel Benito.
HB: Castel Benito. Then you went to —
MR: Marseilles.
HB: Marseilles.
MR: It’s there is it? Oh.
HB: Paris, Munich.
MR: That’s it. Yeah.
HB: And you finished at Bovington [laughs]
MR: Well, my mate flew me back home to Bovington for —
HB: Yeah.
HB: I had my demob there. I got a suit from them.
HB: From the Americans?
MR: No. it was in this country.
HB: Oh [laughs] Yeah. I was joking Maurice.
MR: When I was, when I was demobbed.
HB: Yeah. It’s, no it’s, now that’s interesting because it’s, a Beechcraft is quite a small aircraft.
MR: Oh yes. Well, it was I say it was used as a taxi.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Flying backwards and forwards in that.
MR: There were only about four seats in it. Behind the pilot was a, there was no dividing thing you know. Just four seats behind you when you flew it.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Four or six. I forget now whether it was four or six seats for people to sit there.
HB: Yeah.
MR: It was a tad silly really but the Americans it was on a lease lend and they had to go back to the Americans when the war finished.
HB: Now, when I spoke to you to arrange the interview and having spoken to your son.
MR: Yes.
HB: You’ve sort of skated over something that happened to you involving being torpedoed.
MR: Oh, that was, that was in, yes, when I left Canada to come back I came back, it was in January. When I came back there was, there was three troopships and two destroyers in the North Atlantic, and I think there was someone in the Canadian customs who was a German sympathiser and he was in touch with the U-boats. So when we left this Halifax place to come with these troopships with these two destroyers the U-boats waited for us. And the first night out we had I don’t know how many alarms we had with U-boats. And then we, a bit later on apparently one of the torpedoes was heading straight for a troop ship, I’m talking about five thousand troops on board, heading for this troop ship and a Dutch destroyer sailed in the way of it. The captain, he arranged for the destroyer to sail in the path and the torpedo blew up the destroyer and they had two survivors. And then the one, the one destroyer was circling round and round and round. And when they had [pause] when we got back to Liverpool they had a collection for the crew which is most unusual in wartime. Having a collection because they were so grateful to this destroyer. You know looked after them so well.
HB: Yeah.
MR: The crew.
HB: It’s sad. It’s sad losing all those guys.
MR: You don’t hear about these things do you really? Generally.
HB: Well, it’s because people like you Maurice don’t talk about them.
MR: Yes.
HB: Or haven’t talked about them until now.
MR: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. I mean you’re right, you know a collection for a crew of a destroyer, you know.
MR: And, and that, it could be quite a bit of money. All these troops. They weren’t just troopships. There were important people on board too you know.
HB: Yeah.
MR: People who were going home to England. Important people who travelled. I don’t know.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. So, we’ve, we’ve got you back to Bovington.
MR: Yes.
HB: You got married in 1945.
MR: Oh yes.
HB: So that would have been before you went out to India.
MR: Before I went to India. Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Yeah. I had one week’s leave [laughs] I got married. One week’s leave and then I was away for nearly twelve months in India and Burma.
HB: That’s, now, that is a long distance relationship.
MR: [laughs] Yeah. The only communication we had were by, I used to write her letters and I think there’s still some that’s upstairs.
HB: Yes.
MR: I must, I must get rid of those too. Those letters. I don’t want other people reading them.
HB: Well [laughs] but so you’ve, you’ve come back. You’ve gone to Bovington.
MR: Yeah.
HB: To be demobbed.
MR: Right.
HB: And ⸻
MR: I’ve got to get myself a job after.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Had a fortnight’s leave and then I’d got to find a job. I went to Jones and Shipman.
HB: Which is an engineering company.
MR: Yes. It is.
HB: In Leicester.
MR: It was.
HB: Or was.
MR: It’s gone now.
HB: Yeah. And what did, what sort of engineering did you do there, Maurice?
MR: I wasn’t an engineer. I was on the commercial side and I only had three years with Jones and Shipman. Then I went to Perry Parkers, and they were [laughs] they were a family firm. I was on exports there. Commercial again. Then I went to Richard’s and I spent thirty years with Richard’s and I retired from Richard’s.
HB: And what did Richard’s do?
MR: Well, they were structural. They were structural engineers. They used to have these structures with, you know RSJs and beams and things, and also they had a foundry too. What they called meehanite foundry. It was like a superior cast iron. Cast iron thing they made in the foundry.
HB: Yeah. And you were there for thirty years.
MR: Yeah. I was commercial manager actually.
HB: Yeah. So —
MR: All the buying and all the commercial side.
HB: Yeah. When, when, when you look back now you know not having really talked much about the war but you’re looking back now from being one hundred years old.
MR: Yeah.
HB: What, what do you think you took into your life from your wartime experience?
MR: Oh well, it made a man of me actually I think. I was only a boy when I went in and I had led a fairly sheltered, although not a, we weren’t, we weren’t particularly wealthy. We were, well we were poor really in Manchester but it, it made me a leader. It did me a lot of good really being in the RAF. In the fact, that it built my character I think to not worry about, it doesn’t bother me about people or anything really. I wasn’t, I wasn’t afraid of dying. I didn’t want to get wounded but I was never afraid of dying, not even on trips. I wasn’t scared of going on trips.
HB: Right.
MR: I don’t know why that was. I never felt frightened at all because I didn’t, it didn’t worry me if I got killed really before, that was before I was married of course.
HB: Yes. Yes. Of course. And, and, and that experience obviously took you through. You mention leadership.
MR: Yeah.
HB: And, and that sort of brings you back to how close you worked with your crew.
MR: Yeah.
HB: And you led them and you took that forward but with your crew as a group of men together do you think that worked for them as well? Having you as the pilot.
MR: Well, it could do but you were the boss actually. There was no question. Whatever you said went. If you said, ‘Bale out.’ They’d bale out. Or anything, you know. You, you were like a captain of a ship really, I suppose. Your word was law and there was no, they never questioned it. I remember coming back from a raid once and the rear gunner said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I think there’s a fighter. I can’t, can’t quite see it.’ So he said, ‘I’m not sure.’ So I did a corkscrew you see and he said, ‘Oh you’re alright. No. Don’t worry. Don’t get bloody mad.’ Something like that. I said, ‘Who the bloody hell are you talking to?’ [laughs] And of course he shut up then.
HB: Yeah.
MR: But that’s just an instance of your life you know.
HB: Yeah. I can, yeah I can understand that. I can understand that. So you marry.
MR: When I finished my tour I got married.
HB: You married Sylvia.
MR: Had a week’s leave and then to —
HB: Yeah.
MR: I went to India.
HB: And you set up home here in Leicester.
MR: Well, yeah. I lived in Braunstone actually for, when my, there was houses being built. Twelve hundred pound they were. Houses being built, two up and two down and I had one of those in, just off Braunstone Lane and I lived there for about two years. And then I, in this area, this is in 1952 I think I bought this plot where the house is built. I had an architect and we built the house. We built this house and I’ve lived here for sixty odd years. My wife and I have had sixty years in this house. She’s now in Kirby House.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Care home. But we had sixty, and I’ve lived here for sixty eight, excuse me sixty eight years. And the house was built with the architect and I mean things like the picture window there and the hatch was ours. You know. We wanted that.
HB: Yes.
MR: Sylvia and I. And he, you know was a good architect. All his, every window in the house looks out on the back garden. Three bedrooms. Three bedroom windows. And the architect was very good.
HB: Yeah. That’s lovely.
MR: And we’ve liked this house. We’ve always been very happy in it.
HB: Yeah. Well, we’ve sort of naturally come to an end —
MR: Right.
HB: Of the interview, Maurice and I thank you.
MR: Well, thank you for coming any way.
HB: Well, it’s, and I don’t say this lightly it’s, it’s a privilege really to be able to get you to tell your story and to have your story recorded.
MR: Yeah.
HB: And I thank you for that and I’m sure in the future when people look in to what Bomber Command did in years to come somewhere in there, there will be this little comment from —
MR: Yeah.
HB: From Maurice Roberts.
MR: Well that’s nice to know, you know.
HB: Yes.
MR: And I’ve got this this thing. This aircrew medal plus.
HB: Yeah.
MR: That David Cameron, well it would be, and bar that’s it.
HB: The clasp. Yeah.
MR: The aircrew. And I’ve also got the medal from the French government. The Legion d’Honneur.
HB: Yeah.
MR: Have you seen that?
HB: No. What, what I’ll do now is I will terminate the interview if I may —
MR: Yes.
HB: And we’ll go on to the other bits, because there’s bits of paperwork.
MR: Right.
HB: So, thank you again Maurice.
MR: Ok.
HB: And we’ll just stop the interview.
MR: Right.
HB: I normally say the time but I can’t see the time. So, it’s twelve something I think. Oh dear.
MR: That’s not going that clock. The time. Look at my watch. That’s the correct time.
HB: It’s ten minutes past twelve.
MR: Right.
HB: Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Maurice Roberts
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harry Bartlett
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-02-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARobertsM200219, PRobertsM2001
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:54:47 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Born in Manchester, he was 20 years old in 1940 when he joined up and volunteered for aircrew. He trained in South Africa, Canada (Moncton and Trenton), the Unites States (Lakeland), and was torpedoed in the Atlantic on his way back. Maurice flew Tiger Moths, Oxfords, Wellingtons, and Halifaxes. After being stationed at a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Lossiemouth, he was posted to 51 Squadron at RAF Snaith. He recollects operations to Essen, Cologne, Ludwigshafen and Chemnitz, mentioning 8-hour trips made possible by amphetamines ('Wakey-wakey' pills), heavy anti-aircraft fire, FIDO, and bomb-struck aircraft. On another occasion they were diverted to a Lincolnshire airfield for which they had not got the maps and couldn’t locate it. Having resigned to the fact that they would have to set a course out over the North Sea and then bale out, at the last moment Maurice spotted a light on the airfield and was able to land safely. They once had to land with a 2000 lb bomb still on board, which his crew considered the best landing he had ever done. In May 1945, he did 12 operations for bomb disposal in the North Sea, taking off from RAF Driffield. In June, with 10 Squadron and a new crew at RAF Melbourne, he flew C-47s training for operations on Japan, then was posted to the Far East. While stationed in Karachi, Maurice dropped supplies in the jungle. Demobilised in 1946, he pursued a career in engineering retiring as a manager – Maurice maintains that wartime service helped built his character. He stayed in touch with other 51 Squadron veterans through their association. In addition to his decorations, he was awarded the Legion of Honour.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Scotland--Moray
England--Yorkshire
Canada
Ontario
Ontario--Trenton
New Brunswick
New Brunswick--Moncton
United States
Florida
Florida--Lakeland
South Africa
Germany
Germany--Essen
Germany--Cologne
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Pakistan
Pakistan--Karachi
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
South Africa--Vereeniging
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-10-25
1944-12-02
1945-01-02
1945-05
1945-06
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Graham Emmet
Steve Baldwin
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
10 Squadron
51 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb disposal
bomb struck
bombing
C-47
FIDO
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Driffield
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Snaith
searchlight
submarine
Tiger force
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington